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10.07.16

Links 7/10/2016: Linux Kernel 4.8.1, Wine Staging 1.9.20

Posted in News Roundup at 10:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Tesla vehicles to get a much-needed updated browser with new Linux OS in December, says Musk

    There are plenty of useful and well-thought-out features on Tesla’s 17-in touchscreen, but the internet browser is not one of them. For years now, we have been used to high-speed internet browsing on our laptops, desktop and now even or phones, but Tesla’s browser is so slow that it feels like it’s from another era.

    Model S and X owners have been asking for an update to the browser for a long time and unfortunately, it didn’t come with the recent 8.0 update, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk said yesterday that it will with an upcoming update, which will likely be in December.

    Tesla’s operating system is built on a modified version of Linux Ubuntu. Musk says that Tesla aims to upgrade the Linux OS to 4.4 in Tesla vehicles in December. That’s when he expects they will be able to update the browser.

  • Desktop/Microsoft

    • Detested snooping patch KB 2952664 reappears

      Perhaps the world has gone truly mad. Or maybe Microsoft’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes prior to its major shift in patching strategy — the patchocalypse — widely anticipated this month. It’s even possible Microsoft wants to bring back the “Get Windows 10″ campaign, to drive Windows’ reputation even deeper into the dirt.

      A Microsoft spokesman says it isn’t bringing back the “Get Windows 10″ campaign, but our old nemesis KB 2952664 reappeared suddenly yesterday afternoon, and Windows users are livid — and scared.

    • Microsoft’s Skype locks out iTWire editor-in-chief

      Login issues at Skype have bitten iTWire, with editor-in-chief Stan Beer being told his account has been suspended. After 16 hours of waiting, he is still unable to log in, and Microsoft now says it has lost his account and all its data.

      A furious Beer would not rule out legal action. “This is unacceptable. I have been using my account practically every day for the past 10 years. It is vital to the operation of my company. If I do not have it reinstated immediately I will have no alternative but to consider my options and take legal action,” he said.

      An email just received from Microsoft’s support team said: “We have checked our records and your account does not exist in the Microsoft system. Please check the spelling of your account. If you are sure this is the correct Microsoft account, it is also possible that it has expired due to inactivity.

      “Your account will expire if you do not sign in regularly or within the first 10 days after registration. When the account is deleted, all messages, folders, and contacts are deleted as well. Incoming messages will be sent back to the sender as undeliverable, but the user name is immediately available for registration.”

      After suffering repeated issues with Windows over many years, Beer thought he had escaped the clutches of Microsoft when he switched to OS X.

      But last evening he was given a sharp reminder that the Typhoid Mary of the Internet has a long reach and can still foul up one’s day.

    • Data loss services: Microsoft leads all the way

      When you have data you want to get rid of forever, whom are you going to call? There’s one sure place to go: Redmond. You are assured of losing your data when you hand it to Microsoft.

      The company is not in the habit of keeping backups. That’s so yesterday.

      No, Microsoft is out there in front of them all, modern-looking chief executive Satya Nadella in the lead, preaching the gospel of getting rid of the old and welcoming in the new.

      The bitter truth must now be acknowledged: veteran tech journo Bob Cringely said it first and I have repeated it for some time, but never seen it up so close. Microsoft is a marketing company, not a technology company.

    • BIOS Problems and Solutions

      When Lenovo released the Yoga 900-13ISK2 it became apparent that Linux and BSD users could not rely on closed source BIOSes. Of course while it is rather naive to think that a Microsoft Signature Edition PC would be Linux friendly, one could hope that at least it would not be Linux or BSD hostile. On further analysis one can see that this is not the case, and any would-be Linux user is in for a very difficult time trying to load any operating system other than Windows 10.

      The exact reasons for this problem boil down to the inability of the BIOS to set Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) mode for the SSD. Now I knew long ago that closed source BIOSes could become a problem back in the mid-1990s. I’ve spent considerable time researching the ways one can obtain a computer with FOSS firmware.

      Before I go into the specifics of which computers actually have a BIOS with freely available source code allow me to recap some computer history. When we look at the original IBM PC BIOS we can see that it’s been well analyzed and that no other operating systems have been locked out. In addition to this there was no way to alter the BIOS save for swapping out the BIOS chip and putting in a different one. So for several years people didn’t give much thought to the BIOS, as long as their computer booted they could load whatever operating system they wanted, be it Unix, Minix, MS-DOS, CP/M, etc.

  • Server

    • OCI Announces New Tools Projects and 1.0 Release Candidates

      With ContainerCon Europe currently underway in Berlin, we want to share some of the great progress the Open Container Initiative (OCI) has made.

      The OCI was launched with the express purpose of developing standards for the container format and runtime that will give everyone the ability to fully commit to container technologies today without worrying that their current choice of infrastructure, cloud provider or tooling will lock them in.

    • Never explain, never apologize: Microsoft silent on Outlook.com email server grief

      A tweak to Microsoft’s Outlook.com cloud service has blocked a good number of people from accessing their messages.

      Specifically, the baffling and unannounced change affects Outlook.com users with connected accounts: these are email accounts hosted on third-party servers (such as a company’s private server or an ISP’s mail server) that are accessed via the Outlook.com cloud. People with this setup are no longer able to send or receive mail through Redmond’s webmail service.

      Reg reader David Barrett, who runs an internet-facing server for his friends and a UK health charity, said the issue has left those users who run Outlook.com with outside mail systems unable to get their email for days now.

      “It happened around the end of last week/over the weekend and seems to have been a gradual rollout,” he told us.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • New “Qt Lite” adds 2D renderer, targets 16MB RAM Linux systems

        Qt 5.8 will include IoT-oriented “Qt Lite” technology that enables fine-grained configuration and supports small-footprint IoT gizmos without OpenGL.

        The Qt Company announced a Qt Lite project that aims to extend the Qt development framework to smaller footprint Internet of Things devices with as little as 16MB RAM and flash. The Qt Lite technology will initially appear in Qt 5.8, including a more flexible configuration system for the cross-platform development framework, as well as a new 2D renderer for devices that can’t run OpenGL. Qt Lite also provides a more accessible, lightweight set of development tools.

      • Plasma 5.8 LTS now available in KDE Neon

        KDE Neon, the newly popular distribution produced by KDE and Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell and based on Ubuntu is now available in version 5.8. The best part of this latest release? It includes the latest long term stable release of Plasma 5.8. You can get additional details about this release from Jonathan Riddell’s blog.

      • KDE neon 5.8 Linux Distribution Arrives With Plasma 5.8 LTS Desktop

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Wrapping up Outreachy

        Now that my time as an intern is over, I want to take a moment to thank Outreachy for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this amazing experience. Also a big thank you to my mentor Jim Hall and the GNOME design team (Allan and Jakub) for the guidance and encouragements they provided throughout these months. And finally, a thank you to GNOME community for being awesome ^_^

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Linux Lite 3.2 Beta Released With Lite Desktop Widget

        The Linux Lite 3.2 Beta release has arrived for developer testing and to give an idea about the recent changes made to the Linux Lite distro. It now features a new Lite Desktop widget. The GRUB bootloader has been set to its default configuration which enables multibooting other operating systems alongside Linux Lite.

    • Arch Family

      • The Arch Terminal Desktop

        This linux desktop is an homage to one of our favorite distributions, Arch Linux-and reader KudalGadgil shared it with us in our desktop show and tell pool. Here’s how you can get a similar look.

    • Slackware Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • #RedhatDID: Retrospective and a look ahead to future events

        The day several Redhat trainers and industry folks met to talk about best practices and give feedback on the vision and mission ( and speed of progression) of Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and upstream / downstream projects and products. Among one of the most popular Sessions was the one by Robin Price and Martin Priesler on OpenSCAP which was a standing room only session with nearly 1/3 of attendants in attendance for this talk / session. Rita Carroll and others setup a interest list for those that would like to attend another OpenSCAP Workshop (mainly centered on a hands-on event but other venues seemed open for debate). If you’d be interested regardless of whether you like me were in attendance please email Rita @ rita@redhat.com with a simple subject line referencing OpenSCAP Workshop (Tysons Area).

      • Installing the Red Hat Container Development Kit 2.2 Release

        When an application developer or architect tasked with exploring the possibilities that containerized applications offer, nothing is easier than the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK).

        The Red Hat CDK has all the Cloud tooling you need for your local OSX, Linux or Windows environment and it has a few containers pre-configured for you to explore.

      • RHEL containers on non-RHEL hosts

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Libre Application Summit 2016

          I had a great time at the Libre Application Summit in sunny, hipster moustachioed Portland – many thanks to Sri for inviting me. Sorry this blog post is a bit late, but things have been really busy with the Fedora 25 Beta release (which we signed off on today).

          For a first year conference without a crazy marketing budget or anything, attendance was great – it was a good size for the venue, the number of sessions, and the social events, things felt busy and there was a lot of people-getting-to-know-each-other going on. Sri, Adelia and friends did a great job of finding a good venue and getting a solid wifi network, providing food and coffee, and setting up some fun social events.

        • Design – Steps into tickets – the Track ticket.

          The first step in this is to make sure that the subject completely design team fedora. A second step is to check the validity according to legal terms.

          In this category are the rules established by the international community and the teams fedora.

        • Flatpak 0.6.12 Linux Application Sandboxing Makes Kernel Keyring Non-Containable

          Alex Larsson from the Flatpak project, an open source initiative sponsored by Red Hat in an attempt to make cross-platform app deployment easier, announced on October 6, 2016, the release of Flatpak 0.6.12.

        • Fedora 25 Is Still On Track To Use Wayland By Default

          Back in August Fedora 25 switched to using Wayland by default in time for the project’s alpha release. With next week’s beta release, Fedora 25 is still using Wayland by default and it looks like it will remain that way unless any showstoppers appear.

          Initially it wasn’t clear if Fedora 25 would continue using Wayland by default as it neared the final release, but so far so good. Adam Williamson of Fedora QA confirmed in the forums, “Wayland is the default for Fedora Workstation in F25 Beta, and barring any crazy showstoppers we didn’t know about showing up between now and Final, is likely to be the default for Final too.”

        • Fedora 25 Beta Will Be Released Next Week

          The beta of Fedora 25 will be released on-time next week.

          It’s a bit rare in the Fedora space, but all relevant parties have signed off on the Fedora 25 Beta for it to ship on-time, 11 October. Often Fedora releases are challenged by delays due to blocker bugs, including earlier with Fedora 25 Alpha, but all appears to be in shape for shipping the beta next week.

        • Outreachy with Fedora, Fall 2016

          GNOME Outreachy is a global program that offers historically underrepresented people of gender and race stipends to write code for several participating FOSS projects . Inspired by Google Summer Of Code, Outreachy offers participants hands-on internships for contributing to open source projects.

          In 2016, the Outreachy internship dates are from December 6, 2016 to March 6, 2017. Participants work remotely from home while getting guidance from an assigned mentor and collaborating within their project’s community.

    • Debian Family

      • Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier

        To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier, please join us on our IRC channel #debian-lego and join the Debian LEGO team in the Alioth project we created yesterday. A mailing list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)

      • About Pacemaker HA stack in Debian Jessie

        People keep ignoring the status of the Pacemaker HA stack in Debian Jessie. Most people think that they should stick to Debian Wheezy.

        Why does this happen? Perhaps little or none publicity of the situation.

        Since some time now, Debian contains a Pacemaker stack which is ready to use in both Debian Jessie and in Debian Stretch.

      • Reproducible Builds: week 75 in Stretch cycle

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Announces Snapcraft 2.19 Snap Creator Tool for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

            Canonical’s Sergio Schvezov announced recently the release and immediate availability of the Snapcraft 2.19 tool for creating Snap universal packages, in the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10 repos.

          • Dell Launches Its New Ubuntu-Powered XPS 13 Developer Edition Laptop in US & EU

            Dell just launched its new XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop in the US and European markets, and, as usual, they’re partnering with Canonical to deliver you the best Ubuntu Desktop experience as possible.

            For those of you that aren’t aware yet, the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop was made possible as a part of a project called Sputnik, which attempted to identify the needs of developer when running an open source operating system like Ubuntu, which is currently one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions in the world. Therefore, Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop now ships with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

          • Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) Final Freeze Now in Effect, It Launches on October 13

            A few hours ago, October 6, 2016, Canonical’s Adam Conrad announced that the upcoming Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system has entered the Final Freeze development stage.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Tiny i.MX6 COMs gain enhanced CAN and wireless, eMMC option

      SolidRun has updated its tiny, Linux-ready i.MX6 based MicroSoM modules with optional eMMC and NOR flash, improved FlexCAN, and TI WiLink8 wireless.

      SolidRun has refurbished its NXP i.MX6-based MicroSoM computer-on-modules with new rev 1.5 versions featuring optional eMMC and/or NOR flash, among other additions. Despite some minor mechanical redesigns, the modules have the same 47 x 30mm dimensions, and are backward compatible. They can be plugged into existing MicroSoM companion products such as SolidRun’s sandwich-style, open-spec HummingBoard SBCs and CuBox-i mini-PCs. All the modules continue to run Linux or Android.

    • Desert Rotor’s Next Generation Drone Controller to Use Logic Supply’s ML100 NUC

      Logic Supply informs Softpedia about a recent case study they’re doing featuring drone control specialists Desert Rotor, a drone controller company that uses their ML100 industrial PC for its next-gen UAV control system.

      First, we’d like to inform the reader that Logic Supply is the leading industrial and embedded computer hardware manufacturer. The company is being known for creating some of the most powerful industrial products, from mini and rugged panel PCs and thin client computers to dust-resistant, fanless, and ventless units that can be used in virtualization and IoT (Internet of Things) markets, or other applications.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Samsung might soon be announcing a partnership with Mediatek

          It is no secret that Samsung uses Spreadtrum’s SOCs for most of its budget and mid range smartphones. Spreadtrum’s current best chip happens to be the SC9860- a 16nm process based 2GHz octacore 64 bit Cortex A53 SOC; these are chipset specifications from the yester-year and the technology is now moving into more powerful heterogeneous architectures involving ARM’s Cortex A73, A72 and A57 standards(and the low powered A53 cores for better battery efficiency). Now, this might not make any sense to a normal user. But over at Samsung, Spreadtrum’s slow development pace for its chips seems to be holding the Korean smartphone giant down from offering better (or more) midrange products.

      • Android

        • BMW Connected service adds Alexa and, finally, Android

          The smart car market hasn’t exactly settled along the usual Google vs Apple camps and some do take both sides, if not their own. When BMW launched its BMW Connected service early this year, it seemed to have actually put up a stake on Apple’s iOS side of the fence. Apparently, it was only bidding its time. In its new update, the service finally gets its first Android app. But that’s not the only thing that’s new, as BMW Connected is also gaining support for the Apple Watch 2 and Amazon’s Alexa.

        • Nexus 9 LTE Android 7.0 Nougat Update Officially Rolls Out
        • Upcoming HTC Bolt Smartphone To Run Android 7.0 Nougat
        • Google Pixel phone’s best feature won’t be coming to other Android phones, company suggests

          Google got us all hot and bothered with the launch of a new pair of smartphones earlier this week, but you can be forgiven for missing a major announcement regarding Android.

          The details of the latest version of the operating system, 7.1 Nougat, have been revealed, and it’s missing some of the key features Google waxed lyrical about on Tuesday.

          The biggest news is that Google Assistant, which is sort of like a souped-up version of Siri for Android, will remain exclusive to the Pixel and Pixel XL, in the near future at least. The virtual helper played a central role in Google’s event, with the company taking time to demonstrate how it supports two-way conversation and learns from you as you spend more time using it.

        • Android 7.1 Nougat won’t bring Assistant to everyone

          If, after seeing all the software goodies on Google’s new Pixel phones, you hoped that some of those cool features will trickle down to other Android phones capable of running Android 7.1 Nougat, you’ll be disappointed.

          Google’s smart personal assistant Assistant (Google did not do us a favor when naming this one), as well as unlimited, free backup for full-resolution photos and videos will remain Pixel-only for the time being. Somewhat less surprisingly, non-stop customer support service won’t be included, either.

        • Pixel won’t share Google Assistant with other Android phones
        • When is Android 7.1 Nougat coming to my phone?
        • Giphy Cam finally arrives on Android
        • Android and iPhone fail: Our lust has petered out
        • Verizon will control Android updates for Google Pixel phones it sells
        • Chatting with Google’s Hiroshi Lockheimer about Pixel, Android OEMs, and more

          There were big changes announced at Google this week as the company’s “Google Hardware” team came out of hiding and announced a slew of products. The star of the show was definitely the Google Pixel, Google’s new pair of smartphones that the company is saying it designed while using HTC as a manufacturer. The advent of Pixel phones means Google is an Android OEM again, harkening back to the days when it owned Motorola. This time, though, the company is serious about hardware and software integration.

          Android, however, is the world’s most popular operating system because of OEM partners like Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and LG. And if Google wants Android to continue to deliver Google services to billions of people, it will still need all those partners. Google once again has a delicate balancing act to pull off. The company must do its best to deliver a Google-y Android phone while not stealing the thunder from other OEMs or putting them at a serious competitive disadvantage.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Netizen Report: Open Source Developers Endure Long Prison Sentences, And Worse

    It has been one year since Syrian-Palestinian open technology leader Bassel Khartabil disappeared from his prison cell in Syria.

    Bassel served as the public affiliate for Creative Commons Syria and contributed to Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, and other open communities online. He also was the CTO of Al-Aous, a publishing and research institution dedicated to archaeological sciences and arts in Syria. In November 2012, Foreign Policy named Bassel one of the world’s 100 top global thinkers.

  • Open source IT pros are in high-demand in Europe

    Open source employees in Europe have it good, especially when we compare that market to the rest of the world. This is according to a new report by Dice and The Linux Foundation. The report says that out of 1,000 European respondents 60 percent believe it would be fairly easy to find a new job this year. Globally, the figure stands at about 50 percent.

    “Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles”, says Bob Melk, president of Dice. “Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects”.

    Most sought after skills are application development, the report says, adding that European businesses are doing more than their counterparts in other parts of the world in order to keep hold of the staff. Four out of ten professionals in Europe say the best part about their jobs is that they get to work on interesting projects, as well as the fact that they get to use “cutting-edge technology”.

  • Google’s open source Noto: Free font covers 800 languages, including dead ones

    Google has released a new open-source font called Noto, which supports 800 languages and covers 110 writing systems.

    Short for ‘No more Tofu’, the name of the new typeface is a nod to what people call the default white boxes that appear when a computer doesn’t understand a character on a website.

    “One of the goals of the project was to support every language and every character, so one of the things we wanted to do was make sure there’s no tofu for all our users,” said Bob Jung, an director of internationalization at Google.

  • Google Releases Indoor Mapping Tool to Open-Source Community

    Cartographer, which Google initially used internally only, enables real-time mapping inside buildings, the company says.
    Like it often does, Google has released into the open-source community an indoor mapping tool called Cartographer that it has used internally.

    Cartographer is designed to enable what is known as real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)—or the ability to build a 2D or 3D map while at the same time keeping track of an individual or robotic agent’s location within that map.

    The algorithms used in SLAM combine data from various sensors such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems and cameras to determine the position of an object within an environment and to map that environment.

  • Open Source Explained in Less Than Three Minutes

    Free Code Camp is an organization that teaches people to code. As part of this free training, student coders produce free code needed by nonprofit organizations. Free Code Camp doesn’t accept donations, but you can support them by buying t-shirts, hoodies and audiobooks through their store.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Promoting Cybersecurity Awareness

        We are happy to support National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), a global effort between government and industry to ensure everyone has the resources they need to be safer, more secure and better able to protect their personal information online.

        We’ve talked about how cybersecurity is a shared responsibility, and that is the theme for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month – the Internet is a shared resource and securing it is our shared responsibility. This means technology companies, governments, and even users have to work together to protect and improve the security of the Internet. We all have to do our part to make the Internet safer and more secure for everyone. This is a time for all Internet users to Stop. Think. Connect. This month, and all year long, we want to help you be more “CyberAware.”

  • CMS

    • Why I hate (all) software

      This article will be about OTRS, a ticket system we’re using at the FSFE for handling things like swag orders, internship applications and so on. But it could actually be about any software. OTRS just happened to be in the line of fire this time.

      This will be an example in how to (not) manage user expectations. You may know the principle of least astonishment, and this will be a typical example of where it fails. The problem is in how a program communicates (or fails to communicate) to the user what it will do based on some input.

      The design principle of least astonishment simply means you should aim for designing your software in a way that what the user expects should happen when performing a certain operation, should also happen. If something else happens, that’s bad design.

  • Education

    • Why public libraries need to support open source

      People turn to public libraries for answers, and a lot of times libraries are superb at providing them. But when it comes to providing answers about open source, libraries have an uneven track record.

      What can we do to make this better so that more people can turn to their public library to learn about open source software, hardware, and principles?

      Right now, if you walked into my public library and pelted me with questions about open source—like, “What is it?” “How does it work?” “How can I use open source?”—I’d rattle off answers so fast you’d be walking out with a new tool or technology under your belt. Open source is a big world, so of course there are some things I don’t know, but guess what? We have the Internet and books right at our finger tips. Saying that you don’t know the answer is fine, and patrons will respect you for it. The key is helping them find the answer.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • An even more distributed ActivityPub

      So ActivityPub is nearing Candidate Recommendation status. If you want to hear a lot more about that whole process of getting there, and my recent trip to TPAC, and more, I wrote a post on the MediaGoblin blog about it.

      Last night my brother Stephen came over and he was talking about how he wished ActivityPub was more of a “transactional” system. I’ve been thinking about this myself. ActivityPub as it is designed is made for the social network of 2014 more or less: trying to reproduce what the silos do, which is mutate a big database for specific objects, but reproduce that in a distributed way. Well, mutating distributed systems is a bit risky. Can we do better, without throwing out the majority of the system? I think it’s possible, with a couple of tweaks.

    • Register now for LibrePlanet 2017: “The Roots of Freedom” March 25-26, 2017 in Boston, MA
    • FSFE Newsletter – October 2016

      We’re still not over how cool it was to see so many from our community join the FSFE Summit in September. It was a good experience and we’re keen to repeat it. One of the highlights was the ending keynote where Julia Reda called out proprietary software as a threat to democracy. Be sure to view the keynote and some of the other talks from the Summit, either on our YouTube channel, or from our download server where you can get the available videos in webm format.

      We also celebrated the FSFE’s 15th birthday in C-Base with a ceremony where we honored many of our local heroes from around Europe. C-Base has kindly provided a recording of the ceremony if you’re interested in hearing the story of some of our heroes, all of whom you can find working in one of the FSFE’s teams today.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Tips for building your own maker workspace

        I firmly believe that in the absence of any intentional organizational strategy a person’s workspace becomes a reflection of their mind. Like bits of knowledge stored in the brain, tools and assets instinctively find themselves organized in a way that feels right to the individual.

        If this holds true, it stands to reason that, more often than not, our workspaces are always naturally trending away from being tidy and highly-functional. At this point, the odds are good that I’m just trying to rationalize why my office is an unmitigated disaster most of the time, but since you’ve made it this far, let’s make one more assumption: No two people are exactly alike, therefore no two workspaces are exactly alike.

        With this assertion firmly in place, I’d like to share a few things I’ve implemented for creating my workspace that have worked well for my brain. Your workspace will look different, but the practices I chose to follow here can be used for anyone looking to match their setup to their brain.

  • Programming/Development

    • PHPUnit 5.6

      RPM of PHPUnit version 5.6 are available in remi repository for Fedorra ≥ 22 and for Enterprise Linux (CentOS, RHEL…).

Leftovers

  • Is Apple’s software getting worse or what?

    For over a year, Apple’s software has been the subject of more derision than might be expected for a company of its size.

    Developer Marco Arment took Apple to task early last year, arguing that OS X (recently rebranded macOS) is full of embarrassing bugs and that the company is trying to do too much on unrealistic deadlines.

    Arment subsequently disavowed his post because of the widespread media attention it received. But there was blood in the water and the feeding frenzy has continued at Apple’s expense, at least in part because controversy, manufactured or not, drives online traffic.

  • Science

    • The really secret lives of bees: Ingenious experiment shows they learn like we do, from each other

      The bumblebee brain is puny, at least compared with the massive and fatty organ locked in your skull. At about 0.0002 percent the volume of yours, bee brains are close in size to the seeds stuck on a hamburger bun. Thinking about insect brains in terms of size alone, however, is a trap. The intelligence of sesame-brained bugs should not be underestimated.

      A study reported in the journal PLOS Biology on Tuesday, for instance, takes bee smarts in a surprising direction: Scientists from the Queen Mary University of London suggest that the “insects possess the essential cognitive elements for cultural transmission,” as they wrote in their new paper. It is possible to teach a single bee a new trick, in other words, and a different bee can learn that behavior from her peer.

    • Younger adults prefer to get their news in text, not video, according to new data from Pew Research

      Digital publishers may be pouring time and energy into cranking up their video operations, but for a lot of their potential viewers, text is still the way to go.

      New data from Pew Research finds that, when it comes to the news, younger adults still prefer words over moving images. While 46 percent of Americans overall say they prefer to watch the news over reading it, that number is far lower for Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 — only 38 percent of that group named video as their preferred news consumption format. In contrast, 42 percent said that they actually prefer text (which they prefer to read online, of course). Just 19 percent of young adults named listening as their preference. (“Smelling the news” was not an option.)

  • Hardware

    • Lenovo in talks to buy Fujitsu’s loss-making PC business

      In the early 2000s, Fujitsu was one of the top 5 PC makers globally. Today, it’s a loss-making enterprise that’s seen its market eroded by smartphones and tablets. The margins have squeezed, and IT conglomerate Fujitsu has been working to offload its non-core businesses and improve profitability. The company spun off its PC division as a separate business in February, a move that’s typically a precursor to a sale or other major restructuring option.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Floridians Are Shrugging Off A Hurricane and Zika. But It’s Just the Beginning.

      Hurricane Matthew is whipping away at Florida’s shores this week—threatening lives and homes and parties.

      If you know any Floridians, you know that no one is really freaking out yet. We are masters of disaster in the worst kind of way, having endured hurricanes, tornados, weird crimes, Rick Scott, and a growing Zika virus problem in the past year alone. That’s why business owners in Miami this week were prepping for Hurricane Matthew with a kind of calm, cooperative indifference.

    • Four more states likely to legalize pot

      Voters in four states appear likely to approve ballot measures that would legalize marijuana for recreational purposes, according to recent surveys, while voters are split on the question in a fifth state.

      The polls, taken over the last few weeks, demonstrate a seismic shift in the politics of pot. Even a decade ago, voters rewarded politicians who promised to redouble the war on drugs. After November’s elections, nearly a quarter of Americans could live in states where marijuana consumption is legal.

      But proponents and opponents alike say that polls taken before Election Day often overstate support for legal marijuana measures.

      “If the pro-legalization side is not at 55 percent at this point, it will likely lose,” said Sean Noble, an Arizona-based Republican strategist working against that state’s legalization measure, Proposition 205. “We know that polling on legalization generally overperforms actual results.”

    • Over 140,000 women demonstrate against total ban on abortion

      Plans to impose a total ban on abortion have sparked a massive uncontrolled explosion of anger in Poland. On Monday 3 October a strike of Polish women was called, inspired by the example of Icelandic women, who held a nationwide strike in 1975. In Warsaw, over 50,000 demonstrated in the pouring rain, in Wroclaw 30,000 and Krakow 25,000. Tens of thousands more demonstrated all across the country. In Poznan, there were clashes with the police, while in Kielce demonstrators demolished a controversial homphobic exhibition. Even the police’s conservative estimates talk about 98,000 people demonstrating in over 143 separate protests across the country. Meanwhile, the left party Razem estimated that over 140,000 people had protested on the streets throughout the country. These are easily the biggest ever protests in defence of abortion rights in Poland, far exceeding the protests in 1993, when the current ban on abortion was introduced.

      The first wave of the movement started in spring with the anouncement that a right-wing pressure group had collected over 100,000 signatures (finally they collected 400,000) required to submit a draft law to the Polish parliament which would impose a total ban on abortion and punish women with up to three years in prison. The barbarity of the proposals is illustrated by the fact that all miscarriages would be treated as suspected abortions and would be subject to criminal investigation.

      However, already Poland has one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in Europe, allowing abortion only in the case of rape, a threat to the health or life of the woman, or deformation of the foetus. In practice, even when these conditions are fulfilled abortion is often prevented by doctors who exploit the so-called “conscience clause” and impose their own religious beliefs on patients by refusing vital treatment.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security advisories
    • Fact Or Fiction? Sysadmin Claims This 48 Character String Will Crash Most Linux Distros
    • Crippling bug in Linux crashes system with a single tweet
    • keysafe with local shares

      If your gpg key is too valuable for you to feel comfortable with backing it up to the cloud using keysafe, here’s an alternative that might appeal more.

      Keysafe can now back up some shares of the key to local media, and other shares to the cloud. You can arrange things so that the key can’t be restored without access to some of the local media and some of the cloud servers, as well as your password.

      For example, I have 3 USB sticks, and there are 3 keysafe servers. So let’s make 6 shares total of my gpg secret key and require any 4 of them to restore it.

    • ‘Security fatigue’ is the worst thing to happen to people since insecurity

      CHANGING PASSWORDS is just too much for some people, according to research, and causes them to do stupid things.

      This is called ‘security fatigue’, apparently, and comes straight from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a collection of clipboards and pens.

      “After updating your password for the umpteenth time, have you resorted to using one you know you’ll remember because you’ve used it before? Have you ever given up on an online purchase because you just didn’t feel like creating a new account?” asked NIST.

      “If you have done any of those things, it might be the result of ‘security fatigue’. It exposes online users to risk and costs businesses money in lost customers.”

    • The new BYOD backlash hides an ulterior motive

      Recent research from IDC shows a clear picture: IT organizations are increasingly unhappy about BYOD and now want to curtail or end the practice.

      Their stated concern: The costs are too high and the savings too low. But those concerns are misguided and likely masking a secret agenda to regain control over mobile devices, not to save money. Face it: BYOD was never popular with IT.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Here’s how the U.S. is dealing with Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte’s blitz of rants, insults and ultimatums

      Like those from a battering ram, the hits just keep coming from the recently elected president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.

      Saying this week that President Obama could “go to hell,” Duterte has threatened to jettison decades of close security cooperation with the United States, suggesting Manila would turn to China or Russia for support.

      The latest anti-U.S. vitriol came as U.S. Marines and sailors practiced amphibious landings and other exercises with Philippine troops at coastal sites close to the strategic shipping lanes and disputed islands in the South China Sea, a regional hot spot.

      The joint exercises began Tuesday and are scheduled to run until Oct. 12. Last week, Duterte said this would be the final round of joint exercises with the U.S. military.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Top Climate Scientist: Tax Fossil Fuels to Save Younger Generations’ Future

      The report warns that future generations may be forced to use “negative emissions” measures to forcibly extract CO2 from the atmosphere as temperatures keep rising. (Photo: Joe Brusky/flickr/cc)

      Fossil fuels must be taxed out of existence to ensure that future generations are not saddled with a world of rising seas and extreme weather—and all the costs that come with them—according to a new research paper by renowned climate scientist and Columbia University professor James Hansen.

    • [Older] How to Talk About the Paris Climate Agreement at the Bar

      On October 5, the United Nations proudly announced that enough countries had agreed to the Paris Agreement for it to go into effect, 30 days from now. That’s great. But if you are a bit confused about what exactly this news means, fear not. I’m here to break it all down.

    • ‘Megadrought’ Risk In American Southwest Soars As Global Temperatures Rise

      Vast swathes of Southwestern United States — a region already grappling with parched conditions — may now have to brace for another threat — decadeslong “megadroughts.”

      According to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, there is roughly a 70 to 90 percent chance that the Southwest would experience a megadrought — an extreme dry spell lasting 35 years or more — before the end of the century. And, if precipitation is below normal, it’s 99 percent certain that such an event will occur.

      “Megadroughts are rare events, occurring only once or twice each millennium. In earlier work, we showed that climate change boosts the chances of a megadrought, but in this paper we investigated how cutting fossil fuel emissions reduces this risk,” lead author Toby Ault, a professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University, said in a statement. “The increase in risk is not due to any particular change in the dynamic circulation of the atmosphere. It’s because the projected increase in atmospheric demand for moisture from the land surface will shift the soil moisture balance.”

      The present-day Earth is 1 degree Celsius hotter than it was 150 years ago. The Paris climate agreement, which is to come into force next month, aims to restrict this rise to below 2 degrees Celsius — a target that many experts now believe is almost certain to be breached.

    • Hurricanes will worsen as planet warms and sea levels rise, scientists warn

      Hurricane Matthew is already feared to have caused seven deaths after it hit Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Tuesday, bringing 145mph winds, pounding rain and storm surges to coastal communities.

      The category 4 storm, the strongest hurricane to hit Haiti in 50 years, is expected to surge northwards towards Florida’s east coast and up the south-eastern US coast by the weekend. It follows September’s Hurricane Hermine, which was the first hurricane to hit Florida in nearly 11 years.

    • Amid Media Blackout over Climate Change Links to Hurricane Matthew, Top Scientist Speaks Out

      States of emergency have been declared in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as Hurricane Matthew barrels toward the Southeast coastline. More than 2 million people have been urged to evacuate their homes. The record-breaking storm has already killed at least 26 people in Haiti and four in the Dominican Republic. The storm is soon expected to hit the Bahamas and then strengthen as it moves toward Florida. Meteorologists are predicting Matthew could be the strongest hurricane to hit the United States since Wilma in 2005. Many scientists are saying climate change has intensified Hurricane Matthew because warmer ocean waters help create stronger hurricanes. Matthew is already the longest-lived Category 4 or 5 hurricane in the Eastern Caribbean on record. To talk more about Hurricane Matthew and climate change, we speak to Guardian journalist Oliver Milman and Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University. His latest book, co-authored with political cartoonist Tom Toles, is titled “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.” Mann is also author of “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.”

    • Hurricane Matthew Drives Storm Surge Into Northeast Florida; Coastal Flood Damage Already in South Carolina; Dangerous Flood Threat in Carolinas, Georgia

      Hurricane Matthew’s eyewall continues to brush parts of Florida’s northeast coast with high winds and storm surge flooding, and will spread those impacts, in addition to potentially serious rainfall flooding into Georgia, South Carolina, and southern North Carolina through at least Saturday night.

  • Finance

    • Early indications show UK favouring ‘hard Brexit’, says expert

      The UK will trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, triggering the formal two-year Brexit negotiation process, by the end of March 2017, the prime minister has announced.

      The government also intends to publish a ‘Great Repeal Bill’ which, once given effect, will remove the 1972 European Communities Act from the UK statute book and enshrine any EU laws in effect on the date of the UK’s exit from the EU into UK law, Theresa May told the Conservative Party annual conference.

      May said that the process would give UK businesses and workers “maximum certainty as we leave” the EU, while retaining the government’s right to “amend, repeal and improve any law it chooses” at a later date. EU law expert Guy Lougher of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that the comments provided “a helpful indication of the government’s intentions and priorities”.

      “Although the prime minister has indicated her opposition to the shorthand labels of ‘soft Brexit’ and ‘hard Brexit’, it appears that the government’s negotiation intentions and the likely outcome are closer to the latter than the former,” he said.

    • A ‘Genius’ Like Trump

      Trump’s business “genius” relies on stiffing creditors and contractors, laying off workers and driving the equity of investors down while he just walks away.

    • Privatizing the public sector is actually costing taxpayers money

      Privatization is bad news for federal, state and local government workers, and the communities where they live. That’s according to a new report released Wednesday by In the Public Interest, a research group focused on the effects of privatization.

      The study, “How Privatization Increases Inequality,” explores the role privatization plays in the American economy—compiling data on the estimated $1.5 trillion of state and local contracts doled out each year.

      “A lot of decisions are small,” says Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest, but “if you add all that up, it’s very significant.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Can Facebook influence an election result?

      But Facebook’s most powerful political tool may be one that’s hiding in plain sight. Consider the “I Voted” button.

      The button, dubbed by Facebook a “voter megaphone”, allows users to report whether they have voted and shows which of their friends have also voted.

    • Mike Pence is gaslighting America

      Video of Mike Pence denying Trump said any of the horrible, racist, stupid, uninformed and generally embarrassing things he spouts all day long, matched with Trump saying the stuff.

    • Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein discusses her campaign

      She’s a dark horse in the presidential race, but green party nominee, Dr. Jill Stein could have a big impact on the outcome.

      Stein is campaigning in L.A. for a few days – trying to convince voters that she is the better choice. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein will make a campaign stop Thursday at Cal State Northridge.

      Stein is polling around the 2% mark in most of the national polls, but that is enough to sway the election to the winner.

    • CNN Censors Third Party Supporters as ‘Undecided’ in Focus Group

      After the first presidential debate on September 26, CNN hosted a focus group at the University of Richmond. According to Justin Smith, one of the 28 people included in the panels, CNN censored those who said they would be voting for a third party, declaring them “undecided.”.

      “Out of 28 panel members, five said they were decided on Clinton, two said they were decided on Trump, and 12 said they were going to vote 3rd party. But once they saw the response, they reshot the segment and replaced ‘3rd party’ with ‘still undecided.’ You’ll noticed on the live feed, I refused to raise my hand,” wrote Smith in a Facebook post. Smith is supporting Evan McMullin, former CIA operations officer and former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference in the U.S. House of Representatives, for president. “They then said they were going to reshoot it, except this time they changed ‘3rd party’ to ‘undecided.’ Some of us asked about the third party option, and they ignored us. They then said they were going to shoot it again, and still asked for ‘undecided’ voters and left out ‘3rd party.’ A lot of the members voted ‘undecided’ because it was the only option other than Trump or Clinton.” Smith posted the CNN video of the focus group and wrote that in the video he refused to raise his hand and vote “undecided” as a protest.

    • The Podesta Emails

      WikiLeaks series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of the Clintons and was President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank.

    • Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005

      Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” according to a video obtained by The Washington Post.

      The video captures Trump talking with Billy Bush, then of “Access Hollywood,” on a bus with the show’s name written across the side. They were arriving on the set of “Days of Our Lives” to tape a segment about Trump’s cameo on the soap opera.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • YouTube Takes Down European Parliament Video On Stopping Torture For ‘Violating Community Guidelines’

      Back in 2008, then Senator Joe Lieberman went on a ridiculous pro-censorship campaign, demanding that YouTube take down any “terrorist” videos. For reasons I still don’t understand, YouTube complied. As a result, watchdogs documenting Syrian atrocities had them censored from YouTube, because YouTube determined them to be in “violation” of its guidelines in publishing “shocking and offensive videos.”

      That was a few years ago, and it seems like the problem has only gotten worse — as have the ridiculous calls for YouTube and other platforms to be the giant censor in the digital sky. The latest victim? Would you believe it’s the European Parliament itself? Marietje Schaake, a really wonderful Member of the European Parliament (and a Techdirt reader), tweeted that the video she had posted of a European Parliament debate on “anti-torture” was taken down for “violating community guidelines.” Really.

    • Trump’s many, many threats to sue the press since launching his campaign

      Donald Trump’s outright contempt for journalists and press freedom is well known—but in the past month he has outdone himself.

      In the span of a long weekend in mid-September, Trump threatened to sue The New York Times, his staff had a Vice reporter arrested outside a campaign event, and he blamed the New York terrorist bombings on “freedom of the press.”

      This weekend, Trump struck again. After the Times’ huge scoop detailing how he took an almost billion-dollar loss on his 1995 taxes, Trump’s lawyer threatened “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action” against the Times once more. By my count, it is at least the 11th time Trump has threatened to sue a news organization or journalist during his campaign for president.

      I had intended to quantify how many journalists or news commentators Trump has threatened to sue over his lifetime, but that quickly turned into a fool’s errand. A simple Google search of “Trump threatens to sue” will return an overwhelming number of stories. In the past decade alone, he’s sued a former Times journalist who wrote a book about him that he later admitted he didn’t even read; he’s threatened to sue former View host Rosie O’Donnell for allegations that have been shown over and over again during this campaign to be correct; he’s sued HBO’s Bill Maher over a joke bet that involved proving he was not, in fact, born an orangutan.

    • Trump Adds To His Anti-First Amendment Legacy In Threatening To Sue Clinton For Campaign Ads

      Donald Trump keeps insisting that he’s a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights, but he appears to have skipped right past the 1st Amendment. We’ve discussed his stated plans to “open up” libel laws and his regular threats to sue newspapers for reporting on him in ways he dislikes. Trevor Timm, of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, recently tried to count how many times Trump had threatened to sue the media since his campaign began (ignoring all the threats from before the campaign).

    • Chrome and Firefox are blocking The Pirate Bay as a deceptive site, again

      THE PIRATE BAY is not a place you want to go, at least not according to the Chrome and Firefox browsers which have taken to warning people that the pages are perhaps poisoned and definitely deceptive.

      A post on TorrentFreak said that users are batting their heads against a blocking wall when they try to access magnets and that kind of stuff.

      We took to the water today in search of The Pirate Bay on Firefox. Virgin Media has put a cage around the site, but you can still get to it. Once there we were able to get to the main page, but no further.

      A search, with a capital R for research, took us to a page of links that took us to another page, but not one that we expect The Pirate Bay user base will enjoy.

    • Chrome and Firefox Brand The Pirate Bay As a “Phishing” Site…..Again

      Chrome and Firefox are again blocking direct access to The Pirate Bay’s download pages. According to Google’s safe browsing program, ThePirateBay.org is a “deceptive site” that may steal user information. The TPB crew has been alerted to the issue and hope it will be resolved soon.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Yahoo helps the government read your emails. Just following orders, they say.

      Not long after Edward Snowden’s revelations of massive government surveillance of the American public, Yahoo was one of the eight tech giants that called for strong reforms that would protect their customers.

      And back in 2007, Yahoo went to court to challenge a government surveillance program in order to protect its users’ privacy.

      Well, that was then.

      Now, in a move that has outraged privacy advocates, Yahoo reportedly has helped take government intrusion to a new level. Without apparent protest, according to news reports, it built a mechanism that allowed the National Security Agency and the FBI to scan all of its users’ incoming emails for specific characters or words.

    • Verizon wants $1B discount on Yahoo deal after reports of hacking, spying

      Verizon is pushing for a $1 billion discount off its pending $4.8 billion agreement to buy Yahoo, several sources told The Post exclusively.

      The request comes on the heels of the web giant getting bludgeoned by bad news in the past few days.

      Yahoo revealed two weeks ago that it had been hacked in 2014 and that usernames and passwords for 500 million accounts were swiped.

      Then, earlier this week, it was learned that Yahoo had been ordered by a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to scan emails for terrorist signatures.

      “In the last day we’ve heard that [AOL boss] Tim [Armstong] is getting cold feet. He’s pretty upset about the lack of disclosure and he’s saying, ‘Can we get out of this or can we reduce the price?’” said a source familiar with Verizon’s thinking.

      That might just be tough talk to get Yahoo to roll back the price. Verizon had been planning to couple Yahoo with its AOL unit to give it enough scale to be a third force to compete with Google and Facebook for digital ad dollars.

      The discount is being pushed because it feels Yahoo’s value has been diminished, sources said.

    • FBI Looking Into ‘Legal and Technical Options’ for Entering Another Terrorist’s iPhone

      A new case might lead the FBI and Apple into another fight over security and privacy on smartphones, following a confirmation yesterday by FBI special agent Rich Thorton that the FBI has the iPhone of Dahir Adan in its possession (via Wired).

      Adan was the culprit behind the stabbing of 10 people in a Minnesota mall in mid-September, and was eventually shot and killed by police. After the event, terrorist organization ISIS claimed credit for the attack on social media, but “no evidence has emerged to suggest ISIS had a hand in planning or executing the attack.”

      During a press conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota yesterday, Thorton confirmed that the FBI has Adan’s iPhone and that it is locked with a passcode. According to the special agent, the organization is “still trying to figure out how to gain access to the phone’s contents.” The issue currently is that the model and version of iOS running on the iPhone is known only to the FBI. Following the launch of iOS 8 in 2014, any iOS device running the software is encrypted to an extent that no malicious outsider — or even Apple itself — can get into the iPhone or iPad.

    • Ex-Yahoo Employee: Government Spy Program Could Have Given a Hacker Access to All Email

      Contrary to a denial by Yahoo and a report by the New York Times, the company’s scanning program, revealed earlier this week by Reuters, provided the government with a custom-built back door into the company’s mail service — and it was so sloppily installed that it posed a privacy hazard for hundreds of millions of users, according to a former Yahoo employee with knowledge of the company’s security practices.

      Despite this week’s differing media accounts, this much isn’t disputed: In 2015, Yahoo provided the U.S. government with the means to scan every single email that landed in every single Yahoo Mail inbox. The scanning was kept an absolute secret — and as this ex-Yahoo source describes, that meant keeping it a secret from security personnel who came to believe it endangered Yahoo’s hundreds of millions of unwitting customers.

      The employee, who worked at Yahoo before, during, and after the installation of the email-scanning program, requested anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement formed when the individual quit several months after the program was discovered internally last summer. The source declined to share certain specific names for fear of violating that same NDA or the NDA of others, but The Intercept has confirmed details of the source’s employment at Yahoo, which would have put the then-employee in a position to know this information.

    • Police documents reveal how law enforcement keep Stingray use secret

      Police records obtained by the Daily Dot reveal in unprecedented detail how the Obama administration enables law enforcement to suppress information about controversial phone-surveillance technology used by police throughout the United States.

      The documents, which link the purchase of so-called Stingray devices to various North Carolina state and local police agencies, include a fill-in-the-blank warrant drafted by the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and intended for use by state and local police that extends the veil of secrecy over law enforcement’s Stingray use.

      The records, originally acquired by Working Narratives under North Carolina public records law and shared with Daily Dot reporters, also offer new specifics about the capabilities of Stingrays bought by police in North Carolina from Harris Corporation, a leading U.S. manufacturer of cell-site simulators, and the company behind the original “StingRay” procured by the Pentagon and various intelligence agencies more than two decades ago. The North Carolina agencies referenced by the documents include the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office; the Wilmington Police Department; and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, an agency that reports directly to Gov. Patrick L McCrory (R).

    • At Booz Allen, a Vast U.S. Spy Operation, Run for Private Profit

      In the six weeks since federal agents raided a suburban Maryland home and arrested Harold T. Martin III on suspicion of stealing classified information from the National Security Agency, another organization has quietly prepared to face the fallout: Booz Allen Hamilton, Mr. Martin’s employer.

      Booz Allen, a consulting firm that earns billions of dollars by working for American intelligence agencies, has been called the world’s most profitable spy organization. News this week of Mr. Martin’s arrest in August could renew scrutiny of the firm’s operations and, more broadly, the lucrative contracting business that American intelligence now relies on to run its vast, global surveillance operations.

      Mr. Martin’s arrest is the second time in three years that a Booz Allen contractor has been accused of stealing potentially damaging material from the N.S.A. The company also employed Edward J. Snowden, who spirited out a cache of documents that, in 2013, exposed the extent of American surveillance programs in the United States and around the world.

      Booz Allen is one of a handful of defense and intelligence contractors that blur the line between the government’s intelligence work and private enterprise.

    • BT Yahoo! customers: Why! can’t! we! grrr! delete! our! webmail! accounts!?

      BT customers are unable to delete BT Yahoo email services – despite an exodus of users seeking to leave the security-challenged webmail biz.

      Since allegations arose that Yahoo built an app to enable it to scan all of its users’ emails at the request of US intelligence, many users have sought to delete their email accounts.

      That was in addition to Yahoo!’s confession last month that hackers had stolen the credentials for at least 500 million of its customer email accounts.

    • Imagining a Cashless World [Ed: Lack of anonymity in purchasing/payments now “driven in part by an epidemic of armed robberies in smaller shops,” says iophk]

      A fantastic heist (we like our crimes as smart and magical as dreams) took place some years back, when a stolen helicopter landed on the roof of a cash depot in Stockholm and three masked men smashed a skylight to climb inside. It was September 23, 2009. The depot was freshly stocked in expectation of a coming Swedish payday. Armed with a Kalashnikov, the invaders held employees at bay while their accomplices outside positioned road spikes to keep cop cars from swarming the building. Fake bombs had been set among the police helicopters to delay an aerial chase. The thieves loaded bag after bag of bills into their aircraft, then departed. Seven men were later caught and sentenced, but nearly all of the stolen cash—reportedly some $6.5 million—still has not been found.

      The robbery is known as the Västberga heist, and, like many capers, it became a source of public fascination. (It is the subject of Evan Ratliff’s e-book “Lifted.”) But it also earned astringent notice from some economic theorists, who saw in it a parable about the risks of paper money. Cash is the squirmy ferret of societal wealth—tricky to secure physically and, once liberated in the wild, almost impossible to get back—and money, as technology, has changed a lot in half a century. A day’s errands once called for bulging pockets. Now it’s possible to shop for groceries, pay rent, buy lunch, summon a taxi, and repay your sister for a movie without handling a checkbook, let alone fumbling with bills and coins. Most people think of card and electronic payments as conveniences, stand-ins for exchanging cold, hard cash. Yet a growing group of theorists, led in the United States by Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, are embracing the idea that physical currency should be the exception rather than the rule.

    • Twitter tanks 20.1% as would-be suitors drop out

      Twitter shares plunged 20.1% Thursday after published reports said would-be suitors including Google would not bid for the struggling social media company.

      Technology news outlet Recode said Google and Disney would not pursue Twitter and Apple was unlikely to buy it either, deflating the stock that had soared on takeover speculation.

      Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, considered one of the more likely suitors for Twitter, also seemed to downplay his interest during an analyst meeting at his company’s annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco.

      “We look at everything and we don’t buy most things, and we haven’t agreed to buy that company,” he said Wednesday, emphasizing that Salesforce.com has a “disciplined M&A process.”

    • Yahoo email scan fell under foreign spy law -sources

      A Yahoo operation in 2015 to scan the incoming email of its customers for specific information identified by the U.S. government was authorized under a foreign intelligence law, U.S. government officials familiar with the matter said.

      Reuters on Tuesday reported that the Yahoo program was in response to a classified U.S. government request to scan emails belonging to hundreds of millions of Yahoo users.

      The revelation rekindled a long-running debate in the United States over the proper balance between digital privacy and national security.

      The Department of Justice obtained the order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said the sources, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The FBI Treated Clinton With Kid Gloves

      Tim Kaine repeatedly defended Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate. “The FBI did an investigation,” he said at one point, “and they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further.” But such a statement is credible only if it follows a real criminal investigation—that is, the sort of investigation that the FBI and the Justice Department conduct when they actually care about a case and want convictions.

    • Google ‘screwed over’ its non-millennials – now they can all fight back

      Google has been hit with a class-action lawsuit accusing the ad giant of discriminating against older employees.

      The Northern California District Court has certified [PDF] the case brought against the Chocolate Factory, allowing aggrieved applicants aged 40 and older to join together in filing a single suit.

      By certifying the case, the court allows the plaintiffs to take on Google’s legal might as a combined force, rather than individually. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of a favorable settlement from Cali-based Google.

      The complaint, originally filed in April of 2015, claims that Google discriminates against job candidates over the age of 40 when screening them. The suit accuses Google of violating the US Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

    • Report: DEA Blowing Money On Liars, Thieves, And Amtrak Employees

      If the Drug War is US law enforcement’s wildly-swinging fist, the DEA is its middle finger. Once the pointless brutality stops, the finger is extended to everyone — especially taxpayers.

      Even the agency’s name inadvertently belies its twisted motivations: “Drug Enforcement Agency.” Without further information, the name, on its own, seems to suggest a shoring up of the drug trade, rather than an adversarial force.

      The DEA has a lot of skin in the drug game. Without the steady flow of drugs, it ceases to exist. It operates with a great deal of autonomy and is often excused its worst excesses because most people agree (without much thought) that drugs are bad.

      The DEA controls a vast network of confidential informants. Actually, to state it more accurately, the DEA oversees… Never mind. The DEA pays a great deal of money to confidential informants. Beyond handing out cash, the DEA apparently does little else to keep its informants in line.

      A just-released Inspector General’s report [PDF] on the DEA’s use of confidential informants finds the agency has no problem paying out vast sums of money to lying informants and that it maintains a small army of otherwise-employed citizens who moonlight as cash/drug-sniffing humans for the nation’s top drug warriors.

      This year’s report builds on the lowlights of last year’s examination of the DEA’s informant program, in which the OIG basically stated the entire program runs without sufficient oversight. Nothing has changed in the interim. This report includes even more details of excess, abuse, and stupidity.

    • Cops arrest hundreds of people allegedly involved in IRS phone scam

      Hundreds of people in Mumbai, India have been detained in relation to a massive telephone scam where fake callers “from the IRS” targeted Americans. In said calls, scammers tried to convince recipients that they were from the IRS in order to con victims into forking over thousands of dollars payable via prepaid credit cards.

      According to The Guardian, 200 Indian police officers raided nine locations across one of India’s largest cities.

    • Indonesian arrested for streaming porn on billboard

      Indonesian police have arrested a man accused of hacking into a public billboard in Jakarta and streaming a pornographic film.

      The 24-year-old IT analyst has admitted the crime, said police, for which he could face up to six years in jail.

      Motorists were left in shock last week when footage from a Japanese porn film was displayed on an electronic screen in south Jakarta.

      The video ran for five minutes on Friday before power was eventually cut.

      However the clip had already been captured on many mobile phones and soon spread across social media.

      The man, who was arrested in his office, allegedly carried out the prank after seeing login details displayed on the billboard.

    • [Older] Valley Fair mall guard pulled gun on shopper for hitting traffic cone, lawsuit alleges

      A shopper at Westfield Valley Fair mall claims in a civil lawsuit that a security guard pulled a gun on him after he hit a traffic cone while trying to leave the mall in December.

      In the Santa Clara County Superior Court filing submitted last week, San Jose resident Nicholas Buchanan, an Apple engineer, is seeking unspecified damages against the mall, a security contractor, and two security guards for a Dec. 5, 2015 encounter. The lawsuit also takes issue with how the guard who drew a pistol on Buchanan was not licensed to carry a firearm at the time.

    • Malaysia: Islamic dept launches app allowing public to report Syariah offences

      RELIGIOUS authorities in the Malaysian state of Selangor has launched a mobile application that allows members of the public to report Syariah-related crimes, adding to concerns of growing Islamic fundamentalism in the Muslim-majority country.

      Selangor’s Islamic Religious Department (Jais) director Haris Kasim told The Star that the app allows the public to become the eyes and ears of enforcers, making it easier for them to report offences that breach the Syariah code, such as pre-marital or extramarital sex, or alcohol consumption, which are forbidden to Muslims.

      “The application, which was launched Tuesday, is simple and easy to use. Once installed on a smartphone, people can send over information and make reports to Jais very easily,” he was quoted as saying.

    • Chess star to boycott World Chess Championship in Iran over hijab

      A top chess player is boycotting the World Chess Championship in Iran because women will be legally required to wear the hijab while competing.

      Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, a Geogian-American chess player, is petitioning the World Chess Federation (FIDE) in a bid to change the host country of the women’s world championship competition from Iran.

      “I think it’s unacceptable to host a women’s World Championship in a place where women do not have basic fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens,” the 22-year-old told the BBC.

    • Muslim killer stabbed his care worker wife EIGHT TIMES because she looked after men

      After being arrested, Khan told a police officer: “Never get an arranged marriage bro.”

      The butcher was handed a life sentence after pleading guilty to murdering Nasreen.

      Manchester Crown Court heard Khan told his wife “it’s not halal for you to work with men”.

    • 16-year-old boy killed by LAPD called 911 before the shooting and left a ‘farewell note,’ police say

      A 16-year-old fatally shot by a Los Angeles police officer in South Los Angeles called 911 himself before the shooting and left his family a “farewell note,” leading investigators to believe he had a “desire to end his own life,” LAPD chief Charlie Beck said Thursday.

      Coroner’s officials identified the boy Thursday as Daniel Enrique Perez, who police say was shot after pointing a realistic-looking replica gun at officers.

      Beck said detectives identified Perez through a cellphone he was carrying, which was used to call 911 about 20 minutes before the deadly encounter. The caller reported a man with a gun matching Perez’s description, Beck said.

    • Norway sets out plans for banning burqa in schools and universities

      The burqa veil is to be banned in schools and universities across Norway following similar measures in other European countries, according to the Norwegian education minister.

      The country’s right-wing government confirmed it was considering “national regulations prohibiting the full-face veil in schools and universities”, a move supported by the opposition Labour Party.

      Education minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen confirmed the ban would only apply to the full-face veil and not to other Islamic headscarves including the hijab, chador and niqab.

    • Top CIA officers to face questions about brutal interrogations in civil suit

      Two former high-ranking CIA officials will be compelled to answer questions under oath about the agency’s brutal interrogations of terrorism suspects, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as part of a lawsuit brought against former CIA contractors by the American Civil Liberties Union.

      The ruling would require Jose Rodriguez, who was the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and John Rizzo, the agency’s former acting general counsel, to submit to depositions about a program that used methods widely condemned as torture.

      “This ruling is a critical step towards accountability, and it charts a way forward for torture victims to get their day in court,” ACLU attorney Dror Ladin said in a statement released by the organization after the ruling in federal court in Spokane, Wash.

    • How the Heated, Divisive Election of 1800 Was the First Real Test of American Democracy

      On a windy afternoon in February 1959, 14-year-old Craig Wade scooped up what seemed to be a crumpled rag that was blowing, tumbleweed style, across a railroad track in his hometown, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He later told a local newspaper that he simply “likes to save things.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Facebook wants to bring its free internet service to the US [iophk: "zero-rating, so as to decide what people do and don’t have access to"]

      Facebook is in talks with the government and wireless carriers to bring its “Free Basics” internet service to the U.S., reports The Washington Post.

      If the plan works, Facebook “would target low-income and rural Americans who cannot afford reliable, high-speed Internet at home or on smartphones,” the report notes.

      Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

      Free Basics isn’t a full-fledged internet provider, but rather an agreement with carriers that lets people use Facebook and other sites without it counting towards their data plan.

      Facebook has run into trouble with Free Basics abroad. The program, which currently operates in 49 countries, was shut down earlier this year in India due to net neutrality concerns.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • EU Copyright Reform: Outside the Safe Harbours, Intermediary Liability Capsizes into Incoherence

        As has by now been extensively reported, on 14th September the European Commission released its new copyright reform package. Prominent within this is its proposal for a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

        The proposal contains an array of controversial offerings, but from the perspective of this intermediary liability blogger, the most interesting provision is the proposed Article 13 on ‘Certain uses of protected content by online services’. This is highly problematic in a number of different ways.

      • BitTorrent Fires CEOs, Closes Los Angeles Studio, Shutters BitTorrent Now (EXCLUSIVE)

        BitTorrent has fired its two co-CEOs Robert Delamar and Jeremy Johnson and laid of an unknown number of staffers, Variety has learned from multiple sources. BitTorrent CFO Dipak Joshi has stepped in as interim CEO.

        The company is also closing its Los Angeles-based production studio and shuttering its BitTorrent Now video streaming efforts. This comes just months after BitTorrent announced a renewed focus on media under the leadership of Delamar and Johnson.

        BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen laid out the changes in an email to staff earlier this week, according to a source, but layoffs apparently began as early as two weeks ago. In addition to being ousted as CEOs, Delamar and Johnson were also removed from the company’s board of directors.

        The company had officially announced the appointment of Delamar and Johnson as new co-CEOs in April. At the time, the duo laid out a renewed focus on media production and distribution, which involved the opening of a new Los Angeles-based production studio.

        These efforts culminated in BitTorrent Now, an ad-supported music and video streaming platform that launched in June. BitTorrent Now built on the company’s efforts to strike media distribution deals with independent artists, but didn’t actually use BitTorrent’s P2P technology for streaming.

10.06.16

Links 6/10/2016: KDE Student Programs, Dell With Ubuntu Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 3:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux is a new frontier for young developer

    When I was 17 years old, I started using Linux because I wanted a desktop that resembled my brother-in-law’s Gentoo laptop, which used the KDE environment. Instead, I got the now-nostalgic brown and orange GNOME 2 environment because I’d installed Ubuntu. (Ubuntu has since changed its color palette.)

  • Server

    • HPE, Dell & Cisco Lead Cloud Infrastructure Sales

      Fifth place was a five-way tie between Lenovo, NetApp, IBM, Huawei, and Inspur. IDC declares a statistical tie when there is less than a one percent difference in revenue among two or more vendors.

    • Automation is not DevOps

      It may sound counterproductive from an Automation specialist to reveal the limitations of his job, but I have seen a wide range of inefficiencies, and many failed attempt to fix them.

    • Making Sense of Cloud Native Applications, Platforms, Microservices, and More

      As more and more of our infrastructure moves into the cloud, the proliferation of buzzwords, new terms, and new ways of doing things can be daunting. Fabio Chiodini, Principal System Engineer at EMC, spent some time helping us make sense of these concepts during his LinuxCon Europe talk, “Cloud Native Applications, Containers, Microservices, Platforms, CI-CD…Oh My!!”

    • Introducing InfraKit, an open source toolkit for creating and managing declarative, self-healing infrastructure

      Docker’s mission is to build tools of mass innovation, starting with a programmable layer for the Internet that enables developers and IT operations teams to build and run distributed applications. As part of this mission, we have always endeavored to contribute software plumbing toolkits back to the community, following the UNIX philosophy of building small loosely coupled tools that are created to simply do one thing well. As Docker adoption has grown from 0 to 6 billion pulls, we have worked to address the needs of a growing and diverse set of distributed systems users. This work has led to the creation of many infrastructure plumbing components that have been contributed back to the community.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

    • Wireshark 2.2.1 Network Protocol Analyzer Adds Ascend & K12 Capture File Support

      Today, October 5, 2016, the Wireshark development team announced the release of the first maintenance update for the Wireshark 2.2 series of the world’s most popular network protocol analyzer software.

    • Docker 1.12.2 App Container Engine Is Almost Here, Second RC Brings More Fixes

      The development cycle of the Docker 1.12.2 maintenance update to the widely-used open-source and cross-platform application container engine continues with a second Released Candidate, as announced on October 3, 2016, by Docker engineer Victor Vieux.

      Docker 1.12.2 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) comes one week after the unveiling of the first RC milestone, mainly to address more of the bugs and annoyance discovered lately or reported by users since the first point release of the major Docker 1.12 release. Again, the entire changelog is attached below if you like to read the technical details.

      As you might know, Docker 1.12 introduced a lot of exciting new features, such as the built-in orchestration and routing mesh, the brand new Swarm Mode, as well as a bunch of networking improvements for better security. And it looks like Docker 1.12.2 will attempt to further improve the Swarm Mode and networking functionalities.

    • Kodi 17 “Krypton” Beta 3 Adds More PVR and Video Playback Improvements, Bugfixes

      The day of October 5, 2016, also brought us a new Beta of the upcoming Kodi 17 “Krypton” open-source and cross-platform media center software, the third and most probably the last for this development cycle.

      As we told you in the report about the second Beta of Kodi 17, the final release of the popular media center is launching later this fall with numerous new features and improvements in areas like skinning, video playback, PVR/DVR, live TV, music library, etc. Beta 3 comes three weeks after the release of the second Beta milestone, and it includes a bunch of fixes for various issues reported by users since then.

    • Frogr 1.2 released

      Of course, just a few hours after releasing frogr 1.1, I’ve noticed that there was actually no good reason to depend on gettext 0.19.8 for the purposes of removing the intltool dependency only, since 0.19.7 would be enough.

    • Frogr Flickr Uploader for Linux Is Now Available as a Flatpak

      Like most people living in 2016 I don’t use Flickr. But if I did, I’d probably use Frogr to manage and upload my photos. Frogr is one of a few apps that I’ve written about across all 7+ years I’ve run this site.

    • Libvirt 2.3 Virtualization API Released

      The libvirt Linux virtualization API has been updated to version 2.3 today with some new features and plenty of bug fixes.

    • Harmony Music Player Gets A Gorgeous Dark Mode, Other Improvements

      If you’re a fan of the Harmony music player then listen up: there’s a new update waiting for you to download.

    • This Extension Adds Dynamic Transparency to GNOME Shell’s Top Bar

      Making the GNOME top panel transparent is something a lot of users like to do — but it can look a little out of place when you maximise a window. Dynamic TopBar is a nifty little extension for the GNOME Shell desktop that “makes the top bar transparent when no window is maximized.”

    • ActivityPub and MediaGoblin at TPAC 2016 (or: ActivityPub needs your review!)

      It seems a recurring meme in MediaGoblin land to say “we’ve been quiet, because we’ve been busy” (or maybe historically on every tech blog ever), but I guess I can’t resist repeating the mantra. It’s true! Though the weight of my focus has been shifted from where I expected it to be. From the last few updates over the last year, you would be right to anticipate that the main thing I would be working on would be merging the federation code Jessica has written and getting 1.0 out the door. That was the plan, and we’re still working towards that, but priorities shifted as we realized the opportunities and time pressures we were under with ActivityPub. After the Social Working Group face to face meeting in June, Jessica and I sat down and talked about what we should do. Jessica had recently started working at Igalia (great people!) and was busy with that and other transitions in her life, so we discussed whether we thought it was most sensible to focus my energy on MediaGoblin or on ActivityPub. It was clear that ActivityPub was shaping into a solid specification, but it was also made clear that the Social Working Group’s charter was running out by the end of 2016. We both think ActivityPub is key to MediaGoblin’s success and didn’t want to see our invested time go to waste, so decided my immediate focus should switch to ActivityPub so it could successfully make it as a standard.

      Which isn’t doom and gloom for MediaGoblin! MediaGoblin development has continued… the community is good enough that people have been able to work while I’ve been busy. I’m happy to say we also appointed longtime contributor Boris Bobrov as co-maintainer to help reduce me being a bottleneck. (Thank you Boris, and congrats!) Other contributors have also stepped up to the plate. I’m especially thankful of Ben Sturmfels for hosting MediaGoblin hackathons and being so responsive to community members. (And of course, there are many others to thank, too!)

      Anyway, I’m not going anywhere, I’ve just been shifting focus to standards work for a bit… but it’s all for the greater good of MediaGoblin. (Well, and the greater federated social web!) Soon, we’ll be putting the work we’re doing on ActivityPub directly into MediaGoblin. When we merge Jessica’s work on federation, we will also retool it so that the first federated release of MediaGoblin will be blazing the trails with ActivityPub.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Kickstarter-Funded Game Drops DRM-Free Version It Promised, Then Promises It Again After The Backlash

        Readers of this site should know by now that, as a general rule, DRM is equal parts dumb and ineffective. What in theory is a way for game publishers to stave off piracy typically instead amounts to a grand digital method for making sure legitimate customers can’t play the games they buy. Now, not all DRM is created equally shitty, of course — one of the more benign forms of DRM is Valve’s Steam platform. Because games purchased on the platform check in with Steam servers for product keys and otherwise encrypts the individual files for the game each user downloads, it’s a form of DRM.

        And because DRM is almost always annoying even at its best, there are some gamers who will only buy DRM-free games. Many Kickstarter campaigns for video games, in fact, explicitly state that backers and non-backers will have a DRM-free option for the game available, either through platforms like GOG and HumbleBundle, or directly from the developer. Duke Grabowski, Mighty Swashbuckler! was one such game, with developer Venture Moon Industries promising both a Steam release and a DRM-free release when it collected funds from backers. Then, suddenly, once the company got a publisher on board for the project, it announced that the game would only be available on Steam.

      • Steam woes in OpenMandriva…. Again!

        Steam updated today and, as a nasty surprise, I hit the same problem I had before with it.

        I tried the solution here, but it was not working this time: the code reverted to its original form, preventing the Steam runtime to work.

      • Mad Max Open World Action-Adventure Video Game Is Coming to SteamOS and Linux

        You won’t believe this, by Feral Interactive announced a few hours ago, October 5, 2016, that it will port the awesome Mad Max open world action-adventure video game to the SteamOS, Linux, and Mac platforms.

        Developed by Avalanche Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, the Mad Max has been officially released for Microsoft Windows operating systems, as well as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gaming consoles a year ago, on September 2015.

      • A general guide for the best practices of buying Linux games

        Quite a number of people have asked me to talk about where to buy Linux games, how to make sure developers are supported and so on, so here I am.

        First of all, I am fully aware there will likely be a small backlash in the comments on certain points. We do seem to have a small minority of very vocal people who like to boast about buying dirt cheap games from places like G2A, which makes me sad. We also have a few who like to advocate piracy, which is not only sad, but makes us look really bad in the eyes of developers. For the most part though, the people commenting here are fantastic to talk to.

        To make this a point: I am not aiming to single anyone out, nor am I aiming to be hostile towards anyone. Read this as if we are all sitting around the table having a *insert favourite drink* and discussing the best way to support our platform. That’s what this is all about, everything I do is to help Linux gaming progress somehow.

        To get this out of the way; I flat out do not recommend buying from places like G2A and Kinguin, Samsai already wrote about that here. Read that as a starting point if you please. Basically, don’t pre-order, don’t buy from random reseller stores.

      • Shadow Warrior 2 may not come to Linux after all, it’s getting a bit confusing

        Shadow Warrior 2 was due to get a Linux version, then suddenly information on it vanished from the Steam page and Humble Store. The plot thickens from there.

        When queried about it, a developer for Flying Wild Hog blamed it on a publisher decision (Devolver Digital) not to have Linux at day-1. I personally spoke to Devolver on twitter, who claimed this was false and they didn’t know why the developer said so. That developer very quickly deleted their post after this, and then made a new one that was entirely different.

      • BUTCHER from Transhuman Design releases with day-1 Linux support, it’s brutal

        BUTCHER is a blood-soaked action platformer from Transhuman Design, the developer behind King Arthur’s Gold and Trench Run.

        It’s brutal, difficult, fast paced and it’s actually rather good. It’s almost as if Doom or Quake were re-designed as an action platformer, with the difficulty and speed of Broforce thrown in for good measure. That’s how I can best describe it. It has a similar atmosphere to Doom and Quake, and great action. There’s very little plot to it, no tutorials to get through and nothing standing in the way of getting in, killing stuff and getting on with it.

      • Slime Rancher updated, new slime types, new crops, and more
      • Dead Island Definitive Edition & Riptide Definitive Edition both patched to fix major issues

        It’s good to see both Dead Island Definitive Edition [Steam] & Riptide Definitive Edition [Steam] still being supported. Both have been patched to fix major issues.

      • ‘Stellar Tactics’, a space exploration RPG with classless character progression will come to Linux

        ‘Stellar Tactics’ [Official Site, Steam] is a rather expansive looking space exploration RPG and the good news is that the developer already has plans for a Linux version.

      • Wasteland 3 now on Fig ready to be funded, nearly hit the goal already
      • 7 Days to Die massive update released, Linux version seems to work okay now [Ed: Mono...]
      • Day of Infamy, the WWII FPS from New World Interactive updated, looks pretty good on Linux

        Day of Infamy [Steam] is the new FPS from the Insurgency developers New World Interactive. It has a Linux version, even though it’s not advertised yet. It seems to work pretty well and they just updated the game.

      • My triumph in Rocket League and why you need to own it on Linux

        I’m going to be honest, this is quite easily going to be my Game Of The Year on Linux.

      • If you need a decent action platformer, be sure to check out Super Time Force Ultra

        Super Time Force Ultra [GOG, Steam] was recently ported to Linux thanks to Aaron from Knockout Games, now I’ve had a chance to check out this action platformer I’ve given it a few thoughts.

      • Mad Max Is Making It’s Way To Mac And Linux

        Feral Interactive announced today that the open world, third-person action game Mad Max is coming to Mac and Linux on October 20th, 2016.

      • Mad Max is coming to Mac and Linux on October 20th
      • Feral Announces Open World Action Game ‘Mad Max’ is Coming to the Mac
      • ‘Wasteland Weekend’ Is Mad Max Meets Burning Man In The Coolest Possible Way

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Student Programs announces Season of KDE 2016-2017

        KDE Student Programs announces the 2016-2017 Season of KDE for those who want to participate in mentored projects which enhance KDE in some way. Projects from past Seasons of KDE include new application features, the KDE Continuous Integration system, new reporting for developers, as well as a web framework, porting and a plethora of other work.

        Successful mentees earn a certificate of completion along with a very cool t-shirt and other goodies. Any person who wants to complete a project is eligible to enter.

      • KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS released

        After many work around in the previous beta version of KDE Plasma 5.8 beta,KDE team is finally here with their first LTS of Plasma desktop software release, KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS.
        Believe it or not, this release is surely gong to attract plenty of non-techie or simple users.But Techies are also not going to lose interest, this Ubuntu based beauty is going to prove the beast features as well.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Web Engines Hackfest 2016!

        It had great talks that will eventually end up in videos uploaded to the web site. We were amazed at the progress being made to Servo, including some performance results that blew our minds. We also discussed the next steps for WebKitGTK+, WebKit for Wayland (or WPE), our own Clutter wrapper to WebKitGTK+ which is used for the Apertis project, and much more.

        [...]

        One of the main problems people reported was applications that use WebKitGTK+ not showing anything where the content was supposed to appear. It turns out the problem was caused by GTK+ not being able to create a GL context. If the system was simply not able to use GL there would be no problem: WebKit would then just disable accelerated compositing and things would work, albeit slower.

      • The GNOME 3.24 Release Date Is Set

        GNOME 3.24 is to be released on March 22, 2017 — providing that development goes to plan between now and then, of course!

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • i.MX6 UL COM has a carrier board with Raspberry Pi style expansion

      The Armadeus “Opos6UL” COM runs Linux on an i.MX6 UL SoC, and has eMMC, optional wireless, extended temp support, and a carrier board with RPi-style I/O.

      French embedded manufacturer Armadeus Systems, which last year shipped an APF6_SP computer-on-module with an i.MX6 and a Cyclone V GX FPGA, has now unveiled a more modest, but similarly Linux- and NXP-based COM aimed at IoT applications. The i.MX6 UltraLite (UL) based Opos6UL is designed for industrial products like IoT gateways, medical devices, small HMI, and autonomous robotics.

    • Phones

      • [Early Access] Sailfish OS Fiskarsinjoki

        It’s our great pleasure to announce that we are now starting to speed up deliveries of Sailfish OS updates.

        This post, as mentioned in the title, is about the next early access iteration, update Fiskarsinjoki. Fiskarsinjoki is a small Finnish river in the village of Fiskars. It passes through a park-like cultural landscape and lands in the Gulf of Finland – just some trivia for you to learn!

      • Jolla Puts Out Sailfish OS “Fiskarsinjoki” In Early Access

        Jolla is looking to push out Sailfish OS releases faster and thus today announced “Fiskarsinjoki” in early access form.

        This next iteration of Sailfish OS is codenamed Fiskarsinjoki over a small Finnish river. Fiskarsinjoki adds support for saving images/video directly to an SD card, easy conference calls support, an integrated scientific calculator, more editing options in the image gallery, file sharing support in the file manager, and various other small features and refinements.

      • While Google’s Ara Modular Phone Is Dead, Greybus Still Appears To Have A Future

        With the Linux 4.9 staging pull request comes the addition of the Greybus subsystem.

      • Tizen/ARTIK

        • Pre-Order Gear S3 Classic and Frontier Smartwatch in the UK

          The latest Tizen based smartwatch, the Gear S3, has been launched at the end of August. This gear device builds on the hit features of the Gear S2, the circular screen and rotating bezel immediately come to mind, and adds more features for the fashion and sports conscious amongst us.

        • Samsung Z2 is to be Launched in Kenya Today

          We’ve been following the launch of the Samsung Z2 closely, as you would expect from Tizen Experts, and we knew that Kenya was the next market to be graced by the Z2 and its 4G capabilities. Well it looks like today is the day as Samsung has been sending out Press Invites for the event over the last few days.

        • Xender File Transfer Sharing App Launched on the Tizen Store

          Many of our readers have been waiting for Xender, a file transfer & sharing app, to be released on the Tizen Store and today it finally has. Do you need to transfer a file between mobile phones or between your phone and the pc? This is what Xender is designed to do and it does it quite well. The app boasts at being the fastest all-in-one file transfer and sharing app!

        • SmartHome prototype using ARTIK Cloud and Particle Photon

          Samsung and hackster.io had announced an ‘IOT challenge Using ARTIK Cloud” a couple of months ago in order to bring the maker and developer community on board to samsung’s cloud platform. The deadlines for submissions of project ideas are about to close in 5 days at the time of writing. A huge list of entries have been flooding the doors of hackster.io and Samsung ever since the contest was announced.

      • Android

        • Google melts 78 Android security holes, two of which were critical
        • Remix OS Brings Android For PC
        • Lenovo exec: Nope, not building Windows Phones [Ed: learning from mistakes?]

          Lenovo will not build smartmobes running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system because it doubts the software giant’s long term commitment to the market.

          This is the view from Lenovo’s chief operations officer Gianfranco Lanci, who told attendees at the Canalys Channel Forum 2016 that Windows 10 was generating interest in the corporate market for PCs but that his company won’t entertain basing its phones on the OS.

          “We don’t have Windows phones or any plans to introduce a Windows Phone,” he said.

          “I don’t see the need to introduce a Windows Phone and I am not convinced Microsoft is supporting the phone for the future,” Lanci added.

          According to Gartner, Windows Phone/Windows 10 Mobile was the third most popular OS on the planet behind Android and iOS during Q2, running on 1.97 million phones compared to 297 million on Google’s OS and 44.39 million on Apple’s software.

        • Six reasons to have the Probox2 Air Android TV box in your home

          When it comes to home entertainment, especially the new wave of 4K-enabled products, it gets pretty expensive to kit out your home with equipment. And if you’re in a home with multiple screens, it’s even more so.

          The Probox2 is the latest Android-based TV box to hit the market and has a great number of features to at least tempt you to consider stumping up the cash to get quality visuals in all your rooms.

        • Introducing the Android Central Smartphone Buyer’s Guide

          It’s increasingly likely that you’re reading this on your smartphone. In fact, it’s likely you’re doing more on your phone than ever before, which is why it’s so important to buy the right one — for you and the people in your life.

          Here at Android Central, we don’t just play with phones — we live and breathe them. We’re constantly comparing them to the competition, seeking out the ideal device for each particular use case. We believe in the Android mantra of, “Be together, not the same,” which is why we are launching the Smartphone Buyer’s Guide to help you pick the right phone for your unique situation.

        • Android 7.1 Nougat Update vs. Pixel Android 7.1: Leaked Changelog Reveals Difference Between Pixel OS Features And Upcoming Update
        • Pixel’s best features aren’t coming to the new version of Android

          At Google’s hardware event this week, the new version of the Android operating system, Android 7.1 (Nougat 7.1), was barely mentioned. As it turns out, there was a reason for that: some of the new Pixel smartphones‘ best features won’t be arriving in the new OS. This includes features like Google Assistant, the built-in customer support service, unlimited and free backup of full-res photos and videos, Smart Storage, and more.

          Details on which features were “Pixel-only” were previously reported by Android Police, citing a changelog provided by a Google source. Google confirmed to us those changes are accurate.

          Some of the omissions make sense. For example, only Pixel phones will ship with the new, “quick switch” adapter that makes it easier to move your data from iPhone to Android. That requires hardware in the form of the adapter cable.

        • Google destroys the Android fan myth that the iPhone is too expensive

          For years the Android fanboy argument has been that the iPhone is too expensive and that Android offers them a way to get a high-end smartphone for a fraction of the price.

        • Andromeda Looks Like Android’s Ticket To The Big Screen

          Blending traditional and touch computer user input methods to create a satisfying experience and commercial success has proven elusive for the three big consumer operating system vendors. Apple, in fact, has mostly avoided the challenge by keeping the Mac and ther iPad distinct, with Tim Cook likening attempts to meld laptop and tablet interfaces to combining a refrigerator with a toaster.

          [...]

          If putting Android apps on Chrome OS has failed to excite, how about imbuing Android with elements of Chrome OS? That seems to be the idea behind Andromeda, a rumored forthcoming Google OS that would presumably aim to incorporate the best of both worlds. One model for how it may look and work comes from Remix OS, a tweaking of Android that debuted on a Surface-like device and has since become far more broadly available. It borrows desktop user interface elements from Windows even more aggressively than Chrome does.

          Five years ago, I wrote that Chrome OS was heading toward a niche—ultimately the education market—versus Android. Now, with Andromeda, the security and simplicity that makes Chrome OS great and the windowing user interface that makes it usable on laptops could become key ingredients in finally allowing Android to have an impact on larger-screen computing devices.

        • Best Android Camera

          Samsung introduced this camera setup in the Galaxy S7, and it’s just as fantastic today in the newer Galaxy Note 7. The 12MP resolution gives you plenty of pixels to work with, and the optical image stabilization (OIS) keeps everything clear whether you’re taking low-light shots or shooting video on the move.

          Just as important as the photo output is how quickly the camera operates. Two presses of the home button launch the camera in less than a second, and photos are taken instantaneously even when shooting in HDR or a tough lighting situation. The camera interface is simple but also powerful if you choose to move to the full Manual mode, which can enable great shots if you want to tweak and use a tripod.

        • Google’s new phones won’t solve Android’s fundamental problems

          It’s been a tougher question to answer recently, as Android phones have approached and in some cases beaten the iPhone in terms of design and capability.

          But there’s one major thing that keeps me recommending the iPhone over any Android phone: the iOS ecosystem.

          It’s the only platform with the best developer support and consistent updates with new features throughout the life of your device. Android can’t do that. In fact, many Android phones stop getting new updates and features after a year or so.

        • Best Rugged Android Phone

          It is truly a bummer that the Galaxy S7 Active is an AT&T exclusive because this is a smartphone worthy of all SIMs. Inside, it’s packed with the same stellar components as the rest of the Galaxy S7 family, including a Snapdragon 820 processor and 4GB of RAM. It also offers a massive 4000mAh battery, in addition to a rugged, dust-proof, and water-resistant enclosure. Its 5.1-inch Super AMOLED display is bright enough to see in the great outdoors and sits behind a shatter-resistant protective coating that can withstand the toughest of falls.

          Bottom line: The Galaxy S7 Active is what other consumer-oriented rugged smartphones should aim to be like.

        • ‘Android is not invincible’: What Google is risking by releasing its Pixel smartphone

          Android may be the dominant smartphone operating system (OS) but “it’s not invincible,” according to analysis firm IHS Markit, which argues that Google’s latest Pixel smartphone could risk antagonizing manufacturers reliant on the software.

          On Tuesday, Google – a subsidiary of Alphabet – held a hardware event in which it launched two smartphones – the Pixel and Pixel XL – a smart home hub called Google Home, a virtual reality (VR) headset, Wi-Fi routers and a new version of its Chromecast streaming device.

          The Pixel smartphone runs Google’s Android software and comes with Google Assistant – the technology giant’s digital personal assistant similar to Apple’s Siri, which is also present on its Home hub.

        • Google Play is reportedly streaming Android game demos
        • Google Patches Android for 78 Vulnerabilities in October Update
        • Shazam Lite for Android requires less storage and data
        • Samsung Galaxy S7 Android 7.0 Nougat Update Imminent? S7 Running Nougat Spotted On GFXBench

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Pros Confident in Europe Job Market

    Open source careers may be even more in demand and rewarding in Europe than the rest of the world, according to new data from the 2016 Open Source Jobs Report released today by The Linux Foundation and Dice. European open source pros are more confident in the job market, get more incentives from employers, and more calls from recruiters than their counterparts worldwide, according to the data.

    The full report, released earlier this year, analyzed trends for open source careers and the motivations of professionals in the industry. Now, the data have been broken down to focus specifically on responses from more than 1,000 open source professionals in Europe, and how they compare to respondents from around the world.

  • How open source is enabling the digital art age

    This project was incredibly exciting to me because it demonstrated the freedom that digital art represents. Digital art allows traditional audio and visual methods to take on new forms by adding layers of data and interactivity. This means that your project can respond to events happening in its environment, or on the other side of the world. When a project begins acquiring hardware components like lighting or moving objects, the term digital art seems inadequate since the entire environment becomes the art piece.

    It is well-established that the open source movement has created an enormous amount of value for businesses and organizations. Often overlooked, however, is the amount of value that it has created for those looking to pursue creative ventures. The open source community has created a plethora of libraries and frameworks that reduce the barrier of entry for aspiring digital artists and musicians. Though there are many out there, I would like to focus on Processing and Arduino because they have most shaped my approach to both art and programming.

  • 4 open source alternatives for Google Calendar

    For many of us, our calendar is our lifeblood. Without it, we would be lost, perhaps both literally and figuratively.

    While some people can get away with a wall calendar or a paper day planner to organize their schedule, a whole lot of us have turned over the process of managing time allotments to a digital calendar. In truth, most of us are juggling quite a few calendars from both our work and personal lives, and often a few other organizations that we’re involved with, including anything from non-profits to tech meetups to social clubs.

  • Google releases open source ‘Cartographer’

    Machine learning and vision are essential technologies for the advancement of robotics. When sensors come together, they can enable a computer or robot to collect data and images in real-time.

    A good example of this technology in real-world use is the latest Roomba vacuums. As the robot cleans your dirty floor, it is using sensors combined with a camera to map your home. Today, Google releases Cartographer — an open source project that developers can use for many things, such as robots and self-driving cars.

  • Google open-sources Cartographer 3D mapping library

    Google today said that it’s open-sourced Cartographer, a library for mapping movement in space in both 2D and 3D. the technology works with the open source Robot Operating System (ROS), which makes the software easier to deploy in software systems for robots, self-driving cars, and drones.

    Cartographer is an implementation of simultaneous localization and mapping, better known by its acronym SLAM. But it’s not the only open source SLAM library; there are plenty others, like hector_slam. Proprietary alternatives are also available; for example, Apple recently acquired one company with SLAM software, Flyby Media. But this is Google we’re talking about — Google, the company with self-driving cars that have already driven more than 2 million miles without human control.

    “Our focus is on advancing and democratizing SLAM as a technology,” Googlers Damon Kohler, Wolfgang Hess, and Holger Rapp wrote in a blog post. “Currently, Cartographer is heavily focused on LIDAR SLAM. Through continued development and community contributions, we hope to add both support for more sensors and platforms as well as new features, such as lifelong mapping and localizing in a pre-existing map.”

  • Open Source As a Business

    It’s a script we’ve seen played out many times in the open source community. A great software idea becomes popular, and continues to be developed by a core group of people. Those people build a business around servicing the software. The business grows, and so does the company. In an effort to sustain growth, the company chooses to monetize their software.

    The business logic for this timeline is very clear, and from a certain point of view, hard to refute. Businesses exist to make money. Despite servicing a customer base that believes in the principles of open source, many companies choose – after a time – to abandon those principles to a larger or lesser degree for a traditional software business model.

  • FOSS Organizations, Judged on their Merits?

    The free and open source software community depends heavily upon the work of community-funded nonprofit organizations. These organizations develop software, organize community events, manage key infrastructure, and educate people about FOSS. They serve as key organizing points for the people and companies that develop and sustain FOSS.

    Historically, some of the most important FOSS nonprofits have been U.S. tax-exempt organizations—entities recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as exempt from federal income tax according to IRS regulations. But over the last few years, the community has witnessed changes in the IRS’s handling of applications for tax-exempt status from FOSS organizations. Most troubling, the IRS has denied applications from organizations whose missions and activities differ very little from existing (and exempt) FOSS nonprofits. The IRS’s actions raised concerns within the community about whether tax exempt status would be available to future FOSS organizations and what these changes might mean for the exempt organizations upon which the community already depends. The Open Source Initiative and the Software Freedom Conservancy formed a working group to explore these questions and gather more information about the issue.

    This post will cover what the working group has learned about how this issue developed, where things stand now, and what recent developments at the IRS mean for the future. In future posts, we’ll provide additional guidance to FOSS projects about organizational options, including when U.S. tax-exempt status is a viable option.

  • A guide to building trust in teams and organizations

    My travels globally have given me a feeling for how best to work in many different contexts—like Latin America, West Africa, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, to name a few. And I’ve found that I can more easily adapt my work style in these countries if I focus on something that plays a role in all of them: trust.

    In The Open Organization, Jim Whitehurst mentions that accountability and meritocracy are both central components of open organizations. Trust is linked to both of those concepts. But the truth, I’ve found, is that many people don’t have the information they need to determine whether they can trust a person or not. They need data, along with a system to evaluate that data and make decisions.

    I’ve found a way to measure trust, studied trust building, and developed a strategy for cultivating trust that’s worked for me over the years. I think it could work well in open organizations, where building trust is critical.

    Let me explain.

  • 5 Tips on Using OAuth 2.0 for Secure Authorization

    OAuth is an open standard in authorization that allows delegating access to remote resources without sharing the owner’s credentials. Instead of credentials, OAuth introduces tokens generated by the authorization server and accepted by the resource owner.

    In OAuth 1.0, each registered client was given a client secret and the token was provided in response to an authentication request signed by the client secret. That produced a secure implementation even in the case of communicating through an insecure channel, because the secret itself was only used to sign the request and was not passed across the network.

    OAuth 2.0 is a more straightforward protocol passing the client secret with every authentication request. Therefore, this protocol is not backward compatible with OAuth 1.0. Moreover, it is deemed less secure because it relies solely on the SSL/TLS layer. One of OAuth contributors, Eran Hammer, even said that OAuth 2.0 may become “the road to hell,” because:

    “… OAuth 2.0 at the hand of a developer with deep understanding of web security will likely result in a secure implementation. However, at the hands of most developers – as has been the experience from the past two years – 2.0 is likely to produce insecure implementations.”

    Despite this opinion, making a secure implementation of OAuth 2.0 is not that hard, because there are frameworks supporting it and best practices listed. SSL itself is a very reliable protocol that is impossible to compromise when proper certificate checks are thoroughly performed.

    Of course, if you are using OAuth 1.0, then continue to use it; there is no point in migrating to OAuth 2.0. But if you are developing a new mobile or an Angular web application (and often mobile and web applications come together, sharing the same server), then OAuth 2.0 will be a better choice. It already has some built-in support in the OWIN framework for .NET that can be easily extended to create different clients and use different security settings.

  • Tips for Evaluating a Company’s Open Source Culture

    There are four essential questions a company should ask before it decides to create an open source project, according to Duane O’Brien, open source programs evangelist at PayPal.

    Who cares?

    Are we still using it?

    Are we committing our own resources?

    Can we develop it all in the open?

    This framework, developed by O’Brien’s boss Danese Cooper, is useful in vetting internal software for release as open source projects.

  • Buggy code to the left of me, perfect source to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with EU

    Midway through SUPERSEDE, the EU three-year project backed by €3.25m in funding to make software better, software still sucks.

    It’s always been thus, but now that computer code has a say in the driving of Teslas, confronts everyone daily on smartphones, and has crept into appliances, medical devices, and infrastructure, it’s a more visible problem.

    Robert Vamosi, security strategist at Synopsys, told The Register in a phone interview that software quality matters more than ever.

    “We’re seeing real-world examples of automobiles remotely attacked and medical devices being suspended when they need to keep functioning,” he said. “It’s becoming life-critical.”

    The organizations involved in SUPERSEDE – ATOS, Delta Informatica, SEnerCon, Siemens, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), and the University of Zurich (UZH) – aim to improve the user experience of their software products with a toolkit to provide better feedback and analytics data to application developers.

  • ETSI Releases Its Open Source MANO Software Stack

    ETSI’s Open Source MANO (OSM) group today announced Release ONE, the first code out of the NFV management and orchestration (MANO) project.

    ETSI touts that OSM can natively support VIMs from VMware and OpenStack and can also support various software-defined networking (SDN) controllers. It can also create a plug-in framework to improve platform maintenance and extensions.

  • The Evolution of Open Source Networking at AT&T

    For many years AT&T has been on the forefront of virtualizing a Tier 1 carrier network. They’ve done so in a very open fashion and are actively participating in, and driving, many open sources initiatives. Their open initiatives include Domain 2.0, ECOMP, and CORD, all of which are driving innovation in the global service provider market. Chris Rice, Sr. VP of Domain 2.0 Architecture and Design of AT&T, provided an overview of how AT&T got where they are today during his keynote address at the ODL Summit.

    Providing a bit of history of this journey, Rice noted that today’s implementations and visions started years ago. One of the first steps was the creation of what he called a router farm, which was initiated because of the end of life of a router and there wasn’t a new router that could just take its place. The goal was to remove the static relationship between the edge router and the customer. Once this was done, AT&T could provide better resiliency to their customers, detect failures, do planned maintenance, and schedule backups. They could also move configurations from one router to another vendor’s router. The result was faster and cheaper; however, “it just wasn’t as reusable as they wanted.” They learned the importance of separating services from the network and from the devices.

  • The legacy of Pieter Hintjens

    When I watched Chad Fowler’s GOTO Amsterdam 2014 Keynote it got me thinking about what our aims should be in life.

    He mentions Joel Spolsky’s post from 2001: Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To It, and says software typically only lasts five years so rarely gets to be very good.

    He asks, what does it take create legacy software with a positive meaning, that is software so good that you are fondly remembered for it for many years to come.

    [...]

    Pieter was a man who knew all of this. His deep passion for optimal collaboration lead to the creation of C4: The Collective Code Construction Contract. Not only was he very talented technically, he also understood people and how to foster a strong community.

  • Events

    • FOSSCON

      This post is long past due, but I figured it is better late than never. At the start of the year, I set a goal to get more involved with attending and speaking at conferences. Through work, I was able to attend the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) in Pasadena, CA in January. I also got to give a talk at O’Relly’s Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Austin, TX in May. However, I really wanted to give a talk about my experience contributing in the Ubuntu community.

      José Antonio Rey encouraged me to submit the talk to FOSSCON. While I’ve been aware of FOSSCON for years thanks to my involvement with the freenode IRC network (which has had a reference to FOSSCON in the /motd for years), I had never actually attended it before. I also wasn’t quite sure how I would handle traveling from San Francisco, CA to Philadelphia, PA. Regardless, I decided to go ahead and apply.

      Fast forward a few weeks, and imagine my surprise when I woke up to an email saying that my talk proposal was accepted. People were actually interested in me and what I had to say. I immediately began researching flights. While they weren’t crazy expensive, they were still more money than I was comfortable spending. Luckily, José had a solution to this problem as well; he suggested applying for funding through the Ubuntu Community Donations fund. While I’ve been an Ubuntu Member for over 8 years, I’ve never used this resource before. However, I was happy when I received a very quick approval.

    • FOSS Wave: Bangalore at UVCE

      It was another lazy Saturday with a rare sight of empty Bangalore roads. This FOSS Wave event in Bangalore had been in planning for almost a month. Finally, here we were on September 10th, 2016 in front of the almost a century old structure of University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering.

      Five speakers reached the venue by 9:30am. We were to talk in two different sessions starting from 10:30am until 4:00pm on the following topics.

    • Fedora Join Meeting 26 September 2016 – Summary
    • systemd.conf 2016 is Over Now!

      A few days ago systemd.conf 2016 ended, our second conference of this kind. I personally enjoyed this conference a lot: the talks, the atmosphere, the audience, the organization, the location, they all were excellent!

      I’d like to take the opportunity to thanks everybody involved. In particular I’d like to thank Chris, Daniel, Sandra and Henrike for organizing the conference, your work was stellar!

      I’d also like to thank our sponsors, without which the conference couldn’t take place like this, of course. In particular I’d like to thank our gold sponsor, Red Hat, our organizing sponsor Kinvolk, as well as our silver sponsors CoreOS and Facebook. I’d also like to thank our bronze sponsors Collabora, OpenSUSE, Pantheon, Pengutronix, our supporting sponsor Codethink and last but not least our media sponsor Linux Magazin. Thank you all!

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Databricks Findings Show That Spark is Driving Cutting-Edge Innovation

      This summer, Databricks conducted a comprehensive Apache Spark Survey to identify insights on how organizations are using Spark and highlight growth trends since the company’s last Spark Survey in 2015. The 2016 survey results reflect answers from 900 distinct organizations and 1615 respondents, who were predominantly Apache Spark users, and the results are available now.

      The results show that the Spark community is still growing fast: the number of meetup members worldwide has tripled, and the number of contributors to the project has grown by 67% since last year. Moreover, Spark is driving cutting-edge innovation. Users arebuilding diverse apps, with significant growth in machine learning and streaming.

    • Transitioning from OpenStack Hobbyist to Professional

      To land your first OpenStack job, you’ll want to prove you have a functional understanding of OpenStack basics, can navigate the resources to solve problems, and have recognized competency in your focus area.
      Used with permission

      The hardest part of pivoting your career is proving that you are qualified in your new focus area. To land your first OpenStack job, you’ll want to prove you have a functional understanding of OpenStack basics, can navigate the resources to solve problems, and have recognized competency in your focus area.

      “A functional understanding of OpenStack” means you know how to work in OpenStack––not just naming the projects in alphabetical order or giving an overview of its history. While you’ll want to read up on its origins and future roadmap, you’ll also want to jump in by using tools like DevStack or TryStack to explore.

  • CMS

    • CMSpotlight: 5 CMS apps that deserve more attention

      Everybody knows about WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, although they are great and they are popular for a reason, there are quite a few other alternatives that you may have never heard of. Thousands of quality developers and designers work hard to create amazing masterpieces of applications. Most of them release their applications for free and they make them open source. The least we can do is spread the word so they can get the attention they well deserve. We’ve already listed a dozen CMS apps in our self-hosted alternatives post, but in this article, we’ll focus more on each CMS and its features. Here, 5 open source CMS apps will get the spotlight.

  • Education

    • Charlie Reisinger: FOSS in Education Proponent…and Practitioner

      “Charlie serves as the Technology Director for Penn Manor School District in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. A member of the senior leadership team, he directs instructional technology programs and technical infrastructure and operations. A passionate advocate and speaker on open source values in education, Charlie and his team implemented the largest classroom desktop Linux program in Pennsylvania.

      “Under his leadership, Penn Manor School District received the 2011 School of Excellence in Technology Award from the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA). In 2016, Penn Manor was recognized with the Districts of Distinction Award for the Open Source one-to-one Laptop Program.”

      The book’s title is The Open Schoolhouse: Building a Technology Program to Transform Learning and Empower Students. The Kindle version is only $4.99. I’ve read it. You should read it, too, if you’re a teacher, school administrator, student, parent, uncle or aunt or have friends or family with kids in school — or even if you’re a taxpayer someplace where they have public school or you’re connected in some way with a charter school or private school.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Classic Emacs editor gets a new-school makeover

      A new distribution of the Emacs editor, called Spacemacs, repackages the classic developer’s tool in a new skin for greater usefulness to a new generation of programmers.

      Emacs is one of the oldest text editors in existence. Its most popular variant (now 31 years old) is GNU Emacs, originally developed by Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman. The editor’s enduring popularity comes from its extensibility and programmability courtesy of the built-in Emacs Lisp scripting language — and from the culture of tooling that’s sprung up as a result. Extensions for Emacs (and, thus, Spacemacs) provide everything from integration with GitHub to Slack chat windows.

  • Project Releases

    • FontForge release

      There’s a new release of FontForge available. “This release introduces a new icon set, new functionality for custom icon selection graphics, support for GlyphOrderAndAliasDB files, and support for Unicode 9.0.”

  • Public Services/Government

    • IBM, Microsoft, Oracle beware: Russia wants open source, sees you as security risk

      Russia is drafting a new law requiring Russian government agencies to give preference to open source and to block US software from computer systems, citing security concerns.

      Just weeks after Moscow committed to removing Microsoft Outlook and Exchange on 600,000 systems under orders from Russian president Vladimir Putin, the nation’s lower house, the State Duma, is drafting a bill to make it harder for agencies even to buy Russian software products that are based on foreign-made proprietary middleware and programming frameworks.

      The bill marks Russia’s latest attempt at substituting imported software with local products, but casts a wider net than existing restrictions on IT procurement by agencies and state-run enterprises.

    • Russia Weighs Replacing IBM, Microsoft With Open-Source Software

      Russia is taking another step to reduce dependence on Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. technologies in the country’s $3 billion software market amid political tensions with the U.S.

      The State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, is drafting a bill to restrict government agencies from buying licensed software, giving preference to open-source software. This would complement legislation that curbed state purchases of foreign programs last year, restricting the choice to about 2,000 local software makers.

      “Many local software firms are offering products based on foreign frameworks such as IBM’s WebSphere or Microsoft’s ASP.net,” said Andrey Chernogorov, executive secretary of the Duma’s commission on strategic information systems. “We are seeking to close this loophole for state purchases as it causes security risks.”

      The end of IBM’s partnership with Russian vendor Lanit last year created a potential vulnerability for the government’s website zakupki.gov.ru, which is based on a proprietary IBM platform, according to an explanatory note to the draft law. Additionally, license fees that Russian software makers pay foreign partners inflate their products’ cost of use.

      Some Russian regional administrations already started switching from Oracle to free database software adapted for their needs by local programmers, according to Duma documents.

    • Public review of German municipal eGovernment manual

      Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior is organising a three-month, online public review of a new manual for municipal eGovernment services. From 22 September until 30 November, a website will allow readers to comment on the document.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Udacity open sources an additional 183GB of driving data

        On stage at TechCrunch Disrupt last month, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun announced that the online education company would be building its own autonomous car as part of its self-driving car nanodegree program. To get there, Udacity has created a series of challenges to leverage the power of community to build the safest car possible — meaning anyone and everyone is welcome to become a part of the open-sourced project. Challenge one was all about building a 3D model for a camera mount, but challenge two has brought deep learning into the mix.

        In the latest challenge, participants have been tasked with using driving data to predict steering angles. Initially, Udacity released 40GB of data to help at-home tinkerers build competitive models without access to the type of driving data that Tesla of Google would have. However, because deep learning models drink data by the pond rather than the gallon, the company pushed out an additional 183GB of driving data.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Mike Pence’s Defining Moment As Governor? Enabling An HIV Outbreak

      With the exception of a brief detour into Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s (R) anti-abortion beliefs during the vice presidential debate on Oct. 4, the night centered around foreign policy, not public health.

      It’s a shame, since lackluster public health efforts are what led to the defining moment of Pence’s one-term Indiana governorship: a massive HIV outbreak spurred by public health funding cuts and Pence’s moralistic stance against needle exchanges.

      A timeline of the HIV outbreak, the worst in state history, reads like a roadmap of what to do if you want to create a public health crisis.

    • Poland abortion: Parliament rejects abortion ban after women stage all-out strike

      Polish lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly to reject draft legislation that would introduce a near-total ban on abortion following mass protests in over 60 cities across the country.

      Some 100,000 women dressed in black staged nationwide demonstrations in Poland on Monday against plans to tighten the country’s already restrictive abortion rules, including banning the procedure even in cases of rape, with prison terms for women ending a pregnancy.

      The hastily arranged vote presents the first major domestic setback for the ruling conservatives, of which many members initially backed the proposal.

    • Water Wars: Two Indian States Are Fighting for This River’s Water

      As the world gets hotter, we’ve been warned that the next wars will be over water. In India, that future is here, and the latest proof is a battle between two neighboring states fighting over the river that runs through them.

      In the latest chapter of a century-old water war in southern India, riots rocked Bangalore, the techie capital city of Karnataka state, in September. Buses were set ablaze, and a man was killed by police trying to control the crowds. Protestors opposed a Supreme Court order for the state to release about 120,000 cusecs, or cubic feet per second of water, from the Cauvery river to Tamil Nadu, the state downstream, over 10 days.

    • Amid water crisis, Flint faces a Shigellosis outbreak

      Flint, Michigan, is dealing with another outbreak. This time it’s an infectious bacterial disease called Shigellosis, which can cause bloody diarrhea and fever and typically spreads when people don’t wash their hands.
      That’s exactly what’s happening in Flint, the county health director told CNN.

      A water crisis has plagued residents there for more than two years. Last year, people experienced rashes and hair loss when high levels of lead were found in the local water supply. In 2014, the area faced one of the worst outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in US history.
      Still afraid and mistrustful of the water, people in Flint — who are still forced to use either filtered or bottled water because of damaged water pipes — are bathing less, and refusing to wash their hands.

    • GOP seeks to block ObamaCare settlements with insurers

      Republicans in Congress are plotting ways to block the Obama administration from paying insurance companies hundreds of millions of dollars as part of an ObamaCare program.

      GOP lawmakers say they are looking at “a dozen” options — including a possible provision in the year-end spending bill — to prevent the administration from using an obscure fund within the Treasury Department to pay out massive settlements to insurers.

      The insurance companies are suing over a shortfall in an ObamaCare program that they say is damaging their businesses.

      Settling the cases could help insurers deal with losses on the ObamaCare marketplaces, but Republicans argue the move would be a “bailout” that would circumvent the will of Congress.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • 10 basic linux security measures everyone should be doing

      Akin to locking your doors and closing your windows there’s some really basic things everyone should be doing with their Linux installs (This is of course written from a Fedora viewpoint, but I think this pretty much applies to all computer OSes).

    • EFF Asks Court to Block U.S. From Prosecuting Security Researcher For Detecting and Publishing Computer Vulnerabilities

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a court Thursday for an order that would prevent the government from prosecuting its client, security researcher Matthew Green, for publishing a book about making computer systems more secure.

      Green is writing a book about methods of security research to recognize vulnerabilities in computer systems. This important work helps keep everyone safer by finding weaknesses in computer code running devices critical to our lives—electronic devices, cars, medical record systems, credit card processing, and ATM transactions. Green’s aim is to publish research that can be used to build more secure software.

    • Malta unveils Cyber Security Strategy

      The government of Malta has unveiled a National Cyber Security Strategy. The strategy provides the legal context to defend the country’s computer networks infrastructure and its users from threats.

    • Mirai “internet of things” malware from Krebs DDoS attack goes open source

      Last week, we wrote about a DDoS attack on well-known investigative cybercrime journalist Brian Krebs.

      To explain.

      A DDoS attack is an aggressive sort of DoS attack, where DoS is short for denial of service.

      A DoS is a bit like getting into the queue at the station to buy a ticket for the next train, only to have a time-waster squeeze in front of you and slow you down.

      By the time the miscreant has asked, innocently enough, about the different sorts of ticket available, and whether it costs extra to take a bicycle, and how much longer it would take if he were to change trains in Manchester, only to walk off without buying a ticket at all…

      …you’ve watched your train arrive, load up with passengers, and depart without you.

      A DDoS attack is worse: it’s short for distributed denial of service attack, and it’s much the same thing as a DoS, except that the trouble-stirrer doesn’t show up on his own.

    • Johnson & Johnson Warns Insulin Pump Owners They Could Be Killed By Hackers

      Initially the lack of security on “smart” Internet of Things devices was kind of funny as companies rushed to make a buck and put device security on the back burner. And while hackable tea kettles and refrigerators that leak your Gmail credentials just seem kind of stupid on the surface, people are slowly realizing that at scale — we’re introducing millions of new attack vectors into homes and businesses annually. Worse, compromised devices are now being used as part of massive new DDoS attacks like the one we recently saw launched against Brian Krebs.

      Unfortunately, companies that service the medical industry also decided a few years ago that it would be a good idea to connect every-damn-thing to networks without first understanding the security ramifications of the decision. As a result, we’re seeing a rise in not only the number of ransomware attacks launched on hospitals, but a spike in hackable devices like pacemakers that could mean life and death for some customers.

    • J&J warns diabetic patients: Insulin pump vulnerable to hacking

      Johnson & Johnson is telling patients that it has learned of a security vulnerability in one of its insulin pumps that a hacker could exploit to overdose diabetic patients with insulin, though it describes the risk as low.

      Medical device experts said they believe it was the first time a manufacturer had issued such a warning to patients about a cyber vulnerability, a hot topic in the industry following revelations last month about possible bugs in pacemakers and defibrillators.

      J&J executives told Reuters they knew of no examples of attempted hacking attacks on the device, the J&J Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump. The company is nonetheless warning customers and providing advice on how to fix the problem.

    • Who Makes the IoT Things Under Attack?

      As KrebsOnSecurity observed over the weekend, the source code that powers the “Internet of Things” (IoT) botnet responsible for launching the historically large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against KrebsOnSecurity last month has been publicly released. Here’s a look at which devices are being targeted by this malware.

      The malware, dubbed “Mirai,” spreads to vulnerable devices by continuously scanning the Internet for IoT systems protected by factory default usernames and passwords. Many readers have asked for more information about which devices and hardware makers were being targeted. As it happens, this is fairly easy to tell just from looking at the list of usernames and passwords included in the Mirai source code.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Is WikiLeaks still relevant?

      It was once celebrated as a champion of transparency. But now 10 years old, WikiLeaks has lost a lot of friends.

      The whistle-blowing website serves as the world’s best known source for leaked government and intelligence information.

      It has exposed corruption and misuse of power in many countries, including the United States.

      But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has become increasingly controversial over the past decade.

      Critics say his site is manipulated by politicians, and the way it releases classified documents is irresponsible.

      Assange has been hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid possible extradition to Sweden, where he faces questions over allegations of sexual assault.

    • What Really Happens When You FOIA UK Police

      British authorities have a reputation for keeping incredibly tight-lipped about surveillance, especially when asked to release even basic details of programs or technologies under the Freedom of Information Act.

      But a lot more goes on behind the scenes of requests around surveillance topics than one might realise. By requesting the processing notes and communications for FOIA requests, it’s possible to gain insight into what really happens when someone asks for information on a controversial subject, and how, in some cases, police forces develop a national strategy to ensure that no information seeps out.

      For example, Motherboard has been using the FOIA to dig up details of UK law enforcement’s use of “equipment interference”, the government’s term for hacking. While managing to get some information out of agencies, such as how a few of them will share hacking technologies, many of the requests have been stonewalled.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • ‘Great Pacific garbage patch’ far bigger than imagined, aerial survey shows

      The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined.

      A reconnaissance flight taken in a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft found a vast clump of mainly plastic waste at the northern edge of what is known as the “great Pacific garbage patch”, located between Hawaii and California.

      The density of rubbish was several times higher than the Ocean Cleanup, a foundation part-funded by the Dutch government to rid the oceans of plastics, expected to find even at the heart of the patch, where most of the waste is concentrated.

      “Normally when you do an aerial survey of dolphins or whales, you make a sighting and record it,” said Boyan Slat, the founder of the Ocean Cleanup.

      “That was the plan for this survey. But then we opened the door and we saw the debris everywhere. Every half second you see something. So we had to take snapshots – it was impossible to record everything. It was bizarre to see that much garbage in what should be pristine ocean.”

    • Indonesia’s peat fires add to global warming

      The really scary thing about climate change is not simply that humans may fail to get their emissions under control. It is that, at some point, the Earth could take over and start adding even more emissions on its own.

      A new study underscores this risk by looking closely at Indonesia, which has a unique quality – some 70 billion tonnes of carbon that have built up in peatlands over millennia. In this, Indonesia is much like the Arctic, where even larger quantities of ancient carbon are stored in permafrost, and is also vulnerable.

      In each case, if that carbon gets out of the land and into the atmosphere, then global warming will get worse. But global warming could itself raise the odds of such massive carbon release. That is a dangerous position to be in as the world continues to warm.

    • Enjoy Earth While It Lasts: Atmospheric Carbon Levels Pass the Point of No Return

      The bad news: Earth’s climate change problem just passed a point of no return. Atmospheric carbon levels have passed 400 parts per million, and they won’t return to more environment-friendly levels “ever again for the indefinite future.”

    • Disappearing Yosemite glacier becomes symbol of climate change

      When naturalist John Muir explored Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park about 150 years ago, the river of ice stretched as far as 10 football fields between the peaks of the Lyell Canyon, a glacier one might expect to see in Alaska, not California.

      Today, it’s a sliver of the natural feature Muir called a “living glacier.” Over the last 130 years, the glacier has lost 78 percent of its surface, shrunk from about a half square mile to 66 acres.

      Stand on the glacier and it’s hard to hear anything except the sound of melting water rushing underneath. A big patch of bedrock is exposed in its middle.

      In its dying state, Lyell Glacier has become a vivid example of the effects of climate change and a touchstone for National Park Service officials increasingly concerned about global warming.

      In a speech about climate change at Yosemite this summer, President Barack Obama highlighted Lyell Glacier as a warning for the future.

    • Hurricane Matthew is about to slam Donald Trump’s most prized real estate

      Mar-a-Lago, the country club in West Palm Beach that is one of Donald Trump’s marquee pieces of real estate, is at risk of sustaining damage due to Hurricane Matthew.

      The storm will soon bear down on the east coast of Florida, with the National Hurricane Center issuing a serious warning about Matthew’s potential impact. The warning indicates the “potential for devastating damage across coastal Palm Beach County,” which is where Mar-a-Lago sits.

      In addition to seeing hurricane force winds of greater than 74 miles per hour, West Palm Beach, which is along the state’s east coast, where Mar-a-Lago sits, could receive more than three feet of standing water from the hurricane’s storm surge, according to a projection from the National Hurricane Center.

      The experimental storm surge inundation map below shows West Palm Beach with an arrow to the rough location of Mar-a-Lago.The inundation levels refer to a reasonable worst-case scenario for the flooding of normally dry land. There is about a 1-in-10 chance that storm surge flooding at any particular location, including the area where Mar-a-Lago is, could be higher than the values shown on the map.

  • Finance

    • Big Business Declares TPP the Winner in Vice Presidential Debate

      The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already picked the winner in Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Gov. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

      It’s free trade! (Or, more accurately, corporate-friendly trade agreements.)

      Previewing the debate Tuesday morning, the Chamber tweeted merrily that both candidates have a “great track record on trade.”

      Their running mates are both on the record opposing the hugely controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, but as the Chamber notes so happily, Kaine and Pence both have a long history of siding with big business. Both have praised the TPP and backed similar deals in the past.

      The Chamber, a trade group that represents some of the largest corporate entities in the world, from Goldman Sachs to Dow Chemical, has spent over $1.2 billion just on lobbying since 1998, making it by far the largest influence peddler in Washington, D.C.

    • Latest eGov Benchmark decries lack of decisiveness

      Europe’s governments lack decisiveness in digitising their public services and organisations, conclude the authors of the “eGovernment Benchmark 2016”, which was made public by the European Commission on 3 October. Progress in eGovernment is incremental, the study shows. The authors urge “an acceleration in order to keep up with private sector, and citizen’s expectations”.

    • Exclusive: WikiLeaks Guccifer 2.0 Teaser Exposes Pay-to-Play and Financial Data

      Hours after WikiLeaks held an early morning press conference commemorating their 10th anniversary, hacker Guccifer 2.0 released a trove of documents he claimed were from the Clinton Foundation. WikiLeaks tweeted the 800+MB of files hacked by Guccifer 2.0 shortly after. The documents include several Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and Virginia Democratic Party documents, though Guccifer 2.0 said he obtained them in a hack from the Clinton Foundation.

      The Clinton Foundation has denied this. Alleged communication files were leaked from the Clinton Foundation to the Observer upon request through Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter account, but the Clinton Foundation has not yet responded to a request for a statement on those specific documents.

    • NY Times Reporter Tells the Story Behind the Story of the Trump Tax Leak

      Donald Trump is the first major party presidential candidate in 40 years not to release his tax returns. However, the New York Times has obtained three pages of Trump’s 1995 income tax returns, which it revealed in a controversial investigative report published Saturday.

      “Donald Trump Tax Records Show He Could Have Avoided Taxes for Nearly Two Decades, The Times Found,” read the headline on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Jill Stein Is The Only Presidential Candidate Embracing the Term Latinx This Election

      On September 29, Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s campaign sent out an email with the title, “Join our Latinx movement!”, marking the first official appearance of the term “Latinx” in the 2016 election. The term, which arose from the desire to find a non-binary, gender inclusive word to refer to our community, has been gaining traction since it first came into use online in October of 2014. Today, it’s increasingly common to see “Latinx” used in media headlines (including some of our own), academic texts and activist literature – but the word has not arrived on the scene without its fair share of controversy and resistance. In 2016 much ink has been spilled making cases for or against the term – and in the comments of Remezcla posts we frequently see our usage of the term hotly debated.

    • Playboy Editor Claims Trump Forced Maples to Pose: ‘He Wanted Her to Do the Nude Layout; She Didn’t’

      Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his campaign have spent the week slut-shaming former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, saying she posed in Playboy and that there was a sex tape depicting her in it (there is not). An old New York Daily News article has surfaced that tells a story of Trump pressuring his future wife, against her will, to pose for Playboy magazine. Trump personally negotiated the fee, according to the report.

      The article, tweeted by historian Jeff Nichols, outlines how Trump insisted that Maples do the centerfold and negotiated a million-dollar check to compensate her.

    • Trump Joins Clinton In Pushing For Cyberwar

      We’ve noted a few times in the past our serious concerns about Hillary Clinton’s hawkish and tone deaf views on cybersecurity, in which she wants the US to go on the offensive on cyberattacking, even being willing to respond to attacks with real world military responses. She seems to ignore the fact that the US has a history of being some of the most aggressive players on offense on such things (Stuxnet, anyone?), and doesn’t seem to recognize how escalating such situations may not end well at all.

      Of course, her opponent, Donald Trump has been totally incomprehensible on cybersecurity during the course of his campaign. There was his first attempt to respond to questions about cybersecurity in which it’s not clear he understood the question, and started talking about nuclear weapons instead. Or the time he took a question on cybersecurity and answered by talking about the latest CNN poll. Or, of course, who can forget his debate performance on the topic, where his key insights were that his 10 year old was good with computers and a 400 lb. hacker may be responsible for the DNC hacks.

      It appears that the Trump campaign finally decided that maybe Trump should say something marginally coherent on the subject, and sent him out earlier this week with a prepared teleprompter speech, which Trump actually managed to get through without going too far off script. And… it’s basically the same kind of bullshit as Clinton — pushing for more aggressive and offensive cyberattacks.

    • Expanding the Debate: Green Ajamu Baraka “Debates” Pence & Kaine in Democracy Now!

      Vice-presidential candidates Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine faced off in Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, Tuesday night in their first and only debate before next month’s election. Third-party vice-presidential candidates, including Libertarian William Weld and the Green Party’s Ajamu Baraka, were excluded from the debate stage under stringent rules set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties. On Tuesday night, Democracy Now! aired a special “Expanding the Debate” broadcast, where we gave major third-party candidates a chance to respond to the same questions in real time as the major candidates. The Green Party’s Ajamu Baraka joined us live from Richmond, Virginia. Baraka is a longtime human rights activist and the founding executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network and coordinator of the U.S.-based Black Left Unity Network’s Committee on International Affairs.

    • ‘Deplorable’: Donald Trump’s long war with veterans.

      Donald Trump Monday turned his destructive mouth on a group he ostensibly supports, displaying his trademark lack of sense and compassion when talking about the unseen wounds that too many vets carry home with them from war.

      “When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of folks in this room have seen many times over and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it,” he said during a question-and-answer session sponsored by the conservative Retired American Warriors PAC, referring to veterans who commit suicide.

      Most appallingly, this was probably Trump’s idea of tact and/or empathy for those who have seen combat. But contra his faux tough guy image and what he seemed to be suggesting, PTSD isn’t a symptom of weakness; it’s an at times debilitating wound of war. “To effectively argue that veterans with PTSD are somehow weak is both wrong and insulting.” Steve Benen wrote Monday. “The fact that Trump, even now, still doesn’t understand the basics of this issue is extraordinary.”

    • Jill Stein Polls: National Polling Is Likely Significantly Underestimating Support For The Green Party Candidate

      Jill Stein could soon be making a big jump in the polls, with the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton starting to turn into a blowout and polls likely underestimating the growing support for the Green Party.

      Stein, running to the left of Hillary Clinton, has been lingering around the 2 percent mark in most of the national polls to come out in recent weeks. While it would take something of a miracle for Stein to win a state — or even grab double-digit support — the Green Party’s goal may be the 5 percent threshold that would guarantee matching federal funding for the next election cycle. And that could be well within reach.

      Although Stein appears to be only about halfway there in the polling, there are a number of signs that the current polling is underestimating the support for the Green Party this election cycle.

    • Amazon bans incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products

      Amazon is making a significant change to its Community Guidelines, announced today, which will eliminate any incentivized reviews, except for those that emerge from within its own Amazon Vine program. This program allows Amazon – not the seller or vendor – to identify trusted reviewers, and has a number of controls in place in order to keep bias out of the review process.

      Amazon has historically prohibited compensation for reviews – even going so far as to sue those businesses who pay for fake reviews, as well as the individuals who write them, in an effort to make its review and rating system fairer and more helpful to online shoppers. However, it has allowed businesses to offer products to customers in exchange for their “honest” review.

      The only condition was that those reviewers would have to disclose their affiliation with the business in question in the text of their review. Reviewers were generally offered the product for free or at a discounted price, in exchange for their review.

      Although, in theory, these reviewers could write their true opinion on the product – positive or negative – these incentivized reviews have tended to be overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product being rated.

    • Iceland’s Pirates head for power on wave of public anger

      A party that hangs a skull-and-crossbones flag at its HQ, and promises to clean up corruption, grant asylum to Edward Snowden and accept the bitcoin virtual currency, could be on course to form the next Icelandic government.

      The Pirate Party has found a formula that has eluded many anti-establishment groups across Europe. It has tempered polarising policies like looser copyright enforcement rules and drug decriminalisation with pledges of economic stability that have won confidence among voters.

      This has allowed it to ride a wave of public anger at perceived corruption among the political elite – the biggest election issue in a country where a 2008 banking collapse hit thousands of savers and government figures have been mired in an offshore tax furore following the Panama Papers leaks.

      If the Pirates emerge as the biggest party in an Oct. 29 parliamentary election – as opinion polls suggest – they will deliver another defeat to Europe’s mainstream politicians.

    • Hacking an election is about influence and disruption, not voting machines

      Every time there’s an election, the topic of hacking one comes to the surface. During a presidential election, that conversation gets louder. Yet, even the elections held every two years see some sort of vote hacking coverage. But can you really hack an election? Maybe, but that depends on your goals.

      The topic of election hacking is different this year, and that’s because someone is actually hacking political targets. Adding fuel to the fire, on Aug. 12, 2016, during an event in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump warned the crowd that if he loses the battleground state, it’s because the vote was rigged.

      “The only way we can lose, in my opinion — and I really mean this, Pennsylvania — is if cheating goes on,” Trump said. This was no random remark either, Pennsylvania voting has been called in to question before. Such was the case when Republican supporters claimed Mitt Romney lost the state in 2008 due to fraud.

      When it comes to hacking elections, most people imagine voting machines compromised in such a way that a vote for candidate ‘A’ actually counts as a vote for candidate ‘B’ – or the votes just disappear.

    • If the election is hacked, we may never know

      The upcoming U.S. presidential election can be rigged and sabotaged, and we might never even know it happened.

      This Election Day voters in 10 states, or parts of them, will use touch-screen voting machines with rewritable flash memory and no paper backup of an individual’s vote; some will have rewritable flash memory. If malware is inserted into these machines that’s smart enough to rewrite itself, votes can be erased or assigned to another candidate with little possibility of figuring out the actual vote.

      In precincts where vote tallies raise suspicions, computer scientists will be called in the day after the election to conduct forensics. But even if a hack is suspected, or proven, it would likely be impossible to do anything about it.

    • The Clinton Foundation’s Legacy in Haiti – “Haitians are more than upset…”

      The Miami Herald has a video of Haitian activists protesting the Democratic National Convention, primarily because of the “Clinton Foundation’s spending in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.” According to The Nation in a piece titled The Shelters That Clinton Built, the Clinton Foundation provided Haiti with trailers “structurally unsafe and laced with formaldehyde” that “came from the same company being sued for sickening Hurricane Katrina victims.” Pertaining to the Clinton Foundation’s legacy in Haiti, The New York Times writes “the Clintons have become prime targets of blame for the country’s woes.”

      As a result of the Clinton Foundation’s controversial involvement with Haiti, The Huffington Post reports that Florida’s Haitian-American community might have a profound impact on Election Day. Ryan Grim explains the influence of Florida’s Haitian-American community in a piece titled With All Eyes On Haiti, Its Diaspora In Florida Could Swing A Close Election. With a sudden shift in U.S. immigration policy dividing Haitian families, alongside the Clinton Foundation’s role in Haiti, Florida’s Haitian community’s discontent might impact other ethnic groups on Election Day.

      It’s this backdrop that motivated me to interview Harvard-trained investor and financial analyst Charles Ortel. Dady Cherry of Haiti Liberte’ refers to Ortel as “one of the world’s finest financial analysts” and Mr. Ortel has spent over one year investigating the financial peculiarities of the Clinton Foundation. He’s also researched extensively on the Foundation’s involvement with Haiti and other countries around the globe.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • EFF Exposing The Back-Room Deals That Allow Corporations And Governments To Control The Web

      The EFF is publishing a series looking at the multitude of ways gatekeepers and governments can make content disappear from the web — using everything from legislation they helped craft to applying pressure to multiple points between the content they want removed and the person who put it there.

      But not every tool used to remove content comes in a form that can be contested by the general public. Some of these tools are the result of private agreements with private entities — agreements in which users have no say. The EFF calls it “Shadow Regulation.”

    • Shadow Regulation: the Back-Room Threat to Digital Rights
    • Singapore jails teenager YouTube blogger for ‘insulting Christians and Muslims’ with videos

      A teenage boy has been jailed in Singapore for “wounding the feelings of Muslims and Christians” in a series of YouTube videos, sparking condemnation from the United Nations.

      It is the second time 17-year-old Amos Yee has been imprisoned over his blogs, being sentenced to four weeks in jail last year over footage where he compared revered former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to Hitler and Jesus.

      He has been jailed for six weeks and fined $2,000 (£1,150) on six charges of intending to wound the feelings of Muslims and/or Christians and two of failing to attend a police station, the Straits Times reported.

    • Indonesia wants to criminalize memes

      If Trump’s job was to punish every internet user who ridiculed him with a meme, he’d sure have a lot of work to do. Luckily, U.S. netizens have enough freedom of speech to laugh at him as often as Harambe memes appear on Twitter.

      Yet making the use of memes illegal is not out of this world. Indonesia’s government is looking to criminalize internet users for posting them.

      Its Electronic Information and Transactions Law (ITE) punishes any electronic media communication that incites fear or embarrassment under its defamation article. The public has continuously called for the article’s removal, but instead Indonesia is introducing more restrictions to freedom of expression. Posting memes, texts, pictures, or videos would be punishable if found to have a defamatory or slanderous tone.

      According to the Indonesian government, this provision stands to prevent and control cyberbullying. But it can further be used as a political tool against opposition during elections.

    • Indonesia Government Introduces Vague Law Making Offensive/Embarrassing Memes Illegal

      Confession time: I think memes generally suck. Yes, yes, I know you love them, but when I think of memes, I tend to think of political memes on Facebook that I then have to drop Snopes.com links into the comments on, stupid copyright trolling over them, and that time Axl Rose tried to DMCA a meme so that nobody would see that he dipped into the chocolate fudge too much recently.

      Which is why I’m going to move to Indonesia, where the government has decided it’s time to put a strict control policy on any memes it finds offensive, embarrassing or that incite fear.

    • Jack Dorsey Is Losing Control of Twitter

      A few days before Twitter’s Sept. 8 board meeting, as the company’s finance team readied a presentation, it received conflicting directions on a crucial question. Should their slides reflect Twitter’s prospects as an independent company or delve into the benefits of getting acquired?

      Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive officer, argued that the 10-year-old company should remain on its current course and work to capitalize on recent product improvements and success in streaming live video, people familiar with the discussions said. Ev Williams, a former CEO who has a history of clashing with Dorsey, was in favor of exploring a sale. Other directors agreed they had a fiduciary duty to consider that option. The board ultimately decided to consider takeover prospects after getting an expression of interest from a potential acquirer, which led it to hire Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co. to evaluate possible bids.

    • Kerry Dougherty: Censorship backfires in Neptune Festival sand sculpture competition

      They never learn.

      When those in power try to silence the little guys, it often backfires. And when heavy-handed actions to stomp out tiny voices of dissent are exposed, the resulting tsunami of publicity often helps the group that was targeted.

      Case in point: Last weekend’s sand sculpture caper.

      A coalition of grassroots groups, opposed to light rail but unable to afford expensive radio and TV spots, entered the freelance division of the Neptune Festival sand sculpture competition. For a $15 entry fee, they created a modest little mound of sand with a simple message: “Please vote no light rail.”

    • How countries like China and Russia are able to control the internet

      In January 2011, protests broke out across Egypt to demand an end to the despotic and repressive regime of Hosni Mubarak. The protests were largely organized online, through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Mubarak quickly realized this, and launched a counterattack: He severed all access to the internet from within Egypt.

    • Dam Busters screenwriter fell foul of Hollywood’s Nazi
    • British screenwriter was caught up in a censorship battle with Nazis

      A new book has revealed that the British Dam Busters screenwriter was caught up in a censorship battle with ‘Hitler’s Hollywood consul’ over the ‘negative’ portrayal of Germany after World War I.

      The book on RC Sherriff’s life suggests that Nazi agent Georg Gyssling managed to persuade Universal Pictures to halt The Road Back, All Quiet on the Western Front and Three Comrades in the 1930s.

      Roland Wales, who has written From Journey’s End to the Dam Busters: The Life of RC Sherriff, Playwright of the Trenches, said the studios bowed down to Gyssling’s demands in fear of losing revenue from German box offices.

      He said: ‘The Germans had a Consul in LA, a man called George Gyssling, part of whose job it was to keep up to date with the studio’s plans, and to encourage them to amend their films’

    • Art, Censorship and Race in Small-Town Idaho

      A home across the street from the school, where a Confederate flag regularly flies, became the center of the counterprotest movement with people running up and down the street waving Confederate flags, shouting “All Lives Matter” and “White Power.” In one instance, counterprotesters offered the students fried chicken and watermelon, saying, “Not that fried chicken and watermelon is racist or anything.”

      In the quiet of this past Sunday morning [Sept. 25], with nobody to witness but God and the approving eyes across the street, school officials painted all the parking spaces black, including Tamia’s. I wonder who painted the spaces and how they felt. Tamia was not informed.

    • A Call for Difficult Conversations, Not Censorship

      Re “Will the Left Survive Millennials?,” by Lionel Shriver (Op-Ed, Sept. 23):

      My initial response to Ms. Shriver’s keynote address at the Brisbane Writers Festival last month — walking out and writing about why — seemed to be largely misunderstood. Many took the reaction to be a call for censorship and responded with fury. They took as a given the right to say and write what they want, without critique, consequence or interrogation of intent.

      The debate is not about censorship: People can write in the voices they please. The real question is whether they should. It is about the structures that define the world in which we live and work.

      Fiction does not exist in a vacuum: It becomes people’s realities, because so often the only exposure we have to those with very different lived experiences to our own is through stories. But this discussion is larger than the world of fiction.

      Ms. Shriver claimed that those who now fight for equality have become the oppressor. Her words betrayed a disappointment that the times are changing, and lamented that people are so terrified of being caught saying the wrong thing that they instead choose not to say anything at all.

    • Here Are the Racist Code Words Trump’s Twitter Fans Are Now Using to Avoid Getting Banned
    • Racist Users Use Secret Codes on Twitter to Avoid Censorship
    • Ben Affleck Called Out for Censorship During ‘Accountant’ Press Junket
    • How Media Censorship Is Bringing Journalists Out On The Streets Of Kashmir
    • Even in difficult times, primary duty is to report: Mir Hilal, editor of banned daily Kashmir Reader
    • Banning Kashmir Reader
    • #Day90: Veteran Journalist Joins Protest Against ‘Kashmir Reader’ Ban, Recounts Experiences
    • Shutting down the messenger
    • Journalists hold sit-in outside Civil Secretariat
    • Government Bans Kashmir Newspaper, Fearing Anti-India Violence
    • #Day89: Ban on ‘Kashmir Reader’, Journalists Take Protest March To Secretariat
    • To Beat YouTube Censorship, Well-Known YouTuber Experiments With WebTorrent

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Other people’s computers

      The Internet of Things (IoT), which are devices connected to the internet, is gaining momentum. On the positive side, the idea of being able to remotely activate your central heating, or for your fridge to tell you when you’re nearly out of milk, is rather exciting. However, the darker side of IoT is its vulnerability to hacking, privacy concerns and consumer rights. This was a common theme at last Friday’s Gikii conference, an event dedicated to combining law, technology and popular culture. Think of tech law enthusiasts using episodes of Hannibal to illustrate cybersecurity flaws. Stand-up for geek lawyers.

      An opening talk by Jon Crowcroft, described the IoT as, ““Take all the stuff in the world with moving parts, and now make it as easy to use and reliable as your printer – then put it the far side of the Internet.” (Quote attributed to Derek McAuley.) The idea is that everyday objects are enhanced with internet connectivity. Done well, it should convey health, energy efficiency and productivity benefits. Done badly, and you have privacy concerns, hacking and consumers not being able to access goods and services they’ve paid for.

      Crowcroft noted some challenges of current IoT models, which largely rely on conveying information from devices to the cloud, and back again. He suggested three main critiques: 1) Poor Availability & Latency (connecting through the cloud introduces latency, dependent on internet connectivity), 2) Higher energy use and expense, and 3) Lower security and vulnerability to attack. Combined, these factors imply that the IoT does not currently offer the promised automated world.

    • Neighbor Describes NSA Contractor’s Arrest: “I Thought the Third World War Started”

      The raid took place on August 27. “I thought the Third World War had started,” Bennett told me via telephone, describing the sight of his neighbor of 10 years being hauled away by heavily armed FBI agents.

      Bennett recalls seeing “two dozen of these guys in camo uniforms, with rifles, come running across the yard knocking down his fence. … They dragged him out, threw him on the ground, handcuffed him, and took him away.” He says the FBI agents remained at Martin’s home until “3 or 4 o’clock in the morning” removing computer equipment and papers.

      Prior to this conversation, Bennett had not been informed of the reason for his neighbor’s arrest. He describes Martin, age 51, as a “good neighbor,” but someone who never talked about his work: “I knew he worked in Washington, but I didn’t know what he did.” Bennett added that he didn’t recall Martin ever talking about the U.S. government or fellow Booz Allen NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

    • NSA has lost some terrorists because of encryption, its top lawyer says [Ed: more anti-crypto hysteria]
    • Embarrassed about your cyber hygiene? UK’s new NatCybSecCent can help

      This week, the UK’s new National Cyber Security Centre, NatCybSecCent for short (and NCSC for super-short), has begun its operations. It’s part of GCHQ and will bring together a number of related groups: CESG—the information security arm of GCHQ—the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, CERT-UK, and the Centre for Cyber Assessment. The NCSC will ultimately be based in London, with a team of around 700 led by Ciaran Martin.

      Mr Martin is a man with his finger on the pulse. Fully three weeks before prime minister Theresa May announced that the UK no longer wanted migrants coming over here and daring to save people’s lives in our health system, Mr Martin had already announced the digital equivalent: the Great British Firewall, presumably building on the glorious tradition of The Great British Bake Off.

    • UK Stands Up GCHQ National Cyber Security Center in London
    • Government takes fight to hackers with National Cyber Security Centre
    • National Cyber Security Centre opens doors
    • NSA contractor from Glen Burnie charged with stealing top-secret information
    • NSA contractor charged with stealing highly classified information
    • FBI Arrested NSA Contractor For Walking Off With ‘Highly Classified Information’

      The NY Times story about this claims that the information Martin had was “computer code.” There’s a lot of speculation on the Twitters that this is related to the infamous Shadow Brokers “leak” of NSA hacking tools. The dates don’t fully line up. The Shadow Brokers leak involved code from 2013. The DOJ claims that the code it found Martin had is from 2014 — though it’s certainly possible that the investigation into Shadow Brokers led them to Martin (the arrest came the week after the Shadow Brokers info went public).

      [...]

      As always, it will be interesting to hear the other side of this story. We’ve certainly seen the DOJ come down hard on former NSA employees and contractors, claiming they had made off with classified information, when the later details turned out to show a lot less. But this is clearly a story worth following…

      It should also make you wonder just how many “controls” the NSA has really put in place to keep employees and contractors from walking off with highly classified information. We know that Snowden did it back in 2013, but the NSA keeps insisting that it’s put in place more controls to stop it from happening again. And, if this truly is exploit code, this is much worse. Snowden made off with information about certain programs — but not actual code.

    • Judge Overturns Denied Email Search Warrant, Says Gov’t Can Get It All, Dig Through It Later

      The “Magistrate’s Revolt” was fun while it lasted. Post-Snowden, a few magistrate judges began viewing law enforcement’s electronic search warrant applications with a bit more skepticism. These judges also rolled back a bit of the deference extended to the federal government, forcing the DOJ to narrow search requests or drop gag orders.

      The first flames of the revolt to be snuffed out occurred in a DC district court — the same district where “In re Sealed Case” is the most common docket entry — when Judge Richard Roberts overrode two decisions by magistrate judge John Facciola. The deference to “government knows best” was reinstated and the feds got their gag order and broad search requests approved.

      The same thing is happening in the center of the country. Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy reports that a Kansas district court judge has reversed magistrate judge David Waxse’s denial of an email search warrant.

    • Yahoo calls report of secret email scanning ‘misleading’
    • FU Yahoo!

      The security scare that surfaced about two weeks ago after it was revealed that information on about 500 million Yahoo users had been compromised was bad enough. Even worse was the fact that the compromise began in 2014, with word just now being revealed. The bullet in the head was the revelation Wednesday by Reuters that in 2015 the company evidently searched through its customers incoming emails, spying for either the NSA or the FBI.

      With that news, any nostalgia I had left for the brand completely disappeared. As far as I’m concerned, the site can now completely disappear from the Internet and I won’t feel so much as a twinge of regret that it’s gone. I can forgive the type of incompetence that led to the big breach, but I can’t forgive a website that betrays the trust of its users.

      On Tuesday, just hours after Reuters published its exclusive story on Yahoo’s cooperation with our spymasters, the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the incident “the next front in the fight against mass surveillance.”

      The EFF article concluded by saying “this is a perfect example of why we need to reform Section 702 and rein in the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Absent such reform, Congress must not reauthorize Section 702 when it expires at the end of next year.”

    • Yahoo Issues Tone Deaf Non-Denial Denial Of Email Scanning Report

      Of course, people are parsing every word of that and noting some… remaining questions. The article is misleading? Okay, how? Which parts? What did it get wrong? You narrowly interpret every government request? Great. So explain what was found here, or explain the specifics of what Yahoo is doing. “Does not exist on our systems”? Did it ever? Does it exist on someone else’s system? Does a different mail scanning system exist? Lots of people would like to know.

      More importantly, note that they say they want to minimize disclosures. But that’s not the key issue here, as Chris Soghoian points out. The Reuters report was on the searching of all emails, not the disclosure bit. Yes, sure, it seems clear that after searching everyone’s email, Yahoo likely only “disclosed” a small number to the NSA, but that’s not really the point, is it?

      I mean, I guess this statement is better than Yahoo’s original: “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States” statement. But, it’s not very reassuring. Much more important is what Yahoo could have said, but didn’t.

    • NY Times And Reuters Claim Totally Different Explanations For Yahoo’s Email Scanning

      On Wednesday afternoon the NY Times released a report that appeared to clarify some of the questions around Tuesday’s Reuters report about Yahoo scanning all emails. According to the NY Times, unlike the original Reuters report that talked about a “directive” (which would imply an NSA surveillance program such as the one under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act), the scanning was actually the result of a more traditional FISA Court order.

    • Yahoo denies building secret app to bulk scan emails for US intelligence

      YAHOO HAS unconvincingly denied accusations that it built an application to enable it to bulk-scan emails on the request of intelligence agencies following a demand by the US government.

      The decision by CEO Marissa Mayer to comply with the order, rather than fight it, reportedly led to the departure of Yahoo’s highly rated chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, although Stamos has chosen to keep schtum on the matter.

      The revelation was made on Tuesday in a Reuters report quoting three former employees of the company.

      However, Yahoo has finally got round to hitting back, describing the reports as “misleading”.

      “We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimise disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems,” said Yahoo.

      However, in a series of tweets, privacy campaigner Christopher Soghoian described the company’s curt denial as “carefully worded”, and said that Yahoo “has a history of putting out carefully written, deceptive denials when it comes to NSA surveillance”.

    • Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance by Adapting Spam Filter

      A system intended to scan emails for child pornography and spam helped Yahoo satisfy a secret court order requiring it to search for messages containing a computer “signature” tied to the communications of a state-sponsored terrorist organization, several people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

      Two government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the Justice Department obtained an individualized order from a judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last year. Yahoo was barred from disclosing the matter.

    • Facebook Messenger now lets you toggle end-to-end encryption [Ed: False, misleading claims. The FBI's Comey never even mentioned or shamed Facebook with the T word. It’s not because he forgot; it’s because they’re supine, complicit. When Facebook talks about encryption, safety, privacy etc. it’s probably alluding to resistance to China/Russia/boogeyman, not NATO/5 Eyes. How much is the corporate media willing to lie about Facebook encryption and privacy to entrap, mislead, potentially kill activists? Facebook helps the governments spy, retains private keys, we bet...]

      With the flick of a switch back in April, the popular international messaging service WhatsApp turned on end-to-end encryption for every conversation in its system, dramatically boosting security for its 1 billion-person userbase. At long last, parent company Facebook has finally rolled out the same protections for users of its standard Messenger service. Today, users can toggle the “Secret Conversations” feature on in settings to enable end-to-end encryption, ensuring that nobody can pry into chat content but the participants.

    • Basically All Big Tech Companies Deny Scanning Communications For NSA Like Yahoo Is Doing

      So, the big story yesterday was clearly the report that Yahoo had secretly agreed to scan all email accounts for a certain character string as sent to them by the NSA (or possibly the FBI). There has been lots of parsing of the Reuters report (and every little word can make a difference), but there are still lots of really big questions about what is actually going on. One big one, of course, is whether or not other tech companies received and/or complied with similar demands. So it seems worth nothing that they’ve basically all issued pretty direct and strenuous denials to doing anything like what Yahoo has been accused of doing.

      Twitter initially gave a “federal law prohibits us from answering your question” answer — and a reference to Twitter’s well documented lawsuit against the US government over its desire to reveal more details about government requests for info. However, it later clarified that it too was not doing what Yahoo was doing and had never received such a request. Microsoft’s response was interesting in that it says it’s not doing what Yahoo is, but refused to say if it had ever received a demand to do so. Google said it had never received such a request and would refuse to comply if it had. Facebook has also denied receiving such a request, and, like Google, says it would fight against complying. This still leaves lots of unanswered questions about why Yahoo gave in. Again, historically, Yahoo had been known to fight against these kinds of requests, which makes you wonder what exactly was going on here.

    • Government contractor arrested for stealing top secret data

      A federal contractor suspected of leaking powerful National Security Agency hacking tools has been arrested and charged with stealing highly classified information from the U.S. government, according to court records and a law enforcement official familiar with the case.

      Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, Md., was charged with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, authorities said. He was arrested in August after investigators searched his home in Glen Burnie and found documents and digital information stored on various devices that contained highly classified information, authorities said.

      [Read the full criminal complaint filed against Harold Thomas Martin III]

      Investigators are probing whether Martin was responsible for an apparent leak that led to a cache of NSA hacking tools appearing online in August, according to an official familiar with the case. Those tools included “exploits” that take advantage of unknown flaws in firewalls, for instance, allowing the government to control a network.

    • N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

      The F.B.I. secretly arrested a National Security Agency contractor in recent weeks and is investigating whether he stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments, according to several senior law enforcement and intelligence officials.

      The theft raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, an insider has managed to steal highly damaging secret information from the N.S.A. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a contractor for the agency, took a vast trove of documents that were later passed to journalists, exposing N.S.A. surveillance programs in the United States and abroad.

      The contractor was identified as Harold T. Martin 3rd, 51, of Glen Burnie, Md., according to a criminal complaint filed in late August. He was charged with theft of government property, and unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents. During an F.B.I. raid of his house, agents seized documents and digital information stored on electronic devices. A large percentage of the materials found in his house and car contained highly classified information.

      At the time, F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Martin, and he initially denied having taken the documents and digital files. The agency later said he had stated that he knew he was not authorized to have the materials. According to the complaint, he told the agency that “he knew what he had done was wrong and that he should not have done it because he knew it was unauthorized.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • ‘National Bird’ Exclusive Trailer: Errol Morris and Wim Wenders Present Story of Drone Warfare Whistleblowers

      Errol Morris and Wim Wenders both have new films out this year: Morris’ “The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography” examines the life and work of polaroid portrait artist Elsa Dorfman, and Wenders’ “The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez” captures a conversation between a man and woman that encompasses the totality of life. But the two acclaimed directors have also executive produced Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary feature debut “National Bird,” about drone warfare and the three whistleblowers determined to break the silence around the controversial affair. Watch the trailer for the film below.

    • Feds indict 80 people — including 18 corrections officers — in ‘massive’ Maryland prison corruption case

      Federal authorities have won indictments against 80 people, including corrections officers and inmates, in an alleged conspiracy to sneak heroin, cocaine, cellphones, pornography and other contraband into the Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover.

      The largest federal indictment in Maryland history is the latest to allege that officers and inmates used sex, drugs and violence to run a criminal enterprise out of a state prison facility.

      It mirrors the 2013 case in which the Black Guerrilla Family gang used similar methods of bribery and intimidation to seize control of the Baltimore City Detention Center.

      Federal prosecutors now charge 18 corrections officers, 35 inmates and 27 others in a scheme in which the officers allegedly took bribes to sneak contraband into ECI, the state’s largest prison.

    • Decolonization—not western liberals—established human rights on the global agenda

      A paradox sits at the heart of the human rights movement. For decades it has made strong claims about the universality of human rights but then proceeded to present a discounted version of the universality story.

      Standard historical accounts have privileged the role of western actors, and their perspectives on historical causalities. These have been accompanied by an overemphasis on the 1940s and 1970s in explaining the emergence of human rights—an emphasis that reveals a scholarly addiction to “human rights moments” and iconic histories, instead of more richly contextualized narratives over time.

      The above-mentioned emphasis has resulted in a huge gap in knowledge concerning the intervening period – covering about 25 years from 1948 to the mid-1970s. In this period, the largest transformation of sovereign power in world history took place, namely decolonization. Surely, this structural transformation in the international system of states played a role in the post-1945 emergence of human rights en route to their contemporary significance?

    • Court acquits activist for violent anti-Zwate Piet protest

      The court acquitted anti-Zwarte Piet activist Jerry Afriyie on Thursday. Afriyie was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during a violent protest in Gouda two years ago, NOS reports.

      During the Sinterklaas arrival festival in Gouda in 2014 supporters and opponents of blackface Zwarte Piet gathered to protest at the town hall. They had no permission to protest there and the police ordered them to leave. The atmosphere turned nasty and a total of 90 people were arrested, both in the pro- and anti-Zwarte Piet groups.

      Afriyie was the only one to end up in court, according to NOS. According to the Public Prosecutor, he resisted arrest and injured a police officer by pinching him hard in the leg.

    • Imam beaten with a SHOE on live TV after claiming women SHOULDN’T wear the burka

      The Muslim cleric was repeatedly beaten with a shoe when an on-air row over the Islamic veil turned violent.

      The fight broke out live on Egypt’s popular LTC TV during a discussion about the place of the burka in the Islamic world.

      Sydney imam Mostafa Rashid claimed that the headscarf is a cultural tradition rather than a religious duty.

    • Undercover Video Inside Islamic School In The UK — A Teacher Instructs That Gays Must Be Thrown From Tall Buildings

      Good news: If you aren’t married when you have sex with someone, you just get beaten — perhaps to death — because you are to be given 100 lashes.

    • Ramsey Orta, who filmed Eric Garner death, sentenced to 4 years

      The Staten Island man who filmed Eric Garner’s final breaths was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for possession of a weapon and drug charges.

      Ramsey Orta told his family “it will be okay” in Staten Island Supreme Court as Justice Stephen Rooney read out his sentence.

      As court officers put handcuffs on Orta, protesters stood up in the courtroom, holding their fists in the air, flashing peace signs and chanting, “No justice no peace! F–k these racist police!”

    • Thailand bars entry to teenage HK activist ‘at China’s request’

      Thailand on Wednesday barred entry to a Hong Kong student activist who helped organize pro-democracy protests in the Chinese-ruled city in 2014, with a Thai newspaper saying he had been deported and “blacklisted” at China’s request.

      Bespectacled Joshua Wong, 19, was detained in Bangkok where he had been invited to speak at universities about Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement” street protests and on setting up his political party, Demosisto.

      He was later put on a plane back to Hong Kong where he told reporters Thai authorities had not given him a reason for refusing him entry but had shown him a document citing a security law. One officer had mentioned a “blacklist”, he said.

      “As a Hong Kong person, I did not expect that even if I do not enter mainland China, I would be inside a foreign detention center, detained by other police. This is unbelievable,” he said.

    • Officers tried to run over man before shooting him 14 times, video shows

      In the last seconds before he was shot 14 times, Joseph Mann dodged the police cruiser once, then twice. Dashboard video recorded the officer’s words inside the car: “Fuck this guy. I’m going to hit him.”

      “OK, go for it. Go for it,” his partner replies.

      The Mann family’s attorney amended his complaint against the city of Sacramento on Friday and sent a letter to the justice department requesting a civil rights investigation into the Sacramento fatal police shooting of Mann, a 51-year-old homeless man with a history of mental illness.

      “It’s disgusting,” attorney John Burris told the Guardian. “It raises the question that this might have been a deliberate, premeditated murder, that they intended to do what they did.”

    • Victims of Pakistan’s ‘honor’ killings

      Tasleem was just 18 years old when her brother shot her in the head. Her crime was marrying a man of her choice, considered a betrayal of a family’s honor among many in Pakistan who live by an ancient code of conduct.

      Last year, three people a day were killed in the name of “honor” in Pakistan: a total of 1,096 women and 88 men, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which says the true figure is likely higher because many such crimes go unreported.

      In 2014, the number was 1,005 women, including 82 children, up from 869 women killed a year earlier.

      Outrage at the practice has grown in recent months as Pakistani news channels have reported on girls who are shot, strangled or burned alive, most often by a brother or a parent.

      Pakistan’s conservative Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has promised to introduce legislation that will remove a legal loophole that allows the family of a murder victim to effectively pardon the murderer. The loophole is often invoked in honor killings to prevent any prosecution.

    • Tougher penalties proposed for carrying a knife

      People caught carrying knives in the street will be jailed for longer under new proposals.

      Carrying a knife while in a group or gang, or filming attacks for social media could also spell more jail time.

      The Sentencing Council for England and Wales says it wants sentences to better recognise public concern amid a rise in recorded knife offences.

      Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said sentences should reflect the “devastation” caused by knife crime.

      Police recorded almost 29,000 crimes involving knives in the 12 months to March 2016 – a 10% rise on the year before.

    • Pakistani scholar ordered home from Australian tour after anti-Semitic video emerges

      A Pakistani scholar visiting Australia for a speaking tour has been ordered home after a video sermon surfaced of him saying the world will be purified when every Jew is wiped out.

      Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai, who has a Facebook fan base of almost a million people, spoke at the Ghausia Masjid in Blacktown and the Al-Madinah Masjid in Liverpool over the long weekend.

    • California Passes Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill That Closes Federal Loophole, Adds Conviction Requirement

      After years of civil asset forfeiture abuse, legislators are finally fighting back. Reform bills have been offered up all over the country. Unfortunately, very few of them have made it to state governors’ desks intact. The DOJ itself has played an integral part in thwarting true forfeiture reform, but legislators are also battling powerful police unions and a law enforcement lobby that needs to do little more than say the words “drug dealer” to convince fence-straddlers to come down on their side.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Charter Joins AT&T In Using Lawsuits To Try And Slow Down Google Fiber

      For decades, incumbent broadband ISPs have all but owned state legislatures, often to the point where they’re quite literally allowed to write awful state law that actively harms state consumers. That’s why it has proven amusing to see these same ISPs cry like petulant children at Google Fiber’s disruption of the uncompetitive broadband market. AT&T, for example, has sued Louisville and Nashville for passing pole attachment reform that would speed up broadband deployment, all while claiming that doing so gives Google Fiber an unfair advantage.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • WIPO Conference Archive Missing Video Critical Of Artificial Intelligence, Social Media Giants

      This morning at the World Intellectual Property Organization General Assemblies, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry commented on the success of the WIPO Conference on the Global Digital Content Market, which took place in April. But the full video of the keynote speaker, who had sharp words for corporate internet giants and other new technologies, is missing from the archive.

      His comments were made during the WIPO General Assembly, as delegates were about to discuss the report of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. A short video was then aired presenting a summary of the conference. The keynote speaker [pdf] of the conference was Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, music composer and performer, and author of numerous books, the latest “Who Owns the Future.”

    • WIPO Development Agenda Needs More Promotion, Country Involvement, Experts Say

      Has the adoption of the World Intellectual Property Organization Development Agenda in 2007 changed the culture of the organisation, and what did it achieve? According to panellists at a side event to this week’s WIPO General Assembly, the Development Agenda has not yet changed the culture of the organisation and its primary focus to support and protect intellectual property. However, WIPO should follow the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and collaborate with other UN agencies to include development consideration in its work, they say.

    • Vibrant Lauding Of “Historic” Marrakesh Treaty For The Blind At WIPO

      “Great victory”, “life-changing”, “historic milestone” – no adjectives were strong enough yesterday to celebrate the entry into force of the Marrakesh treaty at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The treaty, which went into effect on 30 September, “opens the door to the world’s knowledge,” to visually impaired people, but will need many more countries join, in particular countries that are major producers of special format books – the United States and the European Union.

10.05.16

Links 5/10/2016: New KDE (LTS), Mad Max Coming To GNU/Linux

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

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop/Microsoft

    • Lenovo won’t make Windows 10 phones due to Microsoft’s commitment issues

      Lenovo’s COO, Gianfranco Lanci, has said that the Chinese tech giant doesn’t intend to release any new phones running Windows 10 Mobile. This is because he doubts Microsoft’s commitment to its floundering smartphone platform.

      Speaking at the Canalys Channel Forum 2016, Lanci said that while Windows 10 for desktops has been doing well in the business world, it has no plans to build smartphones using the operating system.

    • Latest Windows 10 Anniversary Update Build Sends Some Users To Reboot Loop Hell

      Those of you rocking a PC with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update may want to hold off on letting your system apply the latest round of fixes. There are several user complaints that Build 14393.222 (KB3194496), the seventh Cumulative Update since the Anniversary started flooding PCs in August, is borking systems by putting them into an endless reboot loop.

      The latest update package is supposed to deliver “quality improvements” in the form of several bug fixes for various issues, as well as improve the reliability of certain tasks, such as downloading and updating games from the Windows Store. Unfortunately, in many cases the installation fails somewhere along the way and rolls back the changes it made, as indicated by complaints posted to Microsoft’s support forums and Twitter. It also happened to me when I tried installing the update on my primary desktop.

    • More than half of PCs don’t have Windows 10 AU yet, and no one’s quite sure why

      Just 34.5 percent of all PCs are running Windows 10 version 1607, aka the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, according to AdDuplex, maker of a Windows 10 SDK for third-party app makers. The majority, 59.9 percent, are still running Windows 10 version 1511, also known as the Fall Update.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linus Torvalds admits ‘buggy crap’ made it into Linux 4.8

      Linus Torvalds gave the world Linux 4.8 earlier this week, but now appears to wish he didn’t after spotting some code he says can “kill the kernel.”

      When Torvalds announced Linux 4.8 on Sunday he said the final version added “a few stragging fixes since rc8.”

      But by Tuesday he was back on the Linux Kernel Mailing list apologising for a bug fix gone bad.

    • Open source compliance specs advance at LinuxCon

      The Linux Foundation announced the SPDX 2.1 and OpenChain 1.0 specs, which aim to clarify and standardize open source compliance and management.

      At LinuxCon Europe in Berlin, the Linux Foundation announced two new releases from different groups attempting to standardize open source license tracking, compliance, and supply chain management. The Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) Project announced SPDX 2.1 for tracking complex open source license dependencies, adding new “Snippets” and appendix features, and the OpenChain Workgroup released OpenChain 1.0 for managing the open source supply chain.

    • Linux: The free operating system alternative that changed computing

      For most of us, when we think of PCs, we think of Windows. But Microsoft’s popular and well-known operating system isn’t the only option.

      Many users choose to live without Windows and run different operating systems like Linux instead.

      This year is a special one for Linux, as October 5 marks 25 years since the release of the Linux kernel.

      If you’re discovering Linux for the first time, find out all about it below.

    • Linux 4.8 adds Pi, Surface support but Linus Torvalds fumes over ‘kernel-killing’ bug [Ed: Linux foes go full swing to make the kernel look bad]

      Announcing the 4.8 release on Sunday, Torvalds’ correspondence on the Linux kernel mailing list appeared calm despite a few “pretty small” issues carried over from the eighth and final 4.8 release candidate. He signed off with his usual “go forth and test” command.

      The several highlights of 4.8 include support for the touchscreen on Microsoft’s Surface 3 device and the Raspberry Pi 3′s System on a Chip.

    • Linux 4.8 Kernel Support for Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen [Ed: Microsoft sites put a "Microsoft" slant on Linux]
    • Solving the Linux kernel code reviewer shortage

      Operating system security is top of mind right now, and Linux is a big part of that discussion. One of the questions to be solved is: How do we ensure that patches going upstream are properly reviewed?

      Wolfram Sang has been a Linux kernel developer since 2008, and frequently talks at Linux conferences around the world, like LinuxCon Berlin 2016, about ways to improve kernel development practices.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • An Everyday Linux User Review Of Kubuntu 16.04

        My experience with Kubuntu has done nothing to convince me that I want to use KDE in the long term. If I did want to use KDE long term then my experience with Manjaro would definitely make me lean in that direction.

        This is an LTS release yet there are so many little niggles. New users to Linux will not be enamoured with having to find solutions to simple things like installing software.

        The problems are worse than those that I experienced with Ubuntu. At least with Ubuntu I could install a separate application for installing the good stuff like Chrome. With Kubuntu it is command line all the way and searching forums for solutions.

        With Linux Mint being so good it is hard for me to recommend Kubuntu 16.04.

        I am not the only person to have issues with Kubuntu, read this review by Dedoimedo, he runs into many of the same issues as I did.

      • KDE Neon 5.8 User Edition Linux OS Offers the Latest KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS Desktop

        The KDE Neon development team proudly announced a few minutes ago the release of the KDE Neon 5.8 User Edition GNU/Linux distribution with the recently released KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS desktop environment.

      • KDE 5.8 LTS, Fedora PSA, Magic Security Dust

        The top story today was the release of KDE Plasma 5.8 which was covered by all the top sites. This release brings some new features and long term support. It’s already in KDE neon as well. Elsewhere, The Inquirer began a new series on the legends of Linux and Fedora’s Adam Williamson posted a public service announcement for version 24. A bit of drama emerged from Andrew Ayer’s systemd post and Martin Owens ruminated on Free Software Faith.

      • KDE Turning 20, Launches Plasma 5.8 LTS Desktop To Celebrate Its Birthday
      • openSUSE: Beta 3 Release Updates FireFox, KDE Applications, VirtualBox

        The openSUSE Leap 42.2 Beta 3 was released today one day ahead of schedule and the last beta for 42.2 brought quite a few new versions for people to test.

        VirtualBox was upgraded from version 5.0.24 in Beta 2 to version 5.1.4 and there were an enormous amount of fixes applied to this newer version, which was released in August.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Releases WildFly Application Server Version 10.1

        Improved load balancing is accomplished through a new profile, called “load-balancer” in the default domain.xml file. Profiles in domain mode allow for centralized management of multiple nodes (physical or virtual). This allows for multiple instances of WildFly that can be configured to provide different services.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • FOSS Wave: Goa, India

          These sessions mark the beginning of FOSS Wave: Goa, India. We have seen a lot of enthusiasm in this event and many people were interested in learning about FOSS and cutting-edge technologies. Contributors are already flowing in and we expect more in the near future!

        • X crash during Fedora update when system has hybrid graphics and systemd-udev is in update

          Hi folks! This is a PSA about a fairly significant bug we’ve recently been able to pin down in Fedora 24+.

          Here’s the short version: especially if your system has hybrid graphics (that is, it has an Intel video adapter and also an AMD or NVIDIA one, and it’s supposed to switch to the most appropriate one for what you’re currently doing – NVIDIA calls this ‘Optimus’), DON’T UPDATE YOUR SYSTEM BY RUNNING DNF FROM THE DESKTOP. (Also if you have multiple graphics adapters that aren’t strictly ‘hybrid graphics’; the bug affects any case with multiple graphics adapters).

        • Fedora 24 Users: Don’t Run “DNF Update” From The Desktop

          Fedora 24 users are advised against currently updating your system using the common dnf update command when running GNOME, KDE, or any other graphical desktop. Due to an awkward bug being explored, it could leave your system in an unhappy state.

        • Fedora Devs Warn Users Not to Run “dnf update” Inside a Desktop on Fedora 24

          Earlier today, October 4, 2016, Fedora Project’s Adam Williamson published a public service announcement (PSA) to inform the Fedora Linux community about an important issue with the internal update process.

          It appears that many users of the Fedora 24 operating system have reported in the last 24 hours that they are getting “duplicated packages” and “kernel updates not working” errors when attempting to run the “dnf update” command to update their installations with new package versions released through the official software repositories.

    • Debian Family

      • My Free Software Activities in September 2016

        My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donators (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it’s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me.

      • Derivatives

        • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” Is Shipping with Linux Kernel 4.4 LTS, GNOME 3.22

          We reported a couple of days ago that the Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 “Atticus” operating system had reached end of life on September 30, 2016, and its repositories will be closing too on October 10 to make room for the next Parsix GNU/Linux release.

          That’s right, we’re talking here about Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev,” which was already announced last week by the developers of the Debian-based operating system and reported right here on this space. It looks like work on Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” had already begun, and the development team is teasing us with its new features.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Dell EMC ‘backs’ Huawei open-source management disrupter

    LinuxCon Berlin Huawei today announced OpenSDS, an open-source project to replace vendor-specific storage controllers and says it has the weight of world number three Dell EMC behind it.

    It’s understood OpenSDS was presented to Linux Foundation reps on a recent visit to China.

    The idea is that vendors’ products would plug into one side of the finished OpenSDS and third parties’ tools and software, such as Docker, Kubernetes or OpenStack, into the other.

  • What CIOs need to know about open source forking

    Forking is a concept that can strike terror into the heart of any CIO that relies on open source software. Here’s how to make sure you’re on the right side of the split.

  • Open Source MANO Issues First Release

    ETSI’s Open Source MANO (OSM) group has today announced the availability of its OSM Release ONE, an open source Management and Orchestration (MANO) software stack closely aligned with ETSI NFV, and focused on helping industry accelerate the implementation of network virtualization. The OSM community aims to deliver a production-quality open source MANO stack that meets the requirements of commercial NFV networks.

    Available less than six months since the inaugural meeting of the OSM community, Release ONE has been engineered, tested and documented to allow for rapid installation in operator labs worldwide that seek to create a scalable and interoperable open source MANO environment. Release ONE substantially enhances interoperability with other components (VNFs, VIMs, SDN controllers) and creates a plugin framework to make platform maintenance and extensions significantly easier to provide and support.

  • Magisk Updated to v7, Now Completely Open Source

    Amongst the most notable changes, Magisk is now fully open source from v7 onwards, including the binaries that it makes use of. In addition to this, the Magisk Manager is now a completely different app altogether, becoming a part of the core experience. New features and improvements are planned, so we can be sure that things will continue to improve in the future.

  • Nextcloud 10.0.1 Maintenance Release Improves the Updater, Patches Over 40 Bugs

    The Nextcloud developers have released recently the first maintenance update to the Nextcloud 10 series of the open-source and cross-platform self-hosting cloud server forked from ownCloud.

  • Study: open source groups take security serious

    The IT security practices of some open source communities are exemplary, shows a study for the European Commission and European Parliament. Many communities use experts to ensure software security and to help their developers avoid security flaws. “These communities take security serious”, says Alberto Dominguez Serra, one of the authors working for Everis, a IT consultancy.

  • ZeroMQ founder Pieter Hintjens dies

    Pieter Hintjens, Belgian software developer and past president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), gave much of his time and effort to the open-source community.

    He did so even up until the day he planned for his own death, which was today.

    Hintjens, who chose euthanasia today after dealing with terminal cancer, was a writer and a programmer who spent much of his life building large software systems and online communities, which he described as “Living Systems.”

  • It’s good to be an open source pro in Europe

    Open source employees in Europe have it good, especially when we compare that market to the rest of the world. This is according to a new report by Dice and The Linux Foundation. The report says that out of 1,000 European respondents, 60 per cent said it would be fairly easy to find a new job this year. Globally, the figure stands at about 50 per cent.

    “Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles,” said Bob Melk, President of Dice. “Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects.”

  • The 2016 Open Source Jobs Report Update: Insights From European Open Source Professionals
  • Walmart opens website to OS community
  • @WalmartLabs applies Electrode to get current with web dev
  • WalmartLabs open sources platform that powers Walmart.com
  • WalmartLabs open sources its React-powered universal application platform that underlines Walmart.com
  • Introducing Electrode, an open source release from WalmartLabs
  • These open-source compute technologies can help you build and scale your apps faster

    From ordering food, to finding a good doctor in the vicinity or enhancing our learning skills, most of us use an app, whether we are a teenager, in our 30s or even a septuagenarian.

    Not just big brands or multi-national companies, even small and medium businesses and startups are going down the app route. In fact, even your small neighbourhood street food joint wants you to rate their food and service on a popular restaurant search and discovery app because it means better business and value.

    For most organisations today, there are no second thoughts on whether an app is vital for their growth or not. The advantages of having an app are evident – from being able to stay on top of the customers’ mind and building brand loyalty, to being able to provide value to the customers, and doubling up as a marketing channel, apps are playing a vital role.

  • Tibco releases IoT integration toolkit to open source
  • Open Source Project Flogo Pushes IoT Integration and Connectivity to the Edge

    TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in integration and analytics, today announced the immediate availability of its ultra-lightweight IoT integration solution, Project Flogo™. Its tiny open source integration engine allows application and business logic to run on edge devices, simplifying IoT integration challenges, avoiding technological lock-in, and reducing costs.

  • Tips from a software engineer for a balanced life

    Kent Dodds is a busy, busy guy. He’s a full stack JavaScript engineer at PayPal, hosts JavaScript Air, co-hosts React30, is an instructor on Egghead.io, is a Google Developer Expert, and spends a lot of time on Twitter and GitHub.

    He’s speaking at All Things Open this year on automating the open source contributions and maintenance management process in two sessions: Managing an Open Source Project and How to Open Source Your Stuff.

  • How to champion your committers

    A number of companies today proudly wear the open source badge to show their dedication to various projects, particular communities, or simply the idea of free software licensing. Many have gone down the Red Hat business route, creating a revenue model based on support and services, while others have built their business around proprietary features and add-ons to open source projects.

  • Aditya Mukerjee: Crossing the Language Divide in Open Source

    This fascinating talk from September’s GitHub Universe 2016 in San Francisco by Aditya Mukerjee, an engineer at Stripe, made me think a lot about language privilege and global digital inclusion. Mukerjee grabs you in his opening remarks, “I always keep my eye out for the ways technology can empower the disenfranchised — how it can amplify the voices of the subaltern. And it’s crucial to listen to those voices if we want to solve the biggest problems that the world faces.”

  • Web Browsers

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Free Software Faith for the Long Term

      But that naturally led to the in-fighting. It’s typical for the front runner to be targeted by all the also-ran distributions. The FSF targeted Ubuntu’s practicalist concessions (even though they were fairly minimal), Other distributions ripped Ubuntu and their community apart, trying to block Ubuntu’s success. I’m not saying they meant to do it, or that it was a conspiracy. But that these other communities did not see Ubuntu’s success as their own success and naturally tried to undermine it as humans are likely to do.

      So for very human reasons, we’re here with no real champion for Free Software in the practical arena. Ubuntu has fallen for its own hype and is not able to being the Free Software faith with it, even if it was successful. The societal and long term benefits of Free software remain largely unknown to the majority of the world and we wait patiently for a successor that can try again to change the world.

    • Free Software Directory meeting recap for September 30th, 2016
    • Twenty-two new GNU releases in September

      apl-1.6a
      autoconf-archive-2016.09.16
      autogen-5.18.12
      bash-4.4
      denemo-2.0.12
      drgeo-16.10a
      emacs-25.1
      gawk-4.1.4
      global-6.5.5
      gnucash-2.6.14
      gnuchess-6.2.3
      gnu-c-manual-0.2.5
      gnutls-3.5.4
      gsl-2.2.1
      libmicrohttpd-0.9.51
      libosip2-5.0.0
      nano-2.7.0
      parallel-20160922
      readline-7.0
      texinfo-6.3
      unifont-9.0.02
      xorriso-1.4.6

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Access/Content

      • Amyris and Autodesk Offer Powerful Open Source Tools for Genetic Design to Enable Rapid DNA Engineering

        Genotype Specification Language (GSL), is a programming language that facilitates the rapid design of large and complex DNA constructs used to engineer genomes. The GSL compiler implements a high-level language based on traditional genetic notation, as well as a set of low-level DNA manipulation primitives. The language allows facile incorporation of parts from a library of cloned DNA constructs and from the “natural” library of parts in fully sequenced and annotated genomes. GSL was designed to engage genetic engineers in their native language while providing a framework for higher level abstract tooling. GSL was developed and open sourced by Amyris.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • OpenMYR Open Source Wireless Motors (video)

        The creator of the wireless motors Kyle Berezin explains more about their inspiration, design and features as well as some of the applications that they can be used for.

  • Programming/Development

    • The cost of forsaking C

      The C programming language is not trendy. The most recent edition of the canonical C text (the excitingly named The C Programming Language) was published in 1988; C is so unfashionable that the authors have neglected to update it in light of 30 years of progress in software engineering. Everyone “has been meaning to” learn Rust or Go or Clojure over a weekend, not C. There isn’t even a cute C animal in C’s non-logo on a C decal not stuck to your laptop.

      But Myles and I are not trendy people, so we insist that all of our students become fluent in C. A fresh class of C converts has just finished working through the K&R bible, making this a good time for me to reflect on why we deify this ancient tongue.

      We give students four reasons for learning C:

      It is still one of the most commonly used languages outside of the Bay Area web/mobile startup echo chamber;
      C’s influence can be seen in many modern languages;
      C helps you think like a computer; and,
      Most tools for writing software are written in C (or C++)

      The first is easy to dismiss if one likes the Bay Area web/mobile startup echo chamber, the second if one hates C’s influence on many more modern languages. Most engineers should take head of reason three, although our students also learn computer architecture and at least one assembly language, so have a firm mental model of how computers actually compute. But reason four is hard to ignore.

      Forsaking C means forsaking anything below the level of abstraction at which one happens to currently work. Those who work for instance as web developers forsake thoroughly understanding the browsers, operating systems and languages on top of which their own work stands.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Revealed: MRSA variant found in British pork at Asda and Sainsbury’s

      Meat produced from British pigs has been shown to be infected with a livestock strain of MRSA, the Guardian can reveal, raising concerns that the UK is on the brink of another food scandal.

      Tests on a sample of 97 UK-produced pork products from supermarkets show that three – sold at Asda and Sainsbury’s – were contaminated with the superbug strain which can cause serious health problems.

      The Guardian, working with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), has also established that a loophole in import regulations is leaving an open door for MRSA CC398-infected live pigs from countries such as Denmark, where the disease is rife.

    • Poland abortion strike: Thousands of women in over 60 cities refuse to work in protest over restrictive laws

      Thousands of Polish women dressed in black have boycotted work and taken to the streets in protest against a plan to ban abortions.

      Without half their workforce, government offices, universities and schools in 60 cities across the country closed their doors.

      For the day of action, dubbed “Black Monday”, women donned dark-coloured clothes in a symbol of mourning for the loss of reproductive rights they fear.

      Poland already has one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws and opinion surveys show very little support for an even stricter law, despite the nation’s deep Catholicism and conservative political direction.

    • Flint Hit With Bacterial Illness as Residents Shun City Water

      Residents of Flint, Mich., affected by the contaminated-water crisis have added a new complication to their lives: an outbreak of shigellosis, a bacterial illness that is easily transmitted when people do not wash their hands.

      Health department officials in Genesee County, where Flint is the largest city, said there has been an increase in the gastrointestinal illness, which can lead to severe diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, cramps and stools containing blood and mucus, according to a statement issued last month.

    • UNITAID-FIND Partnership To Scale Up Hepatitis C Diagnostics

      New medicines have revolutionised HCV treatment in high-income countries, yet the lack of appropriate diagnostic tools for HCV infection remains a challenge. Catharina Boehme, chief executive officer of FIND, outlined that HCV is “a silent killer which goes unnoticed until it is almost too late.” Accordingly, 85 percent of cases occur in low- and middle-income countries, with fewer than 1 percent of persons aware of their infection.

      The US$38.3 million project aims to develop “better, simpler, point-of-care diagnostic tools for HCV, and will introduce HCV testing and treatment in HIV programmes” with national governments and local implementation partners in Cameroon, Georgia, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, over the next three years.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Putin Suspends Weapons-Grade Plutonium Deal With US

      resident Vladimir Putin on Monday suspended a Russia-U.S. deal on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium, a move that comes amid escalating tensions over Syria between Moscow and Washington.

      Putin’s decree released by the Kremlin cited Washington’s “unfriendly actions” and the United States’ inability to fulfill its obligations under the 2000 deal as reasons for the move.

      However, the decree says that the weapons-grade plutonium that has fallen under the agreement will be kept away from weapons programs.

    • Clinton: ‘I don’t recall any joke’ about droning WikiLeaks founder

      Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said she doesn’t remember ever commenting — joking or otherwise — about using a drone strike against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

      “I don’t recall any joke,” Clinton said, when asked Tuesday at a press conference in Pennsylvania.

      “It would have been a joke, if it had been said, but I don’t recall that.”

      The website TruePundit posted a report Sunday that alleged Clinton had in 2010 spoken of a drone strike against Assange.

      The report cited State Department sources and claimed Clinton had said: “Can’t we just drone this guy?”

    • Sen Mitch McConnell blames Obama for bill that Obama vetoed and McConnell repeatedly voted for

      Congress has overridden Obama’s repeated veto for the “Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act,” which allows US citizens to sue the Saudi government over its alleged complicity in the 9/11 attacks — and which may allow people in other countries hamed by actions sponsored by the US government sue the US in those countries’ courts.

      However you feel about the Saudi role in 9/11, or the US government’s actions abroad, there is one absolutely unequivocal fact: Obama opposed the bill, and Republicans in the House and Senate passed it over his strenuous, repeated objections.

      But those facts haven’t stopped senior GOP senator Mitch McConnell from blaming Obama for the law, despite the fact that McConnell vote for the law, voted again for it, then voted “Aye” on the proposition, “Shall the Bill S. 2040 Pass, the Objections of the President of the United States to the Contrary Notwithstanding?” (McConnell was joined by 28 senators who’d also written a letter condemning the law, warning of the risk of “potential unintended consequences”).

      McConnell said “I hate to blame everything on him, and I don’t” but “it would have been helpful had we had a discussion about this much earlier than last week.” The White House had repeatedly sent information to the Senate about the potential negative consequences of the bill for US interests. Nevertheless, McConnell accused Obama of “dropping the ball” by merely repeatedly vetoing the bill and pleading with Congress to reconsider, which left Congress in a state where “[n]obody [in Congress] really had focused on the potential downside in terms of our international relationships.”

    • Philippine president: Obama to hell, EU to purgatory

      Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has told President Barack Obama “you can go to hell” in his latest tirade against the U.S. over its criticism of his deadly anti-drug campaign.

      He also lashed out anew at the European Union in a speech Tuesday saying the 28-nation bloc, which has also criticized his brutal crackdown, “better choose purgatory, hell is filled up.”

      Duterte, who took office in June, has been hypersensitive to criticisms over his anti-drug fight, which has left more than an estimated 3,000 suspected drug dealers and pushers dead in just three months, alarming the United Nations, the E.U., the U.S. and human rights watchdogs.

    • PM wants British troops pulled out of European convention on human rights

      The Tory government want British soldiers to be exempt from the European Convention on Human Rights during future conflicts so they cannot be sued, in a move that has outraged activists.

      The plans were announced by prime minister Theresa May and defence secretary Michael Fallon at the Conservative party conference on Tuesday.

      The ECHR was established in 1953 by the Council of Europe with Britain as a founding member. Now, after more than 60 years, May wants out of the bits she doesn’t like.

    • FBI’s Comey: Actually, Chasing ISIS Off Twitter Makes It More Difficult For Us To Follow Them

      Over and over again we keep hearing politicians and others going on and on about the need for social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google to kick ISIS users off their platforms. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have called for this. And some people at these companies are supportive of this idea. Twitter regularly feels compelled to talk about how many ISIS accounts it removes.

      Yet, as we’ve pointed out each time it’s done so, this seems backwards. We’ve noted that intelligence officials have claimed that they actually get really good intelligence from following these social media accounts. But generally those voices aren’t heard as much. So it’s actually great to see FBI Direct James Comey (someone we rarely agree with) come out and say it directly: kicking ISIS members off Twitter makes things more difficult for law enforcement.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Indexing the Empire: How to Use Wikileaks’ Public Library of US Diplomacy

      “The Public Library of US Diplomacy,” or “PlusD,” is a very large and constantly expanding collection of internal documents from the US Department of State, published by WikiLeaks in a searchable archive. The library began in 2010 and at the time of writing contains 2,325,961 individual documents made up of about 2 billion words, spread over three collections of cables: Cablegate, the Kissinger Cables, and the Carter Cables. The State Department is the foreign affairs department of the US government and oversees the embassies and consulates of the United States all over the world. Each embassy or consulate corresponds with the State Department in Washington, DC, by sending daily telegram reports, or “cables,” between them, using a special electronic communications system.

      PlusD contains within it the WikiLeaks publication known as Cablegate: the collection of State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011. Cablegate itself consists of 251,287 cables, accounting for 261,276,536 words in total. If printed out in a standard-sized font, Cablegate alone would form a single line over 6,000 kilometers long — the distance to the center of the Earth. The cables are an average of 1,039 words long, revealing detailed internal information about the operation of 274 US embassies and consulates, and their activity within their host country.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • How the Earth will pay us back for our carbon emissions with … more carbon emissions

      The really scary thing about climate change is not that humans will fail to get their emissions under control. The really scary thing is that at some point, the Earth will take over and start adding even more emissions on its own.

      A new study underscores this risk by looking closely at Indonesia, which has a unique quality — some 70 billion of tons of carbon that have built up in peatlands over millennia. In this, Indonesia is much like the Arctic, where even larger quantities of ancient carbon are stored in permafrost, and are also vulnerable.

    • Research Suggests Peat Fires In Indonesia Could Worsen Global Warming In This Century

      The really scary thing about climate change is not simply that humans may fail to get their emissions under control. It’s that at some point, the Earth could take over and start adding even more emissions on its own.

      A new study underscores this risk by looking closely at Indonesia, which has a unique quality – some 70 billion of tons of carbon that have built up in peatlands over millennia. In this, Indonesia is much like the Arctic, where even larger quantities of ancient carbon are stored in permafrost, and are also vulnerable.

      In each case, if that carbon gets out of the land and into the atmosphere, then global warming will get worse. But global warming could itself up the odds of such massive carbon release. That’s a dangerous position to be in as the world continues to warm.

      In the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a team of researchers led by Yi Yin of the French Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement look at the potential of peat bogs in equatorial Asia – a region that includes Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and several other smaller countries but is dominated by Indonesia and some of its largest islands, Kalimantan and Sumatra – to worsen our climate problems. It’s timely, considering that last year amid El Niño-induced drought conditions Indonesian blazes emitted over 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents into the atmosphere. That’s more than the annual emissions of Japan (or, needless to say, of Indonesia’s fossil fuel burning).

  • Finance

    • Bitcoin makes inroads with new ATM in Kouvola

      A new Bitcoin ATM to be located in the southeastern city of Kouvola at the end of October will bring the number of such machines in Finland to nine. Officials say that because Bitcoin is a virtual currency that knows no borders, it’s difficult to estimate the number of users in Finland. Current guesstimates range from hundreds to tens of thousands.

    • Ericsson Slashes 3,000 Jobs in Sweden

      Ericsson AB said Tuesday that it plans to lay off nearly 20% of its home-country workforce, as the Swedish maker of telecom-network equipment races to cut costs amid intensifying competition from Chinese rivals and weak demand for its specialty wireless products.

    • Ericsson to slash about 3,000 jobs – up to 175 in Finland

      Some 175 Ericsson employees in Finland will be affected by the employer-employee negotiations that the Swedish telecom company announced it was starting on Tuesday.

      The company said that it plans to reduce up to 3,000 positions globally in production, research and development and sales and administration. Most of the personnel cuts will be made in Sweden.

      In a press release issued on Tuesday, Ericsson said that dismissals will be carried out using a combination of voluntary and forced reductions, as well as other measures, such as outsourcing.

      Altogether some one thousand of the affected employees work in Ericsson’s production unit, about 800 in research and development and around 1,200 in other departments.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Tim Kaine brings Wall Street fundraising muscle to Clinton campaign

      Pundits were quick to point out the benefits Sen. Tim Kaine may bring Hillary Clinton as her running mate in helping win his home-and-battleground state of Virginia.

      But what flew under the radar was that Kaine may play a key role in helping Clinton raise money, especially when it comes to Wall Street.

      Clinton has proven herself a capable fundraiser, announcing nearly $90 million in contributions for the past month. The former secretary of state is a known quantity with Wall Street as well, having delivered speeches to banks and representing the heart of the financial services industry as a senator from New York.

      In the lead-up to Clinton’s pick of a running mate, the potential that she might choose Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — who has made cracking down on banks a centerpiece of her agenda — had Wall Street ready to tighten its pockets for donations.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • After Facebook “censors” anti-Muslim posts, hate groups sue US gov’t

      In July 2016, an organization called the “American Freedom Defense Initiative” joined another group called Jihad Watch in suing US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Both entities felt slighted by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

      In their 25-page civil complaint, the two anti-Muslim activists and their respective organizations made a ludicrous argument. The groups claimed that as the country’s top cop, Lynch “enforces” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that limits libel and other civil suits filed against websites, service providers, and other online publishers. However, the Communications Decency Act is a civil, rather than a criminal, statute.

      AFDI—which the Southern Poverty Law Center designated last year as an anti-Muslim hate group—is the same group that opposed the proposed Park51 Islamic center that was to be built two blocks from Ground Zero. In 2013, the AFDI’s co-founder, Pamela Geller, and her fellow co-founder, Robert Spencer (who also founded JihadWatch), were banned from entering the United Kingdom for their “extremist” views.

    • ‘The end of Trump’: how Facebook deepens millennials’ confirmation bias

      HBO host John Oliver achieved the destruction of Donald Trump on 29 February 2016. At least, according to the Daily Beast.

      Fansided, a popular social news aggregator, dates Trump’s destruction at 1 August while the Daily Good called it for 21 March. Salon found no fewer than “13 glorious times” that Oliver had destroyed the real estate tycoon.

      Sharp-eyed consumers of the news might note that it is impossible to, as the dictionary says, “put an end to the existence of something” more than a single time. But for #NeverTrump Facebook users who love any content they see as bringing Trump down a peg, the formulaic headline is indicative of the Facebook media landscape: the most shareable, clickable and likable content on the site aligns strongly with its readership’s pre-existing biases, assumptions and political affiliation.

      For millennials who have never known an election without Facebook, the political landscape of the social media network has massive implications for the upcoming contest between Hillary Clinton and Trump – not least of which because of Facebook’s outsized influence on their exposure to political news.

      Six out of every 10 millennials (61%) get their political news on Facebook, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, making the 1.7 billion-user social behemoth (which includes more than 200 million in the United States) the largest millennial marketplace for news and ideas in the world. But within Facebook’s ecosystem exists a warren of walled gardens, intellectual biomes created by users whose interest in interacting with opposing political views – and those who are them – is nearly nonexistent.

    • Spare me the campus ayatollahs ruining my student life: An undergraduate’s fearless broadside against the joyless PC takeover of our universities

      The drunken travails of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim — a shambolic junior academic — have long become a byword for the excesses of university life.

      Flirting, seduction and seeing how many pints you could fit in between lectures were once relatively harmless pastimes on campuses across Britain.

      Yet today, too many universities seem determined to nanny students who are deemed too fragile to be exposed to the rough and tumble of the real world.

      Consider the fact that, this week, it emerged that all new students arriving at Oxford and Cambridge are being asked to attend ‘consent classes’ aimed at preventing rape and sexual harassment at the universities.

      At Oxford, the courses are compulsory as part of freshers’ week, while the student union is urging rugby players to attend anti-sexism workshops to fight ‘lad culture’.

      At Cambridge, consent classes are also being held for freshers, with students of some colleges having to opt out if they don’t wish to attend.

    • Censorship turns up the volume
    • NO, HATE CRIME LAWS AREN’T CENSORSHIP – AND HERE’S WHY
    • Far-right Twitter and Facebook users make secret code to avoid censorship
    • Right-wingers and ‘free speech’ trolls devise secret internet language to dodge online censorship
    • White supremacy worms around censorship to create larger threats

      The alt-right has found a way to evade the censorship policies on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

      The far, far, far-right hate group has begun using the names of Internet applications like “Yahoo” and “Google” as stand-ins for racial slurs and insults. This way, they can still congregate online to spread slander and white supremacy without the worry that their accounts will be flagged and deleted.

      This amount of hatred one group can have towards — seemingly — every population of non-white non-heterosexual people is flabbergasting.

      It’s hard not to feel helpless when trying to minimize the threat of a movement that is so dead-set on cultivating heinously racist views it feels it must re-code innocuous household words.

    • Eduardo Hernández Santos: Conflict, Censorship & the Male Body

      Following part one of his conversation with Lidia Hernández Tapia, Eduardo Hernández Santos talks about his groundbreaking early exhibitions, his recent series El Muro, and the “boom of the phallus” in Cuban art.

    • U.S. universities in China get academic freedom, but face internet censorship – report

      U.S. universities operating in China say they are given the freedom to teach what they like in class, but face restrictions such as internet censorship, according to a report by an independent, nonpartisan U.S. agency.

      In the recent report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), its survey of 12 U.S. universities found that while administrators had control over curriculum content, fewer than half of them had unrestricted access to the internet.

      For example, at one of the universities reviewed by GAO for the survey, users were unable to access Google’s search page and other sites that were available to users at other universities.

    • Propaganda and censorship remain China’s favoured tools of control

      Two recent court battles over historical facts have demonstrated how tight China’s ideological control is and how anxious the party leadership is about its legitimacy of rule.

      Two weeks ago, a Beijing court ruled against a popular blogger and a Hong Kong-based beverage company for mocking a Communist Party propaganda tale about a Korean war hero.

      And in August, a Beijing court upheld a libel ruling against a writer for two articles published in 2013 questioning certain details about five second world war heroes.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hackable Speed Cameras Highlight Risk Of Rush Toward IoT-Enabled ‘Smart’ Cities

      We’ve been talking at length about how the lack of security in the Internet of Things space is seen as a sort of adorable joke, but isn’t always a laughing matter. While the hillarious stupidity of some of the “smart” products flooding the market is undeniable, the reality is that the abysmal state of security in “IoT” devices (read: little to none) is creating millions of new attack vectors every year. And as Bruce Schneier recently warned, it’s only a matter of time before the check comes due, and these vulnerabilities contribute to hacking attacks on core infrastructure resulting in notable fatalities.

      Refrigerators that leak your Gmail credentials are one thing, but this looming calamity is going to be made notably worse by the rush toward “smart” cities. The same hardware vendors that can’t bother to secure their consumer-side hardware haven’t done a much better job securing the gear they’re shoveling toward cities under the promise of a better, more connected tomorrow.

    • AT&T Stops Charging Broadband Users Extra For Privacy

      A few years ago, AT&T came up with an “ingenious” idea: charge broadband consumers more money if they want to protect their privacy. Under this plan, users ordering AT&T’s U-Verse broadband service could get broadband for, say, $70 a month. But if you want to opt out of AT&T’s Internet Preferences program (which uses deep packet inspection to study your movement around the Internet down to the second) you’ll pay $30 to $50 more, per month. AT&T also made opting out as cumbersome as possible, knowing full well that few people would dare take the option.

      With its decision, AT&T effectively made user privacy a luxury option.

    • Subpoenas and Gag Orders Show Government Overreach, Tech Companies Argue

      It has been six months since the Justice Department backed off on demands that Apple help the F.B.I. break the security of a locked iPhone.

      But the government has not given up the fight with the tech industry. Open Whisper Systems, a maker of a widely used encryption app called Signal, received a subpoena in the first half of the year for subscriber information and other details associated with two phone numbers that came up in a federal grand jury investigation in Virginia.

      The subpoena arrived with a court order that said Open Whisper Systems was not allowed to tell anyone about the information request for one year.

      Technology companies contend that court-imposed gag orders are being used too often by law enforcement and that they violate the Bill of Rights. The companies also complain that law enforcement officials are casting a wide net over online communications — often too wide — in their investigations.

    • ShadowBrokers NSA Cyber-weapon Auction Generates Collective Yawn
    • Hackers find little demand for their stolen NSA hacking tools
    • Hacker group finds almost no takers for stolen NSA cyber tools
    • New Documents Reveal Government Effort to Impose Secrecy on Encryption Company

      When it comes to this country’s courts, longstanding practice, history, and the Constitution make clear that openness—of doors, of evidence, of arguments, of opinions—is the rule. Like the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech, that rule is not absolute. But it puts in place a default, one that forces those who want to keep court proceedings secret to show, in each case, that secrecy is warranted—and that the need for secrecy overcomes the traditions and values of openness that animate the default rule in the first place.

      But in far too many cases across the country, the government appears to have reversed the presumption that the First Amendment establishes, opting to keep secret information about its demands for private data where transparency is required and would serve the public good.

    • Feds Gagged Encrypted Communications Firm Open Whisper Systems Over Massively Overbroad Subpoena

      This morning the ACLU announced that it had convinced the government to remove a ridiculous gag order on a subpoena that had been sent to Open Whisper Systems, the makers of the popular Signal encrypted messaging app, and whose encrypted communication protocol is used by many others, including WhatsApp, Facebook and Google for their encrypted messaging offerings. It’s not that surprising that a grand jury would issue a subpoena to Open Whisper Systems demanding “subscriber name, address, telephone numbers, email addresses, method of payment, IP registration, IP history logs and addresses, account history, toll records, upstream and downstream providers, any associated accounts acquired through cookie data, and any other contact information from inception to the present” for certain accounts being investigated. But, of course, Open Whisper Systems has basically none of that data.

    • Decentralise (in a kind of centralised way)

      Once a month I am involved in running an informal session, loosely affiliated with Open Rights Group and FSFE, called Cryptonoise. Cryptonoise explores methods for protecting your digital rights, with a leaning towards focusing on privacy, and provides a venue for like minded people to meet up and discuss the state of the digital landscape and those that may try to infringe on the rights of digital citizens.

      We’ve all made it easy for large enterprises and governments to collect masses of data about our online activities because we perform most of those activities in the same place. Facebook, Google and Twitter spring to mind as examples of companies that have grown to dangerous sizes with little competition. This is not paranoia. This is real. We make it a lot more difficult when we spread out.

    • Surprise! Millennial office workers love email [Ed: Overreliance by young people on unencrypted communications]

      Millennials hate email, and they will finally kill this business scourge — or so you would think from popular discussions on the topic. But do a little research, and you discover that millennials not only don’t hate email, they use it more than any other age group.

      Yes, the text-obsessed and social-media-loving millennials are addicted to email, a recent survey of 1,004 mobile-using American office workers by Adobe Systems has found. Millennials (born between 1981 and 2001) check their email more often than any other group — even more than Gen X (born between 1961 and 1981) and baby boomers (born between 1947 and 1961) for whom email is the mainstay business communication method.

    • Bulk surveillance review is ‘fiction’, claims former NSA technical director

      Former NSA technical director Bill Binney talks about the Investigatory Powers Bill and the UK government’s independent review of bulk surveillance powers

    • Yahoo ‘secretly monitored emails on behalf of the US government’

      Some surveillance experts said this represents the first known case of a US internet company agreeing to a spy agency’s demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.

    • Yahoo Secretly Scanned Users’ Emails For The NSA and FBI: Report

      Reuters says that U.S intelligence officials were searching for a specific set of characters within Yahoo emails, but it is unknown what exactly they were looking for. Reuters also reports that the order to search user emails came in the form of a “classified directive” sent to Yahoo’s legal team.

    • How American Companies Enable NSA Surveillance

      Without the cooperation of American companies — both voluntary and compelled — the National Security Agency’s system of mass surveillance simply would not have been possible. And on Tuesday, Reuters added the name of yet another American corporate giant to the list of those who have made it possible for American intelligence to intercept huge troves of information: Yahoo.

      According to the news service, the American internet giant designed custom software to filter its users’ emails according to a set of search terms, and deliver those messages to the NSA. The decision to enable NSA surveillance was reportedly made by CEO Marissa Mayer and without the knowledge of the company’s security chief, who quit in protest when he learned of the program.

    • Google and Microsoft Not Part of NSA Email Scanning Tied to Yahoo

      The details of the Yahoo email surveillance program, reportedly installed in 2015, are still emerging, but they immediately raise questions about whether other companies are participating as well. So far, four tech giants say they are not.

      “We’ve never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: ‘no way’,” said a spokesperson from Google in response to a query about whether the NSA asked the company to build similar custom software to scan Gmail.

    • Yahoo Secretly Built Software To Scan All Emails Under Pressure From NSA Or FBI

      So Reuters has big exclusive report this morning about Yahoo creating “custom software to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information” at the behest of the NSA or FBI. This was built last year — which came well after the Snowden disclosures, and after Yahoo had been revealed to have legally challenged earlier NSA dragnet attempts — and after it had rolled out end to end encryption on email.

      Apparently, this was a decision made at the top by Marissa Mayer, and pissed off the company’s top security guy, Alex Stamos (who is awesome and a big supporter of end-to-end encryption) leading him to leave the company (and move to Facebook, where he is currently).

    • Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence – sources

      Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

      The company complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said three former employees and a fourth person apprised of the events.

    • Delete Your Yahoo Account

      There’s no good reason to have a Yahoo account these days. But after Tuesday’s bombshell report by Reuters, indicating the enormous, faltering web company designed a bespoke email-wiretap service for the U.S. government, we now know that a Yahoo account is a toxic surveillance liability.

      Reuters’s Joseph Menn is reporting that just last year, Yahoo chose to comply with a classified “directive” to build “a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials” — the NSA in particular.

    • Yahoo! spied on users’ email at spy agencies’ behest: report

      Yahoo! searched all its users’ emails using a specially built program in order to try and locate specific information demanded by American intelligence officials, according to a Reuters report.

      The company, which was bought by Verizon in July for US$4.83 billion, agreed to scan all mail accounts in line with a classified directive from the US government, Reuters said, citing two former Yahoo! workers and a third person who had been informed about it.

      The directive came from the NSA or the FBI, the sources said.

      What the spy agencies were after was not specified by the sources, who said only that they had asked Yahoo! to search for a set of characters.

      Reuters said it had not been able to determine what kind of data, if any, was handed over to the spooks, and if other email providers had been confronted with similar demands.

    • Yahoo Reportedly Scanned Millions of Email Accounts for Intelligence Agencies

      Yahoo reportedly scanned hundreds of millions of email accounts at the behest of U.S. intelligence or law enforcement. The scans, reported by Reuters, allegedly selected incoming messages that contained a string of unknown characters.

      Yahoo did not deny the report, saying only that it is a “law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States.”

      According to the Tuesday report, Yahoo acceded to a 2015 government directive to give email access to the National Security Agency or the FBI. Reuters cited anonymous sources including two former employees and another person with knowledge of the events.

    • Yahoo ‘secretly scanned emails for US authorities’

      Yahoo secretly scanned millions of its users’ email accounts on behalf of the US government, according to a report.

      Reuters news agency says the firm built special software last year to comply with a classified request.

      “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States,” the tech firm said in a statement provided to the BBC.

      The allegation comes less than a fortnight after Yahoo said hackers had stolen data about many of its users.

    • Are smart toys spying on kids and stealing their imagination?

      Last weekend, I saw my first Christmas ad. And what a Smart Christmas it will be, judging by the haul on offer. Over the past year, companies have been teasing the various connected must-haves for the holidays: bots that can respond to kids’ questions and movements, and capture audio and video; an imitation smartwatch that chats with other devices over Bluetooth; not to mention the Barbie Hello Dreamhouse, a pink-and-white smart house for the iconic doll.

      Not everyone is excited about the intelligence creeping into kids’ toys. Privacy activists and developmental psychologists have objected on grounds ranging from security and privacy to fundamental worries about the nature of play. So should you be crossing these gadgets off your list? Or is this just a new variation on a familiar old song?

      As it happens, Barbie was at the centre of the last big smart toy brouhaha. Hello Barbie, perhaps 2015’s most controversial toy, could hold court on a wide range of topics – from fashion and family to dreams and paddleboarding. “Did you know that butterflies live everywhere in the world except Antarctica?” she might say, before confessing in a less guarded moment to “daydreaming about cupcakes”.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Islamic communities contain ‘tsunamis of atheism’ that are being suppressed, says leading ex-Muslim

      Thousands of ex-Muslims in Britain are living in fear of violent revenge for abandoning the Islamic faith while others are afraid to admit they no longer believe, a support group for ex-Muslims has said.

      Maryam Namazie, founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, described a “tsunami of atheism” in Muslim communities and urged that more needs to be done to recognise the dangers often faced by those who choose to renounce their faith.

      Speaking ahead of the release of Exposure, an ITV documentary that explores the lives of ex-Muslims faced with abuse and discrimination, Ms Namazie told The Independent: “There is a large group of people who are not seen and heard. Many young people living in Britain have left Islam and are facing huge ostracisation and isolation from their communities as a result.

    • State Appeals Court Says Not Just Any Nonexistent Law Can Be Used To Initiate Traffic Stops

      The US Supreme Court issued law enforcement fishing licenses with the Heien decision. Vehicle stops no longer needed to be predicated on legal violations. (If they ever were…) Law enforcement officers were no longer required to know the laws they were enforcing. The Supreme Court’s decision combined reasonable suspicion with an officer’s “reasonable” grasp of moving violations, further deteriorating the thin Fourth Amendment insulation protecting drivers from suspicionless, warrantless searches.

      With the standards lowered, officers can now stop anyone for almost any reason, provided they can make the justification stated in their report sound like a reasonable approximation of what they thought the law was, or what they wanted the law to be. (The Supreme Court’s Rodriguez decision still allows for bogus traffic stops. It just puts a highly-subjective time limit on the fishing expedition.)

      The Supreme Court’s case originated in North Carolina. Oddly enough, further down the judicial food chain, a North Carolina state appeals court has just suppressed evidence based on a traffic stop with no legal basis. (h/t The Newspaper)

      Antwon Eldridge was pulled over because his vehicle was missing the driver’s side mirror. This led to a search of his vehicle and the discovery of crack and marijuana. But the reason for the stop failed to hold up in court, even with the Heien decision in place.

  • DRM

    • HP Issues Flimsy Mea Culpa For Recent Printer Cartridge DRM Idiocy, But It’s Not Enough

      A few weeks ago we noted how HP had effectively delivered a DRM time bomb in the form of a software update that, once detonated, crippled customers’ ability to use competing third-party print cartridges in HP printers. While such ham-fisted behavior certainly isn’t new, in this case HP had actually first deployed the “security update” to its printers back in March — but didn’t activate its stealthy payload until last month. Once activated, the software update prevented HP printers from even detecting alternative ink cartridges, resulting in owners getting a rotating crop of error messages about faulty cartridges.

      HP customers were obviously annoyed, and the EFF was quick to pen an open letter to HP, quite correctly noting that HP abused its security update mechanism to trick its customers and actively erode product functionality. Ultimately HP was forced to respond via a blog post proclaiming the company was just “dedicated to the best printing experience” and wanted to correct some “confusion” about its DRM sneak attack. In short, HP strongly implied it was just trying to protect consumers from “potential security risks” (what sweethearts)…

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Taco John’s Continues To Wage A Long-Lost Trademark War To Keep ‘Taco Tuesday’ From Becoming Generic

        Way back in 2010, Mike wrote about how the Taco John’s restaurant chain had threatened a small restaurant in Oklahoma for daring to use the phrase “Taco Tuesday” in a promotion for cheap tacos on…you know…Tuesdays. Taco John’s did indeed have a trademark on the term in 49 of our 50 states, with the exception being New Jersey, because life is strange. The question at the time, as tends to be the question in most trademark disputes, was whether or not there was any potential customer confusion to worry about. Given the somewhat descriptive nature of the phrase, not to mention its widespread use both commercially and in common parlance, the whole thing seemed rather silly.

        Six years does little to change things, it seems. Taco John’s recently fired off a cease and desist notice to the Old Fashioned Tavern and Restaurant in Wisconsin for using the phrase.

      • The Trademarking of “Taco Tuesday”

        When the owners of the Old Fashioned Tavern and Restaurant received a cease and desist letter demanding they stop holding Taco Tuesdays, they thought it was a joke.

        For almost a decade, the restaurant had sold $2 tacos on Tuesday night. Other restaurants and bars in the area had similar promotions, and in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, Taco Tuesday specials are as plentiful as yoga classes.

        But the author of the letter claimed that “Taco Tuesday” was a federally registered trademark that belonged to Taco John’s, a chain of around 400 Mexican-style fast food restaurants. And as Old Fashioned manager Jennifer DeBolt told the local Cap Times, they quickly realized that “the law firm is completely legit.”

      • Following Coverage Of Trademark Dispute, Lawyer Demands Image On News Story Be Taken Down As Infringing

    • Copyrights

      • Judge: Vague IP-Address Evidence is Not Enough to Expose BitTorrent ‘Pirates’

        While relatively underreported, many U.S. district courts are still swamped with lawsuits against alleged film pirates.

        The copyright holders who initiate these cases generally rely on an IP address as evidence. This information is collected from BitTorrent swarms and linked to a geographical location using geolocation tools.

        With this information in hand, they then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, forcing Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.

        In most cases, courts sign off on these subpoenas quite easily, but in a recent case California Magistrate Judge Mitchell Dembin decided to ask for further clarification and additional evidence.

10.04.16

Links 4/10/2016: KDE Plasma 5.8, Google Pixel and Andromeda Predictions

Posted in News Roundup at 3:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 26 open source projects from Linux’s 25 years

    Linux is often credited for pioneering the open source development model and it has led to the creation of many open source projects and communities. Here are some of the major open source projects that were created around Linux in the past 25 years.

  • Server

    • Keeping Linux containers safe and secure

      Linux containers are helping to change the way that IT operates. In place of large, monolithic virtual machines, organizations are finding effective ways to deploy their applications inside Linux containers, providing for faster speeds, greater density, and increased agility in their operations.

      While containers can bring a number of advantages from a security perspective, they come with their own set of security challenges as well. Just as with traditional infrastructure, it is critical to ensure that the system libraries and components running within a container are regularly updated in order to avoid vulnerabilities. But how do you know what is running inside of your containers? To help manage the full set of security challenges facing container technologies, a startup named Anchore is developing an open source project of the same name to bring visibility inside of Linux containers.

    • The History of Pets vs Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly

      I have been meaning to write this post for a long time, but one thing or another has gotten in the way. It’s important to me to provide an accurate history, definition, and proper usage of the Pets vs Cattle meme so that everyone can understand why it was successful and how it’s still vital as a tool for driving understanding of cloud. The meme has taken off because it helped created an understanding of the “old way” vs. the “new way” of doing things. That’s great, but the value of the meme becomes muddied when misused. We can all agree there’s enough muddy terminology and phraseology already, such as “cloud,” “hybrid,” and “DevOps”. So this post aims to set the record straight and assure a canonical history that everyone can reference and use.

    • Running Stateful Applications in Kubernetes: Storage Provisioning and Allocation

      To appreciate how Kubernetes manages storage pools that provide persistence to applications, we need to understand the architecture and the workflow related to application deployment.

      Kubernetes is used in various roles — by developers, system administrators, operations, and DevOps teams. Each of these personas, if you will, interact with the infrastructure in a distinct way. The system administration team is responsible for configuring the physical infrastructure for running Kubernetes cluster. The operations team maintains the Kubernetes cluster through patching, upgrading, and scaling the cluster. DevOps teams deal with Kubernetes to configure CI/CD, monitoring, logging, rolling upgrades, and canary deployments. Developers consume the API and the resources exposed by the Kubernetes infrastructure. They are never expected to have visibility into the underlying physical infrastructure that runs the master and nodes.

    • [Old] Technical Debt

      Building happy engineering teams needs to be your top priority if you want to build great products. Through collective ownership, increasing trust, removing noise, and being bold with new ideas, you can begin to not only improve your practices but also allow new ideas to flourish organically. Allow new eyes to push you to both fix issues and take their fresh perspective not as criticism but as a catalyst for change.

      After our strategic investments, our paging volume is down, service quality is up, and we’re better positioned to move even faster to make email suck less.

    • “I just want to run a container!”

      I wrote “what’s up with containers: Docker and rkt” a while ago. Since then I have learned a few new things about containers! We’re going to talk about running containers in production, not on your laptop for development, since I’m trying to understand how that works in September 2016. It’s worth noting that all this stuff is moving pretty fast right now.

      The concerns when you run containers in production are pretty different from running it on a laptop — I very happily use Docker on my laptop and I have no real concerns about it because I don’t care much if processes on my laptop crash like 0.5% of the time, and I haven’t seen any problems.

      Here are the things I’ve learned so far. I learned many of these things with @grepory who is the best. Basically I want to talk about what some of the things you need to think about are if you want to run containers, and what is involved in “just running a container” :)

    • Hot Startup Nets $5 Million to X-ray and Secure Software Containers
    • Anchore Gets $5M For Software Container Security
    • Anchore 1.0 Delivers Container-Based Compliance and Certification

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • LXQt Memory Usage On Par With LXDE, Lower Than Xfce

      LXQt developers have done a desktop memory consumption comparison to show that Qt programs are not necessarily bloated.

      The tests done by developer “PCMan” show that LXQt 0.11 uses a bit more memory than the GTK2-based LXDE while using less memory than the GTK2-based Xfce.

    • Benchmark: Memory Usage: LXQt desktop environment vs XFCE

      It has always been rumored that Qt is bloated so programs written in Qt should be bloated. Some even argued that the LXDE developers made a wrong decision on the migration to LXQt.
      Why not replace the assumptions with some experiments?
      In fact, LXQt 0.11 even uses slightly less memory than XFCE (with gtk+ 2). After cold boot, LXQt uses 112 MB in the testing environment.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Sysprof Plans for 3.24

        The 3.24 cycle is just getting started, and I have a few plans for Sysprof to give us a more polished profiling experience in Builder. The details can be found on the mailing list.

        In particular, I’d love to land support for visualizers. I expect this to happen soon, since there is just a little bit more to work through to make that viable. This will enable us to get a more holistic view of performance and allow us to drill into callgraphs during a certain problematic period of the profile.

      • GNOME From Scratch Project

        This morning i got an email from Rafael Tavares about his new project, GFS (GNOME From Scratch), a personal project that makes possible to use GNOME on Slackware GNU/Linux operating system without systemd or wayland programs. The GFS project will attempt to bring GNOME 3.22 to Slackware Linux. This is the latest version of GNOME available at this moment.

      • WebRTC in WebKit/WPE

        For some time I worked at Igalia to enable WebRTC on WebKitForWayland or WPE for the Raspberry Pi 2.

        The goal was to have the WebKit WebRTC tests working for a demo. My fellow Igalian Alex was working on the platform itself in WebKit and assisting with some tuning for the Pi on WebKit but the main work needed to be done in OpenWebRTC.

  • Distributions

    • Hardware Firewall: Choosing the Right Firewall Distribution

      Over the years I’ve bought some less than impressive consumer routers, so these days I run my own self-built hardware firewall appliance. Surprisingly, deciding on which option was best for my needs was not as easy as I had hoped.

      Building a hardware firewall requires you to decide on the hardware your firewall/router computer operating system will be installed on. Like myself, some people might use an old PC. Others might decide to install their selected firewall operating system onto a rack mount server. However one decides to do this, the completed act of installing this OS onto the dedicated hardware creates a dedicated hardware firewall.

      And unlike a software firewall, hardware firewalls serve a single dedicated purpose – to act as a gateway appliance for your network. Having had experience with three popular firewall operating systems in the past, I found that choosing the “right one” is a matter of perspective.

      In this article, I’m going to share my experience and overall impressions about those three different firewall solutions. Some of these are highly advanced while others are incredibly easy to use. Each of these solutions share something that I feel good about sharing with my readers. All of the firewalls are easily downloadable without any annoying sign-up pages (I’m looking at you, Sophos).

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • The October 2016 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine

        The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the October 2016 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.

      • Our warm thanks to a long time contributor and friend

        It is with a heavy heart that we address our warmest thanks to our friend Thomas Spuhler for his Mandriva and Mageia contributions over the last decade. After fighting colon cancer for over a year, he finally had to surrender on Saturday September 17, 2016, at the age of 68. He leaves behind his beloved wife, sons and grandchildren, to whom our thoughts go in this difficult time.

        Thomas had been contributing to Mageia, and Mandriva before that, since 2009 as a packager, and much earlier already partaking in email discussions and bug reports. His packaging interests were mostly web and server-related components, for which his contributions were invaluable. He had to step back from his Mageia responsibilities in early August due to his health condition.

    • Gentoo Family

      • GNUnet for Gentoo

        In summer 2015 I started to package GNUnet for Gentoo as contributor to the youbroketheinternet-overlay.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • AppData content ratings for games shipped in Fedora

          GNOME Software developer Richard Hughes recently e-mailed the Fedora developers mailing requesting Fedora package maintainers to update their AppData files to include age ratings using OARS.

        • Linaro Connect Las Vegas 2016

          I spent last week at Linaro Connect in Las Vegas. Nominally I was there for some discussions about Ion. The week ended up being fairly full of the gamut of ARM topics.

          IoT is still a top buzzword. Linaro announced the founding of the LITE (Linaro IoT and Embedded) group. The work that this group has done so far is mostly related to Cortex-M processors which don’t run Linux. This is a change of pace from a consortium that has exclusively focused on Linux. The Linux Foundation has done the same thing, given their focus on the Zephyr Project. I see this shift for three reasons: 1) vendors want an end-to-end solution and reduced fragmentation and Linaro/Linux Foundation provide a good forum to do this because 2) both Linaro and the Linux Foundation are very good at courting companies and engaging in ‘corporate hand holding’ through open source projects especially 3) when bootstrapping relatively new projects. This is not intended to be a negative, sometimes companies need to throw money at outside entities to inform them what needs to be done (even when internal employees are shouting the same thing). Corporate influence in open source can certainly be critiqued but I’m optimistic about that not being a problem for Linaro.

          Red Hat also announced its involvement in the LITE group. Red Hat’s interest aren’t in the RTOS Microcontroller space but the higher level gateway. All those IoT devices have to communicate somewhere and a centralized gateway makes it easier to manage those devices, especially for industrial use cases. Hearing the full-stack story of IoT was a good learning experience for me, as I mostly have my head in the kernel. Everyone seems to be learning everywhere and most of the work is brand new. The Zephyr project was talking about writing new IP stacks which should give you some idea of where these projects are right now.

        • How to debug Fedora rawhide compose problems
        • Fedora Linux’s DNF Package Manager Hits the 2.0 Milestone, Now in Fedora Rawhide

          On October 3, 2016, DNF developer Jan Šilhan proudly announced the release of the DNF 2.0.0 package manager for Fedora Rawhide, the development version of the Fedora Linux operating system.

          DNF 2.0.0 is a major update of the default package management system used in the Red Hat-based Fedora distribution, but it doesn’t look like it landed in the stable Fedora 25 version just yet, most probably because of the incompatibilities with the DNF 1.x series. Therefore, DNF 2.0.0 is now available in Fedora Rawhide.

        • HackMIT meets Fedora

          HackMIT is the annual hackathon event organized by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. HackMIT 2016 took place on September 17th and 18th, 2016. This year, the Fedora Project partnered with Red Hat as sponsors for the hackathon. Fedora Ambassadors Charles Profitt and Justin W. Flory attended to represent the project and help mentor top students from around the country in a weekend of learning and competitive hacking. Fedora engaged with a new audience of students from various universities across America and even the globe.

        • HackMIT meets Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • HPE Donates Hardware to Debian Project, GNOME Sans systemd

        The Debian project today announced the “in-kind” donation of several servers to “boost reliability of Debian’s core infrastructure.” The new hardware will be deployed in Canada, US, and Australia to replace some aging machines as well as expand core services and storage. In other news, a new project aims to provide GNOME 3.22 to Slackware without systemd or Wayland, right as a new ugly systemd bug gives another reason to avoid it. Mageia bid farewell to a lost friend and contributor today and Matt Hartley shared his picks for best firewall distribution.

      • Harden Debian with PIE and bindnow!

        Shipping Position Independent Executables and using read-only Global Offset Table was already possible for packages but needed package maintainers to opt-in for each package (see Hardening wiki) using the “pie” and “bindnow” Dpkg hardening flags.

        Many critical packages enabled the extra flags but there are still way more left out according to Lintian hardening-no-bindnow and hardening-no-pie warnings.

        Now we can change that. We can make those hardening flags the default for every package.

      • My Free Software Activities in September 2016

        Welcome to gambaru.de. Here is my monthly report that covers what I have been doing for Debian. If you’re interested in Android, Java, Games and LTS topics, this might be interesting for you.

      • Several donations boost reliability of Debian’s core infrastructure

        Over the last several months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), one of Debian’s primary hardware partners, has made several large in-kind donations in support of Debian core services. The donated equipment will be deployed in the data centers of multiple hosting partners in Canada, the United States, and Australia.

      • Gitano – Approaching Release – Work

        I have been working quite hard, along with my friend and colleague Richard Maw, on getting Gitano ready for a release suitable for inclusion into Debian Stretch.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • $39 network switching Pico-ITX SBC runs Linux on Cortex-A53

      Globalscale’s “EspressoBin” network switching Pico-ITX SBC offers Marvell’s dual-core, Cortex-A53 Armada 3720 SoC, plus 2x GbE, 1x WAN, SATA, and mini-PCIe.

      Globalscale Technologies and its hardware partner Marvell, which have previously collaborated on products such as the Armada 370 Mirabox, have joined forces on a Linux-fueled EspressoBin network switching single-board computer. The EspressoBin is based on a more powerful Marvell Armada SoC: a dual-core, Cortex-A53 Armada 3720 clocked to 1.2GHz.

    • Open IoT gateway SBCs run Linux on NXP QorIQ and i.mX6 SoCs

      ArgonBoards has launched two Linux-driven SBCs for IoT gateways: an i.MX6 SoloLite reference board and an open source QorIQ LS1021A SBC.

      India-based embedded manufacturer VVDN Technogies, which owns RadiumBoards, the makers of products such as the HD Camera Cape for the BeagleBone Black and MIPI Camera Board for the Wandboard, has also launched a single-board computer subsidiary. The ArgonBoards SBC division recently announced a $499, open source LS1021A Community Board and a $199 i.MX6SL IoT gateway reference board based on the SoloLite SoC, both running Linux. (VVDN is a member of NXP’s partner ecosystem.)

    • Dueling Arduinos reunite with new Arduino Foundation

      Arduino LLC and Arduino Srl have settled their legal disputes, and will reunify under an Arduino Holding company and a not-for-profit Arduino Foundation.

      At the World Maker Faire New York, the Arduino LLC (Arduino.cc) and Arduino Srl (Arduino.org) organizations announced they have signed a settlement agreement concerning the legal dispute that has, for the past two years, split the open source MCU-oriented Arduino hardware community in two. The forked entities will reunite before the end of the year under a new “Arduino Holding” company and not-for-profit “Arduino Foundation.” The identical announcements were posted at Arduino.cc and Arduino.org.

    • Two Arduinos become one (Arduino Blog)
    • Two Arduinos become one

      Arduino, the world’s leading open-source ecosystem for educators, Makers and IoT developers of all ages, today announced that Arduino LLC (aka Arduino.cc) and Arduino srl (aka Arduino.org) have settled their differences and signed a settlement agreement.

      Massimo Banzi and Federico Musto took the stage today at World Maker Faire New York to announce the good news.

      At the end of 2016, the newly created “Arduino Holding” will become the single point of contact for the wholesale distribution of all current and future products, and will continue to bring tremendous innovations to the market.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Create your own Tizen themes with the Tizen Theme Editor

          Tizen’s theme store is one of the main ways in which users can customize their Tizen smartphones. However, if you are not impressed by all the themes available in the store, then Samsung’s Tizen Theme Editor tool is just what you should be looking out for. This Windows desktop only program lest you create your Tizen themes. The theme editor doesn’t require you to have any programming knowledge as the process only involves clicks, drags and drops to get most of the work done.

        • Samsung and SoftBank discuss IoT cooperation

          Samsung Electronics Co. and Japanese internet and telecommunications conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. met recently to discuss how both companies could co-operate in the world of Technology as well as the Internet of Things (IoT) , according to sources. The meeting took place between Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, and SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son at the Samsung office in Seocho Ward.

          SoftBank made the news lately with its $32 billion deal to acquire ARM Holdings PLC, the UK based company that produces the microprocessors that power over 95% of the world’s smartphones. Both companies are known to want to increase their presence in the IoT sector and can complement each other in this regard.

      • Android

        • 3 Android phones that offer long battery life
        • ‘Andromeda’ will be Google’s NT

          If you were to design a client operating system with the goal of being used by two billion people, what would it look like?

          We might soon find out what Alphabet’s looks like. Today’s announcement’s from Alphabet’s Google is expected to reveal “Andromeda”, the merged Android/Chrome OS. Executives have been hyping today’s event as the most “significant” since the first Android device in 2008, and we already know they’re writing a new operating system from a clean slate. We can also have a good guess about what it looks like.

          Google’s goal for the successor is to unify the rival Chrome and Android platforms while providing a clean code base free of the Java legacy. Google’s big advantage here is that it now has a blank slate.

          After Google acquired Android in 2005, Sun Microsystems’ then CEO Jonathan Schwartz offered Google “congratulations on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform”. Android founder Andy Rubin had already figured Java worked, and seen how it decreased time to market, and how much developers liked it. (Anything was preferable to writing for Symbian, the dominant smartphone platform of the time.)

        • Full Google Pixel and Pixel XL specifications leaked by retailer

          Google just found out, the hard way, how difficult it can be to coordinate a major smartphone launch. Details about its first self-branded smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL, have been published by several retailers ahead of their official unveiling tomorrow.

          The most revealing leak comes from Carphone Warehouse. The British retailer put up, and quickly removed, product listings for the Pixel and Pixel XL. The listings confirm much of what we were anticipating thanks to older leaks, and add a handful of new details. A mirror of the Pixel XL is available here, thanks to Reddit user krackers.

        • Live from Google’s mega announcement: Pixel phones, Android updates, 4K Chromecast and more!

          Google is hosting a press event today in San Francisco… and if the rumors are true, it should be a doozy. We’ve heard whispers about everything from new phones, to new Chromecasts, to a new VR headset, to a complete rethinking of Android as we know it.

          You might’ve assumed we’d be at the event covering it live with up-to-the-second updates from the scene… and, well, you’d have assumed right.

          The event is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. Pacific, so tune in then. In fact, chances are good we’ll start warming up the ol’ liveblog a bit before then — so if you don’t want to miss anything, tune in early.

        • Xiaomi’s 4K Android TV box is now on sale in the U.S. for $69

          We told you last month that Xiaomi’s Android TV box would go on sale in the U.S. in October, and true to our word it has. The Chinese company is best known for its affordable smartphones, but today it launched a set-top box priced at $69 that looks like great value.

          Originally unveiled at Google I/O in May, the new Mi Box offers 4K video at 60 FPS and supports Dolby Digital Plus audio playback and HDR content. Xiaomi partnered with Google to integrate Google Cast and Google voice search while there are Android games and apps for the likes of Netflix, HBO, and Showtime alongside support for Sling TV, which itself brings TV shows without the need for cable.

        • The Mi Box is officially launching today for $69

          Google unveiled the Mi Box with Android TV way back in May at Google I/O. Then for months, nothing. We were starting to wonder if the device would ever come out when it began appearing on Walmart shelves last month. Now, the Mi Box is official. It’s going on sale today on Mi.com and at Walmart for $69.

          The Mi Box is one of only a few Android TV boxes that have been released. Google’s original Nexus TV was a flop, and the Razer Forge TV never even got support for Netflix (which is absolutely insane). The NVIDIA Shield has been the only Android TV box worth having, but it’s $200. The Mi Box includes many of the features of the SHIELD for a lot less cash.

        • Why Android Fans Are Feeling Anxious Ahead of Google’s Next Hardware Event

          Recently there has been some anxiety amongst Android enthusiasts who are frustrated by Google’s apparent disregard for consumer satisfaction.

          So what gives? A few days ago Google released a new mobile messaging app called Allo that seeks to insert some Amazon Echo-like smarts into a familiar chat interface. While the app appears to be doing well on the charts, some Android fans have criticized its mobile-only approach (it can’t be used on the desktop) and the fact that it can’t be used to talk to people using Hangouts, another Google messaging app.

        • Google has until October 31 to reply to EU’s Android antitrust charges [Ed: Google has until October 31 to reply to Microsoft’s Android antitrust charges; EU as a Microsoft proxy here]

          Alphabet’s Google has been given until the end of October, the fourth extension, to rebut EU antitrust charges that it uses its dominant Android mobile operating system to block competitors, the European Commission said on Monday.

          The Commission in April said the U.S. technology giant’s demand that mobile phone makers pre-install Google Search and the Google Chrome browser on their smartphones to access other Google apps harms consumers and competition.

          The EU watchdog had initially set a July 27 deadline for Google to respond to the charges. This had been extended three times at the company’s request, with the previous deadline Sept. 20.

          The new deadlines are Oct. 31 for the Android case and Oct. 26 and Oct. 13 for cases relating to online search advertising and shopping.

        • Why Google’s EU Android Probe Bears Close Watching [Ed: Why Google’s [Microsoft proxy attack via regulators against] Android Probe Bears Close Watching]
        • Nokia’s Android-powered return? New mid-range smartphone surfaces [Ed: Microsoft had ruined Nokia before this happened]

          Details have surfaced on a benchmarking site that suggest Nokia may have a new mid-range phone waiting in the wings.

          For Nokia, IoT tech is firmly in its future plans, while smartphones are out. But die-hard Nokia fans may still be able to get their hands on a Nokia smartphone thanks to a little-known Finnish firm called HMD, which has a license and $500m to design, make, and market Nokia-branded smartphones running Android.

          The licensing deal was signed in May, but HMD has yet to announce its first phone, leaving fans with little more than speculation about future launches.

        • iPhone 7 comes last in battery test against Android smartphones

          If you want a smartphone with a long battery life, then testing carried out by UK consumer magazine Which? suggests that you’re far better off going with an Android device from HTC, LG, or Samsung. In fact, when the new iPhone 7 was pitted against the HTC 10, LG G5 and the Samsung Galaxy S7, it came last in all the tests.

        • How to factory reset an Android phone
        • How to Recover Deleted Photos on Android
        • Everything you need to know about Android 7.1 Nougat and the Pixel Launcher
        • Google Maps Now Displays Google Calendar Events on Android
        • Alert: some cards losing Android Pay support October 14th
        • [Finally] Nexus 6 gets official Android 7.0 Nougat with October 5th security patch

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source for Business: Pros and Cons

    Open source software offers benefits like high quality and faster application development, but some businesses have concerns about support and security.

  • OSI Welcomes Powering Potential: Open Source Advocates Extending Education in Tanzania

    The Open Source Initiative® (OSI), the premiere organization working globally to champion open source in society through education, infrastructure and collaboration; announced today that Powering Potential has joined the OSI as an Affiliate Member.

    Powering Potential provides access to educational resources on solar-powered computers running open source software at schools in rural Tanzania. The technology initiative works to enhance education and stimulate imagination of students in Tanzania while respecting and incorporating values of the local culture.

    “The Board of Directors at the OSI is pleased to have Powering Potential as an OSI Affiliate Member,” said Patrick Masson, general manager and director at the Open Source Initiative. “Their work fully aligns with our mission to raise awareness and adoption of open source software, and as our first African Affiliate Member, build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.”

  • Riot Founder Describes Vision of Open Source Collaboration

    Initially built by developers for developers, Riot is free and open source software. It publishes all of the code on GitHub, where anyone can see, modify and run it.

  • Yahoo Open Sources Porn-Hunting Neural Network

    The artificial intelligence system is trained to automatically identify risque images using a probability scale between zero and one. Scores below 0.2 indicate the image is likely safe for all eyes. But those above 0.8 signal the high probability of a long chat with your boss if they spot your computer screen.

  • Yahoo is open sourcing its deep learning model to identify pornography
  • Avoiding quality assurance disasters with openQA

    OpenQA started in 2009 inside the openSUSE community and is now an integral part of the openSUSE ecosystem. It tests software the same way a human being does: Input is given by keyboard and mouse and results are recorded by comparing screenshots of the process to a set of predefined images. Just like a human tester, openQA detects failures and error messages by comparing what it sees with what it expects.

    The first step is the package submission to a new operating system (OS) build. OpenQA runs through a basic pre-build package set to detect basic issues very early. After building a new version of the OS in the Open Build Service, this ISO will be automatically recognized by openQA and validated. The next step is extended “post-validation” testing.

  • SOGo v3.2.0 released

    The Inverse team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of SOGo v3.2.0. This is a major release of SOGo which focuses on important new features and improved stability over previous versions.

  • Recent ownCloud Releases

    Even though we just had the nice and successful ownCloud Contributor Conference there have quite some ownCloud releases happened recently. I like to draw your attention to this for a moment, because some people seem to fail to see how active the ownCloud community actually is at the moment.

    There has been the big enterprise release 9.1 on September 20th, but that of course came along with community releases which are in the focus here.

    We had server release 8.0.15, server release 8.1.10, server release 8.2.8 and release 9.0.5. There are maintenance releases for the older major versions, needed to fix bugs on installations that still run on these older versions. We deliver them following this plan.

    The latest and greatest server release is release 9.1.1 that has all the hardening that also went into the enterprise releases.

    Aside a ton of bugfixes that you find listed in the changelog there have also been interesting changes which drive innovation. To pick just one example: The data fingerprint property. It enables the clients to detect if the server got a backup restored, and saves changes on the clients to conflict files if needed. This is a nice example of solutions which are based on feedback from enterprise customers community running ownCloud, who help with reporting problems and proposing solutions.

  • Evolving Your Open Source Project Infrastructure: There’s No Such Thing As Done

    When it comes to infrastructure for your open source project, you are never done, said Amye Scavarda, Gluster Community Lead at Red Hat, and Nigel Babu, Gluster CI/Automation Engineer at Red Hat. One theme during their LinuxCon Europe talk, “Making More Open: Creating Open Source Infrastructure for Your Open Source Project,” is that you can get closer to being done, but there is no such thing as “done” when it comes to infrastructure. Momentum is important – things are always moving, changing, and evolving. The work never ends as you figure out what can be left behind, what should be upgraded and how you can move into the future to incorporate new technologies.

    Amye and Nigel talked about how when you start an open source project, you tend to focus on shipping and releasing your code. You don’t necessarily worry too much about how you got there and what you did to get it shipped. In the early days of Gluster, almost everyone had root access to the build machine, since it was only a few people working closely together. Fast forward a few years now that Red Hat has acquired Gluster, and there are many people across a wide variety of time zones working on the project. How to manage communication across a large, growing open source project became a big challenge.

  • WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

    Walmart probably isn’t the first company that comes to mind when you think about open-source software (or the second or third, really), but WalmartLabs, Walmart’s innovation-focused tech division, has already launched a number of open-source projects into the wild. The most interesting of these so far was OneOps, its DevOps platform, but today it is launching a similarly ambitious project.

    Over the course of the last year, Walmart.com — a site that handles 80 million monthly visitors and offers 15 million items for sale — migrated to React and Node.js. In the process of this transition, the WalmartLabs team built Electrode, a React-based application platform to power Walmart.com. It’s now open sourcing this platform.

    Electrode provides developers with boilerplate code to build universal React apps that consist of a number of standalone modules that developers can choose to add more functionality to their Node apps. These include a tool for managing the configuration of Node.js apps, for example, as well as a React component that helps you render above-the-fold content faster.

  • Walmart Open Sources Key Infrastructure Tool That Runs its Site

  • Events

    • Linux Foundation Leader Jim Zemlin to Keynote Postgres Vision 2016

      The Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin will keynote Postgres Vision 2016, the international conference for technology and industry visionaries to explore the future of enterprise Postgres, open source, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Postgres Vision will be held October 11-13, 2016, at the iconic Innovation Hangar (iHangar) in the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla awards $300,000 to four open source projects

        Mozilla’s love of open source is nothing new — just look to the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) program. Loving a philosophy is one thing, but Mozilla has also put its money where its mouth is.

        In the third quarter of this year, MOSS awarded more than $300,000 to four projects which it either already supported, or which were aligned with the organization’s mission. One of the smallest awards — $56,000 — was made to Speech Rule Engine, a text-to-speech style component that makes mathematical and scientific content more accessible.

      • MOSS supports four more open source projects in Q3 2016 with $300k
      • Mozilla Funds a Series of Promising Open Source Projects

        You can always count on Mozilla for an interesting spin on open source. Last year, Mozilla launched the Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS) – an award program specifically focused on supporting open source and free software. As The VAR Guy notes: “The Mozilla Foundation has long injected money into the open source ecosystem through partnerships with other projects and grants. But it formalized that mission last year by launching MOSS, which originally focused on supporting open source projects that directly complement or help form the basis for Mozilla’s own products.”

        Now, the company has announced that In the third quarter of this year, MOSS awarded over $300,000 to four projects which it either already supported, or which were in line with the Mozilla mission.

      • Is Chrome faster than Firefox in Linux?

        The browser wars have been raging for many years now, and Linux users have often been on one side or the other. One Linux redditor recently noted that Chrome was much faster for him than Firefox, and a long discussion ensued with folks sharing their experiences with Chrome and Firefox.

  • Databases

    • What’s new in PostgreSQL 9.5

      Fedora 24 ships with PostgreSQL 9.5, a major upgrade from version 9.4 that is included in Fedora 23. The new version 9.5 provides several enhancements and new features, but also brings some compatibility changes, as it has been very common between PostgreSQL major versions. Note that in the PostgreSQL versioning scheme, 9.4 and 9.5 are two major versions, while the first number is mostly marketing and increments when major features are introduced in the release.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • NetBeans IDE 8.2 Download is available now

      NeatBeans doesn’t need an introduction but still who doesn’t know about NetBeans IDE then NetBeans IDE is an IDE(integrated development environment) that supports multiple programming languages like JAVA,HTML5,JAVAScript,C/C++,PHP etc. Well,It’s vastly used by many coders and developers for developing mobile,pc or web applications.
      NetBeans has a great set of pre-installed tools that makes coding and developing more convenient and easy on fingers.The GUI builder really makes the things easy on head when it comes to developing JAVA SE applications.

  • BSD

    • OpenBSD 6.0 – an exercise in precision

      The OpenBSD project is well known for its strong focus on security and for its precise documentation. The OpenBSD operating system generally gives preference to security and properly behaving software over features. OpenBSD is lightweight, sparse and relatively locked down by default. This makes the platform particularly popular among administrators who need a firewall or other minimal and stable platform.

      OpenBSD 6.0 introduces many small changes and a handful of important ones. Looking through the release notes we find support for the VAX platform has been dropped. There have been several security updates to the OpenSSH secure shell service. Perhaps one of the more interesting security features in the operating system is strict enforcement of W^X: “W^X is now strictly enforced by default; a program can only violate it if the executable is marked with PT_OPENBSD_WXNEEDED and is located on a file system mounted with the wxallowed mount option. Because there are still too many ports which violate W^X, the installer mounts the /usr/local file system with wxallowed. This allows the base system to be more secure as long as /usr/local is a separate file system. If you use no W^X violating programs, consider manually revoking that option.”

      I decided to play with the 64-bit x86 build of OpenBSD which is 226MB in size. Booting from this ISO presents us with a text console where we are asked if we would like to install OpenBSD, upgrade an existing copy of the operating system or perform an auto-install. I chose to perform a normal installation.

    • OpenBSD and NetBSD machines at Open Source Conference 2016 Nagaoka

      The Japan NetBSD Users’ Group and Echigo BSD Users Group members held booth at the Open Source Conference 2016 Nagaoka on Oct.1 2016…

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Licensing/Legal

    • GCC RISC-V Support Allegedly Held Up Due To University Lawyers

      While there has been talk about RISC-V architecture support in the GCC compiler and for LLVM too going back months, a developer is reporting that the GCC RISC-V support is being delayed due to UC Berkeley lawyers.

      Contributions to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) require a copyright assignment to the Free Software Foundation for this GPLv3-licensed compiler. It turns out the University of California Berkeley lawyers are taking issue with this, temporarily holding up the compiler back-end from merging.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • France is developing a free consultation platform for public authorities

      Etalab and the CNNum (Conseil National du Numérique, the National Digital Council) planned to collaborate with civil society members and the Open Government ecosystem in France to develop an consultation platform. The idea was presented during an Open Democracy Now Hackathon, which took place in Paris on September 17 and 18.

    • France to develop a toolbox for Open Government

      Etalab, the French government agency in charge of Open Data and Open Government, and the French authorities are currently working, in collaboration with other OGP members, on an Open Government toolkit.

      This is aimed at helping governments to implement Open Government principles in their countries. This OGP Toolkit is to be finalised for the OGP Paris Summit in December. Every OGP member will have access to the toolkit.

      “This toolkit is designed to facilitate the implementation of OGP commitments, by referencing the available solutions and documenting their uses”, Etalab said on its website.

      It is being developed to be “a database of digital tools and uses made of them by organisations and citizens all over the world”. Basically, “the aim of this catalogue is to increase the visibility of these tools and encourage their sharing and reuse”.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Rutgers libraries launch open source textbook program

        It’s no secret that textbooks are expensive, but Rutgers Libraries are giving students’ wallets a break with a new open source textbook program.

        “Hopefully going forward we will have more students who will not have to make the difficult decision of deciding whether or not to purchase a book for their class because of the cost,” said Lily Todorinova, undergraduate experience librarian and liaison to School of Communication and Information.

        The Rutgers libraries are working closely with the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group to launch the Open and Affordable Textbook Project for all Rutgers campuses — New Brunswick, Camden and Newark, she said.

Leftovers

  • 4chan is running out of money

    The infamous message board 4chan is struggling to stay afloat and will have to make changes to reduce costs, the site’s owner wrote in a post on Sunday. “4chan can’t afford infrastructure costs, network fee, servers cost, CDN and etc, now,” writes Hiroyuki Nisimura, who bought the site from its founder last year.

    Nisimura says ads haven’t been effective enough to support the site, nor have subscriptions offering additional features. “We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed,” Nisimura writes. “I am sincerely sorry.”

  • How to prevent coworker competition from ruining company culture

    Over the next few weeks, they would unknowingly be the subjects of one of the most widely known psychological studies of our time. And the ways these groups bonded and interacted with each other draw some interesting parallels to our understanding of workplace culture.

  • Man Gets Attacked Twice By Grizzly Bear, Films Video Of Himself Covered In Blood

    Todd Orr’s story isn’t for the faint of heart.

    The 50-year-old was enjoying a solo hike Saturday near Ennis, Montana, when he was attacked by a grizzly bear.

    Bitten and bleeding, Orr managed to start back down the trail toward his truck ― only to be attacked again by the same bear a few minutes later.

    The encounter left him mangled and drenched in blood, but alive.

    “Legs are good, internal organs are good, eyes are good,” Orr says in a graphic 50-second video that he filmed just after the second attack. “I just walked out three miles and now I’ve got to go to the hospital.”

  • Science

    • Uncovering Texas’ Strategy to Slash Much-Needed Special Education Services

      Federal law mandates that school districts provide special education services to students with disabilities–physical, emotional or developmental. But outside the public’s view, the state of Texas has decided that fewer students should get those services. It pressured school districts to meet an artificial benchmark of 8.5 percent, a rate far below that of any state, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation.

      The article, by Brian M. Rosenthal, documents how “unelected state officials have quietly devised a system that has kept thousands of disabled kids” out of special education.

      “We were basically told in a staff meeting that we needed to lower the number of kids in special ed at all costs,” one former teacher told Rosenthal. “It was all a numbers game.”

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Polish women strike over planned abortion ban

      Women wearing black clothes and waving black flags are demonstrating across Poland, boycotting their jobs and classes as part of a nationwide strike in protest against a new law that would in effect ban abortion.

      Many men also took part in demonstrations on the streets of Warsaw, Gdańsk and elsewhere across the largely Catholic nation.

      Thousands of people also protested on Saturday in front of the parliament in Warsaw. Women were wearing black in a sign of mourning for the feared loss of reproductive rights; they have also warned that some women will die if the proposal passes as it stands now.

      Poland already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, with terminations legally permitted only when there is severe foetal abnormality, when there is a grave threat to the health of the mother, or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

      But the new law would criminalise all terminations, with women punishable with up to five years in prison. Doctors found to have assisted with a termination would also be liable for prosecution and a prison term.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Monday
    • Impossible is impossible!

      Sometimes when you plan for a security event, it would be expected that the thing you’re doing will be making some outcome (something bad probably) impossible. The goal of the security group is to keep the bad guys out, or keep the data in, or keep the servers patched, or find all the security bugs in the code. One way to look at this is security is often in the business of preventing things from happening, such as making data exfiltration impossible. I’m here to tell you it’s impossible to make something impossible.

      As you think about that statement for a bit, let me explain what’s happening here, and how we’re going to tie this back to security, business needs, and some common sense. We’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule, one of the forms is that the last 20% of the features are 80% of the cost. It’s a bit more nuanced than that if you really think about it. If your goal is impossible it would be more accurate to say 1% of the features are 2000% of the cost. What’s really being described here is a curve that looks like this

    • What is the spc_t container type, and why didn’t we just run as unconfined_t?

      If you are on an SELinux system, and run docker with SELinux separation turned off, the containers will run with the spc_t type.

    • The importance of paying attention in building community trust

      Trust is important in any kind of interpersonal relationship. It’s inevitable that there will be cases where something you do will irritate or upset others, even if only to a small degree. Handling small cases well helps build trust that you will do the right thing in more significant cases, whereas ignoring things that seem fairly insignificant (or saying that you’ll do something about them and then failing to do so) suggests that you’ll also fail when there’s a major problem. Getting the small details right is a major part of creating the impression that you’ll deal with significant challenges in a responsible and considerate way.

      This isn’t limited to individual relationships. Something that distinguishes good customer service from bad customer service is getting the details right. There are many industries where significant failures happen infrequently, but minor ones happen a lot. Would you prefer to give your business to a company that handles those small details well (even if they’re not overly annoying) or one that just tells you to deal with them?

    • Why health implants should have open source code

      As medical implants become more common, sophisticated and versatile, understanding the code that runs them is vital. A pacemaker or insulin-releasing implant can be lifesaving, but they are also vulnerable not just to malicious attacks, but also to faulty code.

      For commercial reasons, companies have been reluctant to open up their code to researchers. But with lives at stake, we need to be allowed to take a peek under the hood.

      Over the past few years several researchers have revealed lethal vulnerabilities in the code that runs some medical implants. The late Barnaby Jack, for example, showed that pacemakers could be “hacked” to deliver lethal electric shocks. Jay Radcliffe demonstrated a way of wirelessly making an implanted insulin pump deliver a lethal dose of insulin.

      But “bugs” in the code are also an issue. Researcher Marie Moe recently discovered this first-hand, when her Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) unexpectedly went into “safe mode”. This caused her heart rate to drop by half, with drastic consequences.

    • Hack Crashes Linux Distros with 48 Characters of Code

      With just a mere 48 characters of code, Linux admin and SSLMate founder Andrew Ayer has figured out how to crash major Linux distributions by locally exploiting a flaw in systemd.

      Ayer said the following command, when run as any user, will crash systemd: “NOTIFY_SOCKET=/run/systemd/notify systemd-notify”

    • Systemd is not Magic Security Dust

      Systemd maintainer David Strauss has published a response to my blog post about systemd. The first part of his post is replete with ad hominem fallacies, strawmen, and factual errors. Ironically, in the same breath that he attacks me for not understanding the issues around threads and umasks, he betrays an ignorance of how the very project which he works on uses threads and umasks. This doesn’t deserve a response beyond what I’ve called out on Twitter.

      In the second part of his blog post, Strauss argues that systemd improves security by making it easy to apply hardening techniques to the network services which he calls the “keepers of data attackers want.” According to Strauss, I’m “fighting one of the most powerful tools we have to harden the front lines against the real attacks we see every day.” Although systemd does make it easy to restrict the privileges of services, Strauss vastly overstates the value of these features.

    • A single command needed to crash Linux server – expert
    • Bitcoin Linux Users Need To Beware of Critical Systemd Vulnerability
    • This Single Line Of Code Can Crash Your Linux System In No Time
    • 48 characters enough to crash most Linux distros, says sysadmin
    • ‘We’re From Microsoft and We’ve Been Remotely Watching Your Computer’

      We are going into our third year of living in the Gardens of Taylor. When you come off of the city street and onto this property, you can sometimes get a creepy feeling, like this is familiar in an unpleasant sort of way. It can feel like you’ve just stepped into Stepford Village. Every yard has been manicured to match the ones on either side of it. The edging along all driveways and sidewalks is a perfect two inches across and if a weed or mushroom happens to grow within that etched space, it is gone the next time you look for it.

      Stuff like that just vanishes. Spooky like.

      Fact is, the property manager pays the lawn service to make a drive through every other day in order to take care of any anomalies. Once I got used to it, I became comfortable with living here, being that it’s for people with physical disabilities and age 55 or over.

      On moving-in day, we hadn’t been there an hour before people began to take notice of us from across the street. They would stop just long enough to pretend they weren’t checking us out, then they would be on their way. Some even stopped to help.

      [...]

      Now Claude and Jane both run Linux. Their money is safe, and if anyone calls giving them instructions how to get a virus off of their Windows’ computer, they just laugh and hang up, but not before telling them they run Linux.

      There will come a day, maybe sooner than any of us think, when a scam like this might actually work on a Linux machine. In the past two years we’ve seen stories of Linux servers being compromised, and there is constant news that this or that piece of malicious code might be making its way to Linux computers soon.

      Being prudent, I run both Avast for day-to-day stuff and various Clam iterations for biweekly sweeps for rootkits. I exchange a lot of Windows stuff with my Reglue kids, so that’s only smart. Not that I expect anything to go south in the near future. Everything I’ve seen coming down the Linux pike demands hands-on the target computer to inject the badware.

      Here’s a Helios Helpful Hint: Don’t let someone you don’t know have access to your computer, sans the repair guy.

      However I do believe in preparedness. Jane’s Linux Mint install runs the same security as mine and I administrate it remotely (from home. I’ll get Claude up to speed on Wednesday.

      How long ago was it that many of us gave up on the “disconnected generation?” For a while I didn’t work with people who were so set in their ways that they bucked any suggestion of having to learn something new. And honest-to-goodness, a lady in the neighborhood asked me to make her computer the same way it was when she bought it. That would be the Windows Vista release. Sigh.

      “No ma’am. Not for any amount of money. Sorry.”

      I’m not into any more stress than necessary these days.

      Vista? Really?

    • Security Design: Stop Trying to Fix the User

      Every few years, a researcher replicates a security study by littering USB sticks around an organization’s grounds and waiting to see how many people pick them up and plug them in, causing the autorun function to install innocuous malware on their computers. These studies are great for making security professionals feel superior. The researchers get to demonstrate their security expertise and use the results as “teachable moments” for others. “If only everyone was more security aware and had more security training,” they say, “the Internet would be a much safer place.”

      Enough of that. The problem isn’t the users: it’s that we’ve designed our computer systems’ security so badly that we demand the user do all of these counterintuitive things. Why can’t users choose easy-to-remember passwords? Why can’t they click on links in emails with wild abandon? Why can’t they plug a USB stick into a computer without facing a myriad of viruses? Why are we trying to fix the user instead of solving the underlying security problem?

    • Security Design: Stop Trying to Fix the User [It says (scroll down) "Getting a virus simply by opening an email was an urban legend, a technically impossible but scary sounding thing to frighten normies with, as late as the 90s. ...Microsoft made that myth real with the first release of Outlook"]
    • A tiny PC as a router

      We needed a router and wifi access point in the office, and simultaneously both I and my co-worker Ivan needed such a thing at our respective homes. After some discussion, and after reading articles in Ars Technica about building PCs to act as routers, we decided to do just that.

      The PC solution seem to offer better performance, but this is actually not a major reason for us.

      We want to have systems we understand and can hack. A standard x86 PC running Debian sounds ideal to use.

      Why not a cheap commercial router? They tend to be opaque and mysterious, and can’t be managed with standard tooling such as Ansible. They may or may not have good security support. Also, they may or may not have sufficient functionality to be nice things, such as DNS for local machines, or the full power if iptables for firewalling.

      Why not OpenWRT? Some models of commercial routers are supported by OpenWRT. Finding good hardware that is also supported by OpenWRT is a task in itself, and not the kind of task especially I like to do. Even if one goes this route, the environment isn’t quite a standard Linux system, because of various hardware limitations. (OpenWRT is a worthy project, just not our preference.)

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Race and Militarism from Ferguson to Syria: A letter to African Americans

      “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life.” Ida B. Wells

      The Black radical tradition has always understood the inextricable link between racism and militarism: racism as a manifestation of white supremacist ideology, and militarism as the mechanism to enforce that ideology.

      That fundamental link grounds our analysis of the Obama administration’s policies in Iraq and Syria. But the link between race ( white supremacy) and the deployment of violence to enforce the interests of white supremacy also explains the repressive mission and role of the police in the colonized barrios and segregated African American communities within the U.S.

    • United Nations: Targeting Wikileaks Founder With Drone Strike Criminal Violation of Human Rights

      Targeting or “taking out” Wikileaks founder Julian Assange via military drone strike would be a criminal violation of international human rights laws, a United Nations envoy said Monday.

      “A State could theoretically seek to justify the use of drones by invoking the right to anticipatory self-defence against a non-state actor and by arguing that it had no means to capture their targets or cause another state to capture the target,” said Dr. Agnes Callamard, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions during an interview with True Pundit. “To do so, the State would have to demonstrate an ‘instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment of deliberation’ necessity. This is not only a very high threshold to meet; it is also impossible to see how this could be used or justified in the case of Mr. Julian Assange.”

      Dr. Callamard’s statements come on the heels of a scathing published account by True Pundit detailing that in 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly asked top aides if it was possible to use a drone strike against Assange. While Dr. Callamard said she had no knowledge of the assertions contained in the True Pundit story, she did speak to the alarming generalities of using a drone strike to silence someone of Assange’s global stature. Dr. Callamard stated “the use of drones for targeted killing outside the context of armed conflict, is almost never likely to be legal and to meet human rights law limitations on the use of lethal force.”

      Dr. Callamard, an expert on human rights and humanitarian work globally, in civil society organizations, the United Nations and in academia. Prior to her post at the UN, Dr. Callamard spent nine years as the Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, the international human rights organization promoting freedom of expression globally. Dr. Callamard also serves as director of Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression initiative.

    • Hillary Clinton considered drone attack on Julian Assange – report

      Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reportedly wanted to drone Wikileaks founder Julian Assange when she was secretary of state.

      According to True Pundit, Clinton and the state department were under pressure to silence Assange and Wikileaks in the months before the whistleblowing site released a massive dump of 250,000 diplomatic cables from 1966 up to 2010, dubbed CableGate.

      “Can’t we just drone this guy?” Clinton asked, according to unidentified state department sources.

      Published by True Pundit on Sunday, Wikileaks posted a link to the story on their official Twitter account on Monday, along with a screenshot of the article.

    • Hillary Clinton suggested taking out Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with drone: Report

      A new report reveals that an angry and frustrated Hillary Clinton once pondered obliterating Wikileaks’ Julian Assange with a drone strike.

      The shocking revelation comes as the Democratic presidential nominee and the party’s brain trust brace themselves for an “October Surprise” from Assange.

      Wikileaks has vowed to unleash a torrent of emails expected to be highly damaging to the former secretary of state — and her bid for the White House.

      The True Pundit says the U.S. government was tasked with neutralizing Assange. And Clinton was the point person.

      “Can’t we just drone this guy?” she pondered during one high-charged meeting, State Department sources reportedly told True Pundit. According to the website, others in the room laughed.

      But not Clinton, who called the Assange a “soft target.”

    • Pentagon Paid for Fake ‘Al Qaeda’ Videos

      The Pentagon gave a controversial U.K. PR firm over half a billion dollars to run a top secret propaganda program in Iraq, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal.

      Bell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee.

      The agency’s staff worked alongside high-ranking U.S. military officers in their Baghdad Camp Victory headquarters as the insurgency raged outside.

      Bell Pottinger’s former chairman Lord Tim Bell confirmed to the Sunday Times, which has worked with the Bureau on this story, that his firm had worked on a “covert” military operation “covered by various secrecy documents.”

    • CNN Celebrates Iraqi Housewife Who Beheaded and Then Cooked the Skulls of ISIS fighters

      When Islamic State beheads someone it is terrorism. When an Iraqi housewife beheads an ISIS fighter and cooks his skull, it is freedom. That is the CNN doctrine.

      CNN reports the story of 39-year-old Wahida Mohamed aka Um Hanadi, an Iraqi woman who supposedly leads a tribal militia force of around 70 men south of Mosul. She and her band allegedly helped “government forces” drive Islamic State out of a small town.

      “I began fighting the terrorists in 2004, working with Iraqi security forces and the coalition,” she told CNN. CNN cites no other source other than Um Hanadi herself and Facebook in its coverage.

      As a result, Um Hanadi said, she attracted the wrath of what eventually became al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which later morphed into ISIS. “I received threats from the top leadership of ISIS, including from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself,” she says. “I’m at the top of their most wanted list, even more than the [Iraqi] Prime Minister.”

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • It Seems Like Nobody’s Getting the Cash Bonuses Promised by the Reducing Over-Classification Act

      It often feels like everyone inside and outside the government agrees that over-classification of government records is a major problem. Yet a series of Freedom of Information Act requests by EFF has found that even when Congress allowed agencies to offer cash rewards to government employees to be less secretive, nobody has been collecting the money.

      Recognizing the threat posed by over-classification, Congress passed legislation in 2010 to counter the pervasive problem of bureaucrats making benign government records secret. One of the most highlighted provisions of the Reducing Over-Classification Act (ROCA) was a new tool for agencies: cash incentives for employees who accurately classify (and declassify) documents.

      Congress hoped that by offering a proverbial carrot to the line-level employees making initial and derivative classification decisions within federal agencies, it could increase transparency and allow greater information sharing between federal agencies and local law enforcement. Responses to EFF’s FOIA requests with 27 agencies demonstrates, however, that those carrots have rotted on the shelf.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Scientist: World won’t avoid dangerous warming mark

      A team of top scientists is telling world leaders to stop congratulating themselves on the Paris agreement to fight climate change because if more isn’t done, global temperatures will likely hit dangerous warming levels in about 35 years.

      Six scientists who were leaders in past international climate conferences joined with the Universal Ecological Fund in Argentina to release a brief report Thursday, saying that if even more cuts in heat-trapping gases aren’t agreed upon soon, the world will warm by another 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit by around 2050.

      That 1.8 degree mark is key because in 2009 world leaders agreed that they wanted to avoid warming of 3.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Temperatures have already risen about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, so that 2 degree goal is really about preventing a rise of another degree going forward.

      Examining the carbon pollution cuts and curbs promised by 190 nations in an agreement made in Paris last December, the scientists said it’s simply not enough.

    • [Older] 7 Popular Foods That Might Disappear Because of Climate Change

      Search is on for ancient or near-extinct crops that might be better suited for this new reality

      Throughout history, different types of food have surged and dropped in popularity, and some foods that existed at one point just aren’t around anymore. But we’re not talking about foods that aren’t popular, quite the opposite in fact. Some of our favorite foods and drinks could be considered “endangered” because the places where they are grown are being severely impacted by climate change. If this isn’t proof that we need to do something about climate change, I don’t know what is. To start off, here are a few foods that are part of our every lives that might not be around for long.

    • India ratifies Paris climate agreement

      India, one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, has ratified the Paris global climate agreement.

      Under the deal, India has committed to ensuring that at least 40% of its electricity will be generated from non-fossil sources by 2030.

      CO2 emissions are believed to be the driving force behind climate change.

      Last December in Paris, countries agreed to cut emissions in a bid to keep the global average rise in temperatures below 2C.

      The Paris deal is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement.

      It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries which between them produce at least 55% of global carbon emissions.

      Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced last month that India would ratify the agreement on 2 October, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the struggle for independence from Britain.

    • FMI: September warmer than usual for eighth year running

      According to the Finnish Meteorological Institute FMI, September’s balmy weather was caused by temperatures that were one to two degrees higher than usual across the country. Temperatures were particularly mild in northwest Lapland, where they were from two to four degrees higher than the norm.

      Last month’s highest temperature, 23.2 degrees Celsius was recorded at Kumpula in Helsinki on September 7. It was coolest in Naruska, Salla, in the northeast on September 18, when the mercury dropped to -5.3 degrees.

      The summery conditions persisted throughout the month, given that the last time daytime highs crossed the 20-degree mark was on the 15th and even as late as the 27th, highs passed 17 degrees as far north as Oulu.

      September marked the eighth year running that temperature records were higher than usual. Last year, the month that typically heralds autumn and the advent of decidedly cooler conditions was even warmer than this September. However according to FMI it’s still too early to make predictions about what the rest of the autumn will be like.

  • Finance

    • IMF cuts UK economic forecast for second time since Brexit vote

      The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for the UK economy next year for the second time since the Brexit vote.

    • Alyn Smith: Theresa May’s speech killed off lingering hope of salvaging something from the ruins of Brexit

      ANYONE who did not believe that the European Question is the defining attribute of politics in these islands is in no doubt after Sunday. Different people come to independence for different reasons. I’ve always been motivated by the difference Scotland could make in the world, and the difference we could make to the lives of Scots by taking control over our own lives and making decisions here.

      So Sunday was a stand-out awful day in what has been a pretty bleak few months, watching a Tory party we didn’t vote for making statements about how we’ll interact with the world, and presuming to make the decisions for us, to boot. And by any yardstick not giving one jot about the national interest, neither ours nor the UK’s. We have seen, clearly, that the UK Government’s first priority is the unity of the governing party itself.

      Party conferences can be awful things for outsiders. Part reunion, part beauty contest, part theatre and, somewhere among the open or crypto power-struggles, some business might actually get done. But, much as it pains me, this Tory conference matters, and isn’t just the usual theatre because it is the first glimpse of a carefully constructed facade put forward by the people who seek to make decisions over our lives and the lives of future generations. And it isn’t pretty. I was actually more hopeful. I still had some hope that the canny Remain-voting new PM was keeping her powder dry while the UK civil service worked on a clever fix. But even I have to admit now that the extremists are in charge.

    • Petition: make the FBI explain why they didn’t bring criminal charges against bank execs

      Last month, Senator Elizabeth Warren published an open letter to FBI director James Comey observing that, in revealing details of its investigation into the Clinton email scandal, the Bureau had seemingly abandoned its longstanding policy of not sharing its deliberations, meaning that there was no longer any reason to keep secret its reasoning for not bringing criminal charges against the bankers who did trillions of dollars’ worth of damage to the world economy, sparking wars, starvation, and personal ruin for millions of people.

    • Saudi Arabia switches to ‘Western’ Gregorian calendar so it can pay workers less and save money

      Saudi Arabia has switched to the “Western” Gregorian calendar to pay its civil servants in one of a number of financial reforms announced by the Council of Ministers.

      The Kingdom has used the lunar-based Hijri calendar since it was founded in 1932, but switched to the solar-based Gregorian calendar for paying public sector staff on 1 October.

    • Robert Reich: Why it’s time to start considering a universal basic income

      Imagine a little gadget called an i-Everything. You can’t get it yet, but if technology keeps moving as fast as it is now, the i-Everything will be with us before you know it.

      A combination of intelligent computing, 3-D manufacturing, big data crunching, and advanced bio-technology, this little machine will be able to do everything you want and give you everything you need.

      There’s only one hitch. As the economy is now organized, no one will be able to buy it, because there won’t be any paying jobs left. You see, the i-Everything will do … everything.

      We’re heading toward the i-Everything far quicker than most people realize. Even now, we’re producing more and more with fewer and fewer people.

      Internet sales are on the way to replacing millions of retail workers. Diagnostic apps will be replacing hundreds of thousands of health-care workers. Self-driving cars and trucks will replace 5 million drivers.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Clinton manager ‘reticent to comment’ on report about droning Assange

      Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager declined Monday to comment on recent reports alleging the Democratic nominee once suggested sending a drone strike after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

      “I’m reticent to comment on anything that the WikiLeaks people have said. They’ve made a lot of accusations in the past,” Robby Mook said Monday in an interview with WTTG.com.

      WikiLeaks tweeted a screen grab Sunday evening from a report alleging that Clinton once asked during a State Department briefing, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”

      She supposedly asked this when she served as secretary of state.

    • Biden: Trump ‘completely uninformed’ on veterans and PTSD

      Vice President Joe Biden chastised Donald Trump Monday for his comments about veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), calling the GOP presidential nominee “thoroughly and completely uninformed.”

      Many have interpreted remarks Trump made Monday about veterans and PTSD as a slight, though the campaign insists his comments were misrepresented by the media.

      “Where in the hell is he from?” Biden asked at a campaign stop for Hillary Clinton in Sarasota, Fla.

      “I don’t think he was trying to be mean. He is just so thoroughly, completely uninformed.”

      Biden, who said he has been “in and out” of Afghanistan and Iraq more than 29 times, said the U.S. has only one sacred obligation and that is to “care for those we send to war and to care for them and their family when they come home.”

      “What are the chances Trump honors commitment to those who are wounded?

      “It’s not just that he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t want to find out,” Biden added.

    • The New York Times and Trump’s Taxes: Another Marker on the End of Journalism

      I don’t support Trump. I don’t support Clinton. But what I really don’t support is shoddy journalism, and that’s what is all awhirl regarding the leak of three pages of Trumps’ federal tax return from 21 years ago.

    • More Media B.S. — OMG, Trump Company Legally Rented Office Space to Iranian Bank!

      Once again a story that Trump did nothing illegal is somehow front page news. His crime this time? Continuing to legally rent out office space to a bank already in a building he bought 18 years ago.

      So the big news is that Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented space to an Iranian bank later linked to Iran’s nuclear program.

      Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, was already a tenant in 1998 when Trump purchased the General Motors Building, above, in Manhattan, but he kept them on for another five years, until 2003.

    • Ron Paul criticizes Gary Johnson, praises Jill Stein
    • Third-Party Voters Know What They Want

      On Tuesday night, two men who want to be vice president will face off in a debate. If Bill Weld had his way, he’d be up on that stage, too.

      Mr. Weld, who served as governor of Massachusetts in the 1990s, is running as the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential pick this year, alongside Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. Last week, Mr. Weld spoke to students and supporters at Temple University in Philadelphia. Outside Morgan Hall, two students wearing Gary Johnson shirts directed people to the event.

      A group of young white men wearing baseball caps walked past, saw the Gary Johnson shirts, and jeered: “What’s Aleppo?”

      One of Mr. Johnson’s supporters, Alex Pack, rolled his eyes. Were those guys Trump supporters?

      “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Backward hats.”

    • Here Are 7 Questions Mike Pence Should Be Asked at the Vice Presidential Debate

      When Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine take the stage Tuesday night for the 2016 vice presidential debate, there are a few things we hope that debate moderator Elaine Quijano of CBS News will ask Pence to account for.

      While promoted as the sane member of a GOP ticket headed by the likes of Donald Trump, Pence, who is governor of Indiana, uses a demeanor of reasonableness to offset some mighty extreme views on the role of women, climate change, creationism and Social Security, to name a few. The vice presidential candidates meet only once before a national television audience, so this forum will likely be an introduction of these candidates to most voters.

      Kaine, the U.S. senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, is pretty much your basic liberal; not much by way of surprise in his background. But Pence, a convert to hard-core right-wing Protestant evangelicalism, embraces a range of positions far afield of the views of mainstream voters—views he doesn’t flaunt on the campaign trail. He’s a favorite of donors to the Koch network, as well as Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, the ground-organizing group founded by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers at the helm of Koch Industries. (According to Follow the Money, David Koch has spent some $300,000 on Pence’s political campaigns.) Pence has also enjoyed the largess of Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary firm once known as Blackwater (since renamed Academi), from whom he received thousands of dollars in donations for his congressional campaigns.

      If voters are to know what they’re getting when they pull the lever on November 8, Quijano will need to dig deep into Pence’s record. Here a few topics that would prove most enlightening to the electorate.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Fair Processes, Better Outcomes

      Yesterday we exposed the dangers of Shadow Regulation; the secretive web of backroom agreements between companies that seeks to control our behavior online, often driven by governments as a shortcut and less accountable alternative to regulation.

    • Record Labels Make New Grab For Website-Blocking Power in YouTube-MP3 Suit

      Once again, major record labels are asking a court to give them power over the Internet’s basic infrastructure. This is the very power that Congress has refused to give them, and the very power they have proven unable and unwilling to use responsibly. This time, their alleged target is the website Youtube-MP3.org, a site that extracts the audio tracks from YouTube videos and allows users to download them. But as in other recent lawsuits, the labels’ real target appears to be nearly every company that operates or supports the operation of the Internet. The labels are seeking a court order that would bind all of these companies to assist the labels in making Youtube-MP3 disappear from the Internet.

      Even if that website is found to be liable for copyright infringement, the law doesn’t give copyright or trademark holders such sweeping power to edit the Internet. And it never should.

      Record labels have been filing many lawsuits against websites that they deem to be connected to copyright infringement. These sites, run from outside the U.S., don’t bother appearing in U.S. court to defend themselves—and the labels know this. When one party doesn’t show up to court and the other wins by default, judges often grant the winning party everything they ask for. Record labels, along with luxury brands and other frequent filers of copyright and trademark suits, have been using this tactic to write sweeping orders that claim to bind every kind of Internet intermediary: hosting providers, DNS registrars and registries, CDNs, Internet service providers, and more. Some of these requested orders claim to cover payment providers, search engines, and even Web browsers. Judges often sign these orders without much scrutiny.

      Then, the labels and brands, armed with an overbroad and often, in our view, legally invalid order they wrote themselves, try to force Internet intermediaries into helping make the website disappear, and sometimes to filter their services to keep the website from coming back. The central defect of these orders is that they purport to bind third-parties who have no notice or opportunity to challenge them before they issue. Some intermediaries, faced with these orders, cut off websites without asking questions. Others, including Automattic (WordPress), CloudFlare, and the domain name registrar Tucows, have stood up for Internet users by insisting on proper, legally binding orders. A group of major Internet companies including Google, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Yahoo! also pushed back against this abuse in an amicus brief last year.

    • Singapore Jails Teen Blogger for Videos Critical of Islam, Christianity

      Amos Yee, 17, a blogger from Singapore, has been sentenced to six weeks in prison, plus a fine of $1,500 U.S., because he “deliberately elected to do harm by using offensive and insulting words and profane gestures to hurt the feelings of Christians and Muslims.”

      Such was the pronouncement of district judge Ong Hian Sun, according to CNN, which reports Yee was facing six charges of “wounding religious feeling” with his social media posts — he has a preference for YouTube rants. He was also slapped with two charges of failing to report to the police station when summoned.

    • Microsoft Bing Debuts New DMCA Notice Dashboard

      Microsoft’s Bing has just debuted a new system which allows any copyright holder to submit and monitor the status of their DMCA complaints to the search engine. At the center of the tool is a brand new dashboard, available to anyone with a Microsoft account.

    • Cox Wants Music Group to Pay for False Copyright Claims.

      Internet provider Cox Communications is demanding over $100,000 in compensation from Round Hill Music, for the legal fees it incurred based on false copyright claims. The music group sued Cox last year over alleged infringements committed by the ISP’s subscribers, without actually owning any of the copyrights in question.

    • DOJ To Anti-Muslim Troll Pam Geller: You’re Suing The Wrong Entity, Genius

      There simply aren’t enough derogatives in the dictionary to apply to Pam Geller’s lawsuit against the DOJ for its “enforcement” of Section 230. Geller doesn’t appear to know what she’s doing, much less who she’s suing. Her blog posts portray her lawsuit against the DOJ as being against Facebook. Facebook has earned the ire of Geller by enforcing its terms of use — rules Geller clearly disagrees with.

      Somehow, Geller has managed to construe the actions of a private platform as government infringement on her First Amendment rights. The connective tissue in her litigious conspiracy theory is Section 230 — the statute that protects service providers from being sued for the actions of their users.

      Considering Geller’s fondness for posting inflammatory content, you’d think the last thing she’d want to attack is Section 230. A successful dismantling of this important protection would mean Geller would be even less welcome on any social media platform.

      But the burning stupidity propelling Geller’s white-hot hazardous waste dump of a lawsuit knows no bounds. Somehow, actual lawyers — working in concert with Geller — came up with this breathtakingly wrong interpretation of Section 230.

    • Students, alumni, faculty ‘ban together’ against censorship

      In a small room in the back of Wicker Park’s Davenport Piano Bar Sept. 26, performers, including Columbia students and alumni, squeezed onto the small stage to act out 14 scenes with censored content previously deemed unworthy for theater.

      The censored content performed at the bar, 1383 N. Milwaukee Ave., is part of “Banned Together: A Censorship Cabaret” and was chosen after being challenged or banned by schools and organizations in the past. “A Censorship Cabaret” was organized by the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization created by the Dramatists Guild to advocate freedom of expression in theater.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • After Appeals Court Flip-Flop, Aaron Graham Asks Supreme Court To Examine Warrantless Access To Cell Location Info

      Aaron Graham — the defendant at the center of a Fourth Amendment dispute over the warrantless acquisition of cell site location info — is hoping to get one more court to take a look at his case.

      Last summer, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals became the first appeals court to institute a warrant requirement for historical CSLI. As was noted then, the court found that the records generated by cell phones (and held by phone companies) had an expectation of privacy — at least when obtained for a significant period of time. In Graham’s case, the government obtained 221 days of historical cell site location data — the sort of extended period the Appeals Court found troubling… originally.

      The government appealed and attempted to differentiate its long-term, post-facto tracking of Graham’s movements with eight months of CSLI from the Supreme Court’s Jones decision — which (sort of) found that deploying a surreptitious GPS tracker required the use of a warrant. It claimed this form of location tracking was completely different than the other form of location tracking, mainly because in Graham’s case the tracking was done by the phone company. The government simply benefitted from the warrantless collection of records the phone company was already compiling.

      The court bought the government’s arguments the second time around. The short-lived warrant requirement was removed and the 1979 definition of the Third Party Doctrine (Smith v. Maryland) was reinstated. The dissent correctly pointed out that no cell phone user voluntarily turns over location data to service providers. It’s just something that has to happen for phones to make calls or access data. It also pointed out that, unlike other third-party records, customers aren’t allowed to access their own cell site location data. Only the phone company and the government can do that, even though it’s the customer generating the records and paying for their collection and storage.

    • Victory! Gov. Brown Signs Bill to Overhaul California’s Broken Gang Databases

      Over the last few weeks, a broad coalition of civil liberties and social justice organizations rained down letters, tweets, and op-eds on Gov. Jerry Brown, urging him to sign A.B. 2298, a bill to begin the process of overhauling the state’s CalGang gang affiliation database.

      On Wednesday, it all paid off.

      Gov. Brown signed the legislation, creating a requirement that law enforcement inform a person before they add them to a shared gang database such as CalGang. The new law also gives the person the opportunity to challenge their inclusion in a gang database in court. Starting in January 2018, law enforcement agencies will be required to produce detailed transparency reports on each of their shared gang databases.

    • Trump calls for U.S. to use offensive cyberweapons

      The U.S. government needs to be ready to use its offensive cyberweapons in response to attacks from other nations, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Monday.

      The U.S. has significant offensive cybercapabilities, but it has been shy about deploying them, Trump said during a speech in Herdon, Virginia. “This is the warfare of the future,” he said.

      The U.S. should also increase its use of cyberweapons to attack terrorists, Trump said.

      President Barack Obama has failed to protect the nation’s cybersecurity and a new focus is needed, added Trump, who has largely avoided technology issues in his campaign.

    • Trump Calls For ‘Crippling’ Cyberwar Attack Capabilities

      Donald Trump has made no secret of his “bomb the s&*$t out of them” approach to foreign conflict. But when it comes to America’s digital security, his prescriptions have mostly been limited to vague calls to “get tough on cyber” and invitations to Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s email. Today, however, Trump got a bit more specific about the digital security postures he would favor as president—and set a new benchmark for a hawkish approach the online world.

      “As a deterrent against attacks on our critical resources the United States must possess…the unquestioned capacity to launch crippling cyber counter attacks,” Trump told the crowd at a Retired American Warriors town hall in Virginia today. “I mean crippling. Crippling.”

    • Facebook eyeing data centre in Odense

      There is strong evidence that the US social media colossus Facebook is keen on setting up shop in Denmark by erecting a massive 184,000 sqm data centre near Odense.

      According to Fyens Stiftstidende newspaper, Facebook wants to build three large server halls and a number of other buildings in the business area of Tietgenbyen, located just south of Odense.

      Facebook, meanwhile, has not yet revealed any of its hands, although it has conceded it is interested in the Odense site.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The Playpen Story: Rule 41 and Global Hacking Warrants

      The warrant the FBI used in the Playpen investigation—which resulted in the delivery of malware to over a thousand computers, located around the world—violated Rule 41, an important rule of federal criminal procedure. Although Rule 41 may seem obscure, it plays a vital role in limiting when federal law enforcement agencies can conduct lawful searches and seizures.

    • This November, Know Your Voting Rights

      When voters go to the polls this November, they will encounter a patchwork of different laws and policies, many of them new since the 2012 presidential election — on everything from new voter registration deadlines to new identification requirements at the polls.

      Since the last presidential election, 17 states have sought to implement new barriers to voting — including states like Alabama, Kansas, and Texas — with new ID requirements, disproportionately affecting minorities and low-income communities. As discussed below, some but not all of these laws have been blocked thanks to litigation by the ACLU and other organizations.

    • In Syracuse, A Child Can Be Thrown in Solitary for Singing Whitney Houston

      A NYCLU lawsuit exposes a nightmarish jail where children are kept for months in isolation for minor misbehavior.

      Charnasha still suffers through sleepless nights because of her experience at the Onondaga County Justice Center.

      The Syracuse, New York, jail keeps 16- and 17-year-old children — many of whom have mental illness — locked up in solitary, often for weeks or even months for transgressions as insignificant as wearing the wrong shoes or getting into a water fight. For the benign “offense” of speaking too loudly, Charnasha was sentenced to solitary for 32 days.

      Young girls in solitary at the Justice Center are watched by adult male guards and forced to shower without a curtain. Charnasha described a guard making comments about her naked body and calling her and other girls “little bitches.” Her experience in solitary was so traumatic that Charnasha wrote a letter to her mom telling her she wanted to end her life.

      “I felt uncomfortable and exposed. I still can’t sleep at night because of the nightmares,” Charnasha said. “No other kids should be allowed to go through what we went through.”

      Since 2015, at least 86 children were placed in solitary more than 250 times at the Onondaga County Justice Center.

    • ‘Air passengers are treated like cash cows’: Fury over Government’s plan to let travellers pay £17.50 to beat queues at airport security

      Passengers are to be charged up to up to £17.50 for the chance to jump lengthy queues at airport passport control points.

      Ministers have confirmed they are ‘working closely’ with airports across the country to extend a scheme that allows travellers to pay a premium to avoid delays at border security when they arrive in the UK.

      The ‘fast-track’ fees would be aimed at easing congestion at passport desks, which has soared to unprecedented levels at some airports.

    • Grooming gang leader loses appeal after claiming all-white jury was part of anti-Islam conspiracy

      A paedophile who led a child a child sex grooming ring in Rochdale tried – and failed – to overturn his convictions with a European court claiming an all-white jury was part of a conspiracy to scapegoat Muslims.

      Shabir Ahmed wrote to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) claiming his convictions for child sex offences were part of anti-Islam witch hunt.

      The 63-year-old attempted to use human rights laws to argue his criminal convictions were unsafe and unfair, but failed.

      Ahmed is in Wakefield prison having being caged in 2012 and given a 19-year sentence.

      European Court of Human Rights papers show he claimed the all-white jury at his trial was biased.

      He desperately claimed that breached Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees a fair trial.

    • Hadi: Only Islam can rule, others must be ‘pak turut’

      As various opposition parties begin to corral against BN, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang said those who want to court them must be mindful that only “Islam” can rule the country.

      “Islam has to be the leader and ruler, those who are not of Islam must be followers (pak turut).

      “Let’s not place religion and politics in separate corners,” he was reported saying in Sinar Harian today.

      “Don’t ask PAS to cooperate with you, when you will not make any change towards (prioritising) Islam, that is wrong.

      “As long as the power of Islamic governance isn’t upheld, then those who rule would not care about sin and reward, would rob the people’s wealth and so on.

      “Only Islam can correct people’s (behaviour). PAS can only cooperate with those who are willing to uphold Islam only,” he was reported saying at an event in Kemaman last Thursday night, at the launch of the Harapan Semua (Harap) gathering attended by roughly 1,500.

    • Extremist Imam Tests F.B.I. and the Limits of the Law

      For more than a decade, Suleiman Anwar Bengharsa has served as a Muslim cleric in Maryland, working as a prison chaplain and as an imam at mosques in Annapolis and outside Baltimore. He gave a two-week course in 2011 on Islamic teachings on marriage at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, where President Obama made a much-publicized visit this year.

      But in the last two years, Imam Bengharsa’s public pronouncements have taken a dark turn. On Facebook, he has openly endorsed the Islamic State, posted gruesome videos showing ISIS fighters beheading and burning alive their enemies and praised terrorist attacks overseas. The “Islamic Jurisprudence Center” website he set up last year has condemned American mosques as un-Islamic and declared that homosexual acts should be punished by death.

    • Are students in Detroit being denied their right to literacy? Lawsuit filed against state officials in Michigan says yes

      This month, a unique lawsuit was filed in Michigan against Gov. Rick Snyder and numerous state education officials, claiming that students in Detroit are being denied their constitutional right to literacy. The 133-page complaint, filed by the pro-bono Los Angeles-based firm Public Counsel, is attempting to gain class action status.

      The lawsuit highlights poor conditions in Michigan schools, like classrooms so hot teachers and students literally vomit, vermin in schools, outdated and limited books, an overall lack of teachers, and much more. Detroit’s school districts have some of the lowest performing schools in the country.

      “In one elementary school, the playground slide has jagged edges, causing students to tear their clothing and gash their skin, and students frequently find bullets, used condoms, sex toys, and dead vermin around the playground equipment,” the lawsuit reads.

      The lawsuit is attempting to build off of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education, and assert that students have a right to literacy under the Fourteenth Amendment. That may sound like a heavy lift, but many legal scholars not involved in the case believe the case could be successful and historic.

    • Federal Court Says Ballot Selfie Ban Is Like Burning Down the House to Roast a Pig

      In First Amendment victory, the court unanimously struck down New Hampshire’s law banning “ballot selfies.”

      In a victory for the First Amendment, a federal appeals court unanimously struck down New Hampshire’s law banning “ballot selfies.”

    • Keith Lamont Scott’s Disability May Have Gotten Him Killed, and He’s Not The Only One

      Last week in Charlotte, North Carolina, police shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, a Black man with a disability. This happens with gut-wrenching frequency. It happened again this week in El Cajon, California, where police shot and killed Alfred Olango, a Black man with mental illness. Yet disability is often overlooked as a factor in police killings and use of force.

      A recent widely cited report on the issue estimates that up to one half of all use of force incidents involve individuals with disabilities, noting that “[d]isability is the missing word in media coverage of police misuse of force.” People with mental disabilities, especially people of color, are particularly at risk of being shot or beaten by the police.

      Mr. Scott’s horrific killing, captured on video, is far too typical. Just before police shot and killed Mr. Scott while he was sitting in his car, his wife shouted, “He has a TBI. He’s not going to do anything to you guys. He just took his medicine.”

      A “TBI” is a traumatic brain injury, and it’s a term widely known within law enforcement and other emergency service providers. As with a number of disabilities in the U.S., African-Americans are more likely to have a TBI. People with brain injuries experience problems in cognitive skills and typically think, speak, and process information more slowly than other people. A person with a traumatic brain injury easily becomes confused with sudden changes in their environment and may not be able to immediately understand and comply with police commands.

    • John Oliver Takes On Police Accountability And The Colossally-Stupid ‘Bad Apple’ Defense

      And that’s exactly what has happened. Officers — sheltered by extra rights, less-than-strenuous internal investigations, policies that allow for the destruction of discipline records, civil immunity, revolving door policies that allow “bad apples” to infect new law enforcement agencies — basically answer to no one.

      In rare, rare cases, police officers have been convicted and jailed. But this is usually the end result of outside pressure or behavior so repulsive and toxic the agency housing the officer can’t bring itself to defend them.

      As Oliver points out, when officers are caught committing criminal acts, they’re often given the option to resign rather than face an investigation. In other cases, they’re swiftly cleared of serious charges and allowed to desk job their way back into their old positions.

      Until recently, the DOJ and FBI expressed zero interest in compiling data on police use of force — to say nothing about regular, non-deadly police misconduct. Years of neglect have resulted in a data gap, with private citizens picking up the government’s slack to produce more credible numbers about civilians killed by law enforcement officers.

    • Yes, Police Are Snooping Through Criminal Databases For Personal Reasons All The Time

      The more journalists and other FOIA enthusiasts gain access to public records, the more we discover that a combination of access and power tends to result in abuse. Even as this abuse goes unaddressed, law enforcement agencies are striving to add more personal information to their databases, extending far past the usual “name/last known location” to encompass a vast array of biometric data.

      Privacy watchdogs have been fighting against these for good reason: very little is known about the contents of these databases or the controls put in place to protect the info from inappropriate access. What is known is that these databases are misused by law enforcement officers routinely. What’s also been discovered is that this routine misuse is rarely ever punished to the extent the law allows. Warnings about possible jail time are meaningless when the usual punishment usually ranges from nothing at all to short suspensions.

      The Associated Press has obtained another pile of documents from public records request that show little has changed. Abuse of access is still a common occurrence, as is the lack of meaningful consequences. There’s no almost no oversight and no federal law enforcement body holding agencies accountable for misuse of databases under their control.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • EFF Asks Court To Block The DOJ From Prosecuting Researcher For DMCA Violations

        A few more wrinkles have appeared in the EFF’s attempted legal destruction of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause. Back in July, the EFF — along with researchers Bunny Huang and Matthew Green — sued the government, challenging the constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA. As it stands now, researchers are restricted by the limitations built into the anti-circumvention clause. The Library of Congress can grant exceptions, but these are only temporary, lasting three years and generally vanishing at the end of that term.

        Projects and research efforts continue to be thwarted by this provision, opening up those who circumvent DRM and other protective measures to the possibility of prosecution. And their options when facing charges are severely limited. There is no “fair use” exception to Section 1201 of the DMCA — something the EFF would like to see changed.

        The threat of prosecution may be mostly existential, but it’s still far from nonexistent. This is why the EFF has requested a preliminary injunction that would prevent the DOJ from trying to put its client in jail.

      • MPAA Applauds Derailment of FCC Cable Box Competition Plan Because, Uh, Jobs!

        Last week we noted how the FCC had to scrap its plan to bring competition to the cable box after an unprecedented PR and disinformation campaign by the cable and entertainment industries. In short, using consultants, think tanks, payrolled politicians, a soundwall of misleading editorials and even the US Copyright Office, the cable industry was able to convince many in the press, public and even at the FCC that the plan would have ripped the planet off its very orbital access, violated copyright, eroded consumer privacy, and even harmed diversity programming.

        [...]

        Except the FCC’s proposal wouldn’t hurt jobs in the slightest. Under the FCC’s plan, customers still would pay for cable, they’d just have more flexibility in how that programming is consumed. And if anything, you’d see more jobs as the cable hardware itself was opened to multiple hardware competitors and streaming vendors looking to make headway in the space. But just like their previous whining session on this subject, the MPAA can’t just admit it’s terrified of evolution and consumer empowerment, so it apparently has to conflate “copyright” with a loss of control.

        Meanwhile, while many media outlets continue to insist this plan is simply on hold, there’s really only two likely outcomes moving forward thanks to cable lobbyists, the US Copyright Office, and folks like the MPAA: either the plan gets scrapped entirely, or the end result winds up being so watered down as to be utterly useless.

      • European Allows Copyright Owners to Demand Open Wifi Networks be Password Protected

        The European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently announced its decision in Sony v McFadden with important consequences for open wireless in the European Union. The court held that providers of open wifi are not liable for copyright violations committed by others, but can be ordered to prevent further infringements by restricting access to registered users with passwords. EFF reported on the legal aspects of the case last year and collaborated on an open letter to the ECJ on the costs to economic growth, safety and innovation of a password lockdown.

        Free wifi is rare in Germany compared with other EU countries due to legal uncertainty generated by the doctrine of Störerhaftung, a form of indirect liability for the actions of others, which has deterred cafes, municipalities and others from offering free connectivity. Many in Germany hoped that the McFadden case would remove these doubts, but it is now clear that a legislative fix is needed instead.

      • Will the European Commission’s copyright rules spell destruction for Wikimedia?

        The European Commission’s Copyright Directive – full of bad ideas, or full of the worst ideas ever?

        That’s the question that many of us campaigning for positive copyright reform are asking ourselves in the wake of the Commission’s recently announced copyright package.

        We’ve extensively discussed the problems with the Commission’s link tax – see here, here and here – but equally important, are the Commission’s proposals with regards to intermediaries, such as websites like Wikipedia which host user-generated content, and the role of ‘Internet cops’ they will be forced to play if the Commission is successful in its aims.

        Right now, many such websites have an exemption under the current rules and, quite sensibly, are not expected to police the activities of all their users. Unfortunately this might not be the case for much longer. In the Commission’s new paradigm, websites will suddenly be responsible for monitoring the activity of their users, and filtering content to disable and remove instances of alleged copyright infringement.

10.03.16

Links 3/10/2016: GNU Linux-Libre 4.8, DNF 2.0.0

Posted in News Roundup at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Down the rabbit hole, part 3: Linux and Tor are key to ensuring privacy, security

      So, I’ve decided I need to improve the privacy and security of my life (especially as it relates to computing). And I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to effectively do this, I need to focus on utilizing open source software as much as possible.

      What next?

      Let’s start at a very simple, basic level: the operating system of my laptop computers (I don’t actually have a desktop currently, but the same ideas will apply) and how they connect to the internet.

  • Server

    • Mellanox Deploys Standard Linux Operating Systems over Ethernet Switches

      Today Mellanox announced the availability of standard Linux kernel driver for the company Open Ethernet, Spectrum switch platforms. Developed within the large Linux community, the new driver enables standard Linux Operating Systems and off-the-shelf Linux-based applications to operate on the switch, including L2 and L3 switching. Open Ethernet provides data centers with the flexibility to choose the best hardware platform and the best software platform, resulting in optimized data center performance and higher return on investment.

    • Mellanox Introduces New Driver for Open Ethernet, Spectrum Switch Platforms
    • Mesos and Kubernetes on a hybrid (IBM Power and x86) architecture scenario

      Currently, there are several popular containers clustering system for Linux®, such as Kubernetes, Mesos and so on. Google Kubernetes and Apache Mesos are probably two commonly used tools to deploy containers inside a cluster. Both are created as helper tools that can be used to manage a cluster of containers. However, they differ greatly in their approaches.

      Always, our customs have a hybrid architecture that includes IBM® Power® and x86. So, this article provides the reference solutions about how to apply Mesos and Kubernetes into Linux on a hybrid architecture (including Power and x86) environment.

      See Figure 1 for the reference architecture.

  • Kernel Space

    • GNU Linux-libre 4.8-gnu Released, Deblobs More Drivers

      Hot off the release of the official upstream Linux 4.8 kernel, the GNU Linux-libre 4.8-gnu kernel is now available as the deblobbed code that strips out support for loading non-free firmware and other references to non-free kernel support.

      With GNU Linux-libre 4.8-gnu, there is a change to allow AMD Evergreen GPUs to be able to successfully initialize correctly without any binary-only blobs, a port from a change these developers did back for R600 hardware on an earlier kernel.

    • Linux Kernel 4.8 released with Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen support [Ed: How on Earth have some people spun a Linux release as a “Microsoft” thing? Part of the “Microsoft loves Linux” Big Lie or is “Microsoft” the biggest Linux feature now? Maybe just headline baiting.]
    • Linux 4.8 kernel will support newer hardware, including your Microsoft Surface 3
    • Systemd bug allows ordinary user to crash Linux systems

      The systemd project is yet to release a fix for a bug that was disclosed on 28 September but at least one GNU/Linux distribution has patched the same.

      The bug, allowing a user to crash a system by using a short command as an ordinary user, was disclosed by a developer named Andrew Ayer.

      After running this command, according to Ayer, “You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system. The system feels generally unstable (e.g. ssh and su hang for 30 seconds since systemd is now integrated with the login system).”

    • Major Linux distributions suffer from the latest system crippling bug

      A system administrator, Andrew Ayer discovered a crippling bug while working with his Linux System. He reported the issue at length in a blogpost pointing out how anyone could crash Systemd by one single tweet. The system will not collapse as soon as the tweet is rendered on screen by the system. Instead, what it meant was that any Linux distribution could be crippled by a command that can fit into one tweet. He even posted a tweet with the command to prove his point.

    • Linux 4.9′s CPUFreq To Make Greater Use Of Scheduler Info, IOWait Boosting

      The past few kernel releases there’s been a redesign of CPUFreq and P-State code for being able to make use of the kernel’s scheduler utilization data by these CPU frequency scaling drivers. That work also led to the introduction of the Schedutil governor. Work along this line has continued for Linux 4.9.

    • EFI Test Driver Added To The Mainline Linux 4.9 Kernel

      The EFI material is one of the early pull requests for the Linux 4.9 kernel and its bringing a new driver via EFI_TEST.

    • Linux 4.9 On x86_64 To Support Vmapped Stacks

      With the forthcoming Linux 4.9 kernel, x86_64 builds will support CONFIG_VMAP_STACK where kernel stacks are allocated with vmalloc_node for greater security.

    • Mellanox Platform Support Coming In Linux 4.9

      The x86/platform updates for the Linux 4.9 kernel that entered development on Sunday is bringing initial support for the Mellanox systems platform.

    • Linux Should Soon Start Receiving “Make WiFi Fast” Improvements

      In the months ahead the Linux kernel should start receiving the work out of the “make-wifi-fast” initiative for improving WiFi reliability and performance.

      The Bufferbloat project has been working on the Make-WiFi-Fast project because “the current Linux WiFi stack and drivers are far from optimal.” The project aims to reduce latency, develop new packet scheduling and AQM techniques, and improve the stack to allow 802.11ac MU-MIMO to properly work.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • Apricity OS, a beautiful way to to enter Arch era

        Last time we told you about Manjaro Linux, which is an Arch based linux distribution. Now the point is there is not only one fork but there are others too. Today we will discuss about another fork of Arch in this 12th segment of “Introduction with Linux Distro”. The distribution we will see today is one of the most beautiful distributions in linux world and it is named Apricity OS.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • DNF 2.0.0 and DNF-PLUGINS-CORE 1.0.0 Released

          DNF-2.0 is out! This major version release of DNF brings many user experience improvements such as more understandable dependency problem reporting messages, weak dependencies shown in transaction summary, more intuitive help usage invoking and others. Repoquery plugin has moved into DNF itself. Whole DNF stack release fixes over 60 bugs. DNF-2.0 release was focused on getting rid of yum incompatibilities i.e. treat yum configuration options the same (`include`, `includepkgs` and `exclude`). Unfortunately this release is not fully compatible with DNF-1. See the list of DNF-1 and DNF-2 incompatible changes. Especially plugins will need to be changed to the new DNF argument parser. For complete list of changes see DNF and plugins release notes.

        • DNF 2.0 Released For Improved Package Management On Fedora

          Version 2.0 of the DNF package manager is now available in release candidate form as a major update to this Yum successor. Meanwhile, DNF-Plugins-Core reached version 1.0 for testing.

        • When every Beta closes another Alpha opens…

          As many of you may know, deadlines for Beta packaging for Fedora 25 have recently come and gone. With this said, designs for the default wallpaper are underway and I’m continuing to work through quirks in the design in order to represent the subtle, yet bold and memorable aesthetic that is present in Fedora wallpapers. Getting closer to the Alpha package deadline, I figured that I’d post another progress picture of where I’m at so far. Be sure to check out https://fedorahosted.org/design-team/ticket/473 for more information as to the background and thought process of the design as well!

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Software Can Now Show Screenshots of Snap Apps

            A small fix this one, but it’s something that will help Snap apps stand out in the Ubuntu Software store.

            Snap apps are already available to find and install from the GNOME Ubuntu Software app, on both Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10. As there’s (still) no way to search for Snap app specifically you need to know the Snap app you want to find before you can find it.

            But until recently Snap apps didn’t display application screenshots, a valuable feature of any app store.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Arduino on Arduino battle ends in reconciliation, merger

      On Saturday, the two rival groups—Arduino LLC (Arduino.cc) and Arduino Srl (Arduino.org)—announced that they had “settled their differences,” and agreed to merge. At present, the similarly-designed sites both carry the official Arduino logo, and both sell official Arduino products.

      The electronics platform Arduino describes itself as “the world’s leading open-source ecosystem for educators, Makers and IoT developers of all ages.” Its board plans are published under Creative Commons (CC) licences, while its software is released as open source. Ars interviewed one of Arduino’s co-founders, Massimo Banzi, back in 2013.

    • ROS: An Open Source Robotics Platform on Linux

      ROS is an open source framework allowing you to create advanced robots. Using ROS takes much of the tedious work out of creating useful robots because it supplies code for navigation, arm manipulation, and other common robot tasks. ROS allows various software components to communicate between one or more computers and microcontrollers, and it allows you to control one or more machine robot networks from a desktop, web browser, and/or other input device. Although ROS stands for Robot Operating System, it is really a framework that sits on top of an existing operating system such as GNU/Linux. Packages are provided for Ubuntu Linux to help get your robot up and rolling.

    • ORWL Open Source, Physically Secure Personal Computer $699 (video)

      First unveiled back in 2012 the ORWL open source personal computer has been designed with your data security in mind and is being marketed as the very first open source physically secure computer.

      What’s the promotional two-minute video below to learn more about the ORWL and how it can be used to keep your personal data safe. ORWL is currently in the final days of its crowdfunding campaign and has nearly raised double what the team requires to take the secure personal computer into production. For more information, full specifications and to make a pledge jump over to Crowd Supply via the link below.

    • Phones

      • Linux V4.8 on N900

        Basics work, good. GSM does not work too well, which is kind of a problem. Camera broke between 4.7 and 4.8. That is not good, either.

      • Android

        • Best Phones for Rooting and Modding

          If you’re not content with the software some company decided you are allowed to use and are willing to roll up your sleeves and do something about it, the Nexus 5X is the best phone to do it with.

          Because it’s a phone directly from Google, the bootloader is easy to unlock using tools and directions Google gives you, and you’ll have no restrictions on the software you can install. If you keep going until the phone just stops working getting back to the factory software is just as easy, and Google provides a downloadable image you can use to restore.

        • EU to Google: stop Android anti-competitive deals, or else [Ed: Remember Microsoft was behind this, remember Android is Linux based, ask yourself if "Microsoft loves Linux"]
        • White Google Pixel and Pixel XL leaked by Bell
        • Google Maps for Android Update Brings Calendar Integration, Shows Upcoming Events
        • Most Secure Android Phone

          The Nexus 6P is the most secure Android phone you can buy, and one of the most secure phones of any available today.

          Without disabling any security protections, the Nexus 6P is protected against known public security exploits and remote installations are monitored by Google’s scanning software which blocks potential malicious content. While security and privacy are two very different things, when you decide you want private things to stay private you need to make sure your phone is secure to keep them that way.

Free Software/Open Source

  • How startups can use open source software to compete against the big guys

    Open source software allows more small businesses in industries that haven’t yet been completely disrupted by technology to create agile software with a small team. This kind of access is what helped my team create our own content marketing software to better service our clients in-house. We did it with a small dev team, and we aren’t alone in that. I think we’re going to start seeing more companies use open source software to create custom tech solutions to fit their needs and make them more competitive against industry giants. – John Hall, Influence & Co.

  • Zeppelin: a Secure Smart Contracts Open-Source Framework for Blockchain Applications

    On September 15, the roadmap proposal for Zeppelin, a MIT licensed open source framework for building secure smart contracts, was published. This comes at an appropriate time as evidenced by the number of talks and discussions at DevCon2 surrounding formal verification of smart contracts.

    Demian Brener and Manuel Aráoz, founders of Smart Contract Solutions, are pioneering the effort around Zeppelin. Zeppelin is a community effort to enable the development of secure, tested and audited smart contract code. Earlier this year, “The DAO”, the largest smart contract application to date, was hacked for $60M by exploiting a loophole in its smart contract. This has justified many concerns in the community bringing formal verification to the forefront.

  • Google Open Sources Powerful Image Recognition Tool

    On the artificial intelligence front, there is a true renaissance going on right now, and it includes a slew of new open source tools, many of which are likely to give rise to businesses built around them. For example, Google recently open sourced a program called TensorFlow. It’s based on the same internal toolset that Google has spent years developing to support its AI software and other predictive and analytics programs. You can find out more about TensorFlow at its site, and you might be surprised to learn that it is the engine behind several Google tools you may already use, including Google Photos and the speech recognition found in the Google app.

    Now, Google has open sourced a “Show and Tell” algorithm to developers, who can purportedly use it recognize objects in photos with up to 93.9 percent accuracy, and help to automate smart photo captioning. It’s based on TensorFlow, and here are details.

  • Events

    • OpenStack Summit to Include Distinguished Contributor Awards

      Not long ago, the OpenStack Foundation created a Superuser publication to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaborative problem solving among individuals who are running OpenStack clouds. It’s actually become a very rich site, and if you are at all involved with OpenStack, it’s worth investigating.

      As the Superuser site has announced, at the upcoming OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, a special round of community awards will be handed out by the OpenStack Foundation. The idea is to recognize esteemed contributors, and here are the details on how you can enter a submission for consideration.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GnuCash A Free & Open Source Accounting Software For Linux

      GnuCash is a free open source accounting program launched in 1998 for small business. GnuCash implements a double entry bookkeeping system. It was first designed for Linux but later in 2004 it was released for Mac and in 2007 was available for Windows. Its current version is 2.6.14. GnuCash is also available for Android in Playstore.

  • Public Services/Government

Leftovers

  • Security

    • security things in Linux v4.7
    • Microsoft warns Windows security fix may break network shares

      The latest of these, Preview Build 14936 – for testers on what Microsoft refers to as the Fast Ring – comes with the usual set of updates, new features, and fixes for things that the previous release managed to break.

      However, what caught our eye was a warning that after updating, users may find that shared devices such as NAS boxes have mysteriously disappeared from the home network folder, and that any previously mapped network drives are unavailable.

      Microsoft offers a fix for this; if you change your network to “private” or “enterprise”, it should start working again.

      It seems that the cause of this hiccup is a fix that Microsoft made earlier in September to address a security hole severe enough that it might allow remote code execution with elevated permissions on an affected system, although this would require an attacker to create a specially crafted request.

      The fix addresses this by, among other things, “correcting how Windows enforces permissions”.

      Windows Insiders are typically no newbies and used to preview builds breaking stuff, but it is likely that this change will find its way into the Windows 10 code everybody else is running sooner or later.

    • Android Devices Are Targeted By New Lockscreen Ransomware

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria

      On September 30, demonstrators gathered in city squares across the West for a “weekend of action” to “stop the bombs” raining down from Syrian government and Russian warplanes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Thousands joined the protests, holding signs that read “Topple Assad” and declaring, “Enough With Assad.” Few participants likely knew that the actions were organized under the auspices of an opposition-funded public relations company called the Syria Campaign.

    • Under Intense Pressure to Silence Wikileaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Proposed Drone Strike on Julian Assange

      Julian Assange and his free-speech brainchild Wikileaks were once lauded as global heroes of public service among United States politicians and policy makers. But by 2010, four years after its inception during the President George W. Bush administration, Assange and his organization were no longer considered lovable troublemakers and mavericks.

      A year into President Barack Obama’s first term, Wikileaks was suddenly considered an out-of-control free-speech Frankenstein wreaking havoc on United States foreign policy and intelligence gathering at the direction of Assange, its proverbial Dr. Frankenstein.

      The honeymoon for the whistle-blower web site, once a darling of the Democratic Party, was now over. Even more alarming, Assange’s personal safety and organization were increasingly at risk from U.S. concerns.

      By November 2010, Assange was a household name globally, but especially on Capitol Hill. And in the State Department alone his prowess of releasing otherwise secret, damning military documents and emails were filling conference rooms at Foggy Bottom and the White House with policy wonks and bureaucrats desperately seeking to squelch the upstart Wikileaks. At the State Department, meeting after meeting was conducted about how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her inner circle were going to squash Assange and Wikileaks latest planned document dump on the United States. Deemed “CableGate,” Assange planned to release confidential cables, or communications, unveiling damaging internal conversations between State Department personnel and its foreign assets and allies.

      Prodded by the looming CableGate, Clinton met with staff on Tuesday November 23, 2010 shortly after 8 a.m. on Mahogany Row at the State Department to attempt to formulate a strategy to avert Assange’s plans to release an enormous batch of 250,000 secret cables, dating from 1966 to 2010. Assange had professed for months to rain the internal cables down on Clinton and President Obama. The collective fear was the context of the secret cables would hamper U.S. intelligence gathering and compromise private correspondences and intelligence shared with foreign governments and opposition leaders. Splashing such juicy details on television news shows and the front pages of major newspapers in the country was great for the media but lousy for intelligence and foreign policy. Many, including Clinton and her elected boss, expressed fear these revelations would embarrass and expose intelligence allies of the United States and set America’s already fragile foreign policy back decades.

    • The Empire Strikes Back

      A decade ago left-wing governments, defying Washington and global corporations, took power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. It seemed as if the tide in Latin America was turning. The interference by Washington and exploitation by international corporations might finally be defeated. Latin American governments, headed by charismatic leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won huge electoral victories. They instituted socialist reforms that benefited the poor and the working class. They refused to be puppets of the United States. They took control of their nations’ own resources and destinies. They mounted the first successful revolt against neoliberalism and corporate domination. It was a revolt many in the United States hoped to emulate here.

      But the movements and governments in Latin America have fallen prey to the dark forces of U.S. imperialism and the wrath of corporate power. The tricks long practiced by Washington and its corporate allies have returned—the black propaganda; the manipulation of the media; the bribery and corruption of politicians, generals, police, labor leaders and journalists; the legislative coups d’état; the economic strangulation; the discrediting of democratically elected leaders; the criminalization of the left; and the use of death squads to silence and disappear those fighting on behalf of the poor. It is an old, dirty game.

      President Correa, who earned enmity from Washington for granting political asylum to Julian Assange four years ago and for closing the United States’ Manta military air base in 2009, warned recently that a new version of Operation Condor is underway in Latin America. Operation Condor, which operated in the 1970s and ’80s, saw thousands of labor union organizers, community leaders, students, activists, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, journalists and artists tortured, assassinated and disappeared. The intelligence chiefs from right-wing regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and, later, Brazil had overseen the campaigns of terror. They received funds from the United States and logistical support and training from the Central Intelligence Agency. Press freedom, union organizing, all forms of artistic dissent and political opposition were abolished. In a coordinated effort these regimes brutally dismembered radical and leftist movements across Latin America. In Argentina alone 30,000 people disappeared.

    • Colombia referendum: Voters reject Farc peace deal

      Voters in Colombia have rejected a landmark peace deal with Farc rebels in a shock referendum result, with 50.2% voting against it.

      The deal was signed last week by President Juan Manuel Santos and Farc leader Timoleon Jimenez after nearly four years of negotiations.

      But it needed to be ratified by Colombians in order to come into force.

      Addressing the nation, President Santos said he accepted the result but would continue working to achieve peace.

    • Democracy At Its Worst – Colombians Choose War

      The recent result in Colombia is very unsatisfactory. It allows both sides to see victory is achievable with a little more killing or screaming or whatever…

      The world is not a better place when democracy decides that war is better than a few compromises and wider participation of groups in society. Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail and people care enough to do the right thing sooner or later.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Reykjavík: the geothermal city that aims to go carbon neutral

      Reykjavík used to be marketed as a place of ‘pure energy’, run on geothermal power – and now Iceland’s capital is trying to become the world’s first carbon neutral city.

      Last month, Iceland became the one of the first countries to ratify the Paris climate deal with a unilateral parliamentary vote, shortly after Reykjavik announced its aim to be carbon neutral by 2040.

      It wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 2.8 tonnes per person in 2013 to zero – largely by changing the shape of the city to reverse urban sprawl and encouraging Icelanders out of their beloved cars to walk, cycle or use public transport.

      The city already has a head-start thanks to its reliance on geothermal energy. The US, for example, has a greenhouse gas footprint of 16.5 tonnes per person.

  • Finance

    • 589 million Chinese tourists will spend $72 billion in just seven days celebrating “Golden Week”

      Nearly 600 million Chinese tourists will flock to local tourist spots or fly overseas during the country’s 67th National Day holiday, a seven-day break nicknamed “Golden Week.” Unexpectedly, the new hot destination is Morocco, the North African country.

      South Korea, Thailand and Japan continue to be the top 10 most popular travel destinations (link in Chinese) for Chinese tourists, but there was a 3500% year-on-year increase in visa applications to Morocco processed by Ctrip, a Nasdaq-listed travel agency based in Shanghai, China, according to a 2016 National Day Holiday travel prediction report by Ctrip and the state-backed China Travel Academy. The report also said the United Kingdom, Cambodia, Russia and New Zealand will each see a 60% year-on-year increase.

    • After article 50, Brexit will be easy. A trade deal will be anything but

      Article 50, providing for Brexit, will be triggered by the end of March next year, Theresa May has promised. Two years after it is triggered, Britain will find itself outside the European Union, unless there is unanimous agreement among the other member states to extend the time limit.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Trump Campaign Threatens To Sue NY Times For Sharing His 1995 Tax Returns

      It’s kind of amazing how quickly Donald Trump’s lawyers seem to threaten any media outlet for publishing information about him that he doesn’t like. The latest target is the NY Times which ran a big story over the weekend with some leaked pages of his 1995 tax returns, suggesting that the guy who repeatedly claims he’s great at business, reported personal losses of $916 million. We’ll leave the analyzing of the tax returns to those who do that sort of thing (though I will recommend reading this analysis, which suggests that it’s likely a key part of the NYT article is wrong concerning Trump’s ability to use those losses to avoid taxes for 18 years), but we did want to focus in on something more relevant to what we discuss here at Techdirt.

      [...]

      But, it’s not that simple. The NY Times would have a pretty strong First Amendment defense that what they’re doing here is very much in the public interest. After all, Trump himself has made his tax returns (and his supposed acumen as a business man) an issue in this campaign by refusing to release them, despite every other major party candidate for President releasing tax returns going back decades (and even Trump himself mocked Mitt Romney for taking too long to release his own tax returns in 2012). So there’s no argument here that this isn’t newsworthy. It clearly is, and that certainly helps the NY Times’s case. To me it seems like it should be a clear First Amendment win for the Times — and plenty of others agree.

      Plus, there’s the fact that if Trump actually did sue, he’d have to admit the returns are really his and are accurate.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hackers auctioning NSA code disappointed in bidding
    • NSA Secrets Could Be Yours for Only $1,083!
    • Hacker group finds no takers for NSA exploits
    • Nobody wants hacked NSA tools; The Shadow Brokers go on an angry rant in broken English
    • No-one wants to buy the Shadow Brokers’ stolen NSA tools
    • The Peculiar Case of Email in the Cloud [Ed: All E-mail goes through a server; stop using the Clown Computing buzzword, it’s misleading and harmful]

      If you install Postfix on your server, it’s possible to use a Gmail account to send all e-mail on your system. There are a few downsides to this method, but the configuration is simple, and Google’s e-mail servers are very reliable. Plus, because you’re not acting as an e-mail server yourself, you don’t have to worry about having your e-mail rejected by recipients. It’s legitimately coming from gmail.com.

      The first unfortunate consequence is that for its simplest implementation, you need to enable “less secure apps” to log in to your Gmail account. I actually set up a separate gmail.com account for my server, and then I don’t worry about the less secure setting. Thankfully, if this is a concern, it’s possible to use two-factor authentication (more on that later).

    • Snowden — see this film!

      You’ve seen the news stories, and maybe the documentary. The film Snowden will still scare and inspire you. Oliver Stone has made a film that will draw you in, engage you, and even feel anxious about Snowden’s safety. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is amazingly like the man you’ve seen on TV or Youtube.

      Imdb says about Snowden: Its performance during its opening weekend was the lowest opening of Oliver Stone’s career for a film playing in over 2,000 theaters. So go to a theater near you, and see it!

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • UNSOLVED: The Murder of Ferguson Activist Darren Seals

      It’s been three weeks since the body of 29-year-old Ferguson, Missouri protester Darren Seals was discovered inside his burning vehicle with a gunshot wound to the head. St. Louis County police say the homicide investigation is still without leads. However, some community members are questioning the legitimacy of that investigation.

      Darren Seals was one of the most visible and vocal activists to emerge from Ferguson following the 2014 police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. Seals was known as a “day one-er” – meaning he was a visible presence from the very beginning.

      Watching, from just outside the yellow police tape on the afternoon of August 9th, 2014, as Brown’s body lay in the middle of Canfield Drive, and then demonstrating later that same day just a few blocks away on West Florissant Avenue – where clashes between police and protesters would eventually capture the world’s attention.

    • Chelsea Manning’s Integrity

      In Laura Poitras’s documentary, Citizenfour, Edward Snowden worries to Poitras and Glenn Greenwald that “they” (the press and government) will use his “personality” as a distraction when Greenwald starts publishing stories about the documents that Snowden has leaked. Snowden’s concern was meaningful considering the media coverage of Chelsea Manning, who was on trial at the time Poitras was filming the documentary for charges arising from the Espionage Act, including the charge of aiding the enemy.

      Manning’s queerness, gender nonconformity (she now identifies as trans*), and experiences of being bullied in the Army made her an easy target for claims that her leaking of documents was not true whistleblowing, but amounted simply to a private vendetta against the Army and government. In one of the first articles on Manning in the New York Times, for example, Ginger Thompson suggested that Manning might have leaked documents as a way of seeking revenge for being bullied in the military, or for her struggles under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, or out of “delusions of grandeur.”

    • Arkansas Congressman Who Helped Protect Citizens’ Right To Record Police Arrested For Recording Police

      While the recording of police activities has been covered here for years, I think we’re starting to see what is at least a slight ratcheting down of the drama over the issue. Once almost universally rejected by law enforcement groups, the freedom to record police as they go about their public duty has become more recognized rather than less. That doesn’t mean the issue is settled, though, as shown in a recent example in which Arkansas police arrested a state Congressman who had helped push through a state law protecting the rights of citizens to film police.

    • Arkansas lawmaker who pushed law protecting right to video police is arrested for videoing an arrest

      Officer Jeff Thompson of the Little Rock Police Department arrested Arkansas state Representative John Walker for recording their treatment of a black man who had been put in handcuffs during a traffic stop.

    • Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka on Palestine and Syria

      Ajamu Baraka: Well, of course. The linking of these struggles for liberation in Central America and South Africa with the struggles in the US is a part of the tradition of black internationalism, the center of which is a struggle against the continuity of the colonial, capitalism system. So the quite natural connection has always been with Palestine. In fact, one of the first real structural, organizational connections we point to is the fact that SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee issued a statement standing in solidarity with the liberation aspirations of the Palestinians in the mid-1960s. And of course there was a very negative backlash for that. So solidarity with Palestinian struggles for self-determination has always been part of the black internationalist tradition. The connection for us has always been clear.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Domain name system transitions to private sector

      ICANN, the body that regulates the domain name system, is no longer under US government oversight as of October 1

      The contract between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration to perform the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions expired at midnight on Friday.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Big Week For WIPO Marrakesh Treaty On Access For Visually Impaired; Human Rights Side Under Focus [Ed: WIPO is attacking its own staff and Gurry needs to resign]

      The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled was adopted on 27 June 2013, and the 20th WIPO member ratified it on 30 June 2016, bringing it into force 90 days later on 30 September. The first-ever meeting of the Marrakesh Treaty Assembly is scheduled to take place on 5 October at WIPO.

      The Social Forum of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is taking place from 3-5 October at the UN Palais. The theme of the 2016 session of the Social Forum is the “promotion and full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities in the context of the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD),” according to the event website.

    • External Offices, WIPO Normative Work At Heart Of General Assemblies

      WIPO Director General Francis Gurry, in his opening speech, said “very good process has been made across the organisation over the course of the past 12 months.” He remarked on the last biennium’s (2014-2015) overall surplus of CHF 70.3 million (US$ 72.3 million). WIPO is faring well in the current biennium, he said, and is foreseen to yield an overall surplus as well.

    • Copyrights

      • Phoneix Police Issues Totally Bogus Cease & Desist To Trump Campaign Claiming Copyright Infringement

        Yes, yes, we know that resorting to copyright to take down speech from a politician you don’t like is pretty common. Most of the time it involves musicians not liking politicians playing songs, but lately we’ve seen some other ones as well. Last week, for example, we wrote about a photographer successfully using the DMCA to remove the now infamous image of a bowl of Skittles that Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.

        The latest, however, is even more ridiculous. The city of Phoenix Arizona has sent a cease & desist letter to the Donald Trump campaign, arguing (incorrectly) that Trump was violating their copyrights and publicity rights, by using imagery of Phoneix police officers in an advertisement (first reported by a local NBC affiliate in Arizona). The ad is available on YouTube, and don’t blink or you might miss the Phoneix police officers. It’s a pretty generic politician ad, frankly, but there’s a very brief shot of Trump shaking hands with some Phoneix police officers on a tarmac somewhere (I’m guessing Phoenix…). It appears to last all of about a second.

Links 3/10/2016: Linux 4.8 Released, Steam Survey Shows GNU/Linux Growth

Posted in News Roundup at 3:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • The Bug Report

      So I get a bug report. It is on GNU/Linux, of course, because that is the only ecosystem that sends bug reports.

      So first I boot up my work box (Computer #1, Windows 10) which is the one that has the sweet monitor and try to VPN to the Server box (Computer #2, GNU/Linux Fedora Server, amd64). But, of course, at one point I’d stripped all the non-console-mode functionality off of the server, so VPN is a fail. I could have done the fix easily via ssh and emacs-nox, but, I figure it will only take a minute to get a graphical environment up and running.

      There’s a GNU Linux VM running on VirtualBox on the work box, but, I get distracted from the actual problem when I can’t figure out how to get VirtualBox to create a large screen. Totally not a problem, but, I get obsessed with this minutiae and can’t let it go. I waste time tweaking the virtual graphics card settings with no effect.

    • Doom for Windows [Ed: by the creator of DirectX, who isn't pleased with Windows Update.]

      Windows failed to make the leap to new business models and new distributed computing paradigms such that now in the year 2016 Microsoft is on the cutting edge of adopting Apple’s 2007 business model for Windows 10. Here’s why Microsoft has reached the end of its road. They lost the mobile market, they lost search, they’re struggling to compete in the cloud and all they have left is a legacy OS with an architecture from the days of personal computing when connectivity was something only nerds and IT managers worried about. Now the idea of personal computer security is collapsing. It is readily becoming apparent that NOTHING can stop malicious attackers from eventually penetrating the best most advanced security measures of any personal device. Furthermore, as the Edward Snowden scandal has made plain to us all, if malicious attackers aren’t breaking into our computers, then the worlds governments are requiring companies to make their products vulnerable to intrusion. The idea that a lowly personal computer behind a frail consumer router… made in China… stands any chance of resisting serious hacking attempts is a fast fading dream.

      Back when I was making online game publishing DRM (Digital Rights Management) Solutions we measured the time it took Chinese and Russian hackers to crack our best latest security attempts in weeks. Today it can take a matter of days or hours.

      The Windows Operating system has become vast, bloated and cumbersome to maintain. It faces constant security bombardment by the entire worlds connected hacker community and government security agencies. The volume of patches it needs to maintain even the most rudimentary pretext of stability and security requires a constant and overwhelming flood of Windows updates. The seriousness of the situation and the sheer flood of data Microsoft is constantly sending to our computers is staggering. I wanted to show a screen shot of my HUGE Windows Update history but mysteriously, after this most recent disastrous update… Microsoft has seen fit to clear my machine of that information…

    • No Free Upgrades, No New Users: Windows 10 Declines for First Time Since Launch [Ed: based on Microsoft-connected firm]

      The latest batch of market share statistics provided by Net Applications for desktop operating systems puts Windows 10 on the second position in the rankings, but it also reveals something totally unexpected that happened last month.

      Windows 10 has actually lost market share last month despite the fact that everyone expected the operating system to continue its growth, which could be a sign that Microsoft’s 1 billion devices running Windows 10 goal might take a bit longer to become reality.

  • Kernel Space

    • You can crash Linux Systemd with a single Tweet

      System administrator Andrew Ayer has discovered a potentially critical bug in systemd which can bring a vulnerable Linux server to its knees with a single command line.”After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons.

    • How to reignite a flamewar in one tweet (and I still don’t get it)
    • Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd

      System administrator Andrew Ayer has discovered a potentially critical bug in systemd which can bring a vulnerable Linux server to its knees with one command. “After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system.” According to the bug report, Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS are among the distros susceptible to various levels of resource exhaustion. The bug, which has existed for more than two years, does not require root access to exploit.

    • Lennart’s Look At Systemd This Year, What’s Going To Happen In 2017

      We have already covered some of the interesting talks from this year’s systemd conference including how to use it for application sandboxing, a new wireless daemon coming to replace wpa_supplicant, and BUS1 is on the way. But saving the best for last in another presentation to watch this weekend for those interested in systemd: Lennart Poettering’s state of the union address for systemd and a look ahead to 2017 features.

      Lennart’s systemd presentation covered recent improvements/features to systemd as well as a look ahead at some of the ideas baking for future releases. A lot of emphasis was placed on Portable Services for systemd and sandboxing of applications. Some other future ideas are having a Dbus daemon within systemd, more work on containers support, and a variety of new tunables coming. Some of the future options coming include ProtectKernelLogs, ProtectClock, ProtectKernelModules, ProtectMount, ProtectKeyRing, DataDirectory, CacheDirectory, and RestrictNamespaces.

    • October Should Be Very Exciting For Linux Enthusiasts
    • Legends of Linux Part 1: Linus Torvalds

      AS PART of our visit to LinuxCon this week we’re going to ask five key players in the Linux story the same 10 questions to get an idea of where Linux has been, where it is and where it’s going.

      And who better to start with than Linus Torvalds, the often outspoken creator of Linux itself. Torvalds isn’t actually attending the celebrations this year, but was kind enough to chat to the INQUIRER by email.

    • Linux Kernel 4.8 Released By Linus Torvalds — Here Are The 10 Best Features
    • Linux Kernel 4.8 Officially Released, Merge Window for Kernel 4.9 Now Open

      Today, October 2, 2016, Linus Torvalds proudly announced the release and availability for download of the Linux 4.8 kernel branch, which is now the latest stable and most advanced one.

      Linux kernel 4.8 has been in development for the past two months, during which it received no less than eight Release Candidate (RC) testing versions that early adopters were able to compile and install on their GNU/Linux operating system to test various hardware components or simply report bugs. That’s right, the Linux 4.8 kernel series was one of those special ones that received that eighth Release Candidate.

    • Linux 4.8 Kernel Released

      The Linux 4.8 kernel is now officially available.

      Linus Torvalds tagged Linux 4.8.0 and kept the codename as “Psychotic Stoned Sheep.”

    • The Best Features Of The Linux 4.8 Kernel

      If all goes according to plan, the Linux 4.8 kernel will be officially released this afternoon by Linus Torvalds.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mesa May Move To A Date-Based Versioning System

        Beginning next year, Mesa developers so far appear favorable to moving towards a date-based versioning concept.

        Per the proposal laid out yesterday by AMD’s Marek Olšák, Mesa would move to a date-based version string. He explained, “2017 would start with 17.0, then 17.1, 17.2, 17.3 for following quarters of the year, respectively. 2018 would start with 18.0, then 18.1, 18.2, 18.3. The motivation is that you can easily tell when a specific Mesa version was released with an accuracy of 3 months.”

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • 4MRecover 20.0 Data Recovery Live CD Is Now in Beta, Includes TestDisk 7.0

        4MLinux developer and project leader Zbigniew Konojacki informs Softpedia today, October 2, 2016, about the release and immediate availability for download of the Beta pre-release version of the upcoming 4MRecover 20.0 Live CD.

        As you might know already, the 4MLinux 20.0 and 4MLinux Core 20.0 GNU/Linux distributions are in the works, which means that Zbigniew Konojacki is also preparing new versions of his other projects, including 4MRecover, a Live CD that can be used for data recovery independent of a computer operating system.

        Therefore, 4MRecover 20.0 Beta is based on the Beta release of the 4MLinux 20.0 operating system, which should be officially promoted to the stable channel on the first day of November 2016, and it ships, as usual, with the powerful TestDisk 7.0 data recovery and PhotoRec 7.0 image recovery software.

    • Arch Family

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed Gets Linux Kernel 4.7.5, openSSL 1.0.2j, and Firefox 49.0.1

        Today, October 2, 2016, Douglas DeMaio from the openSUSE project announced that the rolling release Tumbleweed distro received five new snapshots during the last week of September, which brought many goodies to users.

        As mentioned before, these new snapshots brought several updated components and applications for the openSUSE Tumbleweed operating system, which continually received the latest software releases a few days after they’re announced upstream. The most important one being the Linux 4.7.5 kernel.

        We’ve already reported last week that openSUSE Tumbleweed was the first stable GNU/Linux distribution to include the recently released GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, and the openSUSE team now reveals the fact that KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS is coming soon as well, along with Bash 4.4, Qt 5.7, Mono 4.6, and FreeType 2.7.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • DebEX KDE Live DVD Updated with KDE 4.14.2 and Plasma 5, Linux Kernel 4.8 RC8

          GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton informs us about the release of a new stable build of his Debian-based DebEX KDE Live DVD, which ships with the latest stable Linux kernel packages and up-to-date software components.

          Based on the Debian GNU/Linux 8.6 “Jessie” operating system, DebEX KDE Live DVD Build 161001 is out as a drop-in replacement to version 160604, but it looks like Arne Exton managed to implement the latest Release Candidate (RC) version of the just announced Linux 4.8 kernel, which should be out any moment now.

        • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 Reached End of Life, Upgrade to Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 Now

          As reported last month, the Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 operating system was about to reach the end of its life on September 30, 2016, so today being October 2 means that you need to upgrade your system right now.

          Dubbed Atticus, Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 was announced approximately months ago, on the 14th of February, and it was entirely based on the Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” operating system, which means that is shipped with the long-term supported Linux 4.1.17 kernel and thes GNOME 3.18 desktop environment with GNOME Shell 3.18.3.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • CoursePad to Become Open Source

    Cornell’s most popular course scheduling website, CoursePad.me, became an open source platform on Github last Thursday after enjoying two years of popularity among students, according to Jingsi Zhu ’16, the website’s sole developer.

    Zhu explained that he chose to open source his website — or make its code freely available for modification and redistribution — after he graduated last semester and realized that he would need to devote more time to his work than to CoursePad.

  • Yahoo open sources its NSFW-detecting neural network

    Yahoo has open-sourced its NSFW (not suitable/safe for work) detecting neural network, allowing developers to work towards improving the algorithm. Jay Mahadeokar and Gerry Pesavento of Yahoo explained in a blogpost that defining NSFW material on Internet is subjective and identifying such images is non-trivial. “Since images and user-generated content dominate the Internet today, filtering NSFW images becomes an essential component of Web and mobile applications,” they said.

  • Open source drives companies to change hiring and development

    “Do I want to play with this open source thing?” This was the question most people asked 20 years ago when I started reviewing PostgreSQL bug fixes and assembling like-minded database colleagues to help start the PostgreSQL Global Development Group.

    It’s mind-blowing to see how much things have changed.

    Today, not becoming a follower of some open source community almost means you’re cobaling yourself—excluding yourself from the reality of how organizations use open software today. As engineers, we always want to keep up with the latest technologies not only to satisfy our desire to create and innovate, but also to remain marketable in a business world where products and technology constantly evolve. What’s happened with the open source movement is different.

    Open source today is not just about the products and technologies that companies use, but rather a whole rainbow of adjustments that have penetrated the corporate culture beyond the engineering department.

    I heard some of the best examples of this during a discussion for data industry leaders at the forefront of open source software innovation this summer. The event was co-hosted by EnterpriseDB (EDB) and MIT Technology Review. We shared our experiences of data transformation with Postgres, NoSQL, and other solutions, and really learned a lot from each other.

  • Security analytics platform now an Apache open source project

    Infosec pros have been hoping for some time that big data and analytics can be harnessed to improve cyber security. A fledgling open source project with genes from Intel and Cloudera is another step in that direction.

  • Events

    • Indian language localization community meets in New Delhi

      Localization is one of the less glamorous aspects of computing. Despite the fact that less than 6% of the world speaks English, a majority of projects don’t feel inclined to accommodate the rest of the population. One of the primary reasons for sticking to English is the steep learning curve and the lack of standardization in various aspects of the localization process.

      The FUEL Project organized the GILT conference in New Delhi, India September 24-25 to highlight and address these issues. The annual event showcases the efforts of language technology organizations and volunteer communities, but this year’s also gave a platform for non-technical users to voice their concerns. The Indic computing developers were joined by academics, reporters, language researchers, publishers, and entrepreneurs who rely on localization tools to connect and interact with audiences in the various regional languages in India. The brainstorming between the two groups, both on and off the stage, was one of the highlights of the conference.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Rehab Addict’s Nicole Curtis and Hackers Agree : Open Hardware Rules

        They say necessity is the mother of invention and it also happens to be responsible for transforming Nicole Curtis from a waitress/real estate agent into the TV star of Rehab Addicts. Much like the dozens of high-tech makers highlighted in Thomas’s book Making Makers, Nicole’s early challenge of “I had no money” galvanized her to find ways to turn beat up old houses and trash into high-value treasures.

        Her approach has been enormously successful. Nicole routinely shows her Rehab Addict fans how to remodel their homes and save a fortune. For example, she redid a bathroom by upcycling what others discarded for a tenth of the cost of putting in a new bathroom. Her videos provide the how tos for anyone with similar problems -they represent the “source code” to rehab a house.

Leftovers

  • French man walks into Apple store and smashes all of its iPhones, shouting ‘this is happening!’

    A man has been caught on camera smashing thousands of pounds worth of new iPhones on display in an Apple shop.

    The unidentified man, who is wearing dark glasses and carrying a steel ball used for boules, methodically removes display phones from their upright holders, and smashes the ball down onto the phones’ Retina HD displays.

    Footage shows him destroying at least 12 iPhones at the shop in Dijon, before he is challenged by security.

  • EU plans to give free Interrail pass to every 18-year-old in Europe on their birthday

    Plans to give all teenagers living in the EU a free Interrail pass on their 18th birthday are to be debated at the European Parliament.

    The proposal aims to give young Europeans a “sense of belonging” to the continent and comes after the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker called for greater cooperation within the EU during his State of the Union speech in Strasbourg.

  • Revealed: How one Amazon Kindle scam made millions of dollars

    He spent a little over 10 years working as a software development engineer for various companies, including Microsoft. He went on to co-found a startup, Alteroxity, which claims to help authors publish ebooks that are already “done for you” — that includes the writing, the creation, the publishing, and even “dozens of honest positive reviews”.

  • Science

    • 80% of data in Chinese clinical trials have been fabricated

      A Chinese government investigation has revealed that more than 80 percent of the data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been “fabricated”.

      The report uncovered fraudulent behaviour at almost every level, and showed that some pharmaceutical companies had hidden or deleted records of potentially adverse side effects, and tampered with data that didn’t meet their desired outcomes.

      In light of the findings, 80 percent of current drug applications, which were awaiting approval for mass production, have now been cancelled.

      The investigation, led by the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), looked at data from 1,622 clinical trials for new pharmaceutical drugs currently awaiting approval. The applications in question were all for Western medicine, not traditional Chinese medicine.

    • Vint Cerf: Modern Media Are Made for Forgetting

      Vint Cerf, the living legend largely responsible for the development of the Internet protocol suite, has some concerns about history. In his current column for the Communications of the ACM, Cerf worries about the decreasing longevity of our media, and, thus, about our ability as a civilization to self-document—to have a historical record that one day far in the future might be remarked upon and learned from. Magnetic films do not quite have the staying power as clay tablets.

      It’s more than a then-vs-now thing. It’s a progression through history. Clay tablets are more resilient than papyrus manuscripts are more resilient than parchment are more resilient than printed photographs are more resilient than digital photographs.

      At stake, according to Cerf, is “the possibility that the centuries well before ours will be better known than ours will be unless we are persistent about preserving digital content. The earlier media seem to have a kind of timeless longevity while modern media from the 1800s forward seem to have shrinking lifetimes. Just as the monks and Muslims of the Middle Ages preserved content by copying into new media, won’t we need to do the same for our modern content?”

  • Health/Nutrition

    • This Is The Scariest Thing About Health Care In America Today

      I got an email from my husband’s nephrologist the other day that said: “I honestly do not think he will recover.” Before you gasp in horror and go to your dark place, just know that he and I have made our peace with this information. Kidney dialysis is a game-changer, not a game-ender.

      No, it actually wasn’t that particular sentence at all that made my heart sink. The Titanic that overcame me was when his doctor referred him to a vascular surgeon who is not within our insurance company’s network.

      The horrifying reality of my husband’s month-long hospitalization early this summer is that many of the doctors who paraded through his room and stayed for all of about 90 seconds were also out-of-network. And I have the bills to prove it.

      “Well gee, she probably has a cheap-o plan or should be blaming Obamacare,” you may be thinking. You’d be wrong. I work for a large company and we are covered by my large company’s group plan. We bought the best ― and most expensive ― plan offered, one that allowed us to go see any out-of-network doctor if we really wanted to. But somehow, during a hospitalization, the “if we really wanted to” part leaves your control.

    • In Year Since Water Crisis Began, Flint Struggles In Pipe Replacement Efforts

      It’s been one year since health officials in Michigan warned people in the city of Flint to stop drinking the tap water after a research team from Virginia Tech discovered elevated lead levels.

    • In Major Settlement, States Gang Up to Strike Deal with Soldier-Suing Company

      A coalition of attorneys general representing 49 states and the District of Columbia announced a settlement today with USA Discounters, requiring it to pay $40 million in penalties and wipe out more than $95 million in debt for its past customers.

      When ProPublica published its investigation of USA Discounters in 2014, the company was operating two dozen stores, most of them right outside the country’s largest military installations.

      To buy the marked-up furniture, appliances, and electronics the company offered in its showrooms, service members took out loans laden with high interest rates and extra fees. Soldiers who couldn’t pay were then subject to the company’s collection machine, which filed tens of thousands of collection suits in a local Virginia court regardless of wherever in the world the soldier might be.

      Late in 2014, the company underwent a rebranding, dubbing itself “USA Living.” Then, last year, it began to close its stores and later filed for bankruptcy.

  • Security

    • Your next DDoS attack, brought to you courtesy of the IoT

      The internet is reeling under the onslaught of unprecedented denial-of-service attacks, the sort we normally associate with powerful adversaries like international criminal syndicates and major governments, but these attacks are commanded by penny-ante crooks who are able to harness millions of low-powered, insecure Internet of Things devices like smart lightbulbs to do their bidding.

      Symantec reports on the rising trend in IoT malware, which attack systems that “may not include any advanced security features” and are “designed to be plugged in and forgotten” without “any firmware updates” so that “infection of such devices may go unnoticed by the owner.”

      The USA and China are the two countries where people own most of these things, so they’re also where most of the malicious traffic originates. Symantec ran a honeypot that recorded attempts to login and compromise a system that presented as a vulnerable IoT device, and found that the most common login attempts used the default passwords of “root” and “admin,” suggesting that malware authors have discovered that IoT owners rarely change these defaults. Other common logins include “123456,” “test” and “oracle.”

    • Meet Linux.Mirai Trojan, a DDoS nightmare
    • Linux.Mirai Trojan Carries Out DDoS Attacks
    • Fears of a hacked election may keep 1 out of every 5 voters home, says report

      Recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and election databases have increased fears that cybercriminals will try to interfere with the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

      Concerns leading up to election day on November 8 could have a real impact on voter turnout, according to a study from cybersecurity firm Carbon Black. More than one in five registered U.S. voters may stay home on election day because of fears about cybersecurity and vote tampering, the study — an online survey of 700 registered voters aged 18-54 — found.

    • Hostile Web Sites

      I was asked whether it would be safe to open a link in a spam message with wget. So here are some thoughts about wget security and web browser security in general.

    • Bug Bounty Hunters Can Earn $1.5 Million For A Successful Jailbreak Of iOS 10
    • How To Ensure Trustworthy, Open Source Elections [Ed: This reminds us Microsoft must be kicked out of election process [1, 2]

      A strong democracy hinges not only on the right to vote but also on trustworthy elections and voting systems. Reports that Russia or others may seek to impact the upcoming U.S. presidential election—most recently, FBI evidence that foreign hackers targeted voter databases in Arizona and Illinois—has brought simmering concerns over the legitimacy of election results to a boil.

    • Source Code for IoT Botnet ‘Mirai’ Released

      The source code that powers the “Internet of Things” (IoT) botnet responsible for launching the historically large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against KrebsOnSecurity last month has been publicly released, virtually guaranteeing that the Internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and other easily hackable devices.

      The leak of the source code was announced Friday on the English-language hacking community Hackforums. The malware, dubbed “Mirai,” spreads to vulnerable devices by continuously scanning the Internet for IoT systems protected by factory default or hard-coded usernames and passwords.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Pentagon Paid for Fake ‘Al Qaeda’ Videos

      The Pentagon gave a controversial UK PR firm over half a billion dollars to run a top secret propaganda program in Iraq, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal.

      Bell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee.

      The agency’s staff worked alongside high-ranking U.S. military officers in their Baghdad Camp Victory headquarters as the insurgency raged outside.

      Bell Pottinger’s former chairman Lord Tim Bell confirmed to the Sunday Times, which has worked with the Bureau on this story, that his firm had worked on a “covert” military operation “covered by various secrecy documents.”

      Bell Pottinger reported to the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Council on its work in Iraq, he said.

    • As Brazil’s New Ruler Admits Lie Behind Impeachment, US Press Closes Eyes

      The Intercept‘s Inacio Vieira notes that the economic plan that Rousseff refused to implement called for widespread cuts to social programs and privatization, a radically different agenda from the one approved by the 54.5 million Brazilian voters who gave Rousseff’s Workers’ Party its fourth electoral victory in 2014.

      But Temer’s remarkable confession was not seen as newsworthy by virtually anyone in US corporate media—though the New York Times (9/19/16) did report on the speech by Temer to the United Nations a few days earlier in which he insisted in reference to the impeachment, “Everything happened with absolute respect for the constitutional order.”

    • When Is Direct Military Intervention Not Direct Military Intervention?

      “President Obama has long refused to approve direct military intervention in Syria,” the New York Times asserted in an editorial (9/29/16) about “Vladimir Putin’s Outlaw State.”

      That’s a peculiar thing to say, given that the Times regularly covers the United States’ ongoing direct military intervention in Syria. Since 2014, according to official Pentagon figures, the US has carried out 5,337 airstrikes in Syria. According to the monitoring group Airwars, these airstrikes (along with a few hundred strikes by US allies) have likely killed between 818 and 1,229 Syrian civilians.

      Nor is direct US military intervention in Syria limited to aerial attacks. In May 2015, the New York Times (5/16/15) reported on a combat raid by US Delta Force commandos in eastern Syria. Later that year, the Times (10/30/15) observed that President Barack Obama had announced he was sending (in the paper’s words) “several dozen” special forces troops on an “open-ended mission” inside Syria.

    • It’s Personal Now: Apologizing to My Daughter for the Last 15 Years of War

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      I recently sent my last kid off for her senior year of college. There are rituals to these things, and because dad-confessions are not among them, I just carried the boxes and kept quiet.

      But what I really wanted to say to her — rather than see you later, call this weekend, do you need money? — was: I’m sorry.

      Like all parents in these situations, I was thinking about her future. And like all of America, in that future she won’t be able to escape what is now encompassed by the word “terrorism.”

    • Bring Back The Cold War

      Pundits have declared a “New Cold War.” If only!

    • Colombia’s Santos, FARC scramble to revive peace after shock vote

      Colombia’s government and Marxist FARC guerrillas will scramble on Monday to revive a plan to end their 52-year war after voters rejected the hard-negotiated deal as too lenient on the rebels in a shock result that plunged the nation into uncertainty.

      Putting on a brave face after a major political defeat, President Juan Manuel Santos offered hope to those who backed his four-year peace negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Cuba.

      Latin America’s longest conflict has killed 220,000 people.

      “I will not give up, I will keep seeking peace until the last minute of my term,” he said moments after losing Sunday’s plebiscite to those who want a re-negotiation of the deal or an obliteration of the FARC on the battlefield.

    • Colombia’s Brexit moment as politicians misjudge popular anger at Farc amnesty

      Colombia’s rejection of a peace deal with Farc rebels to end 52 years of war does not mean an automatic return to hostilities, but it makes the possibility of peace, which had looked close enough to touch, once again a faraway prospect.

      All the pieces were in place to begin implementation of a deal that was four years in the making after talks between government and Farc negotiators in Havana. The Farc had ratified the accord at a national conference, President Juan Manuel Santos and Farc leader Timochenko had signed it in a public ceremony and UN monitors were ready to oversee the bringing together and disarmament of the Farc’s 5,800 fighters. The Nobel committee was reportedly considering a peace prize for Colombia.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Bees added to US endangered species list for the first time

      Seven types of bees once found in abundance in Hawaii have become the first bees to be added to the US federal list of endangered and threatened species.

      The listing decision, published on Friday in the Federal Register, classifies seven varieties of yellow-faced or masked bees as endangered, due to such factors as habitat loss, wildfires and the invasion of non-native plants and insects.

      The bees, so named for yellow-to-white facial markings, once crowded Hawaii and Maui but recent surveys found their populations have plunged in the same fashion as other types of wild bees – and some commercial ones – elsewhere in the United States, federal wildlife managers said.

  • Finance

    • How Donald Trump could have – legally – paid no taxes

      Trump claimed a $916 million loss in 1995, according to a few pages from his state tax returns obtained by the New York Times.

      Because of how Trump structured his businesses and because of the vast array of tax breaks available to real estate developers, it’s a loss that he could have used to reduce the income tax he might otherwise owe.

      CNN has not independently verified the authenticity of the documents published by the New York Times.

    • ‘The Gender Pay Gap Follows Women Into All Areas’

      Janine Jackson: Every now and again, media will release a list of “best places to work if you’re a woman,” citing companies that treat women, well, fairly. Surely meant to be a spotlight on good guys, these features give the dispiriting impression that fair treatment for women at work is a matter of noblesse oblige, and the onus is on women to shop around till they find a job where they won’t be discriminated against.

      A fundamental reflection of that discrimination is, of course, the gender pay gap. The census data used to figure out the pay gap was released recently, and the American Association of University Women has put together their report analyzing it. Here to talk about where we’re at is Kevin Miller, senior researcher at AAUW and author of the new report, The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap. He joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Kevin Miller.

    • Post-Debate, NYT Scores Points on Trade–Not So Much on Accuracy

      While China has recently been trying to keep up the value of its currency by selling reserves, it still holds more than $4 trillion in foreign reserves, counting its sovereign wealth fund. This is more than four times the holdings that would typically be expected of a country its size. These holdings have the effect of keeping down the value of China’s currency.

      If this seems difficult to understand, the Federal Reserve now holds more than $3 trillion in assets as a result of its quantitative easing programs of the last seven years. It raised its short-term interest rate by a quarter point last December; nonetheless, almost all economists would agree the net effect of the Fed’s actions is to keep interest rates lower than they would otherwise be. The same is true of China and its foreign reserve position.

      The piece goes on to say that NAFTA has “for more than two decades has been widely counted as a main achievement of her husband,” Bill Clinton. It doesn’t say who holds this view. The deal did not lead to a rise in the US trade surplus with Mexico, which was a claim by its proponents before its passage. It also has not led to more rapid growth in Mexico, which has actually fallen further behind the United States in the two decades since NAFTA.

    • Alice O’Connor on the Politics of Poverty

      This week on CounterSpin: New data showing a drop in the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line is being rightly celebrated. But if eliminating poverty is really our goal, wouldn’t there be keener interest in asking exactly why the number went down—or what it means that it didn’t go down for everyone? For that matter, is monitoring the ups and downs in the poverty rate really the most useful way to think about the problem of persistent social inequity and hardship—or the best measure of the adequacy of the responses we’ve developed?

      We talk about the limits of how we talk about poverty with Alice O’Connor. She’s a professor of history at the University of California/Santa Barbara and author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy and the Poor in 20th Century US History.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Why Facts Don’t Matter to Donald Trump or the 2016 Electorate

      Between the hours of 3 AM and 5 AM Friday morning, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump went on a tweetstorm in which he was, you know, just saying that maybe Hillary Clinton helped former Miss Universe (and a target of Trump’s misogyny) Alicia Machado become a US citizen “so she could use her in the debate.”

      Is that true? Almost certainly not—but in this election season, truth and facts hardly seem to matter. Trump’s attacks on Machado are just the latest data point in an election cycle that has seen wild speculation, rampant exaggeration, and outright lies become accepted as fact by huge swaths of the electorate on both sides of the aisle.

    • Challenge Donald Trump: The media needs to stop acting like the Republican nominee is reality TV

      According to the most recent polls — Donald Trump is now leading Hillary Clinton in the critical swing states of Ohio and Florida.

      And if their behavior in the primaries is any indication — the U.S. media is about to deliver this nation into the hands of Donald J. Trump, and there’s probably very little any of us can do about it.

      The “how” of this has played out in front of us for a year: While Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were debating issues on the Democratic side — and being largely ignored — Trump was getting wall-to-wall coverage as he bullied his Republican opponents in the primary.

      So the “how” was grounded in editorial and business decisions about who to cover and how.

    • Trump Tax Records Obtained by The Times Reveal He Could Have Avoided Paying Taxes for Nearly Two Decades

      Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, records obtained by The New York Times show.

      The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

      Tax experts hired by The Times to analyze Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • There’s exactly one way to prevent misuse of surveillance data: to never collect it in the first place

      A key conclusion in my latest column deserves elaboration: why all available empiric data tells us that the only way to prevent misuse of surveillance data is to never collect it in the first place. This is a very unpopular fact with surveillance hawks, but it’s nevertheless the truth: all collected surveillance data will be abused and turned against the citizen, and that with a mathematical level of certainty.

      While it can’t be logically proven that all surveillance data has been misused and that the surveillance power has been abused, there comes a point in time in any activity where all available empiric data gives the same indication of failure forcefully enough to make people stop and ask “hey, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea”. We’re there with the so-called War on Drugs, we’re there with a number of activities, but the establishment is still fighting forcefully for more surveillance – even though all the data against it is there, and has been for decades.

      Let’s take one example of a super-benign data collection. Around 125 years ago, the Netherlands wanted to serve their citizens better in city planning to make sure everybody had a place of worship nearby, so they started collecting data on people’s faith and where they lived, in order to make sure everybody had a short distance to walk to places of worship.

      There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this on the surface, right? Making sure people have access to services? And yet, this is squarely in the “what could possibly go wrong” category.

    • Shadow Brokers rant about people wanting stolen NSA-linked hacking tools for free

      The hacking group trying to auction off NSA-linked Equation Group hacking tools is unhappy because no one has coughed up the big bucks yet to buy the exploits.

      On Saturday, the Shadow Brokers took to Medium to release the group’s third message. The hackers sound hurt that people don’t trust them and – if cursing is any indication – the hackers are angry that the Equation Group cyber weapons auction has flopped so far.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • This U.S. chess champion is missing the world contest in Iran to protest country’s hijab policy

      One female chess player is protesting Iran’s hijab laws by missing the world tournament.

      Nazi Paikidze-Barnes is the reigning U.S. women’s chess champion. But she won’t be going to the Women’s World Championship being held there in February.

      She explained her decision on Friday in a Facebook post in which she called the World Chess Federation’s decision to have the contest in Tehran “unacceptable.”

      SEE ALSO: Models in hijabs make history at New York Fashion Week

      “I think it’s unacceptable to host a WOMEN’S World Championship in a place where women do not have basic fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens,” she wrote on the site.

    • O.C. Woman Says Airline Made Her Move Because 2 Pakistani Monks Can’t Sit Next To Female

      An Orange County woman said she is the victim of discrimination.

      Mary Campos says her pre-booked ticket was given away by United Airlines. The reason? She’s a woman, and two men didn’t want to sit next to a female.

      It’s a story that is Only On 2. Stacey Butler spoke to Campos.

      A a million-mile flier, Campos — a mom who lives in Coto de Caza — said she thought she’d seen it all.

      Until a gate agent handed her a new boarding pass just before she got on a flight to Houston last Monday.

      “He said this is your new seat,” Campos said, “And I said, ‘Excuse me?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this’”

      She said she continued by saying, “Yes?”

      [...]

      The letter said, in part, “What if I were handicapped, or transgender?” she wrote. “What if your entire crew were female? Any belief that prevents individuals from interacting with females should not travel on commercial aircraft.”

      She got a reply that said United would look into it. She said she didn’t hear from them again.

      But Butler did. A company spokesperson wrote, in part:

      “We regret that Ms. Campos was unhappy with the handling of the seat assignments on her flight. United holds its employees to the highest standards of professionalism and has zero tolerance for discrimination.”

    • Egyptian MP calls for women to undergo virginity tests before being admitted to university

      An Egyptian MP has called for women to be forced to undergo virginity tests before being admitted to university, it has been reported.

      Parliamentary member Elhamy Agina called on the Minister of Higher Education to issue a mandate requiring him or his officials to enforce the virginity tests, Egyptian Streets reports. He has suggested that university cards could only been issued to female students on completition of a virginity test.

      In an interview with local media, he said: “Any girl who enters university, we have to check her medical examination to prove that she is a Miss. Therefore, each girl must present an official document upon being admitted to university stating she’s a Miss.”

      The term “Miss” in Egyptian culture is often used to refer euphemistically as to whether a woman is a virgin.

    • Operators of baby factory risk 10 years imprisonment

      Henceforth, operators of baby factories, racketeering with human pregnancy and those involved in sale of new born baby across the country on conviction by Court of any competent jurisdiction will be subjected to 10 years imprisonment.

      The punitive measure was contained in the bill for an Act to amend “trafficking in persons (Prohibition) law enforcement and administration Act No. 28 of 2005 to prohibit racketeering with human pregnancy or operation of baby prosecution factory, harbouring or pregnancy persons under the age of 18 and above or selling or attempting to sell new born baby and for related matters, 2016.”

    • California Governor Signs Major Civil Forfeiture Reform – Institute for Justice

      Today, California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 443, a major overhaul of the state’s civil forfeiture laws. The bill marks one of the nation’s most significant reforms of its kind.

      “Civil forfeiture is one of the most serious assaults on due process and private property rights in America today,” said Institute for Justice Legislative Counsel Lee McGrath. “By generally requiring a criminal conviction, SB 443 would go far in curbing this abuse of power.”

    • Don’t Abandon Due Process, Not Even For Terrorism

      The clash in American history between liberty and safety is as old as the republic itself. As far back as 1798, notwithstanding the lofty goals and individualistic values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the same generation — in some cases the same human beings — that wrote in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech” enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which punished speech critical of the government.

      Similarly, the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process has been ignored by those in government charged with enforcing it when they deal with a criminal defendant whom they perceive the public hates or fears. So it should come as no surprise that no sooner had the suspect in the recent New Jersey and New York City bombings been arrested than public calls came to strip him of his rights, send him to Gitmo and extract information from him. This is more Vladimir Putin than James Madison.

    • Big Papers Want Foreign Companies, Not War Crime Victims, to Sue US

      Notice that the possibility of other countries suing the US for war crimes its government commits is automatically assumed to be undesirable. The Washington Post puts “terrorism” in irony quotes because, of course, the US could never actually commit terrorism; claims to this effect could only be invoked “when convenient” by greedy non-Americans.

      The New York Times uses its trademark euphemisms to describe how the US is “engaged in the world” with “drone operations.” A nice way of saying the US uses drones to bomb people in a half-dozen countries with—so far—legal impunity. Changing this state of affairs is simply glossed over as a nonstarter.

      USA Today frames any attempt at legal recourse over American terrorism overseas as “retaliation”—presumably for some righteous kill executed by the United States in the service of freedom.

      The New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today are saying that exposing American military and intelligence personnel to foreign liability is per se bad—a nativism so casual and matter-of-fact one might hardly notice it until circumstances force them to explicitly state it. No account is taken of the 7 billion non-Americans or their rights. No explanation is given as to why victims of US terror–of which there are many–shouldn’t register in our moral calculus. They just don’t.

      The irony is that none of these publications were overly concerned with exposing the US to foreign lawsuits when they offered support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a corporate trade deal that includes a provision for Investor-State Dispute Settlement—meaning it permits corporations to sue governments, including the US, in the event that a regulation undermines corporate profits. So increased exposure to liability to the US government when it gives more power to corporations is permissible, even desirable, but when it might provide recourse for victims of US war crimes? Not so much.

    • Death threats force Muslim woman into hiding

      Liberal Party politician Mostafa Geha was one of several speakers at the demo, arranged by the local Liberal Party and GAPH, an organisation against “honour violence.” It came in response to a sustained campaign of intimidation and violence on 21-year-old Walaa, who lives in Hedemora.

      In an interview with local radio station P4 Dalarna, she claimed that she has been harassed by both men and women in the town for “not living in the right way”. Tension heightened during a confrontation when she was hit in the face by a young man who had been harassing her over a long period.

      Walaa reported the incident to the police but in the following days the row spread over social media and the story was picked up by local Liberal Party leaders.

      “I decided we should organise a demonstration because that is the way we solve conflict in Sweden. We do it by trying to hold a discussion and say “this is not right”, Anna Eling, chairperson for the Liberals in Hedemora told TT.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • US government no longer manages internet’s technical functions

      The US government has ceded control of the technical management of the internet, in what has been called the “most significant change in the internet’s functioning for a generation”.

      Following a long legal battle, the California-based NGO Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will gain control over the organisation of unique online identifiers.

      The change will not affect ordinary internet users but is a reflection of the rapidly shifting online landscape and attitudes to it.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • “If KickassTorrents is a Criminal Operation, Google Should Start Worrying”

        Polish authorities have extended the arrest of Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents. His defense team is currently preparing to fight the U.S. extradition request, which will start next month. According to Artem’s U.S. lawyer, operating a torrent site is not a criminal offense. “If KickassTorrents is a criminal operation, then Google should start worrying,” he says.

      • Watching Pirate Streams Isn’t Illegal, EU Commission Argues

        This week the European Court of Justice heard a crucial case that will give more clarity on the infringing nature of unauthorized streaming. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN and the Spanish authorities argued that offering or watching pirate streams is a violation of the EU Copyright Directive. However, the European Commission believes that consumers who watch unauthorized streams are not breaking the law. […]

        Based on the hearing the Advocate General will issue a recommendation later this year, which will be followed by a final verdict from the EU Court of Justice somewhere early 2017.

      • Record Label Picks Copyright Fight — With The Wrong Guy

        An Australian record label may have picked a fight with the wrong guy. The label sent a standard takedown notice threatening to sue after YouTube computers spotted its music in a video.

        It turns out that video was posted by one of the most famous copyright attorneys in the world, and Lawrence Lessig is suing back.

10.02.16

Links 2/10/2016: Wine 1.9.20, Raspberry Pi PIXEL

Posted in News Roundup at 6:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac: the channel comparison

    Linux is open source meaning you can customise and modify the code any which way you like. This flexibility has made the system hugely popular amongst the developer community. This is not the same in Windows and Mac. Neither the Windows and Mac programmes nor the operating systems are open source.

    So there we have it, three entirely different operating systems offering unique experiences that can meet the differing demands of the modern user, whilst offering unique opportunities throughout the channel. So the real question now is, are you a Mac Linux or Windows user?

  • Linux Journal October 2016

    There was a show a few years back called, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”. The premise of the show was to find families who needed their houses overhauled, but couldn’t afford to do it on their own. Generally, those chosen had sacrificed for others rather than spend time and money on themselves. Then the show would completely redo their houses, making it so nice the happy families no longer could afford the taxes, and they’d soon be homeless. I might have missed the point of the show, but the idea of improving on outdated infrastructure certainly rings true for IT folks. This month, we look at improving our lives by improving on the tech we depend on every day.

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • Kubernetes 1.4 Improves Container Security

      The latest release of the open-source container orchestration technology adds new security features, including TLS bootstrap.
      The open-source Kubernetes 1.4 release, which debuted Sept. 26, provides users with a host of enhanced security capabilities for container deployment and orchestration.

      Kubernetes originated at Google and is now part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, benefiting from the contributions of multiple vendors.

      Among the new features in Kubernetes 1.4 is TLS bootstrap, which is designed to improve the use of encryption for data in motion across a cluster. TLS (Transport Layer Security) is widely used on the internet today for encryption.

      “The TLS bootstrapping work done in Kubernetes 1.4 is a step toward automating the addition of new hosts to the Kubernetes cluster,” Clayton Coleman, Red Hat’s lead architect for OpenShift, explained to eWEEK.

  • Kernel Space

    • Why kernel development still uses email

      In a world full of fancy development tools and sites, the kernel project’s dependence on email and mailing lists can seem quaintly dated, if not positively prehistoric. But, as Greg Kroah-Hartman pointed out in a Kernel Recipes talk titled “Patches carved into stone tablets”, there are some good reasons for the kernel community’s choices. Rather than being a holdover from an older era, email remains the best way to manage a project as large as the kernel.

      In short, Greg said, kernel developers still use email because it is faster than any of the alternatives. Over the course of the last year, the project accepted about eight changes per hour — every hour — from over 4,000 developers sponsored by over 400 companies. It must be doing something right. The list of maintainers who accepted at least one patch per day contains 75 entries; at the top of the list, Greg himself accepted 9,781 patches over the year. Given that he accepts maybe one third of the patches sent his way, it is clear that the patch posting rate is much higher than that.

      Finding tools that can manage that sort of patch rate is hard. A poor craftsman famously complains about his tools, Greg said, but a good craftsman knows how to choose excellent tools.

      So which tools are available for development work? Greg started by looking at GitHub, which, he said, has a number of advantages. It is “very very pretty” and is easy to use for small projects thanks to its simple interface. GitHub offers free hosting and unlimited bandwidth, and can (for a fee) be run on a company’s own infrastructure. It makes life easy for the authors of drive-by patches; Greg uses it for the usbutils project and gets an occasional patch that way.

    • Fireside Chat with David Rusling and Linus Torvalds
    • The Problem with Linux Kernel Documentation, and How We’re Fixing it

      The Linux Kernel has one of the biggest communities in the open source world; the numbers are impressive: over 4,000 contributors per year, resulting in about 8 changes per hour. That results in 4,600 lines of code added every day and a major release every 9-10 weeks. With these impressive numbers, it’s impossible for a traditional printed book to follow the changes because by the time the book is finally written, reviewed and published, a lot of changes have already merged upstream. So, the best way to maintain updated documentation is to keep it close to the source code. This way, when some changes happen, the developer that wrote such changes can also update the corresponding documents. That works great in theory, but it is not as effective as one might think.

    • How To Use Systemd For Application Sandboxing & How To Easily Crash Systemd

      Another one of the interesting systemd.conf 2016 presentations in Berlin was a talk by Djalal Harouni of EndoCode for using systemd to carry out application sandboxing.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Experimental Unity Vulkan Demos For Linux

        Some of the exciting news this week was Unity releasing their Vulkan renderer in preview form and this initial debut did contain Linux support. There are now some unofficial Unity demos built for Linux with the Vulkan renderer enabled.

        Levi Bard is hosting some sample Linux player builds with the Vulkan preview support enabled. There are two demos currently offered: Corridor Lighting Example and Viking Village. There are both x86 and x86_64 builds and should work with newer Vulkan Linux drivers.

      • The Talos Principle native radv vulkan amdgpu (SI)
      • We Might Never See A New OpenGL Version, At Least Not For A Long Time

        During past Khronos press briefings about OpenGL/Vulkan and in other communications, while Vulkan is the organization’s big graphics API focus, it was implied during these conversations that OpenGL would continue to march to its own beat and evolve as needed. While OpenGL continues to be significantly used by cross-platform graphics application/game developers, it turns out there might not be a new official version for a long time – if ever.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE neon Korean Developer Edition (… and future CJK Edition?)

        Among many other locations around the planet, the local community in Korea is planning to put on a KDE 20th Anniversary birthday party in Seoul on October 14th. The KDE neon Korean Developer Edition was directly created on request for this event, to be made available to attendees.

        That said – this is actually something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, and it’s not just about Korean.

        None of the bits that make up the new image are new per-se; KDE has supported Korean for a long time, both with foundational localization engineering and regular maintenance activity. And as of the Plasma 5.6 release, our Input Method Panel is finally bundled with the core desktop code and gets automatically added to the panel on first logon in a locale that typically requires an input method.

        Yet it’s pretty hard to keep all of this working well, as it requires tight integration and testing across an entire stack, with some parts of the whole living upstream or downstream of KDE.org. For example: After we attempted to make the Plasma panel smarter by making it auto-add the Input Method Panel depending on locale, we couldn’t actually be sure it was working as desired by our users, as it takes time for distros to get around to tuning their dependency profiles and for feedback from their users to loop back up to us. It’s a very long cycle, with too many opportunities to lose focus or domain knowledge to turnover along the way.

      • Qt Champion nominations for 2016 now open
      • MediaWikiToLearn Hackathon + Editathon
      • Mobile IMG 20160930-021219
      • KIO GDrive 1.0 released

        I’m happy to finally announce the first stable release of KIO GDrive. KIO GDrive enables KIO-aware applications (such as Dolphin, Kate or Gwenview) to access and edit Google Drive files on the cloud.

        Given the lack of an official Google Drive client for Linux, KIO GDrive can be used as replacement for managing your Drive files with Dolphin. Even better, you don’t have to use space on your disk! The files are still in the cloud, yet you can edit them as if they were locally stored on your machine.

        For example you can edit a text file in Kate or crop an image in Gwenview, and just save those files as you normally would. The edited file will be automatically uploaded on the cloud. This will also work with non-KIO applications, for example Libreoffice, but in this case a dialog will explicity ask if you want to upload the new version of the file.

      • In Defence for Permissive Licences; KDE licence policy update
      • My Adventures and Misadventures in Qt Quick Land

        I have the worst sense of timing when adopting technologies and always find myself at transition points. Python 2 to 3, OpenGL fixed to programmable pipeline, and Qt widgets to Qt Quick. Perhaps the most significant thing to come out of Nokia’s short stewardship of Qt, Qt Quick (originally Qt QUICK, or Qt User Interface Creation Kit) is perhaps the biggest, and somewhat most controversial, change in Qt in recent years. Unless The Qt Company makes a highly unlikely U-turn, it is also probably Qt’s future (without discarding regular widgets, of course). It is also definitely the future for Plasma, the KDE desktop. In fact, it is already its present. Of course, I just had to sink my teeth into it, if only briefly. Since I still wasn’t yet set firmly in the ways of the Widget, I thought it might be easier to wrap my head around this new way of coding. I was both wrong and right. Here is my story.

      • Qt on Android: How to create an Android service using Qt
      • Using Qt Quick for prototyping
      • KDAB talks at QtCon 2016
      • Tomorrow is a New Day – Joining Blue Systems
      • [Krita] New Stable and Development Builds
      • Kubuntu 16.10 Beta 2 is here! Test Test Test! And then more Testing
      • RFC: How to fix a tricky leak in QFormLayout?
      • Kirigami 1.1
      • Kirigami 1.1
      • Emoji restyling

        I started to restyling and try to finish the Emoji.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • An Introduction to GNOME Boxes (virtualization) on Linux

        GNOME Boxes is a system virtualization application that is a core part of the GNOME desktop environment. Based on the QEMU machine emulator, it offers a simplified and user-friendly approach to the whole OS virtualization idea. This post is just an introduction to its capabilities and a statement that it finally works in other distributions besides Fedora.

        Once you launch Boxes, you are greeted with a message to press the “New” button to add a new system. Doing so will let the application quickly search in your home folder to find any supported image files. You may either select from the list, navigate your disk, or even insert a URL address.

  • Distributions

    • This Week in Solus – Install #36

      Welcome to the 36th installation of This Week in Solus.

    • Reviews

      • Sabayon Bizarre But Useful

        Sabayon, which gets its name from the the Italian egg-derived dessert known as zabaione, is a distribution that we don’t hear too much about these days, although the British Linux press gave it some love a few years ago. It was unassuming…with a hint of mystery. I tried it back then, when I was still fairly new to actually using Linux and thought it was a nice effort, but a little too weird. That wasn’t their fault; that was mine. I was still clinging sharply to Ubuntu at the time. Plus, I was a bit more shallow in those days because I was really set on the idea that an operating system had to look good before I would really put some hours into using it. I still am in many respects. I’m just not crazy about boring.

        So when I approached Matt with the idea of documenting a revisitation to Sabayon, he greenlighted it immediately. Team Sabayon has been very busy. It still has a hint of mystique that I find very attractive. It’s got a lot of applications at default and offers you a lot of decision-making power as well. More on that later.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • Mesa, Kernel, GNOME, KDE apps update in Tumbleweed

        Another week and another five snapshots for openSUSE’s rolling release Tumbleweed produced updates for openSSL, GNOME 3.22, Mesa and the Linux Kernel.

        Dominique Leuenberger, a core member of the openSUSE release team, informed subscribers of the openSUSE Factory Mailing List about some of the packages that were updated during the week and some packages users can expect over the next couple of weeks.

        Snapshot 20160928 produced an update for openSSL to 1.0.2j, which patched a high severity Online Certificate Status Protocol vulnerability. The same snapshot also gave users the updated 4.7.5 Linux Kernel.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Phone pre OTA 14 quick view
          • Canonical Brings Kubernetes to Ubuntu

            It appears as if the guys and gals at Canonical have been working overtime to stay ahead in the cloud, where its Linux distribution, Ubuntu, is the decisive winner as far as the number of deployments goes. Evidently, they’d like to keep it that way. On Tuesday the company unveiled its own fully supported enterprise distribution of Kubernetes. This comes only a week after the company announced it had worked with IBM to bring its own implementation of OpenStack to Big Blue’s hardware.

            If you don’t know, Kubernetes is a container tool for DevOps that was originally developed by Google but which is now managed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and available under the Apache open source license. To develop its own distribution, Ubuntu copied its IBM mainframe move and worked with the source, in this case Google. They’ve come up with what Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is calling a “pure, vanilla version” of the platform.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Mintbox Mini Pro: A Cheap Linux Machine With Compelling Specs

              The Mintbox Mini has been received a major hardware upgrade and it is now called Mintbox Mini Pro. The Linux machine comes at a price of $395 and features an all-metal casing which eliminates the need for a cooling fan. Significant bumps having been given to the storage, RAM, processor, wireless, and other hardware components.

            • budgie-remix 16.10 beta 2 is now available
            • Addressing FUD

              I find it really despicable to see developers, maintainers and communities from competing projects create and spread FUD about Linux Mint in an effort to promote their own distribution.

              At this cost, getting more users is futile. Of course, a project needs a large audience to succeed, but what matters the most is how happy your users are. If you want your project to work, make it great. If you want to promote it, highlight your own work and efforts.

              At the time when Ubuntu was dominant in the Linux market, it continuously received a huge amount of FUD. It was unfair, it was stupid and frankly, it was embarrassing for the entire Linux community. It still is and it has gotten worse for us because we’re now receiving a significant chunk of that FUD, some of it coming from the very same project who already suffered so much from it.

            • Monthly News – September 2016

              Many thanks to you all for your help, support and donations. This month has been very exciting for us because the release cycle was over, the base jump to the new LTS base was achieved, we had plenty of ideas to implement, nothing got in our way and we could focus on development. Not only that but the development budget was high, and that’s thanks to you, and it tightens the bonds a little more between us. It makes everybody happy, some developers start looking for a new laptop, others use the money to relax. No matter how it’s used, it always helps, and because it helps them, it helps us.

              Another team was set up recently to gather artists and web designers who are interested in improving our websites. This is a new team, with 9 members who just started to get to know each others. It’s hard to predict how the team will evolve, or if it will be successful. It’s hard to know also who in this team might end up being central to our designs and maybe not only to our websites but also to our software, our user interfaces.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Trainline creates open source platform to help developers deploy apps and environments in AWS

    The Trainline, the independent rail ticket retailer, has created an open sourced standardised way for its developers to deploy and manage individual applications and environments in Amazon Web Services’ public cloud.

    The company has 150 staff in its development area, who focus on improving user experience, and in order to ensure that its underlying infrastructure wasn’t a constraint on time to market, the firm recently migrated all of its development, staging, UAT and production environments from a legacy private data centre to Amazon’s public cloud.

  • Trainline creates open source platform to let developers test apps in AWS
  • Yahoo open-sources machine learning porn filter

    Yahoo is the latest tech company to open source its computer vision code. The beleaguered outfit’s application for it? Filtering porn. Yahoo hopes that its convolutional neural net (CNN) will empower others to better guard innocent eyes, but admits that because of the tech’s very nature (and how the definition of “porn” can vary wildly), that the CNN isn’t perfect.

    “This model is a general purpose reference model, which can be used for the preliminary filtering of pornographic images,” a post on the Yahoo Engineering Tumblr says. “We do not provide guarantees of accuracy of output, rather, we make this available for developers to explore and enhance as an open source project.” The code is available on Github at the moment, and if you need any testing material, well, there isn’t exactly a shortage of it on Tumblr. Just ask Indonesia.

  • Jahshaka VR alpha release

    We have finally managed to release the alpha version of the Jahshaka VR authoring toolkit under the GPL and wanted to invite people to jump in, look at the code and help out. We have been working on it for 6 months now and its starting to stabilize.

  • Events

    • The Linux Foundation Announces Session Lineup for ApacheCon(TM) Europe
    • OpenShift Commons Gathering event preview

      We’re just two months out from the OpenShift Commons Gathering coming up on November 7, 2016 in Seattle, Washington, co-located with KubeCon and CloudNativeCon.

      OpenShift Origin is a distribution of Kubernetes optimized for continuous application development and multi-tenant deployment. Origin adds developer and operations-centric tools on top of Kubernetes to enable rapid application development, easy deployment and scaling, and long-term lifecycle maintenance for small and large teams. And we’re excited to say, the 1.3 GA release of OpenShift Origin, which includes Kubernetes 1.3, is out the door! Hear more about the release from Lead Architect for OpenShift Origin, Clayton Coleman.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox ready to block certificate authority that threatened Web security

        The organization that develops Firefox has recommended the browser block digital credentials issued by a China-based certificate authority for 12 months after discovering it cut corners that undermine the entire transport layer security system that encrypts and authenticates websites.

        The browser-trusted WoSign authority intentionally back-dated certificates it has issued over the past nine months to avoid an industry-mandated ban on the use of the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, Mozilla officials charged in a report published Monday. SHA-1-based signatures were barred at the beginning of the year because of industry consensus they are unacceptably susceptible to cryptographic collision attacks that can create counterfeit credentials. To satisfy customers who experienced difficulty retiring the old hashing function, WoSign continued to use it anyway and concealed the use by dating certificates prior to the first of this year, Mozilla officials said. They also accused WoSign of improperly concealing its acquisition of Israeli certificate authority StartCom, which was used to issue at least one of the improperly issued certificates.

        “Taking into account all the issues listed above, Mozilla’s CA team has lost confidence in the ability of WoSign/StartCom to faithfully and competently discharge the functions of a CA,” Monday’s report stated. “Therefore we propose that, starting on a date to be determined in the near future, Mozilla products will no longer trust newly issued certificates issued by either of these two CA brands.”

      • Firefox gains serious speed and reliability and loses some bloat

        There’s no way around it. Firefox has struggled. As of this writing, Firefox 47 is the top of the Firefox market share heap at a scant 3.14 %. Given that Chrome 52 holds 23.96 % and IE 11 holds 17.74 %, the chances of Firefox displacing either, anytime soon, is slim. If you scroll way down on the browser market share listing, you’ll notice Firefox 49 (the latest release) is at .19 %. Considering 49 is the stable release candidate that was only recently unleashed, that is understandable (to a point).

        Thing is, Firefox 49 is a really, really good browser. But is it good enough to give the open source browser any significant gains in the realm of market share? Let’s take a look at what the Mozilla developers have brought to the fore with the latest release of their flagship browser and see how much hope it holds for the future of the software that was once leader among its peers.

      • Mozilla’s Project Mortar Wants Pepper API Flash & PDFium In Firefox

        This week word of Mozilla’s “Project Mortar” surfaced, which aims to explore the possibility of bringing the PDFium library and Pepper API based Flash plugin into Firefox. This project is being led by various Mozilla engineers.

        Mozilla is so far developing Project Mortar in private while they plan to open it up in the future.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • What’s Happening in OpenStack-Ansible (WHOA) – September 2016

      Welcome to the fourth post in the series of What’s Happening in OpenStack-Ansible (WHOA) posts that I’m assembling each month. OpenStack-Ansible is a flexible framework for deploying enterprise-grade OpenStack clouds. In fact, I use OpenStack-Ansible to deploy the OpenStack cloud underneath the virtual machine that runs this blog!

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • Next Tech Book

      Instead, I’m starting a book on OpenBSD’s web stack.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • ​For lessons on digital swaraj, Gandhi is an open source

      Gandhi engaged with the copyright law to subvert the economics he disagreed with, and to infuse it with values close to his heart, wrote a US law professor in a 2013 paper titled ‘Gandhi and Copyright Pragmatism’. “Toward the later part of his life, he also came to deploy copyright law to curtail market-based exploitation when he could. In many ways then, Gandhi’s approach did with copyright law what open source licensing and the Creative Commons Project would begin doing with copyright in the 21st century,” wrote Shyamkrishna Balganesh of University of Pennsylvania Law School.

      Now, consider the life and work of Richard M Stallman (callsign RMS in the geek-verse). A champion of the movement for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), he is more commonly known as the pioneer of ‘Copyleft’. “If you want to accomplish something in the world,” says his Wikiquote page, “idealism is not enough — you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be pragmatic.” RMS was among the first to call for a free online encyclopaedia. Wikipedia, no surprise, is governed by Creative Commons licensing.

    • GNU project- the free software movement turns 33

      On September 27, 1983 he had announced the launch of GNU, which was a free software replacement for UNIX.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • The makers of the video game “No Man’s Sky” are under investigation for false advertising

    No Man’s Sky was billed as a revolutionary video game—one that contained such multitudes of programmatically generated planets and animals that the developers said even they weren’t sure what players would find in its vast universe.

  • Science

    • Sexual harassment in STEM: ‘It’s tragic for society’

      These are the experiences of three women who spoke to CNN about a culture of pervasive sexual harassment in academia, especially in the sciences. They were harassed by different men, throughout different parts of their education and careers.
      “We see it in anthropology, we see it in philosophy, we see it in physics, we see it in the humanities, we see it in the social sciences. We see it in engineering in particular. Astronomy just happened to be, sort of, first” to get attention, said Alessondra Springmann, a rocket scientist at the University of Arizona who studies asteroids and comets.
      Distinguished scientists in the field of astronomy have been making headlines for harassing students they are supposed to be advising.
      And it’s happening at the same time as a nationwide push to get more American women into science careers. Young girls are increasingly encouraged to embrace STEM — the acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in elementary and middle school.

    • 9 Bizarre and Surprising Insights from Data Science

      Data is the world’s most potent, flourishing unnatural resource. Accumulated in large part as the byproduct of routine tasks, it is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is inherently predictive. Thus begins a gold rush to dig up insightful gems.

      Does crime increase after a sporting event? Do online daters more consistently rated as attractive receive less interest? Do vegetarians miss fewer flights? Does your e-mail address reveal your intentions?

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Clinical Trial Reporting Biased; Full Disclosure, Transparency Needed, Speakers Say

      A conference on clinical drug trials held today shed a harsh light on the availability and honesty of clinical trial reports. Many factors concur to possible distortion of results, speakers said, calling for more stringent obligations to provide all data for analysis. They also noted legislative efforts to tackle the issue. Speakers also pointed out a growing trend for pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials in developing countries.

    • Developing Countries Should Be Able To Shield Their Markets From Cheap Food Imports, Panel Says

      On the first day of the World Trade Organization Public Forum, which took place from 27-29 September, a panel organised by Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS), and The Right to Food campaign, looked at ways to reduce hunger and achieving the right to food in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In particular, the panel considered the possibility of developing countries investing in domestic production for food security.

    • DEA has kratom users holding their breath, lawmakers write more letters

      Starting today, the US Drug Enforcement Administration is free to list a popular herbal supplement called kratom as a Schedule I controlled substance. This would put kratom in the same lineup as heroin and make its sale and use a felony. But, in statements to the press, the agency said it has no timetable for officially listing kratom—it could be next week or longer—leaving users on the edge of their seats.

      Since the DEA announced its plan to ban kratom at the end of last month, thousands of users have frantically sought to reverse the decision, as well as buy up as much of the drug as they can. Users claim kratom, or Mitragyna speciosa, a tree in the coffee family, is effective at treating chronic pain, as well as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other ailments. The main active ingredients in kratom are mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, which can interact with opioid receptors in the brain. While the data to back up medical use of the plant is scant, users are adamant that it’s a lifesaver, allowing them to kick deadly and all-too-common opioid addictions.

  • Security

    • Report: Linux security must be upgraded to protect future tech

      The summit was used to expose a number of flaws in Linux’s design that make it increasingly unsuitable to power modern devices. Linux is the operating system that runs most of the modern world. It is behind everything from web servers and supercomputers to mobile phones. Increasingly, it’s also being used to run connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including products like cars and intelligent robots.

    • security things in Linux v4.6

      Hector Marco-Gisbert removed a long-standing limitation to mmap ASLR on 32-bit x86, where setting an unlimited stack (e.g. “ulimit -s unlimited“) would turn off mmap ASLR (which provided a way to bypass ASLR when executing setuid processes). Given that ASLR entropy can now be controlled directly (see the v4.5 post), and that the cases where this created an actual problem are very rare, means that if a system sees collisions between unlimited stack and mmap ASLR, they can just adjust the 32-bit ASLR entropy instead.

    • Let’s Encrypt Wants to Help Improve the CA Model

      Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit effort that brings free SSL/TLS certificates to the web, was first announced in November 2014 and became a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project in April 2015. To date, it has provided more than 5 million free certificates.

      While having an SSL/TLS certificate to encrypt traffic is an important element of web security, it’s not the only one, said Josh Aas, executive director of the Internet Security Research Group and leader of Let’s Encrypt.

      “There is a lot in the total picture of what makes a website secure, and we can do a lot to help a certain part of it,” he said in a video interview.

    • How to Throw a Tantrum in One Blog Post

      The systemd team has recently patched a local denial of service vulnerability affecting the notification socket, which is designed to be used for daemons to report their lifecycle and health information. Some people have used this as an opportunity to throw a fresh tantrum about systemd.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Rodrigo Duterte compares himself to Hitler and pledges to ‘slaughter three million drug addicts’

      The Philippine President has likened his national crackdown on drug crime to the Holocaust, saying he would be “happy” to kill as many addicts as Hitler slaughtered Jews.

      Rodrigo Duterte said he had been compared to a “cousin of Hitler” by critics during a press conference in southern Davao city on Friday. “Hitler massacred three million Jews… there’s three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them,” he said.

      At least six million Jews and other minority groups are known to have been killed by the Nazis before and during the second world war.

      Since taking up office in June, Mr Duterte has overseen a vicious anti-drug campaign in which more than 3,000 suspected drug dealers and users are understood to have been killed by police operations or vigilantes. The bodies of those killed are often left in the streets with signs listing their crimes.

  • Finance

    • Panic, Anxiety Spark Rush to Build Luxury Bunkers for L.A.’s Superrich

      Given the increased frequency of terrorist bombings and mass shootings and an under-lying sense of havoc fed by divisive election politics, it’s no surprise that home security is going over the top and hitting luxurious new heights. Or, rather, new lows, as the average depth of a new breed of safe haven that occupies thousands of square feet is 10 feet under or more. Those who can afford to pull out all the stops for so-called self-preservation are doing so — in a fashion that goes way beyond the submerged corrugated metal units adopted by reality show “preppers” — to prepare for anything from nuclear bombings to drastic climate-change events. Gary Lynch, GM at Rising S Bunkers, a Texas-based company that specializes in underground bunkers and services scores of Los Angeles residences, says that sales at the most upscale end of the market — mainly to actors, pro athletes and politicians (who require signed NDAs) — have increased 700 percent this year compared with 2015, and overall sales have risen 150 percent. “Any time there is a turbulent political landscape, we see a spike in our sales. Given this election is as turbulent as it is, we are gearing up for an even bigger spike,” says marketing director Brad Roberson of sales of bunkers that start at $39,000 and can run $8.35 million or more (FYI, a 12-stall horse shelter is $98,500).

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • USA TODAY’s Editorial Board: Trump is ‘unfit for the presidency’

      In the 34-year history of USA TODAY, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.

      This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

      From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.

      Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.

    • A principled option for U.S. president: Endorsing Gary Johnson, Libertarian

      As Nov. 8 looms, a dismayed, disconsolate America waits and wonders: What is it about 2016?

      How has our country fallen so inescapably into political and policy gridlock? How did pandering to aggrieved niche groups and seducing blocs of angry voters replace working toward solutions as the coin of our governing class? How could the Democratic and Republican parties stagger so far from this nation’s political mainstream?

      And the most pressing question: What should tens of millions of voters who yearn for answers do with two major-party candidates they disdain? Polls show an unprecedented number of people saying they wish they had another choice.

    • Jill Stein Eagerly Pointed Out All The Holes In The First Debate

      After being escorted away from Hofstra University ahead of the first presidential debate on Monday, Green party candidate Jill Stein took to Twitter to share her views as the two major party candidates faced off. Stein fell far short of the Commission on Presidential Debate’s requirement that candidates must be polling at 15 percent or more to earn a spot on the stage — Stein was averaging 3.2 percent, according to the commission. But still, she jumped on the opportunity to have her policies lined up next to Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s. Ultimately, Stein’s tweets made me wish she had debated on the main stage to present her extremely progressive politics.

      Stein’s policies skew much farther left than those of Clinton or Trump on nearly every issue — and even farther left than many of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposals. Given the impact that Sanders arguably had on Clinton’s positions throughout the primaries, it would have been interesting to see if Stein’s presence on the debate stage exerted a leftward pull on not only Clinton, but Trump as well. But more importantly, it would have been a service to the viewing public to hear from someone other than the major-party candidates, with whom the electorate is not thrilled.

    • Poll: Desire for major third party grows

      Most Americans say that the country needs a third major political party according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

      Fifty-seven percent say that the two major parties aren’t enough to represent the country’s voters.

      The majority opinion represents an increase from recent elections. In 2012, some 46 percent said a third party was needed.

      Those who currently want to see another major party include 73 percent of independents, 51 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of Democrats.

    • Ukip denies that Farage is coaching Donald Trump for next debate

      Ukip has denied reports that Nigel Farage has flown to the US to coach the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, for his next debate with Hillary Clinton.

      Farage hinted in his farewell speech at Ukip’s conference last month that he might return to Trump’s side following an appearance with the Republican candidate in August, saying: “Who knows, I may even go back to the United States of America at some point.” Ukip sources at the conference also confirmed Farage would travel to the US to help support Trump before the election.

    • Leaked Tape Exposes Hillary Mocking Bernie’s Supporters in Front of Big Donors

      The Democratic nominee said that Bernie’s supporters believed in a fictional world and are “living in their parents’ basement” hoping the United States becomes “Scandinavia, whatever that means.”

      A leaked audio recording of Hillary Clinton from a high-dollar fundraiser in February shows the Democratic nominee mocking not just progressive firebrand Bernie Sanders, but also the cadre of young supporters who favored the insurgent candidacy of the Vermont Senator, a revelation that is bound to have damning ramifications for Clinton’s campaign.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • [Older] Facebook thanks Norway PM after censorship row [Ed: publicity stunt after an ugly act of revisionism by censorship]

      After a protracted debate on censorship and Facebook’s outsized role in today’s media world, the social media giant has thanked Prime Minister Erna Solberg for raising “important issues”.
      Facebook restored a post by Solberg which it had taken down over an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing. The world’s leading social network later backtracked on the decision to remove the PM’s post, which is believed to be the first such online censorship involving a government leader.

    • Evidence of Feared Israel-Led Censorship as Zuckerberg Facebook Bans Palestinian Editors
    • To Stage Or Not To Stage: Theatre Censorship in India

      In December 1872, the Calcutta National Theatrical Society staged Nil Darpan, a play written by Dinabandhu Mitra, that exposed the atrocities committed by British indigo planters on Indian farmers. While the play received glowing reviews in most newspapers with nationalistic leanings, it was expectedly criticised by the British press. There was a demand that the play be banned. Other plays followed, criticising and making fun of the white rulers. Finally, in 1876, came the Dramatic Performances Act, putting restrictions on the public performance of plays.

      Cut to 2016. Nearly seven decades after the country’s independence from British rule, actor-director Amol Palekar moved the Mumbai high court in September, challenging rules framed under provisions of the Bombay Police Act, 1951, which make pre-censorship of drama scripts mandatory by the Maharashtra State Performance Scrutiny Board. In his petition, Palekar said the rules framed under the provisions of the Act were arbitrary and violated citizens’ fundamental right to freedom of expression, guaranteed under the Constitution. However, on September 26, the state government told the Bombay High Court that in March this year, the then commissioner of police had repealed the rule which required prior scrutiny of theatre scripts. Palekar has not replied to HT’s email requesting an interview. Repeated calls to advocate Sugandh Deshmukh, who is representing him in court, also went unanswered. But veteran theatre personality Alyque Padamsee who had filed an affidavit in support of Palekar’s petition said he is not surprised by the court proceedings. “It is the way bureaucracy works,” he says.

    • Your right to read trumps censorship

      “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” “To Kill a Mockingbird.” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

      Three very different books that share a common thread.

      Each year, individuals across the country take it upon themselves to decide what books you should and should not read. These are three that apparently you should not.

      Yes, censorship and attempts at censorship are alive and well in 2016. In most instances, the censor is someone who is sincerely concerned about a societal issue and feels strongly that censoring a book, magazine, film or artwork will improve society, protect children, and restore their idea of moral values.

      However, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives each of us the right to read, view and listen to things that others might find offensive. No one, no matter how well-intentioned, can take away that right.

    • Recreation of removed art echoes 40-year-old accusations of censorship

      A piece of public art is set to be erected in the Plateau next week, 40 years after its predecessor was torn down amid accusations of censorship towards city hall – accusations being echoed towards the current mayor.

      A reclining cross, designed by artists Pierre Ayot, once sat at the corner of Park and Pine, but it didn’t last long.

      Longtime resident Michael Hendricks remembered how in 1976, just before Montreal would host the Olympic Games, then-Mayor Jean Drapeau ordered 16 large works of art torn down.

      “For us, it was a shock,” he said. “It was so beautiful.”

      “It was done in the night, a sneaky dirty trick and that was the end of it,” he added. “The artists weren’t respected, nobody was respected.”

      At the time, Drapeau called the artworks “indecent” because some of them criticized overspending on the Olympics.

    • Racist social media users have a new code to avoid censorship

      Racist online communities have developed a new code for racial, homophobic and bigoted slurs in an attempt avoid censorship, according to an online report from Buzzfeed News.

      The code, using terms like Google, Skittle, and Yahoo as substitutes for offensive words describing blacks, Muslims and Mexicans, appears to be in use by various accounts on Twitter and elsewhere. Many tweets using the code are doing so in support of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The U.S. presidential candidates on technology, privacy issues

      Stein: “End-to-end encryption should be an internet standard, just like SSL for financial transactions.”

    • ‘Shadow Brokers’ Whine That Nobody Is Buying Their Hacked NSA Files

      The hacking group responsible for stealing a large cache of National Security Agency hacking tools is very upset that no one seems to be bidding on their pilfered files.

      Early Saturday morning, the person or group which calls itself “TheShadowBrokers” authored another bizarre rant, expressing their annoyance at the seeming lack of interest in ponying up bitcoins to release the full set of stolen files.

    • Hackers Angry That People Don’t Want To Pay For The NSA Tools They Stole
    • Spotify’s 40 Million Tunes Won’t Go Far With CD-Happy Japanese [Ed: music that spies on the listeners]

      On a recent muggy afternoon in Tokyo, 21-year old Shintaro Naganuma joined several hundred customers browsing CDs at the eight-story downtown outpost of music retail chain Tsutaya.

      Having discovered a couple of new rock artists on YouTube, the third-year university student hit Tsutaya Co.’s flagship store in trendy Shibuya to look up their albums. That process encapsulates the dilemma now facing Spotify Ltd.’s head Daniel Ek, who on Thursday presided over the music streaming service’s long-awaited entry into the world’s second-largest music market.

      On the one hand, the nation’s consumers have grown accustomed to finding music or listening casually through smartphones, which should help the Swedish company attract users for its free ad-supported version. But when it comes time to hand over the cash, most people in Japan continue to buy CDs and even vinyl. That’s largely because record labels remain wary of signing away their music to streaming services.

    • The US government can’t protect its dirtiest laundry, so what makes anyone think a government is capable and willing to protect data about you?

      Governments collect insane amounts of data about ordinary people, and officials get caught red-handed again and again using governmental surveillance networks to stalk private relations. It’s been the NSA, it’s been the FBI, and now it’s the police abusing collected data. The U.S. government has shown it can’t even protect its own dirtiest laundry, so what makes anyone think any government is willing and capable of protecting the data of a random citizen?

      Yesterday, there was yet another story breaking about abuse of surveillance, as police was discovered abusing law enforcement surveillance to spy on basically anybody they were personally interested in. It’s not the first story and it won’t be the last.

    • Networks of Control by Wolfie Christl and Sarah Spiekermann

      The collection, analysis and utilization of digital information based on our clicks, swipes, likes, purchases, movements, behaviors and interests are now part of everyday life. But, while individuals become increasingly transparent, companies take control of the recorded data. Wolfie Christl and Sarah Spiekermann show in their book “NETWORKS OF CONTROL” how today’s networks of corporate surveillance are constantly tracking, profiling, categorizing and rating the lives of billions – across platforms, devices and life contexts.

    • On Phone Numbers and Identity

      Coinbase sees a lot of motivated attackers, it’s one of the things that makes working in security at Coinbase so interesting. I want to deep dive into one recent attack for a few reasons: 1) when we share we all get stronger; 2) It was a really interesting way to end-run around a lot of traditional security protections and highlights, the extent of which personal and corporate systems are linked; 3) we found very little in the way of public discussion around this set of attack vectors and want to help move it from ‘theoretical’ to ‘this really happens’. To be crystal clear, I’m happy to say, no customer data or funds were lost or at risk of loss.

      Rewind back to 25 Aug. It’s around 9 AM when one of our high profile employees wrote in to our on call security engineer. The user said that something weird was happening with his phone.

    • GCHQ gave private Dutch data to Australian firm: report

      The private conversations of thousands of Dutch citizens have ended up in the hands of the Australian technology company Appen which develops software for converting speech into text.

      A report in the Dutch online site Volkskrant said telecommunications experts had opined that the only way this could have happened was by the British spy agency GCHQ tapping the information and then handing it over to Appen.

      Both Appen and GCHQ have been contacted for comment.

      According to Volkskrant, the matter came to light through a Dutch woman who had been employed by Appen in the UK. The company has four main offices: in Sydney, Seattle, San Rafael (California) and Davao City (the Philippines).

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Women competitors must wear hijabs at chess world championship, oddly awarded to Iran

      If you thought soccer’s world cup being awarded to baking-hot Qatar marked the zenith of sporting corruption, give FIDE a chance: the international chess federation’s forthcoming world championship is headed to Iran, and women players must wear the hijab to compete. UK tabloids quote leading women chess players as threatening to quit the tournament rather than obey.

    • Female chess players from around world outraged after being told to wear hijabs at tournament in Tehran

      The world’s top female chess players have reportedly been told they must wear hijabs if they wish to compete in next year’s world championships.

      The next Women’s World Championships are due to be held in Tehran, Iran in March 2017 but several Grandmasters have threatened to boycott the tournament if female players are forced to conform to the country’s strict clothing laws.

      Iran, which has been welcomed back into the diplomatic fold after signing a nuclear deal with the US and several other countries last year, is a theocratic country which strictly polices how women dress, behave and where they go.

    • Justice Watchdog Rips D.E.A.’s Use of Confidential Sources

      The Drug Enforcement Administration is running a freewheeling confidential sources program that leaves the agency vulnerable to fraud and constitutional abuses, according to an audit by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General (OIG).

      While DEA officials boast that the use of informants is the “bread and butter” of their enforcement, the agency does not adequately oversee their activities. Nor does it sufficiently track the payments made to them, the investigation found.

      The lack of oversight, according to the report: “exposes the agency to an unacceptably increased potential for fraud, waste, and abuse, particularly given the frequency with which DEA offices utilize and pay confidential sources.”

      Over the last five years, the DEA has employed more than 18,000 sources, paying them roughly $237 million. The inspector general stated, however, that the agency is unable to analyze the quality of information they provide.

    • Ex-drug squad chief gets three-year prison sentence

      Former head of the Helsinki Police anti-drug unit, Jari Aarnio, was handed a three-year unconditional prison sentence in Helsinki Appeal Court on Friday after being convicted of charges including malfeasance, fraud and accepting bribes.

    • Saudi Arabian teen arrested for online videos with American blogger

      A male Saudi Arabian teenager has been arrested in Riyadh over a series of online videos of conversations between him and a female Californian streaming-video star that went viral.

      A Riyadh police spokesperson, Colonel Fawaz Al-Mayman, said the teenager, known online as Abu Sin, was arrested on Sunday for engaging in “unethical behaviour” in videos with Christina Crockett, a popular broadcaster on the conversational live-streaming site YouNow. Abu Sin’s real name is not known.

      “His videos received many comments and many of the commenters of the general public demanded for him to be punished for his actions,” Al-Maymann added, according to the Saudi Gazette.

      The two amassed thousands of fans on the YouNow network, and later on YouTube after videos of the two speaking were uploaded there. The videos featured Abu Sin – a nickname given to him for his broken teeth – and Crockett communicating despite their significant language barriers.

      The popularity of the videos of the two of them surprised Crockett, she told the Guardian in an interview. As a broadcaster on YouNow, she can invite her fans to join her broadcasts on split-screen, which is known as “guesting”.

    • Kodi boxes are now a key target in the UK government’s piracy crackdown

      Kodi boxes and other devices which can be configured to enable the streaming of pirated content are to become key targets in a UK government intellectual property crime crackdown.

      Revealing the extent to which so-called “fully-loaded” Kodi boxes are being used to circumvent copy protection laws, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) has stated that half of its investigations currently centre around streaming devices using third party piracy software or add-ons.

      Set top boxes are of course legal, and the open-source Kodi software in its vanilla configuration is a harmless media centre. But, Kodi can be tweaked to facilitate the illegal streaming of premium content, ranging from current cinema releases to streams of cable TV channels.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Last Formal Tie To Historic US Internet Control Is Cut

      “The federal court in Galveston, Texas denied the plaintiffs’ application for declaratory and injunctive relief. As of 1 October 2016, the IANA functions contract has expired.” This two-sentence statement from Assistant US Commerce Secretary for Communications and Information and National Telecommunication and Information Administration Administrator Lawrence Strickling ended an era of direct United States oversight over changes to the authoritative root zone of the internet domain name system, and as a contractor for a set of core internet databases.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • J.J. Abrams Can’t Stop Copyright Lawsuit Against Star Trek Fan-Film

        Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios have no plans to end their lawsuit against the crowdfunded Star Trek spin-off ‘Prelude to Axanar’. Director J. J. Abrams previously announced that the case would be dropped soon. However, paperwork filed in court this week reveals that the movie studios dismiss this claim as an irrelevant third party statement.

      • RIAA Label Artists & A-List Stars Endorse Megaupload In New Song

        MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world’s leading rogue sites. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support in a brand new song. TorrentFreak caught up with the elusive founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom, who shrugged off “this rogue nonsense” and told us he wants content owners to get paid.

      • ‘When Is A Chair Just A Chair?’ And Other Annoying Copyright Questions

        Last year, the UK decided to repeal a part of its copyright law that enforced a drastically reduced copyright term for “industrially exploited artistic works” including “works of artistic craftsmanship” — in other words, the industrial design of manufactured objects that are primarily functional, like appliances and furniture. Rather than the full life-plus-seventy term, the copyright on such works was limited to 25 years from the date of manufacturing, making it somewhat closer to the US approach where functional designs can’t be copyrighted but can qualify for 15-year design patents. It was a sensible rule (at least far more sensible than giving them full copyright, even if giving them any at all is still questionable) that allowed industrial designs to rapidly enter the public domain and be used by multiple manufacturers for everything from inexpensive reproductions to retro-chic luxuries — or, in the eyes of IP maximalists and the furniture industry, it was a travesty of a rule that cruelly robbed aging designers and flooded the market with cheap knockoffs and brazen cash-grabs.

        In any case, the rule was repealed and it was repealed retroactively: furniture designs that had already entered the public domain were shoved back under life-plus-seventy copyrights, and the industry was given a grace period to purge their stocks. The repeal officially came into effect in July, and the transitional window will end in January. Then we can watch the lawsuits begin to flow — and they are going to involve a whole lot of wrangling over stupid, highly subjective questions, with lots of flowery protestations about artistry and judges thrust unwittingly into the role of critic, because the question of what exactly this law applies to is one big gray area.

10.01.16

Links 1/10/2016: Linux 4.7.6 and 4.4.23, Blender 2.78

Posted in News Roundup at 3:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Linux Unable To Boot Lenovo Yoga 900 & 900; Is Microsoft At Fault?

      The popular device developer Lenovo has verified the claims that Lenovo Yoga 900 and 900s unable to boot Linux OS but only Microsoft Windows 10. The new Lenovo convertible laptop, Lenovo Yoga 900 and 900s, would reject and decline any attempt to install Linux operating system, making users turn their heads to Microsoft as the suspect for this issue.

      [...]

      This issue about the OS started when an identity of BaronHK posted on Reddit about installing Linux on the latest Lenovo Yoga book in which BaronHK encountered being blocked by a locked solid state drive (SSD) which Linux cannot define itself, and come up to link the issue to Microsoft.

  • Server

    • Why Good Linux Sysadmins Use Markdown

      The Markdown markup language is perfect for writing system administrator documentation: it is lightweight, versatile, and easy to learn, so you spend your time writing instead of fighting with formatting.

      The life of a Linux system administrator is complex and varied, and you know that documenting your work is a big time-saver. A documentation web server shared by you and your colleagues is a wonderful productivity tool. Most of us know simple HTML, and can whack up a web page as easily as writing plain text. But using Markdown is better.

    • How to Effectively and Efficiently Edit Configuration Files in Linux

      Every Linux administrator has to eventually (and manually) edit a configuration file. Whether you are setting up a web server, configuring a service to connect to a database, tweaking a bash script, or troubleshooting a network connection, you cannot avoid a dive deep into the heart of one or more configuration files. To some, the prospect of manually editing configuration files is akin to a nightmare. Wading through what seems like countless lines of options and comments can put you on the fast track for hair and sanity loss.

      Which, of course, isn’t true. In fact, most Linux administrators enjoy a good debugging or configuration challenge. Sifting through the minutiae of how a server or software functions is a great way to pass time. But this process doesn’t have to be an exercise in ineffective inefficiency. In fact, tools are available to you that go a very long way to make the editing of config files much, much easier. I’m going to introduce you to a few such tools, to ease some of the burden of your Linux admin duties. I’ll first discuss the command-line tools that are invaluable to the task of making configuration more efficient.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.7.6

      I’m announcing the release of the 4.7.6 kernel.

      All users of the 4.7 kernel series must upgrade.

    • Linux 4.4.23
    • Linux Kernel 4.7.6 Is Out with MIPS and OCFS2 Improvements, Updated Drivers

      Today, September 30, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the sixth maintenance update to the latest stable Linux 4.7 kernel series.

      Linux kernel 4.7.6 comes only five days after the release of the previous maintenance version, Linux kernel 4.7.5, and, according to the appended shortlog and the diff from the last update, it changes a total of 76 files, with 539 insertions and 455 deletions. In summary, it updates multiple drivers, adds improvements to various filesystems and hardware architectures, and improves the networking stack.

    • Linux Kernel 4.4.23 LTS Has ARM and MIPS Improvements, Updated Filesystems, More

      Immediately after announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.7.6, Greg Kroah-Hartman proudly informed the community about the general availability of the Linux 4.4.23 LTS kernel.

      The Linux 4.4 kernel is a long-term supported branch, the latest and most advanced one, used in many stable and reliable GNU/Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and Alpine Linux 3.4. Therefore, it is imperative for it to receive regular updates that bring fixes to the most important issues, as well as other general improvements.

    • From NFS to LizardFS

      If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that we started our data servers out using NFS on ext4 mirrored over DRBD, hit some load problems, switched to btrfs, hit load problems again, tried a hacky workaround, ran into problems, dropped DRBD for glusterfs, had a major disaster, switched back to NFS on ext4 mirrored over DRBD, hit more load problems, and finally dropped DRBD for ZFS.

    • IBM’s Ginni Rometty Tells Bankers Not To Rest On Their Digital Laurels
    • BUS1, The Successor To KDBUS, Formally Unveiled — Aiming For Mainline Linux Kernel

      BUS1 has been in development as an in-kernel IPC mechanism building off the failed KDBUS project. An “RFC” will soon be sent out to Linux kernel developers about BUS1 and the subject will be discussed at next month’s Kernel Summit.

      David Herrmann, one of the BUS1 developers, presented at this week’s systemd.conf conference about the new capability-based IPC for Linux. He talked about how BUS1 is superior to KDBUS, how BUS1 is similar to Android’s Binder, Chrome’s Mojo, Solaris’ Doors, and other common IPC implementations.

    • A New Wireless Daemon Is In Development To Potentially Replace wpa_supplicant

      In addition to the BUS1 presentation, also exciting from the systemd.conf 2016 conference is a thorough walkthrough of a new wireless daemon for Linux being developed by Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center.

      Intel has been developing a new wireless daemon for Linux to potentially replace wpa_supplicant. This new daemon isn’t yet public but the code repositories for it will be opened up in the next few weeks. This new daemon has improvements around persistency, WiFi management, reduced abstractions for different operating systems and legacy interfaces, and changes to operation. This daemon is designed to be very lightweight and work well for embedded Linux use-cases especially, including IoT applications.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Libinput X.Org Driver Updated For X.Org Server 1.19

        Peter Hutterer has announced the release of a new version of xf86-input-libinput, the X.Org DDX driver that makes use of libinput for input handling on the X.Org Server.

      • xf86-input-libinput 0.20.0

        Most important fix is the use of input_lock() instead of the old SIGIO stuff to handle the input thread in server 1.19.

      • Mesa 13.0 Planning For Release At End Of October, Might Include RADV Vulkan

        Following the mailing list talk over the past two days about doing the next Mesa release, plans are being discussed for releasing at the end of October and it might have just got a whole lot more exciting.

        Emil Velikov, Collabora developer and Mesa release manager for the past several release series, has commented on that previously discussed mailing list thread. He mentioned he was secretly waiting in hopes of seeing the RADV Radeon Vulkan driver merged for this next release! He said he’d even be willing to see it merged even if it’s “not perfect/feature complete.”

    • Benchmarks

      • FreeBSD 11.0 Comes Up Short In Ubuntu 16.04 vs. macOS Sierra Benchmarks

        Yesterday I published some macOS 10.2 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS benchmarks from a Mac Mini and MacBook Air systems. For those curious if BSDs can outperform macOS Sierra on Apple hardware, I tested the MacBook Air with FreeBSD 11.0 compared to the Linux and macOS results on that Core i5 system. Here are those results.

      • Early Benchmarks Of The Linux 4.9 DRM-Next Radeon/AMDGPU Drivers

        While Linux 4.9 will not officially open for development until next week, the DRM-Next code is ready to roll with all major feature work having been committed by the different open-source Direct Rendering Manager drivers. In this article is some preliminary testing of this DRM-Next code as of 29 September when testing various AMD GPUs with the Radeon and AMDGPU DRM drivers.

        Linux 4.9 does bring compile-time-offered experimental support for the AMD Southern Islands GCN 1.0 hardware on AMDGPU, but that isn’t the focus of this article. A follow-up comparison is being done with GCN 1.0/1.1 experimental support enabled to see the Radeon vs. AMDGPU performance difference on that hardware. For today’s testing was a Radeon R7 370 to look at the Radeon DRM performance and for AMDGPU testing was the Radeon R9 285, R9 Fury, and RX 480. Benchmarks were done from the Linux 4.8 Git and Linux DRM-Next kernels as of 29 September.

      • How Ubuntu 16.10 Beta 2 Performance Compares To Some Other Linux Distros

        The final Ubuntu 16.10 Beta for “Yakkety Yak” was released this week and we found its performance doesn’t differ much from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (with the exception of the newer graphics stack) while here are some results comparing it to other modern Linux distributions.

        Tested for this quick, one-page-article comparison were Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS, Ubuntu 16.10 Beta 2, Clear Linux 10660, Fedora 24, openSUSE Tumbleweed 20160927, and the Arch-based Antergos 16.9-Rolling release.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Qt 3D WIP branches
      • New Qt 3D Functionality Is Being Worked On

        Sean Harmer of KDAB is organizing work around some upcoming “major Qt 3D features” for the open-source toolkit.

        It’s not known if the next round of Qt 3D features will be ready for the Qt 5.9 tool-kit release, but KDAB is looking to have these new branches for feature work with continuous integration coverage.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME Calendar App to Feature a New Sidebar, Week View & Attendees in GNOME 3.24

        GNOME developer Georges Stavracas wrote an in-depth blog post the other day to inform the GNOME, Linux, and Open Source communities about the upcoming improvements and new features coming to the GNOME Calendar apps.

        Now that some of us are already enjoying the recently released GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, the GNOME developers are hard at work to improve the GNOME apps and core components by either adding new exciting features and technologies or improving existing ones.

      • Cinnamon 3.2 in Linux Mint 18.1 Supports Vertical Panels, Better Accelerometers

        After informing the community a few days ago about the Mintbox Mini Pro PC and the upcoming improvements and new features shipping with the XApps software projects in Linux Mint 18.1, Clement Lefebvre just published the monthly Linux Mint newsletter.

      • Cross-compiling WebKit2GTK+ for ARM

        Of course, I know for a fact that many people use local recipes to cross-compile WebKit2GTK+ for ARM (or simply build in the target machine, which usually takes a looong time), but those are usually ad-hoc things and hard to reproduce environments locally (or at least hard for me) and, even worse, often bound to downstream projects, so I thought it would be nice to try to have something tested with upstream WebKit2GTK+ and publish it on trac.webkit.org,

      • Should we drop Vala?

        Is it Vala development a waste of time? Is Vala suitable for long term support libraries?

  • Distributions

    • LXLE: A Linux distro to give new life to old hardware

      I’ll bet that somewhere, perhaps at home and most likely at work, you’ve got some old hardware lying around. What to do with it? It still works but what’s it running? Windows XP? Vista? Windows 7 Starter or Home Basic?

      Yep, you’re stuck on some old version of Windows but moving that machine up to a newer version of Windows could be tricky ‘cause one or more of those old graphics cards and printer drivers have probably have fallen out of the update cycle.

      Even if those subsystems are still available, you’ll still have a problem as the newer OSs’ are pretty much guaranteed to suck the life out of old processors with the result that performance and therefore usability will be marginal at best.

      So, what to do? Before you start looking for a deal on a new machine and an e-waste disposal site, consider moving to Linux and, most specifically, consider migrating to LXLE, the LXDE eXtra Luxury Edition (though some people also claim it stands for Lubuntu Extra Life Extension).

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat, Logicalis in digital transformation partnership in Latin America

        PromonLogicalis, a provider of information technology and communication solutions and services in Latin America, and Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, announced a collaboration that aim to help organizations navigate the digital transformation of their infrastructures to pave the way for cloud and the software-defined technologies, and to advance open source technology awareness in the region.

        Open source is delivering significant advancements in many areas of technology through community-powered innovation, including cloud computing, mobile, big data, and more. And, as companies embrace modern technology as a competitive advantage via digital transformation efforts, many are turning to open source because of the flexibility and agility it can enable.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • PHP version 5.6.27RC1 and 7.0.12RC1
        • An Easy Way To Try Intel & RADV Vulkan Drivers On Fedora 24

          Fedora 25 should have good support for the open-source Vulkan Linux drivers (particularly if it lands the next Mesa release) while Fedora 24 users can now more easily play with the latest Mesa Git RADV and Intel ANV Vulkan drivers via a new repository.

          A Phoronix reader has setup a Fedora Copr repository that is building Intel’s Vulkan driver from Mesa Git plus the RADV Radeon Vulkan driver re-based from its source (David Airlie’s semi-interesting GitHub branch). Fedora COPR, for the uninformed, is the distribution’s equivalent to Ubuntu PPA repositories.

        • Meeting users, lots of users

          Every year, I introduce Fedora to new students at Brno Technical University. There are approx. 500 of them and a sizable amount of them then installs Fedora. We also organize a sort of installfest one week after the presentation where anyone who has had any difficulties with Fedora can come and ask for help. It’s a great opportunity to observe what things new users struggle with the most. Especially when you have such a high number of new users. What are my observations this year?

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • 10 reasons why CIOs should consider open source software

    A recent survey shows 78 percent of companies run part or all of their operations on open source software. Indeed, open source continues to gain market traction as more companies adopt open technology to speed innovation, disrupt industries and improve overall productivity.

    Those who remain hesitant about adopting open source are in danger of being left behind. Because open source architecture lends itself to more frequent updates, and because of the openness, open source provides the freedom to innovate and mature in the way that enterprises need.

  • Kubernetes Arrives in New Flavors

    Kubernetes has taken center stage in recent days, and, as we’ve been noting in recent posts, the open source container cluster manager is heading in new directions. Google has just announced the release of Kubernetes 1.4, which makes the tool much easier to install.

    Meanwhile, Canonical has now launched its own distribution of Kubernetes, with enterprise support, across a range of public clouds and private infrastructure. It’s Kubernetes at the core, but features a number of extra bells and whistles.

  • 2016 Women in Open Source Award Winners

    We hope you enjoy and are inspired by this short video celebrating Preeti Murthy and Jessica McKellar, the winners of this year’s Red Hat Women in Open Source Awards.

  • Tech, talent and tools: The secret to monetizing open-source

    “In California during the gold rush, you didn’t make money digging for gold; you made money selling shovels,” said Mehta. A fitting metaphor for the idea that investing in talent and tools, especially tools, is how to turn a profit. The actual data, databases, algorithms and so on would be open source. Money would come from the tools to use that technology to benefit specific areas, such as automation of healthcare.

    And healthcare is a good place to start. “Big Data is all about making life cheaper, better. … If we forget about how to solve problems for humans, we’ve lost. We want to be known for enriching life,” said Mehta.

  • Changing the way we design for the web

    On the one hand, open source should mean lower cost of entry for people from poorer communities (like me, growing up). But on the other, I feel it is hard to contribute when under- or unemployed. I had a grant to work on the Web Animations API documentation, but I can’t do as much as I’d like with other animation features (motion paths, advanced timing functions) because I need to spend a lot of time working on my own business, getting paid.

    Essentially this leads to an awkward model where the only contributors are employed programmers—and when it comes to open source animation or design APIs, platforms, etc, this lack of user input really starts to show. Or, the only products with thriving open source development teams are those that have financially lucrative futures, turning the open source software (OSS) model into a capitalist one.

  • Asterisk 14 Improves Open-Source VoIP

    Digium, the lead commercial sponsor behind the Asterisk open source PBX project announced the release Asterisk 14 this week, continuing to evolve the decade old effort, making it easier to use and deploy.

  • Yahoo open-sources a deep learning model for classifying pornographic images

    Yahoo today announced its latest open-source release: a model that can figure out if images are specifically pornographic in nature.

    The system uses a type of artificial intelligence called deep learning, which involves training artificial neural networks on lots of data (like dirty images) and getting them to make inferences about new data. The model that’s now available on GitHub under a BSD 2-Clause license comes pre-trained, so users only have to fine-tune it if they so choose. The model works with the widely used Caffe open source deep learning framework. The team trained the model using its now open source CaffeOnSpark system.

    The new model could be interesting to look at for developers maintaining applications like Instagram and Pinterest that are keen to minimize smut. Search engine operators like Google and Microsoft might also want to check out what’s under the hood here.

    “To the best of our knowledge, there is no open source model or algorithm for identifying NSFW images,” Yahoo research engineer Jay Mahadeokar and senior director of product management Gerry Pesavento wrote in a blog post.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • CloudReady by neverware

        I thought I would put together a quick “installation” review of a product called CloudReady by neverware. What is CloudReady? CloudReady is basically a project to bring Chromium OS to those who would like to convert traditional laptops into Chromebook-like devices. I stumbled on them several months ago and finally decided to see how hard it was to install Chromium OS and how functional it actually was as a Chromebook-like device. I have a few low end (netbook-like) devices and I have been trying to figure out how I could make them functional for my boys, I thought this might be the solution.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla tells Firefox OS devs to fork off if they want to chase open web apps vision

        The Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox development team has decided enough is enough and will stop supporting Windows XP and Vista in March 2017 and also bin Firefox OS.

        The OS first. In this post Mozillans Ari Jaaksi and David Bryant, respectively the head of connected devices and veep for platform engineering, write that “By the end of 2015 Mozilla leadership had come to the conclusion that our then Firefox OS initiative of shipping phones with commercial partners would not bring Mozilla the returns we sought.”

        That decision means that “as of the end of July 2016 have stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS.”

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Cloudera Delivers Release Built on Apache Spark 2.0, and Advances Kudu

      Cloudera, focused on Apache Hadoop and other open source technologies,has announced its release built on the Apache Spark 2.0 (Beta), with enhancements to the API experience, performance improvements, and enhanced machine learning capabilities.

      The company is also working with the community to continue developing Apache Kudu 1.0, recently released by the Apache Software Foundation, which we covered here. Kudu is an open source columnar storage engine built for the Apache Hadoop ecosystem designed to enable flexible, high-performance analytic pipelines. Taken together, Cloudera’s new tools are giving it more diverse kinds of presence on the Big Data scene.

      Cloudera claims it was the first Hadoop big data analytics vendor to deliver a commercially supported version of Spark, and has participated actively in the open source community to enhance Spark for the enterprise through its One Platform Initiative. “With Spark 2.0, organizations are better able to take advantage of streaming data, develop richer machine learning models, and deploy them in real time, enabling more workloads to go into production,” the company reports.

    • Cloudera Delivers Enterprise-Grade Real-Time Streaming and Machine Learning with Apache Spark 2.0 and Drives Community Innovation with Apache Kudu 1.0
    • Vendors Pile on Big Data News at Strata

      Cloudera, Pentaho and Alation are among vendors making Big Data announcements at this week’s Strata event.

      Vendors big and small are making news at this week’s Strata + Hadoop event as they try to expand their portion of the Big Data market.

      Cloudera highlighted a trio of Apache Software Foundation (ASF) projects to which it contributes. Among them is Spark 2.0, which benefits from a new Dataset API that offers the promise of better usability and performance as well as new machine learning libraries.

    • New alliances focus on open-source, data science empowerment

      How can data science make a true market impact? Partnerships, particularly amongst open source communities. As IBM solidifies its enterprise strategies around data demands, two new partnerships emerge: one with Continuum Analytics, Inc., advancing open-source analytics for the enterprise; and another with Galvanize, initiating a Data Science for Executives program.

      Continuum Analytics, the creator and driving force behind Anaconda — a leading open data science platform powered by Python — has allied with IBM to advance open-source analytics for the enterprise. Data scientists and data engineers in open-source communities can now embrace Python and R to develop analytic and machine learning models in the Spark environment through its integration with IBM’s DataWorks Project.

      The new agreement between IBM and Galvanize, which provides a dynamic learning community for technology, will offer an assessment, analysis and training element for Galvanize’s Data Science for Executives program. This program empowers corporations to better understand, use and maximize the value of their data. The program will support IBM’s DataFirst Method, a methodology that IBM says provides the strategy, expertise and game plan to help ensure enterprise customers’ succeed on their journey to become a data-driven business.

    • Apache Spot: open source big data analytics for cyber

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • TDF Releases Fresh Update to LibreOffice 5.2

      The Document Foundation today announced the availability of LibreOffice 5.2.2, the second update to the “fresh” 5.2 family. “LibreOffice 5.2.2, targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users, provides a number of fixes over the major release announced in August.” These fixes include the usual number of import/export/filter fixes as well as a lot of interface adjustments and a few crashes.

      One of the more interesting import bugs fixed had first been reported 4 1/2 years ago. In version 3.5.0 when importing RTF files with several tables the formatting isn’t retained in all cases. The original reporter said this included column widths and placement. Comments updated the report throughout several versions on various systems. The bug sat for another year before being bumped and eight months later a patch was committed. After further input and more adjustments, Miklos Vajna committed patches for several versions including today’s 5.2.2.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • OpenBSD 6.0 Limited Edition CD set (signed by developers)

      Five OpenBSD 6.0 CD-ROM copies were signed by 40 developers during the g2k16 Hackathon in Cambridge, UK.

      Those copies are being auctioned sequentially on ebay.

      All proceeds will be donated to the OpenBSD Foundation to support and further the development of free software based on the OpenBSD operating system.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Licensing resource series: Free GNU/Linux distributions & GNU Bucks

      When Richard Stallman set out to create the GNU Project, the goal was to create a fully free operating system. Over 33 years later, it is now possible for users to have a computer that runs only free software. But even if all the software is available, putting it all together yourself, or finding a distribution that comes with only free software, would be quite the task. That is why we provide a list of Free GNU/Linux distributions.

      Each distro on the list is commited to only distributing free software. With many to choose from, you can find a distro that meets your needs while respecting your freedom.

      But with so much software making up an entire operating system, how is it possible to make sure that nothing nasty sneaks into the distro? That’s where you, and GNU Bucks come in.

    • Friday Working together for Free Software Directory IRC meetup: September 30th
    • August and September 2016: photos from Pittsburgh and Fresno
    • Libre Learn Lab: a summit on freely licensed resources for education

      Libre Learn Lab is a two-day summit for people who create, use and implement freely licensed resources for K-12 education, bringing together educators, policy experts, software developers, hardware hackers, and activists to share best practices and address the challenges of widespread adoption of these resources in education. The 2nd biennial conference is Saturday, October 8th, and Sunday, October 9th, at the MIT Tang Center.

      The keynote addresses will be delivered by the FSF’s own Richard M. Stallman, former Chief Open Education Advisor Andrew Marcinek and founder of HacKIDemia Stefania Druga. At the event, there will be a special tribute to Dr. Seymour Papert (the father of educational computing) by Dr. Cynthia Solomon.

  • Programming/Development

    • Machine Learning with Python

      I first heard the term “machine learning” a few years ago, and to be honest, I basically ignored it that time. I knew that it was a powerful technique, and I knew that it was in vogue, but I didn’t know what it really was— what problems it was designed to solve, how it solved them and how it related to the other sorts of issues I was working on in my professional (consulting) life and in my graduate-school research.

      But in the past few years, machine learning has become a topic that most will avoid at their professional peril. Despite the scary-sounding name, the ideas behind machine learning aren’t that difficult to understand. Moreover, a great deal of open-source software makes it possible for anyone to use machine learning in their own work or research. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that machine learning already is having a huge impact on the computer industry and on our day-to-day lives.

Leftovers

  • Salesforce tries to block Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition

    Microsoft made a splash earlier this year when it announced the largest acquisition in its history, signing an agreement to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. But now, Salesforce is trying to convince the European Union to block the deal.

    Salesforce Chief Legal Officer Burke Norton will argue to the EU’s competition authority that Microsoft’s control of LinkedIn’s dataset following an acquisition would be anticompetitive. EU competition chief Margarethe Vestager said in January that her agency would be looking directly at whether a company’s use of data is bad for competition, and these complaints seem aimed squarely at those comments.

    “Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of LinkedIn threatens the future of innovation and competition,” Norton said in a statement on Thursday. “By gaining ownership of LinkedIn’s unique dataset of over 450 million professionals in more than 200 countries, Microsoft will be able to deny competitors access to that data, and in doing so obtain an unfair competitive advantage.”

  • The Rise of the Helpful Operational Bots: ChatOps

    While some of the concepts surrounding ChatOps has been around for a long time, it is fair to say that the idea only really began to get traction within technical communities when Jesse Newland gave a talk on ChatOps at Github during PuppetConf 2012. Since 2012 we have seen a growth in interest in the new use of bots within operations.

  • Facebook Video Metrics Crossed The Line From Merely Dubious To Just Plain Wrong

    What happened here is actually pretty subtle, so bear with me. Facebook distinguishes “plays” from “views” — with the former being every single play of the video, including those auto-plays that you scroll straight past and never even look at, and the latter being only people who actually watched the video for three seconds or longer. Of course, there are still a million ways in which this metric is itself broken (I’ve certainly let plenty of videos play for more than three seconds or even all the way through while reading a post above or below them) but the distinction is a good one. All of the more detailed stats are based on either plays or views (mostly views) and are clearly labeled, but the one metric at issue was the “Average Duration of Video Viewed.” This metric could be fairly calculated as either the total amount of time from all plays divided by the total number of plays, or the same thing based only on time and number of views — but instead, it was erroneously being calculated as total play time divided by total number of views. In other words, all the second-or-two autoplays from idle newsfeed scrollers were being totalled up, and that time was being distributed among the smaller number of people who stayed on the video for more than three seconds as part of their average duration, leading to across-the-board inflation of that figure.

  • Journalist Tom Henderson on Cloud Vendor Lock-In

    This video is not technically about free or open source software, but it’s 100 percent about the danger of falling victim to proprietary vendors and their habit of making it hard to leave their sweet embrace once they get their paws on you. The Network World column by Tom Henderson that generated this interview is titled, The Many Dimensions of Cloud Value, and is subtitled, “Put your snorkels on: The marketing for cloud services is getting deep.” So is the marketing for many other proprietary something-as-a-something offerings ranging from operating systems to (obviously) cloud platforms.

  • Science

    • Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life

      Over the past four years, readers have doubtlessly noticed quantum leaps in the quality of a wide range of everyday technologies.

      Most obviously, the speech-recognition functions on our smartphones work much better than they used to. When we use a voice command to call our spouses, we reach them now. We aren’t connected to Amtrak or an angry ex.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Bayer Makes Deal With GMO Giant Monsanto

      That preemption bill was similar to other anti-local democracy measures peddled by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

      From fracking bans to minimum wage and GMO labeling, ALEC and its politicians have successfully driven preemption efforts with its “model” legislation throughout different parts of the country at the behest of giant corporations.

      An Oregonian who leads a group with ties to Monsanto claimed he authored the bill, but as Lisa Arkin of the Pesticide Action Network North America noted both the Oregon bill and the ALEC bill share the same name and have the same core operative language and effect: “A local government may not enact or enforce a . . . measure, including but not limited to an ordinance, regulation, control area, or quarantine, to inhibit or prevent the production or use of agricultural seed, flower seed . . . or vegetable seed or products of agricultural seed, flower seed . . . or vegetable seed.”

      After the Oregon bill was introduced in 2013, it was taken to ALEC’s 40th anniversary meeting in Chicago, as the “Preemption of Local Agricultural Laws Act,” which is known as the “Monsanto Protection Act,” by its foes.

    • More Than 9 in 10 People Breathe Bad Air, W.H.O. Study Says

      The World Health Organization said Tuesday that 92 percent of people breathe what it classifies as unhealthy air, in another sign that atmospheric pollution is a significant threat to global public health.

      A new report, the W.H.O.’s most comprehensive analysis so far of outdoor air quality worldwide, also said about three million deaths a year — mostly from cardiovascular, pulmonary and other noncommunicable diseases — were linked to outdoor air pollution. Nearly two-thirds of those deaths are in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region, compared with 333,000 in Europe and the Americas, the report said.

      “When you look out through the windows in your house or apartment, you don’t see the tiny little particles that are suspended in the air, so the usual perception is that the air is clean,” Rajasekhar Balasubramanian, an air quality expert at the National University of Singapore who was not involved in the study, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

      “But the W.H.O. report is a clear indication that even in the absence of air pollution episodes, the concentrations of particles suspended in the air do exceed what’s considered to be acceptable from a health viewpoint,” he said.

      In previous studies, the W.H.O. estimated that more than eight in 10 people in urban areas that monitored air pollution were breathing unhealthy air and that about seven million deaths a year were linked to indoor and outdoor pollution.

  • Security

    • Linaro organisation, with ARM, aims for end-end open source IoT code

      With the objective of producing reference software for more secure connected products, ranging from sensors and connected controllers to smart devices and gateways, for the industrial and consumer markets, Linaro has announced LITE: Collaborative Software Engineering for the Internet of Things (IoT).

      Linaro and the LITE members will work to reduce fragmentation in operating systems, middleware and cloud connectivity solutions, and will deliver open source device reference platforms to enable faster time to market, improved security and lower maintenance costs for connected products. Industry interoperability of diverse, connected and secure IoT devices is a critical need to deliver on the promise of the IoT market, the organisation says. “Today, product vendors are faced with a proliferation of choices for IoT device operating systems, security infrastructure, identification, communication, device management and cloud interfaces.”

    • An open source approach to securing The Internet of Things
    • Addressing the IoT Security Problem

      Last week’s DDOS takedown of security guru Brian Krebs’ website made history on several levels. For one, it was the largest such reported attack ever, with unwanted traffic to the site hitting levels of 620 Gbps, more than double the previous record set back in 2013, and signalling that the terabyte threshold will certainly be crossed soon. It also relied primarily on compromised Internet of Things devices.

    • Linaro beams LITE at Internet of Things devices

      Linaro launched a “Linaro IoT and Embedded” (LITE) group, to develop end-to-end open source reference software for IoT devices and applications.

      Linaro, which is owned by ARM and major ARM licensees, and which develops open source software for ARM devices, launched a Linaro IoT and Embedded (LITE) Segment Group at this week’s Linaro Connect event in Las Vegas. The objective of the LITE initiative is to produce “end to end open source reference software for more secure connected products, ranging from sensors and connected controllers to smart devices and gateways, for the industrial and consumer markets,” says Linaro.

    • Don’t Trust Consumer Routers

      Another example of why you shouldn’t trust consumer routers. d-link

      It isn’t just this specific d-link router. We’ve seen the same issues over and over and over with pretty much every non-enterprise vendor.

      Plus we don’t want our devices used by crackers to DDoS Brian Krebs anymore, right?

      We are Linux people. We CAN do this ourselves.

    • D-Link DWR-932 router is chock-full of security holes

      Security researcher Pierre Kim has unearthed a bucketload of vulnerabilities affecting the LTE router/portable wireless hotspot D-Link DWR-932. Among these are backdoor accounts, weak default PINs, and hardcoded passwords.

    • The Cost of Cyberattacks Is Less than You Might Think

      What’s being left out of these costs are the externalities. Yes, the costs to a company of a cyberattack are low to them, but there are often substantial additional costs borne by other people. The way to look at this is not to conclude that cybersecurity isn’t really a problem, but instead that there is a significant market failure that governments need to address.

    • NHS trusts are still using unsupported Windows XP PCs

      AT LEAST 42 National Health Service (NHS) trusts in the UK still run Microsoft’s now-defunct Windows XP operating system.

      Motherboard filed Freedom of Information requests with more than 70 NHS hospital trusts asking how many Windows XP machines they use. 48 replied within the allotted time, and a whopping 42 of them admitted that they still use the operating system that reached end-of-life status in April 2014.

      Some of the culprits include East Sussex Healthcare, which has 413 Windows XP machines, Sheffield’s Children’s hospital with 1,290, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust in London with an insane 10,800 Windows XP-powered PCs.

      23 replied to Motherboard’s quizzing about whether they have an extended support agreement in place and, unsurprisingly, the majority said that they do not.

    • Friday’s security advisories
    • ICANN grinds forward on crucial DNS root zone signing key update

      The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is moving — carefully — to upgrade the DNS root zone key by which all domains can be authenticated under the DNS Security Extensions protocol.

      ICANN is the organization responsible for managing the Domain Name System, and DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) authenticates DNS responses, preventing man-in-the-middle attacks in which the attacker hijacks legitimate domain resolution requests and replaces them with fraudulent domain addresses.

      DNSSEC still relies on the original DNS root zone key generated in 2010. That 1024-bit RSA key is scheduled to be replaced with a 2048-bit RSA key next October. Although experts are split over the effectiveness of DNSSEC, the update of the current root zone key signing key (KSK) is long overdue.

    • Cybersecurity isn’t an IT problem, it’s a business problem

      The emergence of the CISO is a relatively recent phenomenon at many companies. Their success often relies upon educating the business from the ground up. In the process, companies become a lot better about how to handle security and certainly learn how not to handle it.

      As a CIO, knowing the pulse of security is critical. I oversee a monthly technology steering committee that all the executives attend. The CISO reports during this meeting on the state of the security program. He also does an excellent job of putting risk metrics out there, color coded by red, yellow, and green. This kind of color grading allows us to focus attention on where we are and what we’re doing about it.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Congress May Rewrite Saudi 9/11 Law After Veto Override

      The two top Republicans in Congress said they’re prepared to rewrite legislation allowing victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia — less than 24 hours after Congress took the extraordinary step of overriding President Barack Obama’s veto of the measure to make it law.

      Both House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the measure could have unintended consequences — including the fact that it could leave U.S. soldiers open to retaliation by foreign governments.

      “I would like to think there’s a way we can fix so that our service members do not have legal problems overseas while still protecting the rights of the 9/11 victims,” Ryan told reporters Thursday, one day after his chamber voted 348-77 to override the veto.

      McConnell also said he was worried about unintended consequences of the measure, saying changes to the law might be needed.

      “It’s worth further discussing,” he told reporters Thursday. “It was certainly not something that was going to be fixed this week.”

    • Arab responses to 9/11 bill point to US interventions abroad

      Others support the bill, but point out that the U.S. is meanwhile backing a Saudi-led intervention in Yemen that has led to the deaths of thousands of civilians there.

      Two Arabic hashtags were trending on Twitter when the bill was passed, one referring directly to the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, and the other simply titled: #TheAmericanTerrorism.

      Some Arabic Twitter users shared a photo montage that depicted U.S. military actions in Japan and Vietnam, as well as naked Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison being humiliated by smiling U.S. troops. It read: “Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan can’t wait for JASTA to be implemented so they can, in turn, prosecute the U.S.”

      Another shared a 2005 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial cartoon of a young boy on his father’s lap watching an image of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud and asking: “Which terrorist group did that?”

      One post shared more than 750 times included a clip with Arabic subtitles of stand-up American comedian Eddie Griffin talking about U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying these wars are about “money, money, money.”

      The criticism, of course, is nothing new, says Eurasia Group’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa Ayham Kamel.

      “The Middle East, as a region where the U.S. has been dominant, has always been critical of U.S. policy,” he said.

    • Pakistan threatens to DESTROY India with nuclear bomb as atomic enemies edge to the brink of war

      PAKISTAN’S Defence Minister has threatened to “destroy” India – after India said on Thursday it had carried out “surgical strikes” on suspected militants preparing to infiltrate from Pakistan-ruled Kashmir.

      The strikes, which were a response to shots fired across the de facto border through the disputed Himalayan territory, could lead to a military escalation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours – risking a ceasefire agreed in 2003.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • ‘We Believe in What We’re Doing’

      WikiLeaks is now 10 years old. SPIEGEL met with founder Julian Assange, 45, to discuss the whistleblower platform’s achievements and whether recent criticism leveled at the site is justified.

      SPIEGEL: Mr. Assange, 10 years after the founding of WikiLeaks, the whistleblower platform is again being criticized. WikiLeaks is said to have put millions of Turkish voters in danger. What is your response?

      Assange: A few days after the publication of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, an entirely false story was put out that we had published the names, addresses and phone numbers of all female voters in Turkey. It is completely false. And it was and is simple to check. Power factions fight back with lies. That’s not surprising.

      SPIEGEL: Quite a few German journalists have long sympathized with WikiLeaks and also with Edward Snowden. But they aren’t impressed with the publishing of the DNC emails. Are you campaigning on behalf of Donald Trump?

      Assange: Our publication of the DNC leaks has showed that the Democratic National Committee had effectively rigged the primaries in the United States on behalf of Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders. That led to the resignation of leading members of the DNC, including its president Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

      SPIEGEL: People within the Clinton campaign have suggested that the DNC emails were given to you by the Russian secret service.

      Assange: There have been many attempts to distract from the power of our publications. Hillary Clinton is the favorite to win. As always, most media aligns with the presumptive winner even though their claimed societal virtue is to investigate those in power.

      SPIEGEL: The fact is, WikiLeaks is damaging Clinton and bolstering Trump.

      Assange: We’re not going to start censoring our publications because there is a US election. Our role is to publish. Clinton has been in government so we have much more to publish on Clinton. There is a lot of naivety. The US presidency will continue to represent the major power groups of the United States — big business and the military — regardless of who the talking head is.

      SPIEGEL: If someone submitted internal documents from the Trump campaign or the Republican Party, you would publish that as well?

      Assange: Yes, of course. That’s what we do.

    • CIA Took Three Years To Reject FOIA Request For Criteria For Rejecting FOIA Requests

      Curious about what criteria the CIA have for determining if they “can neither confirm nor deny” something? So did Jason Smathers, who back in 2010 filed one of MuckRock’s earliest requests for exactly that. Six years later, he still doesn’t know.

      Smathers first filed in October 2010 – to the agency’s credit, they only took a mere two months to get back to him.

    • Government Agencies Apparently Not Interested In Following Congressional Directives On Overclassification

      I’m not sure what this says about government transparency. Maybe it doesn’t say anything useful. Maybe it’s just the mixed signals we can expect from agencies only willing to make the most minimal transparency efforts. Or maybe it says something about the momentum of even slowly-moving large objects. A bureaucracy has a large turning radius and asking it to suddenly change its ways means you have to lower your expectations as to how “suddenly” should be defined. Whatever it says, it’s nothing good.

      Overclassification is a government-wide problem. Legislation has been passed to fix it. While the government expects the private sector to get right on it when laws are passed, it obviously cuts itself a lot more slack when faced with internal legislative redirection.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Climate justice meets racism: Standing Rock was decades in the making

      Attack dogs and waves of arrests by police in riot gear could look like isolated incidents of overreaction to the activism stemming from the Standing Rock reservation. But for the Lakota Sioux who live in these marginalized hillsides, the escalated militarization behind their battle against the Dakota Access pipeline is a situation decades in the making.

      North Dakota is not the whitest state in America, but it’s arguably the most segregated. More than 60 percent of its largest minority population, Native Americans, lives on or near reservations. Native men are incarcerated or unemployed at some of the highest rates in the country. Poverty levels for families of the Standing Rock tribe are five times that of residents living in the capital city, Bismarck. In Cannon Ball, the heart of the tribal community, there are rows of weathered government homes, but no grocery store. Tucked behind a lonely highway, this is where mostly white farmers and ranchers shuttle to and from homesteads once belonging to the Sioux.

    • Most people alive today set to witness dangerous global warming in their lifetime, scientists warn

      The world could hit two degrees Celsius of warming – the point at which many scientists believe climate change will become dangerous – as early as 2050, a group of leading experts has warned.

      In a report called The Truth About Climate Change, they said many people seemed to think of global warming as “abstract, distant and even controversial”.

      But the planet is now heating up “much faster” than anticipated, said Professor Sir Robert Watson, a former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and one of the authors of the report.

      If their analysis is correct, it means the majority of people alive today will experience what it is like to live on a dangerously overheated planet.

    • 9 wonders of the world set to vanish forever: How many have you ticked off?

      This month, we learned that Spain was facing the prospect of becoming the first European Union member state to have a natural World Heritage Site make Unesco’s “danger list”. The Doñana coastal wetlands in Andalucía – home to the endangered Iberian lynx – is said to be under threat from a mining and dredging plan, as well as 1,000 illegal wells in the area.

      But it’s just one among a number of incredible sites the world over that, according to Unesco, could be lost forever. Here are just a few World Heritage Sites in Unesco’s danger zone that you might need to scrub off the bucket list.

    • To Reduce Haze and Save Indonesia’s Forests, Address the Root Cause of Fires

      Over the past few months we have seen heated debates over the problem of Indonesian forest fires and the associated haze in neighboring countries like Singapore. A new law in Singapore permits the prosecution of companies deemed to be responsible for causing such fires, and speculation about how the El Nino phenomenon might lead to particularly intense fires in the next month have drawn global attention to the issue.

      Three years ago, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made a pledge to dedicate the remainder of his term in office to protect Indonesia’s environment and forests. Over the last three years he has done just that — with the historic moratorium on new logging concessions implemented in 2011, which has since been extended to May 2015. This policy has helped to protect more than 63 million hectares of primary forest and peat land, equivalent to an area larger than the landmass of Malaysia and the Philippines combined, and helped to lower Indonesia’s deforestation rate from 1.2 million hectares per year between 2003 and 2006, to between 450 and 600 thousand hectares per year since 2011. We also see the private sectors in the region stepping up their zero-deforestation commitments, including from the pulp and paper and palm oil industries.

    • Fires driving deforestation in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem

      Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem lost 4,097 hectares of forest cover in the first six months of 2016, according to Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh (HAkA), an NGO. At the same time, 187 fire hotspots were recorded in the nationally protected area during the period.

      “The hotspots overlay the forest cover loss in Aceh,” HAkA’s Agung Dwinurcahya said at a press conference in Jakarta. “For example, the high number of hotspots in Aceh Timur is the main contributor to deforestation in Aceh Timur.”

      Leuser, home to one of the Southeast Asian country’s last great swaths of intact rainforest, lies in Indonesia’s westernmost Aceh and North Sumatra provinces. It’s the only place in the world where orangutans, rhinos, elephants and tigers coexist in the wild.

    • Seven Popular Foods That Might Disappear Because of Climate Change

      Throughout history, different types of food have surged and dropped in popularity, and some foods that existed at one point just aren’t around anymore. But we’re not talking about foods that aren’t popular, quite the opposite in fact. Some of our favorite foods and drinks could be considered “endangered” because the places where they are grown are being severely impacted by climate change. If this isn’t proof that we need to do something about climate change, I don’t know what is. To start off, here are a few foods that are part of our everyday lives that might not be around for long.

  • Finance

    • In Wells Fargo Case, News Really Did Happen To An Editor

      Several years after I returned to New York from Oregon, I made a strange discovery. Bank accounts I was certain I had closed were inexplicably racking up service charges. It seemed bizarre, particularly because I had gone in person to a newly opened local branch of my West Coast bank to make sure the accounts were shut down.

      The failure to pay these charges (bills were sent to my old address and never caught up with me) resulted in penalties and a report to a credit agency. After an increasingly frustrating series of exchanges at the local branch, the bank agreed to wipe out the charges but said I would have to deal with the credit agencies on my own.

      It seemed outrageous, and as the editor in chief of an investigative news operation, I thought about asking Paul Kiel, ProPublica’s crack reporter on bank shenanigans, to take a look.

      But then I stopped myself.

      There’s an old saying in the journalism business for this sort of thinking: News is what happens to an editor.

      As with so many newsroom aphorisms, it’s meant to be proclaimed with an eye roll and a tone of deep sarcasm. Reporters view editor-generated stories as the bane of their existence, and not without reason. Random events and pet peeves are not often a great starting point for serious stories.

    • People born in the 1980s are HALF as wealthy in their thirties as people a decade older

      People born in early Eighties were around half as wealthy at age 30 as their counterparts who were born in the Seventies, analysis shows.

      The children of the “Baby Boomer” generation, currently in their early 30s, have an average net household wealth of £27,000 each a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think tank showed.

      By comparison the median wealth of those born in the 1970s had £53,000 on average by the same age. The figure takes into account housing, financial and private pension wealth.

    • Wealth of people in their 30s has ‘halved in a decade’

      People in their early 30s are half as wealthy as those now in their 40s were at the same age, a report finds.

      Today’s 30-something generation has missed out on house price increases and better pensions, according to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

      Those born in the early 1980s have an average wealth of £27,000 each, against the £53,000 those born in the 1970s had by the same age, said the IFS.

      They will also find it harder to amass wealth in the future, it added.

      The think tank found that people born in the early 1980s were the first post-war group not to have higher incomes in early adulthood than those born in the preceding decade.

    • Children of Thatcher era have half the wealth of the previous generation

      The children of the Thatcher era have reached adulthood with half as much wealth as the previous generation, finds a major study published today.

      The report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies concludes people born in the early 1980s are the first post-war generation to suffer smaller incomes in early adulthood than those born 10 years before.

      A toxic mix of low interest rates and the calamitous crash of 2008 mean it is much harder to accumulate wealth, leaving them with meagre pensions and a lower rate of home ownership.

    • Basic Income — A concrete and financed proposal for Sweden

      I have now translated my proposal for basic income for Sweden, which I presented in Swedish some time ago.

      Although the proposal as such is strictly about Sweden and Swedish conditions, I am hoping that the reasoning and design principles I have applied may be of interest to basic income activists in other Nordic and European countries as well. In many ways, the welfare systems we have today are basically quite similar, and many of the problems we face are the same as well.

    • Portugal threatened with first treaty claim

      A Mexican company has threatened to bring a €42 million investment treaty claim against Portugal over a cancelled deal to privatise part of Lisbon’s public transport system.

      Grupo Autobuses de Oriente (ADO) announced last week that it had served a notice of dispute to the Portuguese government under the Mexico-Portugal bilateral investment treaty after negotiations proved “fruitless”.

      If the dispute reaches arbitration, it would be the first known investment treaty case that Portugal has faced – as well as a rare example of a Latin American multinational invoking a BIT to protect investments in a European state.

      The dispute relates to two “sub-concession agreements” that ADO, through its Spanish subsidiary Avanza, signed with Portugal’s then centre-right government under Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho in June 2015.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Gary Johnson Is Not the Third-Party Candidate You’re Looking For

      With Hillary Clinton failing to provide a genuine voice for the 99% against Donald Trump’s bigoted fake-populism, a left-wing third-party candidate like Jill Stein can act as an important pole of attraction for a section of workers and youth sick and tired of the status quo. But Stein isn’t the only third-party challenger to Trump and Clinton. Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, is running for president under the Libertarian Party. Johnson has been consistently outpolling Stein, and some polls even show Johnson beating Stein among former Bernie Sanders supporters.

      Given his polling results, Johnson may appear to be the best bet for building a viable challenge to the two-party system. And Johnson has a number of progressive positions on certain isolated issues, such as support for the legalization of marijuana and opposition to government surveillance. But, as socialists, we have to be clear that Gary Johnson, and libertarian politics in general, are a dead end for anyone trying to build a voice for the 99%.

    • Hacked Audio Reveals Hillary Clinton Sees Herself Occupying “Center-Left to Center-Right”

      In the hacked recording of a private conversation with campaign donors in February, Hillary Clinton distanced herself from progressive goals like “free college, free healthcare” and described her place on the political spectrum as spanning from the center-left to the center-right.

      Clinton has been inconsistent in the past about espousing political labels. She has at times touted herself as stalwart liberal. For instance, she said last July: “I take a backseat to no one when you look at my record in standing up and fighting for progressive values.” But a few months later, she told a group in Ohio: “You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center. I plead guilty.”

      The newly disclosed comments came in audio, apparently from hacked emails, that was revealed this week by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative blog run by a Republican communications strategist. Clinton was speaking at a Virginia fundraiser hosted by Beatrice Welters, the former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, and her husband Anthony Welters, the executive chairman of an investment consulting firm founded by former Clinton aid Cheryl Mills.

      Clinton’s opponent at the time, Sen. Bernie Sanders, was pointing to successful programs in Norway and Sweden, which provide universal daycare, family leave, and government sponsored healthcare and college education, as policies that he would seek to adopt.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Palestinians boycott Facebook over ‘censorship’

      Palestinian activists have recently launched a campaign to boycott Facebook after the popular social-media platform blocked several Palestinian accounts and deleted numerous posts – at Israel’s request – for alleged “incitement”.

      Earlier this week, campaigners – using the hashtag #FBCensorsPalestine – called on supporters to refrain from posting on Facebook between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. (Jerusalem time) on Sept. 25.

      Hussam al-Zayegh, the campaign’s Gaza-based spokesman, told Anadolu Agency that the initiative had been launched in response to what he described as Facebook’s “pro-Israel bias”.

      According to al-Zayegh, the world’s most popular social-networking site is actively working to undermine Palestinian activists and journalists who rely on Facebook to help spread their message.

    • Palestinian Activists Are Angry About Alleged Facebook Censorship

      Palestinian activists are running an online campaign to hold Facebook accountable after the social media giant deleted a number of pro-Palestine posts and suspended several Palestinian journalists’ accounts.

      Quds News Network and other publications launched the hashtag #FBCensorsPalestine on Friday, when news emerged that seven Palestinian journalists associated with popular outlets in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories had their accounts shut down for “violating community guidelines.”

      According to the seven journalists, four of whom work for Shehab News Agency and three of whom work for Quds, Facebook provided no further explanation of what standards were violated.

    • Donald Trump and the Return of Seditious Libel

      In 1733, New York printer John Peter Zenger began publishing the eighth newspaper in the American colonies, and the first willing to venture criticism of the government. The New-York Weekly Journal was the second paper in a city of 10,000 or so people, 1700 of them slaves.

      As we are reminded in Richard Kluger’s comprehensive new book, “Indelible Ink,” the first full-length account of Zenger’s travails, by 1735, Zenger (and the likely editor of his paper, James Alexander) had so offended Britain’s royal governor of New York and New Jersey, William Cosby, that Cosby brought suit against Zenger for seditious libel—the crime of criticizing the government. Under the law then in effect in Britain and its colonies, truth was not a defense to this charge. The leading legal treatise of the day explained that “since the greater appearance there is of truth in any malicious invective, so much the more provoking it is.” And: “The malicious prosecution of even truth itself cannot… be suffered to interrupt the tranquility of a well-ordered society.” This was deemed especially the case with true attacks on those in power, as they would have “a direct tendency to breed in the people a dislike of their governors and incline them to faction and sedition.”

    • Thoughtless and dangerous EU approach to free speech online

      There is a lot of ambiguity when it comes to the EU cooperation with Facebook, Twitter, Youtube/Google and Microsoft to censor the Internet – the Joint Referral Platform.

      On the one hand, it has been marketed as a tool to stop »radicalization« that could lead young people to religiously motivated violence, e.g. terrorism or joining the Islamic State in the Middle East.

      On the other hand, in documents and speeches the EU is totally focused on this project to stem »illegal online hate speech«, e.g. when it comes to racism and Islamophobia.

      On that account, what is deemed to be »illegal« adds to the confusion. Incitement to violence is clearly and reasonably within this definition. But when it comes to the broader definition of hate speech, laws vary between EU member states.

    • Chinese Communism’s Anniversary Shines Light On Censorship — In America

      Due to SAPPRFT restrictions, all American movie scripts are vulnerable to “requested” changes or self-censorship based on the Communist Party’s wishes.

    • Popular YouTuber Experiments With WebTorrent to Beat Censorship

      A popular YouTuber is experimenting with torrent-based technology in order to take control of his content and avoid third-party censorship. Bluedrake says that the potential for freedom when using WebTorrent “blows his mind” and has already carried out tests to get the project underway.

    • Banned Book Week brings awareness to censorship, individual choices

      Banned Books Week is from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1.

      This year will be the 34th anniversary of Banned Books week. The last week of September) will be when words will attempt to overthrow unnecessary censorship.

      After all, in the words of Laurie Anderson “censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.”

      The heat-wave surrounding censorship of books sent the media in a frenzy in the 1980s, urging society to fight against authority, ensuring that there would be a change in social behavior and moral values.

    • Orwell 2016: Censorship in the age of social media

      If George Orwell is watching from above, he must be impressed. In his novel 1984, what was meant as a cautionary tale against government control and intellectual obscurantism, seems to have come to pass without our full knowledge.

      Where have our media taken us?

      To be brutally honest, I would say down the yellow brick road and around the tree a few times over already. As our world has become more and more dependent on media, we have opened ourselves up to the bite of censorship, control and the ever-evolving deity which is ‘social trend’.

      In other words, our need to be “connected” has pretty much left us dependent on information technology.

    • Singapore court sends teen blogger back to jail for criticising religion
    • Singapore rebel teen jailed for anti-religion posts
    • Singapore Teen Gets 6 Weeks in Jail for ‘Intending to Wound’ God’s Feelings
    • Teen blogger jailed in Singapore for insulting Muslims, Christians

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The “Pardon Snowden” Case Just Got Stronger

      Yesterday, the Department of Justice Inspector General (DoJ IG) issued a long overdue Congressionally-mandated report on FBI compliance with the PATRIOT Act’s Section 215 “business records” provision between 2012 and 2014. It is the first such report issued that covers the initial period of Edward Snowden’s revelations about widespread domestic mass surveillance by the federal government. Since his indictment for leaking the information to the press, Snowden’s lawyers have argued that he should not be prosecuted under the WW I-era Espionage Act because his revelations served the public interest.

    • Intel Community To Institute Actual Whistleblower Award For ‘Speaking Truth To Power’

      The Intelligence Community is looking to reward whistleblowers for “speaking truth to power.” No, seriously. Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News has posted a recent Intel Community announcement [PDF] that looks to fold a whistleblower honor into the community’s existing awards program.

      This is part of the intel community’s cautious foray into the harsh sunlight of transparency — itself a response to a presidential directive that our nation’s spies head outside for a bit and expose themselves a bit.

      The award may as well be called the “Snowden.” But the wording makes it explicit Snowden himself will never be eligible to receive the honorific fruits of his whistleblowing.

    • How Bulk Interception Works

      Mobile digital devices are ever more ubiquitous, generating new forms of data in quantities that continue to grow exponentially. Moreover, the costs of storing data have decreased drastically, and continue to do so every year. Most importantly, the technical means of combining datasets and analyzing this vast trove of data have advanced so rapidly that what were previously considered meaningless or incoherent types and amounts of data can now produce incredibly revelatory analyses. Metadata is structured in such a way that computers can search through it for patterns faster and more effectively and learn more about us than similar searches through the actual content of our communications.

    • The secret smartphone war over the struggle for control of the user

      There’s a war going on behind closed doors for control of your smartphone. It’s between the phone makers and the operators, but it’s not over privacy or data or cost – it’s over you.

      The battles are raging over who owns the consumer and your phone: is it the buyer or the manufacturer? And is the smartphone a device you purchase, or a service you pay for monthly?

      The boom years for the industry, when a smartphone was a user’s first, are long gone in developed nations with most smartphones now sold to people who already have one. In the US and UK market penetration has hit roughly 85%. This means the growth a phone maker needs each year can only come at the expense of a competitor. And that has changed how the manufacturers see the market.

      Marina Koytcheva, director of forecasting at CCS Insight says: “After years of analysts and commentators talking about mobile phone market peaking within the visible horizon, it has now reached that point.”

      The research firm expects total mobile phone sales to decline by 1.3% this year over last, with smartphones accounting for almost three-quarters of the market and up only 4.1% globally.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Cops Dodge 4th Amendment By Phoning In ‘Anonymous’ Tips; Watch Their Drug Bust Vanish After They’re Exposed

      The two horses called in tips twice, resulting in searches of two residences. Despite costing them a nice drug bust and successful prosecution, both the DA (Shane Scanlon) and the Chief of Police (Carl Graziano) are defending not only the faux tipsters’ actions, but their work as law enforcement officers as well.

    • NYPD sent undercover officers to Black Lives Matter protest, records reveal

      Legal papers filed by the New York police department reveal that the department sent its own undercover officers to protests led by Black Lives Matter after the death of Eric Garner. The NYPD documents also show that it collected multimedia records about the protests.

      The NYPD disclosed its undercover operations in response to a group of New York attorneys requesting records under the state freedom of information law. The department has thus far declined to provide the records requested. But its descriptions in August court filings of the records it is refusing to release provide new details about its monitoring of protests at Grand Central Station:

      The first set contains “multimedia records” relating to the petitioners’ request for “pictures, videos, audio recordings, data, and metadata” collected or received by the NYPD at the Grand Central Station protests, which Black Lives Matter groups are still leading, according to the NYPD response.

      The second “consists entirely of communications between and among NYPD undercover officers and their handlers”, pertaining to the protests. According to a 22 August NYPD Memorandum of Law, these undercover communications “consist primarily of immediate impressions concerning ongoing events”.

    • FBI, DOJ And Their Forensic Scientists State They’ll Continue Using Discredited Junk Science To Put People Behind Bars

      For dozens of years, criminal prosecutions have relied on junk science. Forensic science, properly applied, can actually provide matches that identify suspects. But it’s not properly applied. In the hands of the DOJ, forensic evidence examination is a closed loop. Outside scientists have been granted access to the DOJ’s DNA work, but everything else — from fingerprints to hair samples — has been locked away in the government’s database.

      Still, the DOJ insists its science is solid, something it bases on confirmation bias. The matches determined in its forensic labs are “scientifically certain” because the DOJ’s expert witnesses have said so in court. Not only are outside scientists locked out of examining evidence and forensic processes, but defense lawyers are as well.

      The DOJ has finally decided to dial back its “scientific certainty” a bit by issuing guidance instructing its experts to not make this claim in court. This follows years of bogus matches being presented as sure things by forensic experts in court, leading to an unknown number of false convictions. This step back is a step forward for an agency that is mostly unwilling to admit to any mistakes or wrongdoing.

    • Video released shows officers shooting 6-year-old

      A Louisiana judge released body cam video Wednesday showing officers firing multiple rounds into a car, unknowingly striking and killing a 6-year-old boy.
      The incident, which happened in September 2015, resulted in the indictments of two marshals on second degree murder and second degree attempted murder charges.

      The marshals began pursuing the car after they witnessed an argument between a man and his girlfriend in front of a local bar, a source told CNN. Officers moved to detain the man, identified as Christopher Few, who took off in his car.
      The pursuit ended in gunfire on a dead-end street in Marksville, Louisiana.

    • Massachusetts Detective who Threatened to Murder Teens and Plant Drugs Won’t Be Fired or Charged

      A Springfield, Massachusetts narcotics detective has been placed on leave for 60 days, but not fired, after videos surfaced showing him threatening to murder two teenagers and plant drugs on them — videos which have cast doubt on the detective’s numerous drug cases.

      Detective Gregg A. Bigda was caught on video on February 26 at the Palmer Police Department, where he interrogated two teenagers, who along with a third teen were suspected of stealing an undercover police car outside a pizza shop, when he made the threats, according to a report on MassLive.com.

    • New Jersey Woman Forced into Mental Facility for Video Recording Courthouse

      It was a beautiful day in Freehold, New Jersey, so Jen Coombs decided to do First Amendment audits at the Monmouth County jail and courthouse to see how well officials there would respect her right to record in public.

      The New Jersey woman who runs a Facebook page called Time to Stand – New Jersey ended up forced into a mental facility against her will for four days. Not that it kept her from doing another First Amendment audit on the same courthouse upon her release.

      It all started on September 15, 2016 when Coombs made her way around the public areas of the facility and was approached within minutes by two jail employees who seemed determined to snatch the camera out of her hand before even asking her what she was doing.

      It wasn’t just her camera they were after. Coombs was immediately placed in handcuffs and her car keys were taken. Police then used her keys to find her parked car.

      Officials did not stop at just running her tags to get her information though. They used the keys to open her car and rummage around inside in an apparent search for something, anything, to charge her with.

    • Christian boy, 16, facing DEATH PENALTY for offending Muslims in Facebook post

      The boy has been arrested and charged with blasphemy after a photo of the Kaaba in Mecca, one of the holiest sites in Islam, appeared on his profile.

      A Muslim man told police the image, which was part of an alleged derogatory post against Islam on the boy’s profile, was insulting and sacrilegious.

      The black cube-shape is built around an ancient stone at the centre of Islam’s most sacred mosque Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

      Locals reportedly claimed the image showed the Kaaba with a pig’s head on top.

    • Is It Still An Anonymous Tip If It’s Me?

      In Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, two police officers found a way to get around one of those annoying loopholes that prevent them from locking up people who are guilty, guilty, GUILTY!!! The loophole is known to the rest of us as “The Fourth Amendment,” which states (among other things) “that no warrant shall issue except upon probable cause.”

      Detective Harold Zech and Lawrence Spathelf didn’t have probable cause to search the homes of Albert McCullough and Dakeem Booker, so they made their own. They phoned in “anonymous” tips to McCullough’s and Booker’s parole officers, who searched their and found some heroin.

    • New Guantánamo intelligence upends old ‘worst of the worst’ assumptions

      The “Dirty 30” probably weren’t all Osama bin Laden bodyguards after all. The “Karachi 6” weren’t a cell of bombers plotting attacks in Pakistan for al-Qaida. An Afghan man captured 14 years ago as a suspected chemical weapons maker was confused for somebody else.

      An ongoing review shows the U.S. intelligence community has been debunking long-held myths about some of the “worst of the worst” at Guantánamo, some of them still held today. The retreat emerges in a series of unclassified prisoner profiles released by the Pentagon in recent years, snapshots of much larger dossiers the public cannot see, prepared for the Periodic Review Board examining the Pentagon’s “forever prisoner” population.

    • DEA’s Army of 18,000 Informants Pocketed $237 Million Over Five Years

      It’s no secret that the Drug Enforcement Administration relies heavily on an army of confidential sources — men and women compelled, coerced, or enticed to share information with law enforcement, sometimes to alleviate their own legal troubles, sometimes for cash.

      Precisely how those relationships play out, however, is often shrouded in secrecy.

      A recently published audit by the Department of Justice has now offered a startling glimpse behind the scenes of those operations, revealing a world in which hundreds of millions of dollars have been doled out to thousands of informants over the last five years. Those informants include package delivery personnel, bus company employees, and Transportation Security Administration agents moonlighting as drug war spies — all operating with abysmal oversight and scant evidence of return on investment.

    • Military-Style Raid Ends Native Prayer Against Dakota Pipeline

      Up to 21 people were arrested during a peaceful prayer service.

      North Dakota police with military-style equipment surrounded Native Americans gathered in prayer against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline on Wednesday, disrupting their plan to cross sacred and treaty-protected land in protest of a project they fear will destroy their livelihood.

    • U.S. Court Of Appeals Upholds Ruling That New Hampshire’s Silly Ballot Selfie Ban Violated The First Amendment

      You may recall that roughly a year ago, a federal judge struck down a New Hampshire law that made “ballot selfies” illegal. The state had essentially updated its laws revolving around limiting the ability to sell votes or influence the public through depicting who a person voted for to include criminalizing anyone that took a picture of their completed ballot and shared it on social media. The state had said that allowing that sort of thing encouraged voter corruption, with the idea that ballot selfies would be used as a form of proof that a bought vote had been completed, or might otherwise be used to influence other members of the public as to how to vote. It was a strange theory, given how unlikely it would be for a corrupted voter to post evidence of his or her corruption on Facebook, not to mention that stating that a person essentially couldn’t engage in a form of political speech via a picture was flatly unconstitutional. The federal judge agreed.

    • Border Patrol Agent Caught Watching Porn On The Job Blames The Internet Filter For Not Stopping Him

      We talk about porn filters occasionally here at Techdirt. Usually those discussions revolve around how useless and easily circumvented those filters are, even as the more clueless in government insist that we need more of this non-filtering filtering. This is not one of those stories. Instead, it is the story of one of the most tone-deaf individuals with a penchant for excuse-making I’ve ever come across.

      We start with Gizmodo, a website that used to be owned by Gawker Media until a rich guy decided to show America exactly what a rich guy with a lot of money could do and had Gawker shut down, presumably then diving into a pile of gold coins and rubbing hundred dollar bills on his nipples. Gizmodo recently filed an FOIA request to get at documents involving the misuse of computer equipment with the Department of Homeland Security. The site was hoping to see if there were any cases of overreach and abuse of technology by the department. Instead, it uncovered four cases of people watching porn, including one really special case involving a border patrol agent that simply would not stop looking at porn while on the job.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Ridiculously Stupid: 4 State Attorneys General File Totally Bogus Lawsuit Against Internet Transition

      Okay, this is really dumb. What is it about state attorneys general making totally bullshit claims? It seems to happen with fairly consistent frequency. The latest is that four state AGs (from Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada) have filed a lawsuit to stop the IANA transition. If you don’t recall, we’ve written about this a bunch. A bunch of people are up in arms over something they don’t seem to understand. The IANA transition is a good thing. It’s not the US government handing over the internet to Russia and China as you may have heard. It’s the Commerce Department severing an almost entirely symbolic link between it and a very specific internet governance capability concerning top level domains. And it’s important to complete the transition because other countries (including Russia and China) keep pointing to this symbolic link as a reason for why they should have more say in internet governance. Getting rid of the link keeps the internet functioning as it has for decades — and takes away a weapon from Russia and China. More importantly, going back on the transition now actually gives even more ammo to Russia and China, allowing them to point to unilateral actions by the US gov’t to block a process that everyone had agreed upon earlier.

      Anyway, to the actual lawsuit. It’s dumb. It’s really dumb. If you live in Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma or Nevada, you should be embarrassed for your Attorneys General. Elect better ones next time, please. First of all, they have no standing whatsoever to file this lawsuit. The IANA/top level domain system is not those states. They have no claim here other than “HEY LOOK! POLITICAL FOOTBALL THAT WE CAN GRANDSTAND OVER!” That does not give them standing. The best they can come up with for claiming standing is… uh… “hey, we have some websites.” No, really.

    • Judge Says No Way To Attorneys General Looking To Block IANA Transition

      Well, this isn’t much of a surprise, but following the ridiculous last minute attempt to block the IANA transition by four state attorneys general (who have absolutely no standing or argument), a judge has flatly denied their request for an injunction meaning that the transition is a go for midnight tonight, barring any really last minute unforeseen methods to block it (or a desperate leapfrog to an appeals court).

      Having spent part of the morning responding to clueless conspiracy theorists on my earlier post, I’m sure you’re going to hear the standard ridiculous lizard people warnings about how this is enabling “the UN” or “leftists” and “globalists” to “takeover” the internet and how it will allow China to build the “Great Firewall” into the core functioning of the internet. None of that is even remotely true. What happens tonight at midnight is… nothing, basically. ICANN, which has managed the IANA function through its multistakeholder process for almost two decades… will continue to do so. Nothing changes. The only “change” is that the US Commerce Dept. no longer has to issue a contract to ICANN for the IANA functions. And that’s it.

    • Net Neutrality: BEREC on the Right Path, Let’s Keep the Pressure on

      Net Neutrality is one of central challenge in the application of fundamental rights in the digital space. Too often it has been only considered as a technical or commercial issue, but it has serious impact on the real exercise of right to freedom of speech, right to information and on how the society build and think of itself; but also has important impacts on industrial and commercial issues. La Quadrature du Net has followed this issue since its start in the European debate circa 2009 by trying to defend a definition and wording in EU law of a strict Net Neutrality, protecting users and guaranteeing opportunities of development in a sane digital environment. As the BEREC guidelines for the Telecom Regulation adopted in October 2015 have been published, it is time to come back on the few years of campaign and to present the next fights and challenges for fundamental rights.

      La Quadrature du Net has defended, since 2009 and the first announces of EU works on Net Neutrality, an approach based on the defence of fundamental rights: to secure Net Neutrality, it is to defend the access of all to the Internet network, it is to allow to receive and send information with the same condition for all, it is to guarantee technical condition to a free and fair exercise of freedom of speech and information.

      It was not self-evident: as soon as the subject was within the speeches of Telecom operators and big digital companies, everything was made to consider Net Neutrality only from the perspective of financing Internet traffic and not as a major issue for the balance of the network that determines the quality of access and circulation of the information and services for the users as a whole.

    • A Massive Cable Industry Disinformation Effort Just Crushed The FCC’s Plan For Cable Box Competition

      Back in February the FCC proposed a new plan to bring competition to the cable box. Under the plan, cable providers would need to provide their programming to third party hardware vendors without the need for a CableCARD. The goal? Bring some competition to bear on a stagnant, captive market, resulting in cheaper, more open, and higher quality cable boxes. But because the plan would demolish $21 billion in rental fees while eroding sector control, the cable industry launched one of the most unprecedented lobbying and disinformation efforts I’ve ever seen in 16 years of covering the sector.

      Politicians loyal to the cable industry wrote letters lambasting the FCC for “jeopardizing the incredible evolution of video distribution services,” falsely comparing the idea to Popcorn Time. A flood of editorials magically began appearing in newspapers country wide claiming the FCC’s plan would boost piracy, hurt consumer privacy, and even “steal the future.” The cable sector even trotted out Jesse Jackson, who claimed in a horribly misleading op-ed that increased cable box competition was akin to the “snarling dogs, water hoses and church bombings” of America’s racist history. Seriously.

  • DRM

    • Racing Game Developers Sacrifice Playability On The Altar Of Anti-Piracy, Deliver Laggy Mess To Paying Customers

      So much for the advantages of PC gaming. Build a rig to your specifications and company reps tell you to use bog-standard settings to keep from being tripped up by anti-piracy and anti-hacking asset checks. If gamers wanted a one-size-fits-all gaming experience, they’d have settled for the console version. And there’s no guarantee that will work. The problem has been linked to on-the-fly decryption of game assets, which isn’t going to be solved in all cases by using default video settings.

      There’s a fix on the way but it’s tough to see how the developers are going to get around built-in asset checks that run through Windows EFS. There’s no easy “switch” to turn that off. While I understand developers are concerned about software piracy and cheaters/hackers ruining the online experience of honest players, there’s simply nothing to be gained by irritating those who’ve spent perfectly functional money on deliberately-broken software.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Time To Talk Digital Issues At WTO With Focus On Developing Countries, Forum Hears

      Now is the time for those who want to bring new voices to the digital trade and general trade debate involving the World Trade Organization, says an adviser to a leading security think tank in Switzerland.

      “If the objective is for trade policy to effectively bring in non-traditional voices this is a perfect time for that to take place,” Nick Ashton-Hart, a consultant and associate fellow for the Geneva Centre for Security Policy said at the WTO’s 27-29 September Public Forum yesterday.

    • Uber hires former Google licensing executive in what could be a familiar pre-IPO play

      In a major move in the licensing community, former Google patent executive Kurt Brasch has moved to Uber as senior manager, patents. He joins an IP team led by fellow former Google employee Michael Meehan who jumped ship in February of this year.

      Brasch left Google earlier in the summer as the search giant let go of most of the legacy licensing team that it had picked up through its 2012 acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

      At Google he played a role in the Patent Purchase Promotion and its recent industry-wide successor IP3; helped launch the Patent Starter Program designed to encourage start-ups to join the License on Transfer Network; and led the team behind the 2014 cross licence with Cisco. That series of successes last year led this blog to name him as one of the IP personalities of 2015.

    • Gurry Speaks On Allegations For First Time As WIPO Members Discuss Actions

      Heading into next week’s annual UN World Intellectual Property Organization General Assemblies, WIPO member states are considering a report from the United Nations investigations office regarding allegations of wrongdoing made involving WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. And for first time since the allegations arose, Gurry has offered his defence. Spoiler alert: he neither confirmed nor denied it but raised questions about the legality of sharing the report with member states.

    • Trademarks

      • Supremes to rule on feds’ trademark censorship

        The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the case alleging improper government censorship of a trademark for a band named The Slants, a precedent that also likely will impact significantly the current fight over the Washington NFL team’s name, the Redskins.

        According to the Rutherford Institute, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the band’s name, the censorship “openly discriminates against speech on the basis of content and viewpoint, violating the most fundamental constitutional guarantees to freedom of expression under the First Amendment.”

        The Asian-American dance rock band sued after the federal government, through its U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, censored them.

      • Can you trademark an offensive name or not? US Supreme Court to decide

        The Supreme Court on Thursday said it would decide, once and for all, whether federal intellectual property regulators can refuse to issue trademarks with disparaging or inappropriate names.

        At the center of the issue is a section of trademark law that actually forbids the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from approving a trademark if it “consists of or comprises immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.”

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