German ministry hellbent on taking back control of ‘digital sovereignty’, cutting dependency on Microsoft

The Federal Ministry of the Interior (Bundesministerium des Innern or BMI) in Germany says it will reduce reliance on specific IT suppliers, especially Microsoft, in order to strengthen its “digital sovereignty”.

In an official statement, the Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer states that “in order to ensure our digital sovereignty, we want to reduce dependencies on individual IT providers. We are also considering alternative programs to replace certain software. This will be done in close coordination with other EU countries.”

BMI commissioned a strategic market analysis from consultants PwC, resulting in a paper that was published last month. The paper examines the risks inherent in IT dependency on commercial software vendors, with a particular focus on Microsoft because of the heavy use of its products and the way they are interconnected, especially Microsoft Office, Windows, Windows Server and Office 365.

Desktop

• Buying Huawei: A wolf in sheep’s clothing?

  Creating a rival for its key technology at the level Huawei’s is suggesting is unprecedented, yet other businesses have either had to give their intellectual property away or, taken a stance that is generally counter to good business: AT&T and its UNIX operating system in the 1970s is a good example. Google has famously done rather well by making its Android operating system (OS) Open Source, and Tesla, with founder Elon Musk stating he: “will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.”

  However, could this move by Huawei be little more than an attempt to protect its future profitability in a mobile market that is about to explode once again as 5G ushers in a new age of connectivity? And Huawei is about to release their own OS, which they hope will rival Android. There is more hope than substance, as users still won’t be able to use many of their favourite apps when the latest Huawei handsets are launched.

  Don’t forget, the current block on US firms selling technology to Huawei includes Apps from Google. Huawei smartphones might use the Open Source Android OS, but their Apps are banned from export due to the US’s arguments that this technology could be a national security issue. So, Huawei’s 5G handsets wouldn’t have YouTube or Gmail for instance. Is Mr. Zhengfei’s offer a backhanded way to get this ban lifted? As the Economist points out, 50% of Huawei sales came from selling its smartphones. All eyes are on how Huawei’s new Mate 30 performs in the marketplace.

Server

• Linux Container Technology Explained (Contributed)

  State and local governments’ IT departments increasingly rely on DevOps practices and agile development methodologies to improve service delivery and to help maintain a culture of constant collaboration, iteration, and flexibility among all stakeholders and teams.

  However, when an IT department adopts agile and DevOps practices and methodologies, traditional IT problems still need to be solved. One long-standing problem is “environmental drift,” when the code and configurations for applications and their underlying infrastructure can vary between different environments. State and local IT teams often lack the tools necessary to mitigate the effects of environmental drift, which can hamper collaboration and agility efforts.

• IBM

  • DevNation Live Bengaluru: Java microservices and how to become cloud-native

    Our first DevNation Live regional event was held in Bengaluru, India in July. This free technology event focused on open source innovations, with sessions presented by elite Red Hat technologists.

    Many of us are on a journey from traditional monolithic applications to a more distributed cloud-native microservices architecture. In this session, Burr Sutter discusses the key microservices architecture principles and explains how and why to evolve to this approach. You’ll learn how to become a new cloud-native developer and architect.

  • Red Hat UK ranked fourth in Best Workplaces In Tech 2019

    At Red Hat we love to celebrate our people and culture, and it is with great pleasure that we can share that Red Hat in the United Kingdom has been honoured in the Great Place to Work awards, ranking fourth in the UK’s Best Workplaces in Tech 2019, large company category.

    Great Place to Work identifies thriving successful workplaces through a rigorous methodology that includes its Trust Index survey, which looks at the employee experience, and its Culture Audit, which assesses leadership and people practices. Red Hat reached the number four spot thanks to its passion to deliver a great employee experience and to enable a more innovative and productive environment for all. Great Place to Work recognises Red Hat UK as somewhere employees trust the people they work for, have pride in the work they do and enjoy the people they work with.

  • Custom Grafana dashboards for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4

    OpenShift administrators often face the same challenges as other system administrators: “I need a tool that will monitor the health of my system.” Yet, traditional monitoring tools often fall short in their visibility of an OpenShift cluster. Thus, a typical OpenShift monitoring stack includes Prometheus for systems as well as service monitoring, and Grafana for analyzing and visualizing metrics.

    Often, administrators are looking to write custom queries and create custom dashboards in Grafana. However, the Grafana instance that is provided with the monitoring stack, along with its dashboards, is read-only. Enter the community-powered Grafana operator provided by OperatorHub.

  • IBM will soon launch a 53-qubit quantum computer

    IBM continues to push its quantum computing efforts forward and today announced that it will soon make a 53-qubit quantum computer available to clients of its IBM Q Network. The new system, which is scheduled to go online in the middle of next month, will be the largest universal quantum computer available for external use yet.

    The new machine will be part of IBM’s new Quantum Computation Center in New York State, which the company also announced today. The new center, which is essentially a data center for IBM’s quantum machines, will also feature five 20-qubit machines, but that number will grow to 14 within the next month. IBM promises a 95% service availability for its quantum machines.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Destination Linux 139 – Manjaro, Firefox VPN, Mumble, LVFS, Pine64 Smartwatch, RawTherapee, WSL

• The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 826

• Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S12E24 – Gran Turismo

  This week we’ve been cataloging hardware (mostly crusty Thinkpads). We interview Kyle Fazzari, serior robotics engineer at Canonical, bring you some command line love and go over all your feedback.

  It’s Season 12 Episode 24 of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson and Kyle Fazzari are connected and speaking to your brain.

• Introducing New People to Linux | Choose Linux 18

  There’s lots to consider when setting someone up with Linux for the first time. User needs and expectations, distro choice, hardware, and so much more.

  We discuss our experiences, and ask some fundamental questions.

• git commit FreeBSD | BSD Now 316

  NetBSD LLVM sanitizers and GDB regression test suite, Ada—The Language of Cost Savings, Homura – a Windows Games Launcher for FreeBSD, FreeBSD core team appoints a WG to explore transition to Git, OpenBSD 6.6 Beta tagged, Project Trident 12-U5 update now available, and more.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.2.16

  I’m announcing the release of the 5.2.16 kernel.

  All users of the 5.2 kernel series must upgrade.

  The updated 5.2.y git tree can be found at:

  git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.2.y

  and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

  https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s…

• Linux 4.19.74

• Linux 4.14.145

• Linux Kernel 5.3

  Linux 5.3 was released over the weekend, which means it’s time for our usual “where does Collabora stand in this picture?” tour.

  As has been the case for several years now, Collabora keeps being an active contributor to the Linux project, with 77 commits authored by Collaborans merged in this release.

  On the media subsystem front, André Almeida and Helen Koike kept working on the Virtual Media Controller (VIMC) driver. The most notable change in this release being the addition of a VIMC entry to the media subsystem doc, centralizing all information about this virtual driver.

• Graphics Stack

  • Intel’s Gallium3D OpenGL Driver Taps Another Optimization – ~32% For GFXBench

    Intel’s new OpenGL Linux driver, their Gallium3D-based “Iris” implementation that is aiming to be the default before year’s end, continues making striking progress.

    Just this past week when testing the very latest Mesa code for this Intel Gallium3D driver I was quite impressed with it near universally being faster than their existing “i965″ Mesa driver. For some OpenGL workloads, this Gallium3D driver is significantly faster than the driver it’s set to replace for Broadwell “Gen 8″ graphics and newer.

  • Mesa’s Disk Cache Code Now Better Caters To 4+ Core Systems

    Most Linux gamers these days should be running at least quad-core systems so Mesa 19.3 has been updated to reflect that reality with the number of CPU threads used by their disk cache.

  • Performance-Boosting DFSM Support Flipped On & Off For RADV Vulkan Driver

    Back in July of last year the RADV Vulkan driver enabled primitive binning and DFSM for this open-source Radeon Vulkan driver. Well, it thought it enabled DFSM support and paired with the binning did yield a minor performance benefit at the time for Raven Ridge APUs. But now it turns out the DFSM support wasn’t properly wired up and is now addressed but is currently introducing a performance regression.

    RADV developer Bas Nieuwenhuizen added the actual DFSM (Deterministic Finite State Machine) support and mirrors the behavior of the RadeonSI OpenGL driver. With the DFSM support he found that it doubles the fill-rate of one of his test samples from around 16 to 32 pixels/cycles for Raven Ridge.

  • The Valve-funded shader compiler ‘ACO’ is being queued up for inclusion in Mesa directly (updated: merged)

    Back in early July, Valve announced their work on a new AMD GPU shader compiler for Mesa named ACO and now they’re trying to get it pulled into Mesa directly.

    Their main aims with ACO were to get the “best-possible code generation for game shaders, and fastest-possible compilation speed” and to replace the currently used shader compiler from the massive LLVM project. It has certainly seemed promising, improving both shader compile time resulting in less stuttering and so helping to improve overall FPS and smoothness in Linux games when played on supported AMD GPUs.

  • Valve’s ACO Shader Compiler For The Mesa Radeon Vulkan Driver Just Landed

    It was just two days ago that Valve’s performance-focused “ACO” shader compiler was submitted for review to be included in Mesa for the “RADV” Radeon Vulkan driver. Just minutes ago that new shader compiler back-end was merged for Mesa 19.3.

    ACO, short for the AMD COmpiler, is the effort led by Valve at creating a more performant and optimized shader compiler for the Radeon Linux graphics driver. Besides trying to generate the fastest shaders, ACO also aims to provide speedy shader compilation too, as an alternative to the AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler back-end. Initially ACO is for the RADV Vulkan driver but it may be brought to the RadeonSI OpenGL driver in the future. At the moment ACO is in good shape for Volcanic Islands through Vega while the Navi shader support is in primitive form.

Benchmarks

• Running The AMD “ABBA” Ryzen 3000 Boost Fix Under Linux With 140 Tests

  Last week AMD’s AGESA “ABBA” update began shipping with a fix to how the boost clock frequencies are handled in hopes of better achieving the rated boost frequencies for Ryzen 3000 series processors. I’ve been running some tests of an updated ASUS BIOS with this adjusted boost clock behavior to see how it performs under Linux with a Ryzen 9 3900X processor.

  The AGESA 1.0.0.3 ABBA update has an improved boost clock frequency algorithm along with changes to the idle state handling. This AGESA update should better position AMD Ryzen 3000 processors with the boost clock behavior expected by users with better hitting the maximum boost frequency and doing so more aggressively.

Instructionals/Technical

• Create backup copy of file, adding suffix of the date of the file modification (NOT today’s date)

• Sysadmin job levels: What you need to know for each

• Easing into automation with Ansible

• iptables allow vnc

• Kubernetes deployment yaml example for beginners

• Source Command on Linux Explained

• How To Install BlankOn 11 Uluwatu to USB Pendrive

• How to Add a Library in Arduino

• How to Install Apache Tomcat in RHEL 8

• How to Install PHP-FPM with Apache on Ubuntu 18.04 – Google Cloud

• How to Install WildFly with Nginx as a Reverse Proxy on Debian 10

• How to Pass Command Line Arguments to Python Script

• How to install Chamilo e-learning Management System on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• Install Git on RHEL 7 Operating System

Wine or Emulation

• WineHQ 4.16 Released, Install Using Official Repository in Ubuntu/Linux Mint

  Wine lets you run Windows software on other operating systems. With Wine, you can install and run these applications just like you would in Windows. Wine enables Linux, Mac, FreeBSD, and Solaris users to run Windows applications without a copy of Microsoft Windows. Wine is free software under constant development. Other platforms may benefit as well. The new release carries new features and bugs fixes.

Games

• Valve have released two more experiments into Steam Labs

  Ready to be a test subject once again and possible find some new games to play? Valve have released another two tools enabling you to find something to keep you busy and keep boredom away.

  The first up is the Deep Dive, developed by Lars Doucet (Defender’s Quest), it’s an extension of the work they did on their own Diving Bell Prototype. It allows you to click through games and be presented by more based on what you’ve clicked, however it comes with a number of improvements over the prototype. It has a breadcrumb navigation with a Start Over button, it won’t loop over as it strips out what you’ve already seen, Microtrailers from another Steam Labs experiment on them all and a proper Search bar.

  Deep Dive, thankfully, is one that should actually respect your store preferences after we had a chat about it on Twitter (#1, #2). So if you’ve only ticked Linux in your Steam Preferences (see the bottom), it shouldn’t constantly throw Windows titles at you.

• Fine Wine: An Interview With Codeweavers About Valve, Windows And The Future Of Gaming On Linux

  For a staggering 23 years, the developers at Codeweavers have undertaken the gargantuan task of enabling Windows software to run on Mac and Linux operating systems. Among other accomplishments, the company’s collective work and collaboration with Valve resulted in a massive leap forward in Linux gaming with Steam Proton. I recently sat down with Codeweavers CEO and Wine developer Andrew Eikum for an illuminating conversation about the challenges they face, working with Valve, and the future of gaming and software on Linux.

• Linux commit suggests mainstream AMD Navi GPUs will launch before October 15

  Trivial and urgent. That’s probably not how AMD would like its upcoming Navi 12 GPUs to be referenced, but that’s how its open source guru, Marek Olsak, has termed the addition of the Navi PCI ID to the Mesa 3D Graphics Library in a recent commit. Trivial, presumably because adding the little bit of extra code of Navi 12’s PCI ID doesn’t take a lot of effort, but what of the ‘urgent’ tag? Are we looking at the very imminent arrival of the AMD Navi 12 graphics cards?

  [...]

  The next Mesa 3D Graphics Library release – 19.3.0-rc1 – isn’t scheduled until October 15 which kinda suggests that AMD’s open source crew wanted to get support into the 19.2 library preceding it, as compatible GPUs would presumably be available before version 19.3 drops.

• A Total War Saga: TROY Seeing A Native Linux Port Next Year

  Creative Assembly revealed Total War Saga: TROY on Wednesday for release next year. Feral Interactive has announced they are porting this latest Total War game to macOS and Linux.

  Feral has done a good job punctually porting Creative Assembly’s Total War games to Linux/macOS and it will continue that way for Total War Saga: TROY.

• Valve have already begun tweaking the new Steam Library Beta

  With the new Steam Library Beta now available for everyone to test, Valve have started tweaking it based on feedback.

• Video recording and livestreaming app OBS Studio has a big new release out

  Some really great new features made it into this release like the ability to actually pause a recording. That will come in very handy, when you want to keep a single file but you know there’s times you don’t want in it. This can certainly help cut down on editing time for a lot of situations. You can also use a script to pause recordings when a specific scene is up, like when you’ve run to the toilet or something—handy! To get pausing to work though, you cannot share the encoder between recording and streaming.

• Physics-based space shoot ‘em up Hyper Ultra Astronautics allows up to 16 players for total madness

  FRACTiLE Games just released Hyper Ultra Astronautics, a physics-based local multiplayer space shoot ‘em with Linux support.

• The dev of Rings of Saturn thinks going cross-platform ‘paid off’

  Currently in Early Access on itch.io and Steam, the developer of the top-down hard sci-fi space sim ΔV: Rings of Saturn seems to think doing a Linux and Mac build was worth it.

  Before getting into the details of it, let’s have a reminder of what the game actually is. Developed by Kodera Software, a one-person studio from Poland, Rings of Saturn follows the unexpected discovery of valuable minerals within the rings of Saturn. This has sparked a thriving space excavation industry and you’re going out there to hopefully strike it rich. The developer said it’s “backed up with real physics and science” and the attention to detail is pretty amazing.

• Total War Saga: TROY officially announced and it will be coming to Linux next year

  Good news for fans of strategy games today as Total War Saga: TROY has been officially announced by Creative Assembly and SEGA. It’s also getting a Linux port once again from Feral Interactive.

  Inspired by Homer’s Iliad, it focuses on the historical flashpoint of the Trojan War, evolving the series with new period-inspired features. Creative Assembly said you will be able to explore it from both the Greek and Trojan perspectives allowing you to peel back “the layers of myth and legend to reveal the realities that may have inspired them”. Taking place in the late Bronze Age, this will be the the furthest back in time the Total War franchise has gone with its setting.

  Right on the Steam store page, it very clearly states “A Total War Saga: TROY will be released for macOS and Linux shortly after Windows.”. Feral Interactive will be doing the port just like they did with previous Total War titles as confirmed on their official site. Exciting to see another top title officially coming to Linux—brilliant!

• Squad-based zombie apocalypse strategic rogue-lite Deadly Days has officially released

  Deadly Days is a game I’ve played repeatedly over the course of it being in Early Access, it’s good fun and it’s officially out now with a big update.

  What to expect from it? You control a small squad, which you equip with various weapons to go through a series of randomly generated locations to loot for scrap and more equipment. You need to direct your survivors around each map and while they can act by themselves, you can also take a bit more direct control to aim their weapons. Additionally, you also have special abilities like dropping bombs, healing, speeding them up and so on.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Plasma 5.17 Beta Out for Testing

    Today KDE launches the beta release of Plasma 5.17.

    We’ve added a bunch of new features and improvements to KDE’s lightweight yet full featured desktop environment.

    Plasma’s updated web page gives more background on why you should use it on your computer.

    System Settings has gained new features to help you manage your fancy Thunderbolt hardware, plus Night Color is now on X11 and a bunch of pages got redesigned to help you get your configuration done easier. Our notifications continue to improve with a new icon and automatic do-not-disturb mode for presentations. Our Breeze GTK theme now provides a better appearance for the Chromium/Chrome web browsers and applies your color scheme to GTK and GNOME apps. The window manager KWin has received many HiDPI and multi-screen improvements, and now supports fractional scaling on Wayland.

  • KDE Plasma 5.17 Beta Rolls Out With Wayland Improvements, Overhauled Settings

Distributions

• Firefox, Graphene, Krita update in Tumbleweed

  Two openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots were released this week.

  The snapshots furnished the update for KDE Applications 19.08.1 and updated several libraries including Intel’s Graphene library OS.

  Snapshot 20190917 delivered four packages. The Graphene package updated to 1.10.0 and now uses an ancillary library called (micro) µTest for its test suite, which makes possible to build and run the test suite without depending on GLib. Mozilla Firefox 69.0 provided Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) with stronger privacy protections and added support for receiving multiple video codecs to makes it easier for WebRTC conferencing services to mix video from different clients. The other two package updates in the snapshot were icecream 1.3, which takes compile jobs from a build and distributes it among remote machines allowing a parallel build, and the HTTP client/server library for GNOME libsoup 2.66.3. The update of icecream 1.3 improved the speed of creating compiler tarballs. The snapshot is trending at a moderately stable rating of 87, according to the Tumbleweed snapshot reviewer.

• Reviews

  • Arch Linux Review in 2019

    In constant development since 2002, Arch Linux isn’t new. It’s built up a large, loyal following of users who love Arch’s “Keep It Simple, Stupid” approach, where minimalism and choice reign supreme.

    No Arch Linux installation is the same, and that’s the appeal to Arch users. It isn’t the friendliest Linux distro for beginners, but if you’re looking to truly understand what a Linux distro can do, Arch Linux could be for you.

    At number 15 on the Distowatch popularity list over the past 12 months, Arch is also one of the most well-known Linux distros. Let’s find out why this minimalist distro continues to be popular.

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • ArcoLinux 19.09 Run Through

    In this video, we are looking at ArcoLinux 19.09 with XFCE 4.14.

• Debian Family

  • FAI 5.8.7 and new ISO images using Debian 10

    The new FAI release 5.8.7 now supports apt keys in files called package_config/CLASS.gpg. Before we only supported .asc files. fai-mirror has a new option -V, which checks if variables are used in package_config/ and uses variable definitions from class/.var.

  • Praise Be CUPS Driverless Printing

    Last Tuesday, I finally got to start updating $work’s many desktop computers to Debian Buster. I use Puppet to manage them remotely, so major upgrades basically mean reinstalling machines from scratch and running Puppet.

    Over the years, the main upgrade hurdle has always been making our very large and very complicated printers work on Debian. Unsurprisingly, the blog posts I have written on that topic are very popular and get me a few ‘thank you’ emails per month.

    I’m very happy to say, thanks to CUPS Driverless Printing (CUPS 2.2.2+), all those trials and tribulations are finally over. Printing on Buster just works. Yes yes, even color booklets printed on 11×17 paper folded in 3 stapled in the middle.

  • Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, August 2019

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

  • Louis-Philippe Véronneau: Archiving 20 years of online content

    mailman2 is pretty great. You can get a dump of an email list pretty easily and mailman3′s web frontend, the lovely hyperkitty, is well, lovely. Importing a legacy mailman2 mbox went without a hitch thanks to the awesome hyperkitty_import importer. Kudos to the Debian Mailman Team for packaging this in Debian for us.

    But what about cramming a Yahoo! Group mailing list in hyperkitty? I wouldn’t recommend it. After way too many hours spent battling character encoding errors I just decided people that wanted to read obscure emails from 2003 would have to deal with broken accents and shit. But hey, it kinda works!

    Oh, and yes, archiving a Yahoo! Group with an old borken Perl script wasn’t an easy task. Hell, I kept getting blacklisted by Yahoo! for scraping too much data to their liking. I ended up patching together the results of multiple runs over a few weeks to get the full mbox and attachments.

    By the way, if anyone knows how to tell hyperkitty to stop at a certain year (i.e. not display links for 2019 when the list stopped in 2006), please ping me.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Vivaldi Web Browser 2.8 Released! How to Install it in Ubuntu

    Vivaldi web browser released the new stable version 2.8 today. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04 and higher.

  • Try Screen Mirroring Android Using Wi-Fi on Ubuntu!

    In the previous article, I once discussed screen mirroring on Ubuntu using Scrcpy. I like Scrcpy because this application is very light and runs very well when Screen Mirroring. And in this article, I will try Screen Mirroring using Wi-fi(wifi).

    Screen Mirroring using wifi has several benefits. One of them is, we don’t need to connect the device with a cable. So, when we are presentation a demo of an application made for smartphones, we can move freely because we don’t use connecting cables when used for screen mirroring.

  • Popular snaps per distro

    From a distance, Linux is one big, confusing ball of passionate users and hardcore technical jargon. But as you zoom in, you can start seeing patterns – and differences. Indeed, the individual and vastly varied choice of a favorite distribution has played a major part in shaping the community conversation in the Linux space. But does this also reflect on the application usage patterns?

    We wanted to have a look at how users on different distributions consume snaps. So we crunched some numbers and checked the top five snaps for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Arch Linux, and Manjaro users.

  • Ubuntu-maker Canonical shares top 5 snaps per Linux distribution

    All Linux users are the same, right? Oh, hell no! Linux users are a diverse bunch, with differing opinions, tastes, and personalities. In fact, that is probably a contributing factor to the fragmentation of the Linux community. Linux users have lots of options between distributions, desktop environments, and more — they are not stuck in a box like Windows 10 users.

    To highlight how different Linux users can be, Canonical has released some data about the installation of snaps, categorized by distro. It chose six of the most popular Linux-based operating systems for its analysis — Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Arch Linux, and Manjaro. It then shared the top five most popular snaps for each distribution.

  • Ubuntu on the new LinuxONE III

    A few months ago I visited the IBM offices in Poughkeepsie to sync up with colleagues, record an episode of Terminal Talk, and let’s be honest, visit some mainframes. A lot of assembly still happens in Poughkeepsie, and they have a big client center with mainframes on display, including several inside a datacenter that they give tours of. I was able to see a z14 in operation, as well as several IBM LinuxONE machines. Getting to tour datacenters is a lot of fun, and even though I wouldn’t have meaningful technical interactions with them, there’s something about seeing these massive machines that I work with every day in person that brings me a lot of joy.

    Now I have to go back! On September 12th, the newest mainframe was announced, the IBM z15 and accompanying Linux version, the IBM LinuxONE III. To celebrate, I joined my colleagues in the IBM Silicon Valley lab for a launch event watch party and, of course, cake.

Devices/Embedded

• Linux-powered NVR can stream and analyze 12 HD cam feeds without a cloud connection

  A new “Camect” camera hub and 1TB NVR that can aggregate up to 12 HD streams has funded on Indiegogo. The $279 device runs Linux on an Apollo Lake SoC and provides AI algorithms to analyze video without a cloud service.

  A Mountain View-based startup called Camect has successfully launched an Apollo Lake-based, AI-enabled camera hub and network video recorder for analyzing surveillance feeds. After more than quintupling its $50K Indiegogo goal, the Camect is available for another 15 days in $279 early bird packages, down from the eventual $399 when it ships in January.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android 10 Review: An Update in Progress

  • Here are all the Samsung devices getting Android 10

  • Nokia 7.2 launches in India: Stock Android, triple cameras for under $300

  • Picture-in-Picture is the best feature Android’s many video apps aren’t using

  • [Update: Now available] SimpleRockets 2 is coming to Android, and you can pre-register right now

  • Huawei confirms the new Mate 30 Pro won’t come with Google’s Android apps

  • The Android tech that iPhone users are most jealous of somehow got even better

  • Google One subscribers will have their inactive Android backups axed just like everyone else

  • Google for India 2019: More Discover & Lens languages, Assistant interpreter mode on Android

  • Best Android Phones for Students in 2019

  • Best Android Phones of 2019 (September Update)

  • Android Users Troll iPhone Fans Over ‘New’ Features In IOS 13

  • #TBT: That Time SNL Poked Fun at Verizon 4G LTE and Android Device Names

  • Android 10 custom ROMs are here for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro, Mi A1, and Google Nexus 5X

  • Samsung Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy S10 to receive Android 10 beta in October: Report

  • Android 10 no longer uses Chrome app to render in-app web content

  • Leak Reveals Which Samsung Phones Will (and Won’t) Get Android 10

  • These five old Mi TV models will get Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Android 9.0 support

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Events

  • Video recap: LibreOffice Conference 2019 in Almeria, Spain

    Here’s a quick recap of the LibreOffice Conference 2019 that took place last week in Almeria, Spain! Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll also upload videos from the individual presentations…

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Localization (L10N): L10n Report: September Edition

      Please note some of the information provided in this report may be subject to change as we are sometimes sharing information about projects that are still in early stages and are not final yet.

    • Will Kahn-Greene: Markus v2.0.0 released! Better metrics API for Python projects.

      Markus is a Python library for generating metrics.

    • This Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 304

      Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a systems language pursuing the trifecta: safety, concurrency, and speed. This is a weekly summary of its progress and community. Want something mentioned? Tweet us at @ThisWeekInRust or send us a pull request. Want to get involved? We love contributions.

    • Mozilla VR Blog: Virtual identities in Hubs

      Identity is a complicated concept—who are we really? Most of us have government IDs that define part of our identity, but that’s just a starting point. We present ourselves differently depending on context—who we are with our loved ones might not be the same as who we are at work, but both are legitimate representations of ourselves.

      Virtual spaces make this even harder. We might maintain many virtual identities with different degrees of overlap. Having control over our representation and identity online is a critical component of safety and privacy, and platforms should prioritize user agency.

      More importantly, autonomy and privacy are intrinsically intertwined. If everyone saw my google searches, I would probably change what I search for. If I knew my employer could monitor my interactions when I’m not at work, I would behave differently. Privacy isn’t just about protecting information about myself, it’s about allowing me to express myself.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Microsoft open-sources its C++ Standard Library (STL) used by MSVC tool-chain and Visual Studio [Ed: Visual Studio is proprietary software with surveillance, so this is yet more openwashing of Visual Studio]

  • Microsoft’s Latest Open-Source Contribution: A New Font For Terminals & Code Editors [Ed: Totally useless 'code' (fonts) to pretend the empire of proprietary stuff is somehow 'open']

  • Microsoft Has Built a Font for the Command Line

    The open source font is called “Cascadia Code” and it was created ‘hand-in-hand’ with the Windows Terminal app, though is also pitched at used of the the Visual Studio Code editing tool too.

  • InSync 3 Goes Stable, Brings OneDrive Sync to Linux [Ed: Proprietary software that gives Microsoft files from GNU/Linux]

    Yes, InSync 3 is now stable and available for Windows, macOS and Linux user (but naturally I’m only covering it it from the purview of the latter as there are native Google Drive and OneDrive sync solutions for the first two operating systems).

    [...]

    There is a “downside” to this otherwise neat slip of news and that is that InSync 3 is not free to use.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Statement on the RMS situation

    On Monday September 16th, Richard Stallman, long-time president and founder of the FSF, has resigned from both his position at the FSF, and the MIT.

    There’s a plethora of reporting around that – if you’re short on time, then I recommend reading Thomas Bushnell’s rather excellent medium piece in full.

    Many things can be said about this event, but immediately coming to defend RMS as a principled old man, who was the victim of a witch hunt, is not it. I fundamentally disagree with Michael here, and like to point out (though its obvious), that his point of view is not shared nor endorsed by The Document Foundation, albeit aggregated on their planet.

  • Remove Richard Stallman: Appendix A

    My original post, “Remove Richard Stallman”, has received over 180,000 views at the time that I am writing this. Since then, I’ve spoken with a few reporters, and even more information has been released that I thought would be useful to add, but too much to fit on that initial post. I leaked the full email thread, with names and contact information redacted, to Vice.

• Programming/Development

  • Get Out, Git! – Building SaaS #33

    In this episode, I removed the Git clone from the server. This is some of the final cleanup to streamline the deployment process.

    Before we could remove the clone completely, we had to decouple the final remaining connections that still depended on the repository clone.

  • An introduction to audio processing and machine learning using Python

    At a high level, any machine learning problem can be divided into three types of tasks: data tasks (data collection, data cleaning, and feature formation), training (building machine learning models using data features), and evaluation (assessing the model). Features, defined as “individual measurable propert[ies] or characteristic[s] of a phenomenon being observed,” are very useful because they help a machine understand the data and classify it into categories or predict a value.

  • Excellent Free Books to Learn Lisp

    Lisp (derives from “LISt Processing”) is one of the oldest programming languages. It was invented in 1958, with the language being conceived by John McCarthy and is based on his paper “Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine”. Over the years, Lisp has evolved into a family of programming languages. The most commonly used general-purpose dialects are Common Lisp and Scheme. Other dialects include Franz Lisp, Interlisp, Portable Standard Lisp, XLISP and Zetalisp.

    The majority of Lisp implementations offer a lot more than just a programming language. They include an entire environment such as debuggers, inspectors, tracing, and other tools to add the Lisp developer. Lisp is a practical, expression-oriented, interactive programming language which uses linked lists as one of its major data structures. A Lisp list is written with its elements separated by whitespace, and surrounded by parentheses. Lisp source code is itself comprised of lists.

    The language has many unique features that make it excellent to study programming constructs and data structures. Many regard Lisp as an extremely natural language to code complex symbolic reasoning programs. Lisp is popular in the fields of artificial intelligence and symbolic algebra.

  • Easy-to-use tools are key to CI/CD success says 2019 State of DevOps Report

    The most effective strategies for scaling DevOps and fostering productivity include easy-to-use tools and solutions that create community, according to the 2019 Accelerate State of DevOps Report.

    This year’s report, written by Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Dr. Dustin Smith, Jez Humble, and Jessie Frazelle, represents six years of research and data from more than 31,000 professionals and aims to better understand how the technical and cultural practices associated with DevOps affect team and organizational performance. It also explores ways to help improve performance and productivity and even reduce burnout.

Slouching Toward “Bethlehem”

Hive-mindedness seems to be growing — at the same time that bees are heading towards kaputzville. DARPA’s got a fix for the bees, they say. Then again, (D)ARPA gave us the Internet, which is where the hivemind is located. On the other hand, Al Gore ‘claims’ to have invented the Internet. Some people say he invented Climate Change, too. Riddle me this: If a guy can be that clever, then how come he can’t win his home state in 2000, without the need to blame Nader? And how come Watergate felon Charles “Dirty Tricks” Colson can be given back his voting rights by Jeb, but not all those Black voters? Is there a koan in a haystack locked up in all this? Or is it all rhetorical?

Health/Nutrition

• Removing the Profit From Our Pills: The Case for a Public Pharma System

  Any American who has paid the price of a patent-protected medicine knows the core flaw in the U.S. prescription drug system: our elected leaders have handed over control to profit-hungry corporations. And for-profit corporations gonna for-profit, as the kids would say.

• Outrage as Tennessee Moves Forward With Trump-Favored Proposal to Slash Medicaid

  The plan, if enacted, threatens to unleash a “radical change to the medical safety net for the nation’s poorest citizens.”

Security (Confidentiality/Integrity/Availability)

• Security Researchers Whose ‘Penetration Test’ Involved Breaking And Entering Now Facing Criminal Charges

  Turning security researchers into criminals is so popular we have a tag for it here at Techdirt. A security hole is found or a breach pointed out, and the first thing far too many entities do in response is turn the messenger over to law enforcement while muttering unintelligible things about “hacking.”

• Security updates for Thursday

  Security updates have been issued by CentOS (exiv2, firefox, ghostscript, http-parser, httpd, kdelibs and kde-settings, kernel, pango, qemu-kvm, and thunderbird), Debian (ibus), Fedora (kernel, kernel-headers, python34, qbittorrent, and samba), openSUSE (chromium), Oracle (go-toolset:ol8), Red Hat (kernel, nginx:1.14, patch, ruby, skydive, systemd, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (thunderbird), SUSE (libreoffice, openssl-1_1, python-urllib3, and python-Werkzeug), and Ubuntu (tomcat9 and wpa, wpasupplicant).

• Irdeto Warns Healthcare IoT Is Under Heavy Attack

  The world of IoT is no stranger to attacks, with security being a number one priority for keeping the world of interconnected devices safe. One area where security is most crucial is healthcare, where successful attacks can result in loss of life. It wasn’t too long ago that ransomware was making the rounds, shutting down entire hospital networks and putting patients at risk. Irdeto made a press release that put forward the case for better security for healthcare IoT. They quoted some statistics that put some insight into how healthcare comes under attack from malicious agents.

• Why it’s time to embrace top-down cybersecurity practices

  Cybersecurity is no longer just the domain of the IT staff putting in firewalls and backing up servers. It takes a commitment from the top and a budget to match. The stakes are high when it comes to keeping your customers’ information safe.

  The average cost of a data breach in 2018 was $148 for each compromised record. That equals an average cost of $3.86 million per breach. Because it takes organizations more than six months—196 days on average—to detect breaches, a lot of remediation must happen after discovery.

  With compliance regulations in most industries tightening and stricter security rules, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becoming law, breaches can lead to large fines as well as loss of reputation.

• SIM Application Toolkit: Avoid Being Exploited

  Technologies are often created with good intent, to make our life easier, to solve problems in a convenient way. The Management Engine in Intel’s CPUs, for instance, was intended to make the life of admins easier. It allowed for remote access on a very low level, so they could even do complete remote reinstalls of a machine. And if you have to manage a large fleet of machines, distributed within a larger enterprise, this can save huge amounts of effort, time–and thus money.

  [...]

  Its name already points to the origin: the SIM card. It is the tiny chip card you insert into your phone, to get access to the cellular network of an operator. The SIM card used to be a fairly simple device, which you can imagine as the key to unlock the access to the network: i.e., it stores a secret (a cryptographic key) along with an ID (the IMSI) and some details about the issuing operator, etc. This data set grants you access to the operator’s network.

  But phones [also called handset, or ‘terminal equipment’ (TE), in mobile terms] have become more and more powerful. And setting up these cards has become more and more complicated; you need an SMS center number, details for the MMS server, mailbox dial-in number… and a lot more. All this needs to be properly set up in the mobile, to make full use of both the mobile and the network. To make this even more complicated, these details (and the way to set them up) are different from operator to operator. The process for this initial setup is (also) called provisioning. It was to make this (and other things) as convenient and least painful as possible for users that SAT was invented.

  The name SAT tells us not only that it is SIM-related, but also that it contains the term application: SIM cards can, and today they usually do, indeed contain small applications or applets. They are small computers on their own, they run code, and they can indeed be programmed. Most are based on the JavaCard standard and can be programmed with small Java applets. The SAT defines a standard way to interface the SAT applets with the modem and the phone.

Defence/Aggression

• Can America Break Its Gun Addiction?

  After mass shootings in Southaven, Mississippi; Dayton, Ohio; and Midland, El Paso and Odessa, Texas, public demand for sensible gun reform once more soared. And once more, Republican politicians, led by President Donald Trump, were intimidated into inaction by the gun lobby…

• The Emperor’s New-Old Nuclear Clothes

  How is it still possible to write a lengthy article about the military/strategic dynamic among the triad of Israel, Iran, and the United States while making zero mention of Israel’s robust nuclear-weapons capability? New York Times staffers Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, and their editors at the Times magazine clearly think this is quite okay.

• The Call of Blood Money

  Because we inhabit a repugnant, rapacious culture, some repugnant, rapacious creeps thought it’d be cool to make clothes celebrating our national sport of killing children en masse. Thus has Bstroy, makers of “neo-native, post-apocalypse streetwear,” unveiled what really shouldn’t be in the same sentence: “school shooting-themed hoodies…”

• Will Americans Let Trump Start World War III for Saudi Arabia and Israel?

• WATCH: With Gun Control Measures Held Up In Congress, ‘Gut Punch’ PSA Shows Children Trying to Survive School Shooting

  “When kids go back to school, they have plenty to worry about. They shouldn’t also have to wonder if they’re going to make it home.”

• Disputing Trump Claims, Japan Says No Evidence Iran Was Behind Saudi Attack

  “We are not aware of any information that points to Iran,” said Japanese defense minister Taro Kono.

• Facebook Still Auto-Generates Islamic State, al-Qaida Pages

  In the face of criticism that Facebook is not doing enough to combat extremist messaging, the company likes to say that its automated systems remove the vast majority of prohibited content glorifying the Islamic State group and al-Qaida before it’s reported.

• Americans Want Action on Climate; Not War Over Oil With Iran

  As I write, the U.S. is inching its way towards possible war with Iran after the weekend drone strikes in Saudi Arabia on the strategic oil facilities owned by the state oil company, Saudi Aramco.

• The Uncertain and Dangerous Interregnum: World Peace and the Post-Cold War Era

  The post-Cold War era is over. We are living in the interregnum between disorders, marked by uncertainties and dangers, as well as opportunities. Some see the confrontations of the moment as a new Cold War.

• Why on Earth Would the US Go to War with Iran over an Attack on Saudi Oil Refineries?

  President Bone Spur, backed by his war-mongering Secretary of State Mike “Armageddon” Pompeo, tweeted yesterday that the US military is “locked and loaded,” ready to attack (bomb) Iran if it can be proven that Iran was behind a drone bomb attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil refineries.

• Conflict With Iran Portends World War III

  Mark Twain once commented, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”  The U.S. conflict with Iran sounds a lot like a rhyme with World War I. The portent would be World War III. The parallels are not trivial. They are haunting, and should be sobering.

• Once Again in Afghanistan, the U.S. Proves It Can’t Be Trusted

  The first draft of this column came not to bury but to praise Donald Trump. I planned to applaud the president’s peace initiative with the Taliban, his strategy of ignoring the corrupt and discredited puppet regime Bush installed in Kabul and his desire to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. This was a move I have been almost alone in promoting since the U.S. idiotically invaded the country in 2001 and I congratulate Trump for having the courage to unwind Bush and Obama’s mistakes. The Afghan people should be allowed to shape their future free of imperialist interference.

• Support the Climate Strike, Not a Military Strike

  The propaganda campaign has begun. The New York Times dutifully published photos of an attack on ARAMCO oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia. Accompanying the photos are descriptions provided by the warmongers in Washington, DC. Naturally, the photos don’t look like much of anything. This gives those describing them the leeway to provide a narrative fitting into their agenda of isolating and eventually attacking Iran, despite no real evidence that Iran was involved beyond perhaps some financial assistance to the forces claiming credit for the Saudi attack. In other words, the Houthi rebels claimed responsibility, Iran denied any knowledge, and Washington, Riyadh and presumably Tel Aviv ramped up their rhetoric against Tehran. Meanwhile, the US media repeats and amplifies the unsubstantiated charges from US war cheerleader Michael Pompeo that Iran launched the attack. Wannabe warriors in the Pentagon and Congress rub their hands together in anticipation of a glorious victory for the homeland’s forces. Meanwhile, ARAMCO debates whether or not to delay its much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO) given the circumstances. At the same time, traders in oil futures look forward to a substantial increase in earnings because of the attack. Now that I think about it, maybe those wannabe warriors are actually rubbing their hands together hoping for a glorious increase in their portfolios; specifically, in the energy and defense sectors.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• ‘What the Hell Is Going On Here’?: Alarm Raised as Trump’s Intelligence Director Refuses to Give Whistleblower Complaint to Congress

  Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire informed the House Intelligence Committee chairman that he’d been directed by “a higher authority” to withhold the complaint…

Environment

• Are ISO’s Draft Guidelines on Climate Action the First Steps Toward Geoengineering?

  The ISO is an industry-driven  non-governmental organization that sets international standards for products, services, and systems, giving it a powerful voice in the global business community.

• Ahead of Climate Strike, Greta Thunberg Tells US Lawmakers to Their Faces: Sorry, You’re Not Trying ‘Hard Enough’

  “Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it because it doesn’t lead to anything.”

• WATCH: Coalition of 10,000 Farmers and Ranchers Call On Congress to Pass Green New Deal

  “With a Green New Deal, we have a historic opportunity to break corporate control of farming, invest in rural America, and stand behind the hard-working people who grow our food every day.”

• The Climate Crisis Is Not Your Fault

  A few years ago, I had a cupcake problem. I’d go to the cupcake store almost daily and I’d eat at least one cupcake, sometimes more.

• Greta Thunberg Just Delivered Her Testimony to US Lawmakers: It Was a Landmark UN Climate Report

  “I don’t want you to listen to me,” said the youth climate leader. “I want you to listen to the scientists.”

• Why You Should Care About #ShutDownDC and the Global Climate Strike

  Today’s news cycle suggests that climate activism is no more than showing up to a protest once in a while. Wave a sign around, believe in science, and you’re set. Politicians and people of note are given credit simply for acknowledging the fact that global warming is happening.

• Global Climate Strike: Kids Are Demanding Action, But Will Adults Act?

  The Global Climate Strike on Friday, September 20, is expected to draw millions of people across 150 countries in what is poised to be the largest worldwide climate protest in history.

• ‘This Really Is Something’: UN Chief Praised for Move to Block Coal-Backing Nations From Speaking at Climate Summit

  The U.N. had already announced that only leaders with a clear climate action plan would be allowed to speak, and it appears the secretary-general is following through on that directive.

• Swiss Voters to Decide on Whether to Allow Factory Farming to Continue in ‘Milestone’ Moment

  On September 16, the campaign submitted more than enough signatures for the measure to appear on the upcoming ballot.

• Parents, Time to Misbehave and Climate Strike With Your Kids

  The recent announcement by the New York Public Schools to excuse all students taking part in the Global Climate Strike on Friday, September 20th is an admirable and welcome step by educators to address the climate crisis. | By Jeff Biggers

• Energy

  • “Biological Annihilation”: The Danger of Opening Alaska’s ANWR to Oil & Gas Drilling

  • In Another Win for Koch Network, Trump Strips States’ Rights to Adopt Clean Car Standards

    Currently, 14 states and the District of Columbia, serving a population of more than 118 million, have adopted these more stringent tailpipe pollution standards in order to protect the public health of their communities. 

  • Fossil Fuel Companies Roll out a New Era of Spin

    Forget “climate change” and “global warming”: Environmental advocates are increasingly using phrases that emphasize the urgency of our planetary pickle, such as “climate crisis,” “climate emergency,” and “existential threat.”

• Overpopulation

  • Spate of Bangladesh ‘Crossfire’ Killings of Rohingya

    Bangladeshpolice have now killed six Rohingya refugeesthey claim were involved in the August 22 murder of Omar Faruk, a local leader of the ruling Awami League’s youth organization, in Cox’s Bazar.  

Finance

• Progressives Say GM’s Decision to Cut Off Employee Health Insurance ‘Yet Another Reason Why We Need Medicare for All’

  Under a single-payer system, said one Medicare for All advocate, employers would no longer have “tons of leverage because workers are desperate to keep their benefit.”

• GM Just Took Away Our Insurance, But It Can’t Stop Our Strike

  Just after midnight on September 15, nearly 50,000 members of The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) walked off their jobs at 33 General Motors (GM) plants across the Midwest and South. For two days, workers have been picketing against GM’s dismal wages and two-tier contracts. Steve Frisque was among them.

• Day After Trump Denigrates Homeless, Sanders Unveils $2.5 Trillion #HousingForAll Plan to Address Crisis

  “My administration will be looking out for working families and tenants, not the billionaires who control Wall Street.”

• Lack of Transparency Surrounding Working Families Party’s Warren Endorsement Raises Concerns

  “Last I checked, transparency isn’t a radical idea.”

• Doctored Admissions: the University Admissions Scandal as a Global Problem

  Not so much a Desperate House Wife as a desperate mother, a contrite Felicity Huffman, known for playing Lynette Scavo, has been convicted for her role in the university admissions scandal in the United States. The scene is set for another dramatization, though few can go past the sheer levels of tinkering Huffman was engaged in to have her daughter’s entrance exams marked in 2017. Money changed hands – $15,000 – a deed that has cost her 250 hours of community service, a $30,000 fine, and 14 days in prison.

• Political Struggle and Fixing Cuba’s Economy

  July 26 is Cuba’s National Day of Rebellion. Speaking in Bayamo, President Miguel Díaz–Canel honored rebels led by Fidel Castro who on that day in 1953 attacked military installations of the Batista dictatorship. He outlined current economic challenges and political tasks lying ahead.

• Chicago City Council Approves Ticket and Debt Collection Reforms to Help Low-Income and Minority Motorists

  The Chicago City Council on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved an overhaul of its punitive ticketing and debt collection system, including an end to the suspension of driver’s licenses over unpaid parking tickets.

  The reforms begin to deliver on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s campaign promise to stop balancing the budget on the backs of the poor with aggressive fines and fees, an issue that gained attention last year as a result of investigations by ProPublica Illinois in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• 2020: Democratic Establishment vs. Democratic Socialists

  Democratic Socialism has grown in popularity over the past few years, fueled by Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign and continued grassroots waves of support. The country has seen a surge of political candidates across all levels of government running on platforms that embrace democratic socialism.

• Creating a Society of Hope and Inclusion: Speech to the TUC

  This is the text of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to the Trades Union Congress on September 10, 2019.

• Putin agrees to consider election reforms, after rocky campaigns in Moscow

  In a meeting with Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin agreed to consider reforms to Russia’s election laws. The president said officials need to look at how the political system’s “existing tools operate in real life,” in order to determine where improvements are needed “for the benefit of Russia’s people.”

• Senator Hawley Responds To Techdirt With A Bunch Of Nonsense And Lies About His Own Bill That He Doesn’t Seem To Understand

  Hoo boy. We’ve criticized a bunch of Senator Josh Hawley’s nonsense over the past few months. After all, he’s the elite cosmopolitan “get big government out of business” Senator who is railing against elite cosmopolitans, while demanding that government get deeply involved in regulating companies. Well, not all companies. Just tech companies. It’s almost as if Hawley is deliberately picking on companies that he thinks don’t like his insane brand of politics. Anyway, while Hawley has introduced a slew of nonsensical bills targeting internet companies, the most laughable was the one that literally lays out what features certain websites can and cannot use. As we wrote in our post about it, Hawley seems to want to appoint himself the product manager of the internet.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Hearing Friday: Plaintiffs Challenging FOSTA Ask Court to Reinstate Lawsuit Seeking To Block Its Enforcement

  On Friday, Sept. 20, at 9:30 am, attorneys for five plaintiffs suing the government to block enforcement of FOSTA will ask a federal appeals court to reverse a judge’s decision to dismiss the case.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Big Tech’s Disingenuous Push for a Federal Privacy Law

  This week, the Internet Association launched a campaign asking the federal government to pass a new privacy law.

  The Internet Association (IA) is a trade group funded by some of the largest tech companies in the world, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber. Many of its members keep their lights on by tracking users and monetizing their personal data. So why do they want a federal consumer privacy law?

• Thanks For Helping Us Defend the California Consumer Privacy Act

  The California Consumer Privacy Act will go into effect on January 1, 2020—having fended off a year of targeted efforts by technology giants who wanted to gut the bill. Most recently, industry tried to weaken its important privacy protections in the last days of the legislative session.

  Californians made history last year when, after 600,000 people signed petitions in support of a ballot initiative, the California State Legislature answered their constituents’ call for a new data privacy law. It’s been a long fight to defend the CCPA against a raft of amendments that would have weakened this law and the protections it enshrines for Californians. Big technology companies backed a number of bills that each would have weakened the CCPA’s protections. Taken together, this package would have significantly undermined this historic law.

• University Of Alabama Is Using A Location-Tracking App To Punish Students For Leaving Football Games Early

  One of the most successful college football programs in history is coached by one of the most insecure men in America, apparently. This combination of success and neediness has resulted in one of the weirdest forms of location tracking in government history. (via Slashdot)

• DOJ Decides To Help Publicize Snowden’s Memoir By Suing Him For Failing To Run His Book By The CIA And NSA First

  As you’ve probably heard, Ed Snowden just came out with his memoir, entitled Permanent Record. I haven’t yet had a chance to read it, but it looks fascinating. Snowden obviously can’t do the usual book tour for this kind of thing, but he has been doing a fresh round of very interesting interviews about his current situation — including saying that he’d be willing to come home to the US and stand trial if only the US actually allowed a public interest defense for Espionage Act claims. As we’ve pointed out for years, one of the (many) problems with the Espionage Act is that it literally does not allow a defendant to explain why they leaked certain information, and assumes that it is equally nefarious to sell secrets to foreign enemies as it is to blow the whistle by informing the press of unconstitutional surveillance.

• US Government Mass Surveillance Isn’t ‘Secret’

  Today marks 11 years since the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a federal lawsuit against mass surveillance in the United States. When it eventually concludes, this case will determine whether people in the US ever get a judgment on the constitutionality of mass surveillance.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Over 3300 Actions This Week with Campaign Nonviolence

  Lately, I’ve been studying Gandhi again, to prepare to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth on October 2, 2019. He’s certainly the greatest person of the past few hundred years, yet why do we so thoroughly reject his teachings of active nonviolence? We keep plunging into greater chaos, blindness, injustice, violence and destruction.

• Picketers gather outside Putin’s office building in Moscow to support actor arrested at protest and sentenced to 3.5 years in prison

  In what’s become the only legal option for citizens who wish to protest without enduring the cumbersome, time-consuming process of obtaining a city permit, Muscovites lined up for a “solitary picket” outside the presidential administration building on September 18 to take turns standing in silence, holding banners in support of Pavel Ustinov, the actor who was recently sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for allegedly injuring a National Guardsman at a protest on August 3. 

• Lawsuit Settlement Over Detainment Of A Journalist Will Force Denver Police Department To Admit The First Amendment Exists

  Last summer, Denver police officers decided the First Amendment didn’t exist in the city, at least not while they were in the process of helping a naked black man get some medical attention by handcuffing him in the middle of the sidewalk.

• A Trial Under the Spotlight in Morocco

  Her smile was striking, wide and slightly ironic. Sitting up straight on the defendants’ bench in a court in Rabat, Morocco on Monday this week, Hajar Raissouni was not letting the situation get her down.

• The Saudi Crown Prince Plans to Make Us Forget About the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi Before the US Election

  The hideous cruelty of the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi death squad almost a year ago still jumps from the pages of the latest apparent transcript of the conversation between his killers as they wait for him to arrive at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

• An Excellent Study Of The Manufactured Labour “Antisemitism Crisis”

• Indonesia: Draft Criminal Code Disastrous for Rights

  The Indonesian parliament should substantially revise the proposed new criminal code to meet international human rights standards.

• Venezuela: Extrajudicial Killings in Poor Areas

  A Venezuelan police unit has been carrying out extrajudicial executions and arbitrary arrests in poor communities that no longer support the Nicolás Maduro government.

• Outspoken Zimbabwe Doctor Abducted

  It’s been four days since the leader of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA), Dr. Peter Magombeyi, went missing. According to a WhatsApp message he managed to send, three unidentified men abducted him from his home in the Budiriro neighborhood of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. Since then, no one has heard from him.

Desktop

• Huawei has started shipping Matebooks with Linux

  Although in recent months, the news published about Huawei has not been about how good their products are or how good their sales are, but about Trump’s decision to ban the company from using future versions of American products, like Android. Today we bring you a very positive one. Huawei has started selling computers with Linux operating system.

  For now, Huawei is selling its Linux computers only for the Asian market, that is, in China, the manufacturer’s country of origin. but it is likely to expand worldwide.

Server

• Linux on the mainframe: Then and now

  of 1999, which is when IBM got onboard with Linux on the mainframe (IBM Z).

  These patches weren’t part of the mainline Linux kernel yet, but they did get Linux running on z/VM (Virtual Machine for IBM Z), for anyone who was interested. Several efforts followed, including the first Linux distro—put together out of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Think Blue Linux by Millenux in Germany. The first real commercial distribution came from SUSE on October 31, 2000; this is notable in SUSE history because the first edition of what is now known as SUSE Enterprise Linux (SLES) is that S/390 port. Drawing again from Wikipedia, the SUSE Enterprise Linux page explains…

• A Look into the Technical Details of Kubernetes 1.16

  Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) were introduced into upstream Kubernetes by Red Hat engineers in version 1.7. From the beginning, they were designed as a future-proof implementation of what was previously prototyped as ThirdPartyResources. The road of CRDs has focused on the original goal of making custom resources production ready, bringing it to be a generally available feature in Kubernetes, highlighted with the promotion of the API to v1 in 1.16.

  CRDs have become a cornerstone of API extensions in the Kubernetes ecosystem, and is the basis of innovation and a core building block of OpenShift 4. Red Hat has continued pushing CRDs forward ever since, as one of the main drivers in the community behind the features and stability improvements, which finally lead to the v1 API. This progress made OpenShift 4 possible.

  Let’s take a deeper look at what will change in the v1 API of Custom Resource Definitions (in the apiextensions.k8s.io/v1 API group). The main theme is around consistency of data stored in CustomResources:

• Kubernetes 1.16: Custom Resources, Overhauled Metrics, and Volume Extensions

  We’re pleased to announce the delivery of Kubernetes 1.16, our third release of 2019! Kubernetes 1.16 consists of 31 enhancements: 8 enhancements moving to stable, 8 enhancements in beta, and 15 enhancements in alpha.

• Project Quarks: Native Cloud Foundry for Kubernetes

  At the recent Cloud Foundry Summit EU in the Netherlands, Vlad Iovanov of SUSE gave a keynote demo of Project Quarks, the project that integrates Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes, by packaging the Cloud Foundry Application Runtime as containers instead of virtual machines. Vlad explains the current capabilities of Quarks, with a look at its future as a Kubernetes Operator. It’s a fairly technical topic, but Vlad uses creative diagrams and an understandable demo to show the power of Quarks.

  Cloud Foundry Foundation has posted all recorded talks from CF Summit EU on YouTube. Check them out if you want to learn more about what is happening in the Cloud Foundry world! I’ll be posting more SUSE Cloud Application Platform talks here over the coming days. Watch Vlad’s talk below:

• IBM

  • Hello Kubernetes 1.16: Custom Resource Definitions ease the creation and long term management of APIs

    Kubernetes 1.16 is expected to arrive this week, and with it comes a host of new changes that help ease management for users of this container orchestration platform. For users of Kubernetes, and of Red Hat OpenShift, this release signals the arrival of the general availability for Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs).

    When building open source software, duties and tasks must be distributed among large numbers of contributors, some of whom may even be in direct competition with one another. While this may sound like a risky, Machiavellian scenario, in practice, there’s far less rivalry. Instead, the whole project becomes a collaborative board game with individual high scores.

    Those high scores ebb and flow as teams take charge of features, lead them to completion and exchange leadership roles over the course of the development of the project. We say all that to say this: Kubernetes 1.16 saw a great deal of work and guidance across the ecosystem, as well as from Red Hat and Google (top upstream corporate contributors). All vendors and the community at large can benefit from the updates made in this release, especially with the prime time for CRDs, which are a main extension point for building cloud native applications on Kubernetes.

  • Announcing Kanidm – A new IDM project

    Today I’m starting to talk about my new project – Kanidm. Kanidm is an IDM project designed to be correct, simple and scalable. As an IDM project we should be able to store the identities and groups of people, authenticate them securely to various other infrastructure components and services, and much more.

    You can find the source for kanidm on github.

    For more details about what the project is planning to achieve, and what we have already implemented please see the github.

  • CentOS Linux 7.7 Officially Released, Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7

    While the project is still working on the CentOS 8.x series, which will be based on the recently released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 operating system series and will be released next month, the CentOS 7.x series has been updated to version 1908, an incremental update based on the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7.

    Highlights of the CentOS Linux 7.7 (1908) release include the Python 3.6 interpreter by default, BIND 9.11 as default Domain Name System software, and Chrony 3.4 as default Network Time Protocol implementation, improved security profiles in Anaconda, improved bug reporting, as well as all the important security and package updates from upstream.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and CentOS 6 Receive Important Kernel Security Update

    Marked by the Red Hat Product Security team as having a security impact of “Important,” the new Linux kernel security update is here to patch a memory corruption (CVE-2018-9568) that occurred due to incorrect socket cloning and a NULL pointer dereference (CVE-2019-11810) discovered in drivers/scsi/megaraid/megaraid_sas_base.c, which could lead to a denial of service.

    Also fixed in this update are two bugs affecting the performance of the Linux kernel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and CentOS Linux 6 systems, namely a fragmented packets timing out issue and the backport TCP follow-up for small buffers. These two bugs can be corrected if you install the new kernel versions for your operating system.

Audiocasts/Shows

• 09/18/2019 | Linux Headlines

  Google’s Stadia good news, VM encryption comes to an OpenStack near you, and details on Ubuntu 19.10′s 32-bit support.

  Plus significant changes for Chef’s certification program, and more.

• mintCast 317.5 – Peer into the Void

  This week, in our Innards section, we interview Toyam Cox, maintainer for Void Linux.

• Linux 5.3, GNOME 3.34, Manjaro, Destination Linux Network, Mumble, Telegram | This Week in Linux 81

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we got the 5.3 release of the Linux Kernel. GNOME recently released their latest version of the GNOME Shell with GNOME 3.34. Manjaro is leveling up by creating a new business around their distro.

• Positive in the Freedom Dimension | LINUX Unplugged 319

  Richard Stallman has resigned as president and director of the Free Software Foundation, and that’s just one of the major shifts this week.

  Also what makes Manjaro unique? We chat with one of the founders and find out why it’s much more than a desktop environment.

  Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar, Bernhard Landauer, Brent Gervais, and Neal Gompa.

• FLOSS Weekly 547: OggCamp

  OggCamp is an unconference celebrating Free Culture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all manner of collaborative cultural activities and is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible.

• Talk Python to Me: #230 Python in digital humanities research

  You’ve often heard me talk about Python as a superpower. It can amplify whatever you’re interested in or what you have specialized in for your career. This episode is an amazing example of this. You’ll meet Cornelis van Lit. He is a scholar of medieval Islamic philosophy and woks at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. What he is doing with Python is pretty amazing.

• Cultivating The Python Community In Argentina

  The Python community in Argentina is large and active, thanks largely to the motivated individuals who manage and organize it. In this episode Facundo Batista explains how he helped to found the Python user group for Argentina and the work that he does to make it accessible and welcoming. He discusses the challenges of encompassing such a large and distributed group, the types of events, resources, and projects that they build, and his own efforts to make information free and available. He is an impressive individual with a substantial list of accomplishments, as well as exhibiting the best of what the global Python community has to offer.

• Episode #148: The ASGI revolution is upon us!

• Noodlings | Commander X16, BDLL and openSUSE News

  The mission of the computer. Similar to the Commodore 64 but made with off the shelf components. As far as the architecture goes, it is actually closer to the VIC-20 on board design but far, far more capable. I am rarely excited about new things, I like my old computers and really existing technology. I tend to drag my heels at the very thought of getting something new. This, for whatever reason gets me excited and I can’t exactly put my finger on it.

  This all started out as a kind of pondering in 2018 and in February 2019 with a video from David Murray, the 8-bit Guy’s Dream Computer. the discussion started by the 8-bit Guy

  The initial design started with the Gameduino for the video chip which had some technical hurdles and was based on an obsolete, as in, no longer supported, chip that doesn’t have a large pool of developers and hackers working on it.

  After some discussions and planning, it was decided to base it largely off of the VIC-20 as most of the chips are still available today and it is a known working design. Some of the changes would be a faster processor, better video and better sound components.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.3 releases with support for AMD Navi GPUs, Zhaoxin x86 CPUs and power usage improvements

  Two days ago, Linus Torvalds, the principal developer of the Linux kernel announced the release of Linux 5.3 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml). This major release brings new support for AMD Navi GPUs, the umwait x86 instructions, and Intel speed select. Linux 5.3 also presents a new pidfd_open(2) system call and 16 millions new IPv4 addresses in the 0.0.0.0/8 range. There are also many new drivers and improvements in this release.

  The previous version, Linux 5.2 was released more than two months ago. It included Sound Open Firmware project, new mount API, improved pressure stall information and more.

• Linux 5.4 Power Management Updates Sent In But Without AMD CPPC Changes

  The Linux 5.4 power management changes have been submitted for this next version of the Linux kernel.

  This time around the power management work isn’t particularly exciting with no breakthroughs for the Intel P-State driver, no major changes to the other prominent CPUFreq drivers/governors, and no AMD CPPC support for their new processors.

• Linux 5.4 Preps For Intel Tiger Lake, Elkhart Lake & Lightning Mountain + Killing MPX

  The Linux 5.4 x86/cpu changes are as busy as always on the Intel side.

  The Linux 5.4 x86/cpu code changes include cleaning up the Intel CPU naming conventions within definitions in the code. The changes now provide a standardized convention for dealing with Intel CPU core names and their variations within the kernel code rather than the naming convention mess that had come about over the years. This doesn’t impact end-users, but cleans up the kernel code to be less confusing.

• Microsoft exFAT File-System Mailed In For Linux 5.4 Along With Promoted EROFS & Greybus

  Greg Kroah-Hartman began volleying his Linux 5.4 kernel pull requests today of the subsystems he oversees. The most significant of this morning’s pull requests are the staging area changes that include the Microsoft exFAT file-system support.

  As we’ve been expecting, Linux 5.4 is bringing exFAT support after last month’s surprise announcement by Microsoft publishing the exFAT specification and giving it an open-source blessing for integrating the file-system support at long last into the Linux kernel.

• Improved Fscrypt Sent In For Linux 5.4 To Offer Better Native File Encryption Handling

  In addition to submitting the FS-VERITY file authentication code for Linux 5.4, Google’s Eric Biggers has sent out his big update to the fscrypt file encryption framework for this next kernel revision.

  Fscrypt as a reminder is a kernel framework providing native file encryption support to file-systems. Currently Fscrypt is used by EXT4, F2FS, and UBIFS while being used by Google for at least new Android use-cases. Fscrypt has been around for several kernel cycles now but for Linux 5.4 is seeing its first big update.

• Topics from the Open Printing microconference

  On day two of the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference, two of the principals behind the Open Printing project led the very first Open Printing microconference. Project leader Till Kamppeter and program manager Aveek Basu described the current state of printing on Linux and some of the plans for the future, including supporting scanning for multi-function devices. The picture they painted was rosy, at least for printing, which may not quite match the experience of many Linux users. As with many projects, though, Open Printing is starved for contributors—something that was reflected in the sparse attendance at the microconference.

  Basu began by pointing out that some attendees had likely printed their boarding passes from Linux, which highlights the importance of printing for Linux. People use it for bank documents, transport tickets, and more. He has been at Lexmark for 11 years, working on printing for Linux, macOS, and other Unix-based systems. Kamppeter said that he has been the Open Printing leader since 2001. The idea of the project is to do everything possible to make printing “just work” with Linux and other operating systems; the goal is “plug and print”.

• What happens to kernel staging-tree code

  The staging tree was added to the kernel in 2008 for the 2.6.28 development cycle as a way to ease the process of getting substandard device drivers into shape and merged into the mainline. It has been followed by controversy for just about as long. The recent disagreements over the EROFS and exFAT filesystems have reignited many of the arguments over whether the staging tree is beneficial to the kernel community or not. LWN cannot answer that question, but we can look into what has transpired in the staging tree in its first eleven years to see if there are any conclusions to be drawn there.

  The core idea behind the staging tree is that it is open to code that does not live up to the normal standards for inclusion into the kernel. Once a driver is added there, it is available to anybody who is brave enough to try to make use of it, but the real purpose is to allow developers to improve the code to the point that it is ready to go into the kernel proper. It serves as an easy place for new developers to try out simple changes and, when it works well, it helps the kernel to gain hardware support that might otherwise languish out-of-tree indefinitely.

• The USB debugging arsenal

  At the 2019 Embedded Linux Conference North America, which was held in San Diego in August, Krzysztof Opasiak gave a presentation on demystifying the ways to monitor—and even change—USB traffic on a Linux system. He started with the basics of the USB protocol and worked up into software and hardware tools to observe, modify, and fuzz the messages that get sent. Those tools are part of the arsenal that is available to those interested in looking deeply into USB.

  Opasiak works in Poland for what he called a “small Korean company” (Samsung). He noted that it is not that easy to sniff USB traffic and that the ways to do so are not well known. But “there are no dragons”; nothing bad will happen if you do so. In some ways, USB is like the internet and some of the same tools can be used for both.

• 5.3 Kernel development cycle statistics

  It’s that time of the development cycle again: work on the 5.3 kernel is winding down with an expected final release date of September 15. Read on for LWN’s traditional look at where the code in 5.3 came from in this relatively busy development cycle.
  As of this writing, 14,435 non-merge changesets have been pulled into the mainline repository for 5.3; these changes were contributed by 1,846 developers

• Linux Foundation

  • Broad Deployment Of Cloud Foundry Almost Double In Just 2 Years

    As businesses embark on their digital transformation journey, developers are driving innovation across cloud native environments for building into the future. According to a recently released report by Cloud Foundry Foundation, 45 percent of user respondents describe their Cloud Foundry use as “broad” compared to 30 percent in 2018 and 24 percent in 2017. The report also revealed that 39 percent of developers are deploying applications in less than one day.

    What points out towards a healthy and growing community of developers is the fact that almost one in five respondents started using Cloud Foundry in just the last 12 months.

  • The Linux Foundation to Host Open Source Project for Drone Aviation Interoperability

    The Linux Foundation today announced it will host the InterUSS Platform Open Source Project to enable trusted, secure and scalable interoperability between UAS Service Suppliers (USSs) that advances safe, equitable and efficient drone operations. Initial contributors include both industry and regulatory organizations Wing, AirMap, Uber and the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA).

    Similar to the evolution of cities, our skies are becoming busier with traffic. In an effort to unleash innovation and ensure safety, aviation regulators around the world are implementing UAS Traffic Management (UTM, also referred to as U-Space) to support rapidly increasing and highly diverse drone operations. Under UTM, a set of USSs (also known as U-Space Service Providers orUSPs) assist drone operators to conduct safe and compliant operations. USSs can provide service in overlapping airspace and share data when required to support services such as a strategic deconfliction of flight plans and remote identification and industry is developing standards for this data sharing through organizations such as ASTM International. The InterUSS Project provides a forum for collaboration and development of standards-compliant, open source implementations that facilitate communication in the UTM/U-Space environment.

• CPU/GPU/Graphics Stack

  • AMD EPYC 7H12 Announced As New 280 Watt Processor For High Performance Computing

    From Rome, Italy this afternoon AMD not only announced more than 100 world records have been broken with their new EPYC “Rome” processors, but there is also a new SKU! Meet the EPYC 7H12.

    The EPYC 7H12 doesn’t quite follow the naming convention of the rest of the EPYC Rome line-up announced back in August as it’s a special part. The EPYC 7H12 is more akin to Intel’s Cascadelake-AP line-up but with more broad availability and just a higher clocked / higher power part as opposed to tacking on extra dies. But it carries the same focus on delivering maximum HPC performance.

  • Nvidia Open Sources Its Deep Learning Compiler

    System architects and software teams now have the complete source for the fully open software and hardware inference platform.

  • NVIDIA Bringing Up Open-Source Volta GPU Support For Their Xavier SoC

    While NVIDIA doesn’t contribute much open-source Linux driver code as it concerns their desktop GPUs (though they have been ramping up documentation), when it comes to Tegra/embedded is where they have contributed improvements and new hardware support to Nouveau and associated driver code in the past several years. NVIDIA’s open-source Tegra/embedded contributions come as a result of customer demand/requirements. Their latest work is preparing to finally bring-up the “GV11B” Volta graphics found within last year’s Tegra Xavier SoC.

  • Valve’s ACO Shader Compiler Under Review For The Mesa Radeon Vulkan Driver

    The RADV “ACO” shader compiler announced by Valve back in July for the fastest compilation speeds and best possible code generation may soon be hitting mainline Mesa for the open-source AMD Linux graphics stack.

    The ACO shader compiler as an alternative to the existing AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler back-end has shown quite promising results for Linux games. ACO has become more featureful over time and is now largely at feature parity to the existing shader compilation support while generally offering some performance advantages, thanks to the effort and funding by Valve.

Benchmarks

• FreeBSD 12 & DragonFlyBSD 5.6 Running Well On The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X + MSI X570 GODLIKE

  For those wondering how well FreeBSD and DragonFlyBSD are handling AMD’s new Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors, here are some benchmarks on a Ryzen 7 3700X with MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE where both of these popular BSD operating systems were working out-of-the-box. For some fun mid-week benchmarking, here are those results of FreeBSD 12.0 and DragonFlyBSD 5.6.2 up against openSUSE Tumbleweed and Ubuntu 19.04.

  Back in July I looked at FreeBSD 12 on the Ryzen 9 3900X but at that time at least DragonFlyBSD had troubles booting on that system. When trying out the Ryzen 7 3700X + MSI GODLIKE X570 motherboard on the latest BIOS, everything “just worked” without any compatibility issues for either of these BSDs.

Applications

• Best Essential Apps for Linux 2019

  You might be a beginner looking to explore Linux and you are at a loss of what Apps you should essentially be using. So what are the best essential Apps for Linux? In this guide, we have put together a list of what we would consider as the most necessary applications that you should have in your Linux system to have a wholesome experience.

• Samba 4.11.0 Available for Download

  Samba 4.11 has changed how the AD database is stored on disk. AD users should
  not really be affected by this change when upgrading to 4.11. However, AD
  users should be extremely careful if they need to downgrade from Samba 4.11 to
  an older release.
  
  Samba 4.11 maintains database compatibility with older Samba releases. The
  database will automatically get rewritten in the new 4.11 format when you
  first start the upgraded samba executable.
  
  However, when downgrading from 4.11 you will need to manually downgrade the AD
  database yourself. Note that you will need to do this step before you install
  the downgraded Samba packages. For more details, see:
  
  https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Downgrading_an_Active_Directory_DC
  
  When either upgrading or downgrading, users should also avoid making any
  database modifications between installing the new Samba packages and starting
  the samba executable.
  

• Samba 4.11 Released With Much Better Scalability While Disabling SMB1 By Default

  Samba 4.11 is out as the latest big feature update to this SMB/CIFS/AD implementation for offering better Windows interoperability with Linux and other platforms. The changes in Samba 4.11 are aplenty that we are a bit surprised it wasn’t called Samba 5.0.

  Perhaps most exciting is Samba 4.11 having big scalability improvements to the point that it should be able to scale to 100,000+ users.

Instructionals/Technical

• How to remove carriage returns from text files on Linux

• How to deploy a Kubernetes cluster on Ubuntu server

• Hands on vhost-net: Do. Or do not. There is no try

• Create backup copy of file, adding suffix of the date of the file modification (NOT today’s date)

• Content Lifecycle Management with SUSE Manager 4

• Kmdr – Display CLI Commands Explanation In Terminal

  A while ago, we wrote about ExplainShell, a web-based tool to learn what each part of a Linux command does. It divides the complex and lengthy Linux commands into multiple parts and gives explanation for each part. Using this tool, a Linux newbie can learn about various command line parameters and options without having to refer man pages. However, It will only help you to learn Linux commands. But what if you want to learn other CLI commands, for example Python? You won’t find explanation of Python commands in ExplainShell. No worries! Today, I stumbled upon a similar tool named Kmdr that provides CLI commands explanation for hundreds of programs. It helps you to easily learn CLI commands without leaving the terminal and without having to go through lengthy man pages. Not just Linux commands, Kmdr provides explanation for a lot of CLI commands including ansible, conda, docker, git, go, kubectl, mongo, mysql, npm, ruby gems, vagrant and hundreds of other programs such as those built into bash.

• Install Peek Animated Gif Recorder on Ubuntu

• Su Command in Linux (Switch User)

• Whereis Command in Linux

• Advanced Linux Network Commands

• Basic Linux Network Commands

• Configure Git Server with SSH on Ubuntu

• Video – Linux File Permissions (chmod and chown)

• Video – Copying, Moving and Deleting files/directories in Linux

• Adding themes and plugins to Zsh

• How to customize the Linux top command

• How to recover deleted files with foremost on Linux

• How to mount file systems as read-only on Linux

• How to Setup MySQL Master-Slave Replication on RHEL 8

• How to Install Google Earth on Debian 10

• How to Install a Raspberry Pi Camera Module

• How to enable a play/pause button on the Chrome toolbar

• How to Make Scrollbar Always Visible in Ubuntu 18.04

• How to Install Bolt CMS with Nginx and Let’s Encrypt on FreeBSD 12

• How to Add Custom Search Engines in Thunderbird

• How Coil and Web Monetization works compared to Flattr

Games

• AMD Linux Driver’s LRU Bulk Moves Can Be A Big Help For Demanding Linux Games

  Sadly not currently queued as a fix for the Linux 5.4 kernel, re-enabling the LRU bulk moves functionality can be a significant boost for helping with the Radeon graphics driver performance for Linux gaming.

  As written about last week, there’s been some signs of soon re-enabling the performance-boosting “bulk moves” functionality. The LRU bulk moves functionality was disabled in the AMDGPU driver back during Linux 4.20 but since Linux 5.1 it’s believed all the bugs have been ironed out for this functionality to migrate PD/PT buffers to the least recently used list in a bulk operation.

• This Is the Police spin-off strategy game Rebel Cops has released with Linux support

  Focusing exclusively on the turn-based combat found in This Is the Police 2, the new spin-off game Rebel Cops is officially out now with Linux support. Note: Copy provided by GOG.

  A new criminal power which has set foot in town and the community leaders, politicians and local police have basically surrendered and so it seemed like all hope was lost. That was, until you and you crew stepped in. You lead a rough and ready group of renegade cops who refuse to give in.

• The latest update to the city-builder god game The Universim adds riots, Twitch integration and some automation

  Crytivo continue expanding their city-builder The Universim, with the Pitchfork Patch now out and it’s quite a big one.

  Added in this patch is a new Riots feature. If you fail them, they will respond. So if global happiness drops too low or there’s too much crime you might see your nuggets run around rioting. Fires might be caused, damage to structures and more. They can be dealt with a few ways like letting them burn out, arresting them or using some god powers.

  The Stone Age Town Hall has been added in, allowing a little more automation. This building allows Elders to sort out the essential needs of your nuggets (like food and water), it will also auto-assign workers to buildings and more allowing you to sit back and appreciate watching everything grow.

• A95X Max Plus S922X TV Box Targets Gaming with Wii-like Motion Sensing Remote & Bluetooth Gamepad

  Unless a new processor is out, we don’t cover most TV boxes as they mostly provide the same features with little differentiation between products.

• Area 86, an amusing physics-based escape room puzzler is coming to Linux

  Area 86 takes the idea of an escape room game and turns it into a physics-based puzzler and it’s coming to Linux next month.

  Linux support is already in and live, as the developer actually sent a preview copy to our GamingOnLinux Curator on Steam. Inspired by the likes of Human: Fall Flat, Overcooked and Portal it tasks you with helping a little robot escape a series of rooms and it’s actually quite amusing.

• Prison Architect updated with more free content, needs a fix for it running on Linux

  Now that Paradox own the rights to Prison Architect and Double Eleven are in charge of development, they’re continuing the free updates.

  The Slammer update was released yesterday and one of the major changes is an overhaul to Deployment. The presentation of visuals of the interface were improved so you can see your prison, you can assign Armed Guards and Dog Handlers to patrols and zones, you can have 2 different intersecting patrol routes plus routes and zones can be prioritized.

• Paradox have released a big free update for Europa Universalis IV, fix included for Linux

  Paradox Development Studio have released another big free content update to the empire building game Europa Universalis IV.

• Receiver, the experimental FPS from Wolfire Games had a big update recently (updated)

  Receiver is a name I’ve not heard in a long time, the indie FPS released back in 2013 by Wolfire Games and it’s just seen a big update.

  There’s no new enemies or levels in this update, instead Wolfire focused on the tech that runs the game. In this case it’s the Unity game engine and they gave it quite a big update. It also adds in some graphical prettiness and other bits like that.

• Backspace Bouken, the dungeon crawler that needs you to type out encounters has a fresh demo out

  RNG Party Games recently put out a freshly baked demo version of the typing dungeon crawler Backspace Bouken. It’s a really sweet idea and thoroughly flips classic dungeon crawling on its head.

• Might and Delight just announced Book of Travels, a unique new RPG that will support Linux

  Might and Delight (Meadow, Shelter) announced something very interesting just recently called Book of Travels. It’s what they say is a TMO (Tiny Multiplayer Online) game and it looks pretty awesome.

  It sounds like nothing else, this could be one of the most unique RPGs I’ve seen in a very long time. With an art style that looks like it has been painted, with a land that’s inspired by old-world fairytales, Eastern mythologies and early industrial eras. I’m most curious to see how they’re handling the online side though. Their current explanation doesn’t help much, just that “other players are few, but your paths will cross – it’s up to you to choose to travel together or go it alone”. There’s no Guilds or other social stuff, to make “your temporary fellowships unique and memorable”.

• Beautiful sci-fi point and click adventure ENCODYA is fully funded and heading to Linux

  ENCODYA is a very impressive sci-fi point and click adventure with a fantastic style and the good news is the recent Kickstarter campaign was very much a success.

  Ending yesterday with €46,543 from 603 backers. Curiously, for that amount of funding that’s quite a small amount of supporters. Looking at the tiers, they had three people sign up to the €5,000 level to be classed as a “co-producer” giving them a few bonuses like a logo during the start and end screen. Pretty amazing really to see a few people give such a huge amount of support to an indie game.

• The delightfully weird adventure Little Misfortune has released

  From the creator of Fran Bow and sharing the same world comes another strange creepy adventure with Little Misfortune, out today with Linux support.

• Steam Play’s Proton 4.11-5 Released With Fixes & Optimizations

  Barely a week since the release of Proton 4.11-4, Valve’s stellar Linux crew in cooperation with CodeWeavers have issued Proton 4.11-5 as the latest update to this Wine 4.11 downstream that powers Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux.

  Fixes in Proton 4.11-5 include a crash with certain input devices and a regression of the previous release and a fix for games running in virtual desktops as well as for games with semi-transparent windows.

• Steam Play gets a small update with Proton 4.11-5 now available

  CodeWeavers and Valve have updated Steam Play once again, this time it’s quite a small release to fix up some issues.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Introducing KDToolBox

    At KDAB we invest a significant amount of efforts in research and development. We are always looking for new tooling, libraries and utilities that can make our job easier and improve the C++ and Qt ecosystems. Ultimately, the gained knowledge and skills make our customers happier.

    As part of this process we develop lots of code, usually starting as small experiments and/or proof-of-concept. Some of those experiments mature and become fully fledged solutions, such as our famous GammaRay, the introspection tool for Qt applications; hotspot, the GUI to Linux perf; and heaptrack, a heap memory profiler.

  • Qt Quick on Vulkan, Metal, and Direct3D – Part 2

    Let’s continue where we left off in the first post. We saw an example of a Qt Quick application running on Linux on top of OpenGL and Vulkan. We also saw a Vulkan frame capture in RenderDoc, which is not just an invaluable tool during Qt development work, but can also be useful to anyone who wants to dig deeper and understand better how Qt Quick renders a frame (or for that matter troubleshoot problems in an application’s rendering). Now in this post we are going to focus on what Qt 5.14 offers for macOS and Windows.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Epiphany Technology Preview Users: Action Required

    Epiphany Technology Preview has moved from https://sdk.gnome.org to https://nightly.gnome.org. The old Epiphany Technology Preview is now end-of-life. Action is required to update. If you installed Epiphany Technology Preview prior to a couple minutes ago, uninstall it using GNOME Software and then reinstall using this new flatpakref.

Distributions

• Linux Distribution Comparison

  There are currently nearly 300 active Linux distributions, which makes choosing just one somewhat difficult, especially if you would rather make your own informed decision instead of relying on the recommendation of someone else. The good news is that the number of major Linux distributions, which stand out in a significant way and are more than simple reskins of existing distributions, is much smaller.
  If we were to represent the world of Linux distribution as a map, the 10 distributions listed in this article would be the continents of the world, while other distributions would be islands of various sizes. Just like there is no “best” continent in the real world, the same holds true in the world of Linux distributions.

  Each Linux distribution is designed with a different use case in mind, and the same distribution can be perfect for one user and unusable for another one. That’s why the distributions in this article aren’t listed in any particular order and are numbered just for the sake of convenience.

• Autonomous Linux Is Like Putting Linux On Autopilot

  Developers should not waste their time in plumbing or maintaining their Linux systems.

• Wim Coekaerts Interview At Oracle OpenWorld

  At the Oracle OpenWorld event, we sat down with Wim Coekaerts – Senior Vice President, Software Development at Oracle – who has been leading Linux work at Oracle.

• ManageEngine Announces New Support For Oracle Cloud

  Applications Manager helps IT admins gain a 360-degree view into the performance of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle VM.

• Oracle Autonomous Linux – ‘world’s first’ autonomous OS announced

  Oracle has announced its world’s first autonomous operating system which provisions itself, scales itself, tunes itself and patches itself while running. Autonomous Linux powers Oracle Cloud and Oracle Engineered Systems as it is based on Oracle Linux.

  “Autonomy is the defining technology of a second-generation cloud,” Oracle co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison contended in his keynote while addressing at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. He further added any Red Hat application would run unchanged on Oracle Autonomous Linux.

• Oracle Autonomous Linux: A Self Updating, Self Patching Linux Distribution for Cloud Computing

  Automation is the growing trend in the IT industry. The aim is to remove the manual interference from the repetitive tasks. Oracle has taken another step into the automation world by launching Oracle Autonomous Linux that is surely going to benefit the IoT and CLoud Computing industry.

  [...]

  The biggest feature that Oracle Autonomous Linux is reduced maintenance costs. According to Oracle’s site, Autonomous Linux “uses advanced machine learning and autonomous capabilities to deliver unprecedented cost savings, security, and availability and frees up critical IT resources to tackle more strategic initiatives”.

  Autonomous Linux can install updates and patches without human interference. These automatic updates include patches for the “Linux kernel and key user space libraries”. “This requires no downtime along with protection from both external attacks and malicious internal users.” They can also take place while the system is running to reduce downtime. Autonomous Linux also handles scaling automatically to ensure that all computing needs are handled.

  Ellison highlighted how the new autonomous would improve security. He mentioned in particular how Capitol One data breach occurred because of a bad configuration. He said “One simple rule to prevent data theft: Put your data in an autonomous system. No human error, no data loss. That’s the big difference between us and AWS.”

• New Releases

  • The [EndeavourOS] September release has arrived

    The ISO contains:

    Linux kernel 5.2.14
    Mesa 19.1.6
    Systemd 243.0
    Firefox 69 (Quantum)
    Arc-x-icons, a more complete and updated version than the Arc icon set used previously.
    The new EndeavourOS welcome launcher on both the live environment as on the installed system. It’s a one-click menu to the wiki for the basic system commands and setting up your hardware.
    Our Nvidia-installer is now installed by default which now also installs the dkms drivers.
    Gtop system monitor, a nice terminal-based system load monitor that launches from the panel.

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • Fedora 31 Beta Run Through

    In this video, we are looking at Fedora 31 Beta. Enjoy!

  • Manjaro 18.1.0 XFCE Run Through

    In this video, we are looking at Manjaro 18.1.0 with XFCE 4.14. Enjoy!

• Fedora Family

  • Fedora Linux 31 Enters Beta, Says Goodbye to 32-Bit Systems

    Fedora 31 has been in development since early this summer and the beta version is now available to download for those who want to get an early taste of what’s coming in the final release later this fall. The most important change in the Fedora 31 release is the fact that there won’t be any 32-bit (i386) ISO images released, nor software repositories.

    “We recognize that this means newer Fedora releases will no longer work on some older hardware, but the fact is there just hasn’t been enough contributor interest in maintaining i686, and we can provide greater benefit for the majority of our users by focusing on modern architectures,” said Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader.

  • Renewing the Modularity objective

    Now that Modularity is available for all Fedora variants, it’s time to address issues discovered and improve the experience for packagers and users. The Modularity team identified a number of projects that will improve the usefulness of Modularity and the experience of creating modules for packagers. We are proposing a renewed objective to the Fedora Council.

• Debian Family

  • Debian May Need To Re-Evaluate Its Interest In “Init System Diversity”

    Debian Project Leader Sam Hartman has shared his August 2019 notes where he outlines the frustrations and issues that have come up as a result of init system diversity with some developers still aiming to viably support systemd alternatives within Debian.

    Stemming from elogind being blocked from transitioning to testing and the lack of clarity into that, Hartman was pulled in to try to help mediate the matter and get to the bottom of the situation with a lack of cooperation between the elogind and systemd maintainers for Debian as well as the release team. Elogind is used by some distributions as an implementation of systemd’s logind, well, outside of systemd as a standalone daemon. Elogind is one of the pieces to the puzzle for trying to maintain a modern, systemd-free Linux distribution.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Kubernetes 1.16 available from Canonical

    Canonical announces full enterprise support for Kubernetes 1.16, with support covering Charmed Kubernetes, MicroK8s and kubeadm.

    MicroK8s will be updated with Kubernetes 1.16 enabling users access to the latest upstream release with a single-line command in under 60 seconds. In addition, MicroK8s gets new add-ons with one line installs of Helm and Cilium as well as enhancements, upgrades and bug fixes. Cilium adds enhanced networking features including Kubernetes Network Policy support. With MicroK8s 1.16, users can develop and deploy enterprise grade Kubernetes on any Linux desktop, server or VM across 42 Linux distros.

    Canonical’s Charmed Kubernetes 1.16 will come with exciting changes like support for Kata Containers, AWS IAM, SSL passthrough and more. Using Kata Containers, insecure or untrusted pods can be run safely in isolation without disrupting trusted pods in deployments. Identity Access Management on AWS can be used to login to your Charmed Kubernetes cluster. Users get more control over their deployments while benefitting from reduced complexity due to improved LXD support and enhanced Prometheus and OpenStack integration.

    “At Canonical, we enable enterprises by reducing the complexity of their Kubernetes deployments. We are actively involved in the Kubernetes community to ensure we listen to, and support our users’ and partners’ needs. Staying on top of security flaws, community issues and features to improve Kubernetes is critical to us. We keep the Ubuntu ecosystem updated with the latest Kubernetes, as soon as it becomes available upstream,” commented Ammar Naqvi, Product Manager at Canonical.

  • Ubuntu 19.10 Release Schedule and Expected Features
    

    This is a continually updated article to inform you about Ubuntu 19.10 release date, features and other important things associated with it.

    The development for Ubuntu 19.10 is nearing its end and it’s time to look at what new features and improvement this new release brings.

    Ubuntu 19.10 is an important release because it will set the course of development for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (long term support). I have always felt that the LTS version release takes a lot of features from its predecessor.

    In other words, Ubuntu 19.10 will be a glimpse of the features you would be getting in Ubuntu 20.04.

  • Announcing the new IBM LinuxONE III with Ubuntu

    Enterprises today need the most secure, and flexible system to support their initiatives, and for that system to grow and evolve for tomorrow. The latest LinuxONE system was designed to support mission-critical initiatives and allow enterprises to be innovative as they design and scale their environment. LinuxONE III provides features for advanced data protection and privacy, enterprise resiliency and scalability, and cloud enablement and integration.

    Reliability and continuity are critical to the success of any business. With this release, they’ll benefit from up to 10:1 consolidation for key workloads, and up to 190 cores and 40TB of memory. And with 99.999%* availability and up to 7.4x better resilience, enterprises can confidently run and scale their business-critical workloads. The new LinuxONE III provides the highest levels of availability and scalability, so business-critical workloads run flawlessly, recover quickly, and grow seamlessly.

Devices/Embedded

• Sandwich-style RK3399 SBC has optional NVMe and 4G

  Boardcon’s “Idea3399” SBC integrates a CM3399 module with 4GB LPDDR4 that runs Android 7.1.2 on a Rockchip RK3399. The SBC offers optional M.2-based NVMe and mini-PCIe-based 4G. Boardcon also recently unveiled a MediaTek-based CM-MT6737 module.

  Boardcon announced a compute module and an SBC based on it equipped with a hexa-core Rockchip RK3399 SoC. As noted by the CNXSoft story that picked up the announcement from Embedded Computing Design, the Idea3399 is the company’s second sandwich-style implementation of the RK3399, following its EM3399 from 2017.

• CAN-Bus HAT for Raspberry Pi 4 offers RTC and wide-range power

  Copperhill’s third-gen, $65 “PiCAN3” HAT features Raspberry Pi 4 support and a SocketCAN-ready CAN-Bus 2.0B port. The HAT has an RTC and is powered by a 3A, 6-20V Switch Mode Power Supply that can also power the Pi.

  Copperhill Technologies has launched a CAN-Bus HAT for the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B designed for industrial and automotive applications. Like the PiCAN2. which we briefly covered last year as part of our report on Network Sorcery’s UCAN software for CAN-equipped Raspberry Pi boards, the HAT is equipped with a Microchip MCP2515 CAN controller and MCP2551 CAN transceiver.

• Industrial PC with 6th or 7th Gen Intel CPUs has four PCIe slots for Nvidia graphics

  Axiomtek’s “IPC974-519-FL” industrial PC for AI edge applications runs on Xeon E3 or 6th or 7th Gen Core CPUs and offers 4x PCIe/PCI slots for up to 300W Nvidia graphics plus 2x SATA, 2x GbE, and modular I/O expansion.

  Axiomtek announced the latest member in its line of IPC (industrial PC) computers with full-sized PCIe/PCI expansion slots. The new IPC974-519-FL computer is very similar to the IPC962-511-FL we reported on last February, which similarly supports Intel Xeon E3 or 6th Gen (Skylake) or 7th Gen (Kaby Lake) Core CPUs. However, the new model has four PCIe/PCI expansion slots instead of two.

• Boardcon Idea3399 Features-Rich SBC Comes with M.2 NVMe SSD and 4G LTE PCIe Sockets

  Back in 2017, Boardcon introduced EM3399 single board computer powered by a Rockchip RK3399 processor through the company’s PICO3399 SO-DIMM system-on-module.

• Random Number Generator Assembly

  Learn how to assemble your NeuG USB True Random Number Generator Assembly from https://shop.fsf.org/

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • How To Install Google Play Store On Android Devices

  • The most hotly anticipated Android phone this fall won’t launch in the US or Europe

  • Tasker 5.8.4 adds support for automating Android 10’s dark mode toggle

  • Android 10 beta for Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10 is almost here

  • Nova Launcher 6.2.2 beta respects Android 10’s dark theme toggle as YouTube 14.38.50 prepares the same

  • OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro get second Android 10 Open Beta with plenty of bug fixes

  • How to Get Android 10′s New Gestures on Any Phone

  • Samsung’s full Android 10 update scheme leaks, is your Galaxy on the list?

  • LG is already working on the update to Android 10 for the V50 and G8

  • OnePlus 7T could be first smartphone to launch with Android 10 this year, 8GB RAM also spotted

  • Google Wants To Stop Your Android TV Device From Eating Too Much Data

  • Better Beware – Android Dangers and Fake Reviews

  • Nokia 7.2 launches in India: Stock Android, triple cameras for under $300

  • How to install the Google Play Store on an Android phone or tablet that doesn’t have it

  • How to Make Android 10′s Dark Mode Turn on Automatically at Night — No Root Needed

  • Android 10-based Oxygen OS Open Beta 2 now rolling out for OnePlus 7 Pro

  • Samsung Android 10 beta to go out to Galaxy Note10 and S10 in October

  • Black Shark 1 finally gets Android Pie update

  • Google Trusted Contacts is the Android alternative to Find My Friends

  • Сache that is Very Difficult to Clean was Found in Android Chrome

  • The definitive guide to watching NFL games on Android TV or Chromecast

  • How to take screenshots with iPhone and Android phones

  • Looks like the Redmi K20 Pro will get an upgrade

  • OnePlus 7, OnePlus 7 Pro reportedly get their second Android 10 beta updates

  • Android 10 will reach some Samsung in beta at the end of September

  • Android 10: Evaluating performance on Pixel XL, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3 XL, and Pixel 3a XL

  • OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro get second Android 10 open beta

  • LG’s vision for Android 10 revealed in leaked V50 screenshots [Gallery]

  • ADV Screen Recorder adds internal audio capture on Android 10 thanks to new API

  • Android TV gets its Android 10 update this year w/ ADT-3, new hardware in 2020

  • Google releases four new features for Android TV

  • Android to finally overtake iOS as the dominant mobile gaming platform by revenue in 2019

  • 2019 Prophet Brand Relevance Index® Finds Apple, Spotify and Android as the Most Relevant Brands to US Consumers

  • Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro August security update based on Android 9 Pie arrives

  • How Much Is an Android Phone Worth Without Google?—Data Sheet

  • How to Enable Google Drive’s Dark Mode on Any Android Phone

  • Fleksy keyboard for Android can now play videos because why not

  • Lenovo K10 key specs and image revealed through Android Enterprise listing

  • Fossil hybrid smartwatch leaks online with 2-week battery life

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Why Open Source continues to be the foundation for modern IT

  Open source technology is no longer an outlier in the modern world, it’s the foundation for development and collaboration.

  Sitting at the base of the open source movement is the Linux Foundation, which despite having the name Linux in its title, is about much more than just Linux and today is comprised of multiple foundations, each seeking to advance open source technology and development processes. At the recent Open Source Summit North America event held in San Diego, the width and breadth of open source was discussed ranging from gaming to networking, to the movie business ,to initiatives that can literally help save humanity.

  “The cool thing is that no matter whether it’s networking, Linux kernel projects, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation projects like Kubernetes, or the film industry with the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), you know open source is really pushing innovation beyond software and into all sorts of different areas,” Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation said during his keynote address.

• Events

  • CF Summit Panel Discussion: Cloud Foundry Test Kitchen

    At the recent Cloud Foundry Summit EU in the Netherlands, Jeff Hobbs of SUSE participated in a re-named “Will it Blend?” panel discussion, talking about whether Kubernetes is the future of Cloud Foundry and how other technologies could potentially be integrated. It seems that Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry did indeed blend and the future is looking bright!

    Cloud Foundry Foundation has posted all recorded talks from CF Summit EU on YouTube. Check them out if you want to learn more about what is happening in the Cloud Foundry world! I’ll be posting more SUSE Cloud Application Platform talks here over the coming days. Watch Vlad’s talk below…

  • FOSDEMs bespoke video hardware and software.

    You can see the white hdmi cable running from the lime2 hdmi out to the monitor. This old monitor is my test “projector”, the fact that it is 4:3 makes it a good test subject.

    You can also see a black cable from the capture board to another blue board with a red led. This is a banana-pi M1 as this is the current SBC being used in the FOSDEM video boxes, and i had one lying around anyway, doing nothing. It spews out a test image.

    What you are seeing here is live captured data at 1280×720@60Hz, displayed on the monitor, and in the background of the status LCD, with a 1 to 2 frame delay.

  • Ubucon Europe 2019: Ubucon talks schedule is live!

    It is now 3 weeks before Ubucon starts, and what better way to remind everyone that we are ready to go by showing our full schedule!

    Don’t forget to register to our pre-ubucon cultural events if you want to know a little bit more of Sintra, and don’t forget as well to register for the event if you would like to receive some swag!

    All of this would not be possible without the support of our sponsors and the participation of volunteers and speakers for which we are very grateful.

  • Qt Contributors’ Summit 2019

    The Qt Contributors’ Summit is an annual event open to anyone who has contributed toward the Qt project in the past year. Contributions can include code, helping on the forum, maintaining the wiki, or any other form of moving the Qt project forward.

    After visiting beautiful Oslo in June last year, we invite you this year to the premises of The Qt Company in Berlin-Adlershof. And because of Qt 6 on the horizon, we have extended the event to three days! The first day will be all about sharing a common vision, while the following two days will be organized as an Unconference. We will have plenty of space to allow you to meet, collaborate, and get stuff done.

  • Alluxio Announces First ‘Data Orchestration Summit’ [Ed: Corporate 'summit' with lots of openwashing]

    This event also brings together creators of open source technologies and leaders in cloud to discuss the latest solutions to today’s biggest data problems.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • The Rust Programming Language Blog: Upcoming docs.rs changes

      On September 30th breaking changes will be deployed to the docs.rs build environment. docs.rs is a free service building and hosting documentation for all the crates published on crates.io. It’s open source, maintained by the Rustdoc team and operated by the Infrastructure team.

    • Flatulence, Crystals, and Happy Little Accidents

      The recording of my Rust Conf talk on algorithmic art and pen plotters is up on YouTube!

      [...]

      I really enjoyed giving this talk, and I think it went well. I want more creative coding, joy, surprise, and silliness in the Rust community. This talk is a small attempt at contributing to that, and I hope folks left inspired.

    • You’ll get a new Firefox each month in 2020 as Mozilla speeds up releases

      Mozilla will turn the Firefox crank faster in 2020, releasing a new version of its web browser every four weeks instead of every six. If you’re using the browser, the change should deliver new features to you faster since there will be less waiting between when developers build them and when they arrive.

      “In recent quarters, we’ve had many requests to take features to market sooner. Feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles. Considering these factors, it is time we changed our release cadence,” Firefox team members Ritu Kothari and Yan Or said in a blog post Tuesday. “Shorter release cycles provide greater flexibility to support product planning and priority changes due to business or market requirements.”

• Event Talks

  • How Chrome OS works upstream

    Google has a long and interesting history contributing to the upstream Linux kernel. With Chrome OS, Google has tried to learn from some of the mistakes of its past and is now working with the upstream Linux kernel as much as it can. In a session at the 2019 Open Source Summit North America, Google software engineer Doug Anderson detailed how and why Chrome OS developers work upstream. It is an effort intended to help the Linux community as well as Google.

    The Chrome OS kernel is at the core of Google’s Chromebook devices, and is based on a Linux long-term support (LTS) kernel. Anderson explained that Google picks an LTS kernel every year and all devices produced in that year will use the selected kernel. At least once during a device’s lifetime, Google expects to be able to “uprev” (switch to a newer kernel version). Anderson emphasized that if Google didn’t upstream its own patches from the Chrome OS kernel, it would make the uprev process substantially more difficult.

    Simply saying that you’ll work upstream and actually working upstream can be two different things. The process by which Chrome OS developers get their patches upstream is similar to how any other patches land in the mainline Linux kernel. What is a bit interesting is the organizational structure and process of how Google has tasked Chrome OS developers to work with upstream. Anderson explained that developers need to submit patches to the kernel mailing list and then be a little patient, giving some time for upstream to respond. A key challenge, however, is when there is no response from upstream. “When developing an upstream-first culture, the biggest problem anyone can face is silence,” Anderson said.

    Anderson emphasized that when submitting a patch to the mailing list, what a developer is looking for is some kind of feedback; whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter, but it does matter that someone cares enough to review it. What the Chrome OS team does in the event that there is no community review is it will have other Chrome OS engineers publicly review the patch. The risk and worry of having Chrome OS engineers comment on Chrome OS patches is that the whole process might look a little scripted and there could be the perception of some bias as well. Anderson noted that it is important that only honest feedback and review is given for a patch.

  • Open Source Builds Trust & Credibility | Karyl Fowler

    Karyl Fowler is co-founder and CEO of Transmute, a company that’s building open source and decentralized identity management. We sat down with Fowler at the Oracle OpenWorld conference to talk about the work Transmute is doing.

  • What Is Infrastructure As Code?

    Rob Hirschfeld, Founder, and CEO of RackN breaks Infrastructure As Code (IaC) into six core concepts so users have a better understanding of it.

  • Everything You Need To Know About Redis Labs

    At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, we sat down with Kyle Davis – Head of Developer Advocacy at Redis Labs – to better understand what the company does.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Amazon open-sources its Topical Chat data set of over 4.7 million words [Ed: openwashing of listening devices without even releasing any code]

• Funding

  • GitLab Inhales $268M Series E, Valuation Hits $2.75B

    GitLab raised a substantial $268 million in a Series E funding round that was more than doubled what the firm had raised across all of its previous funding rounds and pushed its valuation to $2.75 billion. It also bolsters the company’s coffers as it battles in an increasingly competitive DevOps space.

    GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij said in an email to SDxCentral that the new Series E funds will help the company continue to move on its goal of providing a single application to support quicker delivery of software. It claims more than 100,000 organizations use its platform.

    “These funds will help us to keep up with that pace and add to that with our company engineers,” Sijbrandij explained. “We need to make sure every part of GitLab is great and that CIOs and CTOs who supply the tools for their teams know that if they bet on GitLab that we’ll stand up to their expectations.”

• BSD

  • GhostBSD 19.09 overview | A simple, elegant desktop BSD Operating System

    In this video, I am going to show an overview of GhostBSD 19.09 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Richard Stallman and the Fall of the Clueless Nerd

  • Open letter to the Free Software Foundation Board of Directors

    The free software movement draws strength from an environment that is collaborative, inclusive and respectful. Diverse groups of people from all walks of life and nationalities come together and use their strengths and life experiences to contribute, share ideas, challenge the status quo, and improve technology for all. Everyone, including those who have been underrepresented and marginalized in technology, should be able to freely participate to produce useful software including in open source communities.

    Red Hat urges the FSF board to seize the opportunity during its current leadership succession by appointing a president and members of its board that are more diverse, including from a national, racial and gender perspective.

  • GNU lightning 2.1.3 released!

    GNU lightning is a library to aid in making portable programs 
    that compile assembly code at run time. 
    Development: 
    
    http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/lightning.git
    
    Download release: 
    ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/lightning/lightning-2.1.3.tar.gz 
      2.1.3 main features are the new RISC-V port, currently supporting 
    only Linux 64 bit, and a major rewrite of the register live and 
    unknown state logic, so that a long standing issue with a live 
    register not accessed for several consecutive blocks could be 
    incorrectly assumed dead. 
    The matrix of built and tested environments is: 
    aarch64	 Linux (Linaro, Foundation_v8pkg) 
    alpha	 Linux (QEMU) 
    armv7l	 Linux (QEMU) 
    armv7hl	 Linux (QEMU) 
    hppa	 Linux (32 bit, QEMU) 
    i686	 Linux and Cygwin 
    ia64	 Linux 
    mips	 Linux (32 bit) 
    powerpc32	Linux 
    powerpc64	Linux and AIX 
    powerpc64le	Linux 
    riscv	 Linux (64 bit, QEMU) 
    s390	 Linux (Hercules) 
    s390x	 Linux (Hercules) 
    sparc	 Linux (QEMU) 
    sparc64	 Linux (QEMU) 
    x32	 Linux (QEMU) 
    x86_64	 Linux and Cygwin 
    
    

  • Top computer scientist quits MIT

    Computer scientist and GNU creator, Richard Stallman, has resigned from his position at MIT over comments he made about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

    On his personal website, Stallman said that he was resigning “due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterisations”.

    Stallman also stepped down as president of the Free Software Foundation, an organisation he founded in 1985.

    The sudden resignation was on the back of remarks Stallman made about sexual assault allegations involving the late artificial intelligence researcher, Marvin Minsky.

    Minsky had been embroiled in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal after a woman alleged that, at the age of 17, Epstein ordered her to have sex with various men, including Minsky.

    In a leaked email chain, Stallman defended Minsky.

  • Computer scientist Richard Stallman resigns from MIT after comments about Epstein scandal

  • Another Epstein-Related Resignation

    Stallman, a visiting professor in Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s esteemed computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory, or CSAIL, announced in a brief post to his website this week that he’s stepping down immediately “due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.”
    He wrote in a slightly longer email to CSAIL that has since been circulated online that “misleading media” coverage “totally mischaracterized my statements.” Headlines say “that I defended Epstein,” Stallman wrote, but “nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve called him a ‘serial rapist’ and said he deserved to be imprisoned.”
    Yet many who read Stallman’s recent comments about the case on the CSAIL Listserv said he came across loud and clear, and that was the problem.

  • Stallman steps down MIT, FSF posts

    Famed computer scientist and activist Richard Stallman has resigned from his positions at Free Software Foundation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology over the recent comments he made concerning Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.
    Stallman, also the founder of free and open-source software movement and Free Software Foundation, resigned as the president of the FSF as well as from its board of directors.He is best known for initiation of the GNU operating system in 1983, as well as for his work campaigning for the use of free software.
    Last week it emerged that Stallman had cast doubt upon the reports that Artificial Intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky had sexually assaulted one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. In an email dump sent to the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, CSAIL, mailing list that was published by Motherboard, Stallman said that ‘the most plausible scenario’ was that Epstein’s victim ‘presented herself to Marvin Minsky as entirely willing.’

  • Richard Stallman resigns from FSF, MIT after defending child rape [Ed: Why am I not surprised that Thom Holwerda is defaming RMS?]

  • Free Software Pioneer Quits MIT Over His Comments On Epstein Sex Trafficking Case

    Free software pioneer and renowned computer scientist Richard Stallman resigned from his post at MIT following recent comments about one of Jeffrey Epstein.

  • MIT scientist Richard Stallman resigns in the wake of his Jeffrey Epstein remarks

    A prominent computer scientist at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has resigned following recent remarks he made debating a former professor’s alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex ring.

    Richard Stallman, a MacArthur genius grant recipient and Internet Hall of Fame inductee, wrote in an email to the MIT community Monday that he was “resigning effective immediately” from his position as visiting scientist at CSAIL.

    “I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations,” Stallman said.

  • Software Activist Richard Stallman Resigns from MIT over Defense of Jeffrey Epstein

    In an email, Stallman argued that Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s trafficking victims, consented to sex with the late MIT Professor Marvin Minsky. She “presented herself to him as entirely willing,” Stallman wrote, “I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term ‘sexual assault’ in an accusation.”

  • Richard Stallman resigns from Free Software Foundation and MIT CSAIL

    The founder and president of the Free Software Foundation Richard Stallman has resigned in the wake of comments he made about accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his victims. He is also removing himself from the foundation’s board of directors effective immediately.

    In addition, Stallman will no longer be a visiting scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).

    Stallman wrote on his website: “I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.”

    Stallman’s remarks were written after he saw an MIT event protesting Epstein on Facebook.

    In an email published by MIT alum Selam Jie Gano, Stallman wrote: “We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.”

  • Richard Stallman resigns from MIT after comments about Jeffrey Epstein

    “To the MIT community, I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.”

  • MIT scientist Richard Stallman resigns over Epstein remarks

    “I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations,” he wrote in the email and then signed off with his name.

    In the leaked emails published last week by Vice, Stallman suggested that mathematician Marvin Minsky was wrongly accused of sexual assault by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre.

    “The word ‘assaulting’ presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex,” Stallman allegedly wrote, referring to an article about Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s testimony that she was forced to have sex with Minsky.

  • Richard Stallman resigns from MIT after facing backlash over Minsky comments

    Virginia Giuffre previously accused Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier, of directing her to have sex with AI pioneer and MIT professor Marvin Minsky. In Stallman’s original email, he wrote, “All I know she [Giuffre] said about Minsky is that Epstein directed her to have sex with Minsky. That does not say whether Minsky knew that she was coerced.“

    Stallman continued, “We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.” Stallman also questioned whether or not Minsky’s behavior should be characterized as “sexual assault,” which he described as a “slippery” term.

    Following this email, Selam Jie Gano ’18 called for Stallman’s removal in a blog post published Sept. 12. “I know, now, that if prominent technology institutions won’t start firing their problematic men left right and center, we will do nothing. Ever,” Gano wrote. “Long before this incident, Stallman was contributing to an uncomfortable environment for women at MIT in a very real and visceral way.”

  • A reflection on the departure of RMS

    So Richard Stallman has resigned from his guest position at MIT and as President of the Free Software Foundation. You can easily find out all you need to know about the background from a web search and some news articles. I recommend in particular Selam G’s original articles on this topic for background, and for an excellent institutional version, the statement from the Software Freedom Conservancy.
    But I’ll give you a personal take. By my reckoning, I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer.
    1) There has been some bad reporting, and that’s a problem. While I have not waded through the entire email thread Selam G. has posted, my reaction was that RMS did not defend Epstein, and did not say that the victim in this case was acting voluntarily. But it’s not the most important problem. It’s not remotely close to being the most important problem.
    2) This was an own-goal for RMS. He has had plenty of opportunities to learn how to stfu when that’s necessary. He’s responsible for relying too much on people’s careful reading of his note, but even that’s not the problem.
    He thought that Marvin Minsky was being unfairly accused. Minsky was his friend for many many years, and I think he carries a lot of affection and loyalty for his memory. But Minsky is also dead, and there’s plenty of time to discuss at leisure whatever questions there may be about his culpability.

  • Standing on the shoulders of giants

    This changed everything, and it led to the birth of ever greater backgammon neural networks that could provide world-class competition as well as world-class analysis. The first great program to follow and raise the standard was Jellyfish, after which came Snowie, and even a magnificent open-source project: GNU Backgammon, which to this day is the second strongest backgammon software available. It too can be found at its source site. For documentation, refer to my online manual, “All About GNU”.

• Programming/Development

  • Oracle Releases Java 13 with Remarkable New Features

    Oracle – the software giant has released Java SE and JDK 13 along with the promise to introduce more new features in the future within the six-month cycle.

    The Java 13’s binaries are now available for download with improvements in security, performance, stability, and two new additional preview features ‘Switch Expressions’ and ‘Text Blocks’, specifically designed to boost developers’ productivity level. This gives the hope that the battle of Java vs Python will be won by the former.

    Remarking on the new release, Oracle said: “Oracle JDK 13 increases developer productivity by improving the performance, stability and security of the Java SE Platform and the JDK,”.

    [...]

    Speaking of the Java 13 release, it is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2 along with the Classpath Exception (GPLv2+CPE).

    The director of Oracle’s Java SE Product Management, Sharat Chander stated “Oracle offers Java 13 for enterprises and developers. JDK 13 will receive a minimum of two updates, per the Oracle CPU schedule, before being followed by Oracle JDK 14, which is due out in March 2020, with early access builds already available.”

    Let’s look into the new features that JDK 13 comes packed with.

  • 8 Python GUI Frameworks For Developers

    Graphical User Interfaces make human-machine interactions easier as well as intuitive. It plays a crucial role as the world is shifting.

  • What’s In A Name? Tales Of Python, Perl, And The GIMP

    In the older days of open source software, major projects tended to have their Benevolent Dictators For Life who made all the final decisions, and some mature projects still operate that way. Guido van Rossum famously called his language “Python” because he liked the British comics of the same name. That’s the sort of thing that only a single developer can get away with.

    However, in these modern times of GitHub, GitLab, and other collaboration platforms, community-driven decision making has become a more and more common phenomenon, shifting software development towards democracy. People begin to think of themselves as “Python programmers” or “GIMP users” and the name of the project fuses irrevocably with their identity.

    What happens when software projects fork, develop apart, or otherwise change significantly? Obviously, to prevent confusion, they get a new name, and all of those “Perl Monks” need to become “Raku Monks”. Needless to say, what should be a trivial detail — what we’ve all decided to call this pile of ones and zeros or language constructs — can become a big deal. Don’t believe us? Here are the stories of renaming Python, Perl, and the GIMP.

  • How to teach (yourself) computer programming

    Many fellow students are likely in the same boat, the only difference being that the vast majority not only that don’t list computer science as one of their passions (but more as one of their reasons for not wanting to live anymore), but they get a very distorted view of what computer science and programming actually is.

    Said CS classes tend to be kind of a joke, not only because of the curriculum. The main reason why they are bad and boring is the way they are taught. I am going to address my main frustrations on this matter together with proposed solutions and a guide for those who want to start learning alone.

  • [Old] Perl Is Still The Goddess For Text Manipulation

    You heard me. Freedom is the word here with Perl.

    When I’m coding freely at home on my fun data science project, I rely on it to clean up my data.

    In the real world, data is often collected with loads of variations. Unless you are using someone’s “clean” dataset, you better learn to clean that data real fast.

    Yes, Perl is fast. It’s lightening fast.

  • Python alternative to Docker

    Deploying a Python app to a server is surprisingly hard. Without blinking, you’ll be dealing with virtual environments and a host of other complications.

    The landscape of deployment methods is huge. What if I told you that there is a way to build your app into a single file and it isn’t a Docker container?

    In this article, we’re going to look at common ways of deploying Python apps. We’ll explore the touted benefits of Docker containers to understand why containers are so popular for web apps. Finally, we’ll look at an alternative to Docker that may be a lot simpler for your Python web app and compare and contrast this alternative against Docker.

  • How to Convert a Python String to int

    Integers are whole numbers. In other words, they have no fractional component. Two data types you can use to store an integer in Python are int and str. These types offer flexibility for working with integers in different circumstances. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how you can convert a Python string to an int. You’ll also learn how to convert an int to a string.

  • Free Coaching For PyGotham Speakers

    I help organize PyGotham, NYC’s annual conference about the Python programming language. For the third year in a row, we’re giving our speakers free sessions with a professional speaking coach, opera singer Melissa Collom. In the past we’ve limited coaching to first-time speakers, but we’re now able to coach everyone.

  • 8 Excellent C++ Natural Language Processing Tools

    Natural language processing (NLP) is a set of techniques for using computers to detect in human language the kinds of things that humans detect automatically.

    Natural language processing (NLP) is an exciting field of computer science, artificial intelligence, and computational linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages. It includes word and sentence tokenization, text classification and sentiment analysis, spelling correction, information extraction, parsing, meaning extraction, and question answering.

Health/Nutrition

• ‘Heartless and Unconscionable’: Outrage as General Motors Cuts Off Healthcare for 50,000 Striking Workers

  “It is cruel and outrageous that GM has cut off the healthcare benefits from their employees in a blatant attempt to force the union into submission,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

• ‘Look a Dying Man in the Eyes’: Activist Ady Barkan Wants Joe Biden to Sit Down and Talk About Medicare for All

  “Look a dying man in the eyes and tell me how we fix this country.”

• The Health Care Industry Poses an Existential Threat to the Middle Class

  Among many recent troubling headlines was this one: “Families Go Deep in Debt to Stay in the Middle Class.” That story came on the heels of a report that consumer debt in the United States hit $14 trillion in the first quarter of the year, a level not seen since just before the financial crash of 2008.

• Health Care: Premiums and Taxes

  There’s an old joke about a lawyer who is questioning a doctor on an autopsy they had done on someone who was allegedly a murder victim.

Security (Confidentiality/Integrity/Availability)

• Canonical Outs New Linux Kernel Security Update for All Supported Ubuntu OSes

  Canonical released today a new Linux kernel security update for all supported Ubuntu releases to address three vulnerabilities across all supported architectures.

  The new Linux kernel security update addresses three vulnerabilities affecting the Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo), Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), Ubuntu 14.04 ESM (Trusty Tahr), and Ubuntu 12.04 ESM (Precise Pangolin) operating systems.

  The first security issue addressed in this update is a a buffer overflow (CVE-2019-14835) discovered by Peter Pi in Linux kernel’s virtio network backend (vhost_net) implementation, which could allow an attacker in the guest system to either execute arbitrary code in the host OS or crash the host operating system by causing a denial of service.

• How to break out of a hypervisor: Abuse Qemu-KVM on-Linux pre-5.3 – or VMware with an AMD driver

  pair of newly disclosed security flaws could allow malicious virtual machine guests to break out of their hypervisor’s walled gardens and execute malicious code on the host box.

  Both CVE-2019-14835 and CVE-2019-5049 are not particularly easy to exploit as they require specific types of hardware or events to occur. However, if successful, either could allow a miscreant to run malware on the host from a VM instance.

  CVE-2019-14835 was discovered and reported by Peter Pi, a member of the Tencent Blade Team. It is found in the Linux kernel versions 2.6.34 up to version 5.3, where it is patched.

• Security updates for Wednesday

  Security updates have been issued by CentOS (firefox and kernel), Debian (thunderbird), Fedora (curl), openSUSE (curl and python-Werkzeug), Oracle (kernel and thunderbird), Red Hat (rh-nginx114-nginx), SUSE (curl, ibus, MozillaFirefox, firefox-glib2, firefox-gtk3, openldap2, openssl, openssl1, python-urllib3, and util-linux and shadow), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-lts-trusty, linux-lts-xenial, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, and wpa).

• SGX and security modules

  Software Guard Extensions (SGX) is a set of security-related instructions for Intel processors; it allows the creation of private regions of memory, called “enclaves”. The aim of this feature is to work like an inverted sandbox: instead of protecting the system from malicious code, it protects an application from a compromised kernel hypervisor, or other application. Linux support for SGX has existed out-of-tree for years, and the effort of upstreaming it has reached an impressive version 22 of the patch set. During the upstreaming discussion, the kernel developers discovered that the proposed SGX API did not play nicely with existing security mechanisms, including Linux security modules (LSMs).

• GitHub acquires Semmle to help developers spot security vulnerabilities [Ed: Company in NSA PRISM pretends to care about security (and also, Microsoft now uses GitHub to change people's code without asking the developers)]

  Software hosting service GitHub has acquired Semmle, a code analysis platform that helps developers discover security vulnerabilities in large codebases.

• GitHub Buys Semmle To Improve Open-Source Code Security

  GitHub, the Microsoft-owned open-source code repository, has acquired a startup called Semmle that specializes in helping developers analyze code for vulnerabilities.

  Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub, announced the acquisition in a Wednesday blog post, calling it a “big step in securing the open-source supply chain.”

  Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Defence/Aggression

• Locked on Iran

• Netanyahu’s Demonization of Palestinian-Israelis Backfires Spectacularly

• Palestinian-Israeli Joint List Gains Seats, as Netanyahu’s Demonization Backfires

  Benyamin Netanyahu appears to have fallen short in his quest for a majority of 61 in the 120-seat Israeli parliament or Knesset. As I write, his far-right Likud Party is tied 32 to 32 with its center-right rival, Blue and White.

• Reuters Can’t Find US Critics to Question Amazon’s Anti-Venezuela Propaganda

  A line from the trailer for  Jack Ryan, an Amazon TV drama whose second season streams on November 1, is: “A nuclear Venezuela…. You will not hear about it on the news, ’cause we’ll already be dead.”

• Pakistani army using dormant routes to infiltrate nearly 60 terrorists to J&K: Officials

  Dormant routes have been used by the Pakistani army to infiltrate nearly 60 terrorists since the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, officials said on Tuesday.

  This assessment comes amid intelligence inputs that there has been a surge in infiltration from across the border through higher reaches north Kashmir and Poonch and Rajouri of Jammu region, they said.

• Trump Is Treating Foreign Policy Like a Mafia Protection Racket

  The idea that Saudi Arabia, which is not even a treaty ally of the United States, would set the terms for military retaliation was bizarre. Suddenly “America First” had given way to “Saudi Arabia First.”

• On the Precipice: The Collective Asteroid of Human History

  Worlds end. Every day. We all die sooner or later. When you get to my age, it’s a subject that can’t help but be on your mind.  

• Only the Coalition of the Foolish Wants a War With Iran

  There’s no point in dredging up that old slogan, No Blood for Oil. It had no impact the last time. Don’t bomb Iraq, we said in 2002 and 2003, to no avail. George W. Bush and his friends had it in mind to destroy that country, which they did.

• So-Called “Limited” Nuclear War Would Actually Be Very Bad and Kill Tens of Millions, Warns New Report

  “We urgently need sensible action to reduce and eliminate nuclear risk.”

• Joe Biden Is Lying Through His Teeth About Iraq

  Joe Biden’s recent efforts to deny his record of support for invading Iraq are marvels of evasion, with falsehoods that have been refuted by one well-documented appraisal after another after another. This month, Biden claimed that his vote for war on the Senate floor was somehow not a vote for war. Ironically, while he was spinning anew to deny the undeniable, theaters nationwide began screening a movie that exposes the deceptive approach to the Iraq war that Biden exemplifies.

• Warning Against ‘Another Endless War,’ Ilhan Omar Says Congress Must Act to Stop Trump From Attacking Iran

  “Congress has the constitutional right to declare war. The president doesn’t have it. The secretary of state doesn’t have it. And Saudi Arabia certainly doesn’t have it.”

• Liberia: President Backs War Crimes Court

  Liberian President George Weah took a major step to bring justice for atrocities committed during Liberia’s civil wars by endorsing a war crimes court, nine Liberian and international groups said today. 

• Trump Strains to Balance Diplomacy, Military Threat to Iran

  The Trump administration tried to balance diplomacy with fresh talk of military action Tuesday in response to the fiery missile and drone attack on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry — a strike marking the most explosive consequence yet of the “maximum pressure” U.S. economic campaign against Iran.

• Guinean President’s US Visit Comes at Critical Moment

  Guinean President Alpha Condé is visiting the United States this month to attend the United Nations General Assembly. And amid uncertainty about Condé’s political future, a key question is whether will rights abuses are set to continue in Guinea. 

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• 7,200 people have lost their jobs so far this year in a media landslide

  The media industry continued to execute cuts in August and September as Spin, ThinkProgress, Rooster Teeth, Disney, and others reduced headcounts.

  The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.

  The massive cuts this year represent a recent trend in media that has seen upstart companies and newspapers alike shrinking and disappearing.

  Here are the media jobs that have been lost so far in 2019.

• House Intelligence Committee: Intelligence Community Is Burying A Whistleblower Complaint That May Involve Wrongdoing By The White House

  Well. This is awkward. Congressional oversight of our intelligence agencies is actually being performed by the overseers. The House Intelligence Committee — or at least Rep. Adam Schiff — wants to know what’s being withheld by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Environment

• How extreme weather threatens people with disabilitiesk

  This story originally appeared in Yale Climate Connections. It is republished here as part of the Climate News Network’s partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

• The Words of Water: Why Environmentalists Are Losing the Water Wars

• For Communities in South Africa, Climate Change is Now

  Sylvia remembers the first time a government official came to speak to her community in Lephalale, in the Limpopo province, about the construction of a new coal power plant. Like many other community members, she hoped that the plant would bring much-needed jobs and prosperity to her family.  

• Lessmeat for rich can cut heat and hunger

  Eating less meat can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But if everyone tries it, starvation will continue to climb.

• The Danger of Inspiration in a Time of Ecological Crisis

  Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, has one crippling flaw—it’s inspiring. At this moment in history, inspiring talk about solutions to multiple, cascading ecological crises is dangerous.

• ‘Young People Are Correct to Be Outraged’: Seattle City Council Urges Public Schools to Let Students Join Global Climate Strike

  “Seattle Public Schools should stand with the global climate justice movement and excuse students so they can participate in the global climate strike.”

• ‘A Goddamn Terrifying Time to Be Alive’: Naomi Klein Explains Why a Global Green New Deal Comes First and Being Hopeful Comes After

  “How do we earn the hope that we could actually do this?” asks author of new book. “That’s the only discussion that matters.”

• Expanding Carbon Offsets Will Not Solve the Climate Crisis or Protect Tropical Forests

  Wildfires raging across Brazil, Northern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa have focused attention on the importance of forests in capturing carbon emissions and preserving biodiversity. However, a flawed plan set for consideration later this month by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), would only increase the threat to these precious forests.

• ‘Terrifying’ New Climate Models Warn of 6-7°C of Warming by 2100 If Emissions Not Slashed

  “Global greenhouse gas emissions need to decline today rather than tomorrow, and global CO2 emissions should be brought to net zero.”

• Naomi Klein: The Green New Deal is the Last Best Hope to Save the Planet

  Canadian author, social activist and filmmaker Naomi Klein is done with “tinkering and denial” as solutions to climate change. As she explains in her new book, “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal,” America, and the world, is way past the point where a single policy, or even market-based solutions, can cut carbon emissions, increase production of renewable energy, repair broken ecosystems and generally prevent the kinds of climate catastrophe that will hurt the earth and the humans on it.

• Applauding Progressive Challenger for Championing Green New Deal and Medicare for All, Ocasio-Cortez Endorses Marie Newman

  “The momentum is growing to make the Democratic Party fight for solutions as big as the problems we face and create a party for voters, not corporate donors.”

• ‘There Is an Awakening Going On’: Greta Thunberg Honored With Amnesty’s Top Award Days Before Global Climate Strikes

  “What I’m telling you to do now is to act. Because no one is too small to make a difference. I’m urging all of you to take part in the global climate strikes on September 20th and September 27th.”

• The Danger of Inspiration: A Review of On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

  Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, has one crippling flaw—it’s inspiring. At this moment in history, inspiring talk about solutions to multiple, cascading ecological crises is dangerous.

• Indonesia’s bold plan: Moving its capital to an island paradise [iophk: transmigration]

  It won’t stay pristine for long. The government wants to move fast, starting construction within two years and — in about five years —roughly 1.5 million bureaucrats will move to the new capital, making it far and away the island’s most populated city.

• Trump revokes California’s right to set stricter car emissions standards

  President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his administration is revoking California’s authority to set auto mileage standards stricter than those issued by federal regulators, a move critics said would result in more planet-warming pollution.

• 16-year-old Greta Thunberg met with Obama and chided senators, saying they’re not trying hard enough to fight climate change

  During Obama’s tenure, he pledged to reduce the US’ greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% by 2025 under the Paris Climate Accord, and his administration put in place several climate regulations including curbs on coal and a 2013 plan to cut carbon pollution and encourage clean energy. President Trump has since withdrawn from the Paris agreement and revoked Obama’s plan via executive order in March 2017.

  Thunberg also met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and told the Senate Climate Change Task Force on Tuesday that congress was not doing enough to help combat climate change.

• Trump Cancels California’s Auto Pollution Rules

  The state that made smog famous is losing its half-century-old authority to set air pollution rules.

  President Donald Trump announced Wednesday on Twitter that the Environmental Protection Agency was withdrawing California’s authority to issue stricter vehicle efficiency rules than the federal government.

  The move was the latest in the administration’s efforts to loosen regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

  Thirteen states and the District of Columbia follow California’s standards. Together, they account for a third of auto sales in the United States.

• Arsenic and Lead in Tap Water: What Trump’s Deregulation Crusade Really Means for Mining Communities

  Since 2009, public health researchers at West Virginia University and elsewhere have published over a dozen studies showing significantly higher rates of cardiovascular disease, lung and other types of cancer, birth defects, and overall mortality in counties with mountaintop removal compared to other Appalachian counties, even after they controlled for factors such as poverty, smoking, obesity, education, race, and rural disadvantages.

  Soon after throwing out the Steam Protection rule, the Trump administration quashed further study into mountaintop removal mining’s health risks by abruptly canceling funding for a National Academy of Sciences study that had already been halfway completed.

  We found that hundreds of families living near such mines found toxic metals such as lead and arsenic in their tap water, consistent with mining pollution. One family we visited showed us the brown stinking water that began to run from her faucet after the mining began. “I’m worried about my babies,” the mother said. “Is it safe to bathe them?”

• Climate crisis

  However, the battle against climate change cannot be fought with ideas and targets alone. It also requires an attitudinal shift among the leadership and the public. While there needs to be a consensus on a robust and updated policy on climate change, it will eventually be the behaviour and habits of the people — across all economic groups — that will play a critical role in fighting to reverse the impacts of climate change. This responsibility towards the environment has been termed ‘eco-consciousness’ — behaviour or attitude showing concern for the environment.

• Join the Global Climate Strike 20-27 September

  On September 20th and 27th, millions of people will take to the streets worldwide to demand urgent climate action. Our staff and volunteers who attend the Climate Strikes will have Tor’s full support. Different groups in different parts of the world are mobilising on September 20th or 27th (or both). The Climate Strike website has a list of local strike dates and locations.

  Tor will also be joining the Digital Climate Strike. From today until September 27th, we will raise awareness of the strikes by displaying a Climate Strike banner on our website.

• Greta Thunberg Tells Congress: ‘We Don’t Want to Be Heard, We Want the science to Be Heard’⁠—Gets Applause

  But Thunberg was not interested in being called a “superhero”—instead, she called for more action, telling lawmakers they need to listen to the science.

  “Please save your praise, we don’t want it,” she said. “Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it because it doesn’t lead to anything.

  “If you want advice for what you should do, invite scientists, ask scientists for their expertise. We don’t want to be heard. We want the science to be heard,” [...]

• Not Everyone Should Stop Eating Meat to Fight Climate Change

  Eating less meat is not the way everyone should aim to tackle the climate crisis, a new study says. It is an essential step for many of us, the researchers argue, but in a world racked by malnutrition and hunger it can be only part of the answer to rising temperatures.

• Naomi Klein: We Have Far Less Time Than We Think

  Canadian author, social activist and filmmaker Naomi Klein is done with “tinkering and denial” as solutions to climate change. As she explains in her new book, “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal,” America, and the world, is way past the point where a single policy, or even market-based solutions, can cut carbon emissions, increase production of renewable energy, repair broken ecosystems and generally prevent the kinds of climate catastrophe that will hurt the earth and the humans on it.

• Land Without Bread: the Green New Deal Forsakes America’s Countryside

  Days after the heart-stopping Notre-Dame Cathedral fire in April, Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg trained her eyes on the United Kingdom’s parliament and chastised its meager response to climate change. “I want you to panic,” the baby-faced sixteen-year-old quietly instructed the adults in the room. “Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.” For those who don’t get the reference, Notre-Dame’s cornerstone was laid in 1163. The magnificent Gothic structure was not completed until 1345, a work of cross-generational faith, common purpose, and, undoubtedly, obedience. This was, after all, the Middle Ages.

• Climate models predict bigger heat rise ahead

  Scientists using new climate models say a bigger heat rise than expected is possible by the end of the century.

• Carbon emitters face higher legal risks

• How the Rise of Populism is Fuelling Climate Science Denial Across Europe

  This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.  

• Energy

  • Oil Prices Ease on Hopes for Normal Saudi Production

    DALLAS — The price of gasoline crept higher after a weekend drone attack devastated Saudi Arabian oil output, but if the disruption to global supplies is short-lived, the impact on the U.S. economy will probably be modest.

  • Op-ed: Geoengineering Distracts From Real Climate Solutions While Giving Cover to the Fossil Fuel Industry

    In 2019, I think it’s safe to say that humans are capable of wreaking great and terrible changes upon Earth’s systems. To name a few: acid rain, deforestation, and climate change. Reversing such problems is, on its face, quite simple. Stop releasing smog-forming pollution. Stop cutting down forests. Stop burning fossil fuels.

  • Fossil Fuel Ad Campaigns Emphasize ‘Positives’ After Climate Science Denial PR Lands Industry in Hot Seat

    Public relations experts keep a careful eye on the multitude of ways that PR can go wrong: tracking the year’s biggest “PR blunders,” assessing flopped ads for lessons learned, and noting when to remain silent and when to circulate a particular point of view.

  • Mulling Run Against Green New Deal Sponsor Ed Markey, Joe Kennedy Is Heavily Invested in Fossil Fuels

    Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.), the grandson of former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, has filed paperwork to challenge Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), one of the Senate’s most progressive members and the chief sponsor of the Senate version of the Green New Deal resolution.

  • What is Energy Denial?

    The fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day of 1970 will be in 2020. As environmentalism has gone mainstream during that half a century, it has forgotten its early focus and shifted toward green capitalism. Nowhere is this more apparent than abandonment of the slogan popular during the early Earth Days: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”

• Wildlife/Nature

  • CITES Protection for Tokay Geckos: What Does It Really Mean?

  • Governor Newsom Says He Will Veto Bill Blocking Trump Rollback of Endangered Fish Species Protections

    The California Assembly passed Senate Bill 1, legislation blocking Trump administration rollbacks of environmental regulations, on Friday, September 13, on a 43-21 party-line vote.

Finance

• Boris Johnson: Elitist Defender of Britain’s Big Banks

  In a week such as this you can’t help but think that famous cultural theorist Stuart Hall was on to something when he remarked that “the disorderly thrust of political events disturbs the symmetry of political analysis.”

• ‘Abhorrent’: Trump Condemned After Showing More Concern for Real Estate Than Human Beings in Remarks on Homelessness

  “He’s apparently more concerned with the doorways and streets than with the people who are homeless and sleeping on them.”

• The Big American Bribery Scandal Isn’t Felicity Huffman’s $15,000

  The American media world—both social media and “news” media—is afire with the news that actor Felicity Huffman is going to jail for spending $15,000 to bribe her daughter’s way into college.

• Cutting Health Benefits of 1,900 Whole Food Workers Saved World’s Richest Man Jeff Bezos What He Makes in Less Than Six Hours

  A new analysis finds that the billionaire could provide annual coverage slashed last week with just a fraction of what he makes personally each day.

• Trump Gives California Grief—but Also Likes Its Money

  President Donald Trump rarely passes up the chance to throw a sharp elbow at left-leaning California but he’s more than happy to cash in there with a lunch-dinner-breakfast-lunch fundraising blitz expected to scoop up $15 million from wealthy Republicans in two days.

• Seize Solidarity House

  The corrupt and Quisling leadership of the United Auto Workers Union has sent its 50,000 General Motors worker-members out on strike–a strike the labor bosses probably never wanted, as with the wildcat school workers’ strikes of recent months.

• Citing Previous ‘Misstatements of Fact’ and Corruption Allegations, House Democrats Open Ethics Probe into Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao

  Letter to the secretary references “troubling questions about whether you are using office to benefit yourself and your family.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Welcome to the New “Trump, Inc.”

  The “Trump, Inc.” podcast by ProPublica and WNYC is back. And we’ll be bringing you new episodes every two weeks.

  When we started all the way back in early 2018, we laid out how we’d be digging into the mysteries around President Donald Trump’s business. After all, by keeping ownership of that business, Trump has had dueling interests: the country and his pocketbook.

• Moscow online voting officials have messed up their data yet again. This time, they couldn’t do a basic math problem.

  On September 8, Moscow held an experimental round of online voting as part of its citywide legislative elections. Almost 10,000 voters submitted their ballots online. Artyom Kostyrko, the deputy head of Moscow City Hall’s IT Department, organized the online voting process, and on September 18, he released new data about voter demographics in the new system’s first official run.

• Russia Sees Its Reflection in the West

  Consider them dispatches from a present with no future.

• Russian teachers, doctors, programmers, book critics, and actors join Orthodox priests in signing open letters against Moscow repressions

  After dozens of Russian Orthodox clergy released an open letter on September 17 criticizing the prosecution of Moscow election protesters, members of several other professions have also gathered together to demand that defendants in the so-called “Moscow case” be released or acquitted.

• Trump is a Clear and Present Danger to America and the World

  Pray that we make it through the next 14 months. Then, do everything in your power to remove this man from office.

• Justice Kavanaugh

• Our Leaders Are Ensuring Humanity’s Destruction

  Worlds end. Every day. We all die sooner or later. When you get to my age, it’s a subject that can’t help but be on your mind.

• ‘Trump’s Deregulatory Agenda Has Been Driven by Corporations’

• The day a tech billionaire takes over the world

  Armies of online loyalists defend cult figures like Elon Musk. Is a corporate autocrat in our future?

• Warren Draws Record Crowd of 20,000 in New York as She Vows to Combat Corporate Power

  “We can’t choose a candidate we don’t believe in just because we’re too scared to do anything else,” Warren told the crowd. “And Democrats can’t win if we’re scared and looking backward.”

• Nadler Accuses Trump of ‘Shocking and Dangerous’ Abuse of Power as White House Orders Former Aides to Defy Subpoenas

  “The president would have us believe that he can willfully engage in criminal activity and prevent witnesses from testifying before Congress.”

• Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley to Introduce Resolution Calling for Kavanaugh Impeachment Inquiry

  “We must demand justice for survivors and hold Kavanaugh accountable for his actions.”

• Are We the People Unfit for Democracy?

  In typically subtle fashion, Politico reported on a recent conference of political psychologists on the present state of democratic systems. Its arresting headline:  “The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy.”

• Afghanistan: Taliban’s Criminal Attacks on Election Activities

  Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan should immediately cease attacks on political rallies and other election-related activities, Human Rights Watch said today. In recent weeks, Taliban attacks seemingly aimed at deterring people from participating in the presidential election scheduled for September 28, 2019 have killed and injured scores of civilians.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Now is the time to defend the final haven for privacy: your brain

  One of the principal concerns of privacy is to prevent others – typically governments or companies – from monitoring what we think. They have to do that indirectly, by spying on what we say or write, and inferring what is going through our minds from that data. We assume that our actual thoughts are immune from surveillance. That is true today, but may not be tomorrow. Work is underway in research and corporate laboratories to come up with ways of reading directly what we are thinking. The question is: what happens to privacy once that is possible?

• Massive Novaestrat data leak effects over 20 million in Ecuador

  A report by ZDNet, with help from vpnMentor’s Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, have uncovered what’s likely the largest data leak in the history of Ecuador. This leak contains roughly 20.8 million user records. Ecuador has a population of 16.6 million so it’s safe to say this leak has impacted a vast majority of the Ecuadorian population. The number of user records is larger than the number of Ecuadorians because it includes records of those that have passed away. ZDNet confirmed the presence of Ecuador’s President’s as well as Julian Assange’s records in the leak. The leak came from a company called Novaestrat by way of a mis-configured Elastisearch server.

• Lion Air Investigating [Breach] That Compromised Passenger Data

  PT Lion Mentari Airlines, Indonesia’s biggest private carrier, is investigating a breach that led to personal data of its Malaysian unit’s passengers being leaked online.

  Malindo Airways’s passenger information, which is hosted on cloud-based services, may have been compromised, the carrier said in a statement. Malindo is working with its data service provider Amazon Web Services Inc. and e-commerce partner GoQuo to look into the breach.

• American veterans targeted online by foreign entities: study

  A study published Tuesday found that foreign entities have been targeting American veterans, service members and their families through social media disinformation campaigns and identity theft with the goal of “disrupting American democracy.”

• US veterans and service members targeted by foreign entities online, report finds

  US veterans, current service members and their families are being targeted online with malware and by foreign entities and influence campaigns, and the government isn’t doing enough to stop it, a new report says.

  The study by Vietnam Veterans of America, a non-profit that advocates for and serves the needs of all veterans, documents a myriad number of ways veterans are impersonated and targeted online — particularly on Facebook. In at least one instance, they’ve been targeted by influence campaigns from foreign governments.

• Exclusive: Edward Snowden’s First Adventures in Cyberspace

  Many of the first 2,000 or so nights of my life ended in civil disobedience: crying, begging, bargaining, until—on night 2,193, the night I turned six years old—I discovered direct action. The authorities weren’t interested in calls for reform, and I wasn’t born yesterday. I had just had one of the best days of my young life, complete with friends, a party, and even gifts, and I wasn’t about to let it end just because everyone else had to go home. So I went about covertly resetting all the clocks in the house by several hours. The microwave’s clock was easier than the stove’s to roll back, if only because it was easier to reach.

  When the authorities—in their unlimited ignorance—failed to notice, I was mad with power, galloping laps around the living room. I, the master of time, would never again be sent to bed, was free. And so it was that I fell asleep on the floor, having finally seen the sunset on June 21, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. When I awoke, the clocks in the house once again matched my father’s watch.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Eritrea Should End 18 Years of Darkness

  Eighteen years ago today, the Eritrean government began its chilling clampdown on those it perceived as critics, decimating the country’s budding independent press in the process. Eighteen years later, as Eritrea ends its diplomatic isolation, little has changed for its citizens.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Political Fundraiser Pleads Guilty To Fraud

  In one of the first Justice Department cases of its kind, Maryland political consultant Kelley Rogers pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Tuesday for operating multiple fraudulent political action committees that raised money from donors for conservative causes but kept much of the funds for Rogers and his associates.

  Rogers’ arrest and indictment took place shortly after Politico and ProPublica investigated one of Rogers’ PACs, Conservative Majority Fund, which since 2012 has raised close to $10 million — mostly from small-dollar donors, many of them elderly — while giving out just $48,400 to politicians.

• Lebanon: Judiciary Ignoring 2017 Anti-Torture Law

  Lebanese judicial authorities failed to investigate serious torture allegations made by Hassan al-Dika prior to his death in custody, Human Rights Watch said today, on the two-year anniversary of the passage of an anti-torture law.

• Cameroonian Lawyers Say ‘Enough is Enough’

  Cameroonian lawyers are on strike this week, protesting law enforcement agencies’ interference in their work and violations of defendants’ rights.

• Tajikistan: Barriers to Aid for Domestic Violence Victims

  Tajikistan’s government takes little action to investigate or prosecute domestic violence cases and is doing far too little to help survivor. Despite progress in some areas, Tajik law does not criminalize domestic violence, and women who experience abuse lack adequate protection and access to shelter and other services.

• A Moscow man went for a run hours before a protest. Police arrested him and broke his leg. We identified the officer who did it.

  On July 27, three hours before protesters swept Moscow’s Tverskaya Street to demand fair elections, Constantine Konovalov was going on a run when he was unexpectedly arrested. Police officers knocked the professional designer onto the curb of a sidewalk, and one officer stepped onto his calves in such a way that Konovalov broke his right leg. At Moscow’s Hospital Number 67, the young man was diagnosed with a “closed internal tibial spine fracture.”

• The Christian Right Is Helping Drive Liberals Away From Religion

  Researchers haven’t found a comprehensive explanation for why the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has increased over the past few years — the shift is too large and too complex. But a recent swell of social science research suggests that even if politics wasn’t the sole culprit, it was an important contributor. “Politics can drive whether you identify with a faith, how strongly you identify with that faith, and how religious you are,” said Michele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity.” “And some people on the left are falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.”

• Disturbing New PSA Shows How School Shootings Have Become Normalized

  Last year was the deadliest year for school shootings on record, with the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 10 people killed by gunfire at a Santa Fe, Texas, high school, and too many other school shootings that have already been forgotten. This fall, students returned to school under a shadow of anxiety and fear. To address this new normal, Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) — a nonprofit organization founded and led by family members whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 — released a “back-to-school school shootings prevention” PSA.

• Admitting the Terrorism Watchlist Was Unconstitutional is Important, But Not Nearly Enough

  In Wednesday, September 4th, Judge Anthony Trenga of the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the Terrorist Screening Database —colloquially referred to as the “Watchlist”—was unconstitutional. The case was brought forward by the Council on American Islamic Relations on behalf of 23 Muslim American plaintiffs. | By Maha Hilal

• You Say You Want a Revolution: a Prison Letter to Yoko Ono

• Dozens of Russian Orthodox priests sign open letter in support of arrested and imprisoned protesters

  Dozens of Russian Orthodox Church clergy have released an open letter defending election protesters who have been arrested or sentenced to prison time in the so-called “Moscow case.” The letter, which was published on the outlet Pravoslavie i mir (Orthodoxy and the World), had 42 signatories at the time of this writing.

• This election protester might face years in prison for throwing a plastic water bottle toward police officers

  Moscow’s Meshchansky Court has begun hearing the case against 26-year-old computer programmer Aidar Gubaidulin. He stands accused of attempted violence against a police officer: During Moscow’s July 27 protest, the programmer threw a plastic water bottle in the direction of a group of officers and National Guard troops who were beating other demonstrators. The bottle missed the officers, but Gubaidullin is nonetheless being held in a pretrial detention center, and he may receive a lengthy prison sentence. Meduza spoke with Aidar Gubaidullin’s brother, Ildar, about the case.

• Jordan: Hundreds Displaced Based on Family Ties

  Jordanian authorities have forced about 200 people to leave their home governorate because of their extended family ties to an accused murderer, Human Rights Watch said today.

• UN Chief Should Denounce China’s Abuses in Xinjiang

  United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres should join the growing number of those speaking out publicly against China’s mass detention of over one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, FIDH – International Federation for Human Rights, International Commission of Jurists, and World Uyghur Congress, said in a letter to the secretary-general released on September 17, 2019.

• US: New Food Inspection Rule Puts Workers in Danger

  A Trump administration final regulation announced on September 17, 2019 to allow increased slaughter line speeds in hog processing plants in the United States threatens to put workers in grave danger of serious injuries, Human Rights Watch said today.

• UN: Address Egypt’s Assault on Rights

  The United Nations Human Rights Council should use the upcoming review of Egypt’s human rights records to address unprecedented levels of repression, 17 organizations including Human Rights Watch said today in an open letter to the council’s member countries.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps For $60 After Years Of Battling Comcast

  A new community broadband network went live in Fort Collins, Colorado recently offering locals there gigabit fiber speeds for $60 a month with no caps, restrictions, or hidden fees. The network launch comes years after telecom giants like Comcast worked tirelessly to crush the effort. Voters approved the effort as part of a November 2017 ballot initiative, despite the telecom industry spending nearly $1 million on misleading ads to try and derail the effort. A study (pdf) by the Institute for Local Reliance estimated that actual competition in the town was likely to cost Comcast between $5.4 million and $22.8 million each year.

• Space X May Soon Give The US Broadband Sector A Much Needed Kick In The Ass

  Could Space X finally give the busted US telecom sector a much needed kick in the ass? Since 2017, Musk’s Space X has been promising that it would launch 800 low orbit satellites capable of delivering cheaper, lower latency broadband to large swaths of the United States by 2020 or 2021. By and large Musk and company appear to have been successful sticking to that promise, insisting recently that this proposed timeline was “pretty much on target.” That said, Musk had to fire some folks to ensure that the project was meeting its goals, which itself suggests they may not have been.

Monopolies

• Does The Public Care About Tech Backlash? And Does That Matter?

  The NY Times recently had a piece by Rob Walker noting that there is no tech backlash, despite many people believing there is one. Unfortunately, I think the article overstates its case, and misses the more important, more nuanced point. I do think that the public narrative — driven by many in the media and many politicians and bureaucrats — is that there’s a giant “techlash” out there as people are fed up with how various tech companies act. I think that Walker’s point is correct that the public is still using the big internet companies in larger and larger numbers. But I’m not sure it quite says what he seems to suggest it means.

• France, Germany blast Facebook’s Libra, back public cryptocurrency

  The 19-country euro zone bloc is united in pursuing a tough regulatory approach should Libra seek authorizations to operate in Europe, officials said at the meeting.

  It is also considering a common set of rules for virtual currencies, which are currently largely unregulated.

• Lyft Allegedly Kept a Driver on the Platform Who Held a Passenger at Gunpoint While Two Other Men Raped Her

  At least 26 Lyft users have sued Lyft since August 1 for failing to protect them against sexual violence on the platform, and “stone walling” law enforcement from investigating cases. The women say Lyft ignored their pleas for help and does not inform passengers whether drivers who harm them remain on the app.

• Why France and Germany fear Facebook’s cryptocurrency – and plan to block it

  “As already expressed during the meeting of G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank’s Governors in Chantilly in July, France and Germany consider that the Libra project, as set out in Facebook’s blueprint, fails to convince that those risks will be properly addressed,” the joint statement read. “We believe that no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of Nations.”

  At the G7 meeting, the 19-country euro zone bloc indicated it is united in pursuing a tough regulatory approach should Libra seek authorizations to operate in Europe.

• Trademarks

  • Monster Energy Opposes Teenager’s Trademark Application Over Logos Not At All Similar

    Monster Energy. The company’s name is enough to set the average Techdirt reader’s eyes rolling. The company that makes sugar-heavy energy drinks has become essentially a caricature of an overly aggressive trademark enforcer. This habit is somewhat surprising, given just how often the company loses lawsuits and oppositions, which one would think would be a deterrent for future behavior. Instead, it almost seems as though every loss only spurs Monster Energy on.

• Copyrights

  • Xtream Codes IPTV System Targeted in Massive Police Operation (Updated)

    Police in Italy have announced a huge anti-piracy operation against the company operating popular IPTV service management system Xtream Codes. Searches are reportedly underway in several countries including Italy, the Netherlands, France and Bulgaria, in a claimed effort to dismantle the company’s entire infrastructure.

  • EasyDNS Threatened With Criminal Complaint over ‘Pirating’ Customer

    A German law firm has threatened to file a criminal complaint against domain name registrar easyDNS. The Canadian registrar refuses to hand over personal details of an allegedly copyright infringing customer without a valid court order, nor is it planning to pay the proposed €1,481 in damages and fees demanded by the law firm.

  • Millennium Films Goes After Verystream, Streamango, and Others

    Millennium Films is utilizing the US court system to put pressure on sites, services and apps that are linked to piracy. After the shutdown of the popular CotoMovies app, the company has now switched its attention to several sites that were ‘linked’ to the app, including Verystream and Streamango.

  • Australian Aboriginal Flag Mess Is Getting Worse — All Thanks To Copyright

    One of the longer-running sagas here on Techdirt concerns the disgraceful situation regarding the flag of Australia’s Aboriginal peoples. Mike first wrote about this in 2010, and again in June of this year. The problem is that what is now widely regarded as the flag of Australia’s First Nations was designed fairly recently by a private individual, not a group representing those peoples, or some official Australian government body. The designer, Harold Thomas, signed a licensing deal with a clothing company, Wam Clothing, which imposes hefty fees for the use of the design, even on non-profit health organizations giving away items that bear the flag: