Samsung will kill Linux on Dex with the upcoming Android 10 update

Around two years ago, Samsung officially announced that they will be bringing full-fledged Linux support for Samsung Dex. The company later started testing Linux on different Galaxy devices. Earlier this year, Samsung added more devices to the program which was in beta at the time.

Now, out of nowhere, Samsung has decided to kill the Linux on Dex project. As per an email received by 9to5Google, Samsung plans to kill the project with the release of Android 10 Beta. Samsung has sent out emails to all the Beta testers today informing them about the change.

Samsung ends Linux on DeX beta with the Android 10 update

DeX is a feature on the Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab S series that differentiates Samsung’s flagship smartphones and tablets from the company’s competitors. DeX, which debuted back in 2017 with the Samsung Galaxy S8, lets users access a desktop mode UI, with support for Android apps, when connected to a monitor. Initially, DeX required a special accessory in the form of the DeX Station and later the DeX Pad, but with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, Samsung made it work with any HDMI to USB Type-C cable, which means that it no longer required any specialized hardware. This significantly improved its versatility. The one real competitor to Dex is Huawei’s Easy Projection feature, which can also work wirelessly. However, Samsung still had a leg up over its Huawei thanks to the Linux on DeX feature.

Linux on DeX enabled the user to get a full-fledged desktop GNU/Linux environment up and running on the smartphone in DeX mode. Specifically, Linux on DeX supported a modified version of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS for ARM64. Linux on DeX was first shown off all the way back at SDC 2017, and the company finally released a beta for download a year later. The feature was intended for developers and not for regular users, as only ARM64 packages could be used on Linux on DeX. It allowed developers to compile, build, and test Android apps on their smartphone itself. Max used Linux on DeX extensively on the Galaxy Note 9 and noted that it pushed the limits of the hardware at that time.

Samsung won’t support Linux on DeX once Android 10 arrives

If you’ve been using Linux on DeX (aka Linux on Galaxy) to turn your Samsung phone into a PC, you’ll need to make a change of plans. Samsung is warning users that it’s shutting down the Linux on DeX beta program, and that its Android 10 update won’t support using the open source OS as a desktop environment. The company didn’t explain why it was shutting things down, but it did note that the Android 10 beta is already going without the Linux option.

The decision leaves users in a tough spot. This not only gave Linux fans a way to run their preferred computing platform from their phone, it was the only option that provided a full-fledged desktop OS (in this case, Ubuntu Linux). If you use Android 10, you’ll have to revert to the considerably more limited DeX-optimized Android interface. While that should work for people who just want a larger canvas for their Android apps, it won’t help if you were using Linux as a productivity tool.

Samsung ends Linux on DeX without ever releasing a stable version

In an email to the testers, Samsung has announced that it is ending the Linux on DeX beta program. It will no longer provide support for future OS and device releases, including the Android 10 beta. The team behind the app hasn’t offered any reasons for the shutdown of the program but thanked users for the interest and feedback.

Samsung announced the Linux on DeX app nearly a year ago as an experiment to augment the capabilities of its DeX platform. It enables select Galaxy devices to run full Linux OS in DeX mode when connected to an external monitor (or on the device’s display if it’s a tablet). The app has been in beta for the past year, and the company is now ending the program without releasing a stable version.

Desktop

• High schoolers in charge? How one school gave up control and won

  So we chose a different way — the open source way — and as a result, we’ve saved our technology budget more than $1 million.

  But the cost savings are just the beginning. More importantly, our decision to adopt 4,000 Linux-powered laptops empowered our students in remarkable ways.

  Here at Penn Manor School District, we’ve gained much more by using Linux and other open source software. And by infusing open principles and practices into our learning environment alongside open technologies, we’ve cultivated a vibrant and inclusive learning community for all students.

Server

• IBM

  • Why Red Hat supports standards and open source

    Red Hat may be synonymous with open source and the developer community, but the company also actively participates within industry standards processes. For example, it is working closely with the operator-led Common NFVi Telco Taskforce (CNTT), which was initiated in the LFN open source community but has now been embraced by the GSMA, as an attempt to harmonise on the many varied NFV infrastructure solutions and architectures. Furthermore, Red Hat supports the move for greater alignment in NFV software platform domain.

  • Overview of Node-RED 1.0 Release

    Low-code, visual-based programming environments are opening doors for new types of application developers. At the same time, new event-driven architectures are making such environments more responsive.

    Node-RED, a visual flow-based programming tool, is one such environment attuned to these new development styles. After years of refinement, the open source Node-RED recently hit maturity with a 1.0 release.

    I chatted with Nicholas O’Leary of IBM, who has pioneered the development of Node-RED. In this article, we’ll discover what this new release encompasses. We’ll also peek into the history of Node-RED, look into some fascinating IoT use cases and estimate the future Node-RED roadmap.

  • Girls Who Code wins IBM’s first $50K Open Source Community Grant

    Girls Who Code were the winners of the first $50,000 IBM Open Source Community Grant. Girls Who Code is a nonprofit organization working to increase the number of women working in computer science.

    Girls Who Code helps girls to learn more about computer science through after-school classes and summer courses. Along with the advancement of IT knowledge, women also gain confidence in their capabilities.

  • IBM launches grant to promote diversity in the open source community

    Announced at this week’s All Things Open conference in Raleigh, NC, the grant — which will be awarded quarterly — will see the winner receive $25k in cash and $25k in Cloud Credits in order to support their efforts dedicated to education and skill building for women, minorities, and/or under-served communities.

    The inaugural grant is going to Girls Who Code, a non-profit organization working to increase the number of women working in computer science.

    [...]

    Other finalists in this quarter’s grant competition were Outreachy (Organized by the Software Freedom Conservancy), which sets up three-month paid internships on open source projects for people who ordinarily might not have those opportunities. And PyLadies, an international mentorship group of the Python Software Foundation, helping women become active in the Python open-source community.

  • Ex-IBM Director Joins Open-Source Blockchain Platform

    ennifer Trelewicz, the former Director of the Systems & Technology Laboratory at IBM, has just joined the open-source and fully decentralised blockchain software, Credits.

    According to AMB Crypto, Trelewicz has taken the post of Chief Business Officer, under which she is responsible for the external business sector of the firm.

  • IBM Group Sales Down Again But Cloud And Open Source Business Is Positive

    Third quarter results at IBM showed group sales were down 3.9% to $18bn, although revenue from the acquired Red Hat was up a handy 20%.

    That group drop though masked progress being seen in the cloud, with Cloud & Cognitive Software up 7.8% to $5.3bn. This part of the business includes cloud and data platforms that include Red Hat offerings, cognitive applications and transaction processing platforms.

    The Global Technology Services segment – that includes infrastructure and cloud services and technology support services – was down 4.1% to $6.7bn. And Global Business Services, which includes consulting, application management and global process services was up 2.2% to $4.1bn – with consulting actually up 5% when broken down.

  • IBM Poised for Another Sales Slide Despite Red Hat Deal: What to Watch

    International Business Machines Corp. is expected to report third-quarter earnings after the market closes Wednesday. The results, which follow a string of quarterly revenue declines, will be the company’s first since it closed its $34 billion purchase of open-source software giant Red Hat. Here’s what to look for:

Kernel Space

• Intel’s Cloud Hypervisor 0.3 Adds Block Device Offloading, Paravirtualized IOMMU

  Intel developers have been working on the Cloud Hypervisor that is written in Rust and built atop KVM as an open-source VMM designed for running modern cloud workloads while being focused on just supporting modern software/interfaces and relying upon para-virtualized (VirtIO) devices without legacy support. This week marked a new release of this forward-looking KVM-based hypervisor solution.

• Linux 5.4 Lands A Number Of Memory Management Fixes

  While mid-way through the Linux 5.4 development cycle with RC4 due out on Sunday, a number of memory management fixes just hit the mainline kernel.

  Andrew Morton’s pull request was merged on Friday night and he noted, “Rather a lot of fixes, almost all affecting mm/”

  Indeed there were memory management fixes in this pull ahead of 5.4-rc4. Changes include a zRAM race condition fix, avoiding access to uninitialized memory maps, allow dropping transparent huge-pages (THP) from the page cache, and other fixes in this area including the possibility of a kernel crash.

Applications

• Five best screen recorders for Linux

  Screen recording comes in handy when creating a video tutorial, recording gameplay, live streaming or even something cool you just did and want to showcase it to others. Uses of a screen recorder are diverse and there are a ton of reasons to have one installed on your PC. In this article, we will provide a brief overview of five best screen recorders for Linux which include some basic as well as some advanced screen recorders.

• Firefox to get page translation feature, like Chrome

  Firefox’s page translation feature will work offline, with a local library, rather than cloud-based translation services.

• OBS Studio 24.0.3

  OBS Studio is software designed for capturing, compositing, encoding, recording, and streaming video content, efficiently. It is the re-write of the widely used Open Broadcaster Software, to allow even more features and multi-platform support. OBS Studio supports multiple sources, including media files, games, web pages, application windows, webcams, your desktop, microphone and more.

• Proprietary

  • FAA asks Boeing why it hid test pilot’s discovery of ‘egregious’ 737 Max issues

    The Federal Aviation Administration is demanding answers from Boeing after receiving a 2016 electronic message exchange in which a test pilot talks of unknowingly having lied to regulators and discloses “egregious” problems with the flight control system that figured in two 737 Max crashes.

    FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a terse letter Friday to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg requesting to know why the messages had only been delivered the day before, not months ago when Boeing had uncovered them. “I expect your explanation immediately,” he writes.

  • Why Kids’ Programming Will Be a Major Battleground in the Streaming Wars

    It’s not that children are suddenly allergic to SpongeBob. (According to Parrot Analytics, Mr. SquarePants and his underwater antics remain the most in-demand children’s content in America.) But as Juenger puts it: The traditional American TV industry is “entering a period of prolonged structural decline,” as viewers migrate to platforms that feature fewer or no ads.

    Saturday mornings, years ago relinquished by broadcasters, are now threatening to evaporate from the grip of cablers as well. This will prove to be a fertile area for existing streamers, as well as the soon-to-launch over-the-top offerings from Apple, Disney and WarnerMedia, among others. All of them are hungry for subscribers and eager to keep them shelling out monthly dollars.

Instructionals/Technical

• 6 DevOps Skills for Developers to Learn

• Python programming language: A cheat sheet

• How to install Chromium on Ubuntu using SNAP

• 3D using Godot

  It is time for another installment of Godot (previous entries: introduction, 2D). This time, I have dived into the world of 3D. The goal is to recreate parts of an old time favorite: Kosmonaut. Something I remember playing a lot on my dad’s 286 with amazing EGA graphics.

  The state of the game when writing can be seen in the short screen capture below. This is more of a tech demo status than a full game at the moment, but I hope you will still find it interesting. You can also get the complete source code.

  [...]

  Once we have a world with a track (the grid map), we add a player to the scene (the yellow blob in the image above – I need to learn Blender to create a proper ship). The player scene contains the ship – and the camera. This means that the camera follows the player automatically – very convenient.

  The player script is responsible for this ship’s movements based on user input. Inputs can either be pressed for a long time, used for sideways movement, or just tapped (i.e. the release is ignored), used for jumping. Each of the inputs are mapped to a keyboard key (or other input device) in the Project Settings dialog, under the Input Map tab. This feels a bit awkward to me and makes me lose the feeling of flow – but I don’t know how to do it better.

• How to install OpenOffice on Linux

• How To Install Free SSL Certificate for Apache on CentOS 8

• Install VirtualBox 6 on CentOS 8

• How to Install Odoo 13 on Ubuntu 18.04

• How to Install Anaconda on Debian 10

• Install Shutter Screenshot Tool via PPA in Ubuntu 19.10

Wine or Emulation

• Wine-Staging 4.18 Released With Fix For League of Legends

  Fresh off yesterday’s Wine 4.18 release, Wine-Staging 4.18 is now available for those preferring the more experimental blend of Wine that incorporates various testing patches atop Wine.

  Wine-Staging 4.18 is still around 850+ patches atop upstream Wine though not a lot of new patches over the past three weeks. Like with Wine 4.18, the staging release isn’t too big either due to many Wine developers having been away last week for WineConf in Toronto.

Games

• Stellaris: Federations and Stellaris: Lithoids Species Pack announced at PDXCON

  PDXCON is now in full swing and the announcement are being handed out like candy. First up, Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio have announced Stellaris: Federations and Stellaris: Lithoids Species Pack.

• Crusader Kings III announced for release next year, to be more welcoming to new players

  As I suggested they would when setting Crusader Kings II permanently free (but not the DLC), Paradox Interactive have announced Crusader Kings III.

  “Crusader Kings III is a grand medieval simulator where you are free to live out any plausible ruler fantasy that we could think of – but not without challenge.” says Henrik Fåhraeus, the Game Director. “Seeing its predecessor explode in popularity was very satisfying, especially considering that user friendliness was never our primary goal. Now we have a chance to address an even larger audience.”

• Prison Architect – Psych Ward: Warden’s Edition expansion announced (plus another coming)

  I think we all saw this coming when Paradox Interactive picked up the rights to Prison Architect, with Double Eleven taking on further development. The first proper DLC has been announced at PDXCON named Prison Architect – Psych Ward: Warden’s Edition.

  Psych Ward was previously a console exclusive DLC, so it’s good to see it make it onto PC. However, it does include new added features not in the original DLC and it will launch along side a free content update for everyone. It’s not exactly a small pack either, it actually sounds like it’s going to be adding quite a bit to the game. Paradox also gave it a release date of November 21, so you won’t exactly have long to wait to really find out.

• BATTLETECH: Heavy Metal brings more classic ‘Mechs and new weapon systems, releasing in November

  Even more news from PDXCON! Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive have now properly announced the BATTLETECH: Heavy Metal expansion to bring more destruction.

• Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance expansion and a significant free update announced

  Paradox Development Studio and Paradox Interactive are expanding another of their grand-scale strategy games, with Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance announced during PDXCON.

  Not just that, as they usually do they also confirmed a “significant” free content update will be released to all players. The free update will include a reworking of the resistance system, interface improvements to battleplans and air operations plus many other “quality of life improvements”.

• Bioshock 1 & 2 | Linux Gaming | Ubuntu 19.04 | Steam Play

  Bioshock 1 & 2 running through Steam play.

• Continuing the Counter-Strike 20th anniversary Valve put out skins, plus a possible Operation and update coming

  After starting off the celebration for Counter-Strike turning 20 back in June with the retro version of Dust II, Valve have now added a refreshed version of the map Cache and a themed Weapon Case and Sticker Capsule.

  We’re expecting some bigger updates to come but let’s go over what they’ve already done.

  [...]

  VNN’s Tyler McVicker also released another of his highly speculative videos talking about lots of other things that could be pointing to a new operation. With a possible update coming that may include: custom Danger Zone modes, a new Danger Zone map, new Danger Zone weapons, co-op missions, hats and other wearable items, player taunts and more being speculated on.

  I personally hope Valve do put out a big update, since their celebration so far has been a bit lacklustre. An old map, a refreshed map and some skins you have to pay for. Not exactly big or exciting really so far. Speaking personally again, I’m still very much enjoying Danger Zone so if they do expand it again I will be quite pleased.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Xfce 4.16 development phase starting

  In the 4.14 cycle we tried to do a 1:1 port of what used to be our Gtk2 desktop environment, avoiding visual changes. In the 4.16 cycle we plan to harmonize the appearance of certain elements that either became inconsistent through the port or already were inconsistent before (e.g. toolbars or inline toolbars).

  We will also play with client-side decorations where we feel it makes sense (for instance replacing the so-called XfceTitledDialog, that is used for all settings dialogs with a HeaderBar version). Before anyone gets too excited (both positively or negatively): It is not planned to redesign more complex applications (like Thunar) with Headerbars in 4.16. We will however try to keep the experience and looks consistent, which means gradually moving to client side decorations also with our applications (please note that client side decorations are not the same as HeaderBars!). Through this change e.g. “dark modes” in applications will look good (see the part about the Panel below).

  Now before there is a shitstorm about this change I would kindly ask everyone to give us time to figure out what exactly we want to change in this cycle. Also, switching to client-side decorations alone is not a big visual departure – feel free to also dig through the client-side decorations page if you want to read/see more on this.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • kwin-lowlatency 5.17 Brings A Better Experience To The KDE Desktop

    Following this week’s release of KDE Plasma 5.17, a new release of the independent kwin-lowlatency code has been re-based against version 5.17.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Patent Attacks Against Open Source Intensify

  • Patent Attacks Continue Against Open Source Programming

Distributions

• Some New Operating Systems on Distrotest that Caught My Attention!

  Distrotest is one site that provides a variety of Linux distributions that can be run directly on the browser. Or you can also run it on a remote desktop client application, for example using Remmina. So, you can try various linux distributions online without having to install it or make a live CD.

  when I visited the distrotest. Apparently, there have been many new systems added. However, there are several new systems that caught my attention.

• Forbes Raves Upcoming Linux Desktop Will ‘Embarass’ Windows 10 and macOS

  The article points out that Deepin is also a stand-alone desktop environment for any current Linux distribution — and that it’s one of the 248 operating systems available for online testing at DistroTest.net.

• deepin Linux 20 looks incredible

  recently sold my MacBook Pro for a few reasons, but probably most importantly, macOS just wasn’t wowing me anymore. While Apple’s desktop operating system is good for basic users, it is far too limited for the more hardcore. Ultimately, I found my productivity was negatively impacted by macOS — my workflow with Windows 10 and various Linux distributions was simply better.

  Of course, with all of that said, macOS is much prettier than Windows 10 — even Microsoft would confess to that. But is it more attractive than desktop Linux distributions? Well, that depends on the desktop environment. While there are plenty of beautiful DEs and launchers for Linux, only one really surpasses macOS in the looks department — deepin.

• Arch Family

  • [From Arch] `base` group replaced by mandatory `base` package – manual intervention required

    The base group has been replaced by a metapackage of the same name. We advise users to install this package (pacman -Syu base), as it is effectively mandatory from now on.

    Users requesting support are expected to be running a system with the base package.

  • [From Arch] Required update to recent libarchive

    The imminent release of pacman 5.2 brings build tools with support for compressing packages with zstd. To install these packages you need libarchive with support for zstd, which entered the repositories in September 2018. In order for zstd compressed packages to be distributed, we require all users to have updated to at least libarchive 3.3.3-1. You have had a year, so we expect you already did update. Hurry up if you have not.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Theme Updates, Offline Upgrades Headline New Additions to Pop!_OS 19.10

    Offline upgrades are now live on Pop!_OS 19.04, bringing faster, more reliable upgrades. When an upgrade becomes available, it is downloaded to your computer. Then, when you decide to upgrade to the newest version of your OS, the upgrade will overwrite the current version of your software. However, this is not to be confused with an automatic update; your OS will remain on the current version until you yourself decide to upgrade.

    To upgrade to 19.10 from a fully updated version of Pop!_OS 19.04, open the Settings application and scroll down on the sidebar menu to the Details tab. In the About panel of the Details tab, you will see a button to download the upgrade. Once the download is complete, hit the button again to upgrade your OS. This will be the standard method of upgrading between Pop!_OS releases going forward.

  • Pop!_OS 19.10 Released With Tensorman Tool For Tensorflow Management, GNOME 3.34

  • Ubuntu 19.10 brings Linux kernel 5.3, improvements for Raspberry Pi 4

    Ubuntu 19.10—the 31st release of the consumer-focused Linux distribution—was released on Thursday, powered by GNOME 3.34 and version 5.3 of the Linux kernel, which includes support for AMD Navi GPUs, as well as Intel Gemini Lake CPUs and VIA/Zhaoxin x86 CPUs.

    Other Linux distributions typically shy away from providing copyrighted code embedded into the ISO image due to legal or philosophical reasons, though Canonical is shipping NVIDIA GPU drivers out-of-the-box to ease configuration and improve performance for users of NVIDIA GPUs for gaming as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) applications.

Devices/Embedded

• Scary git-lfs “bad object” error not so scary after all

  I just got the following error while trying to push to my [git-lfs]()-enabled repository:

• Install git-lfs on a Raspberry Pi

  Git Large File Storage is “an open source Git extension for versioning large files.” I use it on a number of our git repositories at Small Technology Foundation, including for the Site.js web site.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • LG launches an Android 10 preview for the G8 ThinQ, coming next month to the V50

  • OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T get first Android 10 Open Beta, available now

  • Google Boss Confirms HTC Built The Pixel 3a

  • Google Android’s biggest problem has just been exposed by Apple

  • 15 crossword solvers for Android, iOS, and the web that actually work!

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 review: The only Android tablet that matters

  • Android TV Play Store starts getting its long-awaited redesign

  • Android TV’s redesigned Play Store rolls out over the ‘next few weeks’

  • Huawei Mate 30 Doomed? No Android Support But Next Device Does

  • Huawei P40 series to come with dual OS (Android & Harmony)

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 review: As good as Android tablets get

  • Pixel 4 vs. OnePlus 7T: Which Is the Better Android Phone?

  • 14 new and notable Android apps from the last two weeks including Pokémon Wave Hello, PhotoStack, and Hiitmi – Interval Timer (10/5/19 – 10/19/19)

  • You won’t believe how cheap this brand new Android flagship is

  • 5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week! – Android Apps Weekly

  • [Update: Limited rollout] Twitter’s all-black ‘Lights Out’ mode coming to Android

  • [Report] The upcoming Huawei P40 could dual boot HarmonyOS and Android & that’s probably the Right Way Forward

  • HTC reveals €219 Exodus 1s cryptocurrency phone with… Android Oreo

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• npm is moving back to its developer roots, founder says

  Everyone has an opinion on what NPM should do next, both as a company (npm, Inc.) and as the package manager (npm) made essential by Node.js. That’s not surprising: More than 11 million JavaScript developers use npm (and associated npm registry) to build their applications, whether they use Node.js or not. It’s also not a particularly easy question to resolve, given the turmoil npm Inc. has experienced over the past year, what with the introduction (and eventual departure) of CEO Bryan Bogensberger and employee unrest in his wake.

  Talking to npm founder and Chief Open Technologies officer Isaac Schlueter, however, the right strategy for “building a sustainable engine behind an open source labor of love” might well be a return to npm’s roots.

• Open source community should help fight fake news

  That’s the view of Aroma Rodrigues, a full-time Python developer at a major bank in India and a part-time software activist. She told delegates at last week’s PyConZA 2019, part of SA’s Open Source Week, that they can and should be doing more to use their skills for social good.

  [...]

  For example, the US-based Knight Foundation, which was established to promote excellence in journalism, examined more than 10 million tweets from 700 000 Twitter accounts before, during and after the 2016 US presidential election. The study found that identified clusters of Twitter accounts linked back to more than 600 fake and conspiracy news sites repeatedly, often in ways that seemed to be co-ordinated, or even automated, in order to sway public opinion one way or another.

• Open source community should embrace the spirit of ubuntu

  In an interview with ITWeb at the conference, Nkosi pointed out that although open source was about community, “we are not using it as community”.

  [...]

  The word ‘ubuntu’ loosely translates to “I am because we are”. This, Nkosi asserted, was essentially the premise of open source software, which was about harnessing the collective power of the community.

• How the top open source AI software drives innovation

  Open source software and tools have long been a mainstay of the computing ecosystem, especially over the past two decades. From the popularity of Linux in the enterprise server environment to the Firefox browser, open source has found a successful place in the computing hierarchy. It should come as little surprise that open source AI software is finding significant popularity and use within the machine learning and deep learning ecosystem, as well.

  In fact, much of the technology that powers AI is open source. This comes as a contrast to other enterprise technology, such as operating systems and databases that had their initial roots in closed, licensed software.

• Catalan separatists have tooled up with a decentralized app for civil disobedience

  One of the first protest actions programmed by a new online activist group, calling itself Tsunami Democràtic, saw thousands of protestors coalescing on Barcelona airport Monday, in an attempt to shut it down. The protest didn’t quite do that but it did lead to major disruption, with roads blocked by human traffic as protestors walked down the highway and the cancelation of more than 100 flights, plus hours of delays for travellers arriving into El Prat.

  For months leading up to a major Supreme Court verdict on the fate of imprisoned Catalan political leaders a ‘technical elite‘ — as one local political science academic described them this week — has been preparing to reboot Catalonia’s independence movement by developing bespoke, decentralized high-tech protest tools.

  A source with knowledge of Tsunami Democràtic, speaking to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity, told us that “high level developers” located all around the world are involved in the effort, divvying up coding tasks as per any large scale IT project and leveraging open source resources (such as the RetroShare node-based networking platform) to channel grassroots support for independence into a resilient campaign network that can’t be stopped by the arrest of a few leaders.

• To Go Green, the Energy Industry Goes Open Source

  The European Union aims to reduce carbon emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050. Former California Governor Jerry Brown signed an executive order last year calling for the state, the fifth-largest economy in the world, to go carbon neutral by 2045. Meeting these goals, or even the less ambitious goals set by other governments, will require utilities to buy more energy from sustainable sources like wind and solar power. That shift is already creating logistical challenges for utilities. Unlike more predictable sources of energy, the energy produced by a wind farm can vary from day to day, forcing utilities to offload excess supplies and make up for shortages. The solar panels on residential rooftops that feed into the grid pose their own challenges because the grid wasn’t designed to facilitate a two-way flow of energy.

  To meet those technological challenges, the energy sector is turning to open source software. Open source, which anyone can modify or share, helped power the rise of internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Ostensible competitors worked together to develop software like the data-crunching platform Hadoop because it enabled them to solve difficult computing problems. Now all sorts of companies, ranging from Microsoft to Walmart to JP Morgan Chase use and make open source software.

  But the energy industry has lagged behind others in using and creating open source software, says Loek Bakker, head of information management at Dutch energy distribution company TenneT. “The energy industry isn’t known for being innovative,” he says. “I think we’re quite a traditional industry.”

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • TenFourFox FPR16 SPR1 available

      TenFourFox Feature Parity Release “16.1″ (SPR 1) is now available for testing (downloads, hashes, release notes). As noted, this is a pure security update and there are no user-facing changes; the big under-the-hood change of those is that we are now pulling entirely from 68ESR, including locale data, certificate roots and so forth. There is also a small update to the ATSUI font blacklist. Assuming no issues, it will go live Monday evening Pacific time as usual.

    • Chris H-C: Four-Year Moziversary

      We gained two new team members, Travis and Beatriz. And with Georg taking a short break, we’ve all had more to do that usual. Glean‘s really been working out well, though I’ve only had the pleasure of working on it a little bit.

      Instead I’ve been adding fun new features to Firefox Desktop like Origin Telemetry. I also gave a talk at a conference about Data and Responsibility. Last December’s All Hands returned us to Orlando, and June brought me to Whistler for the first time. We held a Virtual Work Week (or “vorkweek”) a couple of weeks ago when we couldn’t find a time and the budget to meet in person, and spent it planning out how we’ll bring Glean to Firefox Desktop with Project FOG. First with a Prototype (FOGotype) by end of year. And then 2020 will be the year of Glean on the Desktop.

• Linux Foundation

  • Unifying cloud storage and data warehouses: Delta Lake project hosted by the Linux Foundation

    Going cloud for your storage needs comes with some baggage. On the one hand, it’s cheap, elastic, and convenient – it just works. On the other hand, it’s messy, especially if you are used to working with data management systems like databases and data warehouses.

    Unlike those systems, cloud storage was not designed with things such as transactional support or metadata in mind. If you work with data at scale, these are pretty important features. This is why Databricks introduced Delta Lake to add those features on top of cloud storage back in 2017.

  • Open FinTech Forum Brings Together Technologists and Business Executives to Accelerate Development in Finance Sector

    The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the speakers and program for Open FinTech Forum taking place December 9, 2019 at the Convene Conference Center in New York.

  • LF Energy Brings Power System Leaders Together with Open Source Experts at Paris Summit to Implement the Grid of the Future

    LF Energy, a nonprofit, vendor-neutral initiative from The Linux Foundation, whose mission is to accelerate the energy and electricity sectors’ worldwide decarbonization goals through open-source technology, announced the full agenda for its first global summit, NOW TO NEXT – The Power of Together, as well as the addition of Alliander, EDP, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and Unicorn as new LF Energy members.

    NOW TO NEXT, which will be hosted in La Défense, Paris, on Nov. 4-5, will bring together leaders and innovators in the power and technology industries to discuss the global transition to clean energy. Industry leaders have realized that no one can meet decarbonization goals alone. Instead, we must work together to transition the 150-year-old power grid infrastructure to smarter and more efficient digital technologies that enable decentralized energy resources.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • Percona Open Source Software Database Survey Reveals Shift Toward Diversity

    Percona, a leader in open source database software and services, today announced the results of its Open Source Software Database Survey. More than 830 members of the Percona community and customer base, representing small, medium and large companies from around the world, responded to questions regarding open source database usage and growth. The survey revealed that diverse tools and environments, including multiple databases and multi-cloud and hybrid environments, are transforming today’s datacenters.

• Education

  • Moodle Announces the Integration of H5P

• Healthcare

  • Public Health England – open source and containerisation key to tech agenda

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • SOSA Consortium’s C4ISR Demonstrator System Shows Value of Open-Source Tech in Mil/Aero Apps

    Actually, these marketplaces have had some level of collaborative effort due to common development trends and regulatory compliance activity, but nothing like the kind of active open environment that exists in other spaces. The military community is specifically reluctant to adopt more open development methods due to the secretive nature of military capability disclosure. Yet there are areas in core platform development that can benefit from an open-source approach.

  • New WSO2 Identity Server Release Provides a Hassle-Free Configuration Model and RESTful APIs for Self-Service IAM

    Digitally driven businesses face unprecedented complexity in protecting not only their own data and privacy but that of globally distributed customers, partners and employees using a variety of personal computing and mobile devices. WSO2 offers several new capabilities to help enterprises address these demands with the latest release of WSO2 Identity Server for identity and access management (IAM). Using WSO2 Identity Server, IT organizations now have an open source, API-driven, developer friendly solution for modernizing application security and delivering an enhanced user experience that encourages adoption.

  • Winding Tree and Travel Forward to host open-source Hackathon

    Key industry leaders such as Air France, KLM, and Etihad Airways have participated in Winding Tree’s previous two #HackTravel hackathons, one in Prague in December 2018, and the second most recently in Lisbon in July 2019.

  • SalesAgility announces 7th UK Open Source Awards, 2020

    SalesAgility are delighted to announce that the 7th UK Open Source Awards (UKOSA) will take place on Thursday May 21st 2020. We’re also delighted to announce that once again they’ll be held in the Edinburgh University Computing faculty’s Informatics Forum.

    The awards are designed to recognise and celebrate the innovation, diversity, collaboration and creativity that are core components of Open Source software creation and maintenance. Previous winners have included contributors from several NHS healthcare projects, the Gnome project, Collabora (LibreOffice) and students from Edinburgh and Aberystwyth Universities.

  • How Google and Facebook do code analysis

    Facebook has reported target “fix rates” (how often developers fix the bug flagged by a tool) of 70% to 80%, and Google strives for greater than 90% fix rates for its ErrorProne code analysis tool. By only deploying tools with high fix rates, these companies maintain the trust of developers and ensure that they continue to act on important issues found by these tools. But how do you know whether a new tool meets this threshold?

    The best approach is to be data-driven. The developer tooling groups at these companies collect data on which bugs are getting fixed and support explicit developer feedback on tool results. This data is constantly monitored to flag tools that are underperforming so they can improve or remove them.

  • Weekly Wrap: AWS Makes It Rain, Extends Credits to Open Source Projects

  • AWS Makes It Rain, Extends Credits to Open Source Projects

  • AWS tempts open source projects with promo credit sweeteners

    Principal Open Source Technologist Arun Gupta and Operations Manager Vicente explained the initiative in a blog post mentioning the credits were typically used for testing, storage, or CI/CD purposes. First beneficiaries include the Rust and Julia programming languages, Java community project AdoptOpenJDK, Java component repository Maven Central, and a couple of projects hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

  • AWS’ open source entreaties now include cloud credits

    AWS will offer promotional cloud credits to open source project maintainers that meet certain criteria. The move comes after repeated tensions with some companies.

  • Is AWS sponsoring Rust? Only a bit – and so is Microsoft Azure

    AWS has announced its “Sponsorship of the Rust project”, causing some initial excitement in the community. However, in reality it only amounts to a year of AWS “promotional credits.”

    “We’re really excited to announce that AWS is sponsoring the Rust programming language,” reads a statement by David Barsky (engineer on Rust runtime for Lambda), Arun Gupta (open source technical evangelist), and Jacob Peddicord (open-source engineer).

  • Groundbreaking CloudCO Demo at Broadband World Forum 2019 Made Possible by UNH-IOL’s Role as Open Broadband Lab

    The intention of the OB-Labs initiative is to demonstrate an open framework for cloud-based broadband for carriers globally, and bring the promise of SDN and NFV to fruition. The demo at BBWF 2019 was built from a combination of open source from the OPNFV, ONAP, and Open Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA) projects and products from Nokia, Altice Labs, DZS, and VMware. A first of its kind demonstration, this implementation truly shows the power of a well-defined architecture and the agility of an open community.

  • flexiWAN Announces Global Channel Partner Program for MSPs, SIs and VAR Offering SD-WAN Services

  • Mavenir Swings for Big Leagues With OpenRAN

  • Beware Systems Integrator Lock-In, Open Source Dependency

    Broadband World Forum 2019 — Kings can be tyrants, but at least they give you an easy target to punch when something goes wrong and revolution follows. Telcos in a perpetual huff about the ruling trio of Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia could be in for a more slippery autocracy with the emergence of systems integrators, a cabal of tiny vendors and some unwieldy open source platforms.

    Operators are worried, too. “Yes,” said BT’s Simon Fisher when asked during a panel session here if there is a danger of going from one form of lock-in to another. “You are squeezing complexity and cost into the software side of the business.”

    [...]

    “I guess the fear is that because ONAP is open source it will be easier for bad actors to explore (than a commercial solution) and, if widely adopted, worthwhile trying to hack,” noted Crawshaw.

  • Broadband Forum, ONF create virtualisation and open source roadmap

    A new agreement between Broadband Forum (BBF) and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is set to ease the path to automated and open virtualised access networks.
    The roadmap sets forth how operators seeking to effectively use virtualisation and open source to increase agility can leverage open source and standardisation projects side-by-side to ease their migrations to automated access networks and enable seamless co-existence.
    As the broadband industry embarks on the next phase of broadband deployment, numerous new business opportunities are emerging that require rapid service instantiation, often across disparate, software-defined networks, and leveraging third-party applications.

  • Broadband Forum and ONF collaborate on automation and virtualization in access networks

    In yet another example of open source groups working together, the Broadband Forum and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced on Monday that they have signed an agreement to mutually drive automation and virtualization across access networks.

    Over the past several years, open source communities and standards development organizations (SDOs) have started to collaborate with each other in order to speed up the development of new applications and services while not duplicating each other’s efforts.

  • Broadband Forum and ONF Ease the Path to Automated and Open Virtualized Access Networks

    As the broadband industry embarks on the next phase of broadband deployment, numerous new business opportunities are emerging that require rapid service instantiation, often across disparate, software-defined networks, and leveraging third-party applications. To take advantage of this untapped potential, operators are looking to interconnect different parts of their network with open source solutions and systems from various suppliers.

  • Microsoft to Reward Hackers for Finding Bugs in Open Source Election Software [Ed: This clearly spreads Microsoft propaganda. Microsoft puts back doors in election systems, so at the same time it tries to spin itself as the solution to security with its proprietary software

    Fair elections are the lifelines of democracy, but in recent years election hacking has become a hot topic worldwide.

  • Sotabench: Benchmarking Open Source Models Directly From GitHub [Ed: No, you cannot do proper studies with only data from Microsoft because it is biased by design; many FOSS projects reject proprietary software such as GitHub]

    Machine learning research resource Papers with Code last week introduced Sotabench, a free and open website created to benchmark and rate the performance of state-of-the-art open source models from GitHub. Papers with Code is an open platform that aggregates ML papers, code, and evaluation tables and metrics from sources such as arXiv and GitHub.

  • Kansai University Research: Kansai University Researcher is Awarded Prestigious Prize for the Development and Advancement of Open Source Data Mining Technology for Business and Product Marketing

  • Alfresco Named a Leader in Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Content Applications, According to IDC MarketScape

• Funding

  • Ripple invests in Swedish open source start-up Towo Labs

    Towo Labs, a Swedish startup aimed at simplifying ‘crypto self-custody’, has announced an investment from Xpring, Ripple’s developer initiative.

    Xpring is described as an initiative by Ripple that will invest in, incubate, acquire and provide grants to companies and projects run by entrepreneurs.

    [...]

    All open source code contributions will be subject to the normal code and security reviews of the involved repository maintainers.

  • French open-source CMS startup Strapi raises $4 million in seed funding

    Strapi, a Paris, France-based open-source CMS, raises $4M in seed funding to deliver on its vision of making content accessible to any platform while offering the only fully open-source, JavaScript-based, community-powered and 100% customizable Headless CMS which is entirely free for developers.The round was led by Accel and Stride.vc. Notable angel investors and open-source experts, Solomon Hykes (Founder of Docker), Guillermo Rauch (Founder of Cloudup, Socket.io, Next.js and Zeit.co) and Eli Collins (Ex-CTO at Cloudera), also participated in this round.

  • Headless CMS company Strapi raises $4 million

    Strapi has become quite popular in the headless CMS space, with 500,000 downloads and 250 contributors to the open-source project. The first version was released on GitHub in 2015.

• BSD

  • FreeBSD 12.1-RC2 Now Available

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    Hash: SHA256
    
    The second RC build of the 12.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available.
    
    Installation images are available for:
    
    o 12.1-RC2 amd64 GENERIC
    o 12.1-RC2 i386 GENERIC
    o 12.1-RC2 powerpc GENERIC
    o 12.1-RC2 powerpc64 GENERIC64
    o 12.1-RC2 powerpcspe MPC85XXSPE
    o 12.1-RC2 sparc64 GENERIC
    o 12.1-RC2 armv6 RPI-B
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 BANANAPI
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 BEAGLEBONE
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 CUBIEBOARD
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 CUBIEBOARD2
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 CUBOX-HUMMINGBOARD
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 RPI2
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 PANDABOARD
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 WANDBOARD
    o 12.1-RC2 armv7 GENERICSD
    o 12.1-RC2 aarch64 GENERIC
    o 12.1-RC2 aarch64 RPI3
    o 12.1-RC2 aarch64 PINE64
    o 12.1-RC2 aarch64 PINE64-LTS
    
    Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without
    console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of
    freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access.  Additionally,
    the root user password is set to root.  It is strongly recommended
    to change the password for both users after gaining access to the
    system.
    
    Installer images and memory stick images are available here:
    
    https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/12.1/
    
    The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.
    
    If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR
    system or on the -stable mailing list.
    
    If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing
    system, use the "releng/12.1" branch.
    
    A summary of changes since 12.1-RC1 includes:
    
    o The loader.efi had been updated to use ioalign for compliance with
      UEFI specification 2.7A.
    
    o A null pointer dereference bug had been fixed.
    
    o A fix to SCTP to reset local variables to their initial values had
      been added.
    
    o The ixgbe(4) driver had been updated to prevent a system crash when
      configuring EEE on X500EM_X devices.
    
    o The sdhci(4) driver had been updated to fix a boot issue on Beaglebone
      SoCs.
    
    A list of changes since 12.0-RELEASE is available in the releng/12.1
    release notes:
    
    https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.1R/relnotes.html
    
    Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be
    updated on an ongoing basis as the 12.1-RELEASE cycle progresses.
    
    === Virtual Machine Disk Images ===
    
    VM disk images are available for the amd64, i386, and aarch64
    architectures.  Disk images may be downloaded from the following URL
    (or any of the FreeBSD download mirrors):
    
    https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/12.1-RC2/
    
    The partition layout is:
    
        ~ 16 kB - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
        ~ 1 GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
        ~ 20 GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)
    
    The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image
    formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB and 165 MB
    respectively (amd64/i386), decompressing to a 21 GB sparse image.
    
    Note regarding arm64/aarch64 virtual machine images: a modified QEMU EFI
    loader file is needed for qemu-system-aarch64 to be able to boot the
    virtual machine images.  See this page for more information:
    
    https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/QEMU
    
    To boot the VM image, run:
    
        % qemu-system-aarch64 -m 4096M -cpu cortex-a57 -M virt  \
    	-bios QEMU_EFI.fd -serial telnet::4444,server -nographic \
    	-drive if=none,file=VMDISK,id=hd0 \
    	-device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \
    	-device virtio-net-device,netdev=net0 \
    	-netdev user,id=net0
    
    Be sure to replace "VMDISK" with the path to the virtual machine image.
    
    === Amazon EC2 AMI Images ===
    
    FreeBSD/amd64 EC2 AMIs are available in the following regions:
    
      eu-north-1 region: ami-0186d6a5fbc8766f2
      ap-south-1 region: ami-0b6bef3551f1b0f70
      eu-west-3 region: ami-062495360178ede5e
      eu-west-2 region: ami-0ccfe49c85e5f8cc0
      eu-west-1 region: ami-0e2730782e7462f98
      ap-northeast-2 region: ami-053ddd72fc1feb00a
      ap-northeast-1 region: ami-06cd2e1981334f254
      sa-east-1 region: ami-08acf6b9b1df41f34
      ca-central-1 region: ami-064249d804369c668
      ap-east-1 region: ami-020c406cb2f52030b
      ap-southeast-1 region: ami-08264f040bf980098
      ap-southeast-2 region: ami-0da02f500e46cac8f
      eu-central-1 region: ami-05458e84d05b820e8
      us-east-1 region: ami-06f6cbd134064befb
      us-east-2 region: ami-0cfe92105f4fee6a8
      us-west-1 region: ami-0bb63fac9c5ec153a
      us-west-2 region: ami-00a29b19544968928
    
    FreeBSD/aarch64 EC2 AMIs are available in the following regions:
    
      eu-north-1 region: ami-0ea4448b9b547107c
      ap-south-1 region: ami-07a9fd713466fe63f
      eu-west-3 region: ami-02e84241865e90f54
      eu-west-2 region: ami-0b707024f9aadb94f
      eu-west-1 region: ami-0abf12b852be4e776
      ap-northeast-2 region: ami-086547036e5a47816
      ap-northeast-1 region: ami-038017fcbf85e7669
      sa-east-1 region: ami-0da52f30dd7d86ef5
      ca-central-1 region: ami-092ee6a89213c15a2
      ap-east-1 region: ami-0db28099cf79bf65d
      ap-southeast-1 region: ami-0852402b94d58adf8
      ap-southeast-2 region: ami-01f869cc877cef54f
      eu-central-1 region: ami-04d008006fdb7e720
      us-east-1 region: ami-0411db3e8715d4352
      us-east-2 region: ami-01e68c35d7ddcac3e
      us-west-1 region: ami-02dcdcd99bf7fde1f
      us-west-2 region: ami-09ce8334b595dff30
    
    === Vagrant Images ===
    
    FreeBSD/amd64 images are available on the Hashicorp Atlas site, and can
    be installed by running:
    
        % vagrant init freebsd/FreeBSD-12.1-RC2
        % vagrant up
    
    === Upgrading ===
    
    The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386
    systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.  Systems running earlier
    FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows:
    
    	# freebsd-update upgrade -r 12.1-RC2
    
    During this process, freebsd-update(8) may ask the user to help by
    merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically
    performed merging was done correctly.
    
    	# freebsd-update install
    
    The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before
    continuing.
    
    	# shutdown -r now
    
    After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new
    userland components:
    
    	# freebsd-update install
    
    It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible,
    especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example,
    FreeBSD 11.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat11x and
    other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
    into the new userland:
    
    	# shutdown -r now
    
    Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove
    stale files:
    
    	# freebsd-update install
    

  • FreeBSD 12.1-RC2 Has Update For UEFI 2.7A, Various Bug Fixes

    We are getting mighty close to the release of FreeBSD 12.1 as the next installment of FreeBSD 12 for 2019. It’s looking like FreeBSD 12.1 will indeed be ready to set sail in early November.

    FreeBSD 12.1 finally provides the LLVM OpenMP library (libomp) as part of the base compiler set, the LLD linker is now also used by i386, BearSSL has made it into the base system, and a variety of other package updates / new hardware support / improvements for FreeBSD 12.1.

• Licensing/Legal

  • Former Catalyst CEO Launches New Open Source Push for Legal Tech

    John Tredennick, founder and former CEO of e-discovery company Catalyst Repository Systems, has accepted the challenge of bringing free, open source legal tech to an industry notoriously known as a slow tech adopter.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • SDSC Launches Open-Source ‘SeedMeLab’

    Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego have launched an open-source software called SeedMeLab, which provides a host of features for researchers across all disciplines to manage and disseminate their data products internally and externally from a personalized and branded data cloud with full ownership and control.

    Under development and rigorous testing for past five years, SeedMeLab is a result of $1.3 million National Science Foundation (NSF) award to create a set of web-based building blocks that lets scientists seamlessly share and access preliminary results and transient data from research on a variety of platforms, including mobile devices. SeedMe is short for ‘Swiftly Encode, Explore and Disseminate My Experiments.’

    “Offered as an open-source software or a managed service from SDSC, SeedMeLab eliminates content fragmentation—that is data, its context, and its discussion—and enables quick reference of data/research context that’s critical during research phase and very useful for long tail use of data products” said SDSC Visualization Group leader Amit Chourasia, principal investigator for the project. “SeedMeLab also boosts team productivity by facilitating knowledge transfer between lab members in a sustained way, and it is now available for researchers to overcome data management gaps that have been an issue in the past. SeedMeLab is an important stepping stone for researchers to realize FAIR data management in practice.”

  • Open Data

    • Senate Bill Would Open Some Weather Agency Models to the Public

      A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate Tuesday would require the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which collects and models scientific data for weather forecasting purposes, to make certain operational weather models publicly available.

      Under the Learning Excellence and Good Examples from New Developers, or LEGEND Act, NOAA would also “periodically review innovations and improvements” to operational models made by third parties and the public. The bill would give NOAA’s administrator authority to utilize certain outside innovations.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Ploopy is an open-source trackball kit (pre-order one or build your own)

      These days there are plenty of ways to interact with computers including mice, touchpads, touchscreens, and pens (and keyboards, of course). But one option that’s largely fallen by the wayside is the trackball.

      While a handful of companies continue to offer “trackball mouse” accessories that are basically mice with a rolling wheel in the side, there aren’t many decent standalone options.

    • Shapeshifter – An Open Source Drum Machine

      Shapeshifter’s design is open-source, with everything available on Github for the curious musical tinkerers out there. The device is built around a PCB with only through-hole components, making assembly easy for even the least experienced enthusiasts out there. A Teensy 3.6 is then slotted into the socket on the board, providing 180MHz of grunt to run the show. It’s an excellent choice, as the Teensy platform has a huge range of libraries which make it simple to work with audio.

      Being open-source, not only is it a cinch to make your own, but there’s plenty of room to remix the design to your personal tastes. There’s even a breadboarding area and the capability to add an expansion card for even more possibilities. Some users have even gone so far as to add displays and filter mods to really open things up.

    • Speeding the Idea-to-Prototype Process with the Arduino Open-Source Ecosystem

    • Open-Source Arm Puts Robotics Within Reach

      In November 2017, we showed you [Chris Annin]’s open-source 6-DOF robot arm. Since then he’s been improving the arm and making it more accessible for anyone who doesn’t get to play with industrial robots all day at work. The biggest improvement is that AR2 had a closed-loop control system, and AR3 is open-loop. If something bumps the arm or it crashes, the bot will recover its previous position automatically. It also auto-calibrates itself using limit switches.

      AR3 is designed to be milled from aluminium or entirely 3D printed. The motors and encoders are controlled with a Teensy 3.5, while an Arduino Mega handles I/O, the grippers, and the servos. In the demo video after the break, [Chris] shows off AR3’s impressive control after a brief robotic ballet in which two AR3s move in hypnotizing unison.

    • Makr Mirror open source Raspberry Pi smart mirror

      Makr Mirror is an open source smart mirror created to provide a “customisable out of the box experience”. The smart mirror It has been launched via Kickstarter this week and is now available to back with earlybird pledges starting from $649, providing a fully finished Raspberry Pi smart mirror with shipping available throughout the United States. Watch the project video below to learn more about the Makr Mirror and its inspiration to provide a fully open source and extensible smart mirror.

    • BCN3D renews commitment to open source releasing files for Sigma & Sigmax R19 3D printers

      Releasing the news into the community, BCN3D asked RepRap pioneer Richard Horne, better known as RichRap, for his input. Deemed a “step beyond” the usual release of machine CAD files by the open source advocate, Horne says ““This release of the Sigma R19 and the Sigmax R19 source files also comes [with] an even greater gift to the open source hardware community, this being the inclusion of the designs and information that BCN3D use to manufacture, test and assemble all aspects of the machine during production.”

      “With this level of commitment to the open source hardware movement,” Horne adds, “it allows others to learn and further benefit from the R19 project and it’s journey from design to stable production 3D printers.”

    • Intel And AMD’s Biggest Cloud Threat May Be An Open X86 Instruction Set

      Meanwhile, academics at Berkeley created the new RISC-V (pronounced “risk-five”) open source instruction set, which is being commercialized by the RISC-V Foundation. Many current and potential Arm server processor designers are evaluating the potential for RISC-V based server processors. They include some large IaaS clouds, like Alibaba Group and Google, plus some chip companies not currently in the server processor design business, like NVIDIA.

    • Open Source VR – Heads-On with HTC Vive Cosmos

      Depending on your position, VR is either dead or dying, or just waiting on that eureka technological leap to fully realise its promised potential. HTC’s Vive Cosmos headset, released this month, might just be that virtual reality saviour. And we got a complete heads-on experience with it.

• Programming/Development

  • Some Tesla EV’s Control Screens Went Dark as Excessive Logging killed the eMMC Flash

    Despite wear-leveling techniques, eMMC flash memories tend to wear out over time as they have limited write cycles.

  • AMD Zen 2 Improvements For LLVM Have Been Held Up For Months By Code Review

    Back in February for LLVM Clang 9.0 was the initial AMD Zen 2 “znver2″ enablement, but like the GCC support at the time it was the very basics. With time GCC picked up Zen 2 scheduler improvements and other work while sadly in the case of LLVM the improvements are still pending.

    Back in August, AMD’s Ganesh Gopalasubramanian sent out the znver2 scheduler model for LLVM for Zen 2 CPUs but a focus on the EPYC 7002 “Rome” processors. “There are few improvements with respect to execution units, latencies and throughput when compared with znver1. The tests that were present for znver1 for llvm-mca tool were replicated. The latencies, execution units, timeline and throughput information are updated for znver2.”

  • Python Add Lists

    This tutorial covers the following topic – Python Add lists. It describes various ways to join/concatenate/add lists in Python. For example – simply appending elements of one list to the tail of the other in a for loop, or using +/* operators, list comprehension, extend(), and itertools.chain() methods.

    Most of these techniques use built-in constructs in Python. However, the one, itertools.chain() is a method defined in the itertools module. You must also see which of these ways is more suitable in your scenario. After going through this post, you can evaluate their performance in case of large lists.

  • StackOverflow Report: (cxcix) stackoverflow python report

• Standards/Consortia

  • Digital pollution

    You couldn’t just roll down the street leaving huge piles of garbage everywhere you go, making life slower for everyone as they climb over your mountains of junk, just to get on with their life. You’d feel bad about it, right?

    That’s how I feel about the digital things we put out into the world: websites, apps, and files.

    I prefer coding everything by hand, because I don’t like the huge piles of garbage that the automated generators create. These programs that generate a website, app, or file for you spit out thousands of lines of unnecessary junk when really only 10 lines are needed. Then people wonder why their site is so slow, and they think it’s their phone or connection’s fault.

  • Open Cybersecurity Alliance: An Open Source Initiative for Enabling Improved Interoperability

    The Open Cybersecurity Alliance (OCA) project, an OASIS Open Project with IBM Security and McAfee as the initial contributors, is comprised of global, like-minded cybersecurity vendors, end users, thought leaders and individuals from around the world who are interested in fostering an open cybersecurity ecosystem and solving the interoperability problem. This would be done via commonly developed code and tooling, using mutually agreed-upon technologies, standards and procedures.

  • Open Cybersecurity Alliance: In Pursuit of Interoperability

    The new alliance was formed under the auspices of OASIS, a consortium driving the development, convergence and adoption of open standards. It was launched as an OASIS Open Project on Oct. 8.

  • what it can learn from nature – open standards – in bio diversity vs monoculture efficiency (why one system to rule them all is a bad idea)

    common (GPL licenced?) formats (rtf, pdf, odt, doc) protocols (http, https, imap) standards yes – but no mono culture of software (one vs many mail providers, one vs many operating systems, one vs many Text Editors, one Mail program/server vs many Mail server).

    Software mono culture means: a more fragile system with central point(s) of failure affecting the whole planet (Spectre Meltdown) = insecurity = instability = bad for the whole ecosystem.

Education

• Demanding ‘Education Justice and Equality,’ Striking Chicago Teachers Call on Mayor to Put Campaign Promises In Writing

  “We mean business. It’s got to be about shifting and transforming the infrastructure of inequity.”

Security (Confidentiality/Integrity/Availabilitiy)

• Best open-source tools for Red Teaming

  A good starting point for building a Red Team toolkit is downloading and installing Kali Linux, as many of the tools mentioned here are included in the default distribution. From there, additional tools can be acquired and added to address specific use cases. When building a toolkit, it’s important not to focus on the network side of the assessment to the exclusion of the physical aspects. A Red Team is also likely expected to try physical attack vectors against the customer’s security and needs to have the appropriate tools for that part of the work as well.

• What is a zero-day vulnerability?

  Chances are pretty good you’ve heard the term zero-day vulnerability. The term conjures up images of post-apocalyptic landscapes, where technology has either hit a singularity-level madness, or has reverted back to the days of CRT monitors and green screens. Max Headroom has returned and sand is the new currency.

  Or not.

  Truth be told, zero day is not even remotely as ominous. It is, however, quite serious. In fact, of all the known vulnerabilities, zero day can often pose the most risk. Why? The reason is in the very definition.

• Trump Campaign Website Left Open to Email Server Hijack

  “The problem is that many developers fail to disable the debug mode after going live, exposing back-end website details like database locations, passwords, secret keys and other sensitive info,” they said.

Defence/Aggression

• The United States Air Force at Incirlik, Our National “Black Eye”

  Current events concerning Turkey and the Kurds in Syria remind me of a conversation I had with a US Air Force colonel almost 17 years ago in a courtroom in Des Moines.

• Blasts in Afghan Mosque Kill 62 as UN Says Violence Across Country Causing ‘Unprecedented’ Level of Civilian Casualties

  “Civilian casualties are totally unacceptable, especially in the context of the widespread recognition that there can be no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.”

• Mexico Gunbattle Underscores How Government Has Ceded to Cartels

  The Mexican city of Culiacan lived under drug cartel terror for 12 hours as gang members forced the government to free a drug lord’s son, but in many parts of Mexico, the government ceded the battle to the gangs long ago.

• America’s Syria Debacle Is Not Trump’s Alone

  Rarely have two sides fought over an issue so ferociously only for both to get it so wrong. First, U.S. President Donald Trump announced almost a year ago that he would be pulling U.S. ground troops out of Syria. He failed to do so. And then, last week, he blessed an invasion into northern Syria by Turkey, which he is now punishing through sanctions for its conduct.

• Thousands in Germany, France Protest Turks’ Push Into Syria

  Thousands of people in the German city of Cologne and in the French capital demonstrated Saturday against Turkey’s offensive in northern Syria.

• Bolsonaro Helping to Fuel Explosion of Violence Against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil

  On the same day that President Jair Bolsonaro made his anti-indigenous speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) released its annual report, “Violence Against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil.” The data collected are from 2018, but the report also includes preliminary information for 2019, and the findings are alarming.

• Trump Blows It Big Time in Syria

  In less than two weeks, President Donald Trump has managed to create a massive and avoidable crisis in Syria. By greenlighting the Turkish invasion of northern Syria, Trump’s policy forced more than 160,000 Syrians to flee their homes. And guess who emerged as the political and military winners? Russia, Iran, and the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

• Turkey Accused of War Crimes After Suspected White Phosphorus Use Against Kurds in Syria

  Multiple sources have reported that white phosphorus-loaded munitions are believed to have been dropped in the border town of Ras al-Ayn after images and video surfaced of civilians, including children, suffering gruesome burns associated with the chemical.

• Japan: Hold Myanmar to Account for Atrocities

  The Japanese government should publicly hold Myanmar to account for military atrocities committed against Rohingya and other ethnic minorities, Human Rights Watch said today. It should discourage Japanese investment that would benefit the military or at the expense of minority groups.

• Lebanon: Security Forces Use Excessive Force Against Protesters

  Lebanon’s security forces used excessive and unnecessary force against protesters in downtown Beirut on October 18, 2019, Human Rights Watch said today. The Internal Security Force’s riot police fired tear gas at thousands of largely peaceful protesters, including children, in downtown Beirut. The army cleared the areas, sometimes using excessive force, as riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at fleeing protesters.

Environment

• Don’t count on capitalism to defeat climate change

  As “United in Science” put it, current efforts need to be “roughly tripled to be aligned with the 2o C goal and increased fivefold to align with the 1.5o C goal” adopted by the 2016 Paris Agreement (emphasis added).”

  Hence we are confronted by the damage already resulting from climate change: more intense and frequent extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, droughts, forest fires, and heat waves; rising sea levels that threaten the homes, lives and livelihoods of millions of people; and melting ice caps and permafrost, among others.

• ‘A Real Movement Boost’: Sam Waterston and Jane Fonda Among Those Arrested Demanding Green New Deal in DC

  This was Waterston’s first-ever time being arrested. The climate crisis, he said, is “worth it.”

• Right Wing Attacks on Greta Thunberg: How Low Can They Go? Canada’s Extremist Network ‘The Rebel’ Tries for the Prize

  My colleague Mat Hope recently laid out an extensive map of the “free market” lobbyist network behind the attacks on Greta Thunberg, including Canada’s far-right propaganda outlet masquerading as journalism, The Rebel.

• Energy

  • Our Tax System Rewards Polluters

    Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who sparked student protests across the globe, had this to tell the UN General Assembly in New York: “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.” | By Charlie Simmons

  • We’re Not “Polarized” Everywhere. In Maine, Democracy and Green Energy Win Big

    How often I hear that in “polarized” America rural voters will reject a green agenda out of hand. For them, green means liberal, tree-hugging snobs, unconcerned about the struggles of real working people.But last week that frame busted for me when I had a chance to speak with Chloe Maxmin, a 27 year-old Maine legislator.Never heard of Chloe Maxmin? | By Frances Moore Lappé

  • Ohio’s Fascist Pro-Nuke Attack on Democracy Comes Due on Monday

    A terrifying series of gestapo-style assaults, petiton buying, bribery, mass media manipulation and systematic intimidation has smacked into the attempt of Ohio citizens to repeal a billion-dollar bailout for two dangerously failing atomic reactors on Lake Erie. The unprecedented assault threatens the referendum process in Ohio and across the nation. 

  • California Can Expect Blackouts For A Decade, Says PG&E CEO

    PG&E has come near universal criticism for its lack of planning in shutting off power and its failure to adequately handle customers’ questions while the outages lasted. PUC president Marybel Batjer blasted utility officials saying, “what we saw play out by PG&E last week cannot be repeated.”

    During the blackouts, Johnson admitted that his company had not been prepared for the impact of the outages, including the crashing of the utility’s website and call centers being overwhelmed with customers’ concerns.

  • How to make use of all of a tree

    Metsä is ultimately controlled by a co-operative belonging to more than 100,000 families who have each owned large chunks of the forest for generations. For every tree harvested, four saplings are planted. These are allowed to grow for a few years and are then thinned to encourage the best specimens to develop vigorously. The thinnings, however, are not wasted. They are sent to the mill. The mature trees, meanwhile, are harvested when they are between six and ten decades old. The consequence of this husbandry, according to Finland’s Natural Resources Institute, is that the annual growth of trees in Finland exceeds the volume of felling and natural loss by over 20m cubic metres, despite the increasing demand for wood.

    As for the mill itself, Metsä’s stated aim is to make best use of every part of a tree, both to maximise the value of its wood and, where possible, to continue to lock up its carbon. To this end, besides the bread-and-butter business of turning out planks and plywood, the firm has come up with several new ideas. Three are of particular interest. One is a better way of converting wood pulp into fibre that can be turned into textiles. A second is to produce plastic-free cardboard cartons which can be used as food containers and then recycled. The third is to find employment for lignin, a by-product of the pulping process which is, at the moment, usually burned.

Finance

• House Democrats Demand Probe Into ‘Suspicious’ Stock Trades Surrounding Economy-Shifting Statements by Trump

  “Multiple large trades, resulting in billions in profit, occurred shortly before geopolitical events or statements by the president of the United States that moved the markets significantly.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Obama’s Endorsement of Trudeau Highlights Class Unity of the 1 Percent

  Former US President Barack Obama endorsed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bid for re-election.For the centrist status quo liberals, this is a moment of elation. Two tried-and-tested leaders that have respect on the international stage for being progressive heartthrobs, supporting each other against a mounting Conservative opposition. Sounds great.Except, it isn’t.

• Gabbard Fires Back at Clinton Suggestion That She’s Russia’s Pawn

  It’s Hillary Clinton vs. Tulsi Gabbard on the sidelines of the 2020 presidential race.

• Where Are the Influentials Who Find Trump Despicable?

  The British political philosopher, John Stuart Mill, was a man of many pithy phrases. Possibly his most widely quoted assertion is that “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”This quote fits the Trump age perfectly. Where are you, Barack Obama? Obama is still polling higher than any other politician, active or

• Only One View at The View: Biden Not So Bad

  When the then–Democratic frontrunner stopped by the table of The View on April 26 for his first interview since announcing his presidential run, he was afforded an honorific rarely applied to US vice presidents: “The legendary Joe Biden!”

• Boris Johnson Insists He’ll Stand Firm Against Brexit Delay

  A defiant Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday that he would resist attempts to delay Britain’s departure from the European Union beyond the end of the month, after Parliament postponed a decision on whether to back his Brexit deal and ordered the government to ask the EU for more time.

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Backs Bernie Sanders at Packed NYC Rally

  “With Alexandria, with Ilhan, and others on board, we’re going to put together a coalition that is going to win and win big,” Sanders said ahead of the event.

• “There Is Definite Hanky-Panky Going On”: The Fantastically Profitable Mystery of the Trump Chaos Trades

  It was not an isolated occurrence. Three days earlier, in the last 10 minutes of trading, someone bought 82,000 S&P e-minis when the index was trading at 2969. That was nearly 4 a.m. on September 11 in Beijing, where a few hours later, the Chinese government announced that it would lift tariffs on a range of American-made products. As has been the typical reaction in the U.S. stock markets as the trade war with China chugs on without any perceptible logic, when the news about a potential resolution of it seems positive, stock markets go up, and when the news about the trade war appears negative, they go down.

• The Antidote to Trump’s Corrupt G7 Deal? Impeachment and Conviction

  President Donald Trump no longer sees fit even to pretend that he is constrained by the law or the U.S. Constitution.It’s hard to imagine a more blatant violation of the Constitution’s anti-corruption provisions than the president steering foreign governments to stay at his luxury resort.

• Jill Stein Challenges Hillary Clinton to Debate After ‘Russian Asset’ Smear

  “It’s past time to give the American people the real debate they deserved in 2016.”

Censorship/Free Speech

• Trilogues on terrorist content: Upload or re-upload filters? Eachy peachy.

  On 17 October 2019, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union (EU) and the European Commission started closed-door negotiations, trilogues, with a view to reaching an early agreement on the Regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online.

  The European Parliament improved the text proposed by the European Commission by addressing its dangerous pitfalls and by reinforcing rights-based and rights-protective measures. The position of the Council of the European Union, however, supported the“proactive measures” the Commission suggested, meaning potential “general monitoring obligations” and in practice, automated detection tools and upload filters to identity and delete “terrorist content”.

• Lawmakers condemn Apple, Activision Blizzard over censorship of Hong Kong protesters

  A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Friday sent letters to two tech giants over accusations that they were censoring pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong to protect business interests in China.

  Members of the House and Senate panned both Apple and Acitivison Blizzard over actions they said suppressed “criticism of the Chinese government in hopes of gaining higher profits.”

Privacy/Surveillance

• Marshall Faculty Member, Alumna to Present at Forensics Conference [Ed:
  They call it “open source”, but it is surveillance]

  Odom and Brunty also authored a paper on their research, titled “Forensic Inspection of Sensitive User Data and Artifacts from Smartwatch Wearable Devices,” which was accepted for publication in the November 2019 issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences. The full article is available to read at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.14109.

• Open-source DNA: an unprecedented crime buster or privacy nightmare?

• New Open Source Platform Lets Cops Remotely Identify Drones

  From public safety reconnaissance to data-gathering to delivery, potential uses for drones are adding up faster than legalized uses. Without the technical ability to remotely locate and identify all drones in a given vicinity, and thereby avoid safety and privacy concerns, the Federal Aviation Administration has put a moratorium on flying drones at night, above people or beyond a visual line of sight without special permits.

• Execs Could Face Jail Time For Privacy Violations

  “Mark Zuckerberg won’t take Americans’ privacy seriously unless he feels personal consequences,” said Wyden, in a press statement. “A slap on the wrist from the FTC won’t do the job, so under my bill he’d face jail time for lying to the government.”

• In the hands of police, facial recognition software risks violating civil liberties

  Facial recognition uses artificial intelligence to track objects and faces; anticipates what’s important to the user; and scans images against databases with millions of faces. It’s touted as one of the most exciting advancements in tech.

  But limited information about how it’s being used by law enforcement, and a disturbing lack of transparency and accountability from the very companies that develop and sell it, mean we need to consider its dangers, including its proven racial and gender bias. In some circumstances, it’s easy to see how the technology could potentially cost a life.

• Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter knocks Zuckerberg for invoking her father while defending Facebook

  Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., reminded Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg what her father stood for after Zuckerberg invoked the civil rights leader while defending the social media company on Thursday.

  During a speech in Washington, D.C., defending the platform, Zuckerberg twice referenced the civil rights era and MLK when advocating for “free expression” on Facebook, drawing a sharp response from Bernice King.

• Report: Home builders ditch Nest products after Google takeover

  Google’s “Nest” smart home division has seen major upheaval this year, and according to a report from Bloomberg, the changes aren’t sitting well with residential builders that formerly integrated Nest projects into their construction projects.

  This year, we finally started seeing results from Nest’s 2018 demotion from a standalone Alphabet company to a merger with Google. “Nest” is no longer a line of products developed by a company or division and now seems to be a general-purpose sub-brand for any of Google’s smart home devices. We’ve seen several existing product lines be rebranded from “Google” to “Google Nest” like the Google Nest Mini (formerly the Google Home Mini), the Google Nest Hub (formerly the Google Home Hub), the Nest Wifi (formerly Google Wifi), and the Google Nest Learning Thermostat (formerly the Nest Learning Thermostat).

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Gawker-Killer Charles Harder is Now Stalking CNN for Trump After a Bias Exposé

  The threatened lawsuit marks Trump’s latest attack on the media, which has included efforts to smear journalists and news outlets; take away White House press passes; and previous threats of legal action. Trump has yet to actually file a lawsuit against any of his media foes, however—and experts suggested Friday that should he actually follow through this time around, he likely won’t be successful. “This is an absolutely ridiculous letter,” lawyer Ted Boutrous, who represented CNN in their successful lawsuit against the Trump administration, wrote on Twitter. “No serious lawyer would ever think of sending such a frivolous letter making such a baseless threat.” First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told Mediaite that the lawsuit would be a “self-evident non-starter,” given that “CNN’s decisions as to what to cover and how to do so are fully protected by the First Amendment.” National security lawyer Bradley Moss suggested that the potential lawsuit is more of “a PR stunt being pursued for political reasons” than an actual attempt to win damages, saying that even if the lawsuit’s claims were “viable”—which Moss says is “doubtful”—“the purpose of any such lawsuit is no doubt completely untethered to the idea of ‘winning’ in court.” “This threat of a possible lawsuit is nothing more than pure theatrics, pure and simple,” Moss told Mediaite.

• “More Aggressive, a Bit More Salacious, and a Bit Less Risk Averse”: An American Sun Is Rising to Take On the Mail—And News Corp.’s Own Post

  There’s a British tabloid war brewing in New York. Rupert Murdoch’s famously fearsome Sun has been plotting a U.S. incursion, laying the groundwork for a Manhattan-based digital American edition that aims to capitalize on the momentum that the über-salacious sensation sheet has been enjoying in its native market. The news trickled out via a job posting, for a head of audience, first noticed on Wednesday by U.K. trade publication the Press Gazette. Several sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed it to me independently, one of them noting, “It is fairly self-evident that there are some plans to better serve the U.S. audience of the Sun.” The job advertisement calls those plans “ambitious.” Another source said, “The intention is to start pretty small, as a toe-in-the-water exercise, and see how far they can push it. I don’t think you’ll see a super-grandiose launch with a lot of hubris. It’s not gonna be like the Daily,” Murdoch’s similarly ambitious but ultimately failed iPad “newspaper,” which lifted off with a splashy event at the Guggenheim in 2011 starring Murdoch and Apple’s Eddy Cue.

• Pakistan Denies Entry to Director of a Journalism Watchdog

  Steven Butler, the Asia program director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, was traveling to Pakistan to attend a human rights conference when he was stopped upon entry in the eastern city of Lahore. While Mr. Butler had a valid Pakistani visa, immigration officials told him that the interior ministry had put him on a “stop list” before confiscating his passport. Mr. Butler was forced onto a flight to Doha, Qatar, where he was then placed on another plane to Washington, D.C., C.P.J. said in a statement.

  “Pakistani authorities’ move to block Steven Butler from entering the country is baffling and is a slap in the face to those concerned about press freedom in the country,” said Joel Simon, C.P.J.’s executive director. “Pakistani authorities should give a full explanation of their decision to bar Butler from entering and correct this error. If the government is interested in demonstrating its commitment to a free press, it should conduct a swift and transparent investigation into this case.”

Civil Rights/Policing

• Undocumented workers gets busted, but employers often don’t. What we learned from 6 ICE raids

  Court documents allege clear signs the companies knew who they were hiring.

  But the four companies targeted in the operation have yet to face charges for hiring undocumented employees — and similar cases from across the country show they could avoid prosecution altogether.

• Torture, Sexual Abuse Prompt Calls for Reform of Nigeria’s Islamic Schools

  “The core of the Almajiris [Islamic schools] is the study of the Quran and, in many cases, the actual memorization of the Quran. By and large, schools do not include in the curriculum the kinds of things that we would see as necessary for participation in modern life. The focus is really on religion,” Campbell told VOA.

• Police free hundreds of males, some chained and beaten, from Nigerian school in third raid this month

  “The second camp is the dangerous place,” a police source said. “The children were molested there.”

  The source said the most unruly students and some newcomers were placed in the second building. Students at the first school were sometimes taken to the second building for abuse.

  Islamic schools, called Almajiris, are common in the mostly Muslim north of Nigeria. Muslim Rights Concern, a local organization, estimates about 10 million children attend them.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• FTC Democrat raises concerns that government is ‘captured’ by large tech companies

  “All too often, the government is too captured by those incumbents that use their power to dictate their preferred policies,” Chopra said, discussing his concerns around the unprecedented power and strength of Big Tech. He did not name any specific agency or company.

Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Google Play Removes Perfect Player After “Bogus” Copyright Complaint

  • Guns N’ Roses Fans ‘Fear’ That the Band is Setting a Piracy Trap