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08.03.15

Links 3/8/2015: Linux 4.2 RC5, Korora 22

Posted in News Roundup at 3:35 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • A College Without Classes

    Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

    Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Aging Pipes Are Poisoning America’s Tap Water

      In Flint, Michigan, lead, copper, and bacteria are contaminating the drinking supply and making residents ill. If other cities fail to fix their old pipes, the problem could soon become a lot more common.

      [...]

      In the past 16 months, abnormally high levels of e. coli, trihamlomethanes, lead, and copper have been found in the city’s water, which comes from the local river (a dead body and an abandoned car were also found in the same river). Mays and other residents say that the city government endangered their health when it stopped buying water from Detroit last year and instead started selling residents treated water from the Flint River. “I’ve never seen a first-world city have such disregard for human safety,” she told me.

  • Security

    • DNS server attacks begin using BIND software flaw

      Attackers have started exploiting a flaw in the most widely used software for the DNS (Domain Name System), which translates domain names into IP addresses.

      Last week, a patch was issued for the denial-of-service flaw, which affects all versions of BIND 9, open-source software originally developed by the University of California at Berkeley in the 1980s.

    • Researchers Create First Firmware Worm That Attacks Macs

      The common wisdom when it comes to PCs and Apple computers is that the latter are much more secure. Particularly when it comes to firmware, people have assumed that Apple systems are locked down in ways that PCs aren’t.

      It turns out this isn’t true. Two researchers have found that several known vulnerabilities affecting the firmware of all the top PC makers can also hit the firmware of MACs. What’s more, the researchers have designed a proof-of-concept worm for the first time that would allow a firmware attack to spread automatically from MacBook to MacBook, without the need for them to be networked.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • A Haven From the Animal Holocaust

      There are mornings when Susie Coston, walking up to the gate of this bucolic farm in her rubber boots, finds crates of pigs, sheep, chickens, goats, geese or turkeys on the dirt road. Sometimes there are notes with the crates letting her know that the animals are sick or injured. The animals, often barely able to stand when taken from the crates, have been rescued from huge industrial or factory farms by activists.

      The crates are delivered anonymously under the cover of darkness. This is because those who liberate animals from factory farms are considered terrorists under U.S. law. If caught, they can get a 10-year prison term and a $250,000 fine under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. That is the punishment faced by two activists who were arrested in Oakland, Calif., last month and charged with freeing more than 5,700 minks in 2013, destroying breeding records and vandalizing other property of the fur industry.

  • Finance

    • Jimmy Carter: U.S. Is an ‘Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery’

      Former President Jimmy Carter had some harsh words to say about the current state of America’s electoral process, calling the country “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery” resulting in “nominations for president or to elect the president.” When asked this week by The Thom Hartmann Program (via The Intercept) about the Supreme Court’s April 2014 decision to eliminate limits on campaign donations, Carter said the ruling “violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system.”

    • Jimmy Carter: The U.S. Is an “Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery”

      Former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday on the nationally syndicated radio show the Thom Hartmann Program that the United States is now an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” has created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” Both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, “look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.”

    • Charles Koch calls for unity against ‘corporate welfare’

      As top GOP presidential candidates arrived at a hotel here to court the influential donors of the Koch network, Charles Koch called on retreat attendees to unite with him in a campaign against “corporate welfare” and “irresponsible spending” by both political parties.

      Speaking on the hotel’s grassy lawn with the Pacific Ocean shimmering behind him, Koch opened the gathering hosted by Freedom Partners by noting that the theme of the weekend would be “Unleashing Our Free Society.” Koch network donors and politicians alike must work toward “eliminating welfare for the wealthy,” he said.

    • Fox Analyst Compares Donald Trump To St. Augustine And Mr. Smith Goes To Washington

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • At NY Observer, Trump’s Too Close to Cover–but Promoting Publisher’s Real Estate Is No Problem

      The Huffington Post‘s Michael Calderone (7/28/15) had a piece on the ethical dilemma posed for the weekly New York Observer by the fact that its owner and publisher, Jared Kushner, is married to Ivanka Trump, daughter of real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. One would expect the Observer to be all over the Trump story, given that its self-proclaimed mission is to cover “the city’s influencers in politics, culture, luxury and real estate who collectively make New York City unique,” but instead the paper has had next to nothing to say about Trump’s controversy-fueled presidential bid.

  • Censorship

    • Anti-Web Blocking Site More Popular in the UK than Spotify & Skype

      A service that helps users circumvent web-blocking injunctions handed down by the UK High Court has grown to become one of the country’s most popular websites. Unblocked.pw provides instant access to dozens of otherwise blocked domains and is currently ranked 192nd in the UK, ahead of both Spotify and Skype.

    • David Cameron Wants To Shut Down Porn Sites Because Kids Are Clever Enough To Defeat Age Restrictions

      UK Prime Minister David Cameron has been using “porn” moral panics as a wedge issue to ramp up censorship and control over the internet in the UK. He’s been pushing aspects of it for years, including demands for the impossible: filters that block “bad content” but allow “good content.” Yes, it does seem bizarre that someone in as powerful a position as David Cameron sees the world in such a black and white way, but remember, this is the same guy who bases his defense of more spying powers on what happens in fictional TV crime dramas.

      His latest plan? Well, he’s insisting that he’s going to shut down porn websites if they don’t guarantee to keep out everyone under the age of 18. Yes, many sites have some age controls, but kids aren’t stupid and can usually figure out a way around them. And that’s always going to be the case. And it’s been the case since pornography existed. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that it’s quite likely that David Cameron himself first came across pornographic material long before his 18th birthday.

    • The Pirate Bay Will Be Blocked in Austria

      Following a European trend, an Austrian Court has ordered a local ISP to block access to The Pirate Bay. The legal action, brought by copyright holders, resulted in an injunction which orders the ISPs to block access to several popular torrent sites and also affects Isohunt.to, 1337x.to and h33t.to.

  • Privacy

    • GCHQ and Me

      Events were about to take me on a different journey. Behind me, sharp footfalls broke the stillness. A squad was running, hard, toward the porch of the house we had left. Suited men surrounded us. A burly middle-aged cop held up his police ID. We had broken “Section 2″ of Britain’s secrecy law, he claimed. These were “Special Branch,” then the elite security division of the British police.

      For a split second, I thought this was a hustle. I knew that a parliamentary commission had released a report five years earlier that concluded that the secrecy law, first enacted a century ago, should be changed. I pulled out my journalist identification card, ready to ask them to respect the press.

    • I’m Quitting Social Media to Learn What I Actually Like

      Three years ago, I began taking August off social media. I wasn’t alone. That was the year everyone started writing about digital detoxes, smartphone-free summer camps, and Facebook cleanses. One writer at the Verge took a year’s vacation from the Internet.

      I don’t seem to see those stories as much anymore. To figure out why, I decided to ask my 1,868 Facebook friends. I pulled up the site, but before I could properly articulate the question, I noticed a guy I met briefly five years ago had posted hiking photos from the same place I went hiking last week. We had both been in Oregon!! What a coincidence! I clicked on the photo and saw he’d been there with a woman I knew from high school. Well, how do they know each other? I clicked on her photo and up came a profile pic of three tiny children, all adorable. The youngest had a Brown University shirt on. A little bit of digging revealed that, in fact, her husband had gotten a job at my alma mater and they’d all moved to Providence. I’d learned so much in just five minutes, but what was it I’d wanted to know from Facebook?

    • Supporter Newsletter: July 2015

      And now, after taking legal action, the High Court has ruled that DRIPA was indeed inconsistent with EU law.

  • Civil Rights

    • Police in Norway Haven’t Killed Anyone in Nearly 10 Years

      Police in Norway hardly ever use their guns, a new report released by the Scandinavian country’s government shows. In fact, it’s been almost 10 years since law enforcement shot and killed someone, in 2006.

      Perhaps the most telling instance was when terrorist Anders Breivik opened fire in 2011 and killed 77 people in Utoya and Oslo. Authorities fired back at him, all right, but only a single time. In 2014, officers drew their guns 42 times, but they fired just two shots while on duty. No one was hurt in either of those instances.

    • Training Officers to Shoot First, and He Will Answer Questions Later

      Dr. Lewinski and his company have provided training for dozens of departments, including in Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Seattle. His messages often conflict, in both substance and tone, with the training now recommended by the Justice Department and police organizations.

      The Police Executive Research Forum, a group that counts most major city police chiefs as members, has called for greater restraint from officers and slower, better decision making. Chuck Wexler, its director, said he is troubled by Dr. Lewinski’s teachings. He added that even as chiefs changed their use-of-force policies, many did not know what their officers were taught in academies and private sessions.

    • Spanish Cops Use New Law To Fine Facebook Commenter For Calling Them ‘Slackers’

      On July 1st, the Spanish government enacted a set of laws designed to keep disruption within its borders to a minimum. In addition to making dissent illegal (criminal acts now include “public disruption” and “unauthorized protests”), Spanish legislators decided the nation’s law enforcement officers should be above reproach. This doesn’t mean Spanish cops will be behaving better. It just means the public will no longer be able to criticize them.

    • German Netzpolitik journalists investigated for treason

      Press freedom is under threat in Germany — two journalists and their alleged source are under investigation for potential treason for disclosing and reporting what appears to be an illegal and secret plan to spy on German citizens.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Why ISPs still take forever to install business Internet service

      Dealing with telcos and carriers for enterprise circuit installation is still a royal pain. Haven’t we been doing this long enough to do it well?

    • The Web We Have to Save

      Blogs gave form to that spirit of decentralization: They were windows into lives you’d rarely know much about; bridges that connected different lives to each other and thereby changed them. Blogs were cafes where people exchanged diverse ideas on any and every topic you could possibly be interested in. They were Tehran’s taxicabs writ large.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Killing Spotify’s Free Version Will Boost Piracy

        Spotify is generally hailed as a piracy killer, with music file-sharing traffic dropping in virtually every country where the service launches. However, much of this effect may be lost if recent calls to end Spotify’s free tier are honored.

      • Google Asked to Remove 18 ‘Pirate Links’ Every Second

        Copyright holders continue to increase the number of copyright takedown requests they send to Google. As a result the company is currently asked to remove a record breaking 18 links to “pirate” pages from its search results every second, a number that is still increasing at a rapid pace.

      • Kim Dotcom claims deal offered

        He says the offers included one which was conditional on him leaving New Zealand, where he has been a thorn in the side of the government since he and three colleagues were arrested at the request of the FBI in January 2012.

      • Copying And Sharing Was Always A Natural Right; Restricting Copying Never Was

        In the still-ongoing debate over sharing it’s paramount to realize that sharing and copying was always the natural state, and that restricting of copying is an arbitrary restriction of property rights.

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