While the decision will need approval from the full council on 23rd November, Dr Florian Roth, leader of the Green Party in Munich, says committee decisions are normally simply confirmed by the council, without change. However, he said the Green Party would be pushing for a detailed discussion and consideration of the decision by the full council.
"I think it's a great mistake," adding it would place unnecessary burden and cost on Munich at a time it was already restructuring its IT department and implementing new laws on e-government.
"I have the feeling that the IT department don't want to do this, but they have to do it because the two parties who have the majority in the government want this."
After more than a year in testing, CrossOver's ChromeOS support is now finally open to everyone, allowing Chromebook owners to run Windows apps on their computers running Google's ChromeOS.
I'm announcing the release of the 4.13.12 kernel.
All users of the 4.13 kernel series must upgrade.
The updated 4.13.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.13.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st...
If you have been trying to use the RADV Radeon Vulkan driver that's packaged for Ubuntu but find it not working, chances are it's caused by Canonical's patches for Mir support.
RADV developer David Airlie of Red Hat today sent out a notice that Canonical's Mir patches in their Mesa packages are breaking the RADV driver. Ubuntu isn't shipping Vulkan drivers by default yet but ANV and RADV can be easily obtained on Ubuntu Linux systems via sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers for the RADV/ANV drivers built against their stock version of Mesa.
Broadcom's Eric Anholt has remained busy in bringing up the VC5 Gallium3D driver.
Anholt has added occlusion query support to this driver for next-gen Broadcom graphics hardware as well as improving the debugging output, fixing some crashes, and fixing other OpenGL functionality with this driver. It's been a busy time for him in bringing up this new driver stack as well as continuing to maintain the VC4 driver that continues to be most notably used by the current range of Raspberry Pi ARM boards.
We are just one week into November and already there are a number of patches volleyed onto the mailing list for continuing to optimize the RADV open-source Radeon Vulkan driver.
Earlier this year patches were posted and merged for VCN video decode support with RadeonSI/Gallium3D while now patches are coming from AMD for wiring up VCN video encoding support.
VCN is a new media block with the upcoming Raven Ridge (Zen+Vega) APUs for both video encode and decode. In the past there was UVD for video decoding and VCE for video encoding while now VCN offers both multimedia encode/decode unified functionality via this new implementation. As mentioned, the VCN video decode bits are already in Mesa while the video encode pieces are now under review.
Users who work with large projects will be happy to see we resolved a long-standing performance issue related to spawning Git processes to fetch Git status. This manifested in periodic pauses of Atom’s UI and we’ve seen a noticeably smoother experience.
The autocomplete-plus default provider now computes suggestions natively and on a separate thread. This means no memory overhead and no threat to Atom’s responsiveness. Read more in our in-depth blog post on Atom’s new concurrency-friendly buffer implementation.
GitHub updated their open-source and cross-platform Atom hackable text editor to version 1.22, a monthly bugfix release that promises to add an extra layer of performance and usability improvements.
Atom 1.22 is here to address a long-standing performance issue for those who work with large projects. The issue was related to the spawning of Git processes that fetch the Git status, and it would apparently occur at times.
Today we are happy to announce a major update for our on-premise solutions – ONLYOFFICE Enterprise Edition and ONLYOFFICE Community Edition – and we hope you’ll find these changes useful.
This is a small, action / adventure, platform game targeted at young children, primarily 4-8 year olds. The main goal of the game is to have fun.
Captain Holetooth is a pirate who lives in a rich world with amazing characters. His goal is to defend a kind of “magic candy” and to collect surplus sweets so that children don’t eat too much of them. The world of Captain Holetooth has a deep backstory (almost like J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) and the origin of the setting is the developer’s work on children’s books.
Feral Interactive has announced today that Hitman – Game of the Year Edition has released on macOS and Linux. The stealth-action hit was developed by Io-Interactive on PC and consoles, and will be brought to macOS and Linux by Feral.
It’s no easy task to create a sequel that’s not only good, but better than the previous game. Hand of Fate 2 [GOG, Steam, Official Site] is actually fantastic.
I'm really excited for the new System Shock from Nightdive Studios and their commitment to Linux is awesome to see too. Check out their latest update.
If you've been living under a rock, Nightdive Studios ran a Kickstarter campaign to completely reboot System Shock with a new game. Their crowdfunding campaign was succesful with $1.3M gained from pledges.
For those wanting more usage statistics about Linux, the X-Plane flight simulator reports 1.4% of their users are currently running Linux.
Here are the results of the latest usage data as of 05 October, 2017. If you'd like to compare, here is the last usage data result from February 2017.
It took me a bit longer than I would have liked to compile the graphs while working around the 11.10 beta, but we now have a handful of easy-to-digest charts, plus the raw data at the bottom of the post for those that are interested.
Here are my thoughts on KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE.
Please be sure to give EzeeLinux a ‘Like’ on Facebook! Thanks! Also check out http://www.ezeelinux.com for more about Linux.
Tuesday, 7 November 2017. Today KDE releases a Bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.11.3. Plasma 5.11 was released in October with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.
I’ve launched two months ago a fundraising for the GtkSourceView library. I intend to write a report every two months, so that you can follow what’s going on in that project, and at the same occasion I can explain in more details some facets of the fundraising.
Way back in 2011 people were discussing usage of modern GCC features like __attribute__((cleanup())). A few years later it found it’s way into our API’s in GLib with one small caveat, only GCC/Clang support (so no MSVC/Xlc/SunProC). Since I couldn’t care less about MSVC I’ve been using it for years (and really Microsoft, you could contribute more to the mental health of open source programmers by modernizing MSVC).
Just a minor improvement to the Parrot Security 3.x series of the Linux-based operating system used by security researchers for various pentesting and ethical hacking tasks, Parrot Security OS 3.9 is here with all the latest security patches and bug fixes released upstream in the Debian GNU/Linux repositories.
But it also looks like it ships with some important new features that promise to make the ethical hacking computer operating system more secure and reliable. One of these is a new sandbox system based on the Firejail SUID program and designed to add an extra layer of protection to many apps, protecting users from 0day attacks.
Imagine being able to place your cellphone into a small little dock, and be able to run your favourite Linux distribution on a monitor with proper mouse and keyboard, use it as you desire, then switch over to android; still using the mouse and keyboard. Once all was said and done, you could undock the phone, and put it back in your pocket and walk away...
This ladies and gentlemen, is Linux on Galaxy, a new application as part of the new Samsung Ecosystem, DeX.
Users who own a DeX compatible phone, such as the S8, S8+ or Note 8, have the option of picking up this new technology, which allows the usage of your phone as a sort of PC. With the addition of 'Linux on Galaxy', users could run Ubuntu, or Linux Mint, on their phones. While it seems like something so simple and obvious that we should have; it also is going to have much larger implications for the technology world as well.
One of the most compelling reasons to use Linux is its ability to deliver a secure computing experience. There are some specialized secure Linux distros for security that add extra layers and make sure that you complete your work anonymously and privately. Some of the popular secure Linux distros for 2017 are Tails, Whoix, Kodachi, etc.
The Arch Linux devs announced today that they are officially terminating support for 32-bit architectures, removing all i686 packages from the repositories by the end of the month.
At the beginning of the year, on January 25, Arch Linux's Bartà âomiej Piotrowski announced that they are phasing out 32-bit (i686) support for the operating system beginning March 1, 2017, no longer building monthly ISO snapshots that support 32-bit installation.
Arch Linux 2017.02.01 was the last monthly ISO snapshot released with 32-bit support, as all ISO snapshots that followed included only 64-bit packages, but existing 32-bit installations were still supported for a 9-month period during which users were had to move to 64-bit.
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced it is collaborating with Orange, a major multinational telecom operator, to build a modern infrastructure for an agile, responsive network aimed at bringing innovations to customers more quickly and scaling out services dynamically. They are collaborating in open source community projects to accelerate technology innovation in network virtualization, while Orange is using Red Hat OpenStack Platform for its network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) deployments.
Bodhi 3.0.0 was released and deployed to production a few weeks ago, but I wanted to give it the dignity of a blog post since it is a pretty significant milestone in the project's history. Bodhi 3.0.0 is the first Bodhi release that fully supports a non-RPM content type with the addition of the ability to mash modules.
Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth dubbed the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS operating system as the "Bionic Beaver," but he didn't reveal any of the plans for the next long-term supported release of one of the most popular free operating systems in the world, which Canonical will maintain for the next five years.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) is in early development stages, which means that the daily build ISO image is currently based on the stable branch, Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark). As such, it's running the Linux 4.13 kernel and uses the latest GNOME 3.26 desktop environment.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will support color emoji in desktop apps, a move that will let Ubuntu users both see emoji and use an emoji picker to enter glyphs.
Commell’s 3.5-inch “LS-37K” SBC supports 6th or 7th Gen Core S-series and Xeon-E3-1200 v5 CPUs with up to 16GB DDR4, triple displays, 2x SATA, and mSATA.
Commell announced a 3.5-inch SBC with Intel’s 6th (“Skylake”) or 7th (“Kaby Lake”) Gen Core S-series and Xeon-E3-1200 v5 CPUs. The LS-37K’s layout and feature set are similar to that of its Skylake based LE-37I and LE-37G 3.5-inch boards. As usual, no OS support is listed, but Linux should run with no problem.
Kingdy’s compact, fanless “TB-045S” and -20 to 70€°C ready ““TB-045W” systems run Yocto on an i.MX6, and offer 9-36V power, up to 32GB eMMC, and mini-PCIe.
Kingdy, an embedded manufacturer company of Taiwan-based Hong Jue, has announced two flavors of a compact, 130 x 92 x 42mm embedded computer and remote management field controller designed for industrial automation applications. The 0 to 60€°C range TB-045S and otherwise identical, -20 to 70€°C resistant TB-045W, are equipped with dual-core Dual Lite or quad-core Quad versions of NXP’s 1GHz Cortex-A9 i.MX6 SoC.
Aetina’s “ACE-N261” Nano-ITX carrier for the Jetson TX1/TX2 COMs offers GbE, HDMI, 2x USB 3.0, 2x CAN, 2x mini-PCIe, and optional -20 to 70€°C support.
In April, Aetina announced a Nano-ITX ACE-N620 carrier board for Nvidia’s Jetson TX2 COM, as well as its earlier, pin-compatible Jetson TX1. The company has now announced a more feature-rich ACE-N261 Nano-ITX (120 x 120mm) carrier aimed at machine vision.
Commell’s 3.5-inch “LS-37K” SBC supports 6th or 7th Gen Core S-series and Xeon-E3-1200 v5 CPUs with up to 16GB DDR4, triple displays, 2x SATA, and mSATA.
Commell announced a 3.5-inch SBC with Intel’s 6th (“Skylake”) or 7th (“Kaby Lake”) Gen Core S-series and Xeon-E3-1200 v5 CPUs. The LS-37K’s layout and feature set are similar to that of its Skylake based LE-37I and LE-37G 3.5-inch boards. As usual, no OS support is listed, but Linux should run with no problem.
Axiomtek’s Linux-friendly “ICO120-83D” IoT gateway runs on a dual-core Apollo Lake Celeron, and offers mini-PCIe expansion and extended temp support.
Axiomtek has launched an ICO120-83D Internet of Things gateway that runs on Intel’s dual-core, 1.1GHz Celeron N3350 SoC with 6W TDP. The system has the same Apollo Lake processor and fanless DIN-rail design as the recent ICO300-83B gateway, but with a more compact 125 x 100 x 31mm. 0.3 k footprint and a reduced feature set.
When we talk about open source hardware, we often think about the Raspberry Pi and other community-backed single board computers running Linux. Yet all these communities were modeled on the success of the 14-year-old Arduino project, in which Linux has been only tangentially involved, and only over the past four years. The two platforms should grow closer, however, now that Arduino has extended its Arduino Create development environment to support Linux on x86 platforms.
With the new Linux support, “users are now able to program their Linux devices as if they were regular Arduinos,” says Arduino. Arduino Create works in concert with embedded Linux distributions – initially Ubuntu or Intel’s Wind River Pulsar Linux – to let developers load Arduino sketches to control lower level interfaces to sensors and other Internet of Things peripherals.
My love for Android Games has always been infinite. Whenever I am free, you can be very sure I am playing Games on my Android Smartphone. And even among those, the ones that always keep you on your toes and provide you with some high energy fun are the Android Racing Games. So here in this article let’s see the Top Free Android Racing games of 2017.
Back in 1983, Richard Stallman already begun his GNU project and two years later he started the Free Software Foundation. In 1989 he then wrote the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). After Torvalds published version 0.99 using the GNU GPL, GNU components were integrated with Linux and it became a fully functional and free operating system. Torvalds later admitted, “Making Linux GPL’d was definitely the best thing I ever did.”
Many of today’s most promising new enterprise technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Google’s Tensorflow), Containers (Docker Swarm and Kubernetes), Big Data (Apache Spark, Akka and Apache Kafka) are based on free, open-source technology. Open-source software licenses give developers and users freedoms they would not otherwise have. Its source code is freely available to anyone. Therefore, it can be modified and distributed without requiring attribution, payment or anything owed to the original creator.
Commenting on open source’s wide acceptance within today’s computer industry, Dr. Ronald D. Eaglin Chair of Daytona State’s School of Engineering Technology, says, “It’s all open source now. I build all my classes on open source software.”
Uber’s artificial-intelligence lab is less than a year old, but researchers there have already built their own programming language for AI applications—and now they’re releasing it for anyone to use. Quite a generous move for a company known more for its hard-nosed business tactics than for handing out in-house innovations to potential competitors.
How quickly has Kubernetes’ popularity soared? By most accounts, very quickly. Earlier this year, Cloud Native Computing Foundation executive director Dan Kohn penned a blog post that dug into that claim. People regularly tout Kubernetes as one of the highest velocity projects ever in open source history: Does the data back it up?
As Kohn found, there may not be a single definitive metric, but they all point in the same conclusion: “You can pick your preferred statistic, such as that Kubernetes is in the top 0.00006% of the projects on GitHub,” Kohn wrote. “I prefer to just think of it as one of the fastest moving projects in the history of open source.”
Blockchain development is a novelty in the tech world, but has been around long enough to see platforms such as Ethereum give birth to a myriad of decentralized applications. These dApps aim to solve some of the world’s problems, challenges, or to create new marketplaces.
Hyperledger is a blockchain project started by the Linux Foundation in January of 2016 as an enterprise-level development framework. This open-source collaboration has attracted the support of many leaders across various industries that want to utilize blockchain technology to facilitate interconnectivity between businesses.
Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are being developed and adopted at a rapid pace. This area has become a hot topic in 2017. Interestingly, many of the more prominent tools are Open Source. The technologies are being used with a wide variety of applications, like search, data mining, spam detection, character recognition, autonomous vehicles, online recommendations
Many of those Open Source tools offer a Python interface to allow developers to jump in quickly. For example, there are core libraries like NumPy, SciPy and SciKit. Keras is a Deep Learning library and TensorFlow is Google’s Open Source Machine Learning tool.
With NFV open source, service providers can push network innovation and reduce network costs. But service providers will need to adjust to a new open source culture.
The Open Source Initiative€® (OSI), dedicated to increasing the awareness and adoption of open source software, is delighted to welcome DigitalOcean as a Premium Sponsor. DigitalOcean, a cloud services platform designed for developers, will provide both financial support and hosting for several OSI community-driven services.
A Forbes' Cloud 100 company, DigitalOcean's active engagement and investment in open source software highlights how today's most innovative and successful companies have recognized the value of, and opportunities within, open communities of collaboration. The company regularly sponsors open source related MeetUps and Hackathons—including their popular "Hacktoberfest", develops tutorials on open source technologies and techniques, maintains and contributes to a number of open source projects, and of course offers hosting to open source projects and foundations.
The fifth annual Seattle GNU/Linux Conference (better known as SeaGL), held Oct. 6–7 at Seattle Central College, was again a great event. Seattle even rolled out the welcome committee for us with penguins on the train and geek-oriented tagging posted around town.
The tenth (!!) annual annual R/Finance conference will take in Chicago on the UIC campus on June 1 and 2, 2018. Please see the call for papers below (or at the website) and consider submitting a paper.
We are once again very excited about our conference, thrilled about who we hope may agree to be our anniversary keynotes, and hope that many R / Finance users will not only join us in Chicago in June -- and also submit an exciting proposal.
So read on below, and see you in Chicago in June!
At the OpenStack Summit in Sydney, Australia, Juniper announced multiple enhancements to its Contrail Cloud Software Defined Networking (SDN) platform. Among the enhancements are integrated AppFormix visibility capabilities and integrated support for Red Hat's Ceph Storage platform.
Scientists are increasingly turning to the open source infrastructure to support the enormous data their experiments yield
This morning, Google alerted me to a reputable site mentioning “Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Edition.”
Richard Stallman founded the free software movement 34 years ago and announced the GNU Project, the thrust of which wasn’t software’s cost but its ability to be shared, changed and shared again. One offshoot of the project was GNU/Linux, software created and inspired by the movement’s open-source principles.
CWDS is hosting Stallman because it, too, is trying to foster innovation in state IT while freely sharing the products of its best efforts with the city, county and other state agencies it supports through tech.
Given the continuously evolving state of open-source code compilers, especially for the newer AMD Zen "znver1" architecture, here is the latest installment of our compiler benchmarks. Tested for this article from and AMD EPYC 7601 processor were GCC 7.2, GCC 8.0.0, LLVM Clang 5.0, and LLVM Clang 6.0 SVN.
An Intel developer is looking to merge the -march=cannonlake support for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is proud to release its next version of our REUSE practices designed to make computers understand software copyrights and licenses.
The REUSE practices help software developers make simple additions to license headers which make it easier for a computer to determine what license applies to the various parts of a programs source code. By following the REUSE practices, software developers can ensure their intent to license software under a particular license is understood and more readily adhered to.
Together with the updated practices, which mostly clarify and make explicit some points, the FSFE is also releasing a set of developer tools and examples which show the REUSE practices in action. Three example repositories, together with an example walkthrough of the process used to make the cURL project REUSE compliant, are complemented with a simple tool to validate whether a program is REUSE compliant.
One decade after Apple bought out CUPS as the de facto printing system for Unix-like operating systems, they are changing the code license.
The CUPS Common UNIX Printing System up to now had been developed under the GPLv2 license while now Apple will be switching it to the Apache 2.0 software license.
There’s been quite a bit of interest recently about the petition by Software Freedom Law Center to cancel the Software Freedom Conservancy’s trademark. A number of people have asked my views on it, so I thought I’d write up a quick blog on my experience with SFLC and Conservancy both during my time as Debian Project Leader, and since.
It’s clear to me that for some time, there’s been quite a bit of animosity between SFLC and Conservancy, which for me started to become apparent around the time of the large debate over ZFS on Linux. I talked about this in my DebConf 16 talk, which fortunately was recorded (ZFS bit from 8:05 to 17:30).
Codasip, the leading supplier of RISC-V€® embedded CPU cores, today announced its partnership with Avery Design Systems, the provider of cutting-edge verification intellectual property (VIP) solutions for SoC and IP companies.
The ROCm developers wanted a platform that supports a number of different programming languages and is flexible enough to interface with different GPU-based hardware environments (Figure 1). As you will learn later in this article, ROCm provides direct support for OpenCL, Python, and several common C++ variants. One of the most innovative features of the platform is the Heterogeneous-Compute Interface for Portability (HIP) tool, which offers a vendor-neutral dialect of C++ that is ready to compile for either the AMD or CUDA/NVIDIA GPU environment.
If you logged into Twitter on Tuesday to rant about the news of the day, from various elections across the United States to the launch of the Xbox One X, you may have noticed some more breathing room in your rants. That's because the social networking service's character limit has now officially doubled for all of its Roman-alphabet users.
A weeks-long test began in late September, allowing select, random users to post 280 characters per tweet instead of the default 140-character limit. (Both classes of users could still save on characters by way of shortened URLs and attached images.) In extending that change to almost all users, Twitter Product Manager Aliza Rosen published a statement that claims, among other things, that the test didn't result in an endless wave of fully packed 280-character posts.
Just over 21 years ago I took a summer job between university courses. Looking back at it now I find it surprising that I was doing contract work. These days I tend to think that I'm not really cut out for that kind of thing but, when you're young, you tend to think you can do anything. Maybe it's just a case of having enough confidence, even if that can get you into trouble sometimes.
The software itself was called Zig Zag - Ancient Greeks and was written for the Acorn RISC OS platform that, in 1996, was still widely used in schools. Acorn had dominated the education market since the introduction of the BBC Micro in the early 1980s but the perception of the PC, particularly in its Windows incarnation, as an "industry standard" continuously undermined Acorn's position with decision-makers in education. Although Acorn released the RiscPC in 1994 with better-than-ever PC compatibility, it wasn't enough to halt the decline of the platform and, despite a boost from the launch of a StrongARM CPU upgrade in 1996, the original lifespan of the platform ended in 1998.
The history of the platform isn't really very relevant, except that Acorn's relentless focus on the education market, while potentially lucrative for the company, made RISC OS software seem a bit uncool to aspiring students and graduates. Perhaps that might explain why I didn't seem to face much competition when I applied for a summer job writing an educational game.
[...]
I've put the source code for the Sprite Viewer application up in a Mercurial repository. Maybe I'll create a binary package for it at some point. Maybe someone else will find it useful, or perhaps it will bring back fond memories of 1990s educational computing.
While most ransomware hits Windows users, the report found that other platforms aren't immune. Attackers have also been targeting mobile devices, particularly Android.
Performance was challenged from the June cyber-attack of which the financial impact is in the range of USD 250-300m.
The only thing that would have been nice is that after the project had been finished and the chip deployed, that someone from Intel would have told me, just as a courtesy, that MINIX 3 was now probably the most widely used operating system in the world on x86 computers. That certainly wasn't required in any way, but I think it would have been polite to give me a heads up, that's all.
Some vendors take longer than others to update for critical vulnerabilities - case in point is Google's Android mobile operating system. On Nov. 6, Google released an Android update patching a vulnerability that IT vendors have known about for months.
Josh and Kurt talk about Amazon Key and actionable advice.
Magento released important updates for Magento 2.x. However, with being so close to the major holiday sales season, these updates should be tested with your theme and extensions on a backup installation before you use them in a production environment.
A sub-editor was found dead at a lodge at Velliparamba here on Sunday night. The deceased was identified as Nithin Das (26), sub editor with Media One news channel.
Nithin, who hailed from Thoppumpadi in Ernakulam district, was living in a rented room near his office at Velliparamba. He was found hanging at around 8.30 pm on Sunday. The police suspect it to be a case of suicide. The incident came to light when his colleagues checked his room as Nithin did not turn up for evening shift and did not respond to the calls and messages of his friends.
As information warfare becomes a hotter topic, journalists have become bigger targets for repression and even assassination, a troubling trend that is spreading across the globe, reports veteran war correspondent Don North.
Japan is not against the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and may also help in the project, said Japanese Ambassador Takashi Kurai on Tuesday at a public talk titled ‘Japan-Pakistan Relationship: 65 Years and Beyond’.
The weekend’s big splash in musical blockchains was the news that indie pop star Björk is selling her forthcoming album, Utopia, for bitcoins. And there’s something called Audiocoins. Let’s see what doing the obvious basic tyre-kicking reveals …
President Trump has blamed NAFTA for eliminating manufacturing jobs for U.S. workers but it also caused economic dislocation in Mexico, driving some desperate Mexicans northward to the U.S...
Canada is legalizing marijuana and leaving it up to provincial governments to regulate its sale and distribution. The government of British Columbia asked for comments on the best way to manage the province's marijuana market. In a regulatory filing, IBM argued that the province should use a blockchain to manage its legal marijuana market.
The blue wave that crashed Virginia's suburbs on Tuesday could also -- if it extends into the 2018 midterm elections -- carry Democrats into control of the House.
Ralph Northam's victory in the Virginia governor's race highlighted a night of Democratic wins in mayoral and legislative races fueled by higher turnout than most non-presidential elections and much stronger performance by the party's candidates in suburban areas.
Otherwise, Ds will gain in a big way in 2018 and may well gain control of the whole government. The only thing Trump can do to stop this wave would be to restart war with North Korea. The GOP needs to impeach Trump ASAP, before that can happen. How about next Tuesday? That should give every member of the GOP ample time to reflect. Oh, and about Pence? Let him know he’s supposed to carry out the will of Congress, not impose despotic rule.
A small bit of good news from our lol-worthy Justice Department: federal prosecutors have decided they're no longer interested in jailing someone for laughing at the Attorney General. That isn't the entirety of the story (or the dropped charges, for that matter), so here's a little background.
SESTA amends Section 230 in three ways:
1) It would enable sex trafficking victims to bring civil lawsuits against online services for publishing sex trafficking promotions from third parties.
2) It would enable state attorneys’ general to bring enforcement actions against online services for publishing sex trafficking promotions from third parties.
3) It would expand the scope of the federal sex trafficking crime, exposing online services to greater risk of prosecution for publishing sex trafficking promotions from third parties.
Other SESTA provisions include a policy statement that courts should interpret Section 230 to enable vigorous enforcement of anti-sex trafficking laws and a retroactivity provision extending post-SESTA rules to pre-SESTA activity.
So we've already talked a lot about the problems of the "knowledge" standard in the amended version of SESTA, in that it's way too broad, and leaves smaller sites completely adrift in figuring out if they're on the right side of the law. But there were other changes in the amended version of SESTA as well -- some good, and some bad. Law professor Eric Goldman has an excellent post detailing the changes, but I want to focus on one really perplexing one.
Theo Stojanov is a doctoral candidate in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University, where his work focuses on the sociology of cultural production. His research involves a critical examination of the socio-technical aspects of the creative industries and their production practices, policies, and people. He worked closely with Paul Grant of New York University in setting up the debate on film censorship in Myanmar and rest of south-east Asia. Mizzima's Subir Bhaumik caught up with Mr Stojanov on the side-lines of the Memory 2017 film festival.
President Trump is due to visit China tomorrow as part of his Asia tour. On Oct 25, he congratulated President Xi on his “extraordinary elevation” after China’s 19th Party Congress consecrated Xi Jinping as the most powerful leader since Mao.
Donald Trump has thumbed his nose at China’s draconian censorship regime as he touched down in Beijing on the latest leg of a 12-day east Asian tour undertaken against a backdrop of rumbling tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Vietnamese and Singaporean journalists do not enjoy the same freedoms as their Western colleagues, but that does not mean that they cannot practice critical journalism: By reporting on stories that the general public express concern about on social media as well as 'soft' human-interest stories, journalists can indirectly address problems in society and put pressure on the authorities, new research from the University of Copenhagen shows.
Freedom of speech and press freedom are cornerstones of open societies in which journalists and citizens are allowed to scrutinise those in power. In the West, these freedoms are the norm, and this often prompts Western politicians and journalists to demand that journalists who are subjected to censorship be granted the same rights as their Western colleagues. And the sooner the better.
One of the important elements of the First Amendment, and its protections of opinion, is that it opens up all kinds of debates -- from the political to the scientific. Indeed, the very nature of scientific research in academia is one of constant debate between researchers with different viewpoints. This has gone on for centuries. And, yet, it appears that at least one scientist has apparently decided that the standard nature of scientific debate is now defamatory. He's almost certainly wrong, but the details of this case are disturbing. Stanford professor Mark Jacobson apparently was less than happy to see criticism from another scientist, Christopher Clack. Rather than just respond with another paper, Jacobson has sued Clack and the National Academy of Sciences for defamation in the Superior Court in Washington DC (more on that in a moment).
The complaint is worth reading as it lays out the path to this dispute in a pretty straightforward way. Jacobson and some other authors published an article in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in late 2015. Early in 2016, Clack communicated with Jacobson via phone and email to better understand some of the assumptions in the original paper. Clack (and others) then published a "rebuttal" article (also in PNAS) to Jacobson's original article. Jacobson, from the complaint, appears to be upset that Clack never requested "a time series of model output from the Jacobson Article" or any information other than what was discussed via phone and email in early 2016.
It meant feeds from the BBC, the Economist, the New York Times and the Guardian all began with a comment mentioning the word fake.
I did not realise how this has been weighing me down, until the threat has been lifted today. I have never claimed to be entirely without fault, and I would ask you to refrain from any comment here which detracts from the amicable spirit of the joint statement. It is a time for celebration not recrimination, and please confine any rudeness to remarks about me.
In an effort to “take a more aggressive stance,” Twitter announced on Nov. 3 that it will enact new and revised rules later this month to address graphic content, unwanted sexual advances, violent organizations, spam and “hateful” symbols and imagery on the social network.
On Monday, CDT Chinese reposted a letter circulating on Weibo which purportedly shows singer Katy Perry’s pledge to behave harmoniously during a prospective Chinese tour. "Fruit Sister" has performed in China in the past, but occasionally stumbled on moral or political sensitivities there. The letter includes promises to "observe the laws and regulations in China, comply with the management of the regulators," and not to "add or change any content without authorization," "do or say anything religious or political," or "participate in any activities that jeopardize China’s unity and integrity."
This past weekend at the Scaling Bitcoin 2017 conference at Stanford University, two individuals discussed a new method of providing the Bitcoin network with more censorship resistance by utilizing weak signal radio communications. Stanford University’s Elaine Ou, and the computer scientist, Nick Szabo, introduced a project they are testing which secures consensus proofs with weak signal radio propagation.
Harvey Weinstein hired several private security agencies to investigate several women accusing him of sexual assault and the journalists working on the stories, the New Yorker's Ronan Farrow reported Monday.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave Harvey Weinstein information that facilitated his hiring of an Israeli firm to investigate several women accusing him of sexual assault and the journalists working on the stories, Israel's Channel 2 reported on Tuesday.
The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow reported Monday that among a number of firms hired by Weinstein was the Israeli firm Black Cube, whose employees are self-advertised as "highly experienced and trained in Israel’s elite military and governmental intelligence units." According to the contract, signed in July, Weinstein explicitly hired Black Cube to prevent the New York Times and the New Yorker's original reporting on Weinstein, as well as actress Rose McGowan's book detailing his alleged abuse.
According to Channel 2, Ehud Barak unwittingly played a role in leading Weinstein to Black Cube. Weinstein even invited Barak and the head of Black Cube to a Hillary Clinton fundraiser.
The problem with the bug, for Facebook, was not that all the information was lumped together—it was that it had mistakenly shown users the lump existed. The extent of the connections Facebook builds around its users is supposed to be visible only to the company itself.
"They're not [sic] storing the image, they're storing the link and using artificial intelligence and other photo-matching technologies," she said.
They will then be asked to send the pictures they are concerned about to themselves on Messenger while the e-safety commissioner’s office notifies Facebook of their submission. Once Facebook gets that notification, a community operations analyst will access the image and hash it to prevent future instances from being uploaded or shared.
The private prison company has a strategy for embedding itself more deeply into state criminal justice systems.
CoreCivic, Inc., the private prison company, will release its quarterly earnings report tomorrow, Nov. 8, to investors, which will mark an extraordinary one-year turnaround for an industry that depends on keeping people trapped in the criminal justice system.
Just over a year ago, the company — then named Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA — was in dire straits. The Justice Department had announced a plan to phase out its private prison contracts, and as its stocks cratered, CCA rebranded itself with the airily vague “CoreCivic” moniker. However, under President Trump, CCA/CoreCivic’s fortunes have reversed. Its stock has climbed in response to the Trump administration soliciting new private prison contracts and adopting policies that promise to throw many more people behind bars.
But CCA/CoreCivic is not betting entirely on federal contracts from its friends in the Trump administration. Two announcements last week highlight the company’s strategy for embedding itself more deeply into state criminal justice systems.
The film executive hired private investigators, including ex-Mossad agents, to track actresses and journalists.
Dr. Anna Konopka, the 84-year-old New Hampshire physician who recently lost her medical license in part due to a lack of computer skills, has an uphill battle ahead of her.
In two lengthy phone interviews with Ars on Tuesday, Konopka said if she is reinstated by the state's medical board—at this point, a big if—she would be willing to learn how to use the Internet to comply with the state's new law for an online opioid monitoring program.
Former United States Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges was sentenced to an additional two years of prison on Tuesday.
US District Judge Richard Seeborg said that Bridges' totality of crimes and continued dishonesty to the government was a "betrayal of trust" and was "among the worst of crimes."
In August 2017, Bridges pleaded guilty to new counts of money laundering and related forfeiture. In May 2015, Bridges was separately sentenced to 71 months in prison after he stole money from online dealers while investigating Silk Road, a now-defunct Tor-hidden underground website.
Fort Collins voters said "yes" to a ballot question that gives the city council permission "to establish a telecommunications utility to provide broadband services," The Coloradoan wrote. "Unofficial, partial returns as of 12:42 a.m. showed the measure passing with 57.15 percent of the vote."
The vote doesn't require the city to build a broadband network, but it gives the city council the permission it needs to move forward on the plan if it chooses to do so.
Government rules bar any company from holding more than 25% spectrum allocated in a service area or circle, and above 50% in a spectrum band. Carriers in India use airwaves in the 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2500 MHz bands.
[...]
Airtel had, however, asked that the upper limit of 25% of total spectrum held in a service area or circle, be relaxed to 33%. RCom has asked for removal of this limit while Vodafone has sought a relaxation. If the 25% limit is maintained, Vodafone-Idea will breach the cap in the four circles of Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra and Kerala, an expert said.
Maintenance of secrecy is solely the responsibility of the applicant. Previously, such secrecy needed to be updated every 10 years. Currently, when the registration is made on a confidential basis, it remains valid for the total 50- year term, without the need for renewal.Against this backdrop, the BPTO issued on September 1, 2017, Normative Instruction Nۼ 074, which came into force on September 12, 2017. The Instruction establishes new procedures regarding the registration of software and use of the electronic form called e-RPC.
Concerning the changes in the registration system, the following can be highlighted: a completely electronic process, implementation of a hash digital summary as a safer way to protect the software, electronic signature of documents and changes in the Official Taxes Schedule for software services.The cryptographic function hash is an algorithm normally used to guarantee the fully integrity of an electronic document. Therefore, a technical expert can prove there was no modification in the document, since it was turned from source code into hash. Previously, the applicant had to send the entire source code of the software; now, the BPTO requires only a hash digital summary of its most relevant and important parts in order to identify the computer program.
Despite all of the coverage we provide on alcohol-related trademark disputes, Moosehead Breweries has still managed to separate itself from the pack with its aggressive trademark enforcement behavior. You should recall that this is the brewery that sued a root beer company called Moose Whiz and a brewery making a beer called Müs Knuckle under the theory that because it somehow got a trademark on the term "moose" it therefore means that any beverage company using that word is infringing its trademark. That's not correct on multiple fronts, including the question of whether any customers are actually or potentially being confused by the so-called infringing uses. Add to that the somewhat strange circumstance of Canada's CIPO approving a heritage word like "moose" in the Canadian market.
When the Los Angeles Times wrote a two-part exposé about the tax breaks Disneyland gets from the city of Anaheim, California, Disney retaliated by banning Times reporters from screenings of Disney movies like Thor: Ragnarok. But after an outcry by the nation's film critics, Disney is backing down.
“We’ve had productive discussions with the newly installed leadership at The Los Angeles Times regarding our specific concerns, and as a result, we’ve agreed to restore access to advance screenings for their film critics,” Disney said in a statement—conveniently not mentioning that its films were facing a widespread boycott from film critics.
Once again, Disney has decided to sacrifice goodwill for brand perception. Not content to limit itself to sending C&Ds to kids' birthday party performers, Disney's latest act of self-savagery has resulted in backlash from several top journalistic entities.
Back in September, the LA Times dug into Disney's supremely cosy relationship with Anaheim's government -- one that has produced years of subsidies, incentives, and tax shelters for the entertainment giant. Disney wasn't happy with the report, so it responded the way any rational company would: it issued a statement stating the articles were full of errors and claimed the LA Times "showed a complete disregard for basic journalistic standards." (Despite these claims, Disney has yet to ask for corrections to the LA Times' investigative articles.)
It also frowned on the availability of blank media boxes. "In addition, blank media boxes, which permit the installation of third-party, post-purchase applications, are especially problematic for the authorities’ enforcement efforts. MPAA urges the (New Zealand) Government to enact legislation to deal with this increasingly threatening form of piracy," the organisation advised.
The MPAA has submitted its 2018 list of foreign trade barriers to the U.S. Government. The document reveals that Hollywood is concerned that Australia is considering implementing fair use exceptions, allowing circumvention of geo-blocking, and expanding safe harbor provisions for online services. In addition, the MPAA notes that stiffer penalties are required to deter piracy.