Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

04.27.16

[ES] Microsoft ‘Asalto con Todo’ Contra Android, Java, y GNU/Linux, Usando la Clásica E.E.E. Táctica de Nuevo

Posted in Antitrust, Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Java, Microsoft at 7:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado por Antitrust, Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Java, Microsoft at 7:13 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Embrace and Extend
Credit: unknown (Twitter)

Summary: Otro recordatorio de la realidad que Microsoft está muy activo en el frente E.E.E., not no sólo contra GNU/Linux pero también Android y Java

NO es un secreto que Microsoft está tratándo de obstaculizar el desarrollo de Android o dominárlo completamente, no simplemente extorsiónandolo con patentes de software o ejerciéndo influencia/control usando patentes de software. Entonces también hay el aspecto antimonopolio; fue Microsoft y sus proxies/grupos frontales que impulsaron a los que impulsaron a los políticos Europeos a ir detrás de las aventuras Linux de Google (hemos cubierto estos hechos muchas veces por casi una década).

“Entonces también hay el aspecto antimonopolio; fue Microsoft y sus proxies/grupos frontales que impulsaron a los que impulsaron a los políticos Europeos a ir detrás de las aventuras Linux de Google (hemos cubierto estos hechos muchas veces por casi una década).”

Ahora mismo encontramos a Jason Perlow [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (un empleado de Microsoft que habitualmente ataca a los rivales de Microsoft) haciéndo el anti-Java y anti-Android berrinche en ZDNet, quién estupidamente emplea empleados de Microsoft como periodistas. La última de Jason Perlow tiene carnada en el títular, “La crisis existencial de Android: ¿El porqué Java necesita morir en devices móbiles?” (ataque contra ambos Android y Java; dos pajaros, una piedra).
Cuánt típico es todo esto. Agenda disfrazada de ‘noticias’. Ese es el modus operandi y el modelo de negocios de CBS, quien es dueño de ZDNet. Para entender mejor el porque de Perlow desearíá basurear/hablar mal de ambos Java y Android, consideren el caso de RoboVM, e cual Microsoft acaba de matar usando el clásico E.E.E método. El último nuevo artículo acerca del asesinato de RoboVM por parte de Microsoft de James Darvell (y por extensión dañar a Android y a Linux) va como sigue:

Microsoft recientemente hizo un gran ruido alrededor de su amor y apoyo de la comunidad Open Source (especialmente Linux), pero al mismo tiempo se trata de hacer medidas concretas para mejorar su apoyo a los proyectos de software libre, sus motivos no puede ser totalmente altruista. Microsoft sigue financiando ataques legales contra los proyectos de código abierto en varios frentes, y se ha aplastado proyectos de código abierto cuando conviene a la empresa.
Tal es el caso de RoboVM, un compilador de Java-a-móvil que apoya el desarrollo móvil de plataforma cruzada.
RoboVM fue originalmente un proyecto de código abierto, aunque eso cambió después de que la empresa matriz fue adquirida por Xamarin en octubre de 2015. Xamarin tenía varios productos similares que apoyan el desarrollo multiplataforma utilizando diferentes lenguajes de programación. Naturalmente, Xamarin vio RoboVM como una adición adecuada a su establo.
Poco después de la adquisición, se hizo un anuncio en el sentido de que el modelo de desarrollo de código abierto “no estaba funcionando” para el equipo RoboVM. El proyecto se cerró, y derechos de licencia se incrementaron para que coincida con las otras herramientas en la alineación de Xamarin.
A principios de este año, Microsoft adquirió Xamarin, y mientras se está promocionando con orgullo la mayoría de conjunto de herramientas de Xamarin, parece que no hay lugar para RoboVM en los planes de desarrollo multi-plataforma de Microsoft. La semana pasada, el equipo RoboVM anunció que el proyecto sería cerrada.

Actualmente, RoboVM no dijo esto después de su compra pero poco tiempo antes de ella, probablemente cuando negociaba la toma de control por parte de Microsoft todavía tuvo lugar [1, 2, 3]. Darvell del Linux Journal continua:

Sin embargo, hay algunos que dirán que Microsoft no le gusta Java. Microsoft consiguió sus dedos quemados en 1997, cuando Sun demandó a Microsoft por su intento de apropiación de Java. En aquel entonces, Java se convertirá en el “lenguaje de Internet”, y trayendo el apoyo applet de Java en Internet Explorer era un objetivo importante. Al estilo de Microsoft, Java VM de Windows admite sólo parcialmente los Java estándar lo que es más, añadido funciones publicados que no formaban parte de la norma oficial.
El objetivo era crear una situación en código que se ejecutaba en una máquina virtual de Microsoft no se presentaría en cualquier otra plataforma. Secuestrando el estándar de Java, Microsoft planea capturar base de usuarios de Sun y dictar el futuro de Java. Por supuesto, ese plan resultó en un desastre caro, lo que explica la actitud tibia de la compañía a Java desde entonces.

Nos preocupa que el próximo E.E.E. de Microsoft que haya pueda ser Canonical. Entonces allí esta la preocupación acerca de la Linux Foundation, la cual como Canonical al presente tiene dinero de Microsoft money en su mesa. Hablando de lo cual, la propaganda de Microsoft está siendo amplificada por la Linux Foundation incluso dos veces el mismo dia (ayer), levantando dudas como, ¿para quién están trabajando estos dias? Despues de permitir antiguo personal de Microsoft dentro de ellas, y haber estado recibiéndo dinero de Microsoft, el poder del dinero los amenaza también.

“No sobrestime la malicia de Microsoft. Está todavía dirigida por la misma gente.”

Microsoft tiene una historia de usar la corruptible influencia del dinero para demoler a sus competidores, e.g. al contratar a sus empleados, pagar por cláusulas de no competición, hacerse cargo de ellas sólo para desmántelarlas. No sobrestime la malicia de Microsoft. Está todavía dirigida por la misma gente.

“Infestaciónes de Linux están siéndo descubiertas en muchos de nuestros grandes cuentas como parte de los comprómisos de escalación.”

–Microsoft Confidential

[ES] Más Rumores y Llamadas Acerca de Prospectos de Microsoft Vaya a Comprar Canonical (Ubuntu con todo y Zapatos)

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Rumour, Ubuntu at 7:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Rumour, Ubuntu at 6:48 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Microsoft está coercionando a la gente a pagarle por patentes, pero no menciónan cuales. Si un tipo entra a una tienda y dice: “No es un barrio seguro, porque no me pagas 20 dólares y me aseguraré de que nada te pase,” eso es ilegal. Es chantaje.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

Summary: Teniendo en cuenta los últimos movimientos de Canonical, algunos expertos piensan que es posible que Shuttleworth elija el dinero a Microsoft sobre principios sino también inste para que esto ocurra
DESPUÉS de evitar a los medios de comunicación durante semanas o incluso meses (Googlebombing “Linux” en las noticias) y chantajeando compañías de Linux utilizando patentes de software (por paquetes, no sólo los pagos), mientras que cabildea por unas patentes de software más fuertes que crecen cada vez más preocupados en la fase del “abrazo” (como en EEE) continúa hacia la siguiente “extender”. Microsoft ya está pagando a Canonical (esperen que Shuttleworth no se atreve a decir nada negativo de Microsoft) y devore Ubuntu, al igual que lo hizo con Novell con Hyper-V (encerrándo a GNU/Linux en una cárcel de propiedad de Microsoft).

“Microsoft ya está pagando a Canonical (esperen que Shuttleworth no se atreve a decir nada negativo de Microsoft) y devore Ubuntu, al igual que lo hizo con Novell con Hyper-V (encerrándo a GNU/Linux en una cárcel de propiedad de Microsoft).”

A partir de esta semana, sacando a luz la gran mentira (“Microsoft ama Linux”), Janakiram MSV desde el 1% ‘media/boquilla (waripolera de Bill Gates) dice que “la estrategia de código abierto de Microsoft esta incompleta sin esta adquisición” (alude a Canónical).
“Para hacer el caso más fuerte, aquí están algunas de las razones por las que Microsoft debería considerar la adquisición de Canonical”, escribió. Como Susan Linton puso esta mañana: “Cuando la Microsoft y Canonical nueva relación amistosa todavía está en la mente de muchos, Janakiram MSV aseguró que” hoy la estrategia de código abierto de Microsoft es incompleta “sin ellos. Dijo Microsoft está tratando de cambiar su imagen lejos de ser sólo para Windows, sólo tiene sentido comprar Canonical. Ubuntu tiene millones de usuarios y “. Un ejército de desarrolladores y administradores de sistemas” Aparte de la gente, Canonical viene con LXD, Snappy Ubuntu Core y Juju – todas las cosas que podrían hacer más competitivo Microsoft en el Cloud y IT. Para Janakiram, no hay inconvenientes para Microsoft.”

“No es impensable que Microsoft por lo menos atente comprar a Canonical.”
Hace dos años hemos escuchado posts como “¿Por qué Microsoft debería comprar Canónical?” y el año pasado hubo rumores en ese sentido.
No es impensable que Microsoft podría al menos tratar de comprar Canonical. Ya intentó la contratar (caza furtiva) administrador de la comunidad de Canonical de Ubuntu (este, con coraje que saludamos se negó). Pero ¿el señor Shuttleworth vendería más de lo que ya lo ha hecho? Shuttleworth dejó algunos comentarios aquí en los días después de haber comprado licencias de códecs (por las patentes de software) de Microsoft. Eso fue hace 8 años.
“Eso es extorsión y deberíamos llamarlo como lo es. Decir, como Ballmer dijo, que hay un no publico balance de liabilidad, eso simplemente es extorsión y deberíamos rechazar dejar arrastrárnos a ese juego.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

Links 27/4/2016: A Lot About OpenStack, Vivaldi 1.1 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 6:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • A tech company accusing a Google-backed UK rival of copying code is now suing its customers

    London startup Yieldify has been hit with a second lawsuit from competitor Bounce Exchange, again alleging that it copied its code. The more recent suit also names some of Yieldify’s customers as defendants in the suit.

    Bounce Exchange, a New York-based company, alleges in New York and Texas court filings that it gave Yieldify executives a demonstration of its product in 2013 and that Yieldify went on to launch a very similar competing product.

  • I lived with an undercover officer – this BBC series gets it all wrong

    The TV drama is well produced but based on such an implausible premise it is misleading and inauthentic

  • Science

    • Court Smacks Down Kansas Christians for Labeling Evolution a Religion to Force School Ban

      A federal court rejected the argument from a Christian group in Kansas which said that evolution was religious “indoctrination” and should not be taught in schools.

      After the state of Kansas adopted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013, Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) argued that teaching science without a religious explanation for the creation of the universe would indoctrinate children into atheism.

      COPE said that teaching evolution took children “into the religious sphere by leading them to ask ultimate religious questions like what is the cause and nature of life and the universe—‘where do we come from?’”

    • Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and others urge Congress to fund K-12 computer science education

      Some of the biggest names in tech and corporate America, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, have teamed up with governors and educators to ask Congress to provide $250 million in federal funding to school districts in order to give every single K-12 student in the nation an opportunity to learn how to code. On the legislative side, these tech CEOs are joined by governors from both sides, including California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R).

    • EC aims to build EUR 6.7 billion science cloud

      In 2017, the EC will make open by default all scientific data produced by future projects under the EUR 77 billion Horizon 2020 research and innovation funding programme, the Commission announced on 19 April “The benefits of open data for Europe’s science, economy and society will be enormous”, the statement quotes Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, as saying.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The U.S. Is Dropping Bombs Faster Than It Can Make Them

      Like about 90% of the news today, this would be terrific satire, if it wasn’t true.

      America is dropping so many bombs on ISIS that the country is in danger of running out.

      “We’re expending munitions faster than we can replenish them,” said Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has asked Congress to include funding for 45,000 “smart bombs” in the Defense Department’s 2017 budget. But it could take a while to rebuild the stockpile.

    • US finally acknowledging al-Qaeda factor in breakdown of Ceasefire

      One of the frustrations of following the Syria conflict from the Arabic press is that when you then turn to the English language accounts, they tend to play down the importance of al-Qaeda or the Support Front (al-Jabha al-Nusra).

      In American parlance, there have just been three sides– the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Free Syrian Army, and Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). The Free Syrian Army is depicted as democrats deserving US support (only some of them are).

    • From Brady to MH-17, Power Defines Reality

      From the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down to Tom Brady’s NFL suspension, reality gets defined not by facts and reason but by power and propaganda, reports Robert Parry.

    • Saudia Arabia and 9/11: the Kingdom May be in For a Nasty Shock

      Foreign leaders visiting King Salman of Saudi Arabia have noticed that there is a large flower display positioned just in front of where the 80-year-old monarch sits. On closer investigation, the visitors realised that the purpose of the flowers is to conceal a computer which acts as a teleprompter, enabling the King to appear capable of carrying on a coherent conversation about important issues.

    • The Return of the Coup in Latin America

      Venezuela and Brazil are the scenes of a new form of coup d’état that would set the continent’s political calendar back to its worst times. Meanwhile, in Argentina, the brutal model for the demolition of democracy is set forward by the continental oligarchic right and the hegemonic forces of US imperialism who wish to impose their model in the region.

      As we can see in the previews that test the memory of the peoples in the continent, it is difficult to accept that the new types of coups are actually softer and more covert than those which Latin America suffered for so long.

    • ISIL Endgame: Obama to send 250 more US Troops into Syria

      That Obama is focusing on this Kurdish-Arab coalition is a further slap in the face to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who are backing hard line far-right Salafi groups like the Freemen of Syria in the Aleppo area, who have been attacked by the Arab/Kurdish SDF, which is to their left.

    • Mexico Finds It Easier to Focus on Trump Than Its Own Failings

      During my many years as a correspondent in Mexico, some of my best reporting happened around dinner tables. So on a recent trip back, I dined with a range of old contacts to catch up on how Mexico was handling its most pressing challenges, like the 2014 student massacre in southern Mexico, which shocked the world and ignited protests across the country.

      But all anyone wanted to talk about was Donald Trump.

    • Trapped In Turkey: One Afghan Asylum Seeker’s Quest To Make A Life In The EU

      A 23-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, and an example of the collateral damage of America’s longest war, Kakar has been stuck in Turkey since March 20, waiting for human smugglers to get him to Greece. But things have recently tightened up in the Mediterranean route, with Greece even sending some asylum seekers back.

    • An open letter to Jeremy Corbyn from an Italian

      France has just sold 1 billion dollars worth of military equipment to Egypt. Prime Minister François Hollande flew there to sign the eye-watering deals. Other European nations are counting on Field Marshall Al-Sisi’s regime and Turkey to keep ISIS in check. Egypt’s help with Libya is crucial. The scenario is complex. What else can be done to do posthumous justice to the Cambridge PhD student? Not an easy one.

    • Left-wing, Antiwar Voice in Ukraine Assaulted by Rightist Extremists

      On April 22, the leader of the Union of Left Forces (Союз Лівих Сил) of Ukraine, Vasyl Volga, was attacked in Zaporizhia, southern Ukraine by ‘activists’ – extreme nationalists – of the Azov Battalion and Syla Natsii (Force of the Nation). Volga and his colleagues came to Zaporizhia to present the program of their party which fights for the cessation of war in Ukraine, the restoration of peace and integration of Donbass back into Ukraine.

      Volga and his colleagues were heading to a building in Zaporizhia to hold a press-conference. In an interview with Channel 112 television after the attack, Volga told the 112 journalist that he tried to talk to his attackers but they replied that Ukraine needs war and that they do not want politicians like Volga. One of these thugs attacked Volga from behind. Volga and his colleagues were able to escape thanks to Zaporizhia local police.

    • Meddlesome Empire: Obama and Client Britain’s EU Referendum

      Good to see that history, if it does not possess historical cunning, as Hegel rather foolishly observed, has, at the very least, some humour. US President Barack Obama has been busy making it his business to make sure that Britain remains in the European Union after the referendum elections of June. The urging has all the meaning of a Wall Street plea. If Britain leaves, there will be instability. A world of chaos will ensue.

      Obama in imperial mode has been some sight. Armed with words of condescension, he has treated Britons in a fashion they are rarely used to: being lectured as subjects in need of a good intellectual thrashing. For years, the nostalgic establishment Briton has become the supposedly sagacious backer of US power in various parts of the planet. The US has been assured that it can count on vassal insurance when Washington’s more bizarre imperial failures come to light.

    • Saudi Role Beyond the 28 Pages

      Release of the 28 secret pages from the congressional 9/11 report may be long overdue, but the depth of Saudi involvement with Islamic radicals goes much deeper, says Gareth Porter at Middle East Eye.

    • Orwell’s Ghost is Laughing

      What’s the difference between “boots on the ground” and military personnel wearing boots who are engaged in combat – and perhaps dying – on the ground? If you can answer that question convincingly, perhaps you’d like to apply for John Kirby’s job, because he’s not doing it very successfully. Kirby is the State Department spokesman who, in answer to a question from a reporter about the 250 US troops being sent to Syria, denied President Obama ever said there’d be “no boots on the ground” in Syria.

    • In Yemen, Saudi-Led Intervention Gives Rise to New Armed Religious Faction

      Thickly bearded men — some wrapped in traditional outfits, others masked — can be seen these days driving through Yemen’s central city of Taiz in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.

      The men belong to a growing faction of Salafis, an ultra-conservative Sunni religious group. In Taiz, the Salafis were once known for being preachers in mosques and religious scholars, but now they have become the most dominant fighters among local resistance to the Shiite Houthi rebels, who ousted from power Yemen’s President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

    • The Pentagon’s Medal Inflation

      Like grade inflation in college, the Pentagon has engaged in medal inflation, diluting awards for actual heroism by proliferating ribbons for bureaucratic skills, as Chuck Spinney and James Perry Stevenson explain.

    • 9/11 Commission Didn’t Clear Saudis

      As the Obama administration belatedly weighs releasing the 28 pages on the Saudi role in 9/11, Americans should not be fooled by claims minimizing the Saudi involvement, writes 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser.

    • Justin Trudeau outrage at beheading of Philippines hostage Ridsdel

      The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the beheading of a Canadian hostage kidnapped by Islamist militants in the Philippines.

      John Ridsdel, 68, was taken from a tourist resort with three others by the Abu Sayyaf group in September 2015.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Grauer’s Gorillas May Soon Be Extinct, Conservationists Say

      The Grauer’s gorilla, the world’s largest primate, has been a source of continual worry for conservationists for more than two decades. Longstanding conflict in the deep jungles of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo left experts with no choice but to guess at how that gorilla subspecies may be faring.

      Now, with tensions abating somewhat, researchers finally have an updated gorilla head count — one that confirms their fears. According to findings compiled by an international team of conservationists, Grauer’s gorilla populations have plummeted 77 percent over the last 20 years, with fewer than 3,800 of the animals remaining.

    • Bold Moves Block Tapajós Mega-dam and Uphold Indigenous Rights, for Now

      In the shadow of last week’s contentious vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s indigenous agency FUNAI and environmental agency IBAMA made unexpected, decisive rulings in defense of indigenous rights and ecological protection in the Amazon. As if pouncing on the opportunity to finally do their jobs without the overbearing interference of an embattled executive, FUNAI moved to demarcate a besieged indigenous territory while IBAMA took this cue to suspend approval of São Luiz do Tapajós, a mega-dam projected to flood it and displace its Munduruku inhabitants.

    • CNN Is More Focused On Running Fossil Fuel Ads Than It Is On Covering Major Climate Stories

      If you tuned into CNN earlier this year, when NASA And NOAA announced that 2015 was the hottest year on record, you weren’t likely to see much coverage of that announcement. In fact, you were more likely to see an ad for the fossil fuel industry than a news story on how fossil fuels are driving the planet’s warming, according to a new report.

    • Flint and America’s Corroded Trust

      It’s been the subject of protests and debates, but if anything is improving in Flint, Michigan, it’s hard for any of us on the ground to see.

      One of the city’s lead pipes has been replaced for the benefit of the press, but more than 8,000 additional service lines are likely corroded and still leaching toxic lead. It took a mom, a pediatrician, and a professor in Virginia to discover Flint’s children were being poisoned. It took cable television to get the nation to give a damn.

    • The Great Barrier Reef Won’t Survive Bleaching Events If Global Warming Continues

      The Great Barrier Reef’s coral is dying, and it may never be the same again.

      Last month, as historically high ocean temperatures bathed the waters around the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian government raised the coral bleaching threat to the highest level possible.

      On an aerial reconnaissance trip from Cairns to Papua New Guinea, researchers observed the parts of the reef that are supposed to be the most pristine and vibrant. What they saw was chilling.

    • Chernobyl at 30: Thousands Still Living in the Shadow of Nuclear Disaster

      Just this week, the Associated Press described Belarus, where 70 percent of the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl landed, as “a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil.”

    • 30 Ways Chernobyl and Dying Nuke Industry Threaten Our Survival

      April 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the catastrophic explosion at theChernobyl nuclear power plant.

      It comes as Germany, which is phasing out all its reactors, has asked Belgium to shut two of its nukes because of the threat of terrorism.

      It also comes as advancing efficiencies and plunging prices in renewable energy remind us that nukes stand in the way of solving our climate crisis.

    • What does justice for slain Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres mean?

      Particularly worrisome to human rights organizations was the government’s response within the first 48 hours after the murder, in which investigators allegedly tampered with the crime scene and treated COPINH members as suspects, while ignoring the escalating death threats Berta had been receiving for her opposition to Agua Zarca — a hydroelectric dam project that would have impacted communities surrounding the Gualcarque River.

    • ‘Days of Revolt’: Chris Hedges, Tim DeChristopher Discuss Far-Reaching Effects of Climate Change

      In this week’s episode of “Days of Revolt,” Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges sits down with Tim DeChristopher, founder of the Climate Disobedience Center.

      The two analyze how the industrialized world fails to significantly confront climate change, beginning with the “exercise in make-believe” that was the 2015 Paris climate conference.

    • Saudi Prince Announces Plan To Free Kingdom From Oil ‘Addiction’

      Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia — second in line behind the crown prince, and his father, King Salman. Before his father ascended the throne a year ago, Prince Mohammed began to quietly plan for his kingdom’s future with the encouragement of the late King Abdullah, according to Bloomberg. Kings and princes frequently plan for the future, but this time the House of Saud wants to be able to thrive in a low-carbon economy.

    • The Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, 30 years after

      April, 26, 2016 marks the 30th anniversary of the accident in Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which resulted in a very large release of radionuclides which were deposited over a very wide area in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe and, most particularly, in Belarus, Northern Ukraine and part of Western Russia.

      Much work has been conducted immediately after the accident and in the 30 years since in order to secure the area, limit the exposure of the population, provide support and medical follow-up to those affected and study the health consequences of the accident.

    • Mitsubishi Lied About Vehicle Emissions for 25 Years

      Following VW’s smog-testing cheating scandal in September, Mitsubishi on Tuesday announced that its employees used outdated emissions testing methods outlawed in Japan on millions of vehicles sold since 1991.

      The outdated methods violated Japanese regulatory standards and provided deceptively low results for emissions measurements. The environmental impact of Mitsubishi’s decades-long deception is as of yet still undetermined.

    • “There is no doubt”: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s

      Throughout Exxon’s global operations, the company knew that CO2 was a harmful pollutant in the atmosphere years earlier than previously reported.

      DeSmog has uncovered Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s stating unequivocally “there is no doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem” well understood within the company.

    • Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s

      Throughout Exxon’s global operations, the company knew that CO2 was a harmful pollutant in the atmosphere years earlier than previously reported.

      DeSmog has uncovered Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s stating unequivocally “there is no doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem” well understood within the company.

    • 30 Ways Chernobyl and Dying Nuke Industry Threaten Our Survival

      April 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

      It comes as Germany, which is phasing out all its reactors, has asked Belgium to shut two of its nukes because of the threat of terrorism.

      It also comes as advancing efficiencies and plunging prices in renewable energy remind us that nukes stand in the way of solving our climate crisis.

  • Finance

    • Kansas Governor Justifies Kicking 15,000 People Off Food Stamps

      For over five years now, Kansas has served as an economic policy experiment for anti-tax, small-government conservatives. Their lab work is costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars, crippling public service budgets, and making life harder for low-income families without reducing the state’s poverty rate at all.

      With his political star beginning to tarnish, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) came to Washington on Wednesday to discuss his poverty policies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. At one point, the embattled governor justified his policy of forcing people off of food stamps if they can’t find a job by likening low-income and jobless people to lazy college students.

    • ‘We’re At War’ Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country

      Keron Blair will look you directly in the eye the whole time he’s talking to you, making sure you absorb every single word he’s saying. His personality seemed a bit reserved when he sat down with me at a Starbucks to discuss Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, the coalition he is director of, which been responsible for organizing and supporting school protests across the country. But when you listen to his speeches, you hear a minister’s voice.

      “Public education…could die on our watch,” Blair said at a recent event for the Milwaukee Teachers Association. “The reality is what drew me to this fight is the shared acknowledgement that we are in fact at war, and what I’ve learned about wartime is that you cannot operate with the same kind of rules. You’ve got to make some wartime adjustments.”

    • Fast Food Industry Looks To Skirt Labor Law, With An Assist From Scott Walker

      With fast food workers on the march nationwide, deep-pocketed corporate interests have quietly turned to state lawmakers for help.

      The quiet push uses low-profile legislation to shore up a liability firewall that has made it hard for workers in some industries to pursue their labor rights fully since the mid-1980s. Last month, buried in a stack of 59 different laws, Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a bill that made Wisconsin the latest state to join the party.

      Businesses in the state that use franchising agreements to insulate corporate headquarters from legal liability down at ground level will have a slightly easier time thanks to Wisconsin Act 203. The law prohibits state labor agencies and judges from applying the same logic the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has invoked in recent years to eat away at a common corporate liability shield.

    • Monster Corporate Sovereignty Ruling Against Russia Overturned By Dutch Court, But It’s Hard To Tell Whether It’s Over Yet

      By now, the theoretical risks of including corporate sovereignty chapters in TPP and TAFTA/TPP are becoming more widely known. But as Techdirt wrote back in 2014, there’s already a good example of just how bad the reality can be, in the form of the monster-sized case involving Russia. An investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunal ruled that Vladimir Putin really ought to pay $50 billion to people who were majority shareholders in the Yukos Oil Company. The Russian government didn’t agree, and so naturally took further legal action to get the ruling overturned.

    • On Revolutionary Attitude

      I am willing to predict that Cameron, Blair and Clinton all find their way on to Philip Green’s new yacht. I am willing to bet that no ex-employee of BHS ever does.

      [...]

      The truth is that there is very little hope for young people in the UK. They are saddled with massive tuition fee debt as they leave a commoditised education system in which University Principals are paid £300,000 a year plus. They move in to a market which does not provide nearly enough graduate level jobs for the number of graduates produced. Work they do find leaves them at the mercy of their employers with very few rights or benefits. They will normally live most of their lives in private sector rental, where each will be a small part of the astonishing 9 billion pounds per year the taxpayer gives to private landlords in housing benefit – yet another direct transfer by the state from ordinary people to the rich. Indeed, for a great many tenants, every penny they pay in tax goes in effect to their landlord in housing benefit.

    • UK’s Secret TTIP Assessment: No Benefits, Plenty of Risks

      The TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would have “lots of risks and no benefits” for the UK, according to a government analysis released publicly Monday through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the advocacy group Global Justice Now.

    • New York Times Finds Verizon Strike Beneath Notice

      The New York Times actually mentioned the ongoing strike against Verizon on Tuesday.

      David Wacker, a service technician with Verizon who is one of around 39,000 landline and cable employees participating in the largest U.S. strike action in four years, was quoted in an article about Bernie Sanders supporters, which noted, in a subordinate clause, that he was on strike.

      That brief reference was the first mention of the Verizon labor action on the news pages of the New York Times in a week.

      The most recent references before that also had to do with Sanders, when he visited a Verizon picket line in midtown Manhattan on April 18. Outside of those Sanders-focused stories, the New York Times hasn’t run a story on this major labor battle since its second day of action, nearly two weeks ago.

    • Did The Beatles Help Fuel The Reagan Revolution?

      Overcrowded classrooms. Crumbling bridges. Shuttered libraries. These have become our everyday realities after over a generation of tax-cutting political bravado.

      A shrinking middle class. Rising dead-end poverty. The splurges of a new super rich. These have also become the markers of our time.

    • How Bill Gates and His Billionaire Pals Used Their Enormous Wealth to Start Privatizing the Schools in Washington State

      Once upon a time, the super-wealthy endowed their tax-exempt charitable foundations and then turned them over to boards of trustees to run. The trustees would spend the earnings of the endowment to pursue a typically grand but wide-open mission written into the foundation’s charter—like the Rockefeller Foundation’s 1913 mission “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” Today’s multibillionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders—think Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, or Walmart heiress Alice Walton. They aim to do good in the world, but each defines “good” idiosyncratically in terms of specific public policies and political goals. They translate their wealth, the work of their foundations, and their celebrity as doers-of-good into influence in the public sphere—much more influence than most citizens have.

      Call it charitable plutocracy—a peculiarly American phenomenon, increasingly problematic and in need of greater scrutiny. Like all forms of plutocracy, this one conflicts with democracy, and exactly how these philanthropists coordinate tax-exempt grantmaking with political funding for maximum effect remains largely obscure. What follows is a case study of the way charitable plutocracy operates on the ground. It’s a textbook example of the tug-of-war between government by the people and uber-philanthropists as social engineers.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • The Trump University Fraud Case Could Become A Big Problem For Trump This Fall

      GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump may have to testify shortly before November’s election in a case accusing his now-defunct Trump University of fraud. On Tuesday, a New York judge ruled the New York Attorney General’s case against Trump University will go to trial.

      New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman first filed the lawsuit in 2013 and only recently received the go-ahead from the New York Appellate Division.

    • Here Are 10 Ways to Make Elections More Democratic

      Voter suppression is real and comes in many forms.

    • Clueless CEOs at the Top

      The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “Populist Tone Rankles America’s Executives.”

      Apparently the CEOs and board members of big American companies are “increasingly frustrated” by the anti-business rhetoric of both parties, and concerned such sentiments might translate into meaningful public policy change after the election.

      “The precipitousness of the political debate is a little scary right now,” Boeing CEO Jim McNerney told The Wall Street Journal. General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt informed investors that relations between government and big business is “the worst I have ever seen.”

    • Hillary: Wall Street’s Golden Girl

      So it’s a go for Zeus to launch the thunderbolt. Neo-Athena – minus the wisdom – Hillary Clinton, Queen of Chaos, Goddess of War, Empress of the Perma-Smirk, will finally have her shot at the U.S. presidency. After the Battle of New York, she’s on top on number of votes; number of states; number of pledged delegates; number of superdelegates.

    • Dark Money Group Tells the Government it Won’t Spend on Elections While Bragging to Donors it Will “Win Senate Seats” with “No Donor Disclosure”

      Newly-released documents expose how shadowy political operatives flaunt campaign finance law to keep donors secret – and that federal regulators are asleep at the switch.

      The Commission on Hope Growth and Opportunity (CHGO) formed in February 2010 – just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC –told the Internal Revenue Service it would not “spend any money attempting to influence” any “election.”

      Shortly after making those sworn assertions to the IRS, however, CHGO officials prepared a memo and PowerPoint slides telling donors that the group’s goal is to “win Senate seats” and to “make a measureable impact on the election outcome” but “with no donor disclosure.” Citizens United, the group told donors, “creates unprecedented opportunity.”

    • Leading Advocates of “Dark Money” Previously Supported Disclosure

      The campaign to allow money to be spent in the political system without a hint of its origin — the growing phenomenon known as dark money — racked up a major victory last week when a federal judge in Los Angeles issued a permanent injunction ending California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s attempt to obtain the donor list for Americans for Prosperity, the primary campaign and elections arm of the Koch brothers’ $889 million advocacy network.

    • Here’s What Today’s Primary Voters Think About the Planet’s Most Important Issue
    • Bernie Sanders Blames Closed Primaries As Path To The Nomination Narrows

      Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a crushing defeat Tuesday night, losing three out of five states to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton by significant margins at press time.

      In a speech shortly after most polls closed at 8 pm, Sanders blamed his loss on closed primaries, which barred independent voters from participating in four of five primaries. He did win Rhode Island, which allows participation by independent voters.

    • Sanders’ Choice

      Should Bernie Sanders abandon the Democratic Party, which he’s technically not a member of, and make a run of some kind either as an Independent or in amalgamation with Jill Stein and the Green Party? It’s a fair question, one many of his supporters will be asking.

    • Seymour Hersh on Sanders vs. Clinton: ‘Something Amazing Is Happening in This Country’

      Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh weighs in on the foreign policy positions of the 2016 presidential candidates. “For me to say who I’m going to vote for and all that … I’m not a political leader, that’s not what I’m into,” Hersh says. “But I will say this: Something that’s amazing is happening in this country, and for the first time, I do think it’s going to be very hard for a lot of the people who support Sanders to support Hillary Clinton. … There’s a whole group of young people in America, across the board, all races, etc., etc., who have just had it with our system.”

    • Gutless Democrats Fear Fights: Why Triangulating Neoliberal Clintonites Back Big Business Over People

      But it’s not just that American factory workers were sold out. At the same time, professionals (the same class of people who tell us it’s inevitable) were carefully protected. “The arguments on gains from trade are the same with doctors as with textiles and steel,” Baker noted. “The reason that we import manufacturing goods and not doctors is that we designed the rules of trade that way.” Those rules made it easy to off-shore jobs, but retained obstacles to foreign professionals moving here to work. “The reason is simple,” Baker pointed out: “Doctors have more political power than autoworkers.”

    • Donald Trump Is No Match for the Cruz-Kasich Tag Team

      Don’t call it strategy, call it strategery: Ted Cruz and John Kasich are going to cooperate to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination. Also, I don’t know, maybe a hurricane will dishevel Trump’s comb-over and reveal his bald pate, causing such mortification that he quits the race. Or maybe there will be an earthquake next week in Indiana, affecting only precincts where Trump has a lead.

    • Ted Cruz Literally Tells Transgender People They Should Only Pee At Home

      Ted Cruz’s tour de transphobia, launched last week to capitalize on Donald Trump’s criticism of North Carolina’s anti-transgender law, has embraced a new extreme position. Speaking to reporters this weekend in Indiana, he actually admitted that he doesn’t believe transgender people should be allowed to use any restroom except the ones in the privacy of their own home.

    • Cruz Reminds Us That Social Conservatism Has Roots in Prejudice

      All Cruz is really doing is reminding Americans that social conservatism was born in anti-integration politics and anti-gay hysteria.

    • Sanders Didn’t Start The Fire, So Don’t Ask Him To Put It Out

      Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign operation has been anything but subtle in suggesting that now that her win in the New York primary Tuesday has made her nomination at the Democratic convention pretty much inevitable, it’s time for the Bernie Sanders campaign to die with dignity.

      Let’s get on with the laudatory memorial service, the campaign seems to be saying, and then the estate sale, in which Sanders’ cadre of fervent and largely young supporters can be snapped up for pennies on the dollar.

      But Sanders, to the Clinton campaign’s frustration, is not bowing to this bit of conventional wisdom because the Sanders campaign is not a typical campaign. It is, to use Sanders’ oft-repeated word, a “revolution.”

    • GOP Mega-Donors Are So Frustrated by Their Failure to Buy Elections That Some Are Actually Bowing Out

      With all the talk of legalized corruption, it should be good news that money can’t always buy an election—case in point, Jeb Bush. But even months after the once “inevitable GOP frontrunner” dropped out, GOP megadonors have been actively throwing money at Trump’s opponents, without catching a break.

      “John Kasich’s campaign took in $4.5 million and his supporting super-PAC $2.8 million for the month,” The Hill reported, also stating that “Ted Cruz took in just $12.5 million in March—less than half of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign haul.”

      Any average person would look at these numbers and think, “That’s a lot of money.” But it’s a actually not enough money.

    • Winning in Losing: How Sanders pushed Clinton to the Left

      Bernie Sanders’ path to the nomination as the Democratic Party standard bearer in 2016 was all but closed off by Clinton’s four big wins on Tuesday. His only hope had been to get close enough to her in pledged delegates to have a substantial number of super-delegates switch to him. (This kind of switch actually took place in summer of 2008 when super-delegates deserted Clinton for Obama). Sanders could not turn a string of primary wins into a victory because he went on splitting the state’s delegates with Clinton. His loss in New York was probably already fatal to his campaign, but the delegate count turned radically against him yesterday. If she can keep her super-delegates, which she now can, Clinton is only a couple hundred away from clinching the nomination (she has on the order of 2,168 with super-delegates, and just needs 2383). Even if she only gets half of California’s 475 Democratic pledged delegates, that would put her over (and she did defeat Barack Obama in California in 2008).

    • Clinton and Trump Edge Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders Softens His Confrontational Tone

      Donald Trump moved closer to the Republican nomination on Tuesday as he swept five mid-Atlantic primaries, while Bernie Sanders slipped further behind Hillary Clinton—despite winning the smallest state, Rhode Island, and promising to keep campaigning to influence the Democratic Party’s agenda.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • What White Teachers Can Learn From Black Preachers

      Researchers have found that such mental sorting is commonplace in American classrooms and has huge impact on a student’s ability to succeed. When teachers think a student is “teachable,” he or she supports that student in hundreds of invisible ways: by giving them more time to answer questions, or through visual cues such as nodding and smiling. What’s more, new research found that when a white teacher and a black teacher evaluate the same black student, white teachers are almost 40 percent less likely to think the black student will graduate high school. That same bias often translates into a white teacher being less rigorous with the student and more prone to discipline him or her.

    • Man Sentenced To Die After ‘Expert’ Testified That Black People Are Dangerous

      After Buck was convicted of murder, his own attorneys retained a now-discredited psychologist who testified that Mr. Buck is more likely to be a danger to society in the future because he is black. This testimony then went unchallenged at a later, crucial state court proceeding even though Buck was then represented by a new lawyer. The only new claim that lawyer raised at this proceeding was “based on a non-existent provision of the penal code.”

    • As Poles shift right, democracy runs scarce

      Poland has become yet another European country to take the risky route of a nationalist policy, much to the despair of its international partners, including but not limited to the European Commission, Council of Europe and the United States.

    • Law and policy round-up: Theresa May’s call for the UK to leave the ECHR

      Theresa May, the Home Secretary, gave a speech yesterday which included a call for the United Kingdom to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

      The speech is set out in full at ConservativeHome, and (as it appears to be a statement on behalf of her department) it is also now on the Home Office site.

      The statement is, of course, more about the politics of Brexit and succession to the Tory leadership than anything serious about law and policy. It is a sort of counter-balance to her position on the UK remaining in the European Union.

    • immigration issues

      Peter and Mickey spend the hour examining immigration issues. They speak to two undocumented young adults who arrived in the US as children. Also on the show are two immigration attorneys, who explain the Obama Administration’s DACA and DAPA actions — one of which is now before the Supreme Court — and the millions of US residents affected by them.

    • Samantha Bee on the Racist, Sexist and Historically Ignorant Responses to Harriet Tubman on the 20

      Placing one of the most important black women in American history on the 20 dollar bill hasn’t been so popular among conservatives, explains the “Full Frontal” host.

    • A Syrian constitution by August: by whom and for whom?

      This comes after the December 2015 UN Security Council Resolution endorsing the road map for the peace process in Syria, and setting a timetable for talks. Resolution 2254 already set optimistic targets including a six-month political process to arrive at an agreement on both governance arrangements and a process for drafting a new constitution – while also acknowledging “the close linkage between a ceasefire and a parallel political process”. Kerry and Lavrov’s call for a draft constitution by August seems to accelerate this already problematic and challenging timetable and raises alarm in light of recent constitutional transitions.

    • What I Told the Attorney General and the HUD Secretary About My Criminal Record

      After four decades of mass incarceration and over-criminalization in the United States, as many as 1 in 3 Americans now have some type of criminal record, and nearly half of U.S. children now have a parent with a record.

      Today, as part of the Department of Justice’s inaugural National Reentry Week, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro visited Philadelphia to hear how brushes with the criminal justice system have stood in the way of employment, housing, and more—and how people have persevered.

      Here are three stories told to Attorney General Lynch and Secretary Castro—they are representative of the experiences of millions of Americans held back by a criminal record.

    • In / Out: Which Way for the European Union?

      Egyptian Marxist and political economist, Samir Aziz on the other hand has long made known his preference for what he refers to as “convergence of diversity.” Diversity is what the left does well, so why can’t it make it work?

      Part of the problem is that we don’t have a good working definition for such a condition of diversity. Those of us who grew up in a north west European culture have been exposed to the tradition of precise and clinical thinking. We sometimes call this “clear thinking” even in the midst of muddle. This has served us well, especially in the physical world. In the social world where diversity thrives and often seems to be ahead of our particular curve its utility is less certain.

      So we are left with one of life’s old conundrums. How to do the right thing, how to do the thing right? The technocrats and many of my friends in political parties seek to eliminate risk. Others accept risk – this is not just for the entrepreneur classes – it’s part of diversity.

      In the meantime RISE – like them or loath them – goes to the electorate with a convergence of diversity working model, ready to be tested in the referendum. That’s got to be a good start.

    • More Than a Few Rogue Cops: the Disturbing History of Police in Schools

      Another week, another video of police abuse surfaces. This time the video shows San Antonio school resource officer Joshua Kehm body-slamming 12-year-old Rhodes Middle School student Janissa Valdez. Valdez was talking with another student, trying to resolve a verbal conflict between the two, when Kehm entered and attacked her. “Janissa! Janissa, you okay?” a student asked before exclaiming, “She landed on her face!” In a statement on the incident, co-director of the Advancement Project Judith Browne Davis wrote, “Once again, a video captured by a student offers a sobering reminder that we cannot entrust school police officers to intervene in school disciplinary matters that are best suited for trained educators and counselors.”

    • Four Ways To Fight For Democracy

      As we slog through another negative, money-saturated presidential campaign, Americans are doing everything they can to let their leaders know they are fed up. As if the votes for anti-establishment candidates weren’t enough to send the message, thousands of activists spent the last week in Washington and more than 1,200 were arrested in sit-ins at the Capitol.

    • Watch: Samantha Bee’s Stunning Interview with Wrongfully Accused and Tortured Former Gitmo Prisoner
    • Watch: Samantha Bee Shuts Down Conservative Whining about Tubman on the $20
    • The One-State Mirage

      The reality is that the settlers are there precisely because of a subsidy that involves American tax monies. This in turn means that, should Americans demand of their tax dollars cease being used to fund the illegal settlements, the Israelis will either have to do some serious financial restructuring or the settlers will have to move to subsidized housing inside Israel proper. Those who refuse to budge will have to do so in a Palestinian state. Think removing this subsidy is impossible? How long did it take Bill Clinton to get rid of the subsidy to poor mothers via Welfare?

    • Denying a Cadet Her Right to Wear Hijab Will Not ‘Make America Great’

      Should a Muslim woman who enrolls as a cadet at the Citadel, a public military college in South Carolina, be permitted to wear hijab with her uniform?

      One student cadet at the Citadel doesn’t think so. As The Washington Post recently reported, when Cadet Nick Pinelli found out that an incoming Muslim student had requested a religious accommodation to wear hijab, he took to his Facebook page, publicly proclaiming it “shameful that people expect to be accommodated by groups that are opposite to themselves” and calling on people to “Make America Great Again.”

    • 6 Corrupt Police Forces That Didn’t Even Pretend to Give A F

      In the last few years, there seems to have been a drastic increase of police violence plaguing the United States, as if everyone with a badge is auditioning to become Mad Max in the pending societal breakdown. However, the even more depressing truth is that things haven’t really gotten worse. Quite a few cops have been dragging their asses way over the thin blue line since time immemorial. For instance …

    • A Year After the Baltimore Uprising, the Real Work Is Just Beginning

      ONE YEAR AND one day after Freddie Gray succumbed to the spine injury he received during a 45-minute drive in a police van, the Baltimore police commissioner sat on stage before a room packed with people who had poured into the city’s streets demanding justice. On the walls, black-and-white photos of protesters reminded everyone of the rawness and emotion of Baltimore’s breaking point.

    • Jurors caught using social media could be fined up to $1,500

      Jurors who don’t obey a judge’s admonition to refrain from researching the Internet about a case or using social media during trial could be dinged up to $1,500 under proposed California legislation.

      The first-of-its-kind measure, now before the California Assembly, would give a new weapon to judges in the Golden State who can already hold misbehaving jurors in contempt. But under the new law, designed to combat mistrials, a judge would have an easier time issuing a rank-and-file citation under the proposed law instead of having to go through all of the legal fuss to charge somebody with contempt.

      Judges routinely warn jurors not to research their case or discuss it on social media. Normally, errant jurors are dismissed without any penalty, and sometimes a mistrial ensues. Under the new law, levying a fine would be as easy as issuing a traffic ticket.

      “We are all on our cellphones and iPads all the time,” the bill’s sponsor, state Assemblyman Rich Gordon, said. “The problem with that is that it can lead to a mistrial. We’ve seen that happen across the country where verdicts have been tossed out, trials have had to be redone.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • New Report Shows Which Brazilian ISPs Stand With Their Users

      We entrust our most sensitive, private, and personal information to the companies which provide us access to the Internet. Collectively, these companies are privy to the online conversations, behavior, and even the location of almost every Internet user. As this reality increasingly penetrates the Brazilian public consciousness, Brazilian Internet users are justifiably concerned about which companies are willing to take a stand for their privacy and protection of personal data. That is why InternetLab, one of the leading independent research centers on Internet policy in Brazil, has evaluated key Brazilian telecommunications companies’ policies to assess their commitment to user privacy when the government comes calling for their users’ personal data.

    • NBC Smells Cord Cutting On The Wind, Will Reduce ‘SNL’ Ad Load By 30% Next Season

      For several years now we’ve noted how instead of adapting to the cord cutting age, many in the cable and broadcast industry have responded with the not-so-ingenious approach of aggressive denial, raising rates as fast as humanly possible, and stuffing even more ads into every television hour. And when broadcasters can’t get the ads to fit, they’ll just resort to speeding up or editing programs to ensure that they’re hammering paying customers with more ads than ever. Given the rise in alternative viewing options, this obviously isn’t the most ingenious form of market adaptation.

    • FCC Green Lights ‘Crushing’ Charter Cable Mega-Merger

      When the deal is complete, two-thirds of the nation’s high-speed Internet subscribers will be under the control of just two corporations, Charter and Comcast.

    • Measurement Lab explores the current state of the Internet

      M-Lab isn’t just about open data either—it’s an open platform for a few different research projects. The one that most people know is called Network Diagnostic Test (NDT). NDT measures your Internet connection by seeing how much information it can transfer between you and a server in 10 seconds. Everything about how NDT works is published openly, and anytime someone runs an NDT test the data is published to M-Lab and available for others to study and analyze.

    • Brazilian Cybercrime Bills Threaten Open Internet for 200 Million People

      Brazilian internet freedom activists are nervous. On Wednesday, a committee in the lower house of Congress, the Câmera dos Deputados, will vote on seven proposals ostensibly created to combat cybercrime. Critics argue the combined effect will be to substantially restrict open internet in the country by peeling back the right to anonymity, and providing law enforcement with draconian powers to censor online discourse and examine citizens’ personal data without judicial oversight.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • WHO Debates Changes To Safeguards Against Undue Influence By Outside Actors [Ed: The World Health Organization has already complained about the corrupting influence of Bill Gates, who’s trying to profit from it]

      Meanwhile, some 34 civil society groups issued a letter [pdf] this week, titled, “Save the World Health Organization from the undue influence of corporations and corporate linked entities.”

    • Innovative R&D Financing Discussed At Geneva Health Forum

      Given this year’s theme for the forum of ‘Sustainable and Affordable Innovations in Healthcare’, the conference discussed innovation across a whole range of issues. This included sessions on the multi-sectoral approaches to health in the era of SDGs, in dealing with viruses such as Zika and Ebola, on health cooperatives, on the IT revolution for health, innovation solutions for migrations and health, access to innovation at scale for Universal Health Coverage, and on healthcare insurance, among many others. There were also side events on clinical trials and on the future of global public health procurement.

      At an open session on April 21, on ‘Innovation Funding for R&D and Access to Global Health’, TDR – the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases – presented the proposal for a global financial mechanism. The session’s speakers at the Geneva Health Forum included representatives from TDR, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and the University of Geneva.

    • Irony? Publisher Celebrates IP By Revoking IP

      There’s no better way to celebrate something than by doing the opposite of it. That seems to be the message of a leading publishing company. In a campaign today to hail the virtues of intellectual property, it appears to be hoping to gain goodwill – and possibly some sales – by removing intellectual property on some of its products.

      [...]

      It provides open access to numerous – admittedly intriguing – chapters from copyrighted academic books and journals, like samplers of products for sale.

      Exceptions and limitations to copyright are a part of copyright law. But publishers have been under fire for years to make products open access in order to encourage sharing and creativity, and have had to defend the benefits to authors, research and business of copyrighting content.

    • Trademarks

      • Washington NFL Team Asks Supreme Court To Hear ‘Redskins’ Trademark Case

        On Monday, the Washington Redskins asked the Supreme Court to hear its case, which challenges the constitutionality of allowing a trademark to be barred if it “disparages” others.

      • Washington Redskins Appeal To SCOTUS On Trademark And Seek To Tie Their Case To That Of The Slants

        We’ve talked quite a bit around here about the saga of the Washington Redskins trademark cancellation. The long-held mark by the football team was cancelled after a group of Native Americans petitioned against it, claiming that the team’s name was disparaging of their people. After I, dare I say, flip-flopped from cheering on the cancellation to having the team itself change my mind with a delightfully vulgar ruling, which demonstrated that the USPTO grants all kinds of marks on “offensive” terms, the current status of the trademark remains cancelled. Well, the team has now appealed to the US Supreme Court, not only seeking to have its own case reviewed, but also seeking to tie their case to another that we’ve talked a bit about, that of the Asian music group, The Slants.

        The Slants’ case is different from the Redskins’, with the music group never getting its trademark registration, also based on the notion that its name was disparaging of the very group of people who comprised the band. An appeals court declared the refusal of the band’s trademark applications was a First Amendment violation, rightly. But the USPTO has appealed to the Supreme Court. The Redskins, meanwhile, have petitioned the Supreme Court to take the two cases in tandem, arguing that the slight differences between the two would give the court a well-rounded look at the question of whether blocking disparaging trademarks was a constitutional violation.

      • Hong Kong accepts first movement mark registration

        The Trade Marks Registry recently accepted the first movement mark for registration since the IPD published guidance two years ago. What lessons are there for applicants?

    • Copyrights

      • MPAA Says Pirate Sites Will Take Advantage of Set-Top Box Proposals

        Earlier this year the Federal Communications Commission promised to “tear down anti-competitive barriers” by opening up the set-top box market in the United States and freeing consumers from $20 billion a year in rental charges. The proposals have spooked content owners, not least the MPAA who fear that pirate sites will take the opportunity to build a “black market” business.

      • The Misguided Plan to Expand A Performers’ Veto: More “Copyright Creep” Through Policy Laundering

        A proposal to rewrite parts of copyright law being pushed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would create new restrictions for filmmakers, journalists, and others using recordings of audiovisual performances. Against the background of the the Next Great Copyright Act lurching forward and the Copyright Office convening a new series of roundtables on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, few have noticed the USPTO push happening now. But these proposals are a classic instance of copyright creep and are dangerous for users, creators, and service providers alike.

      • Copyright Maximalists And Lobbyists Celebrate Vancouver Aquarium Censoring Critical Documentary With Copyright

        We’ve written many times about how copyright is frequently used for censorship, and just recently we wrote about law professor John Tehranian’s excellent article detailing how copyright has a free speech problem, in that people using copyright to censor has become more common and more brazen. Whenever we write this kind of thing, however, I get pushback from copyright maximalist lobbyists and lawyers, who insist that no one really wants to use copyright for censorship purposes, but merely to “protect” their works.

        I’m finding those claims difficult to square with the following story, which I only found out about because the Copyright Alliance — a front group for the big legacy entertainment companies, and put together by some well known lobbyists — tweeted out a link to a story on a blog by Hugh Stephens, entitled A Whale of a (Copyright) Tale. Stephens is a former copyright policy guy for Time Warner as well as a former diplomat, who blogs about copyright issues in Canada.

        He happily tells the tale of how the Vancouver Aquarium has successfully blocked filmmaker Gary Charbonneau, who made a documentary critical of the Aquarium’s treatment of dolphins and whales, from using clips from the Aquarium’s website. In the original version of the documentary, approximately five minutes of the hour-long film came from clips he pulled from the Aquarium’s own website. The Aquarium wanted to get the entire film blocked by the court, giving you a pretty clear vision of how they were looking to censor the film. While the courts have not gone that far, they did order Charbonneau to make a new edit and remove all of those clips.

04.26.16

A Farce of a System: How SIPO, USPTO, and Increasingly the EPO Too Turn Into Filing Systems (No Proper Examination/Filtering Required)

Posted in America, Asia, Europe, Intellectual Monopoly, Patents at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A critique of the declining quality of patents in some of the world’s biggest patent offices, where the aspiration seems to be neo-liberal in the economic sense

THE patent system — collectively speaking — isn’t functioning like it was supposed to. Rather than encourage innovation it slows innovation down, in the same way that worldwide copyright laws these days grant a monopoly longer than a person’s lifetime, meaning that the incentive to produce more creative works isn’t quite there.

“Rather than encourage innovation it slows innovation down, in the same way that worldwide copyright laws these days grant a monopoly longer than a person’s lifetime, meaning that the incentive to produce more creative works isn’t quite there.”Based on this bit of news, hardware patents are getting US companies sued, owing to the US patent system (but by Asian companies), which means that the US patent system isn’t even necessarily serving the US, it serves a particular class of people in the US and abroad (corporations and billionaires).

Sites like IAM, maximalists of patents (by their own admission), keep trying to spin a negative as a positive by saying that in China “grants [are] growing more quickly than applications” (that’s because China’s patent office is increasingly a joke, more like a filing system than a patent system with examination phase/barrier). Then again, the USPTO is also like this, especially in recent years as some barriers to patenting got removed and patent numbers soared (nearly doubled). Might one get the impression that the USPTO is just a filing office now? No quality control. For trademarks and patents alike; the profit motive led to this (neo-liberalism). Professor Mark Lemley has just quoted J Breyer as saying that the USPTO “has been issuing billions of patents that shouldn’t have been issued — I overstate, but only some.” http://1.usa.gov/1Wmel7j

Well, “billions of patents” sounds like a one-patent-per-person scheme of some kind. Given that some patents are trivial enough to have been automatically-generated by an algorithm or thought of by a primary schools student, this would not be so unthinkable (if the patent fees were less prohibitive).

“The reality of patents in the US is changing right now.”IP Kat‘s Nicola Searle has just correctly noted that “I’ve been meaning to do a post for some time on why patents are a poor indication of innovation (I’ve mentioned it before but not really gone into detail.) It’s not an anti-patent bias, it’s a pro-good data approach. As for lobbying and patent strategies…”

Well, maybe it’s time for Searle to do a post about it. It’s the second time in about a week that she says something to that effect and patent lawyers get all worked up about it (in the comments section).

The reality of patents in the US is changing right now. It’s long overdue. As this new press release puts it, “Software patents in the post Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) era are very difficult to attain from the USPTO.” They’re even more difficult to defend in a courtroom. To quote the whole paragraph:

“This patent covers an important element in the foundation of our mobile engagement platform and embodies the uniqueness of our gamification intellectual property,” said Blue Calypso CEO, Andrew Levi. “Software patents in the post Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) era are very difficult to attain from the USPTO. We anticipate expanding our patent portfolio to cover a broad set of intellectual property in this area as well as others.

“They care neither about justice nor innovation (which are basically marketing terms to them).”Worry not, however, as patent lawyers and their media are in there for ‘the rescue’. They’re attacking AIA, Alice, PTAB, and whatever else threatens the patent maximalists and aggressors. Here is the term “patent death squad” again, showing up in IAM’s ‘analysis’ of Cuozzo at SCOTUS. Because yes, calling bogus, invalid patents “invalid” makes you an executioner? A “patent death squad”? We wrote about the overuse of euphemisms and demonisation terms here before. Sites like IAM are as guilty as anyone of bias. Here are ten more articles we found on the subject last night [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. MIP said that “The Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in Cuozzo Speed Technologies v Lee, the first Supreme Court case to consider an appeal of a PTAB decision” (PTAB is itself already a kind of appeal, so how much more in terms of fees should be added to keep the poor inventors disenfranchised or broke?).

As one might expect, based on these examples from last night [1, 2, 3], patent lawyers are just trying to sell their services. They care neither about justice nor innovation (which are basically marketing terms to them).

“Once again we see CAFC getting involved, despite its track record of being applicant- or plaintiff-friendly (irrespective of the context and the law, e.g. on software patents). “More business for ‘IP’ lawyers is noted right now (even colours are becoming monopolies!) because more lawsuits and feuds are being measured in Europe. As part of yesterday’s new series about trademarks at MIP [1, 2, 3] we found this one titled “EU design cases looking up” and it says: “2015 was a year of definite improvement over 2014 for design decisions from the Court of Justice and the General Court in Luxembourg. David Stone explains, however, that progress still needs to be made to provide certainty for designers and practitioners” (in the US design patent are under SCOTUS scrutiny, but that’s not the same as registered designs). As Patently-O put it yesterday: “After Coleman’s appeal was docketed, the Federal Circuit disavowed the “factoring out” rule that many had read in Richardson. As discussed previously on this blog, in Apple v. Samsung and again in Ethicon v. Covidien, the court insisted that Richardson did not, in fact, require the elimination of functional elements from design patent claims.”

Once again we see CAFC getting involved, despite its track record of being applicant- or plaintiff-friendly (irrespective of the context and the law, e.g. on software patents). CAFC is rife with corruption, especially in recent years (we covered this several times before). It’s not much better than the EPO, which having subverted French media for propaganda a year ago is doing so again, in spite of the risks. Examination quality not only declined because of Battistelli's policies but there are also talks about replacing examiners with machines (that’s how filing systems are likely to work, capable of duplicates detection at best).

“It’s not much better than the EPO, which having subverted French media for propaganda a year ago is doing so again, in spite of the risks.”A reader has just reminded of us an old article from a well-known victim of this system, noting: “His talks are long (he has many others) but they start to explain, indirectly, what is going on with the EPO and similar disasters. The bottom line is that there is no democracy in Europe, the power structure is outside that and the real participants have active contempt for democracy.”

When will there be democracy in Europe if ever at all? Right now few billionaires and non-EU corporations decide for all of us. It is becoming a lot like the US, where political parties are being ‘bought’ (or sold to the highest bidder/s), elections are up for sale, and the USPTO is little more than a corporate tool for very large corporations like IBM and Microsoft. As for China’s system, need we say more? █

Microsoft’s ‘Full Assault’ on Android, Java, and GNU/Linux, Using Classic E.E.E. Tactics Again

Posted in Antitrust, Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Java, Microsoft at 7:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Embrace and Extend
Credit: unknown (Twitter)

Summary: Another reminder of the fact that Microsoft is very active on the E.E.E. front, not just against GNU/Linux but also Android and Java

IT IS no secret that Microsoft is trying to derail Android development or take over it, not just tax it using software patents or exerting influence/control using software patents. Then there’s the antitrust aspect; it was Microsoft and its proxies/front groups that pushed European politicians to go after Google’s Linux endeavours (we have covered this in dozens of posts going half a decade back).

“Then there’s the antitrust aspect; it was Microsoft and its proxies/front groups that pushed European politicians to go after Google’s Linux endeavours (we have covered this in dozens of posts going half a decade back).”Right now we find Microsoft’s Jason Perlow [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (a Microsoft employee who habitually attacks Microsoft’s rivals) doing the anti-Java and anti-Android spiel at ZDNet, which foolishly employs Microsoft staff as journalists. Perlow’s latest piece has a bait headline, “Android’s existential crisis: Why Java needs to die on mobile devices” (attack on both Android and Java; two birds, one stone).

All we can say is, how typical. Agenda as ‘news’. That’s the modus operandi and the business model of CBS, which owns ZDNet.

To better understand why Perlow would wish to trash-talk/badmouth both Java and Android, consider the case of RoboVM, which Microsoft has just killed using its classic E.E.E. method. James Darvell’s good new article about Microsoft’s assassination of RoboVM (and by extension harm to Android and to Linux) goes as follows:

Microsoft recently made a big noise about its love and support of the Open Source community (especially Linux), but while it’s making concrete steps toward improving its support for FOSS projects, its motives may not be entirely altruistic. Microsoft continues to fund legal attacks against open-source projects on multiple fronts, and it has crushed open-source projects when it suits the company.

Such is the case with RoboVM, a Java-to-mobile compiler that supported cross-platform mobile development.

RoboVM originally was an open-source project, although that changed after the parent company was acquired by Xamarin in October 2015. Xamarin had several similar products that support cross-platform development using different programming languages. Naturally, Xamarin saw RoboVM as a suitable addition to its stable.

Shortly after the acquisition, an announcement was made to the effect that the open-source development model “wasn’t working out” for the RoboVM team. The project was closed, and licensing fees were increased to match the other tools in Xamarin’s lineup.

Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired Xamarin, and while it’s proudly touting the majority of Xamarin’s suite of tools, it seems there’s no place for RoboVM in Microsoft’s cross-platform development plans. Last week, the RoboVM team announced that the project would be shut down.

Actually, RoboVM didn’t say this after the buyout but shortly before it, probably when negotiation with Microsoft’s outpost still took place [1, 2, 3]. Darvell of Linux Journal continues:

But, there are some who will say that Microsoft just doesn’t like Java. Microsoft did get its fingers burned back in 1997 when Sun sued Microsoft over its attempt to appropriate Java. Back then, Java was set to become the “language of the Internet”, and bringing Java applet support to Internet Explorer was an important goal. In true Microsoft fashion, the Windows Java VM only partially supported the published Java standard—what’s more, it added features that were not a part of the official standard.

The goal was to create a situation where code that ran on a Microsoft VM would not run on any other platform. By hijacking the Java standard, Microsoft planned to capture Sun’s user base and dictate the future of Java. Of course, that plan resulted in an expensive debacle, which explains the company’s lukewarm attitude to Java ever since.

We worry that next on Microsoft's E.E.E. queue there might be Canonical. Then there’s concern about the Linux Foundation, which just like Canonical currently has Microsoft money on its table. Speaking of which, Microsoft propaganda is being amplified by the Linux Foundation even twice in one day (yesterday), raising questions such as, who are they working for these days? After letting former Microsoft staff in, and having received money from Microsoft, the power of money threatens them too.

“Don’t underestimate Microsoft’s malice. It’s still run by virtually the same people.”Microsoft has a history of using the corrupting influence of money to demolish competitors, e.g. by poaching employees, paying for non-compete clauses, taking over only to dismantle and so on. Don’t underestimate Microsoft’s malice. It’s still run by virtually the same people. █

“Linux infestations are being uncovered in many of our large accounts as part of the escalation engagements.”

–Microsoft Confidential

More Rumours and Calls Surrounding Prospects of Microsoft Buying Canonical (Ubuntu and More)

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Rumour, Ubuntu at 6:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Microsoft is asking people to pay them for patents, but they won’t say which ones. If a guy walks into a shop and says: “It’s an unsafe neighbourhood, why don’t you pay me 20 bucks and I’ll make sure you’re okay,” that’s illegal. It’s racketeering.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

Summary: Taking some of Canonical’s recent moves into account, some pundits not only think it’s possible for Shuttleworth to choose Microsoft money over principles but also urge for this to happen

AFTER gaming the media for weeks if not months (googlebombing “Linux” in the news) and blackmailing Linux companies using software patents (for bundling, not just payments) while lobbying for a stronger software patents impact we grow increasingly concerned that the “embrace” phase (as in E.E.E.) is moving forward to “extend”. Microsoft is already paying Canonical (expect Shuttleworth to dare not say anything negative about Microsoft) and devouring Ubuntu, just like Novell with Hyper-V (enclosing GNU/Linux in a proprietary jail of Microsoft).

“Microsoft is already paying Canonical (expect Shuttleworth to dare not say anything negative about Microsoft) and devouring Ubuntu, just like Novell with Hyper-V (enclosing GNU/Linux in a proprietary jail of Microsoft).”Starting this week, sporting the big lie (“Microsoft loves Linux”), Janakiram MSV from the 1%’s media/mouthpiece (Bill Gates’ cheerleader) says that “Microsoft’s Open Source Strategy Is Incomplete Without This Acquisition” (he alludes to Canonical).

“To make the case stronger, here are a few reasons why Microsoft should consider acquiring Canonical,” he wrote. As Susan Linton put it this morning: “With Microsoft and Canonical’s new chummy relationship still on the minds of many, Janakiram MSV today said “Microsoft’s Open Source strategy is incompletely” without them. He said with Microsoft trying to change their image away from being Windows-only, it only makes sense to buy Canonical. Ubuntu has millions of users and “an army of developers and system administrators.” Besides people, Canonical comes with LXD, Snappy Ubuntu Core, and Juju – all things that could make Microsoft more competitive in the cloud and IoT. To Janakiram, there are no downsides for Microsoft.”

“It’s not unthinkable that Microsoft would at least attempt to buy Canonical.”Two years ago we heard of posts like “Why Microsoft should buy Canonical” and last year there were rumours to that effect.

It’s not unthinkable that Microsoft would at least attempt to buy Canonical. It already tried hiring (poaching) Canonical’s community manager for Ubuntu (he declined). But would Mr. Shuttleworth sell out more than he already does? Mr. Shuttleworth left some comments here back in the days after he had bought codec licences (for software patents) from Microsoft. That was 8 years ago. █

“That’s extortion and we should call it what it is. To say, as Ballmer did, that there is undisclosed balance sheet liability, that’s just extortion and we should refuse to get drawn into that game.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

[ES] El Nuevo Impulso Finánciado por Microsoft Para Reforzar las Patentes de Software en los EE.UU., Apoyado por los Sospechosos Usuales (La Sagrada Familia) Mientras que Microsoft Cada Vez Más Lucha Como Compañíá Productiva

Posted in IBM, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 6:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en IBM, Law, Microsoft, Patentes at 12:13 pmam por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

IBM también cae en este criterio, en todos sus puntos (cabildeo, financiamienteo, y despidos aspirándo convertirse en una compañíá de orientación licensiadora)

Lamp

Sumario: Una mirada al esfuérzo de trae una resurgencia de las patentes de software en los Estados Unidos (con un clarísimo rol de Microsoft en él) y la fundación/conf ianza de Microsoften las patentes de software como arma contr Linux/Android porque las ganancias de Windows se están secando y el Windows Phone está al borde del colápso
“Esfuerzo concertado presionándo al Congreso para eliminar las elegibilidad de restricciones de la Sección 101″

ELobjetivo de TECHRIGHTSha girado últimamente* de la EPO hacia la § 101 (en los EE.UU.), en una reacción proporcionada a una nueva clase de asalto a la § 101 de antiguo Director of the USPTO, David Kappos, y aquellos que le pagan su salario para hacerlo (La Sagrada Familia: Microsoft, IBM, Apple, HP, entre otros). Es difícil ignorar el cablildeo de un cada vez más codicióso David Kappos, solventado por la industria de patentes de software (La Sagrada Familia) para aquellos que no se hayan dado cuenta.

Como elProfessor Dennis Crouch lo puso el otro dia: “Esfuerzo concertado presionándo al Congreso para eliminar las elegibilidad de restricciones de la Sección 101″

Este es un esfuerzo para legalizar las patentes de software sin ningún tipo de restricciónes. Quieren que creamos y/o aceptemos que las grandes (mega) corporaciones on más importantes que la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos y simplemente dejar de lado lo que ella pronunció. “Esa es la sugerencia,” Crouch agregó, “tal vez un límite en “las ideas abstractas como tales.”

¿El cierre de los agujeros que deje la EPO (“como tal”)? Como Benjamin Henrion del la EFF dijo, “no como tal, por favor.”

“Recuérden quien está finánciado a Kappos para que cabildee/presione por las patentes de software.”

“Parece que ambosIBM y Microsoft están en Manióbras”

Recuérden quien está finánciado a Kappos para que cabildee/presione por las patentes de software. Incluso nuestros viejos ‘amigos’ de IAM escribieron: “Parece que ambosIBM y Microsoft están en Manióbras.”

Lo que tenemos aquí es más información (1) de que hay un “Esfuerzo concertado presionándo al Congreso para eliminar las elegibilidad de restricciones de la Sección 101″. Y (2) “Parece que ambosIBM y Microsoft están en Manióbras.”

“Talvez el “nosotros” no es IBM pero IBM asociado con su antiguo empleado, quien se convirtió en Director de la USPTO y ahora un cabildero financiado por IBM contra Alice.”

No sólo nosotros hemos estado viendo esto y escribir sobre ello. Una gran cantidad de estas maniobras o “esfuerzo concertado” son impulsadas por Gene Quinn y sus pro-patentes de software en círculos de IP Watchdog. Hace unos días, escribieron acerca de las patentes de automóviles de conducción (poniendo en algoritmos de lo que las personas han hecho/usado por generaciones), señalando: “Es en este ambiente que Eagle Harbor Holdings, LLC (EHH), de Rolling Bay, WA, está tratando de trazar un curso hacia adelante sobre la venta de una cartera de patentes relacionadas con los vehículos conectados y coches autónomos. A partir de esta semana, EHH será la búsqueda de posibles compradores para una cartera con 74 activos totales, incluyendo 42 patentes concedidas y 17 familias de patentes.”

¿Qué Deberíamos Hacer Con Alice?
Un artículo más revelador fué titulado: ¿Qué Deberíamos Hacer Con Alice? (Nosotros como en IBM)

Escribimos acerca de esta perorata de Schecter la semana pasada y esto es lo que IP Watchdog escribe: “En la mañana del martes 19 de abril de 2016, Manny Schecter, que es el principal asesor de patentes de IBM, hizo una presentación de apertura en los Insights Innography conferencia de 2016 en Austin, Texas. El título de su presentación fue sencilla y directa: ¿Qué debemos hacer con Alice”?

“Hay una fuerte y creciénte cabildeo por las patentes de software financiado por las corporationes en los EE.UU.”

Talvez el “nosotros” no es IBM pero IBM asociado con su antiguo empleado, quien se convirtió en Director de la USPTO y ahora un cabildero financiado por IBM contra Alice. A juzgar por tweets relacionados con el presente (Gen Quinn quien me bloqueó en Twitter no por que haya sido grosero, sino debido a que perdió el argumento, pero todavía puedo ver lo que hace y escribe), estos propagandistas han creado una especie de alianza anti-Alice y algunos son pagados directamente (Kappos por ejemplo), así como indirectamente. No es amor al chancho sino a los chicharrones. Vale la pena recordar que Schecter y Quinn son cercanos (compadres diríamos nosotros).
Vean cómo incluso Martin Goetz (proponente de las patentes de software por mucho tiempo, junto a Quinn) se une a este esfuerzo de presión en IP Watchdog. Esto no es una coincidencia, ¿verdad? Hay una fuerte y creciénte cabildeo por las patentes de software financiado por las corporationes en los EE.UU. en este momento. Más luz necesita ser derramada en esta campaña y estamos contentos de ver que incluso Crouch (Patently-O) así como IAM no pueden negar esto. Los conglomerados de agresión de patentes (por ejemplo, la mencionada Sagrada Familia), junto con sus abogados de patentes, obviamente, tratan – y tratarán – de hacer fracasar la decisión de SCOTUS contra las patentes de software, pero inteligentemente esconden su papel con el fin de evitar o minimizar la inercia.
”Protegiéndo GUIS con Patentes de Diseño”
“El primero de estos ataques, suficiéntemente revelador, vino del antiguo Consejero en Jefe de PatentesChief de Microsoft. El mismo incorrégible/noreformable Microsoft que todavía cabildea y paga a cabilderos para recuperar los colmillos de las patentes de software.”
Alla en MIP, hace unos dias, este artículo aconsejó a compañías a perseguir patentes de diseño (“protegiendo GUIS con patentes de diseño”) cuando las patentes de software sean rechazadas. Para citar al sumario: “la protección útil de patentes para las invenciónes de software ha sido severamente limitada desde la decisión Alice. Tracy-Gene G Durkin considera una alternativa: proteger GUIS con patentes de diseño” (simplemente otra clase de patentes de software, el cual podría muy pronto ser inválidas con intervención de SCOTUS tambiém).

“Estos casos clave ofrecen una oportunidad significativa para establecer aclaraciones muy necesarias.”

Crouch de Patently-Oreconoció que “Hay un esfuerzo concertado presionándo al Congreso para eliminar las elegibilidad de restricciones de la Sección 101″. y parece como si este sitio se ha convertido en un campo de batalla § 101, en medio de esta nueva campaña de presión, basado en tres artículos muy recientes. Éste sobre “el significado del § 101 en un post invitado por Jeffrey A. Lefstin, Profesor de la Universidad de California, Hastings College of Law, y Peter S. Menell, Profesor de la Universidad de California, Berkeley en la Escuela de Derecho.

“Actualmente tener muchas patentes tiene un efecto negativo en la industria, a menos que uno hable de la industria de los abogados de patentes.”

Otra acerca de § 101 proviene de un abogados de patentes, a saber, “Bruce Wexler [...] y Edwin Mok [...] Su práctica se centra en los litigios sobre patentes y ensayos.” (En otras palabras, se beneficiarían del derribo de Alice y un cambio de § 101).
El primero de estos ataques, suficiéntemente revelador, vino del antiguo Consejero en Jefe de PatentesChief de Microsoft. El mismo incorrégible/noreformable Microsoft que todavía cabildea y paga a cabilderos para recuperar los colmillos de las patentes de software. Ahora consigue una plataforma para su cabildeo. Para crédito de Patently-O hay al menos una divulgación de tres artículos. Lo que el ex asesor de patentes en jefe de Microsoft dijo fue: “Estamos en un momento crítico en la definición del alcance y aplicación correcta de la Sección 101. A menos que el poder judicial delinee un marco más claro para permitir la protección de patentes significativa en áreas como la biotecnología y software en el que Estados Unidos tiene sido un líder en tecnología, los EE.UU. podrían perder rápidamente su ventaja competitiva en estas industrias vitales.”
“Su problema no es clarificar; ellos simplemente están molestos que les están negando patentes en las cortes o en la oficina de patentes.”

Esas son mamadas. Actualmente tener muchas patentes tiene un efecto negativo en la industria, a menos que uno hable de la industria de los abogados de patentes. También dijo: “Si bien no creo que todavía es tiempo de adoptar medidas legislativas, llamadas recientes para la abolición de la Sección 101 en su totalidad y la insatisfacción con la aplicación de la prueba de Mayo/Alice está alcanzando un nivel crítico. Estos casos clave ofrecen una oportunidad significativa para establecer ”aclaraciones” necesarias. En caso de que esta oportunidad se puede perder, es difícil ver cómo una intervención del Congreso puede ser evitado.”

Lo para ellos significa “clarificaciones” (estrategia usada por Kappos) es su eliminación. Su problema no es clarificar; ellos simplemente están molestos que les están negando patentes en las cortes o en la oficina de patentes.
“Las ventas de Lumia disminuyeron un 73%, Tiene una venta sólo de 2,3 millones de unidades en total.”
“Windows mobile está prácticamentemuerto.”
Mientras tanto, juzgando por las últimas noticias de Microsoft, sus acciones cayeron como una roca después de los decepcionantes resultados (también disminuyen en la tributación/impuestos de patentes) que conducirá a aún más despidos, como señalamos aquí el viernes. IAM salió con con el titular “Microsoft informa un declive en dinero proveniente de Android y pueda tener que mirar a Asia para cerrar la brecha“. “Microsoft no da a conocer los números de licencia”, escribió IAM “, pero algunos han estimado que la empresa podría estar haciendo la mayor cantidad de $ 6 mil millones cada año a partir de monetizar activos de patentes que las reclamaciones se leen en el sistema operativo Android de Google.” estos son meramente especulaciones, como hemos venido diciendo aquí durante años. Microsoft también utiliza las patentes de coacción, no sólo gravar el dinero, por lo que hay un costo oculto/ganancia del chantaje patentes/extorsión/extorsión (IAM defiende este chantaje a pesar de la Ley RICO). No es difícil ver por qué Microsoft recurrió a estas tácticas feas. Como este nuevo artículo dice: “Sobre la base de la información proporcionada en el informe trimestral reciente de la compañía, los ingresos de la compañía de la división móvil registró un descenso del 46%. Además, en los últimos tres meses, su teléfono inteligente, Lumia, disminuyó sus ventas en un 73%, vendiéndo sólo 2,3 millones de unidades en total.”
“Cazadores de Talentos de Microsoft Buscan Gente de Linux”
“En vez de hacer algo de valor Microsoft actualmente opera como un parásito dentro de ‘anfitrión’, sea Android o lo que sea.”
Windows mobile está virtualmentmuerto. Es un muerto ‘hombre’ caminando. Se le mantiene vivo por malguíadas especulaciónes que pueda recuperárse, pero ni siquiera infiltrándo y destruyendo Nokia contribuyeron a ello. En vez de hacer algo de valor Microsoft actualmente opera como un parásito dentro de ‘anfitrión’, sea Android o lo que sea. Cuando se trata de GNU/Linux en el desktop, Microsoft está tratando de convertirse en su anfitrión para (devorar) GNU/Linux. la extorsión de Microsoft de Linux a través de las patentes de software no obstante, hay un nuevo grupo de artículos (basado en el Canal de Microsoft 9) acerca de cómo logra devorarlo [1, 2, 3] y también aprendemos que Microsoft intenta devorar a los empleados del competidor, simplemente como lo hizo a Borland (vea los artículos “Microsoft está contratando gente de Linux para una secreta unidad de código abierto” y “cazadores de talentos de Microsoft buscan gente de Linux para su secreta unidad de código abierto“). De acuerdo al portavoz de Microsoft (Ina Fried), todo está bien y Microsoft “viene en paz” (cobertura engañosa usualmente). Como una red de noticias conectada a Microsoft lo puso: “. Esta idea proviene de un par de citas dado a volver reportero/citar de Ina Fried esta semana” Fried es más como Microsoft PR desde sus días de CNET, casi no es una reportero objetivo y también una autor de la propuesta de largo plazo de la agresión de patentes de Microsoft. Ella solía ser la principal portavoz de la CBS de Microsoft, le asigna la sección “Microsoft”, donde también habló mal habitualmente Linux. Así que esto parece como otro ejercicio de relaciones públicas.

Mientras Microsoft impulsauna acción antimonopolio contra Android y utiliza las patentes contra Android se supone que debemos creer que hay paz ahora. Para citar: “Microsoft ha discutido mucho con socios de hardware de Google acerca de las supuestas violaciones de patentes de software asociados con el uso de Android, un sistema operativo móvil de código abierto impulsado por Google.”

“Mientras Microsoft impulsa una acción antimonopolio contra Android y utiliza las patentes contra Android se supone que debemos creer que hay paz ahora.”

¿A acabado esto alguna vez? NO

“Microsoft Ha Estado Cazando Furtivamente Completas Linux Distribuciones A Traves de “Sociedades” Con Aquellas Compañíás”

Alla en FOSS Force, Christine Hall afirma que “Microsoft Se Está Convirtiéndoe El Nuevo Pero Exitóso, Novell” (la comparación es débil).

“Microsoft Ha Estado Cazando Furtivamente Completas Linux Distribuciones A Traves de “Sociedades” Con Aquellas Compañíás” Hall nota. No ha cambiado nada desde entonces.

“Fraudulentamente Obtuvo Patentes y Matoneó A Competidores para dominar el Mercado”

“Microsoft puede ahora ser persiguiéndo las patentes de Yahoo, años después de haber destruido afectivamente la empresa (Microsoft recuerdan cómo ‘robó’ las patentes de Novell después de la demolición de la compañía).”

Microsoft puede ahora ser persiguiendo las patentes de Yahoo, años después de haber destruido afectivamente la empresa (recuérden comoMicrosoft ‘robó’ las patentes de Novell después de la demolición de la compañía). Comprar estas patentes on sería tan caro ahor porque, como este nuevo artículo lo pone: “La decisión Alices de 2015 de la Corte Suprema de los EE.UU, “evisceró los métodos de negocios de patentes de varias compañías y daño muchas patentes de software,” dijo la firma.”
¿Cuántos más proyectos y las empresas tienen que ser destruidos antes de que sea ampliamente entendido que Microsoft es malicioso y no se puede confiar en él? Históricamente, y especialmente en la última década (desde que el acuerdo Novell), Microsoft ha utilizado patentes para intimidar a los rivales y monopolizar el mercado, al igual que OptumInsight **. No debería ser sorprendente que detrás de las escenas y detrás de proxies Microsoft ha estado presionando a los reguladores europeos por FRAND (esencialmente patentes de software) en las normas, poner en marcha una acción antimonopolio contra Android (que está matando el monopolio de Windows), y ahora está pagando a Kappos la promoción de las patentes de software en los EE.UU.. ¿Se supone que debemos creer Microsoft ha cambiado realmente? No sean cójudos por favor.

_________
* El ciclo de noticias también ha respondido a la cambio en la atención, con un nuevo artículo señalando que: “La Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos esta semana se negó a revisar la decisión de una corte de apelaciones federal para reactivar un veredicto por violación de patente $ 45 millones en contra de Limelight Networks Inc.” Este es que afecta también a las empresas no tecnológicas, como de acuerdo con esto: “la decisión Genetic Technologies se une a una larga lista de otros casos que demuestran cómo los casos de la Corte Suprema de Mayo y Alice están creando cambios radicales en el sistema de patentes de Estados Unidos.” el uso de 35 USC § 101 para invalidar las patentes de software y la CBM, Samsung se encuentra Alice útil. Para citar: “Samsung presentó inicialmente una petición para instituir método de negocio cubierta (CBM) de revisión de patentes de la reivindicación 11 de la patente de EE.UU. Nº 8.033.458 en base a la afirmación de que la reivindicación 11 se dirige a la patente objeto inelegible bajo 35 USC § 101. Más tarde, Apple presentó una petición para instituir opinión CBM de la reivindicación 11, basándose en la misma planta, y Apple presentó simultáneamente una “Propuesta de Acumulación” de su nuevo caso presentado con el caso previamente establecido de Samsung. El PTAB concedió la petición de Apple y consolida los dos procedimientos “.
** Veán el nuevo artículo de “Arreglos Necesarios en Trifulca de Patentes de Software Medicas”
Un juez federal desestimó el viernes con permiso para modificar una demanda reclamando una empresa de análisis de datos de patentes obtenidas de forma fraudulenta y competidores intimidado a dominar el mercado de la organización de reclamaciones médicas de software.
Cueva Consulting Group, o CCGroup, demandaron OptumInsight en julio de 2015, acusando a la empresa de defensa de violaciónes, publicidad falsa y persecución maliciosa.
CCGroup dice Simmetry Salud Data Systems, adquirida por OptumInsight en 2003, mintió y omitió hechos cuando se solicitó y defendió las patentes con la patente de EE.UU. y la Oficina de Marcas.
Simmetry y más tarde OptumInsight llegó a controlar el 85 al 90 por ciento del mercado de software médico reivindicaciones mero tras demandar dos competidores por infringir sus patentes “mal habidas”, reclamó el CCGroup.
 

Links 26/4/2016: Firefox 46.0, Thunderbird’s Stewardship

Posted in News Roundup at 5:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Why shun Linux, CM Oommen Chandy asks V S Achuthandnan

    Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has slammed opposition leader V S Achuthandnan for preaching free software on the one hand and using a product of Microsoft for his own website. The Chief Minister said though Achuthanandan had repeatedly accused Microsoft of being a global monopolist, his website has been developed using asp.net , which is a product of Microsoft.

  • Microsoft caught in Kerala’s political battle

    Continuing his attack on V S Achutanandan, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy today slammed the Marxist veteran for using a product of Microsoft, which he had earlier dubbed as a “global monopoly giant”, to develop his website ahead of the May 16 assembly polls.

  • In Kerala, Chandy, Achuthanandan spar over usage of software

    Chandy has asked Achuthanandan to explain why he opted for Microsoft when it came to setting up his own website and Facebook page while he has been battling for free software (open source) all these years.

  • Desktop

    • My Linux Desktop — Hither and Yawn

      An argument has taken the form of a verbal running gun battle at our shop, depending on who’s working that day. Does training a student in the use of Linux deprive them of valuable, life-long learning opportunities? I mean, it’s hard to argue the value of being able to delve into the registry and edit the offending subkeys and values that are allowing your banking information to be spread across three continents. How are they to learn the ins and outs of virus and malware protection and for Pete’s sake, do it for the children. Make sure they learn how to use Malwarebytes. For the love of Linux, please don’t fail these kids.

    • The ‘Year of the Linux desktop’ never came, and it never will [Ed: Ignoring Chromebooks for self-fulfilling prophecies and FUD]

      Every culture has its myths and prophecies. For Linux users, it was “The Year Of The Linux Desktop.” The idea: someday in the future, likely soon, everyone is going to notice how great Linux is and just switch over, en masse.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator: Adedayo Samuel

      From my experience interviewing for jobs and to advance my career, it has been a personal desire of mine to understand the inner workings of a computer, and Linux provided a platform for doing that by having a design philosophy that doesn’t shy away from the command line so that caused me to dive right in!

      I like open source because of the free software movement (we can always do with more free software), and more importantly because such a movement is capable of inspiring an operating system like Linux which powers servers of Fortune 500 companies and services we depend on like Banks, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and my favorite mobile OS – Android.

    • Checkpoint-Restore Microconference Accepted into 2016 Linux Plumbers Conference

      This year will feature a four-fold deeper dive into checkpoint-restore technology, thanks to participation by people from a number of additional related projects! These are the OpenMPI message-passing library, Berkeley Lab Checkpoint/Restart (BLCR), and Distributed MultiThreaded CheckPointing (DMTCP) (not to be confused with TCP/IP), in addition to the Checkpoint/Restore in Userspace group that has participated in prior years.

    • Setting Up The Radeon Open Compute Platform On Linux

      Posted today to the GPUOpen blog was a guide on setting up the Radeon Open Compute Platform (ROCm) support. The RoCm 1.0 platform consists of the ROCK kernel driver, ROCR runtime, ROCT Thunk Interface, HCC compiler, LLVM-AMDGPU-Assembler-Extra, and LLVM/Clang. AMD/RTG offers the Radeon Open Compute Platform packages for Ubuntu/Debian systems as well as Fedora/RedHat distributions.

    • Many EFI Updates Prepped For Linux 4.7 Kernel

      Matt Fleming at Intel sent out the set of patches he intends to submit as the queue of EFI changes for what will become the Linux 4.7 kernel. He noted of this queue, “this is probably the biggest EFI pull ever sent, and there quite a few different topics covered.”

    • The Linux Foundation’s Jim Zemlin To Keynote ITS America 2016 San Jose Day Two “Infrastructure of Things”

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • QRegion will be iterable in Qt 5.8

        Apart from providing a non-allocating, non-throwing way to inspect a region, there are other positive effects. Because no QVector is returned that needs to be destroyed by the caller, even in projects (such as QtGui) that are compiled with exceptions disabled, porting even a few loops to the new construct saves more than 1KiB in text size on optimized GCC 5.3 Linux AMD64 builds, not to mention countless memory allocations at runtime.

      • Starting KWin/Wayland on another virtual terminal

        So far when one started KWin/Wayland on a virtual terminal it took over this virtual terminal. This made it difficult to read the debug output and even more difficult to run the complete session through gdb.

        The reason for this behavior is that KWin interacts with logind and needs to take session control on the current logind session. This is needed to have logind open the restricted device files like /dev/dri/card0 or the /dev/input/event* files.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Epiphany Browser Does Its First Development Release Towards GNOME 3.22

        GNOME’s Epiphany web-browser has done its first development release in the GNOME 3.21 series, which is culminating with the GNOME 3.22 release this September.

        Some of the changes to find with Epiphany 3.21.1 include “paste and go” support for the address bar, allow opening WebP files with the open dialog, redesigned error pages, a Duplicate Tab menu item for tabs, various fixes, updated translations, and more.

      • A GNOME Software Hackfest report

        The incarnation of GNOME Software used by endless looks pretty different from what the normal GNOME user sees, since it’s adjusted for a different audience and input method. But it looks great, and is a good example for how versatile GS already is! And for upstream GNOME, we’ve seen some pretty great mockups done by Endless too – I hope those will make it into production somehow.

      • GNOME Software Package Manager Prepares for GNOME 3.22, Gets Steam Support

        For those of you not in the loop, the GNOME Project is currently working hard on implementing new features of the upcoming GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, and they are about to seed the first development milestone.

        GNOME 3.21.1 will be the first development version towards the major GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, due for release on September 21, 2016, and it should be ready for deployments tomorrow, April 27, 2016, according to the release schedule. And, as part of this first GNOME 3.22 milestone, several core components have been updated with new features and bug fixes.

      • Google Summer of Code 2016

        Hello everyone! I am participating in the Google Summer of Code program for the second time with GNOME, this year working on Epiphany. I am one of the two students working on this product, the other person being a friend of mine. We are both excited to leave our mark with some serious contributions.

  • Distributions

    • Should beginners install Kali Linux on their computers?

      Kali Linux is bird of a slightly different feather, in terms of Linux distributions. Kali’s focus is on security and forensics, but some Linux novices have been installing it without knowing much about either thing. DistroWatch has a full review of Kali Linux 2016.1 and doesn’t think it’s really appropriate for beginners.

    • Download ready-to-use Linux virtual machines from OSBoxes

      VirtualBox is a great tool for trying out some new Linux distro, but you’ll usually have to spend a while finding a download and setting up your VM and operating system, first.

      OSBoxes.org makes life easier by providing 40+ prebuilt VirtualBox (VDI) and VMware images for Android x86, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Linux Mint, Remix OS, Ubuntu and many more.

    • Infographic: Which Linux Distribution Is Right For You?

      When setting up a new web server for your website, one of the most important decisions you have to consider making is which operating system you are going to use. If you’ve moved past the Windows Server versus Linux Server debate and decided to go host your website on a Linux Server, you have a whole host of distributions to chose from.

      Every Linux Distribution will have its pros and cons, and all of those pros and cons are dependent on your own needs and requirements for the project.

      In this infographic, the team at Future Hosting takes a look at three of the most popular Linux distributions to try to help you answer all of these questions while guiding you along the path to choosing the right operating system for your next website.

    • Reviews

      • elementary OS 0.3.2 “Freya” review

        The most recent version of elementary OS, codenamed Freya, was released in December 2015 and is based on Ubuntu’s 14.04 Long Term Support distribution. I downloaded the distro’s ISO from their website, for a paltry fee of $0.00, and loaded it onto a USB using Unetbootin. After the quick Unetbootin boot-up screen, I found a familiar install process. elementary’s installation process is beautiful, simple, and works. This is because the installation software, much like everything else in this distro, is based off of Ubuntu. Using the Ubuntu installer is very easy, but elementary turns it into an exercise in beauty as well. The install was quick, taking only about ten minutes to complete.

        The first thing I noticed about elementary was the dock. The dock is located at the bottom of the screen and includes the applications that the elementary team thinks you will use most. Initially included on the dock are applications for music, pictures, videos, mail, the calendar, the web browser, and the settings panel.

        The desktop environment on elementary is called Pantheon. Pantheon includes the dock at the bottom and the panel at the top. The panel at the top is a picture of sheer beauty, and I mean sheer. Where previously the panel was a solid bar at the top of the screen with text in it, it is now completely transparent. This gives the effect that the words are part of the screen. The panel includes the applications on the left, a clock in the middle, and the indicators on the right to show wi-fi, alerts, and battery life, among other things. Pantheon was overall a big hit for me, and I would love to see this desktop environment get ported over into other big distros. Unfortunately, Pantheon crashed many times during my use. Each time it automatically restarted and prompted me to send a bug report; I am disappointed by this instability.

    • New Releases

      • Black Lab Linux 7.6 Released

        Today we are releasing Black Lab Linux 7.6. Black Lab Linux 7.6 is the latest release of our stable 7.x series of OS’s. Black Lab Linux 7.6 is supported long term until April 2019.

      • Pisi-Linux-2.0-Beta-KDE5

        After the last Pisi-Linux-Alpha 7 Release, the Team has work on a lot of bug fixes, to give you a good stable beta Pisi Linux.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE to Mentor Six Google Summer of Code Students

        Google made an announcement April 22 that 1,206 students were selected for the Google Summer of Code and six of those students will be mentored through the openSUSE Project, which is one of 178 mentoring organizations in this year’s GSoC.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Verizon taps Red Hat and OpenStack for its NFV deployment
      • The great systemd bug squashing party of 2016

        After the initial ramp-up period last summer, the trend for new issues is approximately linear, with a hundred new issues opened each month. The trend for issues being closed is different: we seem to have longer and shorter periods of bugfixing activity, separated by periods where very few bugs are being closed. The final outcome is not too bad, with 265/1015 ≈ 26% issues remaining open.

      • Red Hat names telecoms VP in EMEA

        Red Hat has appointed Massimo Fatato vice president of its telecommunications business in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

        According to the company, Fatato will lead strategic development and programme execution to support Red Hat’s expansion in the telecommunications market in EMEA.

      • Red Hat Doubles Down on Cloud With OpenStack Platform 8 and Cloud Suite

        Two new products from Red Hat announced today are aimed squarely at helping enterprise clients deploy private clouds. Red Hat Cloud Suite and Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8 are each designed to offer companies a complete solution for building and deploying private clouds, the company said.

      • Verizon and NASA Double Down on Red Hat OpenStack

        The OpenStack Austin Summit gets under way today in Austin, Texas, and with it comes news of continuing momentum among some big-name organizations. Verizon is announcing a major OpenStack cloud networking milestone, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reveals it is using Red Hat’s OpenStack Platform, and Red Hat now claims to have trained 10,000 IT professionals on OpenStack.

      • NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Powers Planetary Exploration with Red Hat OpenStack Platform
      • OpenStack and Red Hat ready for hybrid deployments | #OpenStack

        As the enterprise moves toward its digital transformation, OpenStack is becoming a key player in the arena of hybrid cloud. The changes in open-source software and the growth of OpenStack has enabled the enterprise to develop a dynamic infrastructure that will help them migrate workloads to and from the cloud, working with on-premise and with legacy systems.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Fedora BTRFS+Snapper – The Fedora 24 Edition

          In the past I have configured my personal computers to be able to snapshot and rollback the entire system. To do this I am leveraging the BTRFS filesystem, a tool called snapper, and a patched version of Fedora’s grub2 package. The patches needed from grub2 come from the SUSE guys and are documented well in this git repo.

        • Fedora @ GNOME.Asia
        • Linux Fest North West Day 0

          We had about 250 at Fedora Game Night, gave away shirts to table winners and ran out of early sign-in badges.

        • Linux Fest North West Day -1

          If you live in the Northwest come an join all the Linux enthusiast this weekend at LinuxFest NorthWest. Seminars and Exhibits are at Bellingham Technical Collage Saturday and Sunday, and the Fedora sponsored Game Night is Friday from 6-10 at Fox Hall at the Hampton Inn. If you join us at Game Night you can get your pass early, play some board games and try out the SuperTuxKart races. At the exhibit on Saturday and Sunday you can participate in the SuperTuxKart Tournament at the Fedora booth. We could also use some help staffing the booth, contact me if you can help.

        • Going to Bitcamp 2016

          The Fedora Project attended as an event sponsor this year. At the event, we held a table in the hacker arena. The Ambassadors offered mentorship and help to Bitcamp 2016 programmers, gave away some free Fedora swag, and offered an introduction to Linux, open source, and our community. This report recollects some highlights from the event.

        • GSoC-2016
        • Data science and Fedora

          I’ve decided to use Fedora as my default GNU/Linux operating system to develop and test data science stuffs. Fedora is pretty nice because it has regular releases and includes most updated mainstream packages.

        • Crouton Fedora new version available!

          I’ve managed to clean the scripts even further, and now it is using Docker images from Koji to set itself up instead of downloading RPM’s. You save a lot of data and a lot of time. It now can install a base Fedora system in less than a minute.

        • Introducing the extra wallpapers for Fedora 24

          In the Fedora 24 alpha release, you could preview an early version of the default wallpaper for Fedora 24. Each release, the Fedora Design team collaborates with the Fedora community to release a set of 16 additional backgrounds to install and use on Fedora. The Fedora Design team takes submissions from the wider community, then votes on the top 16 to include in the next release.

        • How to create Fedora feed in Jekyll

          Across the Linux communities, there are several people that write and maintain their own blogs across all four corners of the world. From low-skills men to professionals, a lot of contents are posted everyday and informations at all levels are available on the Internet. What about to stay in touch with Fedora people that publish on the web?

        • Fedora 24 Linux Default Wallpapers Revealed, They’re Truly Gorgeous

          Fedora Project’s Sirko Kemter announced the winners of the community wallpapers that will be included in the upcoming Fedora 24 Linux operating system, due for release on June 7, 2016.

          The Fedora 24 Linux distribution is currently in heavy development, and it only saw a first Alpha release until now, unveiled at the end of last month, so it’s now time for early adopter and public beta testers to get their hands on the Beta build of the upcoming Linux kernel-based operating system sponsored by Red Hat.

          As with every new release of the Fedora Linux OS, the artwork is being tweaked, optimized, and revamped, with a new default wallpaper, as well as a brand-new set of supplemental desktop background images contributed by various members of the Fedora community as part of a well-organized contest.

        • Refreshed Look of Fedora Developer Portal

          I have just deployed a new version of Fedora Developer Portal. The most visible part is refreshed look with more uniform layout. I have also compressed all the images in titles (from ~1.2MB to ~50kB in average) – so the loading should be much faster.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache® Apex™ as a Top-Level Project
  • Apache Apex reaches top level
  • Apache Elevates Another Big Data Project to Top-Level Status

    Just last week, in conjunction with covering the Allura project, I wrote about the many projects that the Apache Software Foundation has been elevating to Top-Level Status. The organization incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, and has squarely turned its focus to Big Data and developer-focused tools in recent months.

    Today, the foundation announced that Apache Apex has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the project’s community and products have been well-governed under the ASF’s meritocratic process and principles. Apex is a large scale, high throughput, low latency, fault tolerant, unified Big Data stream and batch processing platform for the Apache Hadoop ecosystem. Here is more on the project, and Apache’s other Big Data projects.

  • FLISoL Venezuela 2016 in Numbers

    First of all, CONGRATULATIONS to those who organized each one of the FLISoL’s that were held at Venezuela and THANK YOU to the hundreds of visitors that went to each one of those locations, without you, none of this would have been possible. From my position as National Coordinator I was able to see how 17 cities from our country joined the largest OpenSource celebration from LATAM, at large locations and small ones, with months of planning and also just days. What matters is to multiply that knowledge that can help many.

  • Ask Safia: How do I unite similar open source projects?
  • How one e-commerce giant uses microservices and open source to scale like crazy
  • 2.4 million Euros for making embedded software safe, customizable, and open source

    Nowadays microprocessors are used in thousands of items that were previously not computer-related. These are embedded inside such devices. Together with the proprietary software controlling them, they each form a so-called embedded system. Several of these are at work in an average middle-class household, hundreds in cars, and as the American multinational semiconductor company AMD concludes in its 2014 annual report: “There is significant demand [...] which address the growth of data and content in a world of 50 billion connected devices”.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 46.0 Is Ready To Ship, GTK3 Support Appears Finally Baked

        Firefox 46 won’t be formally announced until the morning, but in usual fashion the source and various platform binaries have appeared this evening.

      • Mozilla Firefox 46.0 Now Available for Download with GTK3 Integration for Linux

        Just a few moments ago, we discovered that Mozilla has uploaded the final version of the Firefox 46.0 web browser to its FTP servers, making them available for download for all supported platforms.

        The Firefox 46.0 web browser is expected to be officially unveiled by Mozilla later today, April 26, 2016, finally bringing the GTK3 integration for the GNU/Linux platform, along with improved security of the JavaScript JIT (Just In Time) compiler and support for using the Content Decryption Module (CDM) as a fallback for decoding unencrypted H.264 and AAC streams.

      • Finding a new home for Thunderbird
      • Thunderbird Evolving

        Since December, Simon has been working on a report describing the options the leaders of the Thunderbird mail client community have for hosting their project now that Mozilla is ready to take the last steps of separation they have long trailed. The report was published today and is now being considered by the Thunderbird community. While it considers a number of potential destinations, it recommends a choice between the Software Freedom Conservancy, The Document Foundation and a new, arms-length status at the Mozilla Foundation.

      • [OT but related] Why email hasn’t killed the fax

        Five years ago, I wrote a column about how the fax machine refuses to die. Five years is a long time in terms of technology, but only a short time in terms of fax machines. Depending on how you define the point of origin of the first method of distributing images or photographs over an electrical wire, the fax machine may date back to 1843.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Open365 Is An Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Office 365

      One of Microsoft’s Office 365 program chief advantages over open source alternatives is the ability to sync documents via the cloud so you can edit them everywhere. Open365 has stepped up to finally match this feature set.

      Open365 works a lot like Office 365 does. The suite builds on LibreOffice Online to let you open your documents in the browser, or use any of the client apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android to open them. Open365 also gives you 20GB of cloud-based storage to store your files on that will be synced across your devices.

    • Open365: open source Office 365 alternative

      Open365 is an open source Office 365 alternative that allows you to edit or create documents online, and to sync files with the cloud.

      The service is in beta currently but you can sign up for it already on the official website. You may use it using a web browser, download clients for Windows, Mac or Linux desktop machines, or for Android. An iOS client is in the making currently and will be made available as well soon.

      Open 365 offers two main features that you can make use of. First, it enables you to synchronize files between devices you use and the cloud.

    • The importance of the Document Liberation Project

      Today I would like to focus on a quite interesting project, even though it is rarely spoken of: The Document Liberation Project. The Document Liberation Project is LibreOffice’s sister project and is hosted inside the Document Foundation; it keeps its own distinct goals and ecosystem however. We often think of it as being overly technical to explain, as the project does not provide binaries everyone may download and install on a computer. Let’s describe in a few words what it does.

    • Tested the Libre Office software.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU releases ethical evaluations of code-hosting services

      Today the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project announced evaluations of several major repository-hosting services according to the standards of the GNU Ethical Criteria for Code Repositories. Released in 2015, these criteria grade code-hosting services for their commitment to user privacy and freedom. At the time of publication, Savannah and GitLab have met or surpassed the baseline standards of the criteria.

    • GNU Rates GitHub & SourceForge With “F” Ratings

      The Free Software Foundation today announced their evaluations of major code repository-hosting services per the standards of the GNU Ethical Criteria for Code Repositories.

    • guix @ Savannah: GNU Guix welcomes four students for GSoC

      All four projects sound exciting to us and we are happy to see progress on these fronts. Happy hacking!

  • Public Services/Government

    • Oettinger: ‘Open source licences should be the norm’

      Industry-friendly open source licences should become the norm for building data platforms, for the web, and for digital consumer services, says Günther Oettinger. The European Commissioner for Digital Economy & Society urges cooperation between standardisation organisations and open source communities on cloud computing services.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • 10 SQL Tricks That You Didn’t Think Were Possible

      But once your database and your application matures, you will have put all the important meta data in place and you can focus on your business logic only. The following 10 tricks show amazing functionality written in only a few lines of declarative SQL, producing simple and also complex output.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • DNA: The Long-term Data Storage Format that Will Never Go Obsolete

      At the Linux Foundation’s Vault storage conference, held last week in Raleigh, North Carolina, European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) researcher Nick Goldman talked about the feasibility of using DNA as a long-term storage format, a talk timely not only because it was at a storage conference, but also because Monday is DNA Day.

  • Hardware

    • Inside One of the World’s Most Secretive iPhone Factories

      John Sheu, known at the factory as Big John, or the Mayor, is giving the tour to a Bloomberg reporter. He’s the president of Pegatron’s facility, where as many as 50,000 people assemble iPhones. It’s his job to make sure that more time is spent making phones rather than wasting it on unproductive distractions, like roll calls and ID checks.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Eliminating malaria, once and for good

      What is an end game? In the case of malaria, the end game is at the same time obvious and enormously challenging. Obvious because the disease can be prevented (mosquito target) and treated (human target) with tools which already exist – so that it is, indeed, obvious that it can be done. Challenging because, as colleagues running national malaria programs are quick to emphasize, doing this at a national scale, given the millions of people infected, is really an uphill task. Besides the complexity of the parasite that causes malaria, the capacity of both the parasite and mosquitoes to develop resistance to widely used drugs and insecticides, the variability of the immune responses – the list goes on –, there exists an uneasy truce between the parasite and humans, developed over thousands of years. Most infections actually do not result in death, particularly in the case of adults who have some level of immunity from prior infections. If left unchecked, however, malaria has shown it can make a comeback, as it did in the 1990s, when deaths increased to about a million per year – mostly children, mostly in Africa. If merely controlled, the entire package of tools, systems and trained staff need to remain in place forever.

    • Ban on THC-Infused Gummy Bears Advances in Colorado

      The most straightforward solution to this problem, of course, is to make sure that marijuana edibles are kept away from children. If that does not happen, the fact that gummy candies are shaped like stars instead of bears is not going to make much of a difference.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Can we train our way out of security flaws?

      Just as humans are terrible drivers, we are terrible developers. We won’t fix auto safety with training any more than we will fix software security with training. Of course there are basic rules everyone needs to understand which is why some training is useful. We’re not going see any significant security improvements without some sort of new technology breakthrough. I don’t know what that is, nobody does yet. What is self driving software development going to look like?

    • Windows Security Flaw Lets Hackers Run Any App On PCs Without Admin Rights

      This Windows security flaw lets you run any app on Windows without admin rights…

    • ‘New’ Windows Security Flaw Runs Apps Without Admin Rights

      Newly discovered Windows security hole bypasses AppLocker and lets apps run without admin rights. Proof-of-concept code published.

    • HTTPS is Hard

      This blog post is the first in a regular tech series from the Yell engineering team looking at challenges they face and problems they solve across Yell’s various digital solutions.

      Here, Yell’s Head of Web Engineering, Steve Workman, looks back over Yell.com‘s seven-month transition to HTTPS, (a secure version of the HTTP protocol – which sends data between a browser and a website) to raise awareness of the issues with the move in the industry and to make the adoption process easier for other engineering teams.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Remembering Argentina’s Mothers of the Disappeared

      On April 30, 1977, Azucena Villaflor de De Vincenti and a dozen other mothers gathered in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina’s capitol city to demand justice for their children, who had been “disappeared” by the military junta during the Dirty War period – a reign of terror that would last from 1976 to 1983, backed by the CIA.

    • World War III Has Begun

      Washington is currently conducting economic and propaganda warfare against four members of the five bloc group of countries known as BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Brazil and South Africa are being destabilized with fabricated political scandals. Both countries are rife with Washington-financed politicians and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Washington concocts a scandal, sends its political agents into action demanding action against the government and its NGOs into the streets in protests.

    • Contractor Hired Former African Child Soldiers to Guard U.S. Forces in Iraq

      A defense contractor hired mercenaries from Africa for $16 a day to guard American bases in Iraq, with one of the company’s former directors saying no checks were made on whether those hired were former child soldiers.

      The director of Aegis Defense Services between 2005 and 2015, said contractors recruited from countries such as Sierra Leone to reduce costs for the U.S. occupation in Iraq. He said none of the estimated 2,500 boys recruited from Sierra Leone were checked to see if they were former child soldiers who had been forced to fight in the country’s civil war.

    • PART 2: Seymour Hersh’s New Book Disputes U.S. Account of Bin Laden Killing

      …when he argues the official U.S. account of how bin Laden was found and killed was deceptive, and that Pakistan detained bin Laden in 2006 and kept him prisoner with the backing of Saudi Arabia. He suggests that the U.S. and Pakistan then struck a deal: The U.S. would raid bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, but make it look as if Pakistan was unaware.

    • Repeating His Own ‘Mistake,’ Obama to Send More Troops to Syria

      President Barack Obama on Monday announced plans to send up to 250 more troops to Syria to allegedly aid in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), just a day after he made emphatic statements against using ground troops to deal with the crisis there.

      The deployment will increase the U.S. troop count in Syria to 300. Obama made the announcement during a visit to Hanover, Germany, stating that the decision comes in response to Syrian fighters recently gaining back territory from the militant group.

      “Given the success, I’ve approved the deployment of up to 250 additional personnel in Syria, including special forces to keep up this momentum,” he said.

    • U.S. to Send 250 Additional Military Personnel to Syria
    • Israel Just Freed A 12-Year-Old Palestinian Girl From Prison

      The Israeli prison service released a 12-year-old girl, believed to be the youngest Palestinian female ever imprisoned, on Sunday after she confessed to planning a stabbing attack against Israelis in a West Bank settlement.

      “I am happy to be out. Prison is bad,” the girl, Dima al-Wawi told AP after her release, where she was greeted by around 80 relatives. “During my time in prison I missed my classmates and my friends and family.”

    • The Panama Papers: Laundering Havens for War Budgets (Video)

      In mid-April, economist Michael Hudson told The Real News Network that global oil and mining industries and the U.S. State Department created Panama and Liberia for the express purpose of tax evasion.

    • Turns Out Their Reassurances Were Too SWIFT

      So SWIFT had warning there were vulnerabilities in its local printer system (though it’s not clear this is the same vulnerability the Bangladesh thieves used).

      You’d think SWIFT would have made some effort when that became public to shore up vulnerabilities in the global finance system. Instead, they left themselves vulnerable to a $10 router.

    • CyberCommand Turns Its “Cyberbombs” from Assad to ISIS

      Golly, what a novel idea, hacking an adversary that relies on the Internet for its external strength? Imagine how many people we could have saved if we had done that a few years ago? And all this time CyberCom has just been sitting on its thumbs?

      Sanger suggests, of course, that CyberCom has been otherwise focused on Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, which (post-StuxNet) would be significantly an active defense. He pretends that cyber attacks have not been used in the ISIS theater at all.

      Of course they have. They’ve been going on so long they even made the Snowden leaks (as when NSA “accidentally” caused a blackout in Syria).

      But it would be inconvenient to mention attacks on Syria (as distinct from its ally Iran), I guess, because it might raise even more questions about why we’d let ISIS get strong enough, largely using the Internet, to hit two European capitals without undercutting them in the most obvious way. It all makes a lot of sense if you realize we have, at the same time, been directing those resources instead at Bashar al-Assad.

    • Pentagon Claims Coalition Civilian Bombing Death Toll 25x Smaller Than NGO Estimates in Syria and Iraq

      The military says its nearly two years of bombings against Islamic State have killed 41 civilians, but a key monitor group puts the number far higher.

    • The US Should Quit Coddling Badly-Behaving Saudi Arabia

      Yet the United States mutes its criticism of such practices because of the pervasive myth among US policymakers that the Saudis can manipulate world oil prices and that the American economy will crash if the Saudis wink and create a world price spike. Neither is true.

    • The Hell on Earth Paved by Samantha Power’s Good Intentions

      Gaddafi’s arsenals were looted by Islamists and other militants.

    • Neocons Panting for President ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis

      Thanks to Target Liberty for its diligence in “Mad Dog” spotting, we see the (former) house organ of the CIA, Time Magazine, joining the neocon cheering section behind the notion of a third party run by retired Major General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, former Commander of the US Central Command.

    • A genocide century: Armenia’s light, Turkey’s denial

      Yerevan is consumed by passionate commemoration of the end of the centennial of the Armenian genocide. What is striking is the new, humanist message.

      When the commemorations started on 24 April 2015, the slogan was “I remember and I demand”: a political message in the tradition of the century-long Armenian struggle, demanding recognition that the mass slaughter that took place during the first world war constitutes a genocide – which remains to be addressed.

      This year, the message emanating from Armenia has a significantly different tone. It is no longer angry, but serene; it is no longer about Armenians, but about humanity still struggling to cope with its own self-destruction.

    • Long Time Coming: Georgia Rises Up

      The racist protesters were outnumbered by police in over-the-top riot gear, as well as by several hundred anti-racism protesters under the auspices of Rise Up Georgia. The protesters, including about 50 Black Lives Matter activists, had carefully orchestrated the action, beginning with blocking traffic by paying $15 park entrance fees in pennies. Others took to the woods to get around police, scuffled with them or threw rocks at them; several were arrested. Using hashtags like #HeritageofHate and #‎Time2Escalate, the protesters argue against having to fight a newer, subtler racism that feels as offensive as the old explicit kind. “It’s 2016,” said Shanda Neal. “We should not be dealing with this same BS of racism and prejudice. There’s no room for it. It should just be over.” Decades ago, Georgia’s own Otis Redding sang of it: “It’s been a long, long time coming/ But I know, but I know a change is gotta come.”

    • Pages Said to Detail Saudi Arabia’s Involvement in 9/11 to be Made Public

      As Obama administration and Gulf ally try to evade accountability, 28-page document may be declassified by June

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • So We Signed the Paris Agreement. Now What?

      “I’m on the front line of the suffering” from climate change, Assaad Razzouk told me at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Friday.

      Razzouk, the sharp-eyed CEO of Sindicatum, a sustainable energy developer based in Singapore, had just finished excoriating Wall Street for sticking its head in the sand with regards to the costly impact of climate change.

    • Civil Society Takes on the Haze Crisis in Indonesia

      The Indonesian province of Riau declared a state of emergency last month as haze from agricultural fires across Sumatra continued to envelope the region. The fires are the result of an early dry period, which comes all too quickly after last year’s extended dry season that saw agricultural fires burn over two million hectares of peatland mostly in Central Kalimantan, Riau, and South Sumatra.

    • Within One Week, Plans For Two Major Proposed Natural Gas Pipelines Are Scrapped

      It’s been a good week for anti-pipeline activists in the Northeast.

      Plans for two proposed natural gas pipelines have been scrapped within the last week — but not for the same reasons. On Wednesday, energy company Kinder Morgan halted operations on its Northeast Energy Direct pipeline, which would have carried natural gas from northeastern Pennsylvania into Massachusetts. Kinder Morgan said it wasn’t able to secure the commitments from energy customers it needed to justify building the pipeline, and said that low energy prices made it difficult for natural gas producers to commit to the pipeline.

      Then, on Friday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration rejected water quality permits needed to construct the Constitution Pipeline, effectively killing the project, which would have brought natural gas 124 miles from Pennsylvania to New York. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation said in its decision to reject the permits that the pipeline would have impacted about 250 streams, “including trout spawning streams, old-growth forest, and undisturbed springs.”

    • Sea Change in Gasland? PA Primary Shaping into Fracking Referendum

      Pennsylvania Democrats will have the opportunity to choose a host of anti-fracking candidates on the states’ primary ballot on Tuesday—representing a potential sea change against the industry at the heart of the Marcellus Shale, one of the country’s largest fracking plays.

      The state is the second largest producer of natural gas in the country, after Texas. Pennsylvanians living close to wells and suffering the accompanying adverse effects on their health and land have long appealed to corporate officials and local politicians to put a stop to the controversial practice.

    • Pennsylvania Attorney General Candidate Says He’d Look Closely At Fossil Fuel Companies Like Exxon

      The day before Pennsylvania voters cast their votes in the primary election, the leading Democratic candidate for attorney general has confirmed to ThinkProgress that, if elected, he would join a growing coalition of state attorneys general in examining whether fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil have purposefully misled the public on climate change.

      “Climate change is one of our world’s most pressing issues and and I’ve made addressing it a top priority in my campaign and have pledged to hold the fracking industry accountable for violating Pennsylvania’s environmental laws,” Josh Shapiro, who according to the most recent polling from Harper Poll leads the current Democratic attorney general race by almost 20 points, told ThinkProgress via an emailed statement. “I applaud [New York Attorney General Eric] Schneiderman and the 16 other state Attorneys General who are investigating Exxon Mobil for misleading investors about climate change. As Attorney General, I will join them in looking closely at whether fossil fuel companies like Exxon Mobil have violated Pennsylvania’s laws.”

    • After Paris COP21: Top 6 Green Energy good News Stories Today

      World leaders signed the COP21 Paris climate accord on Friday, Earth Day. Whether it will be meaningful in stopping carbon dioxide emissions and emissions of other dangerous greenhouse gases that are warming our planet remains to be seen. But there is some good news on the emissions front, and new renewable energy installations are key to it.

    • Revealed: After Big Oil Pressure, EU Dropped Key Environmental Measures

      According to a 10-page letter obtained by the Guardian, the unnamed executive warned that proposed pollution cuts and a push for clean technologies “has the potential to have a massively adverse economic impact on the costs and competitiveness of European refining and petrochemical industries, and trigger a further exodus outside the EU.”

    • Despite Chernobyl, Belarus goes nuclear

      Nuclear fall-out, like carbon dioxide and other climate-changing greenhouse gases, does not respect national borders.

      On 26 April 1986 an explosion at the Chernobyl power plant, in Ukraine but only a few kilometres from the southern border of Belarus, sent clouds of radioactive dust into the atmosphere.

      It’s estimated that up to 70% of the fall-out from what rates as the world’s worst nuclear accident fell on Belarus, affecting hundreds of thousands of people.

    • Clinton Says No Thanks To Charles Koch’s Endorsement, Citing His Climate Denial
    • Why Right-Wing Oligarch Charles Koch Doesn’t Seem That Concerned About a Hillary Presidency

      How Clinton handles such endorsements, or even the occasional kind word from Charles Koch, is important. She already has a problem with perceptions. After all, she earned millions of dollars in speaking fees from strategically-situated business groups and has refused to release the transcripts of those talks. Her vote on the Iraq war in 2003 was a true and monumental misjudgment. Still, she will likely be the Democratic nominee. (And I should add that if she is the nominee, I am likely to vote for her myself).

    • Here’s what publicly owned energy would actually cost – and why the stockbrokers got it wrong

      A substantial majority of people want to see the UK’s electricity and gas services in public ownership.

    • Two Years of Tragedy in Flint

      The water in Flint, Michigan, is still unsafe to drink — two years after the crisis was set in motion. Badly needed federal assistance has been marooned by a handful of congressional Republicans. And the larger national problem of lead in too much of our drinking water is yet to be addressed.

    • ‘Catastrophic Leak’ Found at Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State

      The amount of radioactive waste that has been leaking between the two walls of one of the underground tanks at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State for several years grew dramatically on Sunday, April 17, with up to 13,000 liters (3,500 gallons) of new waste.

    • Australian Politician Sets Methane-Laden River on Fire to Protest Fracking

      An Australian elected official set fire to a river in Queensland this weekend in an act of protest against the coal seam gas industry, stating that fracking causes methane to seep into the river.

      In a video posted to his official Facebook page, Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham can be seen leaning over the side of an aluminum boat on the Condamine River, touching a barbecue lighter to the water and setting it instantly ablaze.

  • Finance

    • TTIP: UK Government found trade deal had ‘lots of risk and no benefit’ in its only assessment

      The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will have “few or no benefits to the UK”, according to the only official assessment of the deal commissioned by the UK Government.

      The stark warning was disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request by anti-TTIP campaigners Global Justice Now.

      Campaigners filed a request to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills to ask what risk assessments had been made about the treaty.

    • A word-switch, not a phrase-insertion: “back of the line” is an Obama rhetorical staple

      The contention is being (seriously) made that President Obama’s use of “back of the queue” in a speech about Brexit shows that the phrase was inserted by his UK hosts. This contention rests on “queue” not being a word Americans use. They use the word “line” instead.

    • TPP Benefits the Few and Harms Many
    • TTIP is a very bad excuse to vote for Brexit

      Barack Obama’s key message to Europe’s leaders last week was “let’s speed up TTIP”. The US-EU trade deal, formally called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, has been mired in controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. The “free trade” agenda has become poison in the US primaries, forcing even pro-trade Hillary Clinton to re-examine TTIP.

      The next round of talks begin on Monday in New York and Obama is worried – unless serious progress is made in coming months, his trade legacy may be doomed. The problem for the US president is selling TTIP at the same time as trying to warn against the dangers of Brexit. This is a tough ask because TTIP has been a godsend for Brexit campaigners, who argue that the deal is a major reason to cut loose from Brussels.

      It’s true that TTIP is a symbol of all that’s wrong with Europe: dreamed up by corporate lobbyists, TTIP is less about trade and more about giving big business sweeping new powers over our society. It is a blueprint for deregulation and privatisation. As such it makes a good case for Brexit.

    • The Theory of Business Enterprise Part 2: Neoclassical Economists and Veblen

      At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution factories were owned an operated by individuals with a view to making a living. Over time the Captains of Industry (his words) built up capital and began to treat factories not as sources of livelihood but assets to be bought and sold, and operated as generators of profit from investment. As Veblen describes the activities of the businessmen, it feels like the creation of a market in plants and equipment and other rights of ownership like railroad rights-of-way and patents. The industrial processes themselves were not operated, or even necessarily understood, by the Captains. They were designed and operated by engineers, inventors and mechanics, ond operated by workers with varying degrees of skill. All of them were working to make production as simple and as useful as possible. They depended for their livelihoods on paychecks from the Captains of Industry.

    • Globo’s Billionaire Heir, João Roberto Marinho, Attacked Me in the Guardian. Here’s my Response.

      Look, João: like virtually all Brazilians, I had to battle a great deal to earn my place in life. I did not inherit a huge company and billions of dollars from my parents. The things I have had to overcome in my life are far more burdensome than your effort to discredit me with condescension, and it is thus not difficult to demonstrate that your response was filled with falsehoods.

    • John Oliver: We Have to Start Treating Puerto Rico Like an Island of American Citizens (Video)

      The “Last Week Tonight” host outlines the Puerto Rico debt crisis and calls on Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and star of the Broadway hit “Hamilton,” to explain just how dire the situation in the U.S. territory is.

    • Trump and Clinton share Delaware tax ‘loophole’ address with 285,000 firms

      1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington is a nondescript two-storey building yet is home to Apple, American Airlines, Walmart and presidential candidates

    • Apple, Twitter and Facebook under scrutiny

      Also on Tuesday, Twitter reports results. When co-founder Jack Dorsey came back to lead the company last year, he put it through the wash — laying off employees, changing the boardroom, dropping some projects and prioritising others. Turns out Twitter shrunk in the wash – in its latest financial results, Twitter revealed it lost users for the first time in its history.

    • Transforming finance can help to tackle the biggest problems of society

      Analysis by the UK housing charity Shelter recently found that since 1969, house prices for first time buyers have increased by 48 times, far out-pacing incomes which have only grown 29 times. The received wisdom is that this is a simple issue of supply and demand: build more houses and the market will sort itself out. But the truth is more complex. As a group called Positive Money has pointed out, the role played by huge increases in mortgage credit is potentially far more significant.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • The Endgame of 2016′s Anti-Establishment Politics

      Will Bernie Sanders’s supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination? Likewise, if Donald Trump is denied the Republican nomination, will his supporters back whoever gets the Republican nod?

      If 2008 is any guide, the answer is unambiguously yes to both. About 90 percent of people who backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries that year ended up supporting Barack Obama in the general election. About the same percent of Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney backers came around to supporting John McCain.

      But 2008 may not be a good guide to the 2016 election, whose most conspicuous feature is furious antipathy to the political establishment.

    • Bernie Says Hillary Will Need to Challenge Oligarchs to Get Enthusiastic Support From His Voters

      “If she continues to be a proponent of establishment politics and establishment economics … she’s not going to generate the excitement that I think we need.”

    • Missing the Biggest 2016 Story

      For one thing, journalists as a whole don’t look like the rest of America. “The typical U.S. journalist is a 41 year-old white male,” began a 2006 report by the Pew Research Center. When that report was updated in 2013, that typical journalist had become a 47 year-old white male, and the median age had risen not only at newspapers, where one might expect journalists to be aging along with their institution, but also at TV and radio stations and even online news sites.

    • Clinton’s Defense of Big Money Won’t Cut It

      Hillary Clinton’s heated defense of the money she has raised from Wall Street and other interests won’t cut it. Her protests contradict the basic case that virtually all Democrats and reformers have made for getting big money out of politics. It is vital that voters not be misled by them.

    • How the CIA Writes History

      Policy and ethics aside, I’m impressed. My attempt to write a more comprehensive history of Angleton’s mole hunt has been limited. My plans to quote Cram and Applewhite on Angleton’s legacy have been called into question. My chapter describing the human toll (and the taxpayer’s bill) for the mole hunt will have to be revised. As I write the story of one of the CIA’s most notorious characters, the agency is redacting my book, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. That’s how the CIA writes history.

    • Clintonism the Future? NYT’s Political Science Fiction

      Just before the New York primary, the New York Times (4/16/16) published an op-ed by Michael Lind called “Trumpism and Clintonism Are the Future.” It’s a good guide to how the wishful thinking of the pundit class will likely lead them to misread the clear message of the 2016 elections.

    • Pro-Israel Billionaire Haim Saban Drops $100,000 Against Donna Edwards in Maryland Senate Race

      IN THE FINAL DAYS leading up to Maryland’s Democratic voters going to the polls on Tuesday to choose their U.S. Senate nominee, Rep. Donna Edwards has been barraged by ads and mailers from the Super PAC backing her opponent, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, called the Committee for Maryland’s Progress.

      A television ad assails Edwards as “one of the least effective members of Congress,” contrasting her career with Van Hollen’s legislative record. It mentions no foreign policy issues, despite the dominant issue motivating one of the Super PAC’s largest funders.

      Recently released disclosures reveal that $100,000 — a sixth of what the Super PAC has raised —comes from a single source: a donation by pro-Israel billionaire Haim Saban.

    • Millennials Poll Shows Sanders’ Revolution Reshaping US Electorate

      Bernie Sanders is changing the face of American politics, a new poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics suggests.

      According to the survey released Monday, Sanders remains the most popular presidential candidate for so-called millennials between the ages of 18-29, 54 percent of whom view him favorably, compared to 31 percent who harbor unfavorable views.

    • Clinton Team Cynically Exploits ‘Cyberbullying’ to Justify $1 Million Online Propaganda Push

      Friday, Clinton super PAC Correct the Record announced it was starting a million-dollar social media campaign to “push back” against online criticism of Clinton supporters and her superdelegates. It’s a plan awash in PR posture about “cyberbullying” that amounts to little more than a classic social media astroturf campaign—the likes of which we’ve seen everywhere from Russia to Mexico to the Department of Defense.

    • Sanders Still Strongest Candidate as New Poll Shows Trump and Clinton in Near-Tie

      Sanders continues to trounce Trump by double digits, 51 to 40 percent, according to the George Washington University survey

    • Final Poll Results for Pennsylvania and Maryland

      Here are the final Pollster aggregates for the Democratic primaries in Pennsylvania and Maryland, the two big states up for grabs tomorrow. If this is how things turn out, there’s really no case left to be made that Bernie Sanders has a chance to win the nomination. A few minutes ago I was watching his town hall with Chris Hayes, and it seemed like he knew it. He struck me as more subdued than usual, pumping out his standard answers sort of mechanically, rather than with any passion. He may have said “revolution” several times, but his eyes didn’t seem to agree. We’ll see.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Facebook is reportedly building a standalone camera app

      A team of Facebook engineers in London are working on a standalone camera app with a big live-streaming component, according to a report today in The Wall Street Journal. The app would open straight into a camera, as Snapchat does, to foster immediate capturing and posting of photos and videos, as well as letting users stream via Facebook Live. The app is just a prototype and the experimental effort may never see a finished public release, the report adds.

    • Facial Recognition Service Becomes a Weapon Against Russian Porn Actresses

      The developers behind “FindFace,” which uses facial recognition software to match random photographs to people’s social media pages on Vkontakte, say the service is designed to facilitate making new friends. Released in February this year, FindFace started gaining popularity in March, after a software engineer named Andrei Mima wrote about using the service to track down two women he photographed six years earlier on a street in St. Petersburg. (They’d asked him to take a picture of them, but he never got their contact information, so he wasn’t able to share it with them, at the time.)

      From the start, FindFace has raised privacy concerns. (Even in his glowing recommendation, Mima addressed fears that the service further erodes people’s freedoms in the age of the Internet.) In early April, a young artist named Egor Tsvetkov highlighted how invasive the technology can be, photographing random passengers on the St. Petersburg subway and matching the pictures to the individuals’ Vkontakte pages, using FindFace. “In theory,” Tsvetkov told RuNet Echo, this service could be used by a serial killer or a collector trying to hunt down a debtor.”

    • Kuwait to DNA Test Everyone, Including Tourists. No exceptions

      According to Traveller 24, Kuwait is going to become the first nation in the world to conduct total mandatory DNA tagging, which applies both to their own population and tourists.

      The legislation that will make DNA tagging mandatory will come in effect later this year. After that each and every person entering the country will undergo a mandatory DNA sampling. This will be done by taking samples of saliva or blood (by person’s choice). Refusing to undergo such procedure will cause “consequences” that have yet to be specified.

    • Britain’s Investigatory Powers Bill: a gift to securocrats everywhere

      Britain is responding to terror threats in ways that are likely to increase global insecurity, including in southern countries that face no major terrorist threats, like South Africa. An example of a dangerously inappropriate response is the Investigatory Powers Bill – the “Snoopers Charter”– which is passing through the British parliament at the moment.

      If passed in its current form, the bill may well give Britain’s intelligence and police agencies sweeping powers to spy on the communications of its and other countries’ citizens on vague grounds, and with inadequate oversight. It writes unprecedented new mass surveillance powers into law: powers that have been shown to have been abused.

    • Court Tells Cops They Can’t Open A Flip Phone Without A Warrant

      Lower courts appear to be taking the Supreme Court’s Riley decision seriously — give or take the occasional “there’s no Constitution at the border” decision. If the Supreme Court says there’s a warrant requirement for cell phone searches, there’s a warrant requirement for cell phone searches.

      The Central District of Illinois has just handed down a decision that makes it clear, in no uncertain terms, that any examination of a cell phone’s contents, no matter how brief, is a search covered by Riley.

      The Pekin Police Department participated in a couple of FBI-assisted controlled buys of weapons and drugs involving defendant Demontae Bell. Shortly thereafter, Bell was arrested.

    • [older] U.S. reluctant to change data pact after EU watchdogs’ concerns
    • Practical Applications For Massive Surveillance Databases: Timely Birthday Cards, Travel Diaries

      The information collected includes data that could reveal political preferences, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, memberships in associations or groups, mental/physical health along with biometric data and financial documents. With a little digging, the massive database could be used to uncover journalists’ sources and privileged communications.

    • FBI Hides Its Surveillance Techniques From Federal Prosecutors Because It’s Afraid They’ll Become Defense Lawyers

      We know the FBI isn’t willing to share its investigative techniques with judges. Or defendants. Or the general public. Or Congress. The severely restrictive NDAs it forced law enforcement agencies to sign before allowing them to obtain IMSI catchers is evidence of the FBI’s secrecy. Stingray devices were being used for at least a half-decade before information starting leaking into the public domain.

      The FBI doesn’t want to hand over details on its hacking tools. Nor does it want to discuss the specifics of the million-dollar technique that allowed it to break into a dead terrorist’s phone (which held nothing of interest).

      USA Today’s Brad Heath has obtained documents showing the FBI’s tech secrecy extends even further than its nominal opponents (judges, defense lawyers, defendants). Its secrecy even involves freezing out other players on the same team.

    • NSA Definitely Working On Maybe Telling Us How Many Americans It Spied On

      Will the NSA reveal how many Americans they spy on? Maybe! One thing is for certain, they are most definitely working very hard on it.

      This morning James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, told reporters “we are looking at several options right now, none of which are optimal.” Sounds promising!

      For years civil liberties groups like the ACLU and some senators (namely Ron Wyden D-OR) have been trying to pry this information out of Clapper to no avail. There’s a famous 2013 video of Wyden asking Clapper if the NSA spies on millions of Americans, to which Clapper replies “not wittingly.”

    • US Spy Chief Considers Disclosing Number Of Americans Surveilled Online
    • US might reveal how many Americans it caught in ‘incidental’ surveillance – spy chief
    • US weighs disclosure of number of surveilled Americans -spy chief
    • US exploring ways to disclose number of Americans caught in data grabs: spy chief
    • Spy chief appalled that Americans don’t want government snooping through correspondence
    • National Intelligence Director Answers U.S. Data Collecting Questions
    • Spies see obstacles for calculating surveillance of Americans
    • James Clapper: Snowden accelerated crypto adoption by 7 years
    • Clapper: Snowden accelerated commercial crypto by 7 years
    • James Clapper: Snowden sped up sophistication of crypto, “it’s not a good thing”
    • Another Reason to Praise Snowden: He Sped Up Encryption Development
    • Spy Chief Claims Edward Snowden Has Made It Harder To Catch Terrorists, Sped Up Rollout Of Strong Encryption
    • US Spy Chief Claims Snowden Helped ‘the Terrorists’ by Improving Technology
    • Congress demands to know how many citizens are being spied on
    • Snowden Leaks Accelerated Encryption Technology By 7 Years, US Intelligence Chief Says
    • Tracking Islamic State Plots Impeded by Encryption, Clapper Says
    • Encryption hindering efforts to stop Islamic State, intelligence director says

      [Ed: Evidence suggests that ‘successful’ terrorists never use encryption so The Liar (Clapper) must be lying again]

    • Clapper says Snowden’s leaks accelerated roll-out of strong encryption
    • Intelligence Director Clapper: Snowden Advanced Encryption Technology ‘Seven Years’
    • Snowden Leaks Advanced Encryption by 7 Years, US Spy Chief Says
    • Plaid Cymru candidate Arfon Jones defends ‘bomb’ tweet

      The Plaid Cymru police and crime commissioner candidate for north Wales said a tweet urging people to “keep GCHQ quiet” by sending emails containing the words “bomb, terrorist and Iran” was meant “in jest”.

      Arfon Jones said the comment was “banter” in response to UK government plans to extend surveillance powers.

      Mr Jones also stood by a tweet that said the “UK created ISIS”.

      He added that he did not recall using a swear word to describe David Cameron.

    • Plaid Police and Crime Commissioner candidate under fire over tweets on GCHQ and David Cameron

      A Plaid Cymru Police and Crime Commissioner candidate has been dubbed unfit to hold office by Labour and the Conservatives after it emerged he had tweeted a message calling on people to “keep GCHQ quiet” by sending emails containing the words “bomb, terrorist and Iran”.

    • NSA Failed to Fully Inform FISC Even After It Started Fact-Checking Itself

      On Friday, I described how, for four years after the FISA Court ruled that NSA couldn’t keep otherwise unlawfully collected information from a single traditional FISA order, the NSA continued to do just that with data from 702 orders.

    • On Encryption Battle, Apple Has Advocates in Ex-National Security Officials

      In their years together as top national security officials, Michael V. Hayden and Michael Chertoff were fierce advocates of using the government’s spying powers to pry into sensitive intelligence data.

      Mr. Hayden directed a secret domestic eavesdropping program at the National Security Agency that captured billions of phone records after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Chertoff pushed for additional wiretapping and surveillance powers from Congress both as a top prosecutor and as Homeland Security secretary.

    • Decrypted PGP BlackBerry Messages Helped Convict UK Gun Smugglers

      Law enforcement agencies across the world are cracking down on PGP smartphones as a means of secure communication for organised crime.

      Last week, two leading members of a UK gang, which bought the largest amount of automatic weapons into the UK mainland ever detected by police, were convicted of importation and firearms offences. The two men, Harry Shilling and Michael Defraine, used so-called PGP BlackBerrys (custom smartphones that come pre-configured with an encrypted email feature), but their messages were ultimately decrypted and used to help convict them.

    • Spy Chief Complains That Edward Snowden Sped Up Spread of Encryption By 7 Years

      THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE on Monday blamed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for advancing the development of user-friendly, widely available strong encryption.

      “As a result of the Snowden revelations, the onset of commercial encryption has accelerated by seven years,” James Clapper said during a breakfast for journalists hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

      The shortened timeline has had “a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists,” he said.

    • House Reps To James Clapper: No, Really, Stop Ignoring The Question And Tell Us How Many Americans Are Spied On By NSA

      Way back before Ed Snowden became a household name, Senator Ron Wyden kept pushing James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, to reveal more details on how the NSA was interpreting certain provisions in the PATRIOT Act to spy on Americans. You probably recall the infamous exchange in a 2013 Senate hearing in which Wyden asked Clapper “does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” and Clapper said “No sir… not wittingly.” Snowden himself later noted that this particular exchange was part of what inspired him to leak documents to reporters just a couple months later.

      However, that question had some history. Two years earlier, in 2011, we wrote about James Clapper’s ridiculous response to a letter from Wyden about this topic. Wyden had asked Clapper to answer some questions about NSA authorities to collect information on Americans and Clapper had refused to answer on the basis of he didn’t really want to.

      A year later, in the summer of 2012, Wyden got more explicit, saying that he would block the FISA Amendments Act until Clapper gave an estimate of how many Americans had their information sucked up by the NSA. This time, Clapper responded in December of 2012 by saying that it would be impossible to actually say how many Americans had their information scooped up by the NSA. We now know why — because six months later, Ed Snowden revealed the answer to be “basically everyone.”

    • Tech titans are busy privatising our data

      Are we facing another tech bubble? Or, to put it in Silicon Valley speak, are most unicorn startups born zombies?

      How you answer these questions depends, by and large, on where you stand on the overall health of the global economy. Some, like the prominent venture capitalist Peter Thiel, argue that virtually everything else – from publicly traded companies to houses to government bonds – is already overvalued. The options, then, are not many: either stick with liquid but low-return products such as cash – or go for illiquid but potentially extremely lucrative investments in tech startups.

    • DOJ Drops Other Big Case Over iPhone Encryption After Defendant Suddenly Remembers His Passcode

      While so much of the attention had been focused on the case in San Bernardino, where the DOJ was looking to get into Syed Farook’s iPhone, we’ve pointed out that perhaps the more interesting case was the parallel one in NY (which actually started last October), where the magistrate judge James Orenstein rejected the DOJ’s use of the All Writs Act to try to force Apple to help unlock the iPhone of Jun Feng, a guy who had already pled guilty on drug charges, but who insisted he did not recall his passcode.

      There were some oddities in the case. Feng had pled guilty and there was some issue over whether or not there was still a need to get into the iPhone. The DOJ insisted yes, because Feng’s iPhone might provide necessary evidence to find others involved in the drug ring. The other oddity: Feng’s iPhone was running iOS7. While the device itself was a newer model iPhone than the one in the Farook case, it still has an older operating system, where it was known that Apple (and others) could easily get in. So it made no sense that the FBI couldn’t get into this phone. In fact, Apple’s latest filing in the case, just over a week ago was basically along those lines, noting that the DOJ claimed Apple’s assistance was “necessary,” but that seemed unlikely.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • 10 percent of Michigan kids have parents in prison

      Michigan is among the states with the highest number of children who have a parent behind bars, according to a report released Monday.

      Some 228,000 children — one out of 10 — have had a parent incarcerated, according to Kids Count in its report “A Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of Parental Incarceration of Kids, Families and Communities.”

      Michigan ranked fifth in the number of kids affected in 2011-12, the latest figures available. California was first with 503,000, followed by Texas, Florida and Ohio.

    • Mexican Human Rights Defenders Say They Are Target of Smear Campaign

      On the eve of the release of a report investigating a student massacre in 2014, its authors and other human rights advocates fear an attempt to pre-empt the findings and discredit the work.

    • The Political Miseducation of DeRay Mckesson

      When it comes to changing the way we talk about race in America, Black Lives Matter has been one of the most successful political movements in the country’s recent history. At Dooby’s, Mckesson told me that the future of Black Lives Matter is one of continued coalition building, with the goal of strengthening what he calls “the inside-outside,” or the pressure placed on institutions of power from both agitators on the outside and political playmakers within.

    • My Frustrating Primary Day as a New York Poll Worker

      More than one million New York City residents participated in Tuesday’s presidential primary. I served as a poll worker on election day and it left me with many questions. Why did many would-be voters receive affidavit ballots on Tuesday? What do you do when everything breaks down at once? Once you go through this process, you have a newfound annoyance with the way New York conducts elections.

      [...]

      There is now a lot of discussion over the affidavits that many people, especially in Brooklyn, had to fill out on Tuesday. Brooklyn is not alone, and at PS 51 we saw voters who had not moved or changed parties in 10 years and were not listed in the book. We had new voters who registered properly and were not in the book. We found misspellings, birthdate issues, and we even found someone’s name backwards. When I placed a follow-up call to the Board of Elections today, I was told by a spokesperson that they do not know how many affidavit ballots they have received but they will be counted in three to four weeks. Whether an affidavit ballot is approved or not will be subject to the same database that showed the voter to be ineligible to cast a regular ballot in the first place.

      New York City voters stepped up to do their civic duty on Tuesday. They deserve an election system better than this.

    • Breivik reminds us human rights never stand alone

      Many have found a Norwegian court’s ruling that mass murderer Anders Breivik was being tortured in jail hard to swallow

    • Turkish academics go on trial for ‘terrorist propaganda’

      Four Turkish academics go on trial Friday for “terrorist propaganda” in the latest of a series of court cases that have highlighted growing restrictions on free speech under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

      Across town, journalists accused of divulging state secrets also return to court for the third hearing of their Istanbul espionage trial.

      The university scholars are being prosecuted for signing a petition along with over 1,000 colleagues and supporters denouncing the government’s military operations against Kurdish rebels in the country’s southeast.

    • Theresa May faces huge backlash over call to leave European human rights convention

      Theresa May’s call for Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights would be a betrayal of the post-war generation who helped create it, human rights groups have said.

      In a speech on the EU, the Home Secretary said that the ECHR was able to “bind the hands of Parliament”, by preventing the deportation of foreign criminals, and called for Britain to stay in the EU but withdraw from the Convention.

      The comments drew immediate criticism from human rights campaigners.

    • Texas is using “Of Mice and Men” to justify executing this man. Seriously.

      Bobby James Moore has a lifelong intellectual disability, yet he sits on Texas’s death row because the courts there used John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” to decide his fate.

      That’s right—the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals went with a fictional novel over science and medicine to measure Bobby’s severe mental limitations. The justices heard a vast body of evidence demonstrating these limitations, which meet the widely accepted scientific standards for defining intellectual disability. Then they rejected it all according to seven wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small. Bobby was no Lennie, they concluded, ruling that his disability wasn’t extreme enough to exempt him from the death penalty. On Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take Bobby’s case.

    • What’s Driving Religious Discrimination at the Alabama DMV?

      I am a Christian woman who follows the Biblical instruction on headscarves, and the state of Alabama should respect that.

      I have always been a spiritual being. Even as a young child I would spend countless hours delving into the tattered pages of my Bible. Though I often have failed, I have tried to remain obedient to God and his Word. But last December, at the Alabama Department of Motor Vehicles, my faith was tested in a way that was humiliating and demeaning.

      In accordance with my Christian faith, I cover my hair with a headscarf, but the DMV refused to take my driver’s license photo unless I removed it. The DMV officials said only Muslims were allowed to keep their headscarves on for photos. I didn’t know what to do. Without question, I believe that Muslim women should not have to violate their faith just to take a driver’s license photo, but neither should Christian women.

    • Independent Investigators Leave Mexico Without Solving the Case Of 43 Disappeared Students
    • ‘Illegal, Immoral, A Slap in the Face’: Experts Blast Mexico over Missing Students

      A scathing report issued Sunday accuses the Mexican government of stonewalling an international probe into the disappearance of 43 students in September 2014, and Mexican police of torturing suspects in the case.

      The 608-page report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—the fruit of an oft-obstructed, year-long investigation—was unveiled “at an emotional press conference on Sunday attended by some of the relatives of the missing students,” according to VICE.

      No high-ranking government officials showed up.

    • The Tories Are Disgusting

      Basic human rights are under greater attack in the UK than in any other member state. We have more communications surveillance, more video surveillance, more organised government informers under “Prevent” and more secret police per head of population than either Russia or Turkey.

      It is therefore not surprising that it is in the UK that the responsible Minister – Theresa May – is today calling for the UK to leave the European Convention of Human Rights. It is indeed complete affirmation of the truth of what I have been saying about the police state the UK has become.

    • Obama is Wrong about Social Movements and Activists

      President Obama is on his farewell tour. Speaking to a young, university audience in London while trying to drum up some support for Britain to stay in the European Union, he offered what has to be seen as totally gratuitous advice to them – and of course all of the rest of us – about what he sees as the proper, underline “proper,” role for social movements and activists.

    • The Tory ‘remain’ strategy is based on fear and selfishness

      PM David Cameron and other prominent politicians campaign for a Remain vote. Stefan Rousseau/PA images. All rights reserved.As confirmed a Remainer I watched with some dismay Chancellor George Osborne’s high-profile defence of British membership in the European Union. The alleged crushing monetary cost of Brexit constituted the central message delivered in his performance in Bristol at the National Composite Centre (who thinks up these names?).

      For progressives – and any open-minded voter — the problems with Mr Osborne’s championing of the EU cause were 1) the Treasury cost estimates are dubious to the point of absurd, 2) the Osborne argument seeks to inspire fear by appealing to narrow self-interest, and 3) for reactionary political reasons the central benefits of the EU were ignored.

    • Donald Trump Once Again Fearmongers About Muslims

      During a Monday afternoon rally in Warwick, Rhode Island, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump warned Ocean State residents to “lock your doors” because Syrian refugees, some of whom he thinks might be associated with ISIS, are being resettled in the state.

      While reading off Rhode Island factoids from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump said, “Here’s one I don’t like… Syrian refugees are now being resettled in Rhode Island.” The audience responded with loud boos.

    • An Obscure GOP Rule Aimed at Stopping Insurgents Is Helping Donald Trump
    • Illinois Police Department Pulls Plug On Body Cameras Because Accountability Is ‘A Bit Burdensome’

      Police body cameras aren’t the cure-all for bad policing. However, they are an important addition to any force, providing not only a means for accountability (albeit an imperfect one) but also documentation of day-to-day police work. They can help weed out those who shouldn’t be cops as well as protect officers from bogus complaints.

      It’s not enough to just have the cameras, though. Effort must be made to keep them in working order (and to prevent intentional damage/disabling). The footage must also be preserved and provided to the public when requested. This does mean there’s additional workload and expenses to be considered, but the potential benefits of increased documentation should outweigh the drawbacks.

    • Cleveland To Shell Out Millions For Tamir Rice’s Death
    • “No Such Thing as Closure”: Tamir Rice’s Family Settles for $6M with Cleveland
    • Tamir Rice’s Family Should Spend Money Warning of Toy Guns, Say Cops Who Shot Him With Real One

      The City of Cleveland announced on Monday that it will pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was tragically killed by police officers in 2014 while holding a toy gun.

      The Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association released a statement responding to the settlement. Rather than acknowledging any error on the police’s part, the association suggested that the Rice family use the funds to “educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms.”

    • Even As Cleveland Pays $6 Million Over Tamir Rice Killing, Police Union Can’t Resist Victim-Blaming

      Hours after the city of Cleveland revealed it will pay $6 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by relatives of slain 12-year-old Tamir Rice, the labor group that represents the police officers who killed Rice sought to remind the world that the boy brought this on himself.

      “We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms,” Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association (CPPA) President Stephen Loomis said in a statement.

    • Democratic Hope in New York

      We face a crisis in this country: A majority of young Americans have lost faith in our government. According to a 2015 Harvard poll, only 17% of 18-29 year olds trust Congress as an institution.

      Having spent three years as a student organizer, I’ve witnessed this political distrust first hand. Many young people view Congress as an auction house, in which politicians are bought via political donation. Given our dysfunctional campaign finance and lobbying systems, none of this should come as a surprise. Indeed, most Americans of all ages believe politicians are more responsive to large donors than their constituents.

    • 8 States Still Have Holidays Celebrating The Confederacy

      Over 150 years ago, the state of Alabama took up arms against the United States in order to defend the state’s practice of enslaving black people and forcing them to work to enrich white property owners. Today, the state celebrates its four years of treason in defense of slavery with a statewide holiday.

      Under Alabama law, the fourth Monday in April is “Confederate Memorial Day” — and this is actually one of two Confederate-themed holidays celebrated by the state. State law also recognizes the first Monday in January as a celebration of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s birthday. State offices, courts, and licensing offices are all closed on Monday because of the state holiday.

    • Psychologists Who Designed the CIA Torture Program Can Be Sued by Victims, Federal Judge Rules

      For the first time, a federal judge is allowing torture victims to sue the psychologists who devised the CIA’s brutal interrogation methods that included sleep deprivation, starvation and forcing captives into coffin-like boxes.

    • Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood most popular leader in Wales, says poll

      Poll suggests Welsh nationalists could become second biggest party ahead of Tories in next week’s assembly election

    • Protests in motion: When films inspire rights’ movements

      Films, like every kind of art, are often made purely for cinema’s sake – but sometimes they aren’t. Some of the most iconic recent films have actually played a major role in inspiring rights’ movements and protests around the world.

      Ten Years, recipient of Hong Kong’s best film award on 3 April 2016, is just one of the latest examples of how cinema can side up with rights: films have often given protests momentum and a cultural reference.

      Sometimes, directors have spoken out publicly in favour of protests; other times the films themselves have documented political abuses. In other cases, protesters and activists have given a film a new life, turning it into an icon for their protests on social media even against the directors’ original ideas.

    • Internet Protections Enshrined In Brazil’s Marco Civil Framework Under Threat From New Laws

      Clearly, if these bills pass in their present form, they will nullify many of the safeguards found in the Marco Civil. The key vote is expected to take place on April 27, and the EFF has a page where you can ask Brazilian lawmakers to reject the proposals. There is also a joint statement to the Brazilian congress, which companies active in the country are invited to sign.

    • Oklahoma Is About to Enact a Bill That Would Jail Abortion Providers

      In the most draconian statewide anti-abortion measure yet, the Oklahoma state House of Representatives approved a state Senate bill last week that could make nearly all abortions in the state illegal and jail doctors who provide the procedure.

      The measure, SB 1522, would make it a felony to perform an abortion, with no exceptions for a woman’s health. The minimum punishment for those who do so would be one year in prison. If it is discovered that they have provided an abortion, doctors would be stripped of their state medical licenses. The only exception to these rules would be abortions to save the life of the mother, and the bill makes clear that the threat of suicide by a woman seeking an abortion doesn’t fulfill the “life” requirement. The bill is now with Gov. Mary Fallin. It’s unclear if she will sign it, though historically she has supported anti-abortion legislation.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Comcast Preventing Customers From Accessing Starz Streaming App, Can Only Offer Flimsy Reasons Why

      Last year, we noted that Comcast was refusing to let the company’s customers access HBO’s streaming video service on certain platforms. In order to watch a service like HBO Go on your Roku or, say, gaming console, you need to log in using your cable credentials, as with most “TV Everywhere” type services. Most cable operators had no problem quickly enabling this authentication, but when it came to say — HBO Go on Roku or the Playstation 3 or 4, Comcast refused to let the services work. Why? If users can’t access this content via a third-party app, they’re more likely to watch the content on Comcast’s own apps, devices, and services.

    • FCC To Ban Charter Communications From Imposing Usage Caps If It Wants Merger Approval

      If you recall, the FCC and DOJ blocked Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable, in large part because of the sheer volume of nonsensical benefits Comcast tried to claim the deal would bring consumers. When Charter Communications subsequently announced its own acquisition of the company, it decided to take a different tack; most notably by taking a more congenial tone with regulators, dialing back the tone-deaf rhetoric and astroturf, and even hiring long-time net neutrality and consumer advocate Marvin Ammori to help seal the deal.

      And it’s now apparent that Charter’s approach paid off. After months of meetings with regulators, both the FCC and the DOJ have announced they intend to approve the deal — with a few conditions. After Bloomberg leaked word of the looming approval, FCC boss Tom Wheeler issued a statement saying (pdf) that most of the conditions being attached to the deal will focus on preventing Charter from harming Internet video competitors.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • MPP Amends HIV Licensing Agreement To Cover More Countries

      The Medicines Patent Pool announced today that its current licensing agreement with ViiV Healthcare for a new antiretroviral drug will be extended to all lower middle-income countries.

      According to an MPP press release, this decision to amend the agreement allows generic dolutegravir distribution in four countries with patents that were not covered in the initial agreement: Armenia, Moldova, Morocco and Ukraine. These were the last lower middle-income countries remaining uncovered, it said.

    • Own name defence narrowed in Europe

      The recently introduced EU trade mark reforms limit the scope of the own name defence. James Whymark and Rachel Boakes explain why the change was introduced, and ask if it is really necessary

    • Federal Cause of Action for Trade Secret Misappropriation

      Nothing is likely to deter the DTSA from passing on Wednesday. The House Leadership is not permitting further amendments prior to the vote and no strong opposition has been voiced other than a group of law professors. States-rights activists have not suggested any reason why the traditional state-law-tort should not also be a federal cause of action.

    • World IP Day – Anne Frank & Geo-blocking Special

      The case highlights the curious lack of copyright harmonisation across the EU, which goes against the single-market premise. Under a single market, capital, goods and services are freely able to move. This freedom stems requires moving towards harmonisation in domestic regulations, lower barriers to trade and reduced restrictions on labour mobility, among others. The goal is to create a trade bloc which functions more like a single European economy, rather than a collection of smaller economies. In theory, this creates a stronger economy that is able to compete internationally with other large economies such as the U.S. and China. In practice, well, geo-blocking is only one example of a number of contentious issues.

    • Trademarks

      • Courts clarify OEM trade mark infringement

        Original equipment manufacturing for export raises several potential trade mark issues in China. Matthew Murphy, Yu Du and Joyce Chng examine the impact of the recent Pretul and Dong Feng cases

      • How to protect your brand when your endorser goes rogue

        Sports sponsorship is big business, and can bring benefits to both the brand owner and the endorser. Nisha Kumar discusses how you can minimise the damage when things go wrong

      • Court Dismisses Trademark Suit Brought By Racetracks Against Gaming Company Referencing Historical Races

        We don’t see nearly enough good trademark rulings, especially concerning Fair Use, that it’s worthwhile in highlighting those that do occur. A nice recent example of this is a court tossing a trademark action started by several horse racing tracks against a gambling gaming company over the latter’s use of track names. To get just a bit of background on this, Encore Racing Based Games makes electronic gambling games, including video slots and video poker. You see these types of machines in bars and restaurants wherever this type of gaming has become legal. But they also make a more innovative type of game in which players are presented with historical races and given the option to bet on them in a parimutuel fashion. The results, as best as I can tell, are based on the real-world outcomes of what I assume are obscure enough races that people aren’t able to simply look up the results on their smartphones in whatever the allotted time is that they’re given. Those results and races, naturally, include the names of the venues in which they were run.

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom and MEGA Ratchet Up War of Words

        Kim Dotcom and the site he founded, MEGA, appear to be at war. After Dotcom warned users to back up their files last week, MEGA hit back with an attack on the entrepreneur’s business plans, noting that his MegaNet project has failed to materialize. Unfazed, Dotcom says MEGA is losing a million dollars per month.

      • Pacemakers and Piracy: The Unintended Consequences of the DMCA for Medical Implants

        As networked computers disappear into our bodies, working their way into hearing aids, pacemakers, and prostheses, information security has never been more urgent — or personal. A networked body needs its computers to work well, and fail even better.

        Graceful failure is the design goal of all critical systems. Nothing will ever work perfectly, so when things go wrong, you want to be sure that the damage is contained, and that the public has a chance to learn from past mistakes.

        That’s why EFF has just filed comments with the FDA in an open docket on cyber-security guidelines for medical systems, letting the agency know about the obstacles that a species of copyright law — yes, copyright law! — has put in the way of medical safety.

« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »

Further Recent Posts

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts