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01.04.16

Links 4/1/2016: Jolla Tablets, 4MLinux 15.0, Budgie Desktop

Posted in News Roundup at 7:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Meshed Again In 2016

    As of January 1st 2016, my main work focus is once again Meshed Insights Ltd., which we’ve kept ticking over during 2015. Working at Wipro was an interesting experiment, but frankly I did not enjoy it at all. I could have probably have lingered there indefinitely if I’d wanted, but leaving on December 31st was entirely my own decision. The company is simply not ready to speak up for software freedom or encourage its clients to set themselves free from the proprietary vendors Wipro loves and from which it profits.

  • My biggest benefit of open source wasn’t what it was supposed to be

    Earlier this year I built my first real Open Source Software (OSS) project. I saw a problem that hadn’t been solved and I decided to fix it. It took some long nights, but eventually I released it. Other people eventually ran into the same problem I had and decided to use my project for their solution. Now, this project isn’t huge by any means. It’s not Redux, Babel, or React Router. You’ve probably never even heard of it. However, it’s big enough that I’ve learned many things about building an open source project that people rely on for their production apps. Surprisingly, my biggest and most valuable take away wasn’t what I thought it would be because it’s not in the usual “the benefits of building an OSS project” list.

  • OS.js Is A New Javascript Based Open Source Operating System Running In Your Browser

    OS.js is a free and open source operating system that runs in your web browser. Based on Javascript, this operating system comes with a fully-fledged window manager, ability to install applications, access to virtual filesystems and a lot more. Read more to know about the OS in detail.

  • My 2015 and looking at 2016

    Today 2015 end and 2016 begins. So I want to use the opportunity to look back what happened in the ownCloud world in the last 12 month but also in my personal life.

    I’m very thankful to work with so many skilled, friendly and dedicated people in the ownCloud community to push this idea and product forward. This is just amazing.

  • Reverse Engineering the GoPro Cineform codec

    Following the fine traditions of great codec reverse engineers it has now become the norm to write-up the trials and tribulations of the process.

  • Five Reasons To Upgrade Your ownCloud

    I know, upgrading can be a pain, it is work and all that. But so are problems in old versions of software you’re running and even more so is security. We’re working on a new upgrade process for 9.0.

  • libusb: Maintainer fail

    In 2010 I was asked by the second maintainer in a row to take over as new maintainer of the libusb project. The first time I had declined.

  • Events

    • Access Without Empowerment (LibrePlanet 2015 Keynote)

      At LibrePlanet 2015 (the FSF’s annual conference), I gave a talk called “Access Without Empowerment” as one of the conference keynote addresses. As I did for my 2013 LibrePlanet talk, I’ve edited together a version that includes the slides and I’ve posted it online in WebM and on YouTube.

  • Web Browsers

    • 32-bit vs 64-bit browsers: which version has the edge?

      The majority of web browsers are offered as 32-bit and 64-bit version nowadays, and it is up to the user to decide which version to run on the computer.

      This comparison guide analyzes the performance of select browsers to find out which version of it performs better.

    • Mozilla

      • W^X JIT-code enabled in Firefox

        Back in June, I added an option to SpiderMonkey to enable W^X protection of JIT code. The past weeks I’ve been working on fixing the remaining performance issues and yesterday I enabled W^X on the Nightly channel, on all platforms. What this means is that each page holding JIT code is either executable or writable, never both at the same time.

        [...]

        Last but not least, thanks to the OpenBSD and HardenedBSD teams for being brave enough to flip the W^X switch before we did!

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice finally making it to the cloud

      LibreOffice is the best free and open-source standalone office suite. But these days, people like their office suites on the cloud, not on their PCs. Just look at the success of Google Docs and Office 365 and you’ll see what I mean.

      Since 2011, LibreOffice has been trying to make a software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud version. Finally, in March 2015, Collabora was successful in creating a SaaS version of LibreOffice. That was the good news. The bad news? It wasn’t ready for primetime.

    • The way you write

      These two different approaches do not necessarily highlight the superiority of the word processor; after all one could imagine an html template instead of one in OpenDocument Format or proprietary one. What it shows, however, is that a word processor deals with documents in a visual way. A text editor sticks pretty much to the text itself. The rest can be dealt with in other ways, either externally or in a programmatic method (with LaTex for instance). My point here is to stress that the two kind of tools rely on broadly different approaches.

  • Education

    • DigiVita uses Blender to teach girls to code

      The field of computer graphics has continued to prove itself as fertile ground for getting kids interested in code and technology. It isn’t just about the extremely gratifying feeling of creating cool-looking visuals on a computer. Since so many digital content creation programs (especially open source ones like Blender) feature built-in scripting support, it’s a natural avenue for fostering curiosity in code and software development.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • The Developer Formerly Known as FreeBSDGirl

      I’m still sad I had to leave. That is a heartbreak that will probably never go away. I’ll miss the conferences and hanging out with so many incredibly talented people to discuss an operating system and open source project that I loved. This project helped me get to where I am today. I’m not advocating that minorities don’t join FreeBSD, but I hope those in charge of the project read this and understand that they’ve got to do better. I hope someone else helps them find their way.

    • randi vs xmj

      If a volunteer project has a volunteer who is honestly so dysfunctional that he doesn’t understand why he is offensive, the project does not need him. And the volunteer needs to get help until he’s capable of behaving in a civilized manner.

    • The Empathy Gap, and Why Women are Treated Badly in Open Source Communities

      Some years ago, I contributed $1000 to be one of the seed funders of the Ada Initiative, which worked to assist women in participating in Open Source projects. That worked out for several years, and the organization had sort of an ugly meltdown in their last year that is best forgotten. There was something really admirable about the Ada Initiative in its good days, which is that it stuck to one message, stuck to the positive in helping women enter and continue in communities in which they were under-represented, and wasn’t anti-male. That’s the way we should do it.

    • Women, Let This Email Plugin Teach You to Be Confident Like A Man

      Sorry, I’m no expert, but have you ever, like, just noticed that women inject many kind of undermining phrases in their day-to-day speech?

    • Initial FreeBSD Core Team comments on concerns about harassment in the FreeBSD community

      A brief comment on the Code of Conduct. The Project’s committer guide has long required that developers treat each other with respect. Community members will hopefully be aware of the more recent (and concrete) Code of Conduct (CoC). This document, already under development, was rushed into service (leading to less feedback sought than we would have liked) in July 2015 as a result of Randi’s report — and has since been updated several times following community (and legal) feedback. This CoC is critical to both documenting — and enforcing — community standards. It is, of necessity, a living document, and in October 2015 we appealed to the FreeBSD developer community for volunteers to assist with further improvements. We also solicited a number of independent reviewers from broader open-source, corporate, and academic communities to assist with updating it further (as well as auditing it for implicit bias). The FreeBSD developer community was this week (re-)invited to contact the Core Team about joining that committee, which had its most recent teleconference in the last week of December.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GIMP & GEGL Made Much Progress In 2015

      Alexandre Prokoudine of GIMP has written an annual report on the project and its GEGL port.

      In 2015 much progress was made on GEGL, painting improvements were made, improved file format support happened, and much more. Lots of progress was made and can be found right now in the GIMP 2.9 test releases though it will culminate with the GIMP 2.10 stable release in the future.

    • GIMP and GEGL in 2015

      The GIMP project has released its annual year-end retrospective, looking back on development on the GIMP editor itself, project infrastructure, and closely related software projects like the Generic Graphics Library (GEGL). Highlights from the past twelve months include the conversion of more tools to using GEGL operations, support for a new perceptual color space, and improvements to image-blending modes. Several new features were added to support painting (including on-screen-canvas flipping and rotation), and work was put into the UI themes.

    • GIMP and GEGL in 2015

      We hope you are having great holidays. Here is our annual report about project activities in 2015.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Perl 6, EFF’s reading and watching lists, and more open source news

      In this fortnight’s edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look at the first official release of the Perl 6 language specification, a reading and watching list from the EFF, and more!

    • Best of Opensource.com: Interviews

    • Open Access/Content

      • Open Access Movement Demands More: 2015 in Review

        In October 2015, all six editors of the linguistics journal Lingua quit at once, along with its 31-member editorial board. The walkout brought mainstream attention to a debate that has been brewing for years over the future of academic publishing.

    • Open Hardware

      • The Hovalin: Open Source 3D Printed Violin Sounds Great

        Yes, there have been 3D-printed instruments before, but [The Hovas] have created something revolutionary – a 3D printed acoustic instrument that sounds surprisingly good. The Hovalin is a full size violin created to be printed on a desktop-sized 3D printer. The Hovas mention the Ultimaker 2, Makerbot Replicator 2 (or one of the many clones) as examples. The neck is one piece, while the body is printed in 3 sections. The Hovalin is also open source, released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

  • Programming

    • PHP 7.0 packages released

      Packages of the new major version of PHP have been released into the stable repositories. Besides the new PHP 7 features there are the following packaging changes. In general the package configuration is now closer to what was intended by the PHP project. Also refer to the PHP 7 migration guide for upstream improvements.

    • PHP 7.0 Enters Arch Linux Stable Repository

      PHP 7 entered the stable repositories and these packages now use a package configuration closer to upstream PHP.net. Some of the nice changes to the Arch packages are no longer setting open_basedir by default and building the OpenSSL, Phar, and POSIX extensions by default. These Arch changes will also make it easier running the Phoronix Test Suite out-of-the-box on Arch.

    • Moving some of Python to GitHub?

      Over the years, Python’s source repositories have moved a number of times, from CVS on SourceForge to Subversion at Python.org and, eventually, to Mercurial (aka hg), still on Python Software Foundation (PSF) infrastructure. But the new Python.org site code lives at GitHub (thus in a Git repository) and it looks like more pieces of Python’s source may be moving in that direction. While some are concerned about moving away from a Python-based DVCS (i.e. Mercurial) into a closed-source web service, there is a strong pragmatic streak in the Python community that may be winning out. For good or ill, GitHub has won the popularity battle over any of the other alternatives, so new contributors are more likely to be familiar with that service, which makes it attractive for Python.

    • Python Is Moving From Mercurial To GitHub

      For those that didn’t hear, Python developers will be abandoning their Mercurial-based repository and development workflow in favor of using a Git repository via GitHub.

Leftovers

  • Arriva trains in Wales hit by strike

    Arriva trains across Wales will not run on Monday because of a strike by drivers over terms and conditions.

    Aslef union members at Arriva Trains Wales are walking out for 24 hours, with all of the company’s services expected to be cancelled.

    Arriva’s Gareth Thomas said the company was “extremely disappointed” that the “latest offer of improvements to terms, conditions and pay” had been rejected.

  • What’s Your State’s Favorite F**king Expletive?

    Cursing is an almost universal pleasure. Why else would so many people learn the curse and slang words in different languages before learning any other phrases? But as U.K. linguist Jack Grieve recently found out, in the U.S., the way you curse depends on where you live.

  • iOS 9 kludged our iPhones, now give us money, claims new lawsuit

    Lawyers in New York have filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, saying that the iOS 9 operating system upgrade slowed their older iPhone 4S handsets into uselessness.

    “Plaintiff and other class members were faced with a difficult decision: use a buggy, slow device that disrupts everyday life or spend hundreds of dollars to buy another smartphone,” reads the lawsuit spotted by Apple Insider.

  • Helmet reading challenge 2016

    Both the participants of the 2015 reading challenge and library staff have suggested new items and many of them made it also to the list. The aim has been to create a reading challenge that will broaden your worldview, inspire, and surprise. And just like last year it’s open for everyone to come and join in the fun!

  • Welcome to another year of transformation

    Unfortunately, such boundary-breaking experiments are in short supply, constantly constrained by the mantra that change is impossible because of (insert your favorite bogeyman): the world economy, footloose corporations, human nature, the weakening of governments, corruption in politics, the decline of the public, too much TV and far too much Rupert Murdoch. If we believe that only small changes are possible in our political and economic systems, then small change is all we’re going to see—another turn of the wheel with little or no forward movement.

  • Science

    • Arne Duncan: Testocracy Tsar. Educational Alchemist. Corporate Lackey.

      For example, in order for states to compete for grant money under Race to the Top, Duncan required them to increase the use of standardized testing in teacher evaluations. Duncan’s championing of the Common Core State Standards—and the tests that came shrink-wrapped with them—has ushered in developmentally inappropriate standards in the early grades that punish late bloomers, while further entrenching the idea that the intellectual and emotional process of teaching and learning can be reduced to a test score. For many, Duncan will be remembered as an educational alchemist who attempted to turn education into “testucation”—with the average student today subjected to an outlandish 112 standardized tests between preschool and high school graduation. The highest concentration of these tests are in schools serving low-income students and students of color.

    • Happy 1.5 Billion Unix Seconds

      On Jan. 1, 1970, Unix time was born. It didn’t actually exist on that day; the Unix operating system only kind of/sort of existed then anyhow. But when the first edition of the Unix manual was released in 1971, it was thus declared that the beginning of Unix time—the Unix epoch, correctly—hath began on New Year’s Day, 1970.

      Maybe you’ve heard of the Unix epoch. Simply, it’s the reference date that Unix-based computers use to tell time. It is just a count of the number of seconds that have elapsed since the beginning of the epoch. If you’re running a Unix or Unix-like machine, you can get this count in its raw form by entering “date +%s” at the command line/terminal. (“Date” by itself will just give you the boring old date-date.) As of this writing, we’re at 1,451,688,846 seconds.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Congress Did Not Legalize Medical Marijuana

      Contrary to what you may have heard, the federal ban has not been lifted.

    • Venezuela Passes Law Banning GMOs, by Popular Demand

      The National Assembly of Venezuela, in its final session before a neoliberal dominated opposition takes the helm of legislative power on January 5, passed one of the most progressive seed laws in the world on December 23, 2015; it was promptly signed into law by President Nicolas Maduro. On December 29, during his television show, “In Contact with Maduro, number 52,” Maduro said that the new seed law provides the conditions to produce food “under an agro-ecological model that respects the pacha mama (mother earth) and the right of our children to grow up healthy, eating healthy.” The law is a victory for the international movements for agroecology and food sovereignty because it bans transgenic (GMO) seed while protecting local seed from privatization. The law is also a product of direct participatory democracy –the people as legislator– in Venezuela, because it was hammered out through a deliberative partnership between members of the country’s National Assembly and a broad-based grassroots coalition of eco-socialist, peasant, and agroecological oriented organizations and institutions. This essay provides an overview of the phenomenon of people as legislator, a summary of the new Seed Law, and an appendix with an unofficial translation of some of the articles of the law.

    • The Shockingly High Number of Casualties of America’s Nuclear Weapons Program

      This point is borne out by a recently-published study by a team of investigative journalists at McClatchy News. Drawing upon millions of government records and large numbers of interviews, they concluded that employment in the nation’s nuclear weapons plants since 1945 led to 107,394 American workers contracting cancer and other serious diseases. Of these people, some 53,000 judged by government officials to have experienced excessive radiation on the job received $12 billion in compensation under the federal government’s Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. And 33,480 of these workers have died.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Outside the box: a Sunni endgame in Syria, Iraq?

      In October, a group of 53 Saudi imams unaffiliated with the government called for a jihad against the Russian, Iranian and Syrian governments. The group went even further than official condemnation and likened the Russian intervention to the 1980 war in Afghanistan—which led to the birth of Al Qaeda, in case anyone has forgotten. It is significant that the Saudi government allowed or was not able to stop the communication; the former would indicate approval of the intensified message while the latter would imply weakness and the desire of the Saudis to avoid internal dissension from the more radical clergy.

    • Man charged with setting Houston mosque fire says he was a devout attendee

      A Houston man has been arrested in connection with a suspected arson at a mosque on Christmas Day, but the motive for the crime remains a mystery, with the suspect maintaining he was a regular at the mosque.

    • Refugee Crisis Leaves the Deepest, and Cruelest, Mark on 2015

      A few things happened in 2015 that changed lives for the better. But not many in a year that ended with mass murder and the mean, sneering Donald Trump a top contender for the presidency.

      There wasn’t even much pleasure from watching pharmaceutical villain Martin Shkreli, in hoodie and facial stubble, perp-walked out of his Manhattan apartment to face security fraud charges. The pleasure was mean-spirited, hardly worthy of an essay on the year that was. And his worse transgression—making vital medicines virtually unaffordable—goes unpunished.

    • 74 Killed in Iraq; ISIS Attacks Ramadi Army Base

      At least six suicide bombers were killed during an attack on an army base near Ramadi. The army was forced to pull out due to an undisclosed number of casualties. With the help of airstrikes, the army was able to retake the desert base later.

    • Back to the 1930s: Hitler, Da’esh and the West

      Whilst Da’esh are constantly being compared to the Nazis, the real parallel – the West’s willingness to build up fascism in order to cripple Russia – is often forgotten.

    • Syria ­- A Light to the World

      Many Syrians are traumatized and in shock and ask ‘how did this happen to our country’? Proxy wars are something they thought only happened in other countries, but now Syria too has been turned into a war-ground in the geo-political landscape controlled by the western global elite and their allies in the Middle East.

    • Taliban Rising

      The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, where they recently mounted a major military operation in Helmand province in the south and where throughout the rest of the country they are increasingly active, is emphatic evidence that NATO’s prolonged military mission there has been a dismal failure. This failure is not however a measure of the failure to impose a liberal democracy in the country but in the lives destroyed in the attempt.

    • Slouching Toward Global Disaster

      In such circumstances, it is difficult to find much hope in the current cosmodrama of world politics.

    • Hard roads across Iraq, Syria and beyond: Freedom and safety are scarce five years after the Arab Spring

      I was planning to visit Baghdad last summer and stay with my friend Ammar al-Shahbander, who ran the local office of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. I had stayed with him for 10 days in June 2014, just after Isis forces had captured Mosul and Tikrit and were advancing with alarming speed on the capital.

      Ammar was a good man to be with in a moment of crisis because he had strong nerves, an ebullient personality and was highly informed about all that was happening in Iraq. He was sceptical but not cynical, though refreshingly derisive as the Iraqi government claimed mythical victories as Isis fighters approached ever closer to the capital. He did not believe that they could successfully storm Baghdad, but that did not mean they would not try – and one morning I found him handing over a Kalashnikov to somebody to have its sights readjusted.

    • Value of gun manufacturers’ stocks almost doubled in 2015

      Stock markets around the world closed down on the last trading day of 2015, with the Dow suffering its first annual drop since 2008. But for the two largest stock market-listed gun manufacturers 2015 has been another great year – their value has doubled.

      In a year marred with gun violence and peppered with calls for tougher gun control measures, Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger and Company have been two of the best performing stocks in the US.

    • Fox’s Ingraham Denies Reality Of Gun Show Loophole And Public Support For Gun Background Checks
    • We Are Still Alive (Non-Terrorism Edition)

      Hard as it is to persuade a constantly re-frightened American public, there have been only 38 Americans killed inside the Homeland by so-called Islamic terrorism since 9/11.

      [...]

      We are not terrorists. No one was hurt. No bombs went off. Almost all of our homegrown lone wolves are all Google and no game. It was all panic, designed to keep us in a state of fear. Fearful people are easy to manipulate.

      Stop being afraid.

    • The Year in Gun Massacres

      Most of the 2015 mass shooters were clearly unbalanced, violent and some had police records or issued threats. Anyone could see the murders coming. Yet the gunmen had sailed through their background checks and were the “law-abiding” gun owners whose “rights” the gun lobby defends.

    • The Year in Drones: 2015

      Israel is the world’s number one exporter of drones, followed by the US, then China.

    • Gallup: Ukrainians Loathe the Kiev Government Imposed by Obama

      Gallup reports, “fewer Ukrainians now say their leadership is taking them in the right direction than before the revolution,” but that statement calling this coup a ‘revolution’ embodies the propaganda-lie of one of Gallup’s main clients, the U.S. government itself, which calls the U.S. coup in Ukraine in February 2014 a “revolution,” when every honest and knowledgeable person now knows that this U.S. government claim — that it had helped install democracy instead of having ended it in Ukraine on 20 February 2014 — to have been a lie. Even the founder of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor has called the overthrow of Yanukovych “the most blatant coup in history.” It had been that because it was the first coup to be videoed by numerous people from many different angles with their cellphones and by TV cameras, uploaded to the Web by even anti-Yanukovych countries such as the UK’s BBC; and those videos, the best compilation of which is here, make clear that this was, indeed, a coup d’etat, no authentic revolution at all, such as the U.S. government claims.

    • The War Against the Cowboys

      The Oregon stand off and US imperialism

    • CNN Analyst: White Militiamen Aren’t a Threat Like Black Protesters Because ‘They’re Not Looting Anything’
    • On #OregonUnderAttack and #YallQaeda: Stop Calling Everyone a Terrorist
    • The Great Oregon Standoff Enters Its First Day
    • Armed Militia Occupies National Wildlife Refuge
    • As The Bundy Brothers Occupy Federal Building, Here Are The GOP Candidates Who Supported Their Dad
    • What You Need To Know About The Current Militia Standoff In Oregon
    • Chuck Todd Doesn’t Ask Rand Paul About Militia Takeover Involving Sons Of Ally Cliven Bundy
    • Media Coverage of Oregon Militia Standoff Raises Eyebrows — and Ire

      After members of a rightwing militia—many armed with assault rifles—seized the headquarters of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon on Saturday afternoon, observers questioned the corporate media’s treatment of the event, pointing to a double standard in coverage compared to other recent protests.

    • Armed Protesters in Oregon Occupy Remote Federal Outpost at Wildlife Refuge After Marching Against Sentence of Father and Son Ranchers

      Yesterday afternoon, as many as 300 demonstrators gathered in Burns, Oregon, to protest a federal appeals court’s decision to extend the length of a sentence handed down by a district chief judge in the arson case of ranchers father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond.

      The two started a series of range fires on their private property which eventually spread onto federal land. The federal government prosecuted them in 2012 on an array of charges, from conspiracy to attempting to damage property through fire. They were found guilty on only two arson counts, which covered activities (setting fires) the Hammonds admitted to. As part of their plea deal, they agreed not to appeal their sentences. 73-year-old Dwight Hammond was sentenced to three years in prison and his 46-year-old son Steven to 11 months, below the mandatory minimum of five years, which the judge, Michael Hogan, called “grossly disproportionate” and said would “shock his conscience.”

    • Large Group Of Armed Militia Members Take Over Federal Building

      A large group of armed militia members have broken into and occupied a federal building in Oregon. The group reportedly includes three sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who had a tense standoff with federal officials in 2014.

    • Armed Militia Seized A Federal Building. The Media Called Them ‘Peaceful.’

      After an armed militia seized a federal building in Oregon — and proclaimed they’re willing to kill and be killed if necessary — the initial headlines about the incident suggested they’re simply peaceful protesters exercising their right to assemble.

      This weekend, radical militia members descended on an Oregon town to protest the conviction of two local ranchers facing multiple years in prison for setting fire to federal land. The right-wing protesters say that the federal government shouldn’t have so much jurisdiction over land use.

      In order to provoke a standoff with federal officials over this point, at least a dozen “heavily armed men” broke into the empty headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon on Saturday evening and refused to leave. Ammon Bundy, a spokesman for the group, told reporters that the militia “would not rule out violence” if officials attempt to remove them from the refuge building.

    • US warns Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent cleric risks inflaming sectarian tensions

      Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr risks worsening sectarian tensions, the US has warned, joining a chorus of critics from the west and the Middle East who have condemned the killing.

      As protesters in Tehran reacted with fury by setting fire to the Saudi embassy, US state department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement that the US was “particularly concerned” that al-Nimr’s execution risked “exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced.”

    • Unidentified Bodies Found; 88 Killed in Iraq
    • Top Investigator Says British Soldiers May Face Prosecution for Iraq Crimes

      “The ICC is looking at more than 1,200 cases of alleged ill-treatment and unlawful killing,” the paper reported, “including almost 50 Iraqis who reportedly died in British custody.”

      Meanwhile, the Chilcot Inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War—which itself has been blasted as a “whitewash”—began in 2009 but has yet to issue its findings.

    • British soldiers could face prosecution for crimes committed during Iraq conflict, investigators confirm

      Exclusive: The unit established to test allegations of torture and unlawful killings has been overwhelmed with cases

    • Turkey’s President Erdogan cites ‘Hitler’s Germany’ as example of an effective form of government

      Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has defended his push for a presidential system of government by citing “Hitler’s Germany” as an historic example.

      The President has pushed ahead with efforts to increase the stature of his own position, despite fears it would split the country’s seat of power in two.

    • A-Z of Drones 2015 – Part Three

      The normalisation of drone targeted killing took a step forward in 2015 as the UK wholeheartedly embraced the tactic. Parliamentarians, US Senators, the United Nations and civil society groups continue to struggle to, at the very least, limit such activity and gain some oversight of the process. Transparency, however, is in short supply and government contempt for proper public oversight, never mind curbing the practice, is obvious. Meanwhile BAE Systems’ Taranis combat drone continued its test programme with a third (and reportedly final) set of flight tests in November. The drone, or a derivative of it, is likely to be a contender for the UK’s Future Combat Air System (FCAS) likely to see some funding decision in 2016.

    • The GOP Plan to Bring Back a Unipolar World

      Republicans seem to think that by banging the drum for increased defense spending, they can restore America’s greatness. They’re wrong.

    • Hearing the Russian Perspective

      The neocons and liberal hawks who dominate the U.S. foreign policy and media establishment are pushing the world toward a nuclear showdown with Russia as few people hear a comprehensive response from the other side, an imbalance that a new Russian documentary addresses

    • Al-Qaeda or ISIS? Al-Shabab’s loyalty dilemma

      In the decades following the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan in the 1980s, al-Qaeda represented the primary face of the global jihadi movement. Daniel Bynum, a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution, argues that Osama Bin Laden sought to capitalise on the network of fighters they had built in Afghanistan to “create a vanguard of elite fighters who could lead the global jihad project and bring together the hundreds of small jihadist groups struggling, often feebly, against their own regimes under a single umbrella.” By the mid-1990s the orientation of this network shifted from local regimes to what they perceived to be their source of sustenance: the United States and the west. Over the next decade, al-Qaeda employed a franchising strategy, which was most attractive to smaller groups on the brink of failure who required much needed financial assistance, a steady stream of recruits, training and logistical support. In return, franchises provide a potential local haven for al-Qaeda members and enable them to remain relevant. This franchise model continues to be attractive for al-Shabab despite the rise of ISIS.

    • How False Stories of Iran Arming the Houthis Were Used to Justify War in Yemen

      The allegation of Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis – an allegation that has often been mentioned in press coverage of the conflict but never proven – was reinforced by a report released last June by a panel of experts created by the UN Security Council: The report concluded that Iran had been shipping arms to the Houthi rebels in Yemen by sea since at least 2009. But an investigation of the two main allegations of such arms shipments made by the Yemeni government and cited by the expert panel shows that they were both crudely constructed ruses.

    • The American Empire: Murder Inc.

      Terror, intimidation and violence are the glue that holds empire together. Aerial bombardment, drone and missile attacks, artillery and mortar strikes, targeted assassinations, massacres, the detention of tens of thousands, death squad killings, torture, wholesale surveillance, extraordinary renditions, curfews, propaganda, a loss of civil liberties and pliant political puppets are the grist of our wars and proxy wars.

      Countries we seek to dominate, from Indonesia and Guatemala to Iraq and Afghanistan, are intimately familiar with these brutal mechanisms of control. But the reality of empire rarely reaches the American public. The few atrocities that come to light are dismissed as isolated aberrations. The public is assured what has been uncovered will be investigated and will not take place again. The goals of empire, we are told by a subservient media and our ruling elites, are virtuous and noble. And the vast killing machine grinds forward, feeding, as it has always done, the swollen bank accounts of defense contractors and corporations that exploit natural resources and cheap labor around the globe.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • LETTER: No democracy as council bans public and media

      Perhaps Arun should consider acting more like a democracy and less like a totalitarian regime?

    • EFF Fights for the Public’s Right to Know: 2015 in Review

      2015 was a busy year for transparency at EFF. We are currently litigating 10 different public records cases—the highest number of transparency cases EFF has had pending at one time in our 25 year history. The majority of the cases are in federal courts (in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.), although we have two cases pending in California state courts.

      Here’s a brief, year-end rundown of each case, including what we’re after, who we sued, and the status of the case.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • China clamps down on coal

      China says it will not approve any new coal mines for the next three years. The country’s National Energy Administration (NEA) says more than 1,000 existing mines will also be closed over the coming year, reducing total coal production by 70 million tons.

    • Court website hacked in protest over dismissed haze lawsuit

      The website of a district court in a South Sumatran city has been hacked as a protest against a ruling it made last week rejecting a government lawsuit against PT Bumi Mekar Hijau, which was accused of failing to prevent fires that blanketed South-east Asia in toxic haze.

      The hacker or hackers wrote on the website of the Palembang District Court of the disappointment with the panel of judges, led by presiding judge Parlas Nababan.

      The words were written in white against a black background on the website.

    • Palembang District Court finds no damages after forest fires

      Delivering the decision on Wednesday, the court said that the evidence collected in the case against PT Bumi Mekar Hijau (BMH, failed prove its alleged criminality in the burning of 20,000 hectares of its concession in Ogan Komering Ilir, South Sumatra, in 2014.

    • Red Lake Nation Agrees to $18.5 Million Settlement with Enbridge
    • Even Tumbling Fossil Fuel Prices Can’t Deter Clean Energy Revolution

      One of the biggest stories of 2015 was the sharp decline of oil prices, which fell this year to levels not seen in more than a decade.

      “After plunging from more than $100 a barrel to nearly $50 a barrel last year, U.S. oil prices fell 30 percent in 2015 to $37.04 a barrel,” the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

    • Double dilemma for Paris climate deal

      The UN’s achievement last month in persuading world leaders to agree on measures to tackle climate change leaves two prominent climate scientists far from convinced.

    • I Was Wrong: Big Banks Actually Were Exactly Like Counterfeiters

      In a recent post about the new movie The Big Short, I argued that it’s not actually necessary to decipher the abstruse jargon of the 2008 financial crisis — i.e., credit default swaps, mezzanine tranches, synthetic collateralized debt obligations, etc. — in order to understand what happened. What the big banks did during the housing bubble of the mid-2000s was in essence straightforward counterfeiting. The difference between what they did and regular counterfeiting was simply the kind of fake paper; regular counterfeiters print fake, valueless cash, while the banks were printing fake, valueless bonds.

    • During Paris Climate Summit, Obama Signed Exxon-, Koch-Backed Bill Expediting Pipeline Permits

      Just over a week before the U.S. signed the Paris climate agreement at the conclusion of the COP21 United Nations summit, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law with a provision that expedites permitting of oil and gas pipelines in the United States.

  • Finance

    • At Stake in 2016: Ending the Vicious Cycle of Wealth and Power

      Billionaires like Donald Trump can use bankruptcy to escape debts but average people can’t get relief from burdensome mortgage or student debt payments.

    • 2016: The Year of the Billionaire
    • The Great Malaise Continues

      At the same time, the US suffers from a milder form of the fiscal austerity prevailing in Europe. Indeed, some 500,000 fewer people are employed by the public sector in the US than before the crisis. With normal expansion in government employment since 2008, there would have been two million more.

    • Sanders: Billionaires won’t ‘rule this nation’

      Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is making a New Year’s resolution not to let the billionaire class take control of the nation — starting with Donald Trump.

      “I say to Mr. Trump and his supporters that the billionaires in this country will not continue to rule this nation,” Sanders said at an Amherst, Mass., rally on Saturday, according to the Washington Examiner.

      The Democratic presidential hopeful said his fourth-quarter fundraising haul of $33 million, announced Saturday, is a sign that a political revolution is underway.

      “What is revolutionary about all of that is we are showing you that you can run a national campaign … without being dependent on big money,” he said.

    • The shocking, unacceptable levels of hunger and homelessness in American cities

      The U.S. Conference of Mayors today released its 2015 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, which gathered information on 22 cities around the country between Sept. 1, 2014, and Aug. 31, 2015. The cities reported on are led by mayors who serve on the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness.

    • Privilege, Pathology and Power

      Modern America is a society in which a growing share of income and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, and these people have huge political influence — in the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, around half the contributions came from fewer than 200 wealthy families. The usual concern about this march toward oligarchy is that the interests and policy preferences of the very rich are quite different from those of the population at large, and that is surely the biggest problem.

      But it’s also true that those empowered by money-driven politics include a disproportionate number of spoiled egomaniacs. Which brings me to the current election cycle.

    • Chris Christie Refuses To Help Unemployed New Jersey Residents Hold Onto Food Stamps

      About 11,000 New Jersey residents are set to lose their food stamps after Gov. Chris Christie (R)’s administration said it won’t seek any waivers from the program’s work requirements.

      Since 2009, state governors have been encouraged to get waivers from the federal government for the requirement that able-bodied, childless adults work at least 20 hours a week to enroll in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, thanks to a weak economy where jobs have been scarce. Those waivers are now being rescinded in states with unemployment levels below 10 percent.

    • The Final Days of the Bitcoin Foundation?

      With support dwindling, funds almost depleted, and ex-board members under criminal investigation, bitcoin’s pioneering advocacy group is a symbol for the digital currency’s growing pains.

    • Should the Fed Issue Its Own Bitcoin?

      Economic exchange depends critically on secure and trustworthy payment systems. Because payment systems are fundamentally about recording and communicating information, it should come as no surprise that payment systems have evolved in tandem with advancements in electronic data storage and communications.

      One exciting development of late is Bitcoin–an algorithmic-based, communally-operated money and payment system. I thought I’d take some time to gather my thoughts on Bitcoin and to ponder how central banks might respond to this innovation.

    • Kshama Sawant: For Many Millennials, the Dirty Word Is ‘Capitalism,’ Not ‘Socialism’
    • Of course ‘socialism’ was most-searched term of 2015: its ideas fit our times

      There is a decisive mood of resistance in America – a backlash to the status quo. The Bernie Sanders campaign for president is capturing that mood, and it is no surprise that ‘socialism’ was the most looked-up word in 2015.

      [...]

      There is deep anger against gaping income inequality and systemic racism. People are hungry for political alternatives that will serve their interests for a change instead of the insatiable greed of Wall Street.

    • Israel Exported $400,000 of Gold to North Korea Despite UN Sanctions

      So what do you call it when America’s bestest friend violates UN sanctions the U.S. pushed for by helping enrich America’s bestest enemy? And all the while the U.S. remains dead silent over the whole thing?

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Sheldon Adelson’s Purchase of Las Vegas Paper Seen as a Power Play

      Sheldon Adelson’s Purchase of Las Vegas Paper Seen as a Power Play – The New York TimesTwo days after Sheldon Adelson’s lawyers lost in their attempts to have a judge removed from a contentious lawsuit that threatens his gambling empire, a call went out to the publisher of this city’s most prominent newspaper.

      Almost immediately, journalists were summoned to a meeting and told they must monitor the courtroom actions of the judge and two others in the city. When the journalists protested, they were told there was no choice in the matter.

      It is unclear whether Mr. Adelson, who was then in talks to buy the newspaper, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, or his associates were behind the directive or even knew about it. But it was an ominous coincidence for many in the city who worry what will become of the paper now that it is owned by Mr. Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate and prominent Republican donor with a history of aggressively pursuing his interests.

    • Ringing in New Year, Sanders Urges Iowans to Make ‘Political Revolution’ Happen

      The Sanders campaign also released a statement on Thursday at the end of a three-day swing through the state trumpeting the over 34,000 people that have come to Sanders-sponsored campaign events since his White house bid began in April.

      “I am very pleased that the turnouts at our meetings have been large and seem to be getting larger every day,” Sanders said in a media statement.

      “We sense real growing momentum here in Iowa and we think we have a great opportunity to win,” he added.

    • Why Isn’t the Media Feeling the Bern?

      Polls show that Bernie Sanders would trounce Donald Trump, but you’d never know that from watching TV news.

    • Identity Berned

      These books don’t make me like Bernie Sanders any more or less, or for that matter take seriously any more or less the idea that a likable personality is particularly relevant. But they do inform me about Sanders and about his supporters. Bunch’s is the most substantive, best researched, and most coherent book of the bunch so far.

      [...]

      Yes, I agree that Bernie’s injecting of a little bit of sense into corporate television is important and very hard to measure. Yes, I have no doubt that there’s a bit more integrity and relevance in Bernie’s background than there was in the legend of the African-American community-organizing author come to save us while shrewdly pretending not to. But Bernie holding the biggest political rallies in some big cities since Eugene McCarthy may not be an unmixed blessing.

    • News Media Infatuated With Donald Trump, Part 4,387

      Would the Post do this for any other candidate doing something as routine as airing an ad? Has it really been long-awaited? Or hotly anticipated? And shouldn’t that last line say “cable news and print media offered ‘exclusive’ looks”?

      I know it’s tedious to complain about the mainstream media going gaga over everything Donald Trump says, but WTF? It’s an ad. There’s nothing special about it. It’s just a narrator saying the same stuff Trump has been saying forever. It’s not raising the temperature of anything. So why not just write a short blog post about it and move on?

    • Behind the Ronald Reagan myth: “No one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill informed”

      No one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill informed. At presidential news conferences, especially in his first year, Ronald Reagan embarrassed himself. On one occasion, asked why he advocated putting missiles in vulnerable places, he responded, his face registering bewilderment, “I don’t know but what maybe you haven’t gotten into the area that I’m going to turn over to the secretary of defense.” Frequently, he knew nothing about events that had been headlined in the morning newspaper. In 1984, when asked a question he should have fielded easily, Reagan looked befuddled, and his wife had to step in to rescue him. “Doing everything we can,” she whispered. “Doing everything we can,” the president echoed. To be sure, his detractors sometimes exaggerated his ignorance. The publication of his radio addresses of the 1950s revealed a considerable command of facts, though in a narrow range. But nothing suggested profundity. “You could walk through Ronald Reagan’s deepest thoughts,” a California legislator said, “and not get your ankles wet.”

    • The Obama Report Card: The Good, the Bad and the Incomplete
    • Carly Fiorina Wins 2016 Pandering Championship After Only 11 Hours

      What really puts this over the top is the fact that it’s so chuckleheaded. No real Iowa fan would have anything but contempt for a Stanford grad who abandoned her school just for a chance to become president of the United States.

    • CNN Commentator Blames Hillary Clinton For Terrorist Recruitment Video Featuring Donald Trump
    • Dear Republican Party, Here’s Why You’re Stuck With Donald Trump

      The conservative establishment will never figure out Trump unless they start talking honestly about their base and race.

    • Donald Trump Featured In New Terrorist Recruitment Video

      Presidential candidate Donald Trump is featured in a new recruitment video from the terrorist group Al-Shabab, according to numerous experts.

    • NSA spying on Israel: This is how you treat your enemies
    • Why Tell the Israeli Spying Story Now?

      This may, in part, be an effort to get those implicated in the intercepts to exercise some more caution. But it also seems to be a victory dance, just as Russia ships away Iran’s uranium stockpiles.

    • What It’s Like To Ring In The New Year With Fox News

      If you are less ambitious, there is TV. Last night offered a bevy of options. Ryan Seacrest and anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy hosted the festivities on ABC, with performances by Demi Lovato, Wiz Khalifa and One Direction. On CNN, Anderson Cooper rang in the New Year with Kathy Griffin, who apparently took her shirt off. NBC’s programming started at 8PM with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, before Carson Daly took over the reins at 10PM.

    • Opportunistic Islamophobia

      If, as he and other true believers think, George W. Bush really does have to meet his Maker someday, and if He (sic) really is just and good, and if the point of the meeting is to decide whether George will spend eternity in Heaven or Hell, then that man should be thanking the alleged divinity every moment of his waking life for making ignorance bliss.

  • Censorship

    • Sin in the time of Technology

      Technology companies now hold an unprecedented ability to shape the world around us by limiting our ability to access certain content and by crafting proprietary algorithm that bring us our daily streams of content.

    • Gareth Philippou: Censorship of expression is still with us

      Gareth Philippou from Mapperley Park says censorship of expression is still an issue for artists.

    • ‘The Dress’ Is Back, But This Time It’s A Debate About Censorship on Russian TV

      “The Dress” is back. Whether you call it Dressgate, #thedress, or something else—the viral photo meme has returned. Only this time, it’s not a dress. It’s also not a question of color perception, but a matter of seeing (or not seeing) a halo in a movie still. The film in question is The Diamond Arm, the 1969 Soviet comedy classic that has aired countless times on Russian television.

    • Governments Taking Techies Offline: 2015 in Review

      The real test of whether you have rights is not what the law says: it’s what happens when you try to exercise them. For too many bloggers and technologist around the world, the price of using the Net in innovative, legitimate ways, has been jail. Some of the cases of imprisonment around the world that we’ve tracked the most closely were freed in 2015, but others continue to languish in need of our support.

    • What to Expect From Russia’s State Censor in 2016

      Alexander Zharov isn’t often credited with being one of Russia’s most powerful state officials, and yet he is the head of Roskomnadzor, the government agency tasked with regulating and censoring the media (including the Internet). In the past, Zharov’s own deputy, Maxim Ksenzov, has outshined him publicly, making headlines for various controversial claims and threats, such as a remark in May 2014, when Ksenzov said regulators could block Twitter or Facebook “in a matter of minutes.”

    • ‘We, the general public, have become our own censors’

      As a nation, we celebrate the freedom that comes from being able to celebrate diversity, freedom of expression, human rights and personal liberties. After all, such beliefs lie at the cornerstone of our democracy.

      It is not surprising, therefore, that the idea of censorship, filters, random searches and restrictions of movement, can make us nervous and fearful that rights are being diluted or undermined.

      Social libertarians are quick to speak out if they feel our freedom is under threat (and they are right to do so), but the reality is that a more insidious, more pervasive censorship is happening every day and we are not only complicit in it, but responsible for it.

    • Novel about Jewish-Palestinian love affair is barred from Israeli curriculum

      A novel about a love affair between a Jewish woman and a Palestinian man has been barred from Israel’s high school curriculum, reportedly over concerns that it could encourage intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.

      The rejection of Dorit Rabinyan’s novel Borderlife, which was published in 2014, created an uproar in Israel, with critics accusing the government of censorship.

    • Novel About Jewish-Palestinian Love Affair is Barred From Israeli Curriculum
    • Israel bans novel on Arab-Jewish romance from schools for ‘threatening Jewish identity’
    • Israel blocks book on love affair between Jew, Arab from schools
    • Education Ministry under fire for excluding novel about Jewish-Arab love story
    • Israel’s Ethical Terrorism and Special Brand of Morality

      “The banality of evil does not exist,’” wrote Jewish writer and Auschwitz survivor Jean Améry, “and Hannah Arendt, who writes about that in her book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem,’ knew this enemy of mankind from rumors alone and only viewed him through a glass booth.”

      Like Arendt, who only saw Eichmann while he was in custody in Israel’s capital, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sounded once again this week like someone viewing the Israeli reality through a glass booth.

    • China’s Top 5 Censored Posts in 2015

      Chinese President Xi Jinping rounded off 2015 by posting his first message on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, in the form of a new year’s greeting to the People’s Liberation Army. His post received 52,000 comments, mostly fawning messages of support featuring thumbs-up and smiling emoticons. This short message symbolizes the official taming of Weibo, whose early promise as a freewheeling platform for criticism and debate has been choked off by censorship, intimidation, a raft of new legislation, and a virtual army of commentators, known as the “fifty-cent party,” paid to influence online opinion.

    • The Guardian view on the foreign press in China: expelling the messenger

      It is not a new charge that authoritarianism has grown in China since president Xi Jinping came to power in 2013. Mr Xi’s strongman style has sometimes been compared to that of Mao Zedong. Under him, China has not only reasserted itself on the international stage, it has cracked down on all forms of domestic dissent. Now, Mr Xi’s government is turning the screws on the international media.

      The expulsion of the French journalist, Ursula Gauthier, the longtime Beijing correspondent for the weekly L’Obs (formerly Le Nouvel Observateur) who flew out of China on Friday after her press visa was not renewed, is an intimidatory tactic aimed at discouraging all independent, critical coverage by foreign media organisations. It comes as China’s internal tensions are on the rise, many linked to social, environmental and ethnic issues. And it sends a message that foreign journalists should think twice before contradicting the official Chinese line.

    • [India] Attacks, threats to journalists galore in 2015: Report

      The report said there were 81 cases of defamation, 26 cases of sedition and eight cases of surveillance against journalists and people belonging to the creative community.

    • New Arabic short story prize meets with cautious welcome

      Censorship further undercuts a state-sponsored prize’s role in cultural promotion. In Qatar, the ongoing imprisonment of poet Mohammed al-Ajami is particularly troubling. Al-Ajami’s 15-year prison term was the reason celebrated translator Humphrey Davies gave for withdrawing from a conference that accompanied the launch of Qatar’s giant new translation award.

    • A New Year resolution: let’s be less angry online

      In 2015, if you expressed your opinion online, you ran the risk of being waterboarded under a faucet of verbal slurry. If I could suggest one resolution for the coming year, it would be to be less angry: 2016 could be the year in which we start channelling that wasted energy. If there was a way to repurpose the effort thrown away on internet anger, Cecil the lion’s death might have landed men and women on Mars.

    • Newspapers: an intellectual legacy of the Ottoman Empire

      However, following the censorship law approved by the Party of Union and Progress (CUP), opposition voices emerged everywhere as the regime of Sultan Abdülhamid was missed. For the first time, differences in political opinion were reflected in newspapers. Hasan Fehmi and Ertuğrul Şakir, two authors for “Serbesti” (Liberty) newspaper, a prominent opposition publication, were shot on Galata Bridge by a pro-CUP group. Fehmi was killed and his funeral attracted thousands who turned out in a show of strength against the CUP. Journalist Ali Kemal, who was later known for his stance against the government in Ankara, encouraged many students at the Faculty of Political Science by saying: “These bullets were fired against freedom of thought.” Thousands marched to Bab-ı Ali (the Sublime Porte) to find the murderers. Also attracting public attention, the crowd did not find what they want at Bab-ı Ali or the Turkish Assembly, and instead, the soldiers fired into the crowd.

    • “I stand for absolutely no censorship”: Rakeysh Mehra, censor board revamp committee
    • Certification much better than censorship
    • ‘Censorship in India is Based on the Paternalistic Idea that Citizens are Not Mature’
    • Safe spaces, the void between, and the absence of trust
    • In Israel, Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ an enduring taboo

      The controversy over the upcoming re-publication of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in Germany is having particular resonance in Israel, where memories of the Holocaust run deep and the book remains taboo.

      Hitler’s anti-Semitic rant, which he wrote from prison in the early 1920s, loses its copyright in Germany on Friday, and the country’s first release of it since 1945 is due out soon in the form of an extensively annotated version.

    • In Russia, political engagement is blossoming online

      In late November, the number of websites being blocked in Russia reached 1 million, according to Roskomsvoboda, the country’s independent Internet censorship watchdog. This did not surprise the Russian online community, which is used to bad news. The Kremlin’s offensive against Internet freedom has intensified dramatically over the past three years, including the creation of website blacklists, the updating of an advanced national system of online surveillance and increased pressure on international Internet companies to share data with Russian security services.

    • Plenty left to discover in Indonesia – Mary Farrow

      The controversy of censorship over not only the 1965 genocide events but also the Bali mangrove landfill discussion only increased the public’s collective interest as reflected by the abundant attendance and the crescendo from social media.

    • Why would the whole world’s book industry gather in booze-free Sharjah?

      Because it originated in a book bazaar, the fair is also open to the general public. Schoolchildren are seen scampering down the aisles with plastic bags full of books. Through the vast halls wander local TV crews, various dancing mascots (on stilts; draped with coloured cloth; waddling and waving in giant fuzzy-felt costumes) representing who knows what, and a very Emirati mix of ladies in chic modern dress and grave, goateed men in kanduras with iPhone 6s clamped to their ears.

    • Ethiopia Censors Satellite TV Channels as Student Protests Draw Global Media Attention

      The Ethiopian government is reportedly undertaking a massive clampdown on dissenting citizen voices in relation with the ongoing Oromo student protests in Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest administrative region.

      The regional political party known as the Oromo Federalist Congress reports that upwards of 80 people have been killed over the past four weeks by government forces. The government has yet to release its own updated numbers, but said on December 15 that five people had died.

      Alongside increasing tensions around protests, security forces have arrested two opposition politicians, two journalists, and summoned five bloggers — all members of the Zone9 collective, who were acquitted of baseless terrorism charges just two months ago — to appear in court on December 30.

    • Activists Deface Statues that Jackie Chan Gifted to Taiwan

      Two statues donated by Hong Kong-born actor Jackie Chan to a museum in Taiwan were vandalized with anti-China slogans on Wednesday night, reflecting the growing chasm between the two countries, the Guardian reports.

      Chan, famous for his starring roles in Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon , is close to China’s Communist party and has been criticized for defending government censorship while calling Taiwanese democracy “the biggest joke in the world.” His gifts to the National Palace Museum’s branch in the southern city of Chiayi are replicas of Imperial Chinese relics, one representing a bronze dragon and the other a horse head. The originals for both were made under the Qing Dynasty, the state that preceded both Taiwan and China’s current governments.

    • Singapore’s shifting social landscape

      The second challenge is the growing stridency of conservative Christians over public morality issues such as homosexuality and censorship. In the past two years alone conservative Christians have lobbied for the removal of children’s books that dwelt on alternative families from public libraries, protested LGBT events like the Pink Dot and petitioned against the hosting of openly gay international artists. The government prefers not to intervene in matters pertaining to morality, so such protests are likely to grow shriller.

    • Editorial: Free expression is solution to problems, not the cause

      The impulse to censor has roots in legitimate complaints and fears. The protests by students about racism’s lingering toll and their elders’ failure to address it ring important and true. And the way terrorists have used the Web to recruit or inspire would-be jihadists to slaughter innocent people from Syria to San Bernardino provides legitimate cause for alarm.

    • Russia Is Banning Country’s 15 Most Popular Torrent Websites

      The Russian telecom regulator Roskomnadzor has decided to ban the country’s 15 most popular torrent from early 2016. This extreme step is being seen as a way to tackle the widespread piracy problem and ban these websites that aid the pirates.

    • Calls For Censorship Are Making a Comeback

      Oxford Dictionaries defines “censorship” as “the suppression or prohibition of any books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.” As I’ve noted recently here at Reason, calls for censorship, based on the supposed existential threat to the US’ national security posed by ISIS, are on the rise.

    • Charlie Hebdo editor: Censorship must not win
    • Charlie Hebdo, The Licensed Anarchist Clowns Of French Society

      SIMON: You say when you first read Charlie Hebdo in the 1970s it just wasn’t to your taste.

      GOPNIK: No. I was a kid and it was kind of scabrous, and it wasn’t the sacrilege that bothered me so much as the obscenity that challenged a 14-year-old American. But over the years, I came to have a keen appreciation of Charlie Hebdo and what it did. That was partly, Scott, because I became a pedant of the form. I did my graduate work in art history and particularly in the history of French satirical cartooning. And that made me aware of what a rich and resilient tradition this seemingly scabrous sacrilegious magazine still represented in French life.

    • Censors say S’pore film’s dialogue a ‘security threat’

      A Singapore film director withdrew her film from a festival to celebrate Malaysian-Singaporean ties this month, after the Film Censorship Board insisted that a scene be amended for being a “security threat”.

      Tan Pin Pin, director of ‘Singapore GaGa’, said the censorship board wanted a scene where a character says “animals” in Bahasa Malaysia, to be removed from the film.

    • Singapore GaGa – Another Tan Pin Pin movie cannot clear censor hurdle
    • ‘Animals’ a security threat, say Malaysian censors over Singaporean film
    • ‘Animals’ a security threat, say Malaysian censors over Singaporean film
    • ‘Animals’ a safety menace, say Malaysian censors over Singaporean movie
    • Singapore GaGa pulled from Malaysia event after film censored
    • How my run-in with Chinese censorship shows the country as more than a global Big Brother

      The People’s Republic’s burgeoning power is not all bad. Its potential for good was demonstrated at the recent climate conference in Paris, where its about-turn made the difference between success and failure. Faced with ecological Armageddon, China has grasped the dangers of galloping economic growth. And because it is an authoritarian state, we can be fairly confident that it will now go on to do something about it – on a scale that can make a difference.

      But China’s actions and policies are often not as clear and decisive as its government would like the world to believe. Because it is a one-party state with a neutered mainstream media, emerging from the historic culture of East Asia where discretion, tact and “face” have always been valued highly, China succeeds in giving the impression of a vast nation acting like a single awesome machine. But in my own experience the reality is rather different.

    • Art according to the rules: Self-censorship in Turkey

      Private investors are welcome in Turkey when it comes to arts and culture. But freedom for artists and journalists is largely restricted. The alternative arts scene has slipped into the background.

  • Privacy

    • Safe Harbor
    • In 2015, promising surveillance cases ran into legal brick walls

      To us, 2015 appeared to be the year where major change would happen whether pro- or anti-surveillance. Experts felt a shift was equally imminent. “I think it’s impossible to tell which case will be the one that does it, but I believe that, ultimately, the Supreme Court will have to step in and decide the constitutionality of some of the NSA’s practices,” Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars last year.

      The presumed movement would all start with a lawsuit filed by veteran conservative activist Larry Klayman. Filed the day after the initial Snowden disclosures, his lawsuit would essentially put a stop to unchecked NSA surveillance. In January 2015, he remained the only plaintiff whose case had won when fighting for privacy against the newly understood government monitoring. (Of course, it was a victory in name only—the judicial order in Klayman was stayed pending the government’s appeal at the time).

    • Media Coverage and the Public in the Surveillance Society

      Findings from a Research Project on Digital Surveillance Post-Snowden

    • Iran’s blogfather: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are killing the web

      Hossein Derakhshan was imprisoned by the regime for his blogging. On his release, he found the internet stripped of its power to change the world and instead serving up a stream of pointless social trivia

    • In a First, NSA Advertises Opportunities on Monster.com of Federal Contracting

      The National Security Agency has begun recruiting spy-tech inventors on the Monster.com of Beltway contractor jobs.

      The agency posted a special notice to FedBizOpps.gov, right before the holidays, advertising work for small companies that develop “innovative technologies.”

      An NSA spokesman told Nextgov on Wednesday afternoon, “NSA’s posting on FedBizOpps is intended to reach out to vendors that may not know how to do business with the agency and to direct vendors to NSA’s website for more information.”

    • GCHQ spy boss Sir Brian Tovey has died aged 89
    • Sir Brian Tovey, former director of GCHQ, dies
    • Former GCHQ director Sir Brian Tovey dies aged 89
    • GCHQ spy boss Sir Brian Tovey has died aged 89
    • Forget anonymity, we can remember you wholesale with machine intel, hackers warned

      Anonymous programmers, from malware writers to copyright infringers and those baiting governments with censorship-foiling software, may all be unveiled using stylistic programming traits which survive into the compiled binaries – regardless of common obfuscation methods.

    • These Public Comments Saved a Library’s Tor Server From a Government Shutdown

      In August, the Department of Homeland Security pressured a public library in the small town of Lebanon, New Hampshire to shut down a Tor node it was hosting on the popular anonymous browsing network. The unbridled support of dozens of citizens from both Lebanon and the entire country, including off-the-books support from an FBI computer scientist, empowered the town to turn it back on, according to emails obtained by Motherboard.

    • When back doors backfire

      Some spy agencies favour “back doors” in encryption software, but who will use them?

    • Is Facebook the enemy of truth and civic unity?

      Every new technology threatens to kill off some revered institution. But in the waning months of 2015, more than a few smart and tech-savvy commentators began suggesting a radical hypothesis: that the rise of social media threatened to deliver a death blow to civic consensus and even to truth itself.

      “The news brims with instantly produced ‘hot takes’ and a raft of fact-free assertions,” Farhad Manjoo observed in the New York Times. “The extremists of all stripes are ascendant, and just about everywhere you look, much of the internet is terrible.”

      In the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum went so far as to demand that Mark Zuckerberg donate the entirety of his fortune to undo the damage Facebook has done to democracy. “If different versions of the truth appear in different online versions; if no one can agree upon what actually happened yesterday; if fake, manipulated or mendacious news websites are backed up by mobs of internet trolls; then conspiracy theories, whether of the far left or far right, will soon have the same weight as reality. Politicians who lie will be backed by a claque of supporters.”

    • Privacy activists notched wins in 2015 but fear shift in tide

      2015 was a mixed bag for digital privacy advocates on Capitol Hill.

      Civil libertarians took one step forward this summer, reforming the National Security Agency (NSA) in the first major rollback of U.S. surveillance powers in a generation.

    • Majority of US citizens in favour of warrantless surveillance – poll

      AP-NORC also broke down the results based on how people vote. It found that Republicans (67 percent) and Democrats (55 percent) were mainly in favour of warrantless surveillance. However, it was only supported by 40 percent of Independents. The results also show that just one-in-three under-30s support warrantless surveillance.

    • Trevor Paglen: What lies beneath

      We all live under constant covert surveillance. The American photographer’s work seeks to reveal this hidden world

    • Department of Defense Nudges Contractors to Patch Juniper Backdoor

      In December, everyone was starkly reminded of the dangers posed by backdoors in security products: Juniper Networks, a massive company that creates popular networking equipment, found “unauthorized” code in its ScreenOS software which would allow an attacker to take total control of Juniper NetScreen firewalls, or even, with enough resources, passively decrypt VPN traffic.

    • What The Juniper Breach Teaches Us About The Domestic Dangers Of Backdoors

      A common refrain amongst all the conversation about encryption the last few months has been the need for technical “backdoors” to be built into encryption and communications platforms that allow authorized law enforcement to intercept and monitor civilian communications. The argument goes that without such backdoors, criminal and terrorist actors will increasingly “go dark” using encryption to organize their activities and attacks. One commonly recommended solution is the weakening of encryption by inserting secret backdoors accessible only to law enforcement. In such a model all communications are encrypted to prevent criminal actors or foreign states from being able to listen to communications, but American law enforcement and their allies will be able to access such communications using a master decryption key.

    • The Biggest Security Threats We’ll Face in 2016

      The year ended with a startling revelation from Juniper Networks that firmware on some of its firewalls contained two backdoors installed by sophisticated hackers. The nature of one of the backdoors—which gives an attacker the ability to decrypt protected traffic running through the VPN on Juniper firewalls—suggested a nation-state attacker was the culprit, since only a government intelligence agency would have the resources to intercept large amounts of VPN traffic in order to benefit from the backdoor. Even more startling was news that the backdoor was based on one attributed to the NSA.

    • In 2016, terror suspects and 7-Eleven thieves may bring surveillance to US Supreme Court

      It has now been 2.5 years since the first Snowden revelations were published. And in 2015, government surveillance marched on in both large (the National Security Agency) and small (the debut of open source license plate reader software) ways.

      Within the past year, Congress voted to end Section 215 of the Patriot Act—but then substituted it with a similar law (USA Freedom Act) that leaves the phone metadata surveillance apparatus largely in place even if the government no longer collects the data directly. Even former NSA Director Michael Hayden admitted in June 2015 that this legal change was pretty minor.

    • In 2015, promising US surveillance cases ran into legal brick walls

      Today, the first Snowden disclosures in 2013 feel like a distant memory. The public perception of surveillance has changed dramatically since and, likewise, the battle to shape the legality and logistics of such snooping is continually evolving.

    • NSA Rats Out Republicans, Proves Netanyahu Bribed Them Against Iran Nuclear Deal

      In this spy versus spy world, longtime bosom buddies Israel and America have been spying on each other for decades, even as they help each other spy on the rest of the world. As former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers once stated, “Intelligence professionals have a saying: There are no friendly intelligence services.” Proving that Rogers was absolutely correct in his statement, the Wall Street Journal just uncovered hard evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to bribe Republicans for nay votes on America’s nuclear deal with Iran.

    • Report From the Student Privacy Frontlines: 2015 in Review

      This year the fight to protect student privacy hit a boiling point with our Spying on Students campaign, an effort to help students, parents, teachers, and school administrators learn more about the privacy issues surrounding school-issued devices and cloud services. We’re also working to push vendors like Google to put students and their parents back in control of students’ private information.

    • The fallacies of surveillance

      First, the costs of surveillance are asymmetrical. This essentially means that the cost of imposing surveillance is much greater than what it would cost for a moderately tech-savvy villain to effectively defeat this surveillance. A useful analogy here is that of a needle in a haystack — it is orders of magnitude easier for a villain to hide the needle in the hay and near impossible for the government to find it.

    • A Wake-Up Call To Fight Government Surveillance

      Look around any crowded place nowadays and it’s quite clear that many of us have literally become prisoners of our own devices: smartphones, tablets, laptops — anything and everything with an Internet connection. Our lifestyles practically require us to always be on, and connected to everyone else.

      That means at any point in the day, and at any point in the world, individuals freely exchange massive amounts of personal information among each other: names, email addresses, phone numbers, photos, bank account and credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, insurance details and so on.

      Looking at that list, it’s clear why some are calling data the oil of the digital world — data has effectively become its own currency, something we trade to either share updates about our lives or make a purchase.

    • How to Protect Your Family From Government Snooping

      If you have found yourself questioning whether you wish to participate in a surveillance state, then a TOR and VPN enabled router is an essential tool. I installed one such router myself once Australia started discussing its data retention laws (which went into effect recently), and after spending a year protecting my family’s digital privacy I thought I would share the results.

    • Contra Costa Times editorial: Spending bill slips in erosion of privacy rights for cybersecurity

      Congress just slipped another ill-conceived cybersecurity bill past Americans, removing basic privacy rights in the name of fighting terrorism.

      No one at the highest levels of government has ever been able to demonstrate that ratcheting up government surveillance of Americans has led to blocking a terrorist threat. The sad truth is that lawmakers are instead using security fears to remove the very freedoms that those who would do us harm hold in scorn.

      The cybersecurity legislation was slipped into the massive $1.1 trillion federal spending bill that passed Congress last week and was signed into law by President Barack Obama.

    • Canadians’ Internet traffic at risk

      Canadian researchers find that a large amount of Canadians’ internet traffic is routed through the United States, making it vulnerable to interception.

  • Civil Rights

    • 4 Things That Were Supposed To Happen By 2016 Because Obama Was Reelected
    • New Guantánamo policy: Psychologists can treat troops, not captives

      The U.S. military has sharply curtailed the use of psychologists at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in response to strict new professional ethics rules of the American Psychological Association, Pentagon officials said.

      Gen. John F. Kelly, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, has ordered that psychologists be withdrawn from a wide range of activities dealing with detainees at the prison because of the new rules of the association, the nation’s largest professional organization for psychologists. The group approved the rules this past summer.

    • Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr: Saudi Arabia executes top Shia cleric

      Sheikh Nimr was a vocal supporter of the mass anti-government protests that erupted in Eastern Province in 2011, where a Shia majority have long complained of marginalisation.

    • Outrage Follows Saudi Arabia’s Execution of Nearly 50 Prisoners

      According to Reuters, the executions took place in 12 cities in Saudi Arabia, with four prisons using firing squads and the others beheading.

    • Saudi Arabia says 47 executed on terror charges, including Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimrits

      Saudi Arabia executed 47 people on Saturday for terrorism it said, an apparent message to both Sunni Muslim jihadists and Shi’ite anti-government protesters that the conservative Islamic kingdom will brook no violent dissent.

      The deaths come amid a growing war of words between Saudi Arabia and the militant group Islamic State, which called for attacks in the kingdom. But it may also raise tensions with Iran over the execution of prominent Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

    • Saudi Arabia executes 47 people in one day including Shia cleric
    • [Older] UK Government attempting to keep details of secret security pact with Saudi Arabia hidden from public
    • His Aim Is True

      Hill was responding to a domestic disturbance at Steel’s home and he says her dog attacked him. He shot at the dog but missed it and hit Steele instead. Prosecutors declined to file any charges against Hill

    • Young Black Men Killed by U.S. Police at Highest Rate in Year of 1,134 Deaths

      Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year.

    • Protecting Human Rights Is Not A Gift, It’s A Given

      Back in 2008, one thousand of Australia’s “best and brightest brains” met at the 2020 Summit to map out a strategy for Australia’s long-term future. They made three key recommendations for constitutional reform: Indigenous recognition, becoming a republic and the creation of a bill of rights. All three are essential for Australia to come of age as a modern and independent democracy that lives its values — respecting and protecting the rights of all its citizens.

    • New Documents Expose Texas ‘Cop of the Year’ as Member of Mexico’s ‘Most Dangerous’ Cartel

      Caught on video illegally selling assault rifles and sensitive information to undercover informants, a former officer of the year has also been accused of secretly working for Los Zetas cartel in a drug trafficking conspiracy in operation since 2006. Although the cop allegedly provided the cartel with firearms, bulletproof vests, luxury vehicles, police scanners, and database access, recently filed court documents revealed at least two convicted cocaine traffickers are cooperating with the government against the disgraced cop.

      On September 2, 2014, Efrain Grimaldo, the nephew of Houston Police Officer Noe Juarez, was sentenced to 33 years in federal prison after caught smuggling 1,640 kilograms of cocaine throughout the southern states and east coast. On June 24, 2014, Efrain’s brother, Sergio Grimaldo, was extradited from Mexico and later charged along with Officer Juarez for participating in a conspiracy to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine. Juarez was also charged in a separate conspiracy to possess firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.

    • Germans and their love of freedom

      Freedom of art matters a lot to most Germans – so much so that it is protected by law. But even in Germany’s democracy and with its liberal outlook, there are certain legal and moral limitations to artistic expression.

    • Cosby Accuser Slimed For Spending Settlement Money On An Apartment

      The New York Post has some shocking news: a woman who accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault used money from a previous settlement with him to buy an apartment.

      Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, brought a civil suit against Cosby in 2005 saying he gave her pills and wine until she was unable to move and then sexually assaulted her after authorities declined to press charges. Her case then was settled out of court in 2006.

    • ‘The Washington Post’ Fired Lefty Columnist Harold Meyerson

      Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, has fired columnist Harold Meyerson, one of the nation’s finest journalists and perhaps the only self-proclaimed socialist to write a weekly column for a major American newspaper during the past decade or two.

      At a time when America is experiencing an upsurge of progressive organizing and activism — from Occupy Wall Street, to Black Lives Matter, to the growing movement among low-wage workers demanding higher minimum wages, to Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president — we need a regular columnist who can explain what’s going on, why it’s happening, and what it means.

      More than any other columnist for a major U.S. newspaper, Meyerson provided ongoing coverage and incisive analysis of the nation’s labor movement and other progressive causes as well as the changing economy and the increasing aggressiveness of big business in American politics. He was one of the few columnists in the country who knew labor leaders and grassroots activists by name, and who could write sympathetically and knowledgeably about working people’s experiences in their workplaces and communities.

    • The Rumble from the People Can Work

      If only the people who engage in “road rage” would engage in “corporate rage” when they are harmed by cover-ups or hazardous products and gouging services, aloof CEOs would start getting serious about safety and fair play. With press report after press report documenting how big business stiffs millions of its consumers and workers, why is it that more of these victims do not externalize some of their inner agonies by channeling them into civic outrage?

    • 2015 a Deadly Year as Journalism ‘Put Daily to the Sword’

      At least 109 journalists and media workers were slain by ‘targeted killings, bomb attacks, and cross-fire incidents,’ new report finds

    • A Case of Bribery

      A lower court had found him guilty of a much more serious bribery accusation and condemned him to a much longer prison term. The Supreme Court, after dragging his case out for as long as possible, reduced the offense and the prison term from 6 years to a mere year and a half. As usual in Israel, a third will be remitted for good behavior in prison, so he will probably “sit” for one year only.

      Hallelujah. The former Prime Minister will spend only one year in prison, where he will join a former President of Israel who has been sent there for rape.

    • Why Is Congress Undercutting PCLOB?

      As I noted last month, the Omnibus budget bill undercut the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in two ways.

      First, it affirmatively limited PCLOB’s ability to review covert actions. That effort dates to June, when Republicans responded to PCLOB Chair David Medine’s public op-ed about drone oversight by ensuring PCLOB couldn’t review the drone or any other covert program.

      More immediately troublesome, last minute changes to OmniCISA eliminated a PCLOB review of the implementation of that new domestic cyber surveillance program, even though some form of that review had been included in all three bills that passed Congress. That measure may have always been planned, but given that it wasn’t in any underlying version of the bill, more likely dates to something that happened after CISA passed the Senate in October.

    • Hundreds Demand Prosecutor In Tamir Rice Case Resign

      Protests continued on Friday following a grand jury’s recent decision not to indict the two white police officers who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

      More than 100 activists marched to the home of the prosecutor who handled Rice’s case, Timothy McGinty, on New Year’s Day and demanded his resignation. Chanting “New year, no more!” and “McGinty has got to go,” protesters called on the prosecutor be removed from his position and demanded a federal investigation into the shooting.

    • Happy New Year From the TSA!

      The huddled masses at airports will no longer be able to opt out of going through body scanners (which might be unlawful in the first place, but who’s counting?). Also, if you have the misfortune of living in one of nine of states that have objected to the feds’ REAL ID scheme, you may not even be able to use your driver’s license to get on a plane. At least the DHS now says the TSA will give you 120 days’ notice before invalidating your ID. Happy (first four months of) 2016!

    • Exclusive: UK Government urged to reveal its role in getting Saudi Arabia onto UN Human Rights Council

      The Government has been called upon to clarify the role it played in voting Saudi Arabia’s onto the UN Human Rights Council, after the kingdom executed 47 people in a single day sparking a backlash across the Middle East.

      Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks last year purported to show that the UK was involved in a secret vote-trading deal to help ensure both countries a place on the influential panel.

      The exchanges, related to the November 2013 vote in New York, were published by The Australian newspaper and have never been commented on by UK officials. Both Britain and Saudi Arabia were later named among the 47 member states of the UNHRC, following the secret ballot.

    • Kurt Vonnegut’s POW nightmare: Inside the World War II battle that shaped “Slaughterhouse Five”

      At the bottom of a snowy hollow, he fixed his bayonet and waited, huddled in a group of roughly fifty soldiers. Their unit, the 423rd, had been at battle for three days, since December 16. They’d been lost for most of it. They must be somewhere in Luxembourg, someone said. Now they were surrounded, herded into a small depression in the unfamiliar land. Kurt hunched into his coat—he had a tall man’s habit of hunching—but he couldn’t get warm. That December—1944— was one of the coldest and wettest ever recorded in Europe.

    • Cameron’s renegotiation speech and intra-EU migration: how the web reacted

      Our analysis provides interesting information about the nature of Twitter and its reaction to Cameron’s proposals. In the first place, it is clear that Cameron’s speech triggered an attitudinal discussion on Twitter. Approximately 40 thousand tweets (roughly half of the tweets relevant to Cameron’s speech) can be interpreted as containing an attitude of some sort. Of these, more than a fifth, as shown, focused on the intra-EU migration issue.

    • Police Couple Wakes Up and “Accidentally” Fires 27 Rounds at Own Mom, Who Lives with Them

      The officer claimed that the 27 rounds were fired “accidentally” and so the department said there is no need for charges.

      Of course, shooting at an intruder in your home is a justified measure. However, what does it say about the trigger-happy nature of this officer who would unleash 27 rounds at her own mom, who had to have been screaming for her life upon hearing the first round being fired?

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • In net debate, many views on Free Basics

      A joint statement by IIT and IISc professors said that allowing a private entity to define for Indian Internet users what is “basic” and to have access to the personal content created and used by millions of Indians is a lethal combination which will lead to total lack of freedom on how Indians can use their own public utility, the Internet.

      “In fact, it has defined itself to be the first ‘basic’ service, as evident from Reliance’s ads on Free Facebook. Now, it will require quite a stretch of imagination to classify Facebook as ‘basic’,” said the statement.

    • Website Obesity

      This is the text version of a talk I gave on October 29, 2015, at the Web Directions conference in Sydney.

    • Net Neutrality in Europe

      After two years the fight for net neutrality in Europe about the Telecom Single Market Regulation has come to a close. In this talk we will analyse the new net neutrality law and it’s consequences and we give you the lessons learned from two years of EU campaigning.

    • Net Neutrality and More: 2015 in Review

      When it comes to net neutrality, 2015 started off with a blast. In February the FCC reclassified retail broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service, and issued strong new net neutrality rules while forbearing from almost all the other Title II regulations. In other words, Team Internet started the year off with a huge victory (with a few caveats, which we’ll return to at the end).

      Of course, the rules were quickly challenged by the ISPs in court. In order to help defend the rules, we gathered an all-star list of computer science professors and Internet engineers to explain to the court just how vital net neutrality has been in helping the Internet grow and flourish. The case itself was heard by the court in early December; it will likely be many months before we find out whether or not the court was persuaded.

      In the meantime, net neutrality wasn’t the only issue that brought the FCC onto EFF’s radar this year.

    • Facebook’s Free Web-India: Kindness Or Neo-Imperialism? [Ed: Forbes is the billionaires' most notable mouthpiece, so it's hardly surprising that it protects Zuckerberg from those he exploits]

      The problem isn’t Mark Zuckerberg’s vision per se, but the tag that comes along with it–Internet comes through Facebook and includes a limited Facebook approved list of sites.

      That raises the sensitive issue of Internet censorship for some, and the potential for exploitation of the poor, for others.

      The concern here is that Facebook is using its free web offer to expand its overseas membership base and eventually monetize a market with an enormous potential—the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid—to use C.K. Prahalad’s expression.

      [...]

      The trouble is this: where marketers and managers see potential opportunities, others see the potential for neo-imperialism, especially in countries like India — which has been through that experience before.

    • The Year in Technology Policy: It Wasn’t All That Bad!

      In the spring, the Federal Communications Commission enacted sweeping regulations to prevent Internet providers from blocking or slowing certain sites or apps. What’s surprising is how little has happened since then.

      ISPs did not all put down their tools in protest and stop investing in their networks. In fact, two of the biggest — AT&T and Comcast — ended the year bragging about how they’re expanding their gigabit Internet services.

      (Unfortunately, these new high-speed ventures rarely involve competing with other incumbent providers. And as the FCC’s latest broadband-survey results show, the phone-based DSL you can usually get anywhere has become increasingly uncompetitive with faster cable and fiber.)

    • Happy 20th Birthday IPv6 – The Hero To Save Our Internet?

      We have just completed the 20 years of the IPv6 launch. This standard was developed by IETF to replenish the drying pool of IP addresses and bring numerous performance improvements. However, the adoption numbers of the IPv6 protocol hasn’t been very encouraging.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Pending Supreme Court Patent Cases for 2016
    • TTIP Update II

      As I noted in my first TTIP Update about the current negotiations between the EU and US over a massive trade agreement that is far from being only about trade, it is probably true that it will not include many of the more outrageous ideas found in ACTA last year. But that is not to say that TTIP does not threaten many key aspects of the Internet – just that the attack is much more subtle.

      The problem is the inclusion of “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS). This began as a perfectly reasonable attempt to ensure that investments in developing countries were not unlawfully expropriated by rogue governments. The idea was that if such an event occurred, and the local government refused to compensate the investor, the latter had recourse to independent international courts that considered the case and awarded damages that could be levied against the government in question in other ways – for example, seizing their assets abroad.

    • The Rise and Fall of TTIP, As Told in 51 Updates

      This year will be make or break for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It is already years behind its original, hopelessly-optimistic schedule, and is now running into immovable political events in the form of the US Presidential elections, and the general elections in Germany. If TTIP isn’t wrapped up this year, it is probably dead until whenever the next attempt to push through such a global takeover of democracy begins, as it surely will.

      From July 2013 until April 2015 I wrote a series of irregular TTIP Updates, which charted the latest developments of the negotiations. They form the most detailed description of how TTIP emerged and developed during the first two years of the negotiations. Although superseded by more recent events, they nonetheless offer a historical record of what happened during that time, and may help people understand the strange beast that is TTIP somewhat better.

    • The Deathbed of the WTO

      When the World Trade Organization (WTO) met in Seattle, Washington in 1999, the Africa paper[1] carefully prepared by the Kenya representatives to the WTO in Geneva, had set the stage for the rejection of the strict intellectual property rights which the Western countries’ pharmaceutical companies desired. Sixteen years later at the 10th WTO Ministerial Conference that was held in Nairobi, Kenya in December 2015, the United States Trade Representatives had pressured the Kenyan leadership to exclude “African issues” from the agenda while simultaneously pushing through the Expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which benefits US corporations. That Kenya could be caught in a position where it had to please the United Stated and thus turn its back on India, Indonesia, China and Brazil was an expression of the country’s lack of consultation with Africa and the other countries of the Global South that had been pushing for the Doha Development Agenda. At the end of the meeting, most international media outlets proclaimed the death of the Doha Development Agenda.

    • Copyrights

      • The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz

        The New Press has published a new collection of Aaron Swartz’s writing called The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz. I worked with Seth Schoen to introduce and help edit the opening section of book that includes Aaron’s writings on free culture, access to information and knowledge, and copyright. Seth and I have put our introduction online under an appropriately free license (CC BY-SA).

      • Most Pirated Films of 2015 Show That Stealing is Great for Hollywood

        Movie piracy, like music piracy and to a lesser degree book piracy, is here to stay for the simple reason that it is technologically easy to do and virtually impossible to stop. More than two decades after the first mass panics about internet-enabled entertainment piracy, it should be clear to legacy companies that such a state of affairs is hardly a death sentence.

      • Four Persistent Online Piracy Misconceptions Busted

        While regular visitors to these pages are probably extremely tuned into the way the file-sharing world operates, more casual readers may have one or two things they’d like clearing up. Here are four of the most common and persistent piracy-related misconceptions of recent years, busted for your convenience.

      • Google received requests to remove 558 million pirate links in 2015

        Google received requests from copyright owners to remove as many as 558 million links to material, which allegedly infringed on copyrights, from its search engine in 2015. The latest figure shows a surge of 60% compared to 2014.

        Google was flooded with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices. The notices are issued to search engines or web hosts to remove links to copyright-infringing material. The majority of the requests came from the music and movie industries.

        Torrent Freak recently found that the URLs submitted by copyright-holders numbered 558,860,089 compared to 2014 when Google processed 345 million pirate links. The majority of the links were removed though Google sometimes takes “no action” if the links do not infringe on copyright material or if they had already been taken down earlier.

      • When Hollywood Raids Pirates, What Do They Search For?

        During December five men from the UK received sentences totaling 17 years after leaking thousands of movies onto the Internet. In an earlier article we revealed how the men were tracked down. Today we’ll look more closely at what police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft were looking for when the men were raided.

      • The First Ten Years of the Pirate Party: Lessons Learned and Road Ahead

        Exactly ten years ago, on January 1 2006 at 20:30 CET, the Swedish and first Pirate Party was launched by me setting up an ugly website. Since then, we delivered on the proof of concept on June 7, 2009, and the movement grew from there. We weren’t always successful, though, and it’s important to be humble and do a little retrospection.

      • Movie Studios Sue Fan-Funded Star Trek Spin-Off

        Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios are suing the crowdfunded Star Trek spin-off “Prelude to Axanar.” The makers initially aimed for a $10,000 budget to start the project, but have raised close to a million since. According to the Hollywood studios they are entitled to any and all profits, claiming that the project infringes on their copyrights.

      • Full text of “The Diary Of Anne Frank”
      • Anne Frank’s diary is in the public domain; editors aren’t co-authors
      • Anne Frank’s diary is now free to download despite copyright dispute

        Anne Frank’s famous Diary of a Young Girl entered the public domain today, making it free to download, read, and distribute, 70 years after her death. Copyright on the diary, written while the young Frank was hiding in an attic with her family from soldiers during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, was scheduled to run out on January 1st, 2016. Within a few hours of the clock striking midnight on the new year, the full text was available to read — in its original Dutch — online.

      • Anne Frank foundation fights plans to publish diary online on 1 January

        An academic and a French MP have said they will go ahead with plans to publish the diary of Anne Frank online on Friday, despite the organisation holding publication rights threatening legal action.

      • Anne Frank foundation threatens legal action after activists vow to publish her diary online in its entirety from tomorrow – 70 years after her death

        An academic and a French MP are planning to publish Anne Frank’s diary online for free tomorrow.

        University lecturer Olivier Ertzscheid and French MP Isabelle Attard say New Year’s Day marks 70 years after the author’s death, and therefore European copyright laws have expired.

        But they have been met with opposition by the diary’s publisher – The Anne Frank Fund – who argues copyright for the translators of the diary is still in effect.

        European copyright laws protect the author’s rights to their work for 70 years after their death.

      • What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2016? Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1959

01.01.16

Links 1/1/2016: WebGL2 in Firefox Nightly, Gentoo on PS4

Posted in News Roundup at 7:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • MuseScore 2.0.2 Brings A Bunch Of New Features

    As you may know, MuseScore is an open-source music composition and notation software, allowing the users tp create, edit and print music in an WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) environment.

  • How software developers helped end the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone

    A team of open source software developers solved the problem that most urgently needed solving: distributing wages to healthcare workers

  • 2015 at a glance: Open Source Yearbook

    For our first Open Source Yearbook, we reached out to dozens of open source organizations and community members and asked them to contribute articles that help provide a feel for 2015. What were a few of the LibreOffice extensions that stood out in 2015? Which Drupal modules were notable? Which books would publishers highlight if they could only pick a handful from the past year? What did open source wearables and 3D printing look like in 2015? And how in the world could we pick one best couple for our yearbook without offending all the other fabulous open source couples in the world? The 2015 Open Source Yearbook answers all these questions, and many more.

  • Open source means choice

    In the late 90s I was ensconced in the Microsoft ecosystem. With the introduction of Windows, personal computer users were being pushed away from the command line. But I stubbornly kept an MS-DOS terminal close by. For reasons now lost to the receding tide of memory, one day I found myself installing Cygwin, a suite of commonly used software and command-line tools that ran within a terminal or X-Window. My introduction to a unix-like environment impressed me. The day I typed “startx” and my screen exploded with tiny x’s sealed the deal. At that time (around 1998), anyone familiar with unix had become aware of the upstart unix-like operating system, Linux, developed around Linus Torvalds’ college software project. When Red Hat Linux 5.2 became available I rushed to my local computer store, intrigued by the new operating system that cost half the price of Windows.

  • Events

    • Closing the Book on Linux and FOSS for 2015

      Sarah Sharp Joins SCALE Keynote Roster: While the SCALE Team is still busy with preparations for SCALE 14X, the first-of-the-year FOSS event worldwide in Pasadena in three weeks, one specific development is that Sarah Sharp joins the list of keynoters. Sharp will speak on “Improving Diversity with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” on Sunday morning, Feb. 24. She joins Cory Doctorow, who is the Friday keynoter at SCALE 14X, with the Saturday keynote yet to be determined. Watch this space.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • WebGL2 enabled in Firefox Nightly
      • Firefox Turns On Its WebGL 2 Support

        For users of Firefox Nightly builds, WebGL 2 support is now enabled.

        Jeff Muizelaar mentioned that WebGL 2 is now enabled within Firefox nightly builds. The WebGL 2 implementation isn’t yet fully complete, but is at least to a point that it’s working well enough for most modern content written against the provisional specification. Jeff mentioned it in this blog post.

  • Education

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • BSD: A Brief Look Back at 2015

      This is the time of year when we look back and go, “Wow. How did this all ever happen?” Or something to that effect. And after about a month of PC-BSD daily use, the verdict so far (subject to appeal) is overwhelmingly positive with a couple of bumps (e.g., someday I will turn off tap-to-click on my touchpad).

      Of course when I look back on the year, I can only look back as far as the time I have been using BSD. It wouldn’t be fair to go all the way back — one time back in the aughts, by some miracle, I got NetBSD to run on a PowerBook G3 until I updated the system and then poof — so this retrospective goes as far back as the month I’ve been using PC-BSD.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • November/December 2015 – Gent and Mexico

      RMS gave his speech “Copyright vs Community” at the Quetelet auditorium, Sint Pietersplein, in Gent, Belgium, on November 17th, to a diverse student audience.

    • Happy GNU Year! Last chance to give in 2015

      Thanks to the free software community’s giving, we have already raised more than $250,000 toward our goal of $450,000 by January 31st, 2016. As we look to the new year, we at the Free Software Foundation are feeling optimistic about our plans for 2016.d

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Glass Half – Brilliant and Hilarious short from the Blender Institute.

      Directed by Beorn Leonard and produced by Ton Roosendaal, Blender’s original founder and chairman of the Blender Foundation, the film is reminiscent in tone of Pixar’s shorts, with the key difference that all assets, including tutorials for some of the techniques used in the film, are free and can be downloaded from Blender’s Cloud storage service.

    • France’s first Digital Law co-created with citizens

      The French draft law Loi Numérique will be presented to the French Parliament on 19 January, after being co-created with citizens through an online public consultation. This is the first law in France resulting from a co-design process.

    • Open Data

      • Northern Ireland launches its open data portal

        Northern Ireland has officially launched its open data portal, OpenDataNI, the goal of which is to provide a global platform where public services and all governmental agencies can publish data.

        This CKan-based portal is now accessible through NIDirect, the official governmental portal for Northern Ireland citizens, which states that it provides ‘a single point of access to public sector information and services’.

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Cloudy With a Chance of Lock-In

    Software as a service to many people is the way to convert what used to be licensed software into a repeat revenue stream and in principle there is nothing wrong with that if done properly (Adobe almost gets it right). But if the internet connection is down and your software no longer works, if the data you painstakingly built up over years goes missing because a service dies or because your account gets terminated for no apparent reason and without any recourse you might come to the same conclusion that I came to: if it requires an online service and is not actually an online product I can do just fine without it.

  • Hysteria on social media as BBC websites go offline

    The BBC experienced a major technical issue on Thursday morning, with all of its websites and several of its digital services offline.

    “We’re aware of a technical issue affecting the BBC website and are working to fix this now. We’ll update you as soon as we can,” the BBC press office said on Twitter.

    The internet did not cope well with this news.

  • A knighthood for Lynton Crosby: government under fire for political honours

    The government has been accused of turning the honours system into an “old boy’s club” after Lynton Crosby, the political strategist who ran the Conservatives’ 2015 election campaign, was awarded a knighthood.

  • Creationism Evangelist: God Put Contradictions in the Bible to ‘Weed Out’ the Atheists

    Young Earth creationism evangelist Kent Hovind asserted this week that God had purposefully put contradictions in the Bible to “weed out” non-believers.

  • Science

    • Heartfelt rationality

      The various branches of the alternative industry make a lot of claims, and a lot of money off these claims. We looked into homeopathy, healing, detox, acupuncture and strange panacea machines supposedly utilizing bio-resonance or quantum mechanics. (Astrologists, psychics and mediums got a showing too, but let’s leave them alone to lick their wounds for now.)

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Dad Arrested, His 2-yo Daughter Taken, for Successfully Treating Her Cancer with Cannabis Oil

      As cannabis is taken more seriously as a medicine and a treatment, more people are taking a chance and using it as a treatment for terminal illnesses. This treatment has had overwhelmingly positive results for countless people who had no other hope of recovery. Every day more stories and scientific studies are appearing from all over the world where people of all ages, even young children, are cured of life-threatening illnesses with cannabis oil.

    • Australia’s big win in Philip Morris plain packaging arbitration

      Plain packaging has been a hot topic on the Kat this year, most recently with Guest Kat Niko’s post on the topic here. But if you thought that would be the last on the matter in 2015, think again. From the AmeriKat’s colleague, Jin Ooi (Allen & Overy), comes news of the latest development concerning Australia’s tobacco plain packaging legislation. The latest news saw a “win” for the Australian government against Philip Morris Asia Limited (“PM Asia”) in which the arbitral tribunal seated in Singapore issued a unanimous decision that it has no jurisdiction to hear Philip Morris’ claim.

  • Security

    • Don’t believe the hype: That GRUB backspace bug wasn’t a big deal

      You can hack any Linux system just by pressing the backspace key 28 times! That’s what some sites would have you believe after an unfortunate GRUB bug was recently made public. But this won’t actually allow you to easily own any Linux system.

    • Researcher criticises ‘weak’ crypto in Internet of Things alarm system

      Security shortcomings in an internet-connected burglar alarm system from UK firm Texecom leave it open to hack attacks, an engineer turned security researcher warns.

      Luca Lo Castro said he had come across shortcomings in the encryption of communication after buying Texecom’s Premier Elite Control Panel and ComIP module and assembling it.

      To be able to remote control the alarm system remotely, you open a firewall port in the router and do a port forwarding to the internet. But this allows the mobile app to directly connect to the ComIP module over an unencrypted connection, Lo Castro discovered.

      Using WireShark, he said he had discovered that data traffic between the mobile app and the control panel is done in clear text or encoded to BASE64. That means potentially confidential information like the alarm control panel (UDL) password, device name and location are exposed, as a blog post by Lo Castro explains.

    • New Year’s Eve security updates
    • The current state of boot security

      I gave a presentation at 32C3 this week. One of the things I said was “If any of you are doing seriously confidential work on Apple laptops, stop. For the love of god, please stop.” I didn’t really have time to go into the details of that at the time, but right now I’m sitting on a plane with a ridiculous sinus headache and the pseudoephedrine hasn’t kicked in yet so here we go.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Sorry Bro, Maybe Next Week: Keep Calm and Troll ISIS

      Reminding us the Revolution may well be tweeted if not televised, ISIS again used its much-vaunted social media savvy this weekend to broadcast the first new online rallying cry since May. In the 24-minute address delivered through ISIS-aligned media accounts, leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told his audience, “Be confident that God will grant victory to those who worship him, and hear the good news that our state is doing well. We urgently call upon every Muslim to join the fight, especially those in the land of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia).” The message was re-tweeted in English by Iyad El-Baghdadi, a prominent human rights activist and ISIS foe initially confused by many online with al-Baghdadi himself. Soon after posting the ISIS message, he started getting mock replies from folks who preferred to join a growing, deft flurry of online anti-ISIS activity aimed at proving that “making fun of the enemy is the best way of defeating them.”

    • Erdogan’s Family Caught in New Scandal

      The clan relations principle has been a prime factor in business affairs for centuries in numerous Islamic and Middle Eastern countries. Unfortunately, in recent months we’ve often witnessed evidence that in Turkey the family of Tayyip Erdogan has been transformed in some sort of carnivorous octopus that has not simply entangled the Turkish economy and politics, but has also extended its tentacles far beyond the state.

      It is hardly necessary to remind anyone of all the scandals in which the members of this family have been engaged. Here are just some examples of its connections with the Islamic State (ISIL) and other terrorist groups:

      Erdogan’s daughter – Sümeyye Erdogan – has been running a covert military hospital, which is treating Islamic State militants.

    • Syria Rebel Leader’s Assassination a Major Blow to US Agenda

      News of the death of prominent anti-Assad commander (or ‘terrorist,’ ‘rebel,’ ‘opposition commander,’ etc.) Zahran Alloush has the potential to radically alter the nature of the war in Syria.

    • Prior to San Bernardino Attack, Many Were Trained to Spot Terrorists; None Did

      These behavioral indicators have become central to the U.S. counterterrorism prevention strategy, yet critics say they don’t work. “Quite simply, they rely on generalized correlations found in selectively chosen terrorists without using control groups to see how often the correlated behaviors identified occur in the non-terrorist population,” Michael German, a former FBI agent who is currently a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, told The Intercept.

      The trainings are based on flawed theories that just don’t stand up to empirical scrutiny, according to German. “The FBI, [National Counter-Terrorism Center], and [Department of Homeland Security] promote these theories despite the fact they have been refuted in numerous academic studies over the past 20 years,” he said.

    • Fire engulfs Dubai hotel ahead of New Year celebrations

      A huge fire has engulfed a 63-storey hotel in central Dubai ahead of a New Year’s Eve firework display.

      Despite the blaze at the Address hotel, the display at the nearby Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, started as planned at midnight.

    • New Year’s Eve Pyrotechnics Go On Despite Raging Hotel Fire in Dubai

      A massive fire was blazing at a 63-story hotel in downtown Dubai on Thursday night, near where tens of thousands of people had gathered for the world’s largest New Year’s Eve fireworks display.

      According to the Associated Press, “It was not immediately clear what caused the fire, which ran up at least 20 stories of the building, which would likely have been packed with people because of its clear view of the 828-meter (905-yard) tall Burj Khalifa.”

    • Iraq’s ‘Liberated’ Ramadi: 80% Destroyed, 30% Still ISIS-Held

      The vital capital of Iraq’s Anbar Province, once a city of half a million people, Ramadi has in the past seven months fell to ISIS, was surrounded and bombarded, and now (mostly) recovered by Iraq. As Iraqi officials tout their victory, however, it seems what they really won is a big repair bill.

    • Over 51,000 Killed in Iraq during 2015

      Antiwar.com has found that at least 51,738 people were killed across Iraq during 2015, while at least 19,651 were wounded. The number of fatalities reported was slightly higher than in 2014, but the number of wounded was substantially lower. These figures should be taken as very rough estimates and probably low estimates at that.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Ten Weather Extremes That Defined Hottest Year Ever Recorded

      From droughts to floods to mega-storms, extreme weather over the past 365 days raises disturbing questions about future of climate chaos

    • Erin Brockovich: California Methane Gas Leak Is Worst U.S. Environmental Disaster Since BP Oil Spill

      Runaway natural gas leak above Los Angeles has emitted more than 150 million pounds of methane since late October.

    • Sick of El Niño? You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, Warns NASA

      The El Niño currently wreaking havoc around the world is forecast to only worsen in 2016 — and NASA experts fear it could get as bad as the most destructive El Niño ever.

      A new satellite image of the weather system “bears a striking resemblance to one from December 1997″ — the worst El Niño on record — which was blamed for extreme weather, including record rainfall in California and Peru, heat waves across Australia, and fires in Indonesia. The severe conditions resulted in an estimated 23,000 deaths in 1997 and 1998.

    • BP partially evacuates North Sea Valhall oil field

      BP is partially evacuating an oilfield in the North Sea because a barge has broken loose and is drifting out of control in rough weather.

      BP says it employs 235 people in the Valhall oilfield but it cannot confirm the number of people who were being evacuated Thursday.

    • One dead and two injured after huge wave hits North Sea oil platform

      One worker has died and two others have been injured after huge waves hit a North sea platform. Statoil today confirmed the news after initially reporting three workers had been injured.

    • North Sea workers airlifted as barge drifts near Valhall field

      The barge was 110m in length and 30m wide and there were fears that it could ram one of the rigs.

    • BP Evacuates Employees From Oilfield in North Sea as Barge Detaches

      Oil and gas giant British Petroleum (BP) is partially evacuating its Valhall oilfield in the North Sea as one of its barges is drifting in the sea uncontrolled, local media reported Thursday.

    • Forests of southwest US face mass die-off by 2100

      California’s drought has already imperilled many of its trees, and within 80 years climate change could destroy the evergreen forests of the entire US southwest.

    • Freak storm pushes North Pole 50 degrees above normal to melting point

      This story has been updated to include buoy measurements that confirm the North Pole temperature climbed above 32 degrees on Wednesday.

    • The 5 Worst Fracking Moments of 2015

      Once again, in 2015 the oil and gas industry showed us the ludicrous lengths they will go to in order to frack more communities. In the process, they created ample fodder for Comedy Central, and the likes of John Oliver, John Stewart, Trevor Noah and Larry Wilmore. Here are a few of the worst head-shaking stunts that made the news in 2015:

    • El Niño and war drive aid agencies to the brink

      Governments must act immediately to end conflicts and counter the impact of climate disruption so as to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe affecting millions.

    • The Paris Climate Agreement: Hope or Hype?

      Perhaps the most realistic assessment was posted by Guardian columnist George Monbiot on the day of the final deal. “By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle,” he wrote. “By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.” It is clear that those who are praising the agreement and those who emphasize its shortcomings live in almost entirely different worlds.

      [...]

      Still, the means for limiting average warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees are largely aspirational, and this is reflected in the agreement’s language throughout. Words like “clarity,” “transparency,” “integrity,” “consistency,” and “ambition” appear throughout the text, but there’s very little to assure that these aspirations can be realized. UN staff are to create all manner of global forums, working groups and expert panels to move the discussions forward but, as was clear prior to Paris, the main focus is to instill a kind of moral obligation to drive diplomats and their governments to take further steps. Article 15 of the agreement proposes a “mechanism to facilitate implementation and promote compliance,” but this takes the form of an internationally representative “expert-based” committee that is to be “transparent, non-adversarial and non-punitive.” This compliance “mechanism” is described in three short sentences in the main Agreement and another couple of paragraphs in the Adoption document; as predicted, there’s nothing to legally pressure intransigent countries or corporations to do much of anything.

    • 5 New Year’s Resolutions For Reporting On Climate Change

      Whether they were covering extreme weather events or presidential campaign events, media outlets often came up short in their reporting on climate change this year. But 2016 will be a fresh opportunity for improved climate coverage. With that in mind, here are five resolutions for reporters looking to provide better coverage of climate change in the new year.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Donald Trump Thanks Conspiracy Site For ‘Amazing Honor’ Of Being Its Man Of The Year

      WorldNetDaily’s founder and editor Joseph Farah is one of the nation’s leading purveyors of “birther” conspiracy theories — the repeatedly debunked notion that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya — publishing more than 600 posts on the topic. Even after Obama released his long-form birth certificate indicating his birth in Hawaii, Farah claimed that this proved nothing. Trump has frequently repeated these claims and Politico reported in 2011 that Farah frequently advised the billionaire investor and former reality show host.

    • Putin’s Magnificent Messaging Machine

      This is the new reality that I helped research while working with Columbia Journalism School’s “ RT Watch” project. For the better part of 2015, the project compiled RT’s output, attempting to examine how, or whether, RT deserves its reputation as a bulwark for Kremlin-friendly programming. Alongside a group of other Columbia graduate students, we watched, read, and consumed RT for hours a day, months on end. We piled our findings—the deceits, the distractions, the direction RT takes—over at the RT Watch blog, along with assorted social media accounts. As one observer said, we watched RT so you didn’t have to. After subsuming ourselves in the entire RT gestalt, I’d like to share some of the things I found.

  • Censorship

    • No, ISIS Isn’t Worth Sacrificing the First Amendment Over

      But America’s principles should be why we hold the nation to such a high standard, not give it a pass for good intentions and high-minded ideals. We say we’re for free speech, so we should mean it. Unfortunately, as we bomb and invade, so we sometimes violate free speech. For most of our history, we’ve managed to at least be better than the rest of the world when it comes to allowing free expression.

    • Twitter tightens rules on trolling and terror talk

      TWITTER IS CLOSING OFF 2015 with updated guidance on what it will and will not stand for on its microchatting pages.

      The Twitter rules have been updated and blogged about. The message is that change is necessary if the firm is to manage free speech and keep people happy.

      “We believe that protection from abuse and harassment is a vital part of empowering people to freely express themselves on Twitter,” said Megan Cristina, who is dubbed a Twitter director for Trust + Safety.

    • Twitter clarifies rules on banned content, abusive behavior

      Twitter Inc has clarified its definition of abusive behavior that will prompt it to delete accounts, banning “hateful conduct” that promotes violence against specific groups.

    • Google Asked to Remove 558 Million “Pirate” Links in 2015

      Copyright holders asked Google to remove more than 560,000,000 allegedly infringing links from its search engine in 2015. The staggering number is an increase of 60% compared to the year before. According to Google the continued surge is a testament that the DMCA takedown process is working, but some copyright holders disagree.

    • Ursula Gauthier: foreign media must fight China censorship, says expelled journalist

      French magazine journalist – ousted by Beijing after writing about repression of the Uighur minority – says reporters must find a way around barriers

    • Expelled French journalist ‘surreal’ ahead of China departure

      A French reporter forced to leave China by authorities after she criticised government policy in violence-wracked, mainly Muslim Xinjiang, said she had been left with a feeling of “surreality” Thursday ahead of her departure.

    • Expelled French journalist prepares to leave China

      A French reporter forced to leave China after she was accused of supporting terrorism for criticising government policy in violence-wracked, mainly Muslim Xinjiang, was preparing to leave on Thursday.

    • French journalist expelled from China for ‘supporting terrorism’ prepares to leave

      A French reporter forced to leave China after she was accused of supporting terrorism for criticising government policy in violence-wracked Xinjiang was preparing to leave on Thursday.

      Ursula Gauthier wrote an article in the magazine L’Obs questioning official comparisons between global terrorism and the unrest in Xinjiang.

    • China passes controversial counter-terrorism law

      China’s parliament passed a controversial new anti-terrorism law on Sunday that requires technology firms to hand over sensitive information such as encryption keys to the government and allows the military to venture overseas on counter-terror operations.

      Chinese officials say their country faces a growing threat from militants and separatists, especially in its unruly Western region of Xinjiang, where hundreds have died in violence in the past few years.

  • Privacy

    • BREAKING: The United States Spies on Israel

      So that’s that. The NSA spied on Netanyahu. That’s a nothingburger. Of course they spied on Netanyahu. And the NSA says that they properly minimized the congressional end of any conversations between Netanyahu and a member of Congress. Since conservatives insist that we should take their word for this in general, why shouldn’t we take their word for it now? Wake me up if it turns out there’s anything more to this story.

    • EXCLUSIVE: Rubio Defends NSA Spying on Netanyahu In Private, Condemns It In Public

      Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) privately defended the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he publicly condemned the practice.

    • Ben Carson: NSA Spying on Israel ‘Is Truly Disgraceful’
    • Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

      The latest chapter of Lawrence Lessig’s career ended in November, when the Harvard Law School professor concluded his bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. That effort centered on his campaign to reform Congressional politics. Prior to that, Prof. Lessig’s scholarship, teaching and activism focused on technology policy and the Internet. He has argued for greater sharing of creative content, the easing of restrictions in areas such as copyright, and the concept of Net Neutrality. Prof. Lessig, who founded the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, is the author of numerous books on technology, including “Code: and Other Laws of Cyberspace,” and “The Future of Ideas: the Fate of the Commons in a Connected World.”

    • Tor project opens up bug bounty program

      DARK WEB GATEKEEPER AND PRIVACY ENABLER the Tor Project is taking a leaf out of the rest of the industry and is offering security researchers prizes for bringing its weaknesses to its attention.

      All eyes are on Tor already. The privacy-aware browser is already a hot topic at the National Security Agency (NSA), and has a price on its head in Russia. With such attention, it makes sense that the outfit behind it would seek to get ahead of the game.

    • How 2016’s war on encryption will change your way of life

      But encryption is now in the spotlight. Should the maths that underpins it be banned in the name of foiling terrorist plans, or should we accept that there is some information our governments will never know?

    • Dems brush off latest spying report

      Top Democrats in Congress are brushing off a report that U.S. intelligence intercepted communications between Israeli government officials and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

      Rep. Eliot Engel (N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it is no secret that the U.S. and Israel spy on each other, even though they are allies.

      “I’m not surprised,” he told The Hill. “I kind of think the report is much to do about nothing.”

      Engel, a staunch supporter of Israel, said he met twice behind closed doors with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer during the heated debate over the nuclear agreement with Iran. He said Dermer presented the Israeli government’s case against the deal.

    • U.S. House panel seeks information on NSA spying report

      A U.S. House of Representatives committee asked the National Security Agency on Wednesday for information about a media report that the agency, while spying on Israeli officials, also intercepted communications between the Israelis and members of Congress.

      In a letter to NSA Director Michael Rogers, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and subcommittee Chairman Ron DeSantis said the story in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal raised “questions concerning the processes NSA employees follow in determining whether intercepted communications involved Members of Congress.”

    • Rubio Outraged by Spying on Israel’s Government, OK with Mass Surveillance of Americans

      This news sparked a denunciation by Florida Senator and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio. “Obviously people read this report, they have a right to be concerned this morning about it,” said Rubio on Fox News Wednesday morning. “They have a right to be concerned about the fact that while some leaders around the world are no longer being targeted, one of our strongest allies in the Middle East – Israel – is. I actually think it might be worse than what some people might think, but this is an issue that we’ll keep a close eye on, and the role that I have in the intelligence committee.”

    • Encryption in the Balance: 2015 in Review

      If you’ve spent any time reading about encryption this year, you know we’re in the midst of a “debate.” You may have also noted that it’s a strange debate, one that largely replays the same arguments made nearly 20 years ago, when the government abandoned its attempts to mandate weakened encryption and backdoors. Now some parts of the government have been trying to revisit that decision in the name of achieving “balance” between user security and public safety. The FBI, for example, acknowledges that widespread adoption of encryption has benefits for users, but it also claims its investigations of terrorists, criminals, and other wrongdoers will “go dark” unless it has a legal authority and the technical capability to read encrypted data. But because the principles of what makes encryption secure haven’t changed, the only “balance” that can satisfy the government’s goals is no balance at all—it would require dramatically rolling back the spread of strong encryption.

    • Americans Evaluate the Balance between Security and Civil Liberties

      In the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 54 percent of Americans say it can be necessary for the government to sacrifice freedoms to fight terrorism; 45 percent disagree. About half of Americans think it is acceptable to allow warrantless government analysis of internet activities and communications—even of American citizens—in order to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. About 3 in 10 are against this type of government investigation.

    • NSA Critics Gleefully Accuse Surveillance Hawks of Hypocrisy

      Privacy advocates are accusing politicians generally deferential to the government’s mass surveillance programs of hypocrisy after leading hawks expressed concern about the possible collection of their own communications.

      Collection on members of Congress, revealed this week by The Wall Street Journal, was performed by the National Security Agency with a wink-and-nod from the White House, which was intent on countering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to derail the Iran nuclear deal.

    • The Dark Web — interview on TRT World
    • Victories in California and Virginia Alongside a Setback in Florida: 2015 in Review

      Congress took action in 2015 to address privacy and transparency, but state legislatures emerged as the nation’s leaders for policy innovation. From Virginia to California, states adopted new policies to reclaim digital privacy, advance government transparency, and protect free expression. These new laws both protect residents of these states, and also provide models for other jurisdictions to emulate.

    • Chaffetz, Stewart want answers about NSA spying on Congress, world leaders
    • Republicans fast to object to NSA spying when it involves Israel

      A recent report has revealed that the National Security Agency intercepted communications involving Israeli officials and members of Congress. Republicans are now requesting that the NSA provide them with the details.

    • Congress to Investigate Report That US Spied on Lawmakers

      The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has opened an investigation into U.S. surveillance practices following a report in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week that the National Security Agency (NSA), an intelligence agency in the executive branch, may have intentionally swept up communications between U.S. lawmakers and Israeli officials.

    • U.S. Rep. Peter King calls for NSA to brief Congress

      U.S. Rep. Peter King said reports that the National Security Agency dropped in on private conversations of congressmen while spying on Israel raise questions about whether the lawmakers were the real target — and the legality of the whole operation.

    • NSA spying on US and Israeli politicians stirs Congress from Christmas slumbers

      After two years of doing little about the mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden, the US Congress has sprung into action in less than two days – with investigations into the NSA spying on some the legislature’s members.

    • U.S. lawmakers communiques snared in NSA surveillance of Netanyahu

  • Civil Rights

    • 2015: The Year in Gun Politics

      The politics of guns in 2015 was largely shaped by a series of newsmaking horrible multiple-casualty murders in public places. Each one inspired Democratic Party politicians, including President Obama and frontrunning 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, to call for a similar set of what they now call “common sense gun safety” laws (“gun control” has lost its luster since Al Gore’s 2000 presidential loss).

    • New Study Confirms Insidious GOP Racism in 2008 Presidential Race

      A new study clears up any lingering doubt that the Republican Party engaged in the tactic of dogwhistle politics in the 2008 presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. The study, which was published online this month in Public Opinion Quarterly, shows that the McCain campaign’s negative ads about Obama overwhelmingly featured him with a darker skin tone in a subtle attempt to appeal to voters’ racial prejudices.

    • Powerful New York Daily News Cover Actually Understates The Case Against Bill Cosby

      But the cover actually understates the weight of the evidence against Cosby. It’s not just the detailed allegations of more than 50 women that implicates Cosby. He is also implicated by his own description of his conduct.

      Kevin Steele, the Pennsylvania prosecutor who charged Cosby today, relied on Cosby’s own statements to support a charge of Aggravated Indecent Assault. The criminal complain filed by Steele revealed that Cosby told police investigators that he gave Amanda Comstand “one whole pill and one half pill” of “over-the-counter Benadryl” even though he knew the pills would “make him go to sleep right away.” He then acknowledged having sexual contact with her when he knew she would not be fully conscious.

    • This Was the Year Tech Became the Bad Guy

      In the first season of Veep, the brilliant political comedy from HBO, Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gets, um, wind that in the coming year, a hurricane will share her name. “Shit!” she says. “What if it hits and we get headlines saying, ‘Selina causing large-scale devastation?’” Needless to say, her staff eventually gets the name of the storm changed.

      It’s hilarious, and it’s consistent with the show’s portrayal of much of Washington as an endless cycle of image control and crisis management. How much should we trust it?

    • South Korea’s Betrayal of the “Comfort Women”

      On December 28th, 2015, the foreign ministers of Japan and Korea, suddenly and hastily announced a “resolution” to the “comfort women” issue, women trafficked and exploited as sexual slaves by the Japanese Army during WWII. This involved an apology by the Japanese prime minister, and the creation of fund for reparations.

      “The issue of ‘comfort women’ was a matter which, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, severely injured the honor and dignity of many women,” said the Japanese Foreign Minister. 1 billion yen ($8.3M) was also promised to the fund to assist the 46 surviving comfort women.

    • Give a Drunk (or Anyone) a Free Ride Home on New Year’s Eve, Accept a Tip, Face $500 Fine

      It’s always amusing, if only bitterly, when government shows its true colors of obdurate opposition to human safety and happiness in the name of its bogus authority.

    • A History Defined by the Trade in Human Beings

      The history of the US is soaked in blood.

      [...]

      As Ned and Constance Sublette make clear in their comprehensive and exhaustive history, The American Slave Coast, that profit was not only determined by the labor of the enslaved but also in the slaves’ bodies themselves, including the potential production of more slaves. The authors call this latter status the “capitalized womb.” In a manner similar to the projection of an animal’s potential reproduction capabilities through several generations, the potential offspring of enslaved girls and women was considered when they were sold and when their owners applied for credit. As an example, supposedly when one kills a hen with their vehicle in some countries, the driver of the vehicle pays the farmer who owned the hen for the hen, but also for all the chickens the hen might have produced and another generation that those chickens would have produced. There is a certain formula used by the legal system in these situations to determine the sum total owed by the offending driver. Slaveowners and traders also agreed upon such a formula in the antebellum United States.

    • Corbyn’s Enemies Within: Working Class Heroes or Right Wing Populists?

      Although extreme, Danczuk, unfortunately, is far from anomalous within the Labour Party at present, both in parliament and in local councils. Following the expulsion of socialists in the 1980s and 1990s and, later, the creation of Tony Blair’s nefarious “New Labour”, the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) has been dominated by neoliberal apologists and class collaborationists. What differentiates Danczuk from this clique, however, is his constant and calculated appeals to a speciously defined working class culture in order to justify his divisive views.

    • A Most Unhappy New Year at Guantanamo

      Reuters reporters Charles Levinson and David Rohde (the former New York Times reporter who was held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan for seven months, until he escaped) cite Ba Odah’s case in their latest article, writing, “Pentagon officials have been throwing up bureaucratic obstacles to thwart the president’s plan to close Guantanamo.”

    • Horrifying Video Shows Cops Sic K-9 on Infant Daughter of a Man they Mistook for a Suspect

      Before Arenas-Alvarez could communicate to the officers that his infant daughter was in the car, the “two minutes” had passed and Sgt. Mitchell arrived with his Belgian Malinois. Almost as soon as he exited the vehicle, Mithcell released the K-9 into the SUV of an entirely innocent man and his daughter.
      Photo Credit: c/o The Free Thought Project

      Henderson, NV — On January 30, 2015, a health food store in Henderson called the police after a disgruntled customer, attempting to return some protein powder, allegedly threatened to rob them. The store described the suspect to police as a black male wearing a black and tan t-shirt who left in an SUV.
      Shop ▾

      As police responded to the call, they quickly stopped the first person they saw, who happened to be Arturo Arenas-Alvarez. Arenas-Alvarez had just pulled up in the shopping center to do some shopping when police drew their weapons and demanded he put his hands in the air and step toward them.

      Arenas-Alvarez did not appear to understand why multiple armed men were pointing their guns at him, so one officer asked him in Spanish to approach the vehicle.

      Before Arenas-Alvarez makes it all the way to the vehicle, officers realized they had the wrong guy.

      [...]

      Below is the horrifying video of the incident which illustrates the sheer violent and unaccountable nature of police in the US.

    • 2015: The Year in Fear

      Criminals, terrorists, and madmen with guns—how fears of violence reshaped American politics

    • The GOP Has Become the Party From George Orwell’s Nightmares

      When an entire field of candidates tend to thrive on bullshit (especially the current front-runners), it is not at all surprising that they have certain reliable terms that vilify critics of their bullshit and shut down debate. The truth is, Republicans have long utilized a manipulative phraseology, full of euphemisms and doublespeak, used either to shut down criticism and debate, as shown above, or to acerbate the listener’s emotional state — think “baby parts” and “death panels” — or provide a positive light on something that is generally frowned upon. (Ergo: Tax-avoiding billionaires become “job-creators.”) The GOP has become truly masterful at distorting political discussion through language, and at each Republican debate, just about every candidate showcases this manipulation. In George Orwell’s classic essay on this subject, “Politics and the English Language,” he seems to describe modern Republicans to a tee, repeating the same tired, yet convenient phrases (the phrases have changed, of course).

    • Texas Legislator Claimed Rape Doesn’t Exist In Marriage

      Texas State Rep. Jonathan Stickland (R) apologized Wednesday after the Texas Observer published a 2008 quote from an online post in which the lawmaker joked that nothing a husband does to his wife could possibly be rape.

      The rape “joke,” accompanied by a yellow smiley emoticon giving a thumbs-up sign, was : “Rape is non existent in marriage, take what you want my friend!”

      Stickland told the publication that he ““severely regrets” the comments now. “I do not feel that way today. I can only repent and ask for forgiveness from the people it offended and hurt. Rape is serious and should never be joked about the way that I did regardless of my age,” he explained. Stickland’s official biography indicates that he is now 32 years old.

    • Citizenship-stripping on the Rise Worldwide

      The debate may prove to be academic—a new opinion poll shows 86 percent of French people saying oui to the idea. If approved, the amendment might still be challenged at the European Court of Human Rights, but don’t hold your breath: Citizenship-stripping in the name of fighting terrorism is on the rise worldwide, including in Europe.

    • What About the Police Crime Rate?

      The failure to indict a police officer for yet another killing of a young, Black person – this time a child, 12-year-old Tamir Rice – should outrage us and cause us to look more deeply at the structures that make both Rice’s shooting and the non-indictment mutually reinforcing acts. Similarly, the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the brilliant organizing within it compels us to look at the relationship between crime and policing in a new way: it forces our society to confront how it allows the police to get away with committing crimes against Black and brown communities.

      When it comes to policing, civil and human rights lawyers are myth busters. We work with organizers, activists and journalists, to bust storied myths, passed down through generations, that attempt to normalize unaccountable police power and the abuses that inevitably flow from it. We also bust the myths about Black and brown criminality that many people believe are true, but simply aren’t.

    • Law, Order, and Social Suicide

      Want a ringside seat for the war on crime? Go to killedbypolice.net. A few hours ago (as I write this), the site had listed 1,191 police killings in the U.S. this year. I just looked again.

      The total is up one.

    • The most important movies of 2015 were not in any theater

      Every December, I make a list of what I think are the best movies released that year. It has never seemed so beside the point as it does this time, looking back at 12 months in which the moving images that actually mattered — the ones that needed to change the national conversation and maybe even started to — weren’t on multiplex screens or dialed up through our cable guide but came crashing through our browsers, our cellphones, and on the nightly news.

      To me, the most important movie of 2015 was the police car dash-cam video of the July arrest of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, in Prairie View, Texas. Not just the three minutes or so of the altercation with a white police officer that resulted in Bland’s being taken to the local jail, where she allegedly hung herself three days later, but the entire 52-minute expanse of the tape, for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment.

    • Christmas with Assange

      Confined in Ecuador’s embassy in London, Assange shows a patent physical and psychological deterioration. But with his intellectual voracity and capacity of attention intact, he seeks international and Argentinean support.

    • Jeb Bush Says No Need For Federal Investigation In Tamir Rice Case

      Former Florida governor and current Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told reporters that a grand jury’s decision not to indict police officers in the shooting of 12-year old Tamir Rice shows that “the process worked.”

      “If there is a grand jury that looks at all the facts and doesn’t indict maybe there’s reasons for that,” Bush said Wednesday night in Lexington, South Carolina. “I don’t believe that every grand jury is racist.”

    • Los Angeles Saw a Huge Crime Increase in 2015. Or Did It?

      It’s also sort of stunning that apparently violent crime was basically flat in the second half of the year. That means violent crime was up about 40 percent from January-June, and then dropped to 0 percent in July-December. This is…a little hard to believe. And no, the deployment of 200 more Metro cops can’t even remotely account for that.

      Anyway, I’ll be curious to see what happens next year. Maybe this whole thing is just an artifact of better crime statistics. Hard to say. In any case, the mayor says LA is safer than at any time since the 1950s. I’m not sure how he figures that, but apparently that means there’s nothing to worry about. Go about your business, citizens.

    • Christian Religious Liberty Is More Popular Than Religious Liberty For Everyone Else

      Most Americans believe Muslims deserve religious freedom, according to a poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 61 percent said religious liberty was important for people of Muslim faith, though the number is dwarfed by the 82 percent who believe Christians’ religious liberty is important.

      The figure wasn’t drastically different along political lines either, as 60 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats supported religious protections for Muslims. Those numbers for Christians were 88 and 83 percent, respectively.

      “These numbers seem to be part of a growing climate of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States,” Madihha Ahussain, an attorney for Muslim Advocates, a California-based civil rights group, told AP. “This climate of hatred has contributed to dozens of incidents of anti-Muslim violence in recent weeks.”

    • Neighbors and Family Recount Chilling Details in Chicago Police Shooting

      Eyewitness accounts from neighbors appear to confirm a Chicago police officer began shooting into the home of Quintonio Legrier and Bettie Jones from several feet away while standing on the sidewalk. That contradicts the police department’s early account, which suggests one of the officers opened fire in the entryway after Legrier confronted him.

      Legrier, a 19-year-old engineering student, and Jones, a 55-year-old mother of five and workers’ rights activist, were shot on Saturday when officers responded to a domestic disturbance call at their home around 4:30 a.m. Jones opened the door when police responded to a call from Legrier’s father.

    • Male Legislator Mocks His Colleague’s Nipples In Push To Ban Public Exposure

      Members of New Hampshire’s Republican-controlled state legislature are pushing for a bill that would make it illegal for a woman to show her nipples in public. And while the bill contains an exemption for breast-feeding, that didn’t stop representatives from sharing their opinions on the matter of public breast-feeding on social media Tuesday night.

    • Florida 911 Dispatcher Accidentally Shoots and Kills Daughter

      The Orlando Sentinel reports Sherry Campbell, who works as a 911 dispatcher, told investigators she was awakened by what she thought was a stranger breaking into her home. That noise was actually the sound of her daughter, Ashley Doby, moving about the house. Campbell fired a single shot that fatally struck Doby in the chest.

    • Obama Reportedly Will Move To Expand Gun Background Checks By Executive Order

      In 2015, 457 people died from 353 mass shootings (as of December 17). After Congress blocked legislative efforts, the president will now take executive action to attempt to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals.

    • Police Union Boss on Tamir Rice: ‘Act Like a Thug and You’ll Be Treated Like One’

      His comment calls to mind those made by current and former heads of the Cleveland union, which represents the officers responsible for Rice’s death. Former boss Jeffrey Follmer previously said on MSNBC that Rice was an imminent lethal threat who might have survived had he listened to police commands—even though the 12-year-old boy was given less than one second to react to purely hypothetical orders before he was fired upon. Current boss Steve Loomis had even worse things to say: he called Rice “menacing.”

    • People Are Fed Up: Protests of 2015

      This year saw a flood of passionate, creative, often furious protests, with many in this country focused on racist police and economic inequality. Revisit some of those most powerfully suggesting that, with concerted collective action, change is possible. Take heart. And a peaceful new year.

    • Cops Not Punished After Beating Innocent Child So Bad with Flashlight He’s Permanently Disabled

      Grand Rapids, MI — Suffering permanent physical and mental damage after a Michigan police officer savagely beat his head bloody with a flashlight, an unarmed teen recently filed a federal lawsuit against the cops for violating his Fourth Amendment rights. Although the teen was cleared of the charges against him, none of the officers involved in the beating received any disciplinary action.

    • Reasons to Celebrate: Key Progressive Gains in 2015

      Among the progressive issues that won on local ballots this fall, November 4th, voters approved every initiative to raise the minimum wage in the five states where they appeared.

      The year also saw decisions to have phased-in minimum wage hikes in Los Angeles, Seattle, Oakland, and San Francisco.

      And the Huffington Post points to a recent analysis showing that workers in 14 states will see the minimum wage go up.

      Contributor Erik Sherman wrote previously at Forbes: “With 28 states now supporting minimum wages higher than the federal level, pressure on Congress will increase, while states with lower figures could find themselves economically uncompetitive for workers and, therefore, businesses.”

    • 5 Cities Where Police Reform Efforts Will Play Out in 2016

      In the summer of 2014, a series of incidents of police brutality brought the issue of excessive force into the mainstream national debate. Since then, progress on the reform front has been slow, but still moving. Police shootings in 2015, from that of Walter Scott in South Carolina to Jamar Clark in Minneapolis, have received more attention, from the media, the public, and authorities, than similar cases in previous years. That’s led to a tripling in prosecutions of police officers on murder and manslaughter charges in 2015—there were a total of 18 cops charged this year. This year also saw the White House launch a panel on police reform, which called for more guidelines, training, and spending, but offered little in the way of introspection on how our culture of more laws contributes to endemic police violence.

    • 2015: The Year in Gun Politics

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • #SaveTheInternet – did you e-mail TRAI yet?

      So, you must’ve heard about Facebook’s plan to “bring the Internet to the poor in India” that they’ve named Internet.org/Free Basics. If you’ve read the plan in detail, you’ll see that it isn’t really bringing the Internet to anyone for free. Well, technically it is, but let’s look at the complete picture before we begin celebrating, shall we?

      Fact: “Free basics” is not providing free access to the whole of the Internet.

    • Your New Years Resolution: Tell The EU Not To Undermine The Foundations Of The Internet

      For a few weeks now, we’ve been telling you about a worrisome EU consultation on regulating the internet. That consultation was supposed to end today — but it’s been extended a week. As we noted recently, the survey technology built by the EU Commission had a major bug in it, meaning that many people had their submissions rejected. Based on this, we requested that they extend the survey. We got back two separate responses, the first telling us that they were very sorry, but it would be “impossible” to extend the survey. The second response was that they had agreed to extend the survey one week… but only for people who had run into problems. Given the two conflicting responses, I asked for more information on this (including how they would keep it open only for those people). I also asked if they were planning to announce this anywhere. I was told that it would likely be impossible to make an announcement, and I never heard anything else, as I believe many left for the holidays.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Patent amendments not allowed during court proceedngs, rules Malaysia’s highest court

      It is so easy to get wrapped up in one’s own orbit. What impacts you right here and right now, be it your local weather, your commuter train delays or the decision of your local patents judge, is often as far as your daily horizon ventures. However, it is becoming increasingly important that IP practitioners look further afield as to what is happening in IP law and practice in other jurisdictions. Much like a lion, the IPKat prides itself in bringing news of important decisions from other jurisdictions.

    • The Return of the Patent Troll: 2015 in Review

      The lack of action in Congress was 2015’s biggest disappointment. House and Senate committees both managed to pass reasonable bills aimed at reducing litigation abuse by patent trolls. Meanwhile, opponents of reform tried to muddy the waters by introducing a terrible bill that would make it even harder to challenge bad patents at the Patent Office. In the end, legislative reform efforts stalled over the summer and Congress did nothing. Lawmakers might return to the issue before the next election. With trolls running rampant, we need legislative reform now more than ever.

      While we did not see blockbuster Supreme Court patent decisions like last year, there was some progress in the courts. Most importantly, the lower courts have applied the 2014 ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank (which held that abstract ideas do not become patentable simply because they are implemented on generic computers) to invalidate a significant number of abstract software patents. The outlier, of course, is the Eastern District of Texas which is granting motions based on Alice at much lower rates than other courts. This has created an even greater incentive for trolls to flock to that district.

    • Price Controls Will Slow Drug Innovation

      Last session, legislators introduced AB 463, which would have required drug companies to detail the profits and expenses on the development of all treatments that cost more than $10,000. It failed, but it was part of this same anti-gouging approach epitomized in the drug-price ballot initiative.

    • Wikipedia, Again

      I loved the idea of Wikipedia in the early years. I used to read encyclopaediae, the dead-tree-kind, as a boy. My father bought them from door-to-door salesmen. I kept them with me for years. With the Internet and search engines the dead-tree-kinds are pretty well obsolete. When Wikipedia came along, I made a local copy for use in the North. The Internet connection could drop and we were still on the air thanks to a LAMP stack. Kids loved it. I worked at it. It took weeks of sifting through articles and hundreds of thousands of images to remove age-inappropriate content. I did that.

12.30.15

Links 30/12/2015: Death of Murdock, Microsoft Blocks Linux Game Port

Posted in News Roundup at 11:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Op-Ed: Microsoft makes it more difficult to run Linux

    There are numerous computer operating systems (OS) other than the various versions of Windows and this includes well over 100 distributions of Linux-based systems.

  • Desktop

    • 5 ways Ubuntu Linux is better than Microsoft Windows 10

      Windows 10 is a pretty good desktop operating system. Unfortunately, that OS is very far from perfect. The most glaring issue, of course, is the confusing privacy settings. Plus, let us not forget the arguably shady tactics Microsoft is employing to get users to upgrade to the operating system. While Windows 10 is more focused than its predecessor, there is still a lack of consistency, such as having a Settings Menu and separate Control Panel menu.

      Meanwhile, in the land of Linux, Ubuntu hit 15.10; an evolutionary upgrade, which is a joy to use. While not perfect, the totally free Unity desktop-based Ubuntu gives Windows 10 a run for its money. Does this mean I think Linux will soon rule the desktop? Absolutely not. Windows will still be dominant in number of installs for the foreseeable future. With that said, more does not always mean better. Here are 5 ways Ubuntu bests Windows 10.

    • Major Linux Desktop Problems In 2016

      A widely-cited blog post about the major Linux desktop problems has been updated for 2016.

      Over on the LinuxFonts.Narod.ru is the “major problems of the Linux desktop” and it’s been updated with all of the latest issues, etc, for 2016. The article was updated yesterday by Artem Tashkinov.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • The Most Popular GNOME & KDE Happenings Of 2015

      Continuing on with our other year-end looks, here are lists of the most popular GNOME and KDE desktop happenings of the year.

      First up, here’s a look at the ten most popular GNOME stories on Phoronix for 2015. GNOME made much progress this year on Wayland support, app sandboxing, UEFI firmware updating, and other features.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Frogr 1.0 released

        I’ve just released frogr 1.0. I can’t believe it took me 6 years to move from the 0.x series to the 1.0 release, but here it is finally. For good or bad.

      • From a lawyer who hates litigation

        Before I started working in free and open source software, before I found out I had a heart condition and became passionate about software freedom, I was a corporate lawyer at a law firm. I worked on various financial transactions. There were ups and downs to this kind of work but throughout I was always extremely vocal about how happy I was that I didn’t do any litigation.

  • Distributions

    Free Software/Open Source

    • Applying open-source tracking technology to hunting research in Brazil

      Mark Abrahams explains his innovative use of an open-source animal monitoring platform

    • 5 Open Source Replacements for Accounting Software

      In recent years, cloud computing has transformed the ways that people purchase software, but it hasn’t necessarily made it more affordable.

      If you’re looking for accounting software – and you’re pinching pennies – you may want to explore one of these open source replacements for expensive accounting software.

      Let the downloading begin!

      As always, if you know of additional open source accounting software that you think should be on our list, feel free to add them in the comments section below.

    • Open-Source / Linux Enthusiasts Have A Lot To Be Thankful For This Year

      There are far too many “open-source wins” to list from 2015, and some of the exciting advancements have already been covered in our other year-end articles. This article are just some of the major items that come to mind. You’re more than welcome to share your own exciting open-source/Linux highlights of the year with us and the community by commenting on this article in our forums.

    • The danger ahead: skyscraper code favelas  in earthquake zones

      Do software application development leaders need a new year’s resolution?

      Do team leaders, software engineering managers and senior architectural planners need a new wake up call?

      [...]

      The story here is that yes, indeed, software is eating the world… but in a proprietary-only technical debt-ridden software world… that software sucks.

    • SaaS/Big Data

      • Google Cloud Platform Offers New Avenues for Leveraging its Power
      • Essential Tools for Development in the Cloud and on the Web

        Web site and application development is becoming in reach for nearly everyone, thanks to easier and better tools. Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are increasingly either employing open source or are built entirely on it. And all of this adds up to an increasing need for web development toolsets focused on the open source community. The good news is that there are many open source tools to help you with your web project, and given the costs of web development environments and the like, they can save you a lot of money. Here are many good examples of tools and tutorials, with a few that we’ve covered before appended at the end, in case you missed them.

    • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

      • Oracle, The Butt Of Jokes

        They did earn their power by making a powerful database but then abused it by charging far more than cost of production plus reasonable profit. Hence PostgreSQL and MySQL and others are thriving. I made the move to mariadb years ago.

    • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

      • Facebook, LinkedIn Reflect on 2015: The Year in Open Source

        Both Facebook and LinkedIn look back on 2015 as a seminal year for open-source technology at their respective companies.
        With 2015 at its end, Facebook took a look back at its year of using, developing and contributing to open-source software.

        In a blog post, Christine Abernathy, developer advocate for the Facebook open source team, said the open source program at Facebook has grown, not only in terms of new projects, but also in the size and strength of its community. Abernathy credits the growth to contributions from more than 3,400 developers who contributed to the company’s projects – the majority of whom were external.

    • BSD

      • BSD Unix-like OS is Resurrected for Embedded IoT Market

        It took two decades, but BSD — the operating system that dominated the Unix world during the 1980s and 1990s before being supplanted by the open source Linux kernel — is now ready for embedded computing. That’s according to the RetroBSD project, which has announced success running BSD on modern embedded hardware.

    • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Public Services/Government

      • Open-source advocates see big opportunity for federal software acquisition reform in 2016

        With open-source software, the code would already be in the public domain, and agencies would instead be procuring value-added services to mold those open-source applications to their needs.

        This saves money for agencies because it eliminates the licensing fees that come with traditional software products as well as the nonrecurring engineering costs — the one-off costs to research and develop the software, or “reinvent the wheel” as Gary Shiffman, CEO of Arlington-based Giant Oak Inc., described it to me.

    • Openness/Sharing

      • Glass Half: The latest open movie from the Blender Institute

        At this year’s Blender Conference, the Blender Institute released its latest open movie project, Glass Half. You can watch the full three minutes of this short animation in all its glory right here.

      • Open Hardware

        • Google, HPE, Oracle back RISC-V, an open source ARM alternative

          Tech giants Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Lattice, Microsemi and Oracle are among the first 15 members of a new RISC-V trade group. Next week the group is hosting a workshop for the processor core. One of the current tasks of the group is to draft the open source agreement which will form part of its membership. The RISC-V is developed under an open source license and members will be able to verify and use the RISC-V logo.

          [...]

          RISC-V processors can currently be used to run Linux and NetBSD.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • Telecom law ‘overlooked’ in ICT standards policy

        Using telecom law offers fundamental advantages over competition law to remedy monopolised ICT market sectors and in eGovernment initiatives, says Felix Greve, a German lawyer specialised in IT-law. In November, Greve summarised his July 2015 PhD thesis in a webinar organised for the European Commission’s ‘Open Standards for ICT Procurement’ project.

    Leftovers

    • Star Wars and the Death of American Cinema

      ‘Star Wars’ is a simple story, simply told, of good versus evil, light versus darkness, and freedom versus tyranny. In other words it is the story of America’s struggle to preserve democracy and civilization in a world beset by evil and ‘evildoers’.

    • Meet “Sledgehammer Shannon,” the lawyer who is Uber’s worst nightmare

      Four years later, Liss-Riordan is spearheading class-action lawsuits against Uber, Lyft, and nine other apps that provide on-demand services, shaking the pillars of Silicon Valley’s much-hyped sharing economy. In particular, she is challenging how these companies classify their workers. If she can convince judges that these so-called micro-entrepreneurs are in fact employees and not independent contractors, she could do serious damage to a very successful business model—Uber alone was recently valued at $51 billion—which relies on cheap labor and a creative reading of labor laws. She has made some progress in her work for drivers. Just this month, after Uber tried several tactics to shrink the class, she won a key legal victory when a judge in San Francisco found that more than 100,000 drivers can join her class action.

    • I Got Married At the Perfect Age

      Looks more like age 29 in the chart, but I got married at 32, so I’ll take it. Unfortunately, this is for people getting married now. For people who got married back when I got married, the older the better. Today, for some reason, it’s the older the better until age 32, and then the divorce risk curves back up. Why the change? After a bit of statistical argle bargle, Wolfinger admits he can’t really figure it out

    • Dr Joshua Freeman, Dr Hayley Bennet: TPP could trump climate accord

      Trade deal gives polluters power to sue governments who try to implement the Paris agreement

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Anti-vaccine Californians are rich, white, but not necessarily highly educated

        At this point, it’s well documented that affluent, educated white communities are behind the surge in unvaccinated kids—and by extension the increase in vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles and whooping cough (pertussis). But there are few studies that dig into the detailed demographics of those unprotected younglings, leaving health experts at a loss for how to target strategies to combat anti-vaccination myths and fears in the specific groups that need it most.

      • Here’s a Whole Bunch of Interesting Facts and Figures About Births and Babies

        This comes from the CDC’s final report on births for 2014, which is chock full of everything you might want to know about US birth and fertility rates. The increase in triplet births is most likely due to the rising use of fertility therapies, and the drop after 1998 is likely due to improvements in fertility therapies. The reason for the steady increase in twins is less clear, since it seems too large to be accounted for by fertility treatments.

    • Security

    • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

      • Turkey: A Criminal State, a NATO State

        It is now openly discussed even in mainstream media the fact that Turkey has been intimately involved in fomenting and supporting the war on Syria, with its ultimate goal of the overthrow of the Syrian government and its replacement by a compliant proxy aligned with Turkish President Erdogan and the Muslim Brotherhood. That this is no longer a ‘conspiracy theory’ but a conspiracy fact not only vindicates my analysis over the last four years, but it also brings to the fore the nefarious role of a NATO member in stoking a brutal and bloody war for its own ends.

      • Bad Government Decisions That Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

        And bad governmental decisions are not confined to the Middle East. Violating the implicit (and maybe explicit) promise made to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to get him to approve the reuniting of Germany as the Cold War ended, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have expanding the hostile NATO alliance right to Russia’s borders. Recently Obama took in the small country Montenegro as a deliberate slap in Russia’s face. Yet, expanding the NATO alliance effectively followed the Versailles model after World War I – keeping your defeated adversary outside the community of European nations – which led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and World War II and went counter to the much more effective Congress of Vienna model, which brought post-Napoleonic France back into Europe, thus ensuring a century of relative peace in Europe. Because the United States and NATO walked all over a defeated Russia after the Cold War, they are now faced with a nationalist Russian leader in Vladimir Putin who is destabilizing Ukraine to keep it out of NATO, which George W. Bush promised would become an alliance member. Not taking any responsibility for this unfortunate chain of events, the United States is using Russia’s behavior to put more NATO forces in Eastern and Southern Europe. Where will the escalation cycle end?

      • Authorities are investigating a firebomb attack on a mosque in Tracy, California

        Authorities are investigating a firebomb attack on a mosque in Tracy, California that took place on Sunday as a hate crime.

      • Israel Firsters

        When I first began commenting on articles here at openDemocracy, I was motivated to answer a writer who contended that the State of Israel had intentionally opened the flood gates on one of its dams in order to flood some villages in Gaza.

        The article was simply one of many examples where Palestinian leadership misfeasance brought tribulations to Palestinians that were blamed on the Israelis. I have come to refer to such observers as “Israel Firsters”.

      • The Jewish Equivalent of ISIS

        The Jewish extremists running amok in Israel have far more in common with the Islamic State than they realize. Both groups need to be confronted and destroyed.

      • Iran Hands Over Stockpile of Enriched Uranium to Russia

        A Russian ship left Iran on Monday carrying almost all of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium, fulfilling a major step in the nuclear deal struck last summer and, for the first time in nearly a decade, apparently leaving Iran with too little fuel to manufacture a nuclear weapon.

      • What Are the Chances for Peace in 2016?

        None of this trillion dollars taken from us is spent to keep us safe, despite what politicians say. In fact, this great rip-off actually makes us less safe and more vulnerable to a terrorist attack thanks to resentment overseas at our interventions and to the blowback it produces.

      • ‘Shadow CIA’ Warns: Daesh Will Opt For Radical Measures to Offset Losses

        Stratfor maintains that despite major anti-Daesh efforts in Iraq and Syria, the group will not be vanquished in 2016.

      • Drones fly over Iraq and Syria without congressional oversight

        With the military, not the CIA, in charge, few know whether casualties include Iraqi and Syrian civilians.

      • With less oversight, activists fear more civilian casualties from drone strikes [Ed: same]
      • How Qatar Is Funding al-Qaeda — and Why That Could Help the US

        Ask Americans to name the terror group they fear most, and they’ll probably says ISIS, even though it was al-Qaeda that killed more than 3,000 people on 9/11/2001. Compared to ISIS, al-Qaeda is seen as the “devil we know,” not the band of barbaric thugs who burn people alive, rape children, and destroy or pilfer historic artifacts for sale on the black market.

        The rivalry between the two terror groups has even prompted the unthinkable—that the U.S. and al-Qaeda would somehow work together to defeat ISIS. Last August General David Petraeus, former CIA director and commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, urged the Pentagon to consider empowering al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front in Syria to fight ISIS. Petraeus, like others, believe Nusra is “moderate” compared with the tactics of the Taliban or ISIS, and could be an asset. But aligning with the lesser of two evils of terrorism is a policy fraught with pitfalls.

      • I revealed the truth about President Erdogan and Syria. For that, he had me jailed

        Early in 2014, a truck understood to belong to the Turkish intelligence service (MIT) was stopped near the Syrian border. The gendarmerie and the intelligence officials in control of the convoy pulled guns on each other. This was the moment the two blocks vying to rule the state came face to face. The truck was searched. Beneath the camouflage composed of medicines boxes, weapons and ammunition were found. The truck was held for a while, but following the intervention of government officials a safe passage into Syria was granted.

        The government immediately discharged the prosecutor and gendarmerie who stopped the convoy and had them arrested. It was declared that the trucks contained humanitarian aid. This incident, which fuelled allegations that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government was intervening in the Syrian civil war, was rapidly covered up.

      • 92 Killed in Iraq as PM Comes Under Rocket Fire in Ramadi

        Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited a relatively safe zone in the recently recovered city of Ramadi, where he promised to move the fighting against the Islamic State to the northern city of Mosul. However, there are reports that he was evacuated due to rocket fire. Meanwhile, Anbar’s governor, Suhaib al-Rawi, said over a thousand militants were killed during the battle for Ramadi. The true tallies of the fighting may never be publicly known.

      • Economic reform: tackling the root causes of extremism in Tunisia

        As we have seen over recent months, the phenomenon of fighters from different countries joining terrorist groups abroad highlights the need for of a global response to terrorism. Terrorism does not respect geographical borders and cannot be addressed within a single country. Tunisia does not operate within a vacuum, and we cannot counter terrorism, meet the expectations of our youth, and continue our democratic transition without the support of the international community.

      • These Ain’t Masterminds: Would Be Terrorist Crowdsourced Targets On Twitter Using ‘Silent Bomber’ Handle

        I have to say, it can certainly be quite frustrating to watch dispassionately how terrorism is discussed in the United States. After the fervor in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when terrorism was used either as a reason or excuse to enact all kinds of liberty-diffusing policies and to launch an insane surveillance state that we still haven’t recovered from, I had thought we were quietly entering an era of eye-rolling at the way some in government throw around the word “terrorism.” But, because the home of the brave is so easily whipped into a frenzy of fear, an admittedly horrible terrorist attack half a world away and a shooting spree in California that would have been shrugged off as “Hey, that’s just America” except that the perpetrators had scary sounding last names, has once again meant that our political debates and twenty-four hour news programs are focused on the threat of Islamic extremist terrorism and not all of the other zillions of ways that you might die in the next twenty-four hours.

        What all of this fear-mongering has done, which completely escapes my understanding, is create the impression that our enemy is generally devious and technologically intelligent on Bond-villain-esque levels. This is how you create a climate where a legitimate tool such as encryption is under attack as a threat. That’s what makes it so useful to point out when would-be terrorists prove themselves to be bumbling idiots practically begging to be caught.

      • Bumbling would-be UK bomber asked Twitter followers for target suggestions

        Once again, encryption was not used to cover tracks in any way.

      • The GOP Candidates Know Nothing about Syria

        Like many political animals, I was glued to the latest Republican presidential debate.

        For the most part, there were no surprises: Donald Trump railed against Muslims, Chris Christie lamented that the NSA can’t intercept Americans’ phone calls and emails as easily as it used to, Ben Carson remained confused about foreign policy, and Carly Fiorina yelled loudly that nobody was paying any attention to her.

        That’s great entertainment. But one ongoing theme bothered me – a lot.

        It seemed to me that none of the Republicans running for president had even the vaguest understanding of what’s happening in Syria.

        I learned during my nearly 15 years of working on the Middle East at the CIA – and after earning my college degree in Middle Eastern Studies – that nothing in that region is easily accomplished. Almost no issues are black and white. Alliances shift constantly, and sometimes politics makes for strange bedfellows.

        [...]

        And those “moderate” rebels? Maybe a few are freedom-loving secularists. But many more are hardcore Islamists like the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. They aren’t any more interested in democracy than Assad or the Islamic State itself.

        There is, however, a solution. And it doesn’t involve killing more people, stumbling into other countries’ civil wars, or “carpet bombing” the Middle East, as Ted Cruz proposed. It’s called diplomacy.

    • Transparency Reporting

      • Spy agencies resist push for expanded scrutiny of top employees

        U.S. intelligence agencies recently fought off a move by Congress to require the CIA and other spy services to disclose more details about high-ranking employees who have been promoted or fired, despite pledges to be more open and accountable.

        The disputed measure was designed to increase scrutiny of cases­ in which senior officers ascend to high-level positions despite problems ranging from abusive treatment of subordinates to involvement in botched operations overseas.

      • US Spy Agencies Crush Congressional Demand for More Employee Scrutiny

        Despite pledges of increased transparency, the US intelligence community successfully fought a Congressional measure that would require agencies to give more details about personnel who have been promoted or fired.

      • TPP’s Forgotten Danger: Stronger Trade Secrets Protection, With Criminal Penalties For Infringement

        Since the release of the TPP text back in November, commentators have naturally tended to concentrate on the bigger, more obvious problems — things like the corporate sovereignty chapter, the extension of Big Pharma’s monopolies to scientific data, and copyright provisions — that Techdirt has been exploring for years. But there’s one area that has received relatively little attention, perhaps because for most people it’s an obscure topic that seems rather unimportant. It concerns the issue of trade secrets, which Techdirt wrote about in the context of TPP in October 2014. There, we concentrated on the risk that it would chill investigative reporting and corporate whistleblowing, but a new column in The Globe and Mail by Dan Breznitz, professor of Innovation Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, looks at the economic impact of TPP’s trade secrets measures.

      • For their eyes only… Secrecy row as Whitehall refuses to release Cabinet files in full for first time in 50 years

        The Cabinet Office was accused of suppressing ‘politically sensitive information’ last night after it failed to fully release official files for the first time in 50 years.

        It usually releases hundreds of documents about government decision-making through the National Archives, but this year there are just 14.

        Files on subjects ranging from the SAS shootings in Gibraltar to the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 should have been available to the public but are not.

        MPs pointed out last night that two senior ministers connected to the National Archives were government advisers during the period covered by the missing files.

      • Police Union Thinks Cops Should Receive Less Scrutiny Than Retail Workers

        Police unions are working tirelessly towards destroying any remaining shreds of respectability. Presumably, they once served a purpose roughly aligned with the public good. Now, they serve the singular purpose of ensuring our nation’s law enforcement agencies will always be forced to keep the abusive, incompetent officers on their payroll.

    • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

      • Fracked Gas Won’t Achieve Paris Climate Goals, But Empowering Communities Could

        The United States is undergoing a massive energy transition that isn’t receiving enough attention, and it could render the Paris climate agreement meaningless. We’re swapping one climate-damaging fuel, coal, for another that is actually worse: fracked gas.

        It’s a stark contradiction for U.S. climate policy. The Obama administration used its executive power to push the agreement and its aspirational goal of keeping warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. The agreement is a good thing. But for the U.S., a big part of reaching its intended nationally determined contribution (INDC) commitment is implementing the Clean Power Plan, the EPA’s framework for states to reduce their carbon emissions. It’s designed to facilitate a wholesale transition from coal to natural gas, much of which is a product of fracking.

      • ‘Incredible’ Winter Flooding Along Mississippi River Could Be Historic
      • Deadly Missouri Flooding Forces Town Evacuations as Water Continues to Rise

        At least 20 people have been killed by severe flooding in Missouri, where several towns along the Mississippi River have been forced to evacuate due to rising floodwaters that are predicted to break records in the next few days. Such catastrophic, widespread flooding hasn’t been seen in the region in over two decades.

      • Sunderland Fan Zone closed by bad weather
      • The 15 Most Ridiculous Things Conservative Media Said About Climate Change In 2015

        From Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, to the establishment of the first-ever federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants, to a landmark international climate agreement, 2015 has been full of major landmarks in national and global efforts to address global warming. Yet you wouldn’t know it if you inhabited the parallel universe of the conservative media, where media figures went to ridiculous and outrageous lengths to dismiss or deny climate science, attack the pope, scientists, and anyone else concerned with climate change, and defend polluting fossil fuel companies. Here are the 15 most ridiculous things conservative media said about climate change in 2015.

      • No Denying It, Climate Change Is Happening Now

        The leaves came off the last trees — a crabapple, a willow and a hardy Norway maple — during the first week of December this year, surely the latest I can remember seeing leaves on trees since we moved to the Philadelphia area 18 years ago. But it’s not just that.

        A rhododendron bush beside the house has huge blooms ready to burst open, the white petal tips pushing out of their scaly looking egg-sized buds. And our garden is still boasting a surprisingly fast-growing crop of chard, sweet kale and perhaps most surprisingly, tall fava bean plants that, while they didn’t produce any beans this year, saute up to make a beautiful doumiao — one of my favorite Chinese vegetable dishes.

      • Waiting to exhale: The politics of fire in Indonesia

        Why are there more land fires in Indonesia before an election? Why are oil palm plantations burned also? Why does everyone involved see the fires differently?

        And what do elephants have to do with any of it?

        The devastating land and forest fires in Indonesia begin long before someone lights a match: They start with a complex entanglement of politics, economics, power and practice.

      • Commentary: Emissions From Indonesia’s Fires Reach New Highs, but Solutions Are Within Reach

        Indonesia’s forest and land fires have reached a new level of global significance. New analysis published this week by Guido van der Werf, lead scientist with the Global Fire Emissions Database, indicates that since September greenhouse gas emissions from the fires exceeded the average daily emissions from all US economic activity. Extrapolating from van der Werf’s estimates, these emissions are likely to add about 3 percent to total global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities for the year. The emissions from fires so far in 2015 are more than three times higher than expected by Indonesia’s national planning agency.

        The fires in Indonesia are set to clear land for agriculture or as a weapon in conflict over land. Many of the fires are burning on carbon-rich peatlands and as a result spew extremely large amounts of toxic smog into the air and climate-altering gas into the atmosphere.

      • Floods, climate, and neglect: a reflection

        We have been lucky with the flooding where we live, at least so far. Kirkburton is in the east Pennines a few miles out of Huddersfield and the village was on the Environment Agency’s “risk of flooding” warning for twenty-four hours on the weekend of 26-27 December. Fortunately, while the rain may have been very heavy it didn’t persist here as long as it did up on the moors, but some of the Calder Valley towns like Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd and Sowerby Bridge were hit appallingly badly.

    • Finance

      • Affluenza: An Outrage in All Its Forms

        Ethan was sentenced to mere parole instead of prison. Ethan Couch, whose family is worth a reported $15 million, became the embodiment of our unfair treatment of the rich. He recently re-entered headlines after a jaunt through Mexico in violation of parole left him in federal custody. He may, in the end, face jail time.

        The public outrage at Ethan’s legal treatment has been understandably intense. Why should someone get off easy simply because they’re rich?

        However, much less public outrage has come from another insidious from of affluenza—the legalized tax evasion by the ultra wealthy. According to a blistering new report from The New York Times, “The very richest are able to quietly shape tax policy that will allow them to shield millions, if not billions, of their income.”

      • For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions

        The hedge fund magnates Daniel S. Loeb, Louis Moore Bacon and Steven A. Cohen have much in common. They have managed billions of dollars in capital, earning vast fortunes. They have invested large sums in art — and millions more in political candidates.

        Moreover, each has exploited an esoteric tax loophole that saved them millions in taxes. The trick? Route the money to Bermuda and back.

      • Apple to pay Italy 318 million euros, sign tax deal – source

        Apple Inc will pay Italy’s tax office 318 million euros ($348 million) to settle a dispute over allegations it failed to pay taxes for six years, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday.

        The maker of iPhones and iPads will also sign an accord next year on how to manage its tax liabilities from 2015 onward, the source said.

      • German Ministry of Finance’s anti-Europe proposal

        Recently, I wrote a blog – Who is responsible for the Eurozone crisis? The simple answer: It is not Germany! – where I contended that Germany was not to blame for the Eurozone crisis. I also wrote that while Germany was not responsible, single-handedly, for the creation of the dysfunctional monetary union, its politicians were surely complicit in making the crisis deeper and longer than it otherwise could have been given the circumstances.

      • Clinton Senior Adviser Authored Paper Arguing for Paid Leave Proposal She Now Opposes

        But for Hillary Clinton, this tiny increase in payroll taxes is not only a reason to delay, but a reason to oppose the legislation altogether – something O’Leary has apparently discarded her own previous advocacy for.But for Hillary Clinton, this tiny increase in payroll taxes is not only a reason to delay, but a reason to oppose the legislation altogether – something O’Leary has apparently discarded her own previous advocacy for.

      • The Sharing Economy
      • A Crisis Worse than ISIS? Bail-Ins Begin

        At the end of November, an Italian pensioner hanged himself after his entire €100,000 savings were confiscated in a bank “rescue” scheme. He left a suicide note blaming the bank, where he had been a customer for 50 years and had invested in bank-issued bonds. But he might better have blamed the EU and the G20’s Financial Stability Board, which have imposed an “Orderly Resolution” regime that keeps insolvent banks afloat by confiscating the savings of investors and depositors. Some 130,000 shareholders and junior bond holders suffered losses in the “rescue.”

      • What Went Right in 2015

        Sure, income inequality has grown—but so what? The rich don’t get richer at the expense of the poor. Poor people’s income grew 48 percent over the past 35 years. Bernie Sanders says that “the middle class is disappearing!” But that’s mainly because many middle-class people moved into the upper class. Middle class incomes grew 40 percent over the past 30 years.

    • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

      • 5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015

        2015 was an important year in education policy, with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the beginning of the 2016 election campaigns, and local fights for teachers and public schools making national headlines. In an important year for students and teachers across the education spectrum, however, some media outlets used their platforms to push falsehoods. Here are five of the worst media failures on public education this year.

      • George Pataki Leaves Presidential Race

        Earle I. Mack, a prominent real estate developer and Republican donor who was supporting Mr. Pataki, said the former governor had faced a difficult national environment for his “middle of the road” brand of politics. Mr. Mack, who spoke with Mr. Pataki ahead of his announcement, said Republicans faced a dire future if they did not tack toward the center, as Mr. Pataki had urged.

      • Trump Spokeswoman Loves Her Bullet Necklace, but Might Wear a ‘Fetus’ Necklace Next Time
      • The Airwaves May Soon Be Awash With Footage of Donald Trump Mugging in the Debates

        My colleague Russ Choma, who was apparently denied entry to a Donald Trump rally in chilly New Hampshire, nonetheless reports that Trump says he will soon begin spending millions of dollars on television ads in early primary states. Maybe so—or maybe it’s just Trump jabbering again.

      • Does Donald Trump Have Any Friends?

        This is an odd quirk in Trump’s personality. He seems to have an ironclad rule against ever attacking someone first. Even Vladimir Putin. Putin says nice things about Trump, so Trump has to say nice things back. Opposing candidates who don’t attack him are “great guys.” But if you attack first, then he has to fire off a nuclear retaliation. There’s an odd kind of chivalry at work here, and I suppose it also provides people with a motivation to leave him alone.

      • Here Is Every Crazy, Insane, Terrible, Genius, Infuriating Thing Donald Trump Did This Year

        It’s hard to overstate Donald Trump’s impact on the 2016 race for the White House. The business tycoon symbolizes the shift from traditional presidential campaigns to the new uncampaign. Trump has had no need to pander for money, and he has been impervious to criticism—no matter how justified. He seems to only be strengthened by political gaffes that would doom other candidates. This year, he has dominated the news cycle repeatedly and ridden high in the polls. Chronicling all his wacky remarks, blunders, outrageous proposals, and, of course, crazy tweets of this past year would be nearly impossible. But we tried.

      • Donald Trump Is About to Open His War Chest

        But the biggest news of the night came when Trump said he would vastly increase his spending on television commercials. To date, Trump appears to have spent only $217,000 on advertising—compared with $41 million spent by Bush and his allied super-PAC. But Trump told the crowd that’s about to change.

      • EXCLUSIVE: The Story Sheldon Adelson Didn’t Want You To Read

        Two weeks ago, conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his family purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest paper. On Tuesday, its editor-in-chief of five years, Mike Hengel, resigned.

        If you are a subscriber to the Review-Journal, you would have read a grand total of 79 words on Wednesday about Hengel’s departure. According to the story, which did not have a byline, the decision was “mutual” and “he did not believe he was forced out.”

      • Michael Moore on Why America ‘Needs a Little Time in the Timeout Room,’ and Whether Hillary Will Start a War

        Where do you see signs of hope? Is the Bernie Sanders campaign a sign of hope, even if he doesn’t win?

        Absolutely. A socialist was on the stage for a Democratic debate! There was a poll last month where they asked Democrats how they felt about socialism and capitalism, and 46 percent said they had a positive view of socialism, while 37 percent said they had a positive view of capitalism. Things are changing, and young people are making this change happen. My politics and Bernie’s line up almost exactly the same.

      • Bernie Sanders’ Ambitious Plan to Win the Backing of Donald Trump Supporters

        Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said Sunday that he believes he can boost his own standing in the race by swaying supporters of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump to back his campaign.

        Sanders told CBS’s Face the Nation that many of Trump’s supporters have legitimate fears stemming from income inequality that Sanders is best positioned to address.

        “What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears, which are legitimate, and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims,” Sanders said.

      • One person shows up to O’Malley event in Iowa, remains uncommitted

        The uncommitted voter told the candidate that he had the strongest résumé of the three Democrats seeking the nomination, according to Beckman’s report. “I give you a lot of credit for coming out here,” Kenneth told O’Malley. “I’m glad you took the time.”

      • Ukraine’s media: a plea for pluralism

        Under these conditions, so-called ‘explanatory journalism’ has come to play an increasingly important role. This is journalism that tells its audience how a particular incident, phenomenon or statement impacts them personally, and how it relates to their value systems and principles.

        In a pluralistic society, the commitment to a particular belief system is important for building audiences around specific media resources. Conservatives and liberals, supporters of free enterprise and socialists, supporters and opponents of migration, tend to group around the publication which best reflects their personal views.

    • Censorship

      • A deadly landslide exposes the depths of China’s corruption and censorship

        DISASTERS, BOTH natural and man-made, tear a hole in society. When that tear comes in a place such as China, systemic failures often are exposed as well as lives lost and dreams crushed. The landslide that came roaring down on the Chinese city of Shenzhen on Dec. 20 underscores yet again the dangers of unbridled growth, lax safety inspections, corruption, unaccountable government and lack of rule of law.

      • Official in China city hit by deadly landslide kills himself

        A government official in southern China killed himself a week after a landslide from a huge pile of construction waste in his city left scores missing and presumed dead, police said Monday.

      • 2015 was the year ‘censorship’ lost all meaning

        This year, in lieu of the traditional “Best Of” lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our editors into a draft together and have a conversation. This is the year that censorship was either a big deal or lost all meaning. We got an error code for governments blocking web pages, a presidential candidate suggested we “close up” the internet, we spent a lot of time wondering whether college campuses were limiting free speech, and we got into a gigantic debate over whether Reddit’s stricter policies constituted censorship. And of course we heard about whether all the things Gamergate and similar internet bottom-feeders hated last year — Twitter block lists, comment moderation, saying a game was sexist — were still turning the internet into a censorious wasteland. We brought together Adi Robertson and Russell Brandom to discuss whether anyone knows what censorship means now.

      • Fighting abuse to protect freedom of expression

        Today, as part of our continued efforts to combat abuse, we’re updating the Twitter Rules to clarify what we consider to be abusive behaviour and hateful conduct. The updated language emphasizes that Twitter will not tolerate behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user’s voice. As always, we embrace and encourage diverse opinions and beliefs –but we will continue to take action on accounts that cross the line into abuse.

      • Filmmaker wins lawsuit against censorship in Chinese court

        Director Fan Popo says he won a lawsuit targeting censorship in China, but the victory is only partial because he must continue his fight to screen a film.

      • Gay filmmaker claims partial victory over China censors

        ‘I also saw online comments saying that they don’t support gay rights but they are happy to see somebody sue SAPPRFT’

      • Gay Filmmaker Fan Popo Declares Legal Victory, but Banned Film Still Can’t Be Viewed

        At issue is Fan’s 2012 documentary titled Mama Rainbow, which follows mothers of gay children throughout China. Fan’s 30-minute-long documentary was previously available on many Chinese video streaming platforms, namely Youku, Tudou, and 56.com, receiving a huge amount of hits, comments, and reviews from people from all walks of life, both positive and negative, until it was removed in late 2014.

      • New media law gives Polish government fuller control

        Poland’s parliament on Wednesday adopted a new media law that gives the conservative government more latitude to control state-run television and radio.

        The law on “national media” is the latest in a series of legislative efforts by the newly elected Law and Justice party (PiS) government to take control of a wide array of state institutions, something that’s creating a growing, but so far ineffective, domestic and international pushback.

      • Latin American Journalism and Advocacy Groups Recognized by Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards

        Journalists, media organizations and freedom of expression advocates from El Salvador, Cuba, Argentina, Mexico and Ecuador were included on the long list of candidates for the Index on Censorship’s 2016 Freedom of Expression Awards announced on December 16.

      • Twitter Closes Out 2015 By Tackling Harassment In Its Terms Of Service

    • Privacy

      • War on drugs meets terrorism

        Last month I had the pleasure of attending the biennial Drug Policy Alliance shindig in Washington on behalf of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.leap.cc). We also held our annual LEAP board meeting ahead of the DPA, and it was great to have the chance to catch up again with my fellow directors.

      • Reforms Abound for Cross-Border Data Requests

        Currently, all countries must meet the U.S. legal standard of probable cause before obtaining communications from U.S.-based companies. The proposal seems to lower this standard by mandating requests be “relevant and material” to the crime under investigation. While it’s our understanding that the proposed language is meant to approximate the U.S. probable cause standard without using the words “probable cause,” the elasticity of “relevance” (as seen in U.S. debates over the scope of Section 215) is a red flag.

      • Report: Obama spied on Netanyahu after NSA reforms

        President Barack Obama’s administration continued to spy after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, even after he announced two years ago he would curtail the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program on friendly heads of state, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

      • China expert Adam Segal: U.S. companies should worry about Beijing’s new anti-terrorism law

        American tech companies are worried that China’s new anti-terrorism law will force them to open up their encryption for the country’s notoriously repressive government.

        As the United States debates whether police should have guaranteed access to encrypted products like your iPhone or Android device, Beijing’s new technology policies—part of a broader law that passed on Sunday to combat terrorism in the country—are sure to spark renewed hand-wringing in Silicon Valley over whether and how U.S. firms should even operate in China.

      • EFF Joins ACLU in Amicus Brief Supporting Warrant Requirement for Cell-Site Simulators

        EFF, ACLU, and ACLU of Maryland filed an amicus brief today in the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in the first case in the country (that we know of) where a judge has thrown out evidence obtained as a result of using a cell-site simulator without a warrant.

        In the case, Baltimore Police used a Hailstorm—a cell-site simulator from the same company that makes Stingrays—to locate Kerron Andrews, the defendant. The police not only failed to get a warrant to use the device, they also failed to disclose it to the judge in their application for a pen register order. And it appears they even failed to tell the State’s attorney prosecuting Mr. Andrews’ case.

        Luckily Mr. Andrews’ intrepid defense attorney suspected the police might have used a Stingray and sent a discovery request asking specifically if they had. The prosecution stalled for months on answering that request, but, on the eve of trial, one of the investigators responsible for Baltimore PD’s stingrays finally testified in court not only that he’d used the device to find Mr. Andrews, but that he’d specifically not disclosed it in any report filed about Andrews’ arrest. The judge concluded the police had intentionally withheld information from Mr. Andrews—a clear violation of his constitutional rights.

      • Spying on Congress and Israel: NSA Cheerleaders Discover Value of Privacy Only When Their Own Is Violated

        The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the NSA under President Obama targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top aides for surveillance. In the process, the agency ended up eavesdropping on “the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups” about how to sabotage the Iran Deal. All sorts of people who spent many years cheering for and defending the NSA and its programs of mass surveillance are suddenly indignant now that they know the eavesdropping included them and their American and Israeli friends rather than just ordinary people.

      • One Of Congress’s Biggest Defenders Of NSA Surveillance Suddenly Aghast That NSA May Have Spied On Him

        Remember how Dianne Feinstein — a huge supporter of the intelligence community — absolutely freaked out about surveillance when it happened to her staffers (when the CIA snooped on their network)? It would almost be funny how the defenders of surveillance react when they’re being surveilled… if it weren’t so tragic.

      • House Intelligence chair seeks answers on NSA spying report

        The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday his committee will look into a report the U.S. spied on the Israeli prime minister and in the process swept up communications with Congress.

      • Poisoned apple: the curse of social media in the Gulf

        The increased social media use in the Gulf might signify some progress for its citizens, but the extent to which it empowers them is greatly outweighed by state surveillance through the same vehicle.

      • NSA Never Stopped Intercepting Foreign Leaders’ Communications, Swept Up Congress Members In Its Collection

        Technically, spying on Congress is off-limits. In reality, the NSA can grab anything involving conversations with foreign citizens, provided it feels the content of the communications contains “significant foreign intelligence.” Even so, the NSA is required to inform oversight committees when it has released unminimized, Congress-related communications to the executive branch. In this case, that information was never turned over to the oversight committees, and the executive branch deferred entirely to the NSA’s judgment on the withholding of this information.

      • Paul “appalled” by NSA surveillance, Pataki on campaign exit
      • Rubio: Reports of NSA spying on Congress ‘worse than some people might think’
      • Rand Paul Appalled By NSA’s Possible Data Collection on Congress
      • Rand Paul: ‘Appalled’ By NSA Spying on Members of Congress
      • Rand Paul ‘Appalled’ The NSA Spied On Members Of Congress
      • NSA eavesdropping on Israeli PM Netanyahu is nothing new

        The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that President Obama did not include Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in his list of world leaders that the US does not spy on, and that he ordered the continued monitoring of the discussions between Netanyahu and his senior aides.

      • US ‘spied on Binyamin Netanyahu during Iran nuclear deal talks’
      • The New WSJ Report on the NSA Has Some WTF For Everyone

        This latest Wall Street Journal bombshell about the National Security Agency’s having spied on the back-channel shenanigans between putative ally Benjamin Netanyahu and the members of Congress regarding the state of the Iran nuclear talks has a little WTF somethin’-somethin’ for everyone. If you happen to be a staunch American Likudnik, you can ask WTF the NSA is doing spying on our plucky ally. If, like me, you don’t trust the NSA’s assurances as far as you can throw the billions of dollars we spend snooping around the world, you can ask WTF the NSA is doing spying on members of Congress. (Answer to outraged conservatives in this camp: exactly what all you people want it to do to Muslims.) If you have made a career out of being a public nut, you can go indiscriminately crazy. And if, like me, you’ve always wondered WTF members of Congress were doing helping a putative ally derail a major foreign-policy initiative of the United States, thanks to the NSA, you’ve now got a pretty good idea.

      • No comment: Sen. Harry Reid declines to blame NSA spying allegations on Koch brothers
      • Is the Freedom Act More Effective Than the Patriot Act?

        As members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), we have witnessed firsthand how oversight, coupled with transparency, can drive efforts to improve flawed surveillance programs.

        Section 215 of the Patriot Act, under which the National Security Agency (NSA) collected and searched the telephone metadata of millions of innocent Americans, serves as a prime example.

      • The Cold War-Era Rules Designed to Protect U.S. Lawmakers’ Communications

        When Americans, including U.S. lawmakers and government officials, were referenced in foreign communications swept up by the NSA, their identities were required to be obscured through a process called “minimization.” The question of how the NSA handles lawmakers was raised in a Wall Street Journal piece about U.S. spying on Israel’s top leadership.

    • Civil Rights

      • What Everyone Should Know About The Police Killing Of Tamir Rice (2002-2014)

        Today, prosecutor Tim McGinty announced that he would not seek criminal charges against the officers involved in the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback. The decision came after a grand jury, which has been hearing evidence for three months, declined to issue an indictment. Rice’s family and others sharply criticized McGinty’s conduct throughout the grand jury process, arguing that he was manipulating the proceedings to the benefit of the officers.

      • Top Wins for Civil Liberties in 2015

        We made great progress on key fronts in 2015. We fought to protect our privacy, demanded justice for torture victims, and stood up against pregnancy discrimination. We also won the right for same-sex couples to legally wed, fought for families seeking asylum—and much more. The strides we’ve made in the past year are all due to your support. Thanks to you, the ACLU’s impact throughout the country—in courts, legislatures, and the media—resonates across issues and generates new momentum for change.

      • The Illusion of Freedom

        The seizure of political and economic power by corporations is unassailable. Who funds and manages our elections? Who writes our legislation and laws? Who determines our defense policies and vast military expenditures? Who is in charge of the Department of the Interior? The Department of Homeland Security? Our intelligence agencies? The Department of Agriculture? The Food and Drug Administration? The Department of Labor? The Federal Reserve? The mass media? Our systems of entertainment? Our prisons and schools? Who determines our trade and environmental policies? Who imposes austerity on the public while enabling the looting of the U.S. Treasury and the tax boycott by Wall Street? Who criminalizes dissent?

      • Argentina lurches rightwards but progressive policy gains will endure

        The ascendency of the pro-business conservative Mauricio Macri to Argentina’s Presidency on 10th December 2015 spells the end of 12 years of centre-Left Peronist governments.

      • The Ku Klux Klan: America’s Long History of Tolerating White Terrorist Organizations

        One centuries’ old example of US government double standards when it comes to terrorism, is the infamous Klu Klux Klan. The Klan has terrorized and killed far more Americans than Islamic terrorists ever have; and despite being America’s oldest terrorist organization, the US government does not officially consider the KKK a terrorist organization, classifying it merely as a “hate group”.

      • Cleveland officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice will not face criminal charges

        Grand jury declines to indict white officer Timothy Loehmann and partner over shooting of 12-year-old, citing lack of evidence of criminal misconduct

      • Cleveland’s Terrible Stain

        Tamir Rice of Cleveland would be alive today had he been a white 12-year-old playing with a toy gun in just about any middle-class neighborhood in the country on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 2014.

        But Tamir, who was shot to death by a white police officer that day, had the misfortune of being black in a poor area of Cleveland, where the police have historically behaved as an occupying force that shoots first and asks questions later. To grow up black and male in such a place is to live a highly circumscribed life, hemmed in by forces that deny your humanity and conspire to kill you.

        Those forces hovered over the proceedings on Monday when a grand jury declined to indict Officer Timothy Loehmann in the killing and Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, explained why he had asked the grand jurors to not bring charges. Mr. McGinty described the events leading up to Tamir’s death as tragic series of errors and “miscommunications” that began when a 911 caller said a male who was “probably a juvenile” was waving a “probably fake” gun at people in a park.

      • Pressure Mounts After Chicago Police Admit To Killing Innocent 55-Year-Old Woman By Accident

        After police officers shot and killed two Chicago residents — one admittedly accidentally — early Saturday morning, their friends and families are asking why officers “shoot first and ask questions later.”

      • CIA Torture Program Originated in MKUltra Department

        As Soft Panorama notes, Seligman’s theory of Learned Helplessness was initially used to design a training program to help captured military personnel resist the effects of torture (3). LH went on to be used in the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay to assist the interrogation of convicts.

        According to an article by Shadow Proof about the CIA’s torture program originating in the same department as MKUltra, Seligman is believed to have met with Mitchell on three occasions, which, as Shadow Proof claims “strongly suggests” that the CIA torture program was initiated by the OTS and constituted “at least in part” of an experimental program (4).

      • The whipping girl: Screaming in agony, a woman collapses as she and a man are caned under Sharia law in Indonesia merely for being ‘seen in close proximity’ to each other without being married
      • Federal Judge Says Cops Can Hold Your Family at Gunpoint if You Drink Tea or Grow Tomatoes–Here’s Why

        A Kansas couple lost their lawsuit after a federal judge essentially ruled that drinking tea and gardening were probable cause for a drug search warrant — but they forced a change in state law that could prevent similar raids.

      • Why Sarah Silverman Is Scary: It’s the Cultural Power of Celebrities That Drives Conservatives Insane

        Conservatives love decrying liberals for “political correctness” and “oversensitivity,” a particularly poignant form of hypocrisy since liberals could never reach the levels of whininess and hyper-sensitivity to perceived insults that the right wing coughs up daily. Doubly so when it comes to anything that a celebrity says.

        Freaking out on celebrities allows conservatives to double down on their sense of victimhood — not only do they get to feign offense, they also get to wallow in how supposedly unfair it is that the giant liberal media conspiracy is oppressing them by allowing celebrities to say progressive things in public.

      • The Unspoken Problem With the Tamir Rice Killing

        This is absolutely right, of course. The war by police on Black Americans is a continuation of the war on former black slaves in the post bellum South, when unfortunate young black men, Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit,” were strung up with utter impunity by whites in hoods and sheets. None of us who saw it can ever forget the face of Emmett Till in his coffin.

      • The Politics of the “Comfort Women” Deal

        The comfort women are in their 90s now but it is not their increasing frailty that led to the “agreement’’ between Seoul and Tokyo. The timing concerned an event held in Beijing on Sept 3. China’s “Victory over Fascism’’ military parade which marked the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII had one telling moment that made strategists in Washington sit up and take notice. The attendance of South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, the only major US ally to turn up, prodded Washington to lean on Japan and Seoul to get an agreement. The pivot, a mild word for what is a major US military redeployment, depends on the pillar of Japan and South Korea cooperating. The plight of the former sex slaves, which Japan euphemistically calls the ianfu, or comfort women, is the main thorn in the side of relations between Seoul and Tokyo.

      • Bill Cosby To Face Criminal Charges For Sexual Assault

        Prosecutors announced Wednesday morning that Bill Cosby will face criminal charges for a sexual assault he allegedly committed in 2004 against a former Temple University employee. He is expected to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.

      • 2015 in reproductive rights: Arkansas sets off year of abortion restrictions
      • U.S. Passed 47 New Anti-Abortion Laws in 2015

        In 2015, U.S. states introduced upwards of 350 anti-abortion bills and passed 47 of them, according to a report from the Center for Reproductive Rights.* This is down somewhat from 2013, but an increase over the number of measures passed in 2014.

      • Why Black Lives Matter Is the Movement of the Year

        Although more than two years have passed since three black women—Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi—founded Black Lives Matter (BLM) in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin, the U.S. justice system’s continued failures clearly illustrate why the movement is still as important and necessary as ever.

        Earlier this month, a Baltimore judge declared a mistrial in the case of William Porter, the first of six officers to be indicted in the death of Freddie Gray.

        Then, just five days later, on Dec. 21, a Texas grand jury decided not to indict anyone in the mysterious police-custody death of Sandra Bland.

      • 2015: The Year Police Killings in America Were Counted

        The Black Lives Matter movement that swept the country in 2015 has—among other accomplishments—forced global media outlets to afford victims of police killings the most basic acknowledgement: a public record of their names and deaths.

        Such a grim tally was maintained this year by both the Guardian and the Washington Post, following the consistent failure of the U.S. government to keep adequate records.

        According to the Guardian, 1,126 people were killed by police so far in 2015, averaging more than three a day, with 27 percent of those slain facing mental health issues.

      • LeBron Shouldn’t Boycott Basketball. But He Should Learn Something About Tamir Rice.

        His comments came after a group of activists online started a #NoJusticeNoLeBron campaign, asking the NBA superstar and Cleveland native to sit out of Cleveland Cavaliers games until the Department of Justice “imprisons the murderers” of Rice.

      • America’s Incarcerated Population, Largest in World, Grew Even More Last Year

        The federal government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics has released new numbers detailing how America’s incarcerated population — already the world’s largest — grew even bigger in 2014.

        The bureau’s researchers report that the number of individuals incarcerated grew by 1,900 people over the course of last year — “reversing a 5-year decline since 2008.”

      • Racial prejudice is driving opposition to paying college athletes. Here’s the evidence.

        With the money made from college sports increasing every year, the way colleges treat their athletes has become controversial.

        That’s because college sports is a tremendously lucrative business for everyone but the athletes. The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) will receive $7.3 billion from ESPN for the right to broadcast the seven games of the College Football Playoffs (CFP) between 2014 and 2026, and $11 billion from CBS and Turner Sports to broadcast “March Madness” over the next 14 years.

      • Chicago’s Solution to Killings by Police? More Tasers! Which Also Result in Death.

        So Chicago’s police are a disaster and has been since forever, honestly. Even before the latest outrages—the brutal police killing of Laquan McDonald (and the city’s attempt to suppress video footage of it) and the accidental killing of a 55-year-old grandmother by police responding to a call over the holidays—the city had been paying out millions of dollars in settlements over claims of misconduct by police.

        Some are calling for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s resignation. He is declining and has been promising reform. Today we are going to be seeing what his idea of reform looks like.

      • After the French 9/11, Le Patriot Act

        The visible signs of change here at the merciful close of France’s annus horribilis are subtle to the American eye. Travelers arriving by air from other European countries no longer encounter an automatic “hurry along” at the passport booth. More tricolors than usual are draped across apartment buildings. The rifle-gripping soldiers walking slowly through the shopping promenades look decidedly alert and grim.

      • VIDEO: White Police Officer Who Fatally Shot 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Will Not Face Criminal Charges

        More than a year after the shooting in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty declared, “The death of Tamir Rice was an absolute tragedy. It was horrible, unfortunate and regrettable. But it was not, by the law that binds us, a crime.”

      • Virginia Man Shot 23 Times by W.Va. Cops, Family Challenging Judge’s Summary Dismissal of Lawsuit

        In March 2013, Wayne Jones was stopped by a police officer in Martinsburg, West Virginia for walking in the street. He reportedly told the cop he had a knife and then tried to flee. Five police officers caught up with Jones, shooting him at least 22 times after yelling at him to “drop the fucking knife.” That October, a grand jury predictably declined to indict anyone in relation to the shooting.

      • The Paranoid Style of American Policing

        When I was around 10 years old, my father confronted a young man who was said to be “crazy.” The young man was always too quick to want to fight. A foul in a game of 21 was an insult to his honor. A cross word was cause for a duel, and you never knew what that cross word might be. One day, the young man got into it with one of my older brother’s friends. The young man pulled a metal stake out of the ground (there was some work being done nearby) and began swinging it wildly in a threatening manner. My father, my mother, or my older brother—I don’t recall which—told the other boy to go inside of our house. My dad then came outside. I don’t really remember what my father said to the young man. Perhaps he said something like “Go home,” or maybe something like, “Son, it’s over.” I don’t really recall. But what I do recall is that my dad did not shoot and kill the young man.

      • Update: TSA Will Give 120 Days Before “Implementing REAL ID Enforcement at Airports”

        Come January 10, at least nine states and several territories will be in defiance of a decade-old law mandating various security features on the driver’s licenses they issue. That raises the specter of people traveling on domestic flights being turned away from airport gates for having non-compliant IDs.

      • Rahm Emanuel Announcing Plans for ‘Major Overhaul’ of Chicago PD This Afternoon

        Rahm Emanuel’s resignation could be an acknowledgement of the depths of the problem, but on its own it’s not a solution nor even a step toward one. There are blueprints for reform, and they don’t require a blue ribbon panel stocked with politicians and police. This summer activists from Black Lives Matter launched Campaign Zero—a list of reforms to police practices and policies that work toward eliminating excessive police violence and increasing accountability that have been adopted in some jurisdictions and could be adopted in others. And earlier this month, they launched Check the Police, a program to collect and analyze police contracts around the country in an effort to direct attention to how they perpetuate police violence.

      • Penn. Court Says State Can’t Block Folks from Some Jobs Forever Entirely Due to Criminal Record

        A modest but important win for occupational liberty in Pennsylvania. Today its Commonwealth Court judges (that’s a step below the state’s Supreme Court) ruled unanimously that a state law that forbids people with any criminal past from getting jobs in nursing homes and long-term care facilities is unconstitutional.

    • Internet/Net Neutrality

      • Save The Internet (part 3). Tell TRAI that we need net neutrality, once again (Dec 2015)
      • Zuckerberg’s Free Web Woes Extend Beyond India

        Mark Zuckerberg didn’t see this coming.

        When Facebook Inc.’s co-founder proposed bringing free Web services to India, his stated aim was to help connect millions of impoverished people to unlimited opportunity. Instead, critics have accused him of making a poorly disguised land grab in India’s burgeoning Internet sector. The growing backlash could threaten the very premise of Internet.org, his ambitious, two-year-old effort to connect the planet.

        Indian authorities are circumspect because the Facebook initiative provides access to only a limited set of websites — undermining the equal-access precepts of net neutrality. The telecommunications regulator is calling for initial comments by Jan 7, extending the deadline from today, on whether wireless carriers can charge differently for data usage across websites, applications and platforms. Losing this fight could imperil Facebook’s Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and select services such as Messenger and Microsoft’s Bing without a data plan.

      • ‘Free Basics’ will take away more than our right to the internet

        As the TRAI decides the fate of Free Basics, Mark Zuckerberg is in India with ₹100 crore, in pocket change, for advertising. Facebook’s Free Basics is a repackaged internet.org, or in other words, a system where Facebook decides what parts of the internet are important to users.

      • Broadband Rates Are Too Damn High

        Low-income communities are being stranded as everyone else catches a ride on the information superhighway.

      • Accused of Gatekeeping India’s Internet, Facebook CEO Lashes Out

        Nikhil Pahwa, an organizer with Save the Internet-India, raised the question earlier this week in the Times of India: “Why has Facebook chosen the current model for Free Basics, which gives users a selection of around a hundred sites (including a personal blog and a real estate company homepage), while rejecting the option of giving the poor free access to the open, plural and diverse web?”

    • DRM

      • If We’re Not Careful, Self-Driving Cars Will Be The Cornerstone Of The DRM’d, Surveillance Dystopias Of Tomorrow

        We’ve talked a lot about the ethical and programming problems currently facing those designing self driving cars. Some are less complicated, such as how to program cars to bend the rules slightly and be more more human like. Others get more complex, including whether or not cars should be programmed to kill the occupant — if it means saving a school bus full of children (aka the trolley problem). And once automated cars are commonplace, can law enforcement have access to the car’s code to automatically pull a driver over? There’s an ocean of questions we’re not really ready to answer.

    • Intellectual Monopolies

      • Pharma Exec for Maker of $150,000 Cancer Drug Tells Investors Its Pricing Is “Very Responsible”

        A top official at pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson dismissed questions on a recent earnings call about the drug price reform debate in Washington, saying that the company is “responsible” in its pricing.

        As part of the question and answer period during the company’s third quarter earnings call in October, one questioner asked Johnson & Johnson Chief Financial Officer Dominic Caruso where he sees the drug pricing reform debate in Washington going and if the company was planning a pledge, similar to one made by many firms in the 1990s, to not raise drug prices beyond the cost of inflation.

        “Despite significant media attention on drug pricing, there really isn’t a consensus on policy solutions that would lower prices without negatively lowering innovation,” he said.

      • Besides Which, Don’t You *Want* The Blades To Wear Out?

        No, I am not calling Gillette a troll, Paul. But they’re acting awfully trollish by going after the competition like this. As if we all can’t see what’s going on here, right?

        C’mon, Gillette. You’re better than that.

      • Qualcomm Signs New Patent Licensing Deals In China

        Qualcomm announced today that it has inked new patent licensing deals in China with smartphone manufacturers Beijing Tianyu Communication Equipment and Haier Group. The San Diego-based chipmaker has made a series of similar agreements over the past two months as it recovers from an antitrust investigation by the Chinese government.

        Since the beginning of November, Qualcomm has also announced deals with QiKu, a joint venture between Qihoo 360 and Coolpad, Xiaomi, Huawei, TCL Communication Technology Holdings, and ZTE.

      • Copyrights

        • China box office to beat out U.S. by 2017

          China’s box office is expected to surpass the U.S. in 2017 to become the largest market in the world, while more Chinese movie enterprises will turn to global investments to learn and practice international industry methods, a report released by H. Brothers Research and the Institute for Cultural Industries at Beijing University on Monday predicted.

        • CBS Sues Over Star Trek Fan Film Because It Sounds Like It’s Going To Be Pretty Good

          When it comes to passionate fan-bases, it’s kind of hard to match Star Trek fans. This is a group of fans that fuel much of the cosplaying and fan-creating that goes on to this day. CBS, owners of the Star Trek copyrights, has had something of a complicated relationship with these fans, flip-flopping between allowing this community to foster a wider appreciation of the franchise while occasionally clamping down on them. In the past, it has seemed clear that CBS’ chief criteria for deciding when to go legal on fan-made works boils down to two factors: is there money involved and just how professional is the fan-creation going to be?

12.29.15

Links 29/12/2015: SparkyLinux 4.2, Ian Murdock’s Rants

Posted in News Roundup at 7:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 10 projects to fork in 2016

    2015 was a year of many new open source projects hitting the scene with a splash. From enterprise solutions to home brewed open source concoctions, many of the projects released as open source software this year have made a huge impact on the world of computing in a very short amount of time. While flash stardom isn’t always the best predictor of longevity, we think these 10 projects just might have come onto the scene with enough momentum to continue their success in the new year.

  • 32C3: A Free and Open Source Verilog-to-Bitstream Flow for iCE40 FPGAs

    The toolchain, or “flow” as the FPGA kids like to call it, consists of three parts: Project IceStorm, a low-level tool that can build the bitstreams that flip individual bits inside the FPGA, Arachne-pnr, a place-and-route tool that turns a symbolic netlist into the physical stuff that IceStorm needs, and Yosys which synthesizes Verilog code into the netlists needed by Arachne. [Clifford] developed both IceStorm and Yosys, so he knows what he’s talking about.

  • Codes of Conduct

    What is the role of programmers in software development? The question is never far away in free and open source software (FOSS). Last month, however, the issues surrounding the question were emphasized by Robert C. Martin’s attempt to write a programmer’s oath that states best practices and the resulting discussion.

  • Enterprise startups: Open source may be your only hope

    No, not because second-tier developers wrote it. You probably have great developers. Instead, the real problem is that your developers are stuck building new code on top of old code. Over and over and over again.

    Ironically, this is a sign of success. But, it also creates problems.

    As professor Zeynep Tufekci describes it, “We are building skyscraper favelas in code—in earthquake zones.” While she’s referring to the security vulnerabilities inherent in such code development, the problem is actually broader.

  • Open Source Software’s Role in Breach Prevention and Detection

    Security professionals are increasingly acknowledging an uncomfortable truth: No network is secure from a sufficiently skilled and determined attacker. So while every effort should be made to prevent intruders getting on to the corporate network, it’s important that you can quickly spot an intrusion and minimize the damage that can result.

    Anton Chuvakin, a security expert at Gartner, points out that if hackers are made to work hard to find what they are after, intrusion prevention and detection systems have a far greater chance of spotting them before they can do too much damage.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Mesosphere Releases Datacenter Operating System Version 1.4

      Version 1.4 of the Mesosphere Datacenter Operating System (DCOS) is now generally available, featuring user interface updates, support for Marathon 0.13.0 and Chronos, and the Mesos 0.25.0 kernel.

    • A 2016 to do list for the OpenStack board

      One look around the airport waiting lounge or family living room will tell you everything you need to know about where the cloud is headed. Christmas carols drift on by thanks to Pandora, gifts come without having to stand in line at the mall, and those holiday snaps of the family will be stored on someone else’s server.

      In the next 12 months, software running on clouds will rule our world more than ever—but unfortunately not many of those clouds are powered by OpenStack.

      While we rightly raise a glass to celebrate the substantial gains OpenStack has achieved in 2015, it’s time to recognize the vast potential to gain new ground in 2016. So, let’s put those New Year’s resolutions to good use by rallying application developers to the cause. To win them over, we must make OpenStack a more inviting and immediately valuable solution to serve their needs.

    • How Docker and containers improved software development at eZ

      Docker sparked the trend in software containers less than two years ago. And since its modest presentation at PyCon in 2013, the startup has vaulted to a value of nearly one billion dollars, drawn 2,500 attendees to DockerCon, and its namesake technology has become a marketable skill to have, entering Hacker News’ top 20 most frequently requested job skills.

    • Apache Turns to Big Data Projects — Big Time

      Kylin. Meanwhile, the foundation has also just announced that Apache Kylin, an open source big data project born at eBay, has graduated to Top-Level status. Kylin is an open source Distributed Analytics Engine designed to provide an SQL interface and multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP) on Apache Hadoop, supporting extremely large datasets. It is widely used at eBay and at a few other organizations.

      “Apache Kylin’s incubation journey has demonstrated the value of Open Source governance at ASF and the power of building an open-source community and ecosystem around the project,” said Luke Han, Vice President of Apache Kylin. “Our community is engaging the world’s biggest local developer community in alignment with the Apache Way.”

    • 10 cool tools from the Docker community

      Looking back at 2015, there have been many projects created by the Docker community that have advanced the developer experience. Although choosing among all the great contributions is hard, here are 10 “cool tools” that you should be using if you are looking for ways to expand your knowledge and use of Docker.

    • Linux Containers – Benefits and Market Trends

      In April, Docker announced a $95 million series D round of funding. This is one of many events over the past year that has demonstrated how the industry has shifted towards the use of Linux containers (LXC) to deploy online services. Even giant cloud services companies, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Redhat, IBM and VMware, are pushing towards containerization. With the market leaning in the direction of containers, let’s take a deeper look at what they are, their history and current developments.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Getting LibreOffice to Do the Write Thing

      We install Linux on every one of our Reglue computers. Included in that installation is the entire suite of LibreOffice. Unfortunately, a number of Reglue Kids began complaining about homework assignments being rejected. Most times they were scolded and told to re-submit the assignment in the proper format…you know, that well known proprietary one. Sometimes students were given a lower grade for not following the submission instructions.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • DragonFlyBSD Rebases Its Intel Kernel Graphics Driver Against Linux 4.0

      DragonFlyBSD’s Francois Tigeot has done some more great work in allowing their open-source Intel graphics driver to be more featureful and comparable to the Linux i915 kernel DRM driver for which it is based.

      While DragonFly’s i915 DRM driver started out as woefully outdated compared to the upstream Linux kernel code, the work done by Tigeot and others is quite close to re-basing against the latest mainline code. With patches published recently, the DragonFlyBSD driver would now be comparable to what’s in the Linux 4.0 kernel.

    • FuguIta-5.8

  • Public Services/Government

    • 18F site facilitates open-source bargain hunting

      To facilitate this, the team launched a new website — Micropurchase.18F.gov — as place to post new projects for registered users to peruse and bid on.

      “Our goal is to enable parts of our own agency and the rest of the federal government to use this platform to ask the developer community to create open source code for their project,” 18F said in an email to companies that expressed interest in the original micro-purchase pilot. “We anticipate posting auctions for micro-purchase tasks throughout 2016.”

    • Estonia updates X-Road server

      The X-road update is financed in part by the European Regional Development Fund. Estonia’s secure document exchange system is developed as open source.

  • Licensing

    • Shining a spotlight on free software: the FSF’s Licensing & Compliance Lab’s interview series

      In August of 2012, the Licensing & Compliance Lab kicked off a series of interviews with developers of free software. With 2015 in the rear-view mirror, we take a moment to look back on the series and highlight these great projects once again.

      In August of 2012, the Licensing & Compliance Lab kicked off a series of interviews with developers of free software. These interviews were a chance to highlight cool free software projects, especially those using copyleft licenses, and learn more about why they are dedicated to free software. What started as a single interview has grown into a regular feature of the Licensing & Compliance Lab blog. With 2015 in the rear-view mirror, we take a moment to look back on the series and highlight these great projects once again.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Google, HP, Oracle Join RISC-V

      RISC-V is on the march as an open source alternative to ARM and Mips. Fifteen sponsors, including a handful of high tech giants, are queuing up to be the first members of its new trade group which will host next week its third workshop for the processor core.

      RISC V is the latest evolution of the original RISC core developed more than 25 years ago by Berkeley’s David Patterson and Stanford’s John Hennessey. In August 2014, Patterson and colleagues launched an open source effort around the core as an enabler for a new class of processors and SoCs with small teams and volumes that can’t afford licensed cores or get the attention of their vendors.

    • An Open Source Reference Architecture For Real-Time Stock Prediction

      While this post does not cover the details of stock analysis, it does propose a way to solve the hard problem of real-time data analysis at scale, using open source tools in a highly scalable and extensible reference architecture. The architecture below is focused on financial trading, but it also applies to real-time use cases across virtually every industry. More information on the architecture covered in this article is also available online via The Linux Foundation, Slideshare, YouTube, and Pivotal Open Source Hub, where the components in this architecture can be downloaded.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Origins of the Irish down to mass migration, ancient DNA confirms

      Scientists from Dublin and Belfast have looked deep into Ireland’s early history to discover a still-familiar pattern of migration: of stone age settlers with origins in the Fertile Crescent, and bronze age economic migrants who began a journey somewhere in eastern Europe.

      The evidence has lain for more than 5,000 years in the bones of a woman farmer unearthed from a tomb in Ballynahatty, near Belfast, and in the remains of three men who lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and were buried on Rathlin Island in County Antrim.

      Scientists at Trinity College Dublin used a technique called whole-genome analysis to “read” not the unique characteristics of each individual, but a wider a history of ancestral migration and settlement in the DNA from all four bodies.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • IDF admits spraying herbicides inside the Gaza Strip

      “The aerial spraying of herbicides and germination inhibitors was conducted in the area along the border fence last week in order to enable optimal and continuous security operations,” an IDF Spokesperson told +972 on Sunday.

      Palestinian Agricultural Ministry officials told Ma’an news that farmers said Israeli planes had been spraying their agricultural lands adjacent to the border fence for several days straight. Spinach, pea, parsley and bean crops were reportedly destroyed around the al-Qarrara area in eastern Khan Younis and the Wadi al-Salqa area in central Gaza, according to the report.

      The military spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about the destruction of agricultural crops.

    • USDA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Censorship of Pesticide Research

      Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, an expert on the risk assessment of pesticides and genetically modified crops, worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research for more than a decade. But when his findings on the ill effects of systemic pesticides and RNAi (a biological process in which RNA molecules inhibit gene expression) on pollinators began to gain traction and visibility, the harassment and punishments did as well.

    • USDA whistleblower launches new bee research effort

      Scientist Jonathan Lundgren believes the USDA retaliated against him because of his research on neonicotinoid insecticides and potential effects on bees and butterflies.

      Neonicotinoids are among the most widely used pesticides. Some research shows they harm bees and butterflies, but the chemical industry disputes much of the research.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Tuesday
    • Towards (reasonably) trustworthy x86 laptops

      Can we build trustworthy client systems on x86 hardware? What are the main challenges? What can we do about them, realistically? Is there anything we can?

    • Recently Bought a Windows Computer? Microsoft Probably Has Your Encryption Key [Ed: yes, flawed by design]

      One of the excellent features of new Windows devices is that disk encryption is built-in and turned on by default, protecting your data in case your device is lost or stolen. But what is less well-known is that, if you are like most users and login to Windows 10 using your Microsoft account, your computer automatically uploaded a copy of your recovery key – which can be used to unlock your encrypted disk – to Microsoft’s servers, probably without your knowledge and without an option to opt-out.

      During the “crypto wars” of the nineties, the National Security Agency developed an encryption backdoor technology – endorsed and promoted by the Clinton administration – called the Clipper chip, which they hoped telecom companies would use to sell backdoored crypto phones. Essentially, every phone with a Clipper chip would come with an encryption key, but the government would also get a copy of that key – this is known as key escrow – with the promise to only use it in response to a valid warrant. But due to public outcry and the availability of encryption tools like PGP, which the government didn’t control, the Clipper chip program ceased to be relevant by 1996. (Today, most phone calls still aren’t encrypted. You can use the free, open source, backdoorless Signal app to make encrypted calls.)

    • Chaos Computer Club: Europe’s biggest hackers’ congress underway in Hamburg

      Some 12,000 hackers are challenging the power of Google, Facebook and Youtube to filter information and shape users’ view of the world. One of them demonstrated how to hack into VW’s cheating software.

    • Password-less database ‘open-sources’ 191m US voter records on the web

      Austin-based Chris Vickery – who earlier this month found records on 3.3 million Hello Kitty users splashed online – says the wide-open system contains the full names, dates of birth, home addresses, and phone numbers of voters, as well as their likely political affiliation and which elections they have voted in since 2000.

    • The next wave of cybercrime will come through your smart TV

      Smart TVs are opening a new window of attack for cybercriminals, as their security defenses often lag far behind those of smartphones and desktop computers.

      Smart TVs are opening a new window of attack for cybercriminals, as the security defenses of the devices often lag far behind those of smartphones and desktop computers.

      Running mobile operating systems such as Android, smart TVs present a soft target due to how to manufacturers are emphasizing convenience for users over security, a trade-off that could have severe consequences.

    • Nemesis Bootkit Malware the new stealthy Payment Card.

      After I read many articles I got this infos about Nemesis Bootkit Malware:
      – suspected to originate from Russia;
      – infect PCs by loading before Windows starts
      – has ability to modify the legitimate volume boot record;
      – seam to be like another Windows rootkit named Alureon;
      – intercepts several system interrupts to pass boot process;
      – can steal payment data from anyone’s not just targeting financial institutions and retailers;
      – this malware hides between partitions and is also almost impossible to remove;

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Syria anti-Islamic State documentary maker ‘assassinated’ in Turkey

      A Syrian opposition film-maker was gunned down in broad daylight in the Turkish city of Gazientep on Sunday, apparently by Isil supporters.

      Friends said that Naji Jerf, 38, was shot twice in the head after being approached by an unknown car outside of a local restaurant.

    • Why Britishers left India in 1947? explains NSA Ajit Doval

      ncumbent National Security Advisor, had once said that the spark which Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose created within the Indian Army forced Britishers to quit India in 1947.

      In a video posted on Youtube, Doval has given a detailed explanation of the main reason as to why the mighty British Empire which, won the Second World War in 1945, decided to quit India in a hurry.

      On August 22, 1945, Tokyo Radio announced the ‘death’ of Netaji in an air crash in Formosa (now Taiwan) on August 18, 1945, en route to Japan.

      But the crash theory has been rejected by scores of Netaji’s followers and admirers and several claims of the revolutionary leader resurfacing continue to intrigue and divide Indians over the years.

    • Endless War, Undeclared and Undebated

      The Obama administration is waging war all over the world – without congressional authorization

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Saudi Arabia unveils record deficit as it succumbs to oil price rout

      A brutal sell-off in oil prices has forced Saudi Arabia’s government to post the largest budget deficit in its history, as the state’s revenues have crumbled.

      The country’s deficit rose to 367bn riyals (£66bn), after government spending rose 13pc above officials’ plans in the wake of declining oil prices and a war with Yemen. A Saudi official said that the deficit was “considered an acceptable figure” under the circumstances.

      Stock markets reacted positively to the government’s spending plans, as investors had feared far worse news was to come, anticipating an overshoot well in excess of 13pc. The total deficit stood at 16pc of the economy’s size, while analysts had expected a gap of 20pc. The Tadawul All Share Index made a daily gain of 0.7pc.

    • Here Are 58 Million Reasons to Care About California’s Drought

      The past four years of punishing drought have badly hurt California’s forests. Rain was scarce, the days were too hot, and this year’s wildfire season was the worst anyone has seen in years, burning up nearly 10 million acres across the West. For the first time, a team of researchers has measured the severity of the blow the drought dealt the trees, uncovering potential future destruction in the process. The resulting paper, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a rich visual testament to just how much California needs its trees and how close the state is to losing 58 million of them.

    • Fukushima Today

      Throughout the world, the name Fukushima has become synonymous with nuclear disaster and running for the hills. Yet, Fukushima may be one of the least understood disasters in modern times, as nobody knows how to fix neither the problem nor the true dimension of the damage. Thus, Fukushima is in uncharted territory, a total nuclear meltdown that dances to its own rhythm. Similar to an overly concerned parent, TEPCO merely monitors but makes big mistakes along the way.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Michael Moore just exploded the right’s biggest lie

      Michael Moore’s new film, “Where to Invade Next,” is sure to generate Oscar buzz. It is already on the short list of 15 documentaries from which the final five nominations will be announced on Jan. 14. But rather than wonder whether Moore will score a second Oscar (his first was for “Bowling for Columbine” in 2002), the question to ask is whether this film can spark a political revolution just in time for the 2016 election.

      “Where to Invade Next” has a wide release set for Feb. 12, which is also Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and the week of the New Hampshire primary. Coincidence? Definitely not.

    • Trump: Muslims Knew About San Bernardino Shooters But Didn’t Report Them

  • Censorship

    • How China Tries To Censor The Whole World
    • Time to take a re-look at Censor Board’s role: Arun Jaitley

      Having witnessed the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) getting embroiled in one controversy after the other through the past few months, the government is now considering taking a re-look at the body so as to make it “controversy free”.

    • Amid Censorship Flap, Steinmetz To Discontinue 81-Year-Old School Newspaper

      “School newspapers provide students with a powerful voice and a positive learning experience, and we are committed to providing journalism opportunities to our students,” CPS spokesman Michael Passman said. “Steinmetz High School will continue to offer journalism courses for the foreseeable future, and the Steinmetz Star will remain in operation as an online publication that will continue to serve as a valuable learning opportunity for students.”

    • Kremlin’s Censorship Of Shenderovich Interview Backfiring – OpEd

      But the Shenderovich case may provide the Putin regime with an object lesson because it is obvious that the Kremlin took this action because of Shenderovich’s criticism of Putin himself (openrussia.org/post/view/11565/) and because it is obvious that taking down the interview in one place won’t block the spread of the text.

    • China publisher pulls ‘racy’ Tagore poems translation

      A Chinese publisher has pulled a translation of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore’s poems after it sparked controversy for racy content.

      The translation of works from one of India’s most famous poets was by Chinese novelist Feng Tang.

      His publisher said on Monday that it was removing the work from sale following the “huge debate” in China’s literary and translation circles.

      Mr Feng has defended his translation, saying a previous version lacked style.

      Tagore, known as the Bard of Bengal and seen as a literary god in India, was the first non-European to win the Nobel prize for literature.

    • Five reasons why we must NOT censor ISIS propaganda

      First of all, censoring ISIS in this way is simply not feasible. We can very well demand that mainstream newspapers and TV news stations limit their coverage of these issues, but that would leave the entire field of discussion to the unregulated areas of the internet, the “blogosphere” and social media. ISIS would still dominate in these areas, except now we will have removed from the discourse those outlets that would be most capable to hold the ISIS narrative to scrutiny.

    • Orwellian model won’t keep the internet free

      Last week brought a positively Orwellian moment to the debate about Internet freedom.

      Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke at a state-organised internet conference in Wuzhen, in Zhejiang province, where he was once party secretary. Xi declared, “As in the real world, freedom and order are both necessary in cyberspace.” He said, “Freedom is what order is meant for, and order is the guarantee of freedom.”

      These slogans are more than just propaganda from the leader of a country with the world’s largest internet censorship operation. Behind them lurks a dangerous ambition.

    • China Invokes UN Decree for Its Right to Censor the Internet

      China’s President Xi Jinping invoked “cyber sovereignty” to describe his country’s right to create its national cyber policy while giving the opening speech at the second World Internet Conference, held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang, on December 16.

      “We should respect the right of individual countries to independently choose their own path of cyber development, model of cyber regulation, and participate in international cyberspace governance on an equal footing,” said President Xi. “No country should pursue cyber hegemony, interfere in other countries’ internal affairs or engage in, connive at or support cyber activities that undermine other countries’ national security.”

    • Not allowing free speech on-campus is dangerous – universities need to defend their right to be offensive

      2015 has been an eventful year for freedom of speech. In January, #JeSuisCharlie was a global trend championing freedom of expression, lack of censorship, and the right to offend. Yet, as the year draws to a close, it seems the Facebook generation is becoming more and more suppressed.

      Once upon a time, universities were bastions of free speech, where world leaders would debate with fresh-faced 18-year-olds who were determined to save the planet. Once, just about anything could be discussed in the name of free speech. But, this year, there have been countless examples of speakers being banned, societies being stopped, and student media being censored, all in the name of “protecting students.”

    • Syria, France Deadliest Countries for Journalists

      The Committee to Protect Journalists says 2015 was one of the deadliest years on record for members of the press worldwide, with 69 journalists killed on-assignment. According to the CPJ, 2015 was the sixth year out of the last ten (and eighth since 1992) in which more than 60 journalists were killed in the line of duty—a figure that includes those targeted for their profession as well as those killed in combat, crossfire or while covering other assignments deemed dangerous.

    • Reading Everything Aaron Swartz Wrote

      It was cowardly, disrespectful, and it isolated Aaron again in death. He was The Boy, a tragic waste, not a murdered comrade or a martyr. Saying he was misguided served as an excuse for not being at his side.

    • Does The US Really Want A North Korean Internet?

      With all of the news about the holidays, one story you might have missed yesterday is that China passed with little fanfare its new antiterrorism law that bears substantial resemblance to proposals currently under review in the US and UK that would require backdoors or other weakened measures to allow encrypted communications to be secretly monitored by governments.

      The Chinese law requires that “telecommunications and Internet service providers should provide technical interfaces and technical support and assistance in terms of decryption and other techniques to the public and national security agencies in the lawful conduct of terrorism prevention and investigation.” It is remarkably similar to the wording of a UK proposal that would require companies to offer the government “permanent interception capabilities … [including] the ability to remove any encryption” and similar to calls by US intelligence officials for the ability to decrypt civilian communication.

      On the surface such proposals seem highly desirable: the ability to monitor and disrupt terrorist and criminal communications in order to protect life and ensure national security. The problem, as I pointed out last week, is that there is no universal definition of “terrorism” or “national security threats.” In fact, one of the focal points of the Chinese online censorship apparatus is the removal of material relating to protests and mass organization, which the government views as a threat to the stability and well-being of the nation.

      [...]

      North Korea is one of the few countries to take this model of a safe and secure internet to its logical conclusion, creating its own walled-off private version of the internet where only a small number of approved websites are accessible. The government even created its own operating system called Red Star OS, designed for total government surveillance. Yesterday two German researchers offered the latest in-depth look at the functioning of this operating system custom built for the world of a surveillance state.

    • Those Demanding Free Speech Limits to Fight ISIS Pose a Greater Threat to U.S. Than ISIS

      In 2006 – years before ISIS replaced Al Qaeda as the New and Unprecedentedly Evil Villain – Newt Gingrich gave a speech in New Hampshire in which, as he put it afterward, he “called for a serious debate about the First Amendment and how terrorists are abusing our rights–using them as they once used passenger jets–to threaten and kill Americans.”

    • Chinese president Xi Jinping blogged for the first time—and 48,000 people commented

      China’s biggest microblogging site, Weibo, is not unfamiliar to foreign head of states. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, UK prime minister David Cameron, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro—all have opened accounts on the site and have interacted with readers in Chinese. But China’s own leaders are more reluctant to engage with online audiences.

      Chinese president Xi Jinping’s limited number of social media contributions include a selfie with Cameron and Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero during Xi’s state visit to the UK in October, while Chinese premier Li Keqiang indulged Modi in a joint selfie, said to be Li’s first, at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven in May. Neither of these were posted by the Chinese leaders on Weibo. Instead, they surfaced on Twitter—a social media platform blocked by China’s elaborate censorship machine.

      But finally, on Dec. 25, during his visit to the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army Daily—a mouthpiece newspaper of the Communist Party and the army—Xi crafted his first post on Weibo. It’s the first Weibo message from any of China’s senior officials, as far as we can tell. Xi wrote the message personally, according to state media.

    • Thai media decide junta chief no laughing matter

      Every New Year Thailand’s top political journalists traditionally come up with satirical nicknames for the government and senior ministers. But this year they will forego the pleasure, having decided the junta is no laughing matter.

      The occasion is usually a rare moment of light relief for reporters covering the febrile world of Thai politics, in a country which has witnessed a string of military coups, violent street protests and toppled governments – and where defamation is a criminal offence.

    • Was 2015 a Bad Year for Campus Free Speech? Let’s Ask the Experts

      Are easily-offended students and their allies within the university bureaucracy ushering in a new era of censorship on American college campuses? Even President Obama is worried that excessive political correctness is stifling legitimate debate at universities.

    • The militarization of the press in Syria

      Ahmed Abu al-Hamza, “Software” as he was known by his friends, stood behind the camera on November 6 as a gunman explained how rebel forces took Tel Sukayk, a strategic hilltop north of Hama, from government forces. Suddenly the camera’s sound recorder picked up the faint thud of a mortar shell firing in the distance. A few seconds of confusion then turned to horror as the shell exploded right in front of the camera, killing Abu al-Hamza and the rebel fighter and injuring several others.

    • Dr. Timaree: How to be mindful, ethical when it comes to porn

      Censorship, though, is not an effective way of fixing a social problem.

    • Why Latin America Needs PEN

      The Mexican way of death is unique, issuing from a symbiosis of indigenous beliefs and practices with Catholic rituals. To celebrate the return of the souls of the dead every November, Mexicans set up altars laden with the departed’s favorite food and drink and sugar skulls emblazoned with that person’s name, while images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints flank a photo of the deceased. Marigolds festoon the altars and the graves where relatives gather to share a meal and news of the past year with the visiting spirits.

      [...]

      Journalists are not only pursued by organized crime in all its forms, but also by local, state and federal governments, police forces, the military, and even by people whose job it is to impart justice. Not only must the federal government guarantee the safety of journalists, it must also resolve pending cases and punish the criminals, even if they work in government. Otherwise, as time passes most of the cases become enveloped in a tangle of conflicting lines of investigation where the real one is lost or the victim is morphed into the guilty party. A journalist friend recently told me about how when dealing with a notorious political crime, officials often present a new line of inquiry every once in a while which leads the investigation further away from reality, until it reaches a point where nobody knows anything for sure, a kind of legal shell game with the truth.

    • Pirate Bay’s Suspended Domain Names Spell Trouble for File-Sharing Sites

      Earlier in December, file-sharing site the Pirate Bay went down due to a problem regarding the registration of the thepiratebay.org domain — a seemingly innocuous hitch. But then, a week later, thepiratebay.com and several other of the site’s domain properties, including piratebrowser.com, piratebrowser.net, and piratebrowser.org — which link to the Pirate Bay’s TOR-based anti-censorship tool — also went down, suspended for similar violations of ICANN registration policy. And though thepiratebay.org was quickly restored after a transfer from EuroDNS to a new registrar, the other domains remain suspended.

    • YouTube dumps Holocaust memory

      “Why do I see beheadings and bestiality on YouTube, but the story of an aged Holocaust survivor must be removed? Is there an agenda going on? If so, what is it?” she asked. “This ministry is being targeted for some unexplainable reason. Is it because we tap in Michele Bachmann regularly? I do not hear of other ministries undergoing this kind of an exam and retribution.”

    • George Washington University apologizes for censorship of Palestinian flag

      Earlier this month, six weeks after receiving a “Warning Letter” for hanging a Palestinian flag out his dormitory window, George Washington University (GWU) student Ramie Abounaja obtained a formal apology from university president Steven Knapp for the attack on his free speech rights. The apology came after an implied threat of legal action against the university.

    • Silencing Students: The 8 Most Loathsome Campus Censors of 2015

      Every year brings new examples of ruthless college administrators trampling the free expression rights of students and faculty, and 2015 was no different. Here are eight of the most notable campus censors I wrote about this year.

    • Students of color frustrated with campus climate

      Multicultural student groups are calling for more inclusion at AU after a rash of anonymous social media posts and posters targeting minorities have appeared on and around campus.

      Yik Yak is a smartphone application that allows smartphone users to make posts anonymously and view posts made by those within close proximity to them. Racist posts on the platform prompted University forums last year and inspired an Undergraduate Senate discussion about race, the Eagle previously reported. In recent months, users have continued to write discriminatory comments in the the app around campus.

    • Chinese filmmaker claims victory in online film censorship lawsuit

      Beijing-based filmmaker Fan Popo, whose gay rights documentary was removed from Chinese video streaming websites, has claimed victory in a lawsuit over government censorship despite the courts ruling that regulators were not to blame.

      In its verdict released last week, Beijing’s No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court found censors had not ordered his documentary “Mama Rainbow” to be taken down from prominent streaming websites Youku, Tudou and 56.com.

    • Artists oppose Erdogan’s censorship

      Turkey welcomes private investors in the field of art and culture, but many artists feel oppressed by their government. Beyond censorship and commercial speculation, an alternative art scene offers some hope.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • DOJ’s Equitable Sharing Program Takes $1.2 Billion Hit, Much To Dismay Of Asset Forfeiture-Abusing Law Enforcement Agencies

      Good news (of sorts) on the asset forfeiture front: the same budget bill that delivered us into the hands of CISA also helped “rob” the nation’s highwaymen of $1.2 billion in equitable sharing funds.

    • Federal judge: Drinking tea, shopping at a gardening store is probable cause for a SWAT raid on your home

      In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun. The family was then held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.

    • Italian president reduces sentences in CIA kidnapping case

      Italy’s president has shaved two years off the sentence of a former CIA base chief convicted in absentia in the 2003 extraordinary rendition abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect.

      With the decree, announced Wednesday night by the presidential palace, President Sergio Mattarella reduced to seven from nine years Robert Seldon Lady’s sentence. Mattarella also wiped out the three-year sentence handed down by a Milan court to another US defendant convicted in absentia, Betnie Medero.

    • Former CIA chief’s rendition sentence reduced in Italy
    • Italian president offers pardons in CIA rendition convictions

      Italy has partially pardoned the former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady who was convicted for his role in the kidnapping of an Egyptian Muslim cleric under the U.S. “extraordinary rendition” programme.

      Another U.S. citizen found guilty in the case, Betnie Medero, was also granted a pardon by Italian President Sergio Mattarella, his office said in a statement.

    • From the Shadows of the Cold War: the Rise of the CIA

      The longest running director of the CIA (1952-1961), Dulles helped coordinate extremely bloody coups throughout the world. Not surprisingly, he comes off as a nasty piece of work. He and his brother John Foster Dulles both worked with the prestigious Wall Street firm Sullivan and Cromwell, which made a fortune representing cartels that were part of the Nazi war machine (John Foster Dulles went on to become Eisenhower’s Secretary of State). The Dulles brothers were quite cozy with Nazi higher ups in the ’30s and remained staunch apologists for Hitler well into the the ’40s.

    • Sudanese security enjoys “good relations” with the CIA: NISS chief

      The director of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) Mohamed Atta said his agency maintains “good ties” with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

    • Trump praises Putin after being told he kills political opponents

      “I’m saying when you say a man has killed reporters, I’d like you to prove it”, Trump argued. But, in all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. In response, Trump said he appreciated “when people call you brilliant” and that “it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russian Federation”.

      McCain’s comments come after Putin complimented Trump last week, and Trump responded it was an “honor” to receive the compliment. “Not a bad thing”, Trump said. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports Russian journalists experience intimidation and censorship.

      “I think I’ll win the Hispanic vote”, Trump told reporters after touring the bridge.

    • Russia can only use the United States as an excuse for so long

      Sergei Guriev, Russia’s most prominent free market economist, left Moscow in 2013 for Paris, in fear of his liberty. He had publicly supported dissidents, criticized the administration’s policies, was an active and committed liberal, in politics as in economics. He produced, earlier this year, a 21st century equivalent of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince”: a blueprint of how the modern autocrat rules, and remains.

      Unlike the Florentine, though, Guriev isn’t recommending a course of action, he’s describing it; and he doesn’t believe it will be good for the state, but ruinous. If, in this and other writings and interviews, he’s right about the nature of Russia’s governance, his country is in for a bad crash. And when Russia in its present condition crashes, the world will shake.

    • Why Russia Can Only Go Backward

      The Public Opinion Foundation conducted a survey this month asking Russians two questions: “What was the main event of the year in Russia?” and “What was the main global event of the year?”

      Noteworthy is that fully 40 percent of the respondents had trouble answering either question. And the most brutal political murder in modern Russia — the assassination of my father — did not even figure in the responses. State-controlled television hardly mentions it, with the exception of the first few days after the killing, when commentators spoke of him in contemptuous tones.

    • How Fox News’ Primetime Lineup Demonized Black Lives Matter In 2015

      In 2015, Fox News’ three primetime hosts engaged in a smear campaign against the Black Lives Matter movement, fearmongering about the alleged threat they pose to law and order and hyping racist canards aimed at discrediting the movement’s calls for justice.

      The Black Lives Matter movement — which emerged after the 2013 shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin — became a regular news fixture in 2015 following the high-profile deaths of several unarmed black civilians at the hands of police officers. The movement brought national attention to the issues of police brutality and racial disparities in criminal justice. One group associated with the movement introduced a set of concrete policy solutions, and the movement as a whole became a politically relevant force amid the 2016 presidential race.

    • WaPo Tallies Police Killings–but Holds Back Some of the Numbers That Count

      “The kind of incidents that have ignited protests…represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings”: That sure sounds like an attempt to play down the number, doesn’t it? Particularly since the write-up never presents the raw number for fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans in 2015—which is 37—or the more comprehensive number of all unarmed civilians shot and killed: 90. Those numbers can be found on a graphic that accompanied the story in the paper’s print edition, and in an interactive feature online–but are nowhere to be found in the Post‘s own article on its project. (“Just 9 percent of shootings involved an unarmed victim,” a sidebar accompanying the graphic began—that word “just” indicating that we should read that as “not so many.”)

      And the Post‘s “meanwhile,” juxtaposed against “incidents that have ignited protests,” implies that the categories that follow would not inspire protest: those killed “wielding weapons,” who were “suicidal or mentally troubled,” or who “ran when officers told them to halt.”

    • Egypt’s censorship authority raid Merit Publishing house in Cairo

      Egypt’s censorship authority raided and searched on Tuesday afternoon Merit Publishing house in downtown Cairo without providing any reason, owner Mohamed Hashem wrote on his Facebook page.

      Staff member Mohamed Zein, 23, was arrested during the raid then released a few hours later.

    • Egypt Raids 2 Major Independent Cultural Institutions In 2 Days

      Egyptian authorities have raided two pillars of the independent arts and culture scene in Cairo over the past 48 hours.

    • TSA Says It Will Stop Accepting Driver’s Licenses From Nine States

      The last time we took notice of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), it was to inform you that the unpopular, expensive, and ineffectual outfit had decided it could force travelers on domestic airline flights to go through full-body scanners. Previously, TSA had allowed folks to submit instead to a full-body pat-down.

    • Who Needs A No-Fly List When You Can Just Ground 91 Million Citizens?

      For the residents of Alaska, California, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, Minnesota and Washington (along with American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands), this means their ID cards are perfectly legal within those states, but only as long as they stay in those states. (And, apparently, never need to enter a government building — like, say, to acquire a new, compliant ID card).

    • Human Research Loopholes: Alive and Well

      In one of the darkest chapters in medical ethics, the United States government ran an experiment from the 1930s to the 1970s in which it withheld treatment and medical information from rural African-American men suffering from syphilis. The public uproar generated by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study eventually resulted in regulations restricting government-supported research testing on humans. These regulations are called the “Common Rule,” and they are right now up for their first full update.

      The Common Rule, also known as the “Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects,” is supposed to affirmatively protect us from the abuses of the future. However, the proposed regulation is lousy with loopholes, including ones that could exempt tracking online behavior and experiments related to intelligence activities.

    • Hospital Refuses Pregnancy-Related Care Again Because of Religious Directives

      Today we filed a lawsuit challenging Dignity Health’s use of religious directives to deny basic reproductive health care to its patients. Filed on behalf of patient Rebecca Chamorro and Physicians for Reproductive Health, the suit argues that withholding pregnancy-related care for reasons other than medical considerations is illegal in California.

    • Sadistic Cops Make K-9 Maul Unarmed Suicidal Teen – Caught Planning and Celebrating It in Texts

      Months after the Herald-Tribune exposed the North Port Police Department for routinely commanding their K-9 dogs to attack people without provocation, the department has done nothing to address the problem. In fact, it defends its officers even in the most egregious cases, including the mutilation of unarmed juveniles.

    • Extended Interview: Remembering Haskell Wexler, 93, Legendary Cinematographer & Activist

      In Part 2 of our look at the life and work of Haskell Wexler, we air clips from “Rebel Citizen,” a new documentary about his life, and speak to the film’s director, Pamela Yates. Wexler is perhaps best known for his 1969 film, “Medium Cool,” which captures the upheaval surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He won two Academy Awards for cinematography in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Bound for Glory,” about folk singer Woody Guthrie. His documentaries tackled political issues including the Southern Freedom Riders of the 1960s, the U.S. government’s destabilization of Nicaragua, U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and torture under the U.S.-backed junta in Brazil.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Stupid Patent Of The Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent On A Slider

      For the first time ever, this month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is being awarded to a design patent. Microsoft recently sued Corel for, among other things, infringing its patent on a slider, D554,140, claiming that Corel Home Office has infringed Microsoft’s design.

    • Trademarks

      • Canada Too Has An Issue With Abitrary Applications Of Morality In Trademark Applications

        In our recent discussion about the delightfully vulgar filing by the Washington Redskins in an effort to point out the arbitrary application of morality by the government to trademark law, the point in the filing was driven home by just how many similarly vulgar and offensive terms the USPTO has been happy to sanctify with a valid trademark. Perhaps some of you out there thought that this was a uniquely American problem, something resulting from our overabundance of political correctness. It’s not. A case in Canada over the trademark application for “Lucky Bastard Vodka” shows this quite well. It also shows the inherent problem in trying to have a government institution apply morality to business in this way.

      • Saskatoon distillery fights feds over ‘scandalous’ trademark

        A Saskatoon company’s attempt to trademark its flagship vodka has turned into a four-year battle with the federal government over the definition of “bastard.”

        In 2011, LB Distillers applied to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) to register “Lucky Bastard vodka” as a trademark. About eight months later, the agency responsible for trademarks, patents and copyright replied.

        “The examiner came back and said it was immoral, scandalous and obscene, and that the general population of Canada would agree that it was an immoral name,” LB Distillers co-owner Cary Bowman said.

    • Copyrights

      • The DMCA Has Delivered Us Into The Hands Of The Proprietary Internet Of Disconnected Things

        The phrase “Internet of Things” suggests connection. The problem is there’s nothing financially motivating about interconnectedness. Manufacturers of connected devices would prefer homogeneity, which leads to actions like Philips’ which recently pushed a firmware update that locked competitors’ bulbs out of its Hue “smart” lighting fixtures. Sure, it rolled back the update and (mostly) allowed owners to use bulbs they had already purchased, but it was also suggested in the same quasi-apology that the company would rather limit the options available to its purchasers in the future, funneling them through its “friends of Hue” program.

      • Book Publisher Has No Idea How Google Works But Pretty Sure It Could End Piracy If It Tried

        Here’s the stupidest thing on piracy you’re going to read today. Or this month. Maybe even this whole holiday season. Rudy Shur, of Square One Publishers, has a problem with piracy, which he thinks is actually a problem with Google.

      • 50 Cent Files Stupid, Hypocritical Lawsuit Over Another Rapper’s ‘Theft’ Of His Song In A Mixtape

        I can see why 50 Cent and his lawyers might feel this lawsuit is a good idea: 50 Cent is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings. On top of that, the rapper owes $7 million to the plaintiff in a sex tape lawsuit — one that also involves rival rap star, Rick Ross. (The woman in the sex tape is the mother of one of Ross’ children. 50 Cent can be heard taunting Ross in the recording.) 50 Cent is also engaged in a $75 million lawsuit against his former legal team, so there’s bills to be paid there as well.

        50 Cent’s lawsuit takes aim at the rap industry’s standard operating procedure: mixtapes. Rick Ross rapped over 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” in his latest mixtape, much as thousands of rappers have rapped over the beats of others on mixtapes since the early days of the genre. It’s an accepted — if quasi-illegal — practice. Everyone raps over everyone else’s beats on mixtapes, almost all of which are given away as promotional tools.

12.28.15

Links 28/12/2015: Corporate Media Associates Linux With N. Korea and Abuses, Linux 4.4 RC7 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 3:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • On the OpenStack Scene, Get Credentials to Get Hired

      As part of its efforts to grow the OpenStack talent pool and global community, the OpenStack Foundation has announced a new professional certification program that is meant to provide a baseline assessment of knowledge and be accessible to OpenStack professionals around the world. Some of the first steps in advancing the program are taking place now, and other companies are also advancing OpenStack certification plans. Here is a sampling of the educational opportunities.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

  • Licensing

    • What topped the GitHub charts in 2015

      It’s been a year of open-source projects. Both enterprises and startups have been releasing their code into the wild as a way to grow their capabilities. It’s not just the code that’s important; it’s the programmers and contributors that can get their hands on it, alter it, fix it, and make it better.

    • Best of Opensource.com: Law
    • Answer to a Frequently Asked Question

      Q: Which open source license is best?

      A: Unlike bilateral copyright licenses, which are negotiated between two parties and embody a truce between them for business purposes, multilateral copyright licenses — of which open source licenses are a kind — are “constitutions of communities”, as Eben Moglen and others have observed. They express the consensus of how a community chooses to collaborate. They also embody its ethical assumptions, even if they are not explicitly enumerated.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Switzerland Wants a Single, Universal Phone Charger by 2017

      Apple’s Lightning cable cartel be damned: Switzerland is moving forward with a plan for a single, universal phone charger across the country, standardizing phone chargers across the board. While the exact standard hasn’t been mentioned yet, it wouldn’t be hard to guess the standard: Micro USB, used across phone platforms, most especially Android, which has a gigantic chunk of the cell phone market worldwide.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Security Researchers Offer Warnings About Hackable Railroads

      The well-being of critical infrastructure and transportation has long been the elephant in the room when it comes to cybersecurity: plenty of researchers have warned about the possibility of attacks on power-plants, the national grid, and, more recently, even the emergence of internet connected cars.

      Now, researchers are warning of the gaping holes in the security of railroad systems. On Sunday at Chaos Communication Congress, a security, arts and politics conference held annually in Hamburg, Germany, members of the SCADA StrangeLove collective presented a long list of problems with railroad systems that attackers could exploit.

    • DLL Hijacking Just Won’t Die

      To make a long and complicated story short, a bad guy who exploits this vulnerability places a malicious DLL into your browser’s Downloads folder, then waits. When you run an installer built by an earlier version of NSIS from that folder, the elevation prompt (assuming it runs at admin) shows the legitimate installer’s signature asking you for permission to run the installer. After you grant permission, the victim installer loads the malicious DLL which runs its malicious code with the installer’s permissions. And then it’s not your computer anymore.

    • CA Council to Improve Internet Certificate Security in 2016

      At the heart of much of the Internet’s security is the use of Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS), which provides encryption for data in motion. Certificate Authorities (CAs) are the trusted entities that issue TLS certificates, and as a group, the CAs are gearing up for big year in 2016, with multiple efforts designed to improve the security of the Internet.

    • Backspace Flaw Enables Linux Zero-Day Attack
    • Monday’s security updates

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Thousands More Homes Face Flooding Threat

      Thousands of homes are being evacuated in York after “unprecedented” levels of rain caused the Foss and Ouse rivers to burst their banks and the city’s flood barrier to be lifted.

    • UK flooding: Government rejected warnings of high flood risk from own advisers

      Minsters were warned by the Government’s own climate change advisers that they needed to take action to protect the increasing number of homes at high risk of flooding – but rejected the advice.

      The decision not to develop a comprehensive strategy to address increased flood risk came in October just a few weeks before the flooding in Cumbria before Christmas and the most recent flooding in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

    • Why Engineers Can’t Stop Los Angeles’ Enormous Methane Leak

      One of the biggest environmental disasters in US history is happening right now, and you’ve probably never heard of it.

      An enormous amount of harmful methane gas is currently erupting from an energy facility in Aliso Canyon, California, at a startling rate of 110,000 pounds per hour. The gas, which carries with it the stench of rotting eggs, has led to the evacuation 1,700 homes so far. Many residents have already filed lawsuits against the company that owns the facility, the Southern California Gas Company.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Bill O’Reilly Had A Terrible 2015

      Numerous Journalists Took Apart O’Reilly’s Falklands War Tales. O’Reilly has repeatedly attempted to bolster his reporting credentials by claiming over the years that he reported “in the Falklands” during the 1982 Falklands War. A Mother Jones exposé, however, found that O’Reilly fabricated his reporting resume and his former colleagues said he was actually 1,200 miles away in Buenos Aires. O’Reilly also claimed to have reported on a 1982 Buenos Aires protest in which “many were killed,” but numerous journalists who reported from the scene and a historian disputed his story. Furthermore, O’Reilly claimed to have helped an injured CBS photographer during the protest, but his colleagues have no recollection of that incident.

  • Censorship

    • True or false, decide through self-censorship, says minister

      He said self-censorship was important to see that the information they received and believed were valid and not detrimental and disruptive to harmony in society and country.

    • Public should practice self-censorship on social media, says minister

      Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak today called on the people to use their power of self-censorship to reject or accept any information posted on the social media.

      He said self-censorship was important to see that the information they received and believed were valid and not detrimental and disruptive to harmony in society and country.

      “The important thing is, we should not be confused between news and views. Views are people’s own and not necessarily accurate and our views could differ from each other’s. But news contain facts, the veracity of which are verified before being disseminated.

    • Anonymous Attacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity website to protest Internet censorship

      The global hacktivist group, Anonymous has now turned its eyes to the varying degrees of censorship being practised in Asia. The Asia Pacific Telecommunity website (apt.int) has not only been hacked by members of the Anonymous hacker collective, and they also have got entry to the site’s admin panel (running Drupal), and also have been able to get their hands on a database dump.

    • Anonymous Hacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity Against Internet Censorship in Asia

      Anonymous hacker collective has attacked the official website of Asia Pacific telecommunity and defaced it in protest against growing plans for internet censorship in Asia.

      The hackers gained access of the website’s admin panel (running Drupal) and from there, leaked all the data stored on the website along with defacing the site with one of their own pages.

    • Court Orders Shutdown of Libgen, Bookfi and Sci-Hub

      A New York District Court has granted Elsevier’s request for a preliminary injunction against several sites that host academic publications without permission. As a result the site’s operators are now ordered to quit offering access to infringing content, while the associated registries must suspend their domain names.

    • Amidst censorship row, two “porn-coms” are releasing in India in January

      India’s 2016 film calendar will begin on a controversial note. Two Bollywood adult comedies starring the same actor are releasing within a week of each other in January. Both Maastizaade and Kya Kool Hain Hum 3 are releasing after facing considerable objections from India’s censor board.

    • The Splinternet: A New Era of Censorship, Surveillance, and Cyberwarfare

      For more than a decade, the internet has become a seemingly borderless land of free flowing information. It began as a not so open U.S. military data system decades ago, but it evolved over time into the public digital domain it has become.

    • On the Aggressive, Hilarious Theorizing in ‘Censorship Now!!’
    • Harvard Law Review Freaks Out, Sends Christmas Eve Threat Over Public Domain Citation Guide

      In the fall of 2014, we wrote about a plan by public documents guru Carl Malamud and law professor Chris Sprigman, to create a public domain book for legal citations (stay with me, this isn’t as boring as it sounds!). For decades, the “standard” for legal citations has been “the Bluebook” put out by Harvard Law Review, and technically owned by four top law schools. Harvard Law Review insists that this standard of how people can cite stuff in legal documents is covered by copyright. This seems nuts for a variety of reasons. A citation standard is just an method for how to cite stuff. That shouldn’t be copyrightable. But the issue has created ridiculous flare-ups over the years, with the fight between the Bluebook and the open source citation tool Zotero representing just one ridiculous example.

  • Privacy

    • Why ownCloud’s CEO isn’t worried about the death of Safe Harbor [Ed: Katherine Noyes should be smarter than that and not quote Microsoft propagandist Enderle]
    • Windows 10: Microsoft hits new low with ‘Upgrade Now’ or ‘Upgrade Tonight’ pop-up [Ed: how to push spyware]

      The latest pop-up message to consumers, outed on Reddit, removes the explicit option to opt out of the upgrade, instead offering two options: ‘Update Now’ or ‘Update Tonight’. Simply closing the box will make it go away (we’re still trying to ascertain for how long) but it seems that this is a deliberate attempt to prey on the less tech savvie.

    • The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord

      “I’m not high-tech, but I’m like, ‘This isn’t that complicated. This is just some guy behind a computer,’” he recalled saying to himself. “In these technical investigations, people think they are too good to do the stupid old-school stuff. But I’m like, ‘Well, that stuff still works.’ ”

      Mr. Alford’s preferred tool was Google. He used the advanced search option to look for material posted within specific date ranges. That brought him, during the last weekend of May 2013, to a chat room posting made just before Silk Road had gone online, in early 2011, by someone with the screen name “altoid.”

    • China passes law requiring tech firms to hand over encryption keys

      Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the controversial law is the Chinese government’s attempt to curtail the activities of militants and political activists. China already faces criticism from around the world not only for the infamous Great Firewall of China, but also the blatant online surveillance and censorship that takes place. This latest move is one that will be view very suspiciously by foreign companies operating within China, or looking to do so.

    • New Chinese law takes aim at encryption

      A new law passed by China’s Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.

      A new law passed by China’s Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.

      ISPs and telecommunication companies must provide technical assistance to the government, including decrypting communications, for terrorism-related investigations, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

    • China Using US Encryption Fight To Defend Its New Encryption Backdoor Mandate

      So, again, to all the politicians and lawmakers supporting backdooring encryption, what’s your response when China uses it to say that’s why they’re doing it as well?

    • Senator Richard Burr: Confused And Wrong On Encryption

      Right, except so far officials haven’t been able to show evidence of any of those cases actually using encryption. Similarly, law enforcement has failed to show that criminals using encryption have really been that much of a problem either. And that’s because it’s not a problem. Even in the (still mostly rare) cases where encryption is being used, criminals still reveal plenty of information that would allow law enforcement to track them down. It’s called doing basic detective work.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • India Tells Facebook To Shut Down Controversial Zero Rating Program ‘Free Basics’

      The Indian government has spent much of the last year trying to craft net neutrality rules, and had recently been fielding public comment on whether or not Facebook’s zero rating effort, Free Basics, violates net neutrality. As we’ve covered at length, Facebook’s been trying to corner the developing nation ad market with a zero rated program that offers free access to curated, Facebook approved content. Critics and Free Basic content partners alike haven’t been comfortable with giving Facebook that much control.

    • How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice
    • Why India’s Net Neutrality Activists Hate Facebook

      Facebook Inc. Chairman Mark Zuckerberg made a personal appeal in one of India’s leading newspapers for the country to allow a free Internet service that has stirred controversy and invited questions from regulators.

      Facebook’s proposed Free Basics plan allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan. Yet activists say the program threatens the principles of net neutrality and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.

      The backlash in India centers on net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible. Critics accused the world’s largest social networking company of favoring a limited swath of the Internet and excluding rival services. And Facebook’s broader Internet.org initiative, including Free Basics, is seen as an effective way to draw more users onto a social network already used by over a billion people.

    • Facebook’s Zuckerberg: If You Oppose Our International Power Grab, You’re An Enemy Of The Poor

      Last week we noted that India had shut down Facebook’s Free Basics program, arguing the company’s plan for zero rating Facebook-approved content and services is effectively glorified collusion; an attempt to eventually corner global ad markets under the banner of altruism. The country has been trying to craft net neutrality rules, and has slowly realized that whatever neutrality looks like, Facebook deciding what content Indians get access to isn’t it.

    • Comcast Cap Blunder Highlights How Nobody Is Ensuring Broadband Meters Are Accurate

      For years now we’ve noted that while broadband ISPs rush toward broadband caps and usage overage fees, nobody is checking to confirm that ISP meters are accurate. The result has been user network hardware that reports usage dramatically different from an ISPs’ meters, or users who are billed for bandwidth usage even when the power is out or the modem is off. Not only have regulators historically failed to see the anti-innovation, anti-competitive impact of usage caps, you’d be hard pressed to find a single official that has even commented on the problem of inaccurate broadband usage meters.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • El Paquete Semanal: How Offline Piracy Flourishes in Cuba

        For more than a decade many Cubans have been pirating the latest entertainment without a proper connection to the Internet. Instead, they have built their own person-to-person distribution network to share a weekly package of pirated material: El Paquete Semanal.

12.27.15

Links 27/12/2015: Perl 6, Solus 1.0

Posted in News Roundup at 8:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why Don’t You Contribute to Open Source?

    In my How Much Do You Cost? post last year, I said open-source contribution is a very important factor in defining who is good and who isn’t, as far as programmers go. I was saying that if you’re not contributing to open source, and if your GitHub profile is not full of projects and commits, your “value” as a software developer is low, simply because this lack of open-source activity tells everybody that you’re not passionate about software development and are simply working for money. I keep getting angry comments about that every week. Let me answer them all here.

  • Open Source Software Went Nuclear This Year

    Open source software—software freely shared with the world at large—is an old idea. A guy named Richard Stallman started preaching the gospel in the early ’80s, though he called it free software. Linus Torvalds started work on Linux, the enormously successful open source operating system, in 1991, and today, it drives our daily lives—literally. The Android operating system that runs Google phones and the iOS operating system that runs the Apple iPhone are based on Linux. When you open a phone app like Twitter or Facebook and pull down all those tweets and status updates, you’re tapping into massive computer data centers filled with hundreds of Linux machines. Linux is the foundation of the Internet.

  • ownCloud 8.2.2, 8.1.5, 8.0.10 and 7.0.12 here with Sharing, LDAP fixes

    The latest ownCloud stability and security updates are available, bringing improvements to sharing capabilities and performance enhancements to the ownCloud 8.2 series and LDAP, sharing and many minor fixes to the earlier releases. We recommend to upgrade as soon as possible! Please note the change in upgrade behavior for the Linux packages which require system administrators to manually run the occ upgrade command. Read on for more details about this end-of-year gift from your friends at ownCloud.

  • The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?

    The Trolley Problem is an ethical brainteaser that’s been entertaining philosophers since it was posed by Philippa Foot in 1967:

    A runaway train will slaughter five innocents tied to its track unless you pull a lever to switch it to a siding on which one man, also innocent and unawares, is standing. Pull the lever, you save the five, but kill the one: what is the ethical course of action?

    The problem has run many variants over time, including ones in which you have to choose between a trolley killing five innocents or personally shoving a man who is fat enough to stop the train (but not to survive the impact) into its path; a variant in which the fat man is the villain who tied the innocents to the track in the first place, and so on.

  • Events

    • Nha Trang ICT 2015

      I came to Nha Trang this year to bring Fedora back there after the successful event last year. This year, the event was held in another university in Nha Trang, TCU with more participants from other universities in Nha Trang and nearby cities.

      There was a academy/science conference in the morning with some talks from open source enterprises who sponsor the whole event. The afternoon was reserved for FOSS communities and I had a session to introduce about the Fedora project to all students and lectures. There were about 200 attendees join into a big classroom.

      During the session, I talked to them about the benefit of contributing to FOSS and Fedora. I told participants what the employers need in general when they recruit new employees, especially young students. Basically, they need candidates to have critical thinking, group working, English speaking and technical skills. Students can study those skills during participating in a FOSS project like Fedora.

  • BSD

    • 2.2.6-RELEASE Now Available!

      pfSense® software version 2.2.6 is now available. This release includes a few bug fixes and security updates.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Little Helper: Open Source Hardware Hacker Multitool

        The open source gadget looks like an iPod (if an iPod had header pins sticking out of it). It has basic analog I/O capability, can generate PWM pulses, sniff I2C traffic, and do lots of other features. It is open source, so you can always add more capabilities if you need them.

  • Programming

    • Santa Claus in Linux Style: Top Linux Hardware and Free Linux/Programming Books & Courses Recommendations
    • PHP version 7.0.2RC1

      Release Candidate versions are available in remi-test repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests. For x86_64 only.

    • The Perl 6 release

      The December 25 entry follows with the Rakudo Perl 6 release. “This version of the compiler targets the v6.c ‘Christmas’ specification of the Perl 6 language. The Perl 6 community has been working toward this release over the last 15 years.”

    • Signs that you’re a good programmer

      The most frequently viewed page on this site is Signs you’re a bad programmer, which has also now been published on dead trees by Hacker Monthly, and I think that behoves me to write its antithesis. “Bad programmer” is also considered inflammatory by some who think I’m speaking down to them. Not so; it was personal catharsis from an author who exhibited many of those problems himself. And what I think made the article popular was the “remedies”–I didn’t want someone to get depressed when they recognized themselves, I wanted to be constructive.

      Therefore if you think you’re missing any of the qualities below, don’t be offended. I didn’t pick these up for a while, either, and many of them came from watching other programmers or reading their code.

Leftovers

  • Two men miraculously found alive 72 hours after Shenzhen landslide in China

    RESCUERS scrabbling through the aftermath of a huge three-day-old landslide discovered two people alive in the mud, as China’s cabinet announced a probe into the country’s latest industrial accident.

    Almost 72 hours after being buried alive by a tide of earth and rubble, 19-year-old Tian Zeming was pulled from the soil by emergency workers who have been battling around the clock in the search for survivors.

    Images from the scene showed dozens of firefighters and police thronging around a stretcher, apparently bearing the teenager to a waiting ambulance.

    [...]

    “The lack of safety supervision and passive attitude in taking precautions has caused the whole nation to shake with anger and shocked the world!” user Xizidan wrote in a post that was taken down by authorities, but found on the censorship tracking website Weiboscope.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Bottled air from Canada is selling like crazy in China

      The startup has been capturing that air in “massive cans” through a clean compression process, which according to Vitality Air, “lock[s] in the pure air without any contamination.” The siphoned air is taken back to the company’s bottling facility, where “we begin filling our convenient delivery cans to the brim with excellent air.”

      Vitality Air’s pitch might read like a throwaway joke on Silicon Valley, but the company has found a market for their version of Canada Dry. People in smog-filled Chinese cities have been buying up the cans in bulk.

  • Security

    • #OLEOutlook – bypass almost every Corporate security control with a point’n’click GUI

      In this tutorial, I will show you how to embed an executable into a corporate network via email, behind the firewall(s), disguised as a Word document. There is no patch for this issue.

    • Somebody Tried to Get a Raspberry Pi Exec to Install Malware on Its Devices

      Liz Upton, the Director of Communications for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has tweeted out a screenshot of an email where an unknown person has proposed that the Foundation install malware on all of its devices.

      In the email, a person named Linda, is proposing Mrs. Upton an agreement where their company would provide an EXE file that installs a desktop shortcut, that when clicked redirects users to a specific website. (Raspberry Pi devices can run Windows as well, not just Linux variants.)

    • Botnet of Aethra Routers Used for Brute-Forcing WordPress Sites

      Italian security researchers from VoidSec have come across a botnet structure that was using vulnerable Aethra Internet routers and modems to launch brute-force attacks on WordPress websites.

    • Steam Had A Very Rough Christmas With A Major Security Issue

      The security issue looks like it might be resolved now, but resulted in gamers being able to see other account holder’s information. Seeing other accounts included partial credit card information, addresses, and other personal information. For a while, the Steam store was completely shut down. The issue seems to stem from some caching issues due to account holders being presented with the wrong information.

    • Xen Project blunder blows own embargo with premature bug report

      The Xen Project has reported a new bug, XSA-169, that means “A malicious guest could cause repeated logging to the hypervisor console, leading to a Denial of Service attack.”

      The fix is simple – running only paravirtualised guests – but the bug is a big blunder for another reason.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • US Has More than 200,000 Soldiers Deployed Around the World

      The United States armed forces now have more than 200,000 soldiers deployed in one hundred countries of all continents, according to Defense Department reports.
      About 9,800 remain in Afghanistan, while about 3,500 in Iraq and Syria under the pretext of fighting Islamic State (IS), most of the latest from the 82nd Airborne Division.

      The Navy maintains about 40 ships deployed, the largest of which is the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, with about 5,000 sailors and officers on board-.

      In recent days, this naval unit crossed the Suez Canal with its escorts ships to station in the Persian Gulf Gulf and from there to take part in the bombing against the IS targets in the region.

    • America’s Unending War On Terrorism Will Destroy Humanity And Planet Earth

      Ostensibly, the Arab Middle East is controlled and managed by the US intelligence network; otherwise, Arab leaders would have hard time to stay afloat. The authoritarian Arab leaders live in palaces, not with people to understand the outcomes of their political folly and ignorance. Ironically, the US-Russian air strikes and killings of the civilians in Syria and Iraq will instigate reactionary opposition and increased insurgency to topple the puppet regimes. Daveed Gartenstein-Rosss writing in Foreign Policy (“Thank you for Bombing-Obama- Why al Qaeda might be the biggest winner of America’s airstrikes on the Islamic State.”), argues that President Obama is using wrong strategy to attack ISIL: ‘But an emphasis on degrading and destroying IS while giving a pass to other jihadist groups in Syria could have serious consequences that could leave al Qaeda in the catbird seat.’ America enjoys a record of failure in strategic thinking and practices if you view the war theater in Afghanistan and Iraq and now the forged battleground is Syria.

    • Cameron, Spy Chiefs Trade Secrets With Merkel Over Daesh Terror Threat

      UK Prime Minister David Cameron and the chiefs of Britain’s three intelligence services have briefed German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the latest terror threats, including Daesh, also known as ISIL, in what analysts say is a rare move.

    • Letter: A reader’s election year thoughts

      The current crises with the ISIS/terrorist threat has political and media fear mongers salivating over the potential of going into another prolonged military conflict. Money would once again flow freely into corporations (mostly Cheney’s Halliburton) involved in supporting combat operations in addition to the weapons of war manufacturers and technology industries developing and maintaining hundreds of technology based combat support systems, most of which are not needed nor completed. In this greedy quest, there appears to be little, if any, concern for thousands of military and civilian deaths and the destruction of in-country vital infra-structure essential for post operation stabilization and reconstruction.

    • France out-Bushing George W. Bush in its terror fight

      France once led the world in lambasting George W. Bush’s “war on terror”. But as François Hollande looks to enshrine emergency powers in the constitution, the country’s leaders are suddenly sounding like the US president they once held in contempt.

    • Palace: No ISIS training camps in PH

      Malacañang on Tuesday denied reports that there is now an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) training camp in the country.

      Presidential Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma, Jr. said National Security Adviser (NSA) Cesar Garcia has denied the report.

    • NATO: Seeking Russia’s Destruction Since 1949

      In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W. Bush through his secretary of state James Baker promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Soviet cooperation on German reunification, the Cold War era NATO alliance would not expand “one inch” eastwards towards Russia. Baker told Gorbachev: “Look, if you remove your [300,000] troops [from east Germany] and allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east.”

    • Exclusive: Islamic State sanctioned organ harvesting in document taken in U.S. raid

      Islamic State has sanctioned the harvesting of human organs in a previously undisclosed ruling by the group’s Islamic scholars, raising concerns that the violent extremist group may be trafficking in body parts.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Hundreds evacuated after further flooding in northern England – latest updates
    • More than 100,000 flee El Niño flooding in Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay

      More than 100,000 people evacuated their homes in the bordering areas of Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina due to severe flooding in the wake of heavy summer rains brought on by El Niño, authorities said.

      The Paraguayan government declared a state of emergency in Asunción and seven regions of the country. Several people were killed by falling trees, local media reported.

    • Hanging out with the orangutan whisperer

      But the modest, grey pony-tailed founder and president of the Orangutan Project has made world-first discoveries about the orangutan, which literally translates as a “person of the forest” in Indonesian.

    • Climate Change: A Tale of Two Governors

      That brief conversation in Miami would result in Florida becoming, however briefly, a pioneer in grappling with the effects of climate change — such as flooding and freshwater drinking supplies contaminated with saltwater. After Crist was elected governor, he convened a summit, appointed a task force and helped usher in new laws intended to address a future of climate change and rising sea levels. Crist and the Florida Legislature set goals to reduce emissions back to 1990 levels.

    • UK Deploys Army to Rescue People in North Western County Hit by Floods

      British Armed Forces personnel have been deployed to the English county of Cumbria to rescue people whose homes have been flooded, UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Friday.

      Earlier this month, Storm Desmond brought record amounts of rain to Cumbria, resulting in several bouts of flooding in the region.

    • UK weather: M62 20ft sinkhole causes travel chaos as north of England battered by floods

      The M62 has been closed around a 20ft sinkhole which opened up in the road as the north of England was battered by a month’s rain in a few hours.

      The massive hole opened up between junctions 20 and 19 near Rochdale, Greater Manchester shortly after midday, bringing traffic grinding to a halt.

      The westbound carriageway has been closed as engineers examine the scene.

      Meanwhile, the Met Office has issued ‘danger to life’ flood warnings and the army has been called in to evacuate residents in flood-hit parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

    • Live updates: Homes evacuated, pub collapses, city centre on flood alert as rivers across Manchester burst their banks

      Greater Manchester is on flood alert after torrential rain throughout the night.

      Rivers across the region have burst their banks with many roads closed.

      Part of the Waterside pub in Summerseat in Bury has collapsed

      We will bring you all the latest updates here.

    • 10,000 properties without power across Lancashire and Rochdale

      Severe flooding has caused widespread disruption throughout the morning causing loss of power to customers in Rochdale and Lancashire with 10,000 properties currently off supply.

      30,000 properties are usually supplied with electricity from the main substation in Rochdale. Engineers from Electricity North West shifted 10,000 properties from the substation an hour before the flooding hit to secure supplies.

    • Govt looking at new insurance levy over floods

      The Government is considering whether a new insurance levy should be introduced to fund flood cover for homeowners who cannot buy policies.

      Insurance companies do not offer cover to homes and businesses in areas at risk of flooding.

      The Department of Environment, the Department of Finance and the Office of Public works are working on possible solutions.

    • Flooding Causes Manchester Gas Explosion

      Listen to this account from an eyewitness who says that flooding has caused a gas explosion in Bury, Greater Manchester.

    • Pub washed away in Summerseat on River Irwell

  • Finance

    • Capitalism – Not China – Is to Blame for the Current Global Economic Decline

      Capitalism, like a speeding train, barreled into a stone wall in 2008. Shocked and dazed, its leaders have been trying to “recover.” By that, they mean to fix the mangled tracks, reposition the locomotive and cars on those tracks and resume forward motion. No basic economic change, in their view, is needed or even considered. They see no absurdity in such a “recovery plan” – just as they saw no approaching catastrophe in the years leading up to 2008.

    • Prof. Wolff comments on U.S. exports of crude oil at RT International
    • Bitcoin: What It Is And How It Works

      In 2008, a programmer issued a white paper in which he argued that we need an Internet currency not subject to the fees and permissions of third-party intermediaries. So he came up with the digital equivalent of cash online, a system that lets participants send value to anyone else with a Bitcoin address the same way they might send an email. “Like the Internet flattened global speech, Bitcoin can flatten global money,” says computer scientist Nick Szabo, who is suspected as Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Robin Kelley, Malkia Cyril, Richard Rothstein: Do Black Lives Matter to Media?

      This week on CounterSpin: From community rallies around the country to the presidential election, the Black Lives Matter movement has changed the conversation. Keeping a spotlight on state-sanctioned violence against black people, activists have opened up a debate, including in corporate media, that addresses racism and white supremacy in ways more searching and less euphemistic than we’re used to. At least, fewer pundits tell us we’re living in a “post-racial” society—that’s a start.

    • Senate Bill 571 censors factual election information

      And helping taxpayers understand how these vital public goods are going to be delivered or paid for is important too. Which is why many people across Michigan are baffled by the Michigan Legislature’s desire to prevent school districts and other public bodies from distributing factual and unbiased information about ballot proposals within 60 days of the election.

      Gov. Rick Snyder should stand for more information and transparency, not less, and veto Senate Bill 571, now before him.

      Senate Bill 571 would prohibit a public body, or person acting for a public body from using public resources for factual communications referencing local ballot questions by radio, television, mass mailing, or prerecorded telephone message for 60 days prior to an election.

    • Donald Trump: Another Terrorist from the 1 Percent

      “What most concerns the [New York] Times is that the crude politics of Trump shatters the lying rhetoric used by Democrats and Republicans alike to justify the policies of the ruling class, at home and abroad. Thus, it worries that Trump is doing “serious damage” to the country’s “reputation overseas” by “twisting its message of tolerance and welcome.” What is the “tolerance and welcome” of which the Times speaks? Is it perhaps the Obama administration’s deportation of more immigrants to Mexico and Central America than any other president? Or the construction of brutal detention facilities in the southern US to hold men, women and children seeking refuge in the US. The Times writes that Trump “has not [yet] deported anyone, nor locked up or otherwise brutalized any Muslims, immigrants or others.” The newspaper fails to add, “Obama, however, has.”

    • Sanders-Clinton Voter Database Hack: a Campaign Pro’s Perspective

      As you probably already know, Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was involved in some recent hijinks involving improper access to campaign data from the Hillary Clinton campaign, after a buggy software patch applied by the contractor maintaining the Democratic Party’s voter database, NGPVAN, inadvertently opened a data firewall. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) suspended the Sanders’ campaign access to Democratic voter lists (a subscription that the campaign had paid for); Sanders responded by suing the DNC; after a brief negotiation, the DNC restored the Sanders campaign access; and Sanders apologized to Clinton for the hack in Saturday night’s debate. Clinton accepted the apology, and noted that most Americans don’t care anyway.

  • Censorship

    • To tolerate or to take offence? That’s the question

      AMOS Yee’s most recent blog post has got him into trouble with the authorities again and has led to vehement responses online. However one response, by the President of the Humanist Society, has chosen not to focus on the 17-year-old himself, but on the perceived vitriol against the youth, in turn sparking two camps of responses both online and offline.

      Even though the letter Humanist Society president Paul Tobin wrote was in response to Amos Yee, his letter about the vitriolic responses towards Yee’s blog post has engaged citizens on a general discussion of intolerance towards offensive remarks online.

    • Tuesdays at Cheongster Cafe: Report Police Report

      It seems like Singaporeans have found themselves a new pastime – filing police reports. The past week alone saw two police reports filed against former Nominated MP Calvin Cheng, for incitement to violence. Add to that police reports filed against Amos Yee earlier this year, filed by National Solidarity Party, and another by Workers Party candidate Daniel Goh during GE2015 and so on, and it seems like our boys in blue have no time to nab criminals but spend their days attending to people with grievances to air.

    • Remembrance theme ranks high on Google Singapore searches

      Outspoken blogger Amos Yee, who sparked an uproar for his criticisms of Lee Kuan Yew, was high on the search list of Singaporeans who followed the controversy online.

    • Anonymous Hacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity Portal to Protest Against Censorship In Asia

      Members of the Anonymous hacker collective have defaced the Asia Pacific Telecommunity website (apt.int), gained access to the site’s admin panel (running Drupal), and also managed to get their hands on a database dump.

    • When Censorship is Really Tempting

      Needless to say competing voices and groups oppose this kind of censorship. Officially I think of censorship as acts of governments to limit or punish ideas that threaten them. On a less legalistic basis, I think we tend to use the term to refer to efforts to shut up any views by anybody that the other person or party or organization objects to. You could say, for example, that when our fellow citizens called us peace activists opposed to the Iraq War “unpatriotic” that were attempting to censor our speech. Bullying, peer pressure, threatened loss of livelihood…all are techniques for suppressing unpopular or unwanted ideas separate from any specific government action.

    • Free speech trumps censorship – be it Cecil Rhodes or Adolf Hitler

      Now they want the statue of the man the campaigners call “the Hitler of South Africa” removed. One can see why. Rhodes began enforced racial segregation in South Africa and was – avowedly – a racist, proclaiming the superiority of Anglo-Saxons. Looking back at him today, it is difficult not to regard him and much of his legacy as toxic.

    • International publishers blast censorship in Turkey

      The International Publishers Association on Dec. 22 condemned what it called “blatant political censorship” in Turkey, saying three journalists’ books had been pulled from shelves on court orders.

      “Books by Hasan Cemal, Tuğçe Tatari and Müslüm Yücel will be removed from sale merely because they were found in the possession of people arrested on suspicion of being members of various outlawed political parties,” the Geneva-based IPA said in a statement.

      The Third Criminal Court of Peace in southeastern Gaziantep province decided to remove a total of three books focusing on the Kurdish problem by journalists Hasan Cemal and Tuğçe Tatari from bookstores after being seized during an operation into a cell where suspected militants of the outlawed Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), youth-wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), were detained. The court ruled for the confiscation of the books on Dec. 4, arguing they spread terrorist propaganda and praised criminal activity.

    • Turkey attacked by international publishers for ‘blatant political censorship’

      The International Publishers Association on Tuesday condemned what it called “blatant political censorship” in Turkey, saying three journalists’ books had been pulled from shelves on court orders.

      “Books by Hasan Cemal, Tugce Tatari and Muslum Yucel will be removed from sale merely because they were found in the possession of people arrested on suspicion of being members of various outlawed political parties,” the Geneva-based IPA said in a statement.

    • How Websites Will Signal When They’re Censored
    • Bradbury-Inspired 451 Error Code Warns of Online Censorship
    • Error 451 is the new HTTP code for online censorship

      The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body responsible for overseeing the internet’s technical standards, has approved HTTP 451, “an HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles”. The new status code will show viewers when a web page is being blocked for legal reasons.

    • Forget 404 Errors: HTTP Now Has a Code for Censorship

      HTTP status codes are not normally a thing that aids political dissidents, or really anything to get excited about. But the newly-made code 451, to be used when something is taken down for legal reasons, is a timely exception.

      Status codes are used when requesting and transmitting data over the internet, for example, pulling up this page. There are five classes, 100s-500s, and tens or hundreds of specific codes within those classes. You normally don’t encounter the codes unless something goes wrong—the infamous 404 error for a page not found, for example.

    • CALLING OUT CENSORSHIP BY NAME, OR AT LEAST BY NUMBER

      With those words, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) announced new HTTP status code 451, to be used when access to a website is denied due to legal demands.

      Most users pay little attention to status codes, which are numerical indicators of how a website is responding to a browser request. If they are familiar with status codes at all, they have most likely encountered a “404 – File Not Found” or possibly an occasional “403—Forbidden.”

    • Burmese artists caught in self-censorship

      Burmese artists lived under strict laws of censorship since 1964. Through their artworks they battled for freedom and it’s only since 2012 that censorship was abolished. Since then there was an explosion of political art but artists stayed very careful in their choice of subject.

      Walking through the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, you could feel an air of silenced excitement. The first free elections in 25 years were only a month away and artist Khin Maung Zaw took me to his home and gallery. The idyllic paintings of Buddhist monks and Burmese landscapes on the wall express the love he feels for his country but “Myanmar is a shattered country. We need to choose democracy. It’s the only way we can talk about our needs.”, says a soft-spoken Zaw. Still, he doesn’t call his work revolutionary: “my works are snapshots of the daily lives of Burmese people.”

    • Mercury News editorial: China’s Internet conference is all about censorship

      If you were planning to hold an Internet conference for the world, where would you choose to hold it?

      “Anyplace but China” would be a reasonable response. Yet last week, no less a luminary that Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed more than 2,000 guests to the coastal city of Wuzhen, as they opened the World Internet Conference.

      That’s right. China hosted an Internet conference. Has one of world’s heaviest-handed cyber censors decided to join the digital marketplace of ideas? Hardly. Check out the guest list, including delegates from such freedom-loving places as Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

      The purpose of this conference was not to be to open the Internet, but how better to close it. China is promoting the idea of “Internet sovereignty,” which is basically a web of fiefdoms gagged by official censors.

    • China is Finally Taking its Seat at the Big Table
    • China’s Xi calls for cooperation on Internet regulation

      President Xi Jinping has defended his government’s broad censorship of the internet, in a high-profile speech underscoring China’s increasingly emphatic attempts to justify its strict online control.

    • Is American film industry pandering to Chinese censors?

      The director of China’s state-controlled film bureau, Zhang Hongshen, has said that China is at war with Hollywood. China’s propaganda chief, Liu Qibao, believes that Chinese movies should reflect the Chinese Dream. President Xi Jinping declared that art should be patriotic and that foreign films should be sanitized.

    • So you think Thai Internet censorship is bad?

      Every hotel I stayed at in China offered free WiFi, but it was a meaningless gesture. While some of my email got through, I was not able to reply to any of it until I returned to Thailand. Likewise Facebook was blocked, though many might see that as a blessing in disguise.

    • The Delicate Dance of a Chinese Journalist

      China jails more journalists than any other country, but media students say the landscape is changing.

    • Students Call for ‘Terrifying’ Wave of Censorship

      A video shows filmmaker and satirist Ami Horowitz on the campus of Yale University asking students to sign a petition calling for a repeal of the First Amendment.

      Horowitz said he was able to quickly gather more than 50 signatures in less than an hour and believes most who signed were students.

    • Trigger Warnings on College Campuses Are Nothing but Censorship

      Two Yale University professors recently said they would no longer be teaching classes after students expressed outrage that the instructors called for open debate and dialogue in an email. Increasingly, students are making demands of university faculty to limit exposure to material that the students deem to be discomforting. One way this is being expressed is in the call for trigger warnings in course syllabi. The student government at the University of California–Santa Barbara, for example, passed a resolution requiring trigger warnings on every syllabus with no penalties for students who skip a trigger class or assignment.

    • Self-censorship makes us victims of political jihad

      Well-respected ASIO chief Duncan Lewis has advised MPs to use soothing language when publicly discussing Islam, apparently to prevent a backlash. Malcolm Turnbull’s tacit support for the advice is not merely an error of judgment, it is profoundly misconceived.

      During the past week, the government has changed the parameters of the public debate on Islamism in Australia. Along with ASIO, it has reframed the debate to propose the cause of militant Islam is, in part, our response to it.

    • Tact is tactical. Obsequiousness signals surrender
    • Self-censorship? Lok Sabha Speaker expunges her own remarks after Congress raises concern

      Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, who had returned to the House by this time, protested against Naidu making comments against the opposition in his absence.

    • e-Books help overcome Book Censorship in the Middle East

      The Middle East is notorious for banning books due to moral, political, religious, or commercial reasons. Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria are often heralded as the countries that tend to ban the most books.

    • Police encourage social media censorship
    • Students need education, not indoctrination

      There is, it turns out, a bright side to this otherwise depressing affair. A small group of brave and principled students, who identified themselves as ‘representatives of the Harvard undergraduate council’, made themselves heard and announced their outraged opposition to the administration’s latest experiment in thought control. A truly diverse array (just judging by last names such as Biebelberg, Ely, Gupta, Kelley, Khansarinia, Kim, Popovski and so forth) wrote ‘to express concern regarding’ the placemat dissemination. ‘Reject[ing] the premise that there is a “right” way to answer the questions posed’, the protesting students affirmed that ‘we should work to foster a climate that is conducive to frank, open discussion – especially among students who disagree’. The placemat, they complained, ‘gives the impression that the points it articulates are positions endorsed by the college and, more disturbingly, positions that the college thinks students should hold’. College, concluded the students, ‘should engage in the task of helping students to think and speak for themselves, not telling them what to think and what to say’.

    • In Hong Kong, Fears for an Art Museum

      “The problem in Hong Kong is not censorship,” said Pi Li, the Sigg senior curator at M+. “The problem in Hong Kong is self-censorship. It’s self-censorship hidden in the procedures, so it’s difficult to distinguish.”

    • Don’t Let Principals Censor the Internet

      Public schools should not have the power to punish off-campus speech.

    • The Palestinian-Israeli singer challenging everyone’s misconceptions

      Call her a traitor, call her a normalizer — Palestinian-Israeli singer Amal Murkus has heard it all. Now as she gets ready to release her brilliant new album, the avowed Marxist and feminist is speaking out against the racism of the Israeli mainstream as well as Palestinian attempts to silence her.

    • Closing down access to ‘free speech’ is not a joking matter

      The U.S. Supreme Court has a long string of decisions defending speech and speakers that many Americans would like to shut off or shut down. But within a just a few days of each other:

      • Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, said in an Op-ed piece for The New York Times that his company and others should create algorithmic “tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media – sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment.”

      • Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton called on Web companies to “disrupt” terror groups’ ability to use social media for recruitment and communication, to “deprive jihadists of virtual territory.”

      • GOP poll leader Donald Trump said at a South Carolina rally that “in certain areas” we should just shut down the Internet.

    • Why did Iranian TV censor interview with Zarif?

      After a highly promoted holiday interview with Iran’s popular Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was canceled at the last minute, Iranians cried foul, accusing state television of taking sides in a partisan quarrel ahead of the elections.

    • NY Times Warns About Europe Expanding The ‘Right To Be Forgotten’

      We recently warned about how the new Data Protection Directive in the EU, while written with good intentions, unfortunately appears to both lock-in and expand the whole right to be forgotten idea in potentially dangerous ways. A big part of it is that the directive is just too vague, meaning that the RTBF may apply to all kinds of internet services, but we won’t know for certain until the lawsuits are all finally decided many years in the future. Also unclear are what sorts of safe harbors there may be and how the directive protects against abusing the right to be forgotten for out and out censorship. Unfortunately, many are simply celebrating these new rules for the fact that they do give end users some more power over their data and how it’s used.

    • Keystrokes in the West may mean a death sentence in Saudi Arabia

      From posting a message on Facebook to watching the cursor blink on a screen, many of us take online communication for granted. For most, the idea that such activities might lead to severe punishment is absurd. But, in Saudi Arabia, the West’s treasured Middle East ally, keystrokes can result in public stoning, flogging, life imprisonment, crucifixion, or beheading. Saudi Arabia appears to be existentially threatened by freedom of expression.

      On 16 December Ensaf Haida, the wife of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi accepted, on his behalf, the 2015 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Saudi authorities had sentenced the blogger to 10 years in prison with 1,000 lashes for posting comments that criticized the kingdom’s extremist Wahhabi ideology. They consider his views blasphemous.

      In January 2015, the Saudi authorities publicly gave Badawi 50 lashes. This first round of flogging resulted in such a serious deterioration in his physical health that doctors were able to halt the flogging for a while. But, a remaining 950 lashes still await Badawi.

      United Nations human rights expert David Kaye has expressed alarm at growing repression in Saudi Arabia: ‘Such attacks on freedom of expression deter critical thinking, public participation, and civic engagement, the very things that are crucial to human development and democratic culture,’ he said.

    • Rated R for Ridiculous

      MPAA ratings are more political than ever, so parents should do their own research

    • Why Did Facebook Block the Sharing of This New York Times Article About Nuclear Targets?

      When atomic weapons historian Stephen Schwartz tried to post information about 1950s U.S. nuclear targets to Facebook Wednesday, the site stopped him. “The content you’re trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe,” an automated error message announced. Here’s the strange thing: Schwartz—who pointed out the oddity on Twitter (where Washington Post journalist Dan Zak noticed it)—wasn’t sharing state secrets. He was posting a New York Times article.

      It’s not immediately clear why Facebook blocked the story—a fascinating and chilling historical narrative woven from publicly available information—or even whether the block was algorithmic or manual. At first, Slate colleagues told me they were able to link to it through the Facebook widget on the New York Times’ page, but attempting that method now generates a message that reads, “The server found your request confusing and isn’t sure how to proceed.” As some have noted, posting the mobile version of the article appears to work, and other articles about nuclear targets failed to generate the same issues. All this suggests that Facebook isn’t really taking issue with the article itself, so what exactly is going on here?

      [...]

      Again, whatever’s going on here clearly isn’t willful censorship. What’s troubling is the lack of transparency. The more powerful Facebook gets, the more such erratic quirks threaten to shape our everyday experience. At the very least, the company would do well to elaborate on what they mean by “unsafe.” Without providing further details, the site is effectively infantilizing its user base. Even if Facebook eventually explains what happened with the New York Times article, the initial mystery is a potent reminder of who really controls our ability to share information.

    • Thai high court upholds conviction of webmaster for postings

      Thailand’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the 2012 conviction of a webmaster for not acting quickly enough to delete online comments deemed insulting to the country’s monarchy, a decision decried by rights advocates as another blow to freedom of expression.

    • British pub’s Facebook account banned over ‘offensive’ name

      Facebook has suspended a 175-year-old British pub’s social media account over its “offensive” name, saying it was derived from a black cockerel — a male chicken, the media reported.

      The manager of the Blackcock Inn in Llanfihangel Talyllyn, a small village in Wales, in November this year received a message from Facebook saying the pub’s account he created had been suspended for “racist or offensive language”, he told the Independent in an interview.

    • Twitter says it is beating the trolls

      After making it easier to report abusive tweets and increasing the size of its anti-troll team, Twitter believes it is getting ‘bad behavior’ under control. As well as bullying of acquaintances and work colleagues, Twitter has also been used to attack celebrities, the gay community, religious groups, and more, with many people feeling driven from the site. It seems that the decision to take a very hands-on approach to troll tackling is starting to pay off.

    • ICFJ’s Butler: American journalists feel the attacks on colleagues in Turkey and elsewhere

      In the past several years, Turkey has been facing increasing unlawful government oppression on civil society and aggressive assaults against the media.

      After consolidating his power, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government did not hesitate to arrest critical voices and media professionals, and has even seized private property and companies. While known as a democracy — even if not a liberal one — Turkey, embracing these tyrannical tendencies of President Erdoğan, has brought the entire nation to very unsteady ground.

      Patrick Butler, vice president for programs at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), a Washington-based non-profit organization that works to improve the skills and standards of journalists and media around the world, says he is deeply saddened to see assaults on journalists in Turkey.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Digital Rights Battles in 2015: NSA Reform, Net Neutrality, CISA and Beyond

      From John Oliver quizzing Edward Snowden on whether the NSA is collecting our “dick pics” to EFF’s legal team obliterating the patent that was used to go after podcaster Adam Carolla, digital rights issues have been in the public spotlight this year. For the most part, 2015 found us winning hard-fought battles to advance our freedoms online.

    • 10 human rights cases that defined 2015

      It has been a fascinating year in which to edit this Blog. Political and social challenges – from continued government cuts to the alarming rise of Islamic State – have presented new human rights conundrums that have, as ever, slowly percolated to the doors of the country’s highest courts. And all this during the year of an astonishing General Election result and amid continually shifting sands around the future of the Human Rights Act.

      [...]

      This was a historic decision if only for the fact that it was the first time the Investigatory Powers Tribunal had ever found against the Government. It all began with the Edward Snowden leaks and revelations surrounding the US National Security Agency’s communications interception programme. Liberty and other NGOs cited breaches of Articles 8 and 10 ECHR as a result of the UK authorities’ reception, storage, use and transmission of material intercepted and shared with them by their US counterparts.

    • US revokes visa of British Muslim without explanation

      The imam, Ajmal Masroor has accused the United States of enacting the anti-Muslim policies propagated by Republican presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, who prompted global condemnation this month when he pledged to ban Muslims from entering the US.

    • Conservative Media’s Demand That Muslims Atone For Terrorism Is A Rigged Game
    • Iranian-Americans Are Once Again The Escape-Goats. Why?

      We reaffirm our commitment to the principled American ideals of equal opportunity, due process, and the transparent application of the rule of law and justice afforded to all citizens irrespective of one’s national origin, presumed religion, creed, ethnicity, or gender. I submit this note specifically to YOU to take appropriate action to ameliorate the adverse ramifications of certain aspects of HR158:

    • Congress Put Iranian-Americans and Others At Risk for Becoming Second-Class Citizens

      As a powerful Iranian-American community, we are politically passive. Many of our parents came to the US to avoid politics and politicians. But it seems our passive disposition relative to politics and lack of unity regarding politicians has hurt us and the passing of this legislation is a representative example. The legislation that passed last week by both democrats and republicans is un-American. This legislation is legally, socially, and morally wrong.

    • Yahoo now warns users if they’re targets of state-sponsored hackers

      Bob Lord, the company’s newly appointed chief information security officer, said in a blog post that it will notify users if it suspects suspect that their account may have been targeted by a state-sponsored actor.

      “We’ll provide these specific notifications so that our users can take appropriate measures to protect their accounts and devices in light of these sophisticated attacks,” said Lord.

    • Yahoo becomes the latest company to warn users of suspected state-sponsored attacks
    • Controversial China anti-terror law looks set to pass this month

      China’s controversial anti-terrorism law could be passed as soon as the end of this month, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday, legislation that has drawn concern in Western capitals for its cyber provisions.

      The draft law, which could require technology firms to install “backdoors” in products or to hand over sensitive information such as encryption keys to the government, has also been criticised by some Western business groups.

    • These are the people responsible for our out of control police…

      Matthew Harwood’s definitive article shows that America’s police have gone out of control.

    • Smiles and Nerves: Schools reopen in Ukraine’s frontline villages

      Children have been returning to schools in eastern Ukraine after the Red Cross provided materials to repair the damage and allow them to restart their studies this winter.

      Although the guns have been mostly silent since the early September in Ukraine, government troops and Russian-backed militant forces continue to report casualties in the region. Among the most vulnerable populations are children attending schools near the frontline.

    • Trump’s Muslim ban is as American as apple pie

      Genuinely appalled members of the public and press, as well as elements of the Republican establishment, desperate to stop Trump as a loose cannon not beholden either to the party or its decisive megadonors, labored mightily to make Trump’s Muslim ban blather a huge issue, the killer gaffe that would disqualify him as presidential material.

      However, efforts to neutralize Trump through public censure–“bigot” “fascist” etc.—do not appear to be getting much traction.

      I believe there’s a good reason for that.

      When confronted by discriminatory speech and actions, some make the high-minded appeal to Americans’ better nature: “this isn’t us.”

    • Western Democracy: Who’s Watching the Watchers?

      What kind of society do our so-called “Western and networked democracies” count as normal if humans are constantly objectified, monitored and profiled?

    • China’s cyber-diplomacy

      China’s World Internet Conference is last week’s news, but the event will likely reverberate for years to come, as China seeks international support for its notion of a “multilateral” approach to the governance of global cyberspace.

      The piece that follows is one of the most informative I have read so far on the so-called “Wuzhen Summit,” attended this year by President Xi Jinping. Published in The Initium, a Hong Kong start-up that has done some very good reporting on China over the past six months, the piece is written by Fang Kecheng (方可成), a former journalist at Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly newspaper.

    • The Advocates: Four Public Interest Lawyers To Know

      The Bay Area is home to several legal nonprofits focused on issue advocacy. We asked state and federal judges to identify the staff litigators they see as particularly effective advocates.

    • The Perfect Storm in Digital Law

      The final element in this perfect storm is differing cultural expectations about the role of digital laws. The United States, says the stereotype, sees Europe’s digital laws as anti-business, anti-free speech, and pro-regulation. The EU, in turn, sees the United States’ digital laws as anti-privacy, reckless, and dictated by corporate interests.

    • 2 fatally shot, 1 accidentally, by Chicago police on West Side; families demand answers

      Police responding to a call about a domestic disturbance shot and killed a 19-year-old engineering student and a 55-year-old mother of five, and authorities acknowledged late Saturday that the woman had been shot by accident.

      The families of both victims demanded answers after the deaths, which were the first fatal shootings by Chicago police officers since last month’s release of a 2014 video of Laquan McDonald’s death put a national spotlight on the city.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • There’s wi-fi in the middle of the only place in the U.S. where wi-fi is ‘outlawed’

      At the beginning of this year, the Washingtonian ran an incredible piece about “electrosensitives” who had moved to “the town without wi-fi.” These people believe all the signals crowding the air to power our telecommunications-dependent society are making them sick, so they fled to Green Bank, West Virginia, which exists in the US’s only federally-mandated “radio quiet zone.”

    • Facebook’s Fraudulent Campaign on Free Basics

      Facebook is back with its game of trying to pretend that its platform is a substitute for the Internet, particularly for the poor. The originally controversial Internet.org is now back, re-branded as Free Basics, with full page ads in major papers, hoardings and a completely misleading on-line campaign using Facebook itself.

      The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued a notice for public consultation on the issue. While TRAI has put on hold Facebook’s agreement with Reliance offering Free Basics for now, it has not stopped Facebook’s campaign.

    • 10 reasons that explain why you should oppose Facebook’s Free Basics campaign

      Free Basics violates a fundamental principle of the Internet.

  • DRM

    • Welcome to the Digital Dark Ages

      Historians and archivists call our times the “digital dark ages.” The name evokes the medieval period that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which led to a radical decline in the recorded history of the West for 1000 years. But don’t blame the Visigoths or the Vandals. The culprit is the ephemeral nature of digital recording devices. Remember all the stuff you stored on floppy discs, now lost forever? Over the last 25 years, we’ve seen big 8-inch floppies replaced by 5.25-inch medium replaced by little 3.5-inch floppies, Zip discs and CD-ROMs, external hard drives and now the Cloud — and let’s not forget memory sticks and also-rans like the DAT and Minidisc.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Netgear Shows Customers How to Share Pirate Movies

        Showing users how to send large video files is a task undertaken by dozens of software and hardware manufacturers but for the folks at Netgear the issue is now a controversial one. Want to send a pirate movie to a friend after downloading it from a torrent site? Netgear apparently has an app for that.

      • New Zealand court rules that Kim Dotcom can be extradited

        Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand-based German entrepreneur behind the Mega Upload file-sharing website, can be extradited to the US along with three associates, an Auckland court has ruled.

        Dotcom and his three associates are accused by the US authorities of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering. However, Dotcom claims that his file-sharing website was little different from many other file-sharing websites.

      • Kim Dotcom Challenges U.S. Govt. in Christmas Address

        The past several years have been a roller-coaster ride for Internet mogul Kim Dotcom. As he continues to fight an aggressive government determined to extradite him to the United States to face serious criminal charges, this Christmas Day the Megaupload founder recaps his case here on TorrentFreak.

12.25.15

Links 25/12/2015: SolydXK Linux Christmas Release, Wine 1.9

Posted in News Roundup at 5:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 49 Open Source Office Tools

    The good thing about open source office tools: you can use them to save major cost in office productivity. As you’ll see on the list below, some of these free office tools replace highly expensive commercial software. In some cases, a business could equip itself for thousands of dollars less.

    In many ways, the following list of open source office tools shows just how far open source has progressed in the last several years. And, always, if you have recommendations to add to this list, use the Comments section below. Happy downloading!

  • 5 things you should know about the plan to open source artificial intelligence

    Arguably, the open source movement — the idea that a group of technologists freely contributing their own work and commenting on the work of others, can create a final product that is comparable with anything that a commercial enterprise might create — has been one of the great innovation catalysts of the technology industry.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla 2016 Outlook: Promising Despite Funding, Competitive Woes

        For Mozilla, 2015 has been a year of large challenges, with a shift in funding sources and increasing competitive pressures across the desktop and mobile markets. The biggest challenges for Mozilla, however, are likely yet to come in 2016.

      • Exclusive: Mozilla working on a tablet a stickTV, an intelligent keyboard and a router

        We mentioned earlier that Mozilla’s Firefox os isn’t dead. Mozilla has some great plans for firefox os. These internal documents obtained by Hypertext shows the future of Mozilla Firefox preparing detailed OS beyond smartphones and include Panasonic TVs & these documents detail the new plans of Mozilla.

      • Adding Community-Driven Wayland Support to Servo

        It’s been some time since the last Servo article on the OSG blog, but this has no relation to the speed at which the browser engine’s development has been progressing.

        In the last post, the Offscreen Rendering (OSR) integration status was explored, culminating in both some code snippets as well as videos of an embedded browser application. That post can be considered the foundation for the recently-tweeted screenshot of Servo running with Wayland support.

      • The next 12 months will change Firefox’s add-on landscape fundamentally

        A lot is going on at Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox web browser. In the next 12 months, the organization plans to make fundamental changes to the Firefox web browser which affect core features of the browser including its add-on ecosystem.

      • Divergent News on FirefoxOS

        I said good-bye to my FirefoxOS phone because of Mozilla’s decision to stop the distribution of the devices.

      • Open letter to Mozilla: Bring back Persona

        It was on the news this mroing, Mozilla will stop developing FirefoxOS phones, and the top Hacker News comment really resonated with me. Sure, IoT is the future, and it would be great if we had more nifty stuff there (shameless IoT privacy plug), but these headlines make the bad taste that I’ve had in my mouth ever since Mozilla shuttered Persona stronger, and I can’t stay silent any more.

      • Temporary add-on loading coming to Firefox

        Andy McKay, Engineering Manager at Mozilla, announced yesterday on the official add-ons blog that Mozilla would implement temporary add-on loading in its Firefox web browser.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • A BSD Wish List for 2016

      First things first: I know that the wide number of variants in the BSD family are primarily aimed at servers. That said, it’s clearly understandable that with the exception of PC-BSD and BSD variants like GhostBSD, desktop/laptop users are not the primary focus in the BSD constellation. I get that, and regardless I am still using it for about 80 percent of my overall computing needs, and still using it on a daily basis on my go-to daily laptop.

    • FreeBSD and Linux servers

      Linux server distributions get compared all the time. And in the end, the discussion typically ends up around CentOS (from RHEL) and Ubuntu (from Debian). Why is this? When Rackspace discusses Linux server options, many more distributions are mentioned: Gentoo, Arch, Fedora, etc. Let’s focus on Gentoo and Arch.

    • The Most Popular BSD Stories Of 2015

      While we primarily focus on Linux operating system news and releases, I do enjoy watching the *BSD space and covering their major events. This year has saw some great updates for DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, and friends. Here’s a look at the most popular BSD news on Phoronix for 2015.

    • Problems with Systemd and Why I like BSD Init by Randy Westlund

      For my part, I’m not a fan of systemd but I also don’t think it’s the end of the world. I watched a great interview with Lennart on the Linux Action Showabout why he implemented it, and he had some good reasons. To write a daemon for Linux, you need to maintain a different init script for each distro because they all put things in different places. And sysVinit isn’t the best with dependencies. Developing things for the Linux desktop is not as easy as it could be, due in large part to the fragmentation.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Intel PKU Instruction Support Lands In GCC

      Just a few days ago I was writing about LLVM working on PKU memory protection keys. It seems now GCC has support for Intel’s PKU instructions.

      PKU Memory Protection Keys are going to be a feature of future Intel CPUs as explained in the aforelinked article and with them come new PDPKRU and WRPKRU instructions. With this commit today to the mainline GNU Compiler Collection, it appears GCC has now support for these new PKU instructions.

    • What are the best plugins to increase productivity on Emacs

      Over a year ago now, I went looking for the best plugins to turn Vim into a full-fledged IDE. Interestingly, a lot of the comments on that post were about how Emacs already has most of these plugins built in, and was already a great IDE. Although I can only agree about Emacs’ incredible versatility, it is still not the ultimate editor when it comes out of the box. Thankfully, its vast plugin library is here to fix that. But among the plethora of options available to you, it is sometimes hard to know where to start. So for now, let me try to assemble a short list of the indispensable plugins to increase your productivity while using Emacs. Although I am heavily geared towards programming related productivity, most of these plugins would be useful to anyone for any usage.

    • The New GNU News Of 2015

  • Public Services/Government

    • Grenoble commits to free software

      Grenoble, France’s 16th largest city, is committed to the use of free software. This type of ICT solutions facilitaties the sharing of knowledge, empowers citizens and institutions and helps to cut costs, the city said in a statement. The city also sees free software as one of the tools to increase citizen participation.

    • Infrabel seeking support for range of open source solutions

      Infrabel, Belgium’s government-owned railway network management company, is requesting services and support for two enterprise Linux systems, Red Hat and Suse. Infrabel also seeks support many other open source solution, including network monitoring tools Logstash, Zabbix and Rsyslog, and Java applicatieserver Jboss (renamed WildFly).

    • Open source engine for Portugal’s online gazette

      Portugal’s online government gazette, Diário da República Eletrónico (DRE), runs on open source components, including enterprise content management system Liferay and Java application server Jboss (renamed WildFly). INCM, the country’s printing office and mint, is looking for IT services for these and other IT solutions. The two-year contract is estimated to be worth EUR 550,000.

    • Grenoble Set FREE

  • Programming

    • How GitHub is building a platform and supporting open source (podcast)

      We caught up with her recently to talk about how GitHub has evolved into a platform (and what it means to be a platform), how the company figures out which new features and products to build, and the role of open source software in stimulating innovation.

    • Perl 6 Is Ready For Release

      Perl 6 was unveiled back in October with plans to officially ship the Perl 6.0 for Christmas. Larry Wall and those involved in Perl 6 development have managed to deliver.

    • What’s new in Ruby 2.3?

      Ruby 2.3.0 will be released this Christmas, and the first preview release was made available a few weeks ago. I’ve been playing around with it and looking at what new features have been introduced.

    • Ruby 2.3 Released With New Language Features

      Ruby 2.3 features a frozen string literal pragma, a safe navigation operator, and more.

Leftovers

  • How to praise IT? Evangelize it

    For a lot of people within IT who’ve been at it for a while, it becomes very easy to continue doing your job and then at the end of a project move on to the next thing. Praise for success and hard work is a way to pause and assess what you’ve accomplished.

  • Science

    • Best of Opensource.com: Science

      This year has been another great one for open science. At Opensource.com we published several great stories about open science projects that are changing the way we research, collaborate, and solve problems.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security updates
    • MMD-0047-2015 – SSHV: SSH bruter ELF botnet malware w/hidden process kernel module
    • Another “critical” “VPN” “vulnerability” and why Port Fail is bullshit

      The morning of November 26 brought me interesting news: guys from Perfect Privacy disclosed the Port Fail vulnerability, which can lead to an IP address leak for clients of VPN services with a “port forwarding” feature. I was indignant about their use of the word “vulnerability”. It’s not a vulnerability, just a routing feature: Traffic to VPN server always goes via ISP, outside of VPN tunnel. Pretty obvious thing, I thought, which should be known by any network administrator. Besides that, the note is technically correct, so nothing to worry about. But then the headlines came, and shit hit the fan.

    • Cracking Linux with the backspace key?

      The source of these reports is a mildly hype-ridden disclosure of a vulnerability in the GRUB2 bootloader by Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll. It seems that hitting the backspace character at the GRUB2 username prompt enough times will trigger an integer underflow, allowing a bypass of GRUB2′s authentication stage. According to the authors, this vulnerability, exploitable for denial-of-service, information-disclosure, and code-execution attacks, “results in an incalculable number of affected devices.” It is indeed a serious vulnerability in some settings and it needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, some of the most severely affected systems may also be the hardest to patch. But language like the above leads reporters to write that any Linux system can be broken into using the backspace key, which stretches the truth somewhat.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Yemen: 1 More Reason to Re-evaluate Toxic US-Saudi Alliance

      After almost a year of civil war, the conflicting forces in Yemen sat down on Dec. 15 in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss the prospect of finding a political solution to the conflict that has been raging since March 2015. While this is a necessary step towards ending the violence that has killed thousands, crippled infrastructure had led to a critical humanitarian crisis, so the peace talks should include a mechanism for rebuilding this impoverished nation. Saudi Arabia, which is responsible for most of the destruction with its relentless bombings, should be forced to pay for the terrible damage it has wrought. So should the United States.

    • When Terrorism becomes Counter-terrorism: The State Sponsors of Terrorism are “Going After the Terrorists”

      And now in an unusual about turn, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has configured a coalition of 34 mainly Muslim countries “to go after the Islamic state”. In a bitter irony, the key protagonists of this counterterrorism initiative endorsed by the “international community” are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, i.e. countries which have relentlessly supported “Islamic terrorism” from the very outset in close liaison with Washington. In the words of Hillary Clinton in her declassified Emails: “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

      Counter terrorism by the state sponsors of terrorism? A New Normal? The propaganda campaign appears to have reached an impasse.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • It’s time for the private sector to buy in to the COP21

      THE 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) concluded on December 12 with the European Union and 195 countries agreeing on limiting greenhouse gas emissions to a point where the global temperature rise is capped at less than 2° C. The agreement has a strong basis in the principles of shared responsibility and transparency as well as collective oversight in the form of periodic assessments. This has finally brought the world’s governments (including those of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) together and has steered them in a clear direction for making a positive impact in the arena of climate change. But as vital as this development has been, government action cannot fix the problem alone. The private sector is a key participant in this endeavour: it is bigger, more agile, and more influential than any government, or even group of governments, could ever be.

    • To slow climate change, you have to start here

      The phrase “climate change” often summons images of exhaust-spewing trucks and coal plants blackening the skies.

      [...]

      But even people who’ll never visit the region should fear Indonesia’s flaming jungles. When the forest fires rage hardest, they can spew out more emissions per day than the entire US economy, according to the pro-conservation World Resources Institute.

      The fires briefly turned Indonesia — a largely impoverished, Muslim-majority archipelago — into the world’s worst polluter. During particularly smoky spells in September in October, Indonesia daily churned out more greenhouse gases than even China or the US.

      When Indonesia’s fires are tamed, the country is usually pegged as the sixth-worst offender, behind China, the United States, the European Union countries (which are counted as one bloc), India and Russia.

  • Privacy

    • Marc Andreessen: ‘In 20 years, every physical item will have a chip implanted in it’

      The hype around the Internet of Things has been rising steadily over the past five years. In tech analyst Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report in 2015, the IoT is at the peak of “inflated expectations”, particularly for areas like the smart home, which involve controlling your lights, thermostat or TV using your mobile phone.

      But the era of sensors has only just dawned, according to renowned technology investor and internet pioneer Marc Andreessen. In 10 years, he predicts mobile phones themselves could disappear.

    • Australian government tells citizens to turn off two-factor authentication

      The Australian government has repeatedly called for citizens to turn off two-factor authentication (2FA) at its main digital government portal, myGov. The portal’s Twitter account has recently been updated several times with cute pictures encouraging holidaymakers to “turn off your myGov security codes” so that “you can spend more time doing the important things.”

      The portal is the place where Australian citizens can use and manage a number of governmental services, including health insurance, tax payments, and child support. In case of myGov, two-factor authentication is implemented by sending users text messages that contain one-time codes to complement their usual passwords.

    • NSA Helped British Spies Find Security Holes In Juniper Firewalls

      A TOP-SECRET document dated February 2011 reveals that British spy agency GCHQ, with the knowledge and apparent cooperation of the NSA, acquired the capability to covertly exploit security vulnerabilities in 13 different models of firewalls made by Juniper Networks, a leading provider of networking and Internet security gear.

      The six-page document, titled “Assessment of Intelligence Opportunity – Juniper,” raises questions about whether the intelligence agencies were responsible for or culpable in the creation of security holes disclosed by Juniper last week. While it does not establish a certain link between GCHQ, NSA, and the Juniper hacks, it does make clear that, like the unidentified parties behind those hacks, the agencies found ways to penetrate the “NetScreen” line of security products, which help companies create online firewalls and virtual private networks, or VPNs. It further indicates that, also like the hackers, GCHQ’s capabilities clustered around an operating system called “ScreenOS,” which powers only a subset of products sold by Juniper, including the NetScreen line. Juniper’s other products, which include high-volume Internet routers, run a different operating system called JUNOS.

    • User Data Portability and Privacy – Comment on Recent News

      Anyway, I am happy that KDE signed the User Data Manifesto 2.0 a few months ago. Why wait for official legislation when we can do the right thing right now?

    • Resuming GPG

      Quite possibly Moxie Marlinspike is right, but for non-casual communications this can still be useful.

    • State considered harmful – A proposal for a stateless laptop (new paper)

      Two months ago I have published a detailed survey of various security-related problems plaguing the Intel x86 platforms. While the picture painted in the paper was rather depressing, I also promised to release a 2nd paper discussing — what I believe to be — a reasonably simple and practical solution addressing most of the issues discussed in the 1st paper. Today I’m releasing this 2nd paper.

      I think it is the first technical paper I’ve written which is not backed by a working proof-of-concept. Incidentally, it might also be one of the most important ones I have authored or co-authored.

  • Civil Rights

    • Media Reform Committee Considers a Crackdown on Online Media Using Article 44

      A junta appointed media reform committee is considering a new measure to control online media that incites “social unrest.”

      Pol.Maj.Gen Pisit Pao-in, the former commander of the Technology Crime Suppression Division who now oversees the government’s ‘reform’ of online media, said on Dec. 24 that he would ask to use the power of Article 44 to crack down on online media, including content deemed to be affecting national security and/or defaming the monarchy.

      Article 44 of the interim constitution grants junta chairman Prayuth Chan-ocha a power to enact any laws or take action to protect “national interests” and “national security.”

      After the talk between the media reform committee and police today, Pisit said representatives from Google are scheduled to meet the committee for a discussion on Jan. 14 and again on Jan. 21. According to the officer, these meetings will be followed by further meetings with representatives from Facebook and the messaging app, LINE, at as yet unspecified dates.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Why No to Free Basics by Facebook!

      There are other successful models (this,this,this) for providing free Internet access to people, without giving a competitive advantage to Facebook. Free Basics is the worst of our options.

      Facebook doesn’t pay for Free Basics, telecom operators do. Where do they make money from? From users who pay. By encouraging people to choose Free Basics, Facebook reduces the propensity to bring down data costs for paid Internet access.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Pirate Bay co-founder builds device that costs the music industry $10,000,000 a day

        Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has created a device that he believes is costing the music industry $10 million a day, reports TorrentFreak.

        The ‘Kopimashin’, seen in the video below makes 100 copies of the Gnarls Barkley song ‘Crazy’ and sends them all to /dev/null – a technical term meaning the files are deleted as soon as they are saved.

      • Pirate Bay Founder Builds The Ultimate Piracy Machine

        Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde served his prison sentence last year but still owes the entertainment industries millions in damages. Some might think that he’s learned his lesson, but with a newly built copying machine he’s generating millions of extra ‘damages,’ which might be worth a mention in the Guinness Book of Records.

12.24.15

Links 24/12/2015: Manjaro Linux 15.12, Black Lab 7.0.2

Posted in News Roundup at 6:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why All The ‘Open Source’ Innovation?

    Open source software is nothing new. The roots go back to the 1980s from a global community of programmers who created free software. But the movement got a huge boost in the 1990s because of the Internet. If anything, this rapidly growing open-source community essentially became one of the first social networks.

    But there was always skepticism. After all, how can you really trust open source software? Was it really good for enterprise-level applications?

    Well, it seems that such arguments are quickly fading away, especially as seen with the success of standout companies like RedHat. But even the mega Internet operators like Facebook and Google have been major players.

  • OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams – nice free software

    A few days I came across the OpenALPR project, a free software project to automatically discover and report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the “car numbers” in a machine readable format. I’ve been looking for such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the automatic number plate recognition tool only is available in the hands of the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I discovered the developer wanted to get the tool into Debian, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian archive.

  • Why the open source debate around MBaaS is missing the point

    There has been lots of discussion around mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) and the merits of open source vs. proprietary options in this space. Arguments on either side of the fence are largely unchanged from when the same debate raged over a decade ago, across anything from operating systems – Linux vs. Windows vs. (Open) Solaris – to productivity software – Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice. Take the debate to the cloud, give it a mobile spin, update your FUD and you’re all caught up to what’s happening in the world of MBaaS.

  • What’s New in 3D Printing, Part I: Introduction

    One of the things that has interested me most as I’ve followed the 3D printing industry is just how similar it is to the story of Linux distributions. In my articles from three years ago, I discussed all of the open-source underpinnings that have built the hobbyist 3D printing movement, starting with the RepRap 3D printer—an open-source 3D printer designed to be able to build as many of its parts as possible. Basically every other 3D printer you see today can trace its roots back to the RepRap line. Now that commercial interests have taken the lead in the hobby though, it is no longer a given that you will be able to download the hardware plans for your 3D printer to make improvements, even though most of those printers got their initial designs from RepRaps. That said, you still can find popular 3D printers that value their open-source roots, and in my follow-up article on hardware, I will highlight popular 3D printers and point out which ones still rely on open hardware and open-source software.

  • Events

    • Going to FOSDEM

      It has become almost tradition for me, so yes, I’m attending FOSDEM 2016. It’s probably the best conference in Europe to meet other free software guys and that was always motivation for me to come – to see people I meet on mailing lists for rest of the year.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU MDK 1.2.9 release

      This release fixes documentation bugs (thanks to Joshua Davies) and adds support for the MIX instructions SLB,SRB,JAE,JAO,JXE,JXO (implemented by Sergey Litvin).

    • GNUnet e.V. Assembly 2015

      The p≡p foundation would like us to enter into an agreement. Their initial draft proposal (nothing final) is below (in DE and EN). Matthias and Christian can give some background on their motivations at the meeting. The goal of the discussion will be to get some feedback from the members and a mandate for the Vorstand in terms of the direction for how to proceed.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Programming

    • 5 favorite open source Django packages

      Django is built around the concept of reusable apps: self-contained packages that provide re-usable features. You can build your site by composing these reusable apps, together with your own site-specific code. There’s a rich and varied ecosystem of reusable apps available for your use—PyPI lists more than 8,000 Django apps—but how do you know which ones are best?

Leftovers

  • Science

    • EU referendum: Leading UK scientists warn against consequences of Brexit

      Britain would face an exodus of the best international scientific talent and lose millions of pounds in research funding if voters decided to pull out of the European Union, some of the country’s most eminent scientists have warned. Leaders from across scientific disciplines have told MPs that leaving the EU would relegate the UK to a bit player in worldwide research.

    • Scientists find 1500-year-old Viking settlement beneath new airport site

      When Norway announced plans to expand its Ørland Airport this year, archaeologists got excited. They knew that pre-construction excavation was likely to reveal ancient Viking artifacts. But they got far more than they had hoped.

      Ørland Airport is located in a region of Norway that changed dramatically after the last ice age ended. The area was once completely covered by a thick, heavy layer of ice whose weight caused the Earth’s crust to sink below sea level. When the glaciers melted, much of this region remained underwater, creating a secluded bay where today there is nothing but dry land. At the fringes of this vanished bay, archaeologists with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Museum found the remains of what appears to have been a large, wealthy farming community.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Weirdly, Trump Is as Blased About Russia Killing Journalists as He Is About US Killing Journalists

      But there are killings of journalists by the US that aren’t counted in these tallies. In 2006, CPJ put out a list of 15 media workers killed by US forces in Iraq. The Pentagon dismissed these deaths as regrettable accidents, but there’s suspicion in at least some of these cases that reporters were targeted by the US military for doing their jobs. Regarding lethal airstrikes against Al Jazeera‘s Baghdad offices and a deadly military assault on journalists in the city’s Palestine Hotel, for example, Reporters Without Borders declared (4/8/03), “We can only conclude that the US Army deliberately and without warning targeted journalists.” (See “Is Killing Part of Pentagon Press Policy?” FAIR Press Release, 4/10/03.)

      Sometimes attacks on journalists by US forces are openly acknowledged. During the Kosovo War, the US military targeted and destroyed the offices of Radio/Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers. CPJ refused to include these casualties in its annual list of attacks on the press, saying that RTS fell “outside our extremely broad definition of journalism.”

      [...]

      Page rightly scorns “Putin’s casually dismissive attitude toward murdered journalists.” But how much has Page–as he discloses, a board member of CPJ–spoken out about CPJ’s dismissal of media workers deliberately killed by his own government? It’s easy to get outraged by the crimes of official enemies, and to forget or to justify the crimes of the state you identify with. What really sets Trump apart is that he seems lackadaisical about both types of crimes.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • What you need to know about Indonesian fires that are affecting global climate change

      Raging fires in Indonesia’s forests and peat lands since July this year are precipitating a climate and public-health catastrophe with repercussions across local, regional and global levels, said experts.

      Acrid smoke and haze have enveloped Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, and have reached Thailand, choking people, reducing visibility and spiking respiratory illnesses, according to Susan Minnemeyer, Mapping and Data Manager for Washington-based World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Global Forest Watch Fires initiative.

    • RSPO to publish members’ plantation maps in wake of Indonesia’s forest fires

      The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) will publish maps of all its members’ palm oil plantations – with the exception of Malaysia – in the hope closer monitoring will prevent forest fires and peat land destruction. But is this enough?

      The announcement comes as forest fires continue to burn across large swathes of Indonesia’s forests and peat lands, although the arrival of monsoon rains which have dampened fires in some hot spots.

      Except under exceptional circumstances, the RSPO operates a no-fire policy on its members’ plantations, and monitors compliance with this policy by studying data provided by the Global Forest Watch (GFW). But because there is no single up-to-date database of palm oil plantations, the data is not 100% accurate.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Donald and the Decider

      Almost six months have passed since Donald Trump overtook Jeb Bush in polls of Republican voters. At the time, most pundits dismissed the Trump phenomenon as a blip, predicting that voters would soon return to more conventional candidates. Instead, however, his lead just kept widening. Even more striking, the triumvirate of trash-talk — Mr. Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz — now commands the support of roughly 60 percent of the primary electorate.

  • Censorship

    • New HTTP error code 451 to signal censorship

      After a three-year campaign, the IETF has cleared the way for a new HTTP status code to reflect online censorship.

      The new code – 451 – is in honor of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451 in which books are banned and any found are burned.

    • Should ISPs filter the Internet for their customers?

      The topic of Internet censoring … excuse me … filtering is certainly a controversial one. Some countries are taking a very active role in forcing ISPs to filter the Internet. But does this help or hurt their customers? A writer at Ghacks recently took a look at this divisive and very important issue.

    • Internet Service Providers should not filter the Internet

      I’m following the UK’s fight against porn on the Internet with fascination as it highlights how ideologists use something that everyone can agree on (protect children) to censor the Internet.

  • Privacy

    • 7 Insane Problems We’ll Have To Deal With In The Future

      As we remind you all the time, the future ain’t what it used to be. We have no jetpacks or robot butlers, and we’ve still not upgraded from Land Wars to Star Wars. The dreamers fell short … but it turns out that some of the pessimists came pretty close to the mark. In the same way that no one in the ’50s thought “millions of strangers across the world accidentally saw your dick” could ever become a realistic problem, our near-future will be filled with annoyances that sound completely ridiculous to us now.

      [...]

      Any denizen of the digital generation knows that anything you say on the Internet can and will be used against you, especially if it’s embarrassing fan fiction. However, that’s a logical extension of using written material as evidence, as we’ve done for centuries. The newest way to incriminate yourself online has far less precedent: the data collected from wearable technology, such as the Fitbit.

    • Young Danes ‘ditching Facebook for real world’

      The survey commissioned by state broadcaster DR found that 20 percent of respondents said that they use social media once or less per month.

      Of these, 70 per cent said that they had made a conscious choice to avoid logging on to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and other such sites and apps.

      People polled said a major reason for staying away from social media was a belief that spending too much time online led to missing out on ‘real life’.

    • Drop Facebook and be happy: Danish study

      The Copenhagen-based Happiness Research Institute has a simple formula for increasing your happiness, social activity and concentration, but it might not be something you’re willing to do.

    • We Talked About Refrigerators with Vint Cerf, Father of the Internet

      The internet was once described by International Telecommunications Union secretary general Dr. Pekka Tarjanne as “a haven for pornographers, terrorists and hackers.”

      That was in 1995. Some things, it seems, never change.

      In fact, a scan of tech headlines today is like a time-warp into yesteryear. Encryption? Debates on limiting such protections were rife in the 1990s, and we’re still fighting about it today. Censorship? Foreign governments were trying to stifle the internet’s rising tide, even in its earliest days, and such attempts haven’t gone away. AOL may not be much of an ISP these days, but we’re still trying to get America online.

  • Civil Rights

    • Internet Freedom Is Actively Dissolving in America

      It’s the end of 2015, and one fact about the internet is quickly becoming clear this year: Americans’ freedom to access the open internet is rapidly dissolving.

      Broadband access is declining, data caps are becoming commonplace, surveillance is increasing, and encryption is under attack.

      This is not merely my opinion. The evidence is everywhere; the walls are closing in from all sides. The net neutrality victory of early this year has rapidly been tempered by the fact that net neutrality doesn’t matter if you don’t have solid access to said ‘net.

      A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this week showed that at-home broadband adoption has actually decreased over the last two years, from 70 percent of people to 67 percent of people. Among black Americans, that number has dropped from 62 percent to 54 percent; among rural residents, the number has dropped from 60 percent to 55 percent.

    • DoJ forced Google to turn over Jacob Appelbaum’s email, then gagged Google

      Google’s lawyers fought strenuously against the DoJ’s demands for access to the Gmail account of Jacob Appelbaum, a journalist, activist and volunteer with the Wikileaks project; they fought even harder against the accompanying gag order, arguing that Appelbaum had the right to know what was going on and have a lawyer argue his case.

      In both cases, a Federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled against the company, allowing the government to read Appelbaum’s email in secret.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Facebook “Free Basics” Curtailed in India Over Net Neutrality Dispute

      The controversial program allows mobile customers free access to a limited set of Internet services, including certain online shopping, employment and health sites, Wikipedia and, naturally, Facebook itself. While Facebook has said the program offers limited Internet access to more than 1 billion people, those who might otherwise have none, it’s come under fire from net neutrality activists and others in the industry who say it limits users to a walled garden populated solely by Facebook’s partners.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Judge’s Opinion On Kim Dotcom Shows An Unfortunate Willingness To Ignore Context

        Last night, we posted the news that a judge in New Zealand had ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues were extraditable. Dotcom is appealing the decision, so it’s not over yet. Soon after the decision was announced, the full ruling by Judge Nevin Dawson was released. It’s a staggering 271 pages, and I’ve spent a good chunk of today reading it over. Some parts of it are more compelling than others, and there may even be enough to support the ruling. However, what troubles me is how frequently Judge Dawson appears to totally, without question, accept the US government’s arguments (as relayed by New Zealand prosecutors), despite the fact that many of them are clearly misleading at best, or downright incorrect.

      • Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload heyday is ancient history for the music industry

        You might expect champagne corks to be popping within major music labels at the news that a New Zealand court has ruled Kim Dotcom can be extradited to the US to face charges of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering.

        In his heyday at cloud storage service Megaupload, Dotcom became a cartoon villain for music rightsholders – and their compatriots in the film, games and software industries – as they saw the company as a haven for illegal filesharing. Yet that heyday is ancient history for a music industry that has been going through an intense period of digital disruption in recent years. Dotcom was arrested and his site shut down nearly four years ago, in January 2012.

      • The Big Read: What next for Kim Dotcom?

        Finally, a decision, but don’t expect Kim Dotcom to be going anywhere fast.

        In an interview just before the extradition decision, Dotcom says no matter the outcome he is determined to live in New Zealand.

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