01.04.15
Posted in News Roundup at 3:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
Desktop
-
“The Acer Chromebook 15 is a true powerhouse, it provides fast mobile performance and a large display to help customers accomplish more every day,” said Jerry Kao, president of Acer Notebook Business Group in a statement. “Acer has been a leader in the Chromebook market, from providing the latest in technology and trailblazing battery life to designing new form factors. We’re driving the category forward again with the world’s first 15.6-inch display Chromebook, the Acer Chromebook 15.”
-
It’s got enough computing power, graphics power and memory to be useful for all the kinds of tasks folks use a smartphone or tablet but it’s definitely a desktop-PC form factor. It has the instant supply of Android apps and the usability of a GNU/Linux desktop all in one package.
-
Kernel Space
-
Graphics Stack
-
There hasn’t been much to report on in months for the OpenChrome DRM driver as there simply hasn’t been any new public patches to comment on. While it sort of looked like this VIA DRM Linux driver was dead, it seems work is possibly getting resurrected on this open-source driver.
-
Applications
-
-
Plex Media Server, a software that makes it easy for everyone to play movies and TV shows on the computer, has received quite a few fixes and it should be available for download.
-
Calibre is an application that can be used as an eBook reader, converter, and editor. Its maker is not wasting any time and has release a new update for it, making some important improvements for the book-editing function.
-
Proprietary
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
The latest Steam Hardware Survey for December has been published and it confirms the rising trend of the Linux platform. It’s not something out of the ordinary, but it’s slowly moving in the right direction.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
Given that the KF5 based Kate works OK on Windows, I would like to get the Mac version up and running, too.
As virtualization of MacOS X is kind of “forbidden” and not that nicely usable anyway, as no nice accelerating drivers are available for the standard vm solutions, I just went out into the world and bought some Retina MacBook.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
GNOME’s GTK+ tool-kit saw numerous improvements over the course of 2014 that led it to having a higher development activity rate than the preceding few years.
-
-
North Korea Linux 3.0 is the best and latest from the state of North Korea. The ISO images of this elusive operating system have been made available and everyone can get to test it. Knowing Korean is a plus, but you can get the idea even without it.
-
Screenshots
-
Debian Family
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
We have yet to see any actual Ubuntu phones in the wild, but more rumors are popping up all over the place. This time it’s about the impending launch of the upcoming Meizu M1 Note with an Ubuntu system.
-
Japan is the leader in the industry of humanoid robotics, although other countries have made significant progress. One of the best and easily recognizable humanoid robots that comes from Japan is Honda’s Asimo and it looks like the engineers are using Ubuntu for some of their tasks.
-
It’s the same old thing. An operating system gains reasonable popularity and it becomes godlike. It must not be criticized or the critic is declared mentally incompetent. That’s just wrong. If users become dependent on an OS and the developers of the OS go off on some tangent the users don’t like, that’s the developers’ problem, not the users. I long ago dropped Ubuntu because it didn’t work for me, breaking configurations with updates. I once had all my terminal servers drop out because the display manager would not run. My configurations were ignored. I went to Debian where users get much more respect. The policy that one package should not mess with the configuration of another protects users’ investments in their systems. Ubuntu thought it was fine that ~100 seats should be disabled when I installed a new set of icons, for Pity’s sake. For that, they overruled /etc/gdm.conf…
-
Flavours and Variants
-
elementary OS is a very beautiful system that doesn’t really need any enhancements, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any important themes out there for it. The Yellowstone GTK theme is built specifically for it and you can guess where this is going.
-
-
Phones
-
Android
-
Android-x86 is a port of the Android operating system for the x86 platform. The developers have just released a new update for it and version 4.4-r2 is now out and ready for download.
-
To get the New Year started, we’ve put together our regular pick of the Top 10 Android Wear apps from the past month. These could be good choices for your new smartwatch, or just something to get your brain moving before you have to go back to work. A lot of these new apps this month are watch faces, after all that’s what the latest Android Wear update to Android 5.0 was all about, and there are some great new additions available. As well as watch faces, apps many of us use on a daily basis have been upgraded with great Android Wear support and it’s a good time to be an Android Wear user.
-
Just as Flappy Bird signalled the lopsided nature of the software market during the early months of 2014, its arrival on your Android Wear powered smartwatch points to the strengths of Google’s approach to wearables, and how it will contrast with Apple’s strategy.
[...]
Google’s vision of Android Wear is relatively clear. It is a second screen to your main Android device (be it a smartphone, phablet, or ultraportable), it will give you rich notifications you can act on from your wrist, and it will present you with relevant and timely information.
-
Customers in 2014 who bought a Samsung smartphone are more satisfied than those who purchased an Apple device, according to a new report from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.
-
As we briefly mentioned a little earlier, Xiaomi has just officially rounded-off its latest round of fundraising, where the company generated $1.1 billion with of additional investment. This gives Xiaomi a valuation worth $46 billion, matching original estimates and making the Chinese manufacturer the most valuable technology startup around.
-
Yes, I am sober. Please let me explain. A man from Sunderland in northern England stole an Android tablet from a charity store, according to court documents. Christopher Hooson apparently saw it in the window of the Jonny Kennedy store in Whitley Bay and thought: “I’ll have that.”
There was one small problem. When he brought it home he didn’t know how to get it to work. It’s unclear why this was so. What is clearer is that, eight days later, Hooson took it back to the charity store and showed his deep good-heartedness. He tried to donate the tablet back to the store.
This move was unwise. Even charity stores have CCTV. And so Hooson, age 33, ended up in court to defend himself.
-
Several weeks ago Sony Pictures was hacked by a group that claimed to have done so that The Interview would not be released. Once it was clear that the film WAS still going to be released as normal, they issued further threat that anyone who saw the film would be in danger of physical attack. Most recently there’s been a hack embedded within a torrent – that’s an illegal download, in this case, and it’s hitting Android users in South Korea specifically.
-
Nokia, what’s left of it that is, surprised everyone by announcing an Android-powered Nokia N1 tablet back in November. Why was this surprising? Well, I believe you all know by now that Nokia’s Devices and Services department was acquired by Microsoft, which left this Finnish company in ruins basically. The vast majority of the company is now Microsoft-owned, but what’s left of it is trying to make their mark out in the market. Nokia is technically not allowed to manufacture devices until 2016, as per their contract with Microsoft, but they found a way to avoid that rule. Nokia N1 wasn’t manufactured by Nokia, Foxconn did that for them.
-
Android handset makers launched a wide variety of smartphones last year and a surprising number of flagship devices managed to stand out of the crowd. But one handset in particular really stood out from the pack because it literally came out of nowhere to generate buzz that was unprecedented for a small, unestablished company.
-
Taking a look back at the week’s news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit highlights a number of stories including the Galaxy S5 vs the Galaxy Note 4, the Note 4 LTE, Xiamoi’s 2015 strategy and financials, where is the profit in Android and can Samsung find it, is the Moto G the smartphone of the year, and is Android 2.3 Gingerbread a good OS in 2015?
-
Web Browsers
-
Mozilla
-
Sometimes when you are looking for an answer to one thing, you end up finding something else rather surprising. Case in point, Google’s statement that Mozilla Thunderbird is less secure, but why do they say that? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a confused reader’s question.
-
Programming
-
It’s been a while since I’ve last tried out the Git code for the next-generation PHP (phpng) that’s going to be known as PHP 7.0 when released likely later this year.
The next major release of PHP is to be called PHP7 in order to avoid confusion with the now-defunct PHP6 unicode initiative. PHP 7.0 is likely to be released by the end of 2015 per the PHP7 timeline. If the release candidates begin on time starting in June, we could be looking at the official PHP 7.0 release around October of this year. However, it’s largely dependent upon the state of affairs at that point with the quality of the code.
-
Science
-
Our solar system is littered with billions of pieces of debris, from the size of large boulders to objects hundreds of miles across. We know that from time to time these hit Earth. A Russian scientist has calculated that a mountain-sized asteroid — which crosses paths with the Earth every three years — could one day hit us with an explosion 1,000 times greater than the surprise 2013 impact of a bus-sized meteor in Russia.
This is not the only doomsday scenario faced by our planet. Humanity may have already created its nemesis, according to Prof. Stephen Hawking. The Cambridge University physicist claimed that new developments in the field of artificial intelligence mean that, within a few decades, computers thousands of times more powerful than in existence today may decide to usurp their creators and end humanity’s 100,000-year dominance of Earth.
-
Health/Nutrition
-
To the thump of dance music, four tigers roll over in succession, and then raise themselves up on to their haunches. A man in a shiny blue shirt waves a metal stick at them, and they lift their front paws to beg.
-
Security
-
As the clock strikes midnight on the new year, so begins the countdown to a new round of security threats and breaches that doubtless will unfold in 2015. But this year will be a little different. In the past, when we’ve talked about threat predictions, we’ve focused either on the criminal hackers out to steal credit card data and banking passwords or on the activist hackers out for the lulz (and maybe to teach corporate victims a lesson).
But these days, no threat predictions are complete if they don’t address the looming threats posed by nation-state attacks, like the ones exposed by Edward Snowden. It’s been said repeatedly that when a spy agency like the NSA undermines a system to gain access for its own use, it makes that system more vulnerable to attack by others. So we begin this list with that in mind.
-
If only the internet had its own version of Lost in Space’s robot to herald every lurking hazard or menace with an unequivocal warning. Unfortunately Robot B-9 isn’t available. So in his absence we’ve compiled a list of candidates we consider to be this year’s most dangerous. We’ve taken a broad view of danger, though—it’s not just about who is potentially a danger to public safety, but also about entities who might be considered a danger simply because they rock the status quo.
-
As you turn the last page of Kim Zetter’s new book about the worm and virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program, don’t be surprised if you find yourself starting to mull over a career change.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
Heading into the last quarter of his presidency, Barack Obama must decide whether he will let the neocons keep pulling his strings or finally break loose and pursue a realistic foreign policy seeking practical solutions to world problems, including the crisis with Russia over Ukraine, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
-
The Russian Government’s Tass ‘news’ agency is alleging that “The US private military company Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) … has confirmed to the Kiev authorities its readiness to start training an experimental battalion of 550 men as of January at the request of Ukraine’s General Staff,” according to an unnamed source, which source is probably one of the few remaining anti-nazi bureaucrats still remaining in the Ukrainian Government. The reported price of this Blackwater (a.k.a. “Xe,” a.k.a. “Academi”) training contract is $3.5 million.
-
The latest documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that US drone strikes in Afghanistan weren’t limited to just al Qaeda and Taliban leaders — they also targeted drug dealers accused of supporting the insurgency.
The papers, obtained by German news magazine Der Spiegel, include a “kill list” that once contained as many as 750 names, including many mid- and lower-level members of the Taliban involved in drug trafficking.
-
In fact, it is all about domestic political and bureaucratic interests.
-
The German magazine Der Spiegel has published a revealing exposé about the loose standards by which the the Obama administration assassinated people, including many non-combatants, in Afghanistan. The December 28 story documented a quick-to-assassinate tendency which took the form of readiness to loosely classify anyone in the drug trade as a legitimate assassination target, as well as a readiness to accept large numbers of civilian casualties.
The Obama administration accelerated the 2008 decision by the Bush administration to extend the war on terror to the drug war. “In the opinion of American commanders like Bantz John Craddock,” Der Spiegel reported, “there was no need to prove that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban to declare farmers, couriers and dealers as legitimate targets of NATO strikes.” The result was that many people who made the assassination list — hundreds of people at any time — were often several layers removed from actual Taliban terrorists, and may even have been unaware they were financing the Taliban.
-
The failure to hold anyone accountable for torture derives from extraordinary post-9/11 legal theories that made the President all-powerful during “wartime” and established what amounted to martial law in the United States, a condition that continues to this day, writes retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce.
-
Quoted in an article by the Washington Post‘s Greg Miller on Tuesday, an unnamed former U.S. intelligence official described how the NCTC—citing the threat of Europeans who may have travelled to foreign battlefields, particularly in Syria and Iraq—is actively placing thousands of people into the database nearly constantly, sometimes with (and often without) the full knowledge of European governments or their intelligence agencies. According to the report, the database already contains more than 15,000 names.
-
Besides targeting top Taliban leaders, NATO forces in Afghanistan included low-ranking fighters and drug dealers on their list of “legitimate” targets, risking civilian lives in a wider airstrike campaign, Der Spiegel reported, citing Snowden archives.
-
Drawing information from top secret documents spirited away by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel reports that the “kill list” used by NATO forces in Afghanistan included low-ranking members of the Taliban along with drug dealers suspected of supporting them.
-
The reporting also explains how the wide net of those targeted for assassination covered those deemed to be narcotics traffickers.
-
-
A suspected U.S. drone strike killed at least nine suspected militants in Pakistan on Sunday, government and security officials told NBC News. Pakistani government and security officials said the drone fired two missiles and struck a militant compound in the Shawal valley of the restive region of North Waziristan.
-
At least six foreign militants are believed to have been killed in an American drone strike in the North Waziristan tribal region on Sunday morning, a Pakistani security official said.
The Pakistani official said a drone fired two missiles into a compound in the Dattakhel subdistrict at 6.40 a.m. The area is close to the border with Afghanistan and to Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan and the site of the region’s administrative headquarters.
-
Obama headed out to the beach to join his daughter Malia and friends at Bellows Air Force Station on a mostly sunny day. A dozen onlookers watched as the motorcade left the Kailua neighborhood, some holding signs that read “Drones Kill” and “Stop NSA Snooping.” A rainbow stretched over the mountains as the president made his way to the beach and its sparkling turquoise waters.
-
In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson was heckled this way. Anti-war activists targeted his Southeast Asian war they wanted ended.
Obama way outdid his predecessors. With two years left to go. Bombing 7 countries in 6 years. More on this below.
Plus subversion in unknown numbers of others. From its empire of bases. Its global embassies infested with CIA agents.
-
I’ve spent most of the past two days reading through the ~ 1,200 emailed or paper-mailed responses I’ve gotten, most from past or current military people and most supportive overall if differing in degree. Obviously I can’t quote from (or unfortunately even acknowledge) all of them, but I’ll excerpt some as feasible in coming days. Again, I’ll assume that I am free to quote from incoming messages unless specified otherwise, but I won’t use real names unless you say so in advance.
Today’s theme: business aspects of what I call the chickenhawk economy.
-
The U.S. Army has manufactured a bullet that can change direction mid-flight, according to a story reported in the Independent (U.K.).
-
The Sentinelese, a tiny island tribe in the Indian Ocean, have a tried-and-true foreign policy.
[...]
The Sentinelese have been derided as “savages” and “primitives” for failing to join the outside world. But their habit of killing intruders is nonetheless wise.
Modern history is filled with sad sagas of indigenous peoples eradicated or decimated by diseases borne by European visitors. As in 17th-century America, epidemics can rapidly depopulate the land and leave it vulnerable to takeover.
-
There was a disturbing revelation contained in recent a New York Times’ front-page report. President Obama has empowered the CIA by “allowing its director, not the White House, to make the final decisions about targeted drone strikes” on foreign soil. These strikes number in the hundreds from Afghanistan to Yemen to Somalia.
-
Major events and policies in 2014 which have had a profoundly negative effect on the prospects for peace and social justice are equally numerous.
(1) The US and EU installation of a puppet regime in the Western Ukraine (Kiev) and its conversion into an economic vassal state of the European Union and NATO outpost on Russia’s border is a major blow against democracy and boost to Ukrainian neo-fascist political leaders. The militarization of the Ukraine, as an adversary of Russia, threatens a global nuclear war.
-
Pakistan has problems with the way it has been depicted as a military-dominated, terrorist-infested hellhole in the American television drama Homeland and has reportedly conveyed its unhappiness to the show’s producers.
-
To illustrate his point, Diamond blames the coup against Chile’s democratically elected Salvador Allende partly on Allende’s refusal to compromise, making no mention of the CIA’s role in bringing dictator Augusto Pinochet to power.
-
Former CIA official claims that US drone strikes targeting the Taliban and other insurgent groups will continue despite the official end of NATO combat operations in Afghanistan.
-
The Syrian people have won two successive wars in four years. Yet the country does not yet know peace. Not only are Washington “liberal hawks” doing everything in their power to prolong the crisis, but they have devised a plan to prepare a third war. Thierry Meyssan reveals here how they intend to use to their advantage the peace conference planned to be held in Moscow in late January 2015.
-
Transparency Reporting
-
Christy Thornton speaks with Jesse Franzblau on the investigations by the National Security Archive (NSA) into the newly released documentation by Mexican authorities on the 2010 and 2011 migrant massacres.
-
Finance
-
Policy makers throughout the industrialized world generally assume that humankind can solve serious global problems by adopting better technologies and regulations—without questioning the viability of consumer-capitalist societies. This faith is mistaken. The big problems, particularly climate change, are so serious that they cannot be solved without unprecedented and extremely radical change, including abandoning the obsession with economic growth, market systems, and high living standards.
-
Next year, the Russian economy is projected to fall by around 4.5 percent if the average price of oil remains near $60 per barrel, according to the central bank.
-
Larry Wilkerson and Paul Jay discuss the “tactical strength and strategic weakness” of Putin in Ukraine and whether the West is trying to turn Russia into another “Greece”
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
If they really wanted to be freedom’s heroes, US filmgoers would be lining up at theaters that are showing the movie “Kill the Messenger,” an excellent drama based on a real story. It exposes how the CIA used its contacts and perhaps even paid agents who work inside the largest and supposedly “free and independent” corporate media organizations, to spread lies and destroy the reputation of Gary Webb, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who had exposed an incredibly cynical and criminal program by the CIA in the 1980s to facilitate the massive import into the US of cocaine from Latin America in order to raise money from the drug cartels which it used to fund arms for the Contra army fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
-
Balloons have been used before to take propaganda and other items into North Korea.
-
The 62-year-old actor stars as retired CIA agent Bryan Mills in the action franchise and admits fans have written to him saying they’re frightened of travelling abroad due to the storylines in which his wife and daughter are kidnapped.
-
Fox News and Mike Huckabee are finally parting ways as the now former host explores a second presidential run. After serving as the governor of Arkansas and losing a 2008 presidential primary bid, Huckabee was hired by the network. His media career was rife with controversial comments and outright falsehoods.
-
Mike Huckabee, who is parting ways with Fox News, has profited from renting his Fox-promoted MikeHuckabee.com email list to a wide range of shady characters, including a medical quack claiming Alzheimer’s disease cures; a for-sale stock pundit that was fired from Fox; a financial firm that was fined by the government for engaging in “deliberate fraud”; and a survival food company that profits off of readers’ fears of being “herded into FEMA camps.”
Huckabee has previously denied responsibility for his shady sponsored emails, telling Media Matters: “You are supposed to read the disclosure and the disclaimer that is a part of the messages. You know, we are simply the conduit to send messages, these are sponsored and I can’t always vouch for the veracity.”
-
The Interview is a dangerous movie. The first victim was Sony, which had electronic files hacked in an intrusion that revealed shocking details: like the fact that one of its executives wanted to cast a black actor as James Bond, and that many people at Sony can’t spell. But another more serious group of victims haven’t yet been mentioned: journalists who work in dangerous parts of the world.
The film, which was released over the Christmas holiday, depicts two goofy journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who score an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and who are recruited by the CIA to kill him. Rogen’s character, the producer of a television interview program, was supposedly educated at my alma mater, Columbia School of Journalism, but seemed to have no qualms about crossing what I recall was one of the most indelibly-inked lines of journalism ethics: don’t do the bidding of the CIA.
-
-
The way the news is covered by Fox in the US can seem incomprehensible to the rest of the world – not to mention many Americans.
-
In a healthy society governed by democratic principles and the rule of law, news media would be analogous to a powerful telescope, a roving, scrutinizing eye from which little or nothing can hide. Corrupt societies — ones that require the vast majority of the population to be passive, obedient, misinformed, ignorant, distracted and consumptive — require instead a media that acts as a kind of prism, a distorting lens that presents a perversion of reality.
The scale of this distortion varies greatly around the world, with some — mostly independent — media (sometimes lone journalists) laudably aiming to shine a torch as best they can on state and corporate power. At the other extreme, dictatorships like North Korea use state media to portray a false reality to help control their people, who nonetheless are surely aware that their freedoms are strictly limited.
Western corporate-owned media, however, is unique and quite remarkable in that while it depicts a reality as laughably false as that shown to the North Koreans, its readers/viewers — more accurately its consumers — are overwhelmingly unaware that they are being fed a pack of lies, that the picture given to them is — in key areas that concern corporate power and Western control of world resources — diametrically opposite to reality.
-
Censorship
-
-
The government wants a crackdown on violation of Official Secrets Act through leakage of sensitive information in the media but its own communication seeking to curb the practice has come out in public domain.
Aaj Tak has accessed a series of government notes highlighting concerns over the leakage of information to the media expressed by top security bosses. In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth on October 13, 2013, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval pointed out that a news channel had broadcast a report on India’s nuclear submarine INS Arihant.
-
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval has asked ministries to take necessary steps to prevent leakage of classified information to the media and fix responsibility in case the leakage takes place.
-
In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth on October 13, 2013, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval pointed out that Aaj Tak channel had broadcast a report on India’s nuclear submarine INS Arihant.
-
Cuban police have detained at least three leading dissidents ahead of a planned free-speech demonstration in the Plaza de la Revolución.
The arrests of Antonio Rodiles, Eliezer Avila and Reinaldo Escobar look set to be the biggest test yet of diplomatic relations with the US since they were restored earlier this month after 53 years of tension.
-
This morning, under the glare of worldwide media attention, a Russian court sentenced Oleg Navalny, an apolitical former postal worker, to three and half years in prison on embezzlement charges that are widely and correctly considered to be fictitious.
Russia’s slide into authoritarianism has been so gradual, and accompanied by so many distractions such as Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his ban on American adoptions (not to mention his cartoonish image abroad), that many Americans have missed it. Yes, Russia does some bad things, particularly to gays, the common perception goes, but it’s still not quite a dictatorship.
-
It was the radicals—Russians call them the demshiza, formed from the roots of the words for “democratic” and “schizophrenic”—who insisted on talking about the fact that Putin had established a virtual state monopoly on media, jailed his opponents, most likely sent his cronies to London to poison a former secret agent, and enabled the murders of many more critics, cancelled elections, waged war on his own people in Chechnya and Dagestan, and annexed parts of Georgia and Ukraine. All along, Putin and his friends stole from state coffers and from their enemies on a scale that overwhelms the imagination. They were never just “crooks and thieves.” Navalny knows that now.
-
Privacy
-
The founder of secure messaging app Wickr on privacy, why she always wears dark glasses in public and why girls make great hackers
-
The United States is the physical hub of the global Internet. Data from around the globe crosses gateways and servers in the United States. This basic fact, obscured by hazy visions of a borderless Internet cloud, is part of what accounts for global dismay at the revelations of extensive spying by the National Security Agency.
-
-
Every quarter, the National Security Agency generates a report on its own lawbreaking and policy violations. The reports are classified and sent to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. It’s unclear what happens once they get there.
Those reports are now online dating back to late 2001.
The NSA has posted redacted versions of the documents to its website. “These materials show, over a sustained period of time, the depth and rigor of NSA’s commitment to compliance,” the agency’s self-congratulatory introduction declares. “By emphasizing accountability across all levels of the enterprise, and transparently reporting errors and violations to outside oversight authorities, NSA protects privacy and civil liberties while safeguarding the nation and our allies.”
These NSA characterizations are not credible.
-
A bill filed late last month in Missouri would step into the breach left by a federal government unwilling to restrain the unconstitutional surveillance of Americans.
-
Reports out of Berlin today say that a top aide of German Chancellor Angela Merkel was targeted by advanced malware commonly used by the NSA and Britain’s counterpart, the GCHQ.
-
The German chancellor’s office has fallen victim to a hacking attack, according to a German newspaper. The Regin malware in question has been linked to British and US spy agencies.
-
-
Apple responded on Tuesday to Germany’s Der Spiegel reports that the National Security Agency had developed a system to hack into and monitor iPhones called “Dropout Jeep,” saying it never worked with the U.S. spy agency and was unaware of efforts to target its smartphones. Der Spiegel referred to it as a “trojan,” or malware that helps hackers get into protected systems. The report, which surfaced on Sunday, did not suggest that Apple had cooperated with the U.S. spying agency on so-called backdoors.
-
The National Security Agency (NSA) was forced to admit on Christmas Eve how it wrongly spied on Americans in a list it released as a result of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
-
The majority opinion prioritized protectionism—the idea that phone-record collection could stop threats like ISIS from endangering U.S. citizens—over economic growth. Such myopic attachment to the tools of defense, without consideration of their big-picture relevance, puts the $5.7 trillion U.S. IT industry in danger of losing its competitive advantage.
Risking the second-largest industry in the country will pose serious long-term consequences—not only to the economy, but, by association—to national security itself.
It’s time for legislators to ask themselves which laws matter most.
-
The NSA has posted redacted versions of the documents to its website. “These materials show, over a sustained period of time, the depth and rigor of NSA’s commitment to compliance,” the agency’s self-congratulatory introduction declares. “By emphasizing accountability across all levels of the enterprise, and transparently reporting errors and violations to outside oversight authorities, NSA protects privacy and civil liberties while safeguarding the nation and our allies.”
These NSA characterizations are not credible.
Even the uninformed observer will be suspicious of the spy agency’s account upon learning that far from voluntarily releasing redacted versions of these documents, it was forced to do so by Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the ACLU. The NSA fought to continue suppressing these documents from the public, even though the redacted versions in no way harm U.S. national security. A court ordered the documents released.”
-
-
Kim Dotcom, an individual who has become known as an outspoken encryption enthusiast, and the man who attempted to stop the recent hacks against both Sony and Microsoft’s online services via the notorious hacker group Lizard Squad, has announced he intended to bring about a rival against Skype. Dotcom intends to release MegaChat, a fully-encrypted video call and chat platform for users tired of Skype on all of their devices. The service is said to support key features of most well known messaging platforms already, but with the promise of no back doors where the United States government can access chat logs from those using the service, reports Slash Gear.
-
-
Outspoken encryption enthusiast Kim Dotcom has promised the imminent arrival of his Skype rival, Mega’s fully-encrypted video call and chat platform, which will be positioned as a pipeline for free-speech. The service, currently referred to as MegaChat, will support all the key features of existing popular messaging clients, only with the added promise of no backdoors being provided to the US government, Dotcom claims, pointing out that it’s already in fact been used in public by high-profile leakers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. News of the app comes as fresh revelations from Snowden’s NSA documents finger several services as being targeted by the spy agency.
-
Megaupload maestro Kim Dotcom says he will soon unveil an encrypted video calling and chat service that he claims will mark “the end of NSA mass surveillance.”
In a series of tweets, Dotcom said the service, to be called MegaChat, will also doom Skype, the current king of online calling, which is thought to have been cooperating with US government snoops since at least 2011.
“No US based online service provider can be trusted with your data,” the rotund refugee proclaimed. “Skype has no choice. They must provide the US Government with backdoors.”
-
Whistleblower Edward Snowden is accepting donations in bitcoin to pay for his legal defence.
Courage Foundation, which manages the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor’s legal defence fund, launched a website, edwardsnowden.com, where people can donate to support Snowden via a number of means.
The website accepts payments via paypal, credit cards, bank transfer and cheques in addition to bitcoins.
-
-
The UK passed “emergency” legislation, referred to as the Drip Act, expanding mass surveillance powers in the wake of European court judgments. In the US, modest reforms to domestic mass surveillance failed to pass Congress. Ireland retrospectively made legal UK mass surveillance efforts related to the country, while even Germany – one of the most outspoken nations on surveillance – has challenged Der Spiegel’s reporting of the tapping of Angela Merkel’s phone.
[...]
The technological backdrop is similarly mixed: in the immediate wake of Snowden, a flurry of new companies promising privacy arose, but there’s not yet a definitive app, while incumbents such as Tor have revealed several attacks and security breaches (since fixed). Conversely, though, major players are starting to regard privacy as a selling point: Google and others are encrypting ever more of their traffic, and even enhancing privacy controls over which information the search and social giants store.
-
In a letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson this week, leading US Senators requested information about the use of “StingRay” and “dirt box” devices and other cell phone surveillance and data mining systems by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other US government agencies.
-
Whether it was the NSA, your cell phone company or some place where you bought pants a few months ago, it seemed everyone was after your data in some way in 2014. Here are some of the stories that shed light on the new ways you’re being tracked — and also some methods to keep your information safe from prying eyes of all sorts.
-
Ben Wizner is a director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speech, Privacy & Technology Project — which is dedicated to protecting and expanding individuals’ right to privacy, as well as increasing the control that one has over their personal information, ensuring that civil liberties are enhanced, rather than compromised, by new advances in science and technology.
Winzer has litigated numerous cases involving post-9/11 civil liberty abuses. These include challenges to airport security policies, government watchlists, extraordinary rendition, and torture. He has testified before US Congress, and also traveled several times to Guantánamo Bay, where he has met people who have been held against their will in secret prisons and tortured by the CIA.
In July 2013, one month after the revelations about the NSA’s practices came to light, Winzer became Edward Snowden’s attorney. He was put in contact with him directly through the journalist Glenn Greenwald. I spoke to Wizner, focusing specifically on the issue of maintaining democratic accountability as technology advances.
-
It’s the Bush-Obama record of surveillance and lack of accountability—and not executive action on immigration—that ought to concern citizens.
-
Civil-liberties advocates and many lawmakers want stricter protocols for gathering information—in particular, limits on the mass collection of phone records by the National Security Agency—while opponents of such measures cite security threats that they maintain warrant the continuation of the bulk accumulation of personal data.
-
Nursery staff and childminders are given ‘duty’ to report toddlers they suspect of being at risk of becoming terrorists under new Home Office measures
-
Civil Rights
-
Dennis Johnson, one of the founders of Melville House Publishing, called the CIA Torture Report “probably the most important government document of our generation, even one of the most significant in the history of our democracy” and announced the publishing of the report as an e-book and a paperbook.
-
Melville House revealed plans to sell the CIA’s recently release torture report earlier this month, and it turned out to be a good idea.
-
Canadians know, by following their own and the US media, that race relations remain ugly in the United States despite gratifying progress and that the CIA tries to topple foreign governments, kill foreign leaders and tortures people to achieve its policy goals, for example in Guantanamo Bay.
-
The CIA, the executive hand of the president, has been involved, deeply, in every crime known to man — for decades!
-
The 47-year-old, who has been cleared for release from the detention camp since 2009, said he had not read the 6,000-page report but had been the victim of one of the measures outlined in it – “rectal rehydration”.
-
President Barack Obama has made it clear since taking office that no one will be punished for torture.
As I have repeatedly written before, that’s reprehensible. But what about compensating torture victims?
According to the recent report issued by the U.S. Senate Intelligence committee, torture under the Bush administration was more brutal and widespread than previously understood.
-
As the child of an emigrant family that escaped from a Hungary ruled by a communist government, I heard many stories of relatives and friends enduring extreme cruelties and torture by that government. Perhaps this was the reason I joined Amnesty International 40 years ago.
The organization is dedicated to helping the victims of human rights abuses and supporting the abolition of torture worldwide. After my family became American citizens, I never imagined that my new adopted country would engage in torture and abuse of prisoners. But in the 1970s, the investigations by Sen. Frank Church revealed that the CIA was not only attempting to assassinate some leaders of South American and Central American countries but that they were also assisting in torturing prisoners in those countries and training the torturers.
-
The number of whistleblowers being retaliated against is increasing every year as former federal workers warn it’s almost impossible to raise grievances through official avenues within the government, a new report reveals.
Among the employees and contractors working for the United States military and the American intelligence community, more than 8,700 have filed claims since 2001 in which they allege having faced reprisal for raising objections about supposed instances of waste, fraud or abuse, McClatchy reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, an analysis of whistleblower retaliation claims made with the Pentagon suggests the number of workers who say they suffered for speaking out has been “increasing virtually every year” since September 11, 2001.
-
Onetime interns will each get payouts of up to about $1,900 for their time with the publisher
Condé Nast appears likely to pay $5.85 million to thousands of former interns who have accused the magazine publisher of underpaying them for their work.
-
The April 2013 issue of The Atlantic recounts the U.S. Senate testimony of a young man named Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemini. He attended English classes in Yemen before going to high school in Rosamond, California, then college in Beirut— all funded through U.S. State Department scholarships. One day a drone strike hit his remote home village of Wessab. Seven of his siblings died from injuries they sustained. During his testimony to the Senate, he said he has met dozens of civilians who were injured during drone strikes and other air attacks in Yemen. “The killing of innocent civilians by U.S. missiles in Yemen is helping to destabilize my country and create an environment from which AQAP benefits. [Drone strikes] are the face of America to many Yemenis.” (He was quoted using the acronym for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.)
-
It’s not as if we weren’t warned about the CIA. Some 50 years before the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its 500-page report on torture, former President Harry Truman published an opinion piece in the Washington Post asserting that the CIA was out of control and calling for it to be broken up.
-
According to a recent series of investigative reports, oil-rich Azerbaijan — wedged between Russia and Iran — is ruled by a virtual kleptocracy. It is illegal for Azerbaijan government officials to own businesses, but the law does not apply to their families. So while President Ilham Aliyev’s control of the nation’s oil industry remains cloaked in layers of deceptive legality, the facts about his two daughters’ hefty stake in the mining, financial services, construction, and other industries have become public knowledge.
These facts were unearthed by a brave journalist named Khadija Ismayilova. On Dec. 5, Ismayilova was jailed; on Dec. 26, the Baku office of her employer, the US-funded Azeri language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was raided and ransacked.
For months, the ruling party has been accusing Ismayilova of spying for the CIA. But she has not been formally charged with espionage, and weeks of interrogations and searches by the legal authorities have not produced a shred of evidence to justify such a charge. Yet sadly, America has a history of providing a pretext to authoritarians and other adversaries to discredit independent journalists in this manner. This needs to end.
When RFE/RL was originally established in 1949, its purpose was to break the information monopoly of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union — and its funding came covertly from the CIA. In 1967 this covert funding was exposed (by investigative journalists), and in 1971 it was terminated. In 1972, Congress voted to fund RFE/RL openly as an independent media company under the supervision of the Board for International Broadcasting, a new entity created to serve as a firewall between RFE/RL and the government.
-
Despite its rich fund of hard-won detail, the Senate report has, at best, produced a neutral outcome, a draw in this political contest over impunity. Over the past forty years, there have been a half-dozen similar scandals over torture that have followed a familiar cycle – revelation, momentary sensation, vigorous rebuttal, and then oblivion. Unless we inscribe the lessons from this Senate report deeply into the country’s collective memory, then some future crisis might prompt another recourse to torture that will do even more damage to this country’s moral leadership.
-
After the hostage crisis, the Revolutionary Guard used it as a training centre, eventually opening a museum, variously called the Espionage Den or Den of Spies. Provocative murals and posters on peeling walls are updated regularly to reflect US invasions since then (Afghanistan and Iraq). One startling frieze is a parody of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” showing Uncle Sam handing dollars to a greedy banker. The perimeter walls feature a number of anti-American murals commissioned by the government of Iran, notably a Statue of Liberty with the slogan “Death to America!”
-
On October 27, 2014, the front page of The New York Times reported: “In Cold War, U.S. spy Agencies used 1,000 nazis.” What the headline fails to say is that the U.S. employed and protected men whom they knew were among the most barbaric nazi war criminals. “When the Justice Department was preparing in 1994 to prosecute a senior Nazi collaborator in Boston, named Aleksandre Lileikis, the CIA tried to intervene. The agency’s own files linked Mr. Lileikis to the machine-gun massacres of 60,000 Jews in Lithuania.
-
Mr. Justin Smith’s over-long pro-torture piece in Sunday’s Daily News Journal (Dec. 21) was way off base.
Characterizing water-boarding as “minor dunkings” is an error of the first order. CIA water-boarding is way worse than anything done in training for U.S. service personnel in Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape classes, where the exercise is carefully regulated and controlled.
CIA water-boarding has no such controls, is real and not practice, and in its excesses approaches and crosses over into the water torture for which we condemned war criminals after World War II.
-
An end of year report by the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence has documented an apparent spike in torture and abuse across Egyptian prisons in 2014, recording at least 100 deaths in custody.
-
As chief of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, Rodriguez ordered the destruction of 90 videotapes showing interrogations of Abu Zubaydah. Those tapes might have settled two questions: Were prisoners “tortured” and did “enhanced” interrogation techniques really provide “actionable” intelligence”? Why were the tapes destroyed, if the CIA is telling the truth?
More disturbing is Joseph Reisert’s column (“Blatantly partisan tenor ensures CIA report serves no good purpose,” Dec. 12). You might expect a “professor of American constitutional law” to focus on the legal issues raised by the CIA report. Surely Reisert knows that torture is illegal under both American and international law.
Japanese soldiers were charged with war crimes for waterboarding American POWs during World War II. “Just following orders” was not a defense.
-
The funeral of Officer Ramos on Saturday, Dec. 27, turned into a Fascist spectacle as many in the ranks of the police turned their backs on NYC Mayor de Blasio—a Fascist spectacle because, already heavily militarized, already implicated in wanton killings of blacks nationwide, the police, many coming from far and wide, used the funeral to demonstrate their demand for acting with impunity and their contempt for authority to reign them in. The funeral symbolized the police as enemies of the rule of law, unable and unwilling to bear scrutiny for lawless acts of an ongoing nature but brought to national attention through a sudden condensation of events over the last several weeks. We stand in fear of our own public servants, just as we do toward the CIA on the international plane, a militarization of American life which internalizes, collectively, the repression America as a nation presents to and imposes on the world and internally demands of itself lest its global/domestic Power be questioned.
-
Michael Nutkiewicz’s recent letter to the Journal (Dec. 20) about the futility and danger of torture was spot-on correct. I spent 25 years in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and retired in 2009 as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI for New Mexico. Prior to that I was SAC for the FBI in Alaska for four years. My heart does not ache, and I face no moral dilemma, for those chosen to undergo enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT). My issue with EIT and torture in general is that it just doesn’t work and is, in fact, counterproductive. Mr. Nutkiewicz correctly notes studies have shown valuable intelligence overwhelmingly being collected through simple and direct interrogation techniques.
-
According to Hayden, the CIA’s program is “built on the particular psychological profile of the people we have and expect to get — al-Qaeda operatives. Perceiving themselves true believers in a religious war, detainees believe they are morally bound to resist until Allah has sent them a burden too great for them to withstand. At that point — and that point varies by detainee — their cooperation in their own heart and soul becomes blameless and they enter into this cooperative relationship with our debriefers.”
So what sorts of sufferings might you inflict on these Muslim detainees to persuade them to cooperate, and yet remain sinless in their religion?
Aside from waterboarding, which brings victims to near drowning, “interrogators used ‘rough takedowns,’ described as taking a naked detainee outside of his cell, placing a hood over his head, and dragging him up and down a long corridor while slapping and punching him.”
Another was “the technique known as ‘hanging,’ involving handcuffing one or both wrists to an overhead horizontal bar… one detainee was apparently left hanging for 22 hours each day for two consecutive days to ‘break’ his resistance.”
Then there was “forced rectal feeding,” which the CIA said was “medically necessary” for those refusing to eat. For example, a detainee named Majid Khan, was “subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration, which included two bottles of Ensure. Later that same day, Majid Khan’s ‘lunch tray,’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins, was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused.”
-
Fidel Castro would survive 11 U.S. presidents, at least eight CIA plots to assassinate him and a few premature obituaries, and live to see world’s most powerful country finally give in and recognize—in principle at least—Cuba’s right to national self-determination.
-
On Dec. 17, the United States and Cuba carried out an unprecedented — but not unforeseen — prisoner swap: USAID subcontractor Alan Gross and an unidentified U.S. intelligence asset were released by Cuban authorities in exchange for the three remaining members of the “Cuban 5” being held in the U.S.
[...]
The Cuban 5, on the other hand, were imprisoned for attempting to safeguard the small island nation from terrorist activities that intensified following the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane by former CIA agents Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. In 1998, they were charged with a number of crimes in the U.S., including conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, and acting as agents of a foreign government.
-
One day after the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its Executive Summary of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program exposing a policy of torture applied in the War on Terror, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff unveiled her country’s investigatory National Truth Commission Report, identifying human rights atrocities committed in Brazil between 1946 and 1988.
-
Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer after U.S. commandos and FBI agents captured him in 2013, outside of his home in a suburb of Tripoli, Libya.
-
For instance, of the 119 detainees tortured by CIA agents and contractors, 26 individuals were mistakenly held. This means that completely innocent people were detained and tortured for months. Not all of them survived their captivity.
-
In 1995, I swore an oath to support and defend our Constitution — a document proclaiming basic human rights and prohibiting the U.S. government from inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment.” After taking this oath, I became a military intelligence officer and, four years after that, a counterintelligence officer with interrogation training.
-
The widespread rhetoric of evil and fear surrounding terrorism suspects has created a large risk that individuals who are detained for interrogation will automatically be seen as inherently bad. For example, in a “Meet the Press” interview the Sunday after the torture report was made public, former Vice President Dick Cheney described the CIA’s targets as way: Unlawful combatants who committed unlawful acts of war against Americans.
My research has serious implications: Public support for the use of severe interrogation may well have less to do with a quest for information than with a subconscious human instinct for vengeance, even though that is not the expressed purpose of interrogation.
-
2013’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the capture and murder of Osama bin Laden, made the false point that torture works.
Both Sony films depict and promote State Department and C.I.A. narratives, and were vetted and approved by those government agencies—yet, the truth of each narrative is questionable, at best, and their effect on audience understanding of history is frightening.
-
Based on the CIA torture report recently disclosed, the bombshell report revealed that the American government had approved the torture of prisoners, some of whom were wrongfully imprisoned and held without due process or even public acknowledgment. An earlier report found that some detainees were held indefinitely at least in part because the CIA about the circumstances of their detention.
When we allow fear and uncertainty to drive our policy, the consequences can haunt us forever. In the saddest news of all, of the world’s nations helped run the program.
The Senate report makes it clear that “enhanced interrogation techniques” is simply a euphemism.
Interrogators also staged executions and made threats to hurt detainee’s children or rape and murder their mothers, a common form of psychological torture that has been a mainstay of totalitarian regimes for centuries.
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
Recent reports that China has imposed further restrictions on Gmail, Google’s flagship email service, should not really come as much of a surprise. While Chinese users have been unable to access Gmail’s site for several years now, they were still able to use much of its functionality, thanks to third-party services such as Outlook or Apple Mail.
This loophole has now been closed (albeit temporarily – some of the new restrictions seem to have been mysteriously lifted already), which means determined Chinese users have had to turn to more advanced circumvention tools. Those unable or unwilling to perform any such acrobatics can simply switch to a service run by a domestic Chinese company – which is precisely what the Chinese government wants them to do.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
01.03.15
Posted in News Roundup at 8:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
The desktop version North Korea Linux 3.0 is finally available for download and install, thanks to the same guy who initially brought us the server version of North Korea Linux. The ISO download has been popping up all over the place on torrent sites, and I’ve got a full screenshot tour of this odd but interesting Linux distribution. I suggest downloading it via Kick Ass Torrents.
-
Martyn Williams at North Korea Tech reports on the public release of Red Star 3.0:
The latest version of North Korea’s home-grown desktop operating system, Red Star Linux 3.0, was uploaded to BitTorrent on Monday. We first got a look at the operating system almost a year ago when screenshots were posted online.
-
Kernel Space
-
Graphics Stack
-
The X.Org Server had more code churn in 2014 than it did in 2013, but its pace has certainly slowed down compared to years prior. But at the same time for those thinking X.Org Server development is going the way of the dinosaur due to Mir and Wayland, you’re sadly mistaken too.
-
Applications
-
Yet another free application that allows anyone to view high quality movies for free
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
‘Downfall’ is the remake of the 2009 adventure game by the same name. It’s the game preceding ‘The Cat Lady’ in developer Harvester Games’ planned trilogy, is slated for release in Q2 and has now been confirmed for Linux.
-
Lockdown Protocol is a good looking high-score orientated action platformer that has now entered beta for Linux, and it’s looking great.
-
Hello, open gaming fans! In this week’s roundup, I take a look at an open source alternative to Minecraft, a new Desura client, and new games for Linux.
-
First up, this latest Steam beta is expected to fix a video playback performance regression for Linux and OS X users. Unfortunately details on this regression and the affected hardware/drivers are scarce. This update has also reduced the CPU load when drawing animated images or videos.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
The KHangMan was initially a KXmlGuiWindow, but the new UI did not need a few things like the menubars and such, for which it was changed to a QMainWindow.The Messages.sh script was initially placed in src/desktop/ , but since those 3 folders (desktop, harmattan, plasma-active) were about to go, it was moved from there to simply src/ , and it was modified to translate the qml files also. After all these changes the code needed some heavy cleanup, because a lot of functionalities already implemented in the QML code were also defined in the cpp code. Some of the other cleanup tasks were removing commented out statements, removing unnecessary variables, optimizing the code by removing some unncecessary statements, and so on.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
The combination of GnuPG and a OpenPGP smartcard (such as the YubiKey NEO) has been implemented and working well for around a decade. I recall starting to use it when I received a FSFE Fellowship card long time ago. Sadly there has been some regressions when using them under GNOME recently. I reinstalled my laptop with Debian Jessie (beta2) recently, and now took the time to work through the issue and write down a workaround.
-
-
Arch Family
-
Updated packages, Network Manager (nm-applet) for network connections, Firefox web browser and of course Gparted for all you power users
-
Red Hat Family
-
Several other analysts have also recently commented on the stock. Analysts at BMO Capital Markets raised their price target on shares of Red Hat to $77.00 in a research note on Tuesday. Separately, analysts at Piper Jaffray initiated coverage on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Tuesday. They set an overweight rating on the stock. Finally, analysts at William Blair reiterated an outperform rating on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Monday, December 22nd. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nineteen have issued a buy rating to the stock. Red Hat presently has a consensus rating of Buy and a consensus target price of $72.78.
-
Fedora
-
I finally found time to write a blogpost about our F21 release party in Brno office of Red Hat. It took place on the release date – December 9th. It was, as always, well attended. It’s hard to estimate the total number of attendees, but it was definitely over 100. Unfortunately, F21 DVDs had not arrived yet, but we still had other swag for people to take: Fedora product stickers, Fedora logo stickers, case badges, badges, pins, flyers,…
-
Installing the AMD Catalyst (fglrx) driver on the latest Fedora release can sometimes be a challenge due to Fedora catering towards the open-source graphics drivers.
With Fedora being on the bleeding-edge and not caring much about proprietary software support while the open-source graphics drivers continue to evolve, sometimes it can be a bit of a headache installing the AMD Catalyst/fglrx driver on the newest Fedora release, but generally it’s possible.
-
The Korora Project is very pleased to announce that the first beta release of version 21 (codename “Darla”) is now available for download.
Although this is a beta release of Korora, it is derived from Fedora 211 stable and should be ready for every day use. We are keen however, to hear any issues people encounter so that we can improve it for the final release. Feel free to bombard us on social media or log a report in our support system, Engage.
-
The first beta release of the Fedora-based Korora Linux distribution is now available that’s powered by last month’s Fedora 21.
-
Debian Family
-
-
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
There is a fresh leak being spread throughout the mobile device world from Team Ubuntu (via GizmoChina) that appears to reveal the Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone running a full version of Ubuntu OS Linux. This type of leak is hard to confirm one-hundred percent, but a series of images within the source website show the mobile device running the operating system effectively. The images appear to reveal the smartphone running the full version of the Ubuntu OS desktop operating system. Anyone who has used the Ubuntu Linux operating system previously should recognize the setup on the phone, as it featured a basic wallpaper with tiles commonly used for features and shortcuts set to the left hand side.
-
Chinese smartphone brand Meizu, which not too long ago grabbed eyeballs of technology enthusiasts across the world by announcing its decision to convert its high-end smartphone, the MX4 to open-source, is now in the news again.
This time it is because the China-based company’s first Canonical Ubuntu-powered smartphone, the M1 Note running the Ubuntu Flyme operating platform is pegged for official launch during the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015) in Las Vegas.
-
-
Following up on its well-received first batch of WebOS based smart TVs, LG has announced a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS.
Following up on its well-received first batch of WebOS based smart TVs, LG just announced a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS. WebOS 2.0 offers up to 60 percent faster boot time, as well as an easier interface and easier connectivity to external devices. In addition, users can now customize their menus on the Launcher Bar.
-
Phones
-
So yes, readers, it was an exhilirating ride. But it is now over. The bloodbath is gone. Samsung won the hardware war clearly. Android won the OS war, decisively. There are no dark horses left. We just learned a week ago that even the so-called ‘third ecosystem’ haha, Windows Phone, has actually failed to activate one third of all the Lumia Nokia smartphones shipped using that OS. So Windows is in reality a far worse disaster than has even been reported, and the Nokia collapse was the worst corporate management catastrophy ever witnessed. Well, we know all that, Elop the worst CEO of all time and all that. what we now will see in the coming years is more price wars that will cause unforseen profit warnings, more mergers and acquisitions like Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset business and Lenovo buying the Motorola business from Google. We may well see former greats like HTC and Blackberry being sold and buyers from Asia most likely China but could be India or elsewhere in Asia. Japan’s seven handset makers have gone through their own consolidation through mergers and acquisitions already shrinking from 7 manufacturers to 4. The South Korean market is in similar state now with Pantech being on the block.
-
Tizen
-
Samsung says it will use Tizen Linux in all of its 2015 Smart TVs, which will feature WiDi and BLE for content sharing and mirroring from mobile devices.
-
Android
-
Last week on our Android customization post, you got to play with image files and change up your wallpaper on your Android device. After messing with all those image files, you may be finding that your internal storage space is strangely low, so we should try to fix that.
-
OnePlus has released its first official Android 5.0 Lollipop alpha custom build for the OnePlus One smartphone.
-
The update arrived ahead of Android lollipop that is scheduled to roll out this year. Although most users are hoping for Android Lollipop, the Kitkat version still includes bug fixes and security patches.
-
The Pixi doesn’t run all these operating systems at once or anything; which one you want is a choice you’ll have to make when you buy one. But adding to the variety, the new Pixi comes 3.5-inch, 4-inch, 4.5-inch, and 5-inches alongside the choices of operating system. The only catch is that the tiny 3.5-inch version won’t have LTE. Still, that’s an ass-ton of variety.
-
-
Android is still seen as an open operating system with communal benefits for all, but it is also still closely associated with Google. How important is Google to the Android ecosystem? The instinctive answer is ‘very’ but let’s question that for a moment and consider how much Android needs Google.
-
-
Jack Wallen shows you how to quickly and easily update your Android apps from within the Google Play Store.
-
-
-
You’re not paranoid if they really are listening. A new Android app can detect surveillance attempts on your smartphone, including IMSI catchers (also called “stingrays”), hidden text messages and attacks exploiting the telephone-signal protocol known as Signaling System 7 (SS7).
-
Following a temporary ban in India, OnePlus has released its own alpha Lollipop ROM for the One based on stock Android 5.0 — with no Cyanogen influence. For now, the alpha software is only available as a download, and you’ll need to wipe your phone in order to get it. It’s also very basic and OnePlus said it includes “no extras beyond the stock features of AOSP Lollipop,” though it promised to build on it over time. OnePlus started talking about its own Android fork shortly before Cyanogen inked an exclusive deal with Indian smartphone maker Micromax.
-
Android is probably the most versatile mobile platform out there, both when it comes to hardware and software. The Android platform is one that comes in many shapes, sizes, and flavors. To somebody who has never really looked at Android in depth before, it can be a somewhat confusing experience. How is the HTC One, which looks completely different from the Galaxy S5 over here, possibly be a part of the same platform?
-
After watching as Android dev Corbin Davenport ported everything from Minecraft Pocket Edition, to Doom, to Windows 95 onto his Android Wear smartwatch (he even got Grand Theft Auto 3 up and running), that mad developer is at it again.
-
These holidays, I was refraining from spending huge sums on stocking gadgets I don’t need. But (un)fortunately, I ended up buying a Nexus 5, a Moga Hero controller and a cheap smartwatch. So what do you do when you get an Android device? Exactly! Start hacking on it – root, custom ROMs, custom kernel, cool apps! So, my experimentation started with the SmartQ Z Smartwatch I had bought. For the price (CAD $91, including shipping from China) this was an irresistible piece of tiny Android to start tinkering around with. It packs a 1GHz Ingenic processor (MIPS) – JZ4775, 512MB DDR RAM and 4GB flash.
-
XDA Developer developed a custom ROM CyanogenMod CM12 series NightOwl version. Android developers with usernames TouchLeclouds and DroidTwe4kz also contributed to the custom ROM.
-
In my small home-office, I have hard drives, flash drives, and solid-state drives, which use FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, Btrfs, Ext3, and Ext4 file systems, and are connected to the computers with CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, ssh, and ftp over the Internet and Gigabit Ethernet with a variety of authentication systems based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Active Directory (AD). And, this, mind you, is a simple, small-business network.
Is it any wonder then that companies, far, far larger then my little operation, want to abstract their storage concerns away with software-defined storage (SDS)? I think not!
-
While Coreboot is most commonly used by Google Chromebooks, an increasing number of Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are becoming compatible with Coreboot for initializing and booting the system with open-source software.
-
-
Web Browsers
-
Chrome
-
Google’s Chromebooks can now run Linux, François Beaufort, former frequent Chrome hacker who was hired by Google in 2013, revealed on a Google+ post. To run Linux, users will essentially have to enable developer mode, and use a Chrome extension named Crouton Chrome.
Chromebook computers run on Google’s ChromeOS, which isn’t as full-fledged as Windows, OS X, or most Linux distributions for that matter. Google, however, has added several handy features to the operating system in the last couple of months. Chromebooks now support offline video playback and also lets users run a handful of Android applications.
-
Mozilla
-
Firefox turned ten years old last November and celebrated the occasion with a new version (33.1) that featured a much-welcomed developer edition. It also featured a “forget” button that lets you backspace through time, blowing away history, cookies and open tabs: one more privacy tool for the shed.
Those were two among many new moves by Mozilla, Firefox’s parent, all siding with individuals leaning against two prevailing winds that have blown across the on-line world for at least a decade.
-
BSD
-
First of all let me say I really like BSD. I enjoy studying it’s history which extends back to 1978 when it was a mere add-on to Bell Labs Unix version 6. The longest uptime I’ve ever had on a computer was with OpenBSD. It’s a fine piece of work.
On the other hand when I look at the BSD community I see a less than friendly environment. It is rather like a gated community where you need to be invited in. Often when one goes to BSD forums one gets some mysterious error message and no access. IRC channels related to BSD are also invite only.
-
Among the pros of ZFS are it’s self-healing, writable clones, fully journaling system using ZFS snapshots, compression, and portable storage. Among the viewed HAMMER positives are the focus on data integrity, great SQL database performance, lower RAM requirements, supports pseudo file-systems, fully open-source with a BSD license, etc. Of course, with each also comes various cons.
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
So we’ve now chucked this particular easter egg, and written this post to document the decision. Doing this reminded me of the relative impermanence of all digital media. DRM-pushing companies like Amazon and Apple who distribute videos and ebooks have the same capability, to go back and edit works after they are published. In many cases, they can even do it remotely, replacing works that you think of as living on a device in your home. Will they tell you about it when they do?
Thank you to Urchin Studios for making the edits and for their amazing work on the project! It really demonstrates the power of free software and free formats, and debunks the myth that professional designers and animators must use proprietary software to be top notch.
-
-
Project Releases
-
The possibilities of the new styling system are particularly interesting, and I’m working on ways to make it more powerful, and providing series of default style files that anyone could use as they want. Among other future changes, I want to improve the position of ticks, especially when using non-linear axes, and add functions to draw vector fields (though this still needs some thinking). Enjoy, and a happy new year to everyone !
-
Openness/Sharing
-
Artist Oliver Laric worked with the Usher Gallery and The Collection in Lincoln to create 3D scans of their collections, then made the files available online. The art that emerged is varied and sometimes astonishing, like the work above by Leah Ferrini.
-
Programming
-
Pulp has used web.py as its web framework for a long time, but unfortunately that project has gone dormant. Since Pulp only uses a small set of web.py’s features (essentially using it as a thin WSGI adapter), replacing it is a reasonably straight-forward task. This gave us an opportunity to re-evaluate what we want out of a web framework and consider several compelling options.
-
When I woke up the next morning, I had four emails from Amazon AWS and a missed phone call from Amazon AWS. Something about 140 servers running on my AWS account. What? How? I only had S3 keys on my GitHub and they where gone within 5 minutes!
Turns out through the S3 API you can actually spin up EC2 instances, and my key had been spotted by a bot that continually searches GitHub for API keys. Amazon AWS customer support informed me this happens a lot recently, hackers have created an algorithm that searches GitHub 24 hours per day for API keys. Once it finds one it spins up max instances of EC2 servers to farm itself bitcoins.
Boom! A $2375 bill in the morning. Just for trying to learn rails.
Lucky for me, I explained my situation to Amazon customer support – and they knew I wasn’t bitcoin mining all night. Amazon was kind enough to drop the charges this time!
-
Prior to Libscore, developers contributed to front-end open source projects, hoping their work would be used at-large, but without having any concrete visibility.
-
Juan Alessi, who spent 11 years working for Epstein, also told the Daily Mail how the Prince enjoyed daily massages by young women during his visits.
He said Andrew emerged ‘smiling’ after the rub-downs which, he believes, were paid for by Epstein.
-
Science
-
A paper published in Science has been widely reported in the media today. According to media reports, such as this one, the paper showed that two thirds of cancers are simply due to bad luck, and only one third are due to environmental, lifestyle, or genetic risk factors.
The paper shows no such thing, of course.
It’s actually quite an interesting paper, and I’d encourage you to read it in full (though sadly it’s paywalled, so you may or may not be able to). But it did not show that two thirds of cancers are due to bad luck.
-
Health/Nutrition
-
In 2016, a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy will give veterinarians a key role in combating a surge in antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” that infect humans. For the first time, the agency will require veterinarians, not farmers, to decide whenever antibiotics used by people are given to animals.
-
Security
-
Many registrars don’t support DNSSEC, if you use such a registrar (as I do) then you need to transfer your zone before you can productively use DNSSEC. Without the DS entries being signed by a registrar and included in the TLD no-one will recognise your signatures on zone data.
-
-
As always, your testing is needed to ensure that any bugs are found and squashed early!
-
Transparency Reporting
-
Guarding the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Julian Assange has claimed asylum has now cost taxpayers £9million, it has been revealed.
Metropolitan Police officers have been standing outside the Knightsbridge building since the WikiLeaks founder took refuge there in June 2012 – a vigil costing £11,000 per day.
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
Fox News reported on Pope Francis’ upcoming action on climate change by promoting climate change denial and suggesting that the pope is aligning with “extremists who favor widespread population control and wealth redistribution.”
-
Britain’s leading fund manager, Neil Woodford, has warned that falling oil prices could prompt a rout in the global bond market as shale companies default on vast debts built up during the US fracking boom.
-
When the latest international Climate Conference wrapped up in Lima, Peru, last month, delegates boarded their flights home without much official discussion of how the planes that shuttled them to the meeting had altered the climate.
Aircraft currently contribute about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. That might not seem like much, but if the aviation industry were a country, it would be one of the world’s top 10 emitters of CO2. And its emissions are projected to grow between two and four times by 2050 without policy interventions.
-
Finance
-
There are *already* more than €30 billion worth of ISDS claims against EU nations
[...]
This is the key problem with ISDS: it places the rights of corporations above the rights of nations – indeed, in this case, above the rights of the EU to determine laws within its borders. ISDS cannot be “fixed”, as the European Commission would have us believe, because it was designed with exactly this purpose in mind: it was introduced as a way of protecting investments in countries where the local rule of law could not be depended upon. Since that is manifestly not the case in the EU or US, it serves no purpose other than to undermine the strong legal systems there. The only solution is therefore to drop ISDS from TTIP, CETA and all future agreements.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
Conservative news outlet Watchdog.org released a six-part series defending dark-money organizations — politically focused groups that conceal the identities of their donors — but failed to disclose its own funding from the Koch brothers and other conservative dark-money players.
-
Privacy
-
Android apps are spying on users far more than expected, a new study has found.
The research by Vocativ shows the apps that can access user’s microphones, call logs and contacts.
-
-
The F.B.I. is subjecting hundreds of its employees who were born overseas or have relatives or friends there to an aggressive internal surveillance program that started after Sept. 11, 2001, to prevent foreign spies from coercing newly hired linguists but that has been greatly expanded since then.
The program has drawn criticism from F.B.I. linguists, agents and other personnel with foreign language and cultural skills, and with ties abroad. They complain they are being discriminated against by a secretive “risk-management” plan that the agency uses to guard against espionage. This limits their assignments and stalls their careers, according to several employees and their lawyers.
-
So many telephones were being tapped during the 1984-5 miners’ strike that the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong became so alarmed that he took immediate steps to ensure that no mention was ever made of the extent of the eavesdropping.
Margaret Thatcher’s success in hushing up the bugging of phones by the Security Service MI5 is finally revealed in her 1985 cabinet papers released by the National Archives.
Action to prevent public disclosure of the role of intelligence officers was personally approved by the Prime Minister.
-
Civil Rights
-
Fox News falsely claimed that California’s new program to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants amounted to “back door to citizenship” that would increase identity theft. But the program requires a stringent background check and shares the support of law enforcement and public officials who point to studies that show the program will lead to increased safety and transparency for citizens.
-
In part two of our holiday special, we feature our April 2014 interview with Matt Taibbi about his book, “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.” The book asks why the vast majority of white-collar criminals have avoided prison since the financial crisis began, while an unequal justice system imprisons the poor and people of color on a mass scale. “It is much more grotesque to consider the non-enforcement of white-collar criminals when you do consider how incredibly aggressive law enforcement is with regard to everybody else,” Taibbi says.
-
The executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on CIA torture was finally published on 9 December 2014, and it proved shocking, despite being highly-redacted and missing 9,400 documents “withheld by the White House”.
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
Federal regulators looking to place restrictions on Internet providers will introduce and vote on new proposed net neutrality rules in February, Federal Communications Commission officials said Friday.
-
-
DRM
-
Netflix is starting to block subscribers who access its service using VPN services and other tools that bypass geolocation restrictions. The changes, which may also affect legitimate users, have been requested by the movie studios who want full control over what people can see in their respective countries.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Copyrights
-
Starting today Canadian Internet providers are required to forward copyright infringement notices to their subscribers. This notification scheme provides a safe harbor for ISPs but is also expected to result in a surge in piracy settlement schemes. The new law further causes trouble for VPN providers, who are now required to log customers for at least six months.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Bill Gates, Patents at 1:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Bill Gates continues to engage in class war by creating a penal system that maximises detention while giving poor people dependence on giant food monopolies, both of which he profits from
THE Gates Foundation‘s destructive path is not news. A lot who are sceptical of corporate media have been paying attention to how the Gates Foundation bribes a lot of writers (even bloggers) to bamboozle those without critical skills, so we live in a world where a lot of people think that GMO is about ending hunger and that Bill Gates is a charitable man (they don’t know he invests in GMO, which is essentially a patent monopoly on nature).
“He just keeps getting richer at a pace of about 10% per year”Bill Gates has been working with PR magnates for well over three decades, so he knows how to play this game. He would pose for photos to appear in newspapers, usually with black kids or poor kids (ultimate PR hit in local/national media), but won’t even paint a bridge [1, 2] or associate himself with tasks he never did (he grew up in a super-affluent family with many helpers). He would fly a private jet to very poor areas, contributing little more than carbon and a dangerous impression that the world’s plutocrats are those who will save it (famous mythology that serves power). Let’s look at some recent figures. The super rich people are getting richer and richer ($92 billion richer in the past year for the richest 0.000000006% – yes, that’s in 2014 alone!) while using their corporate press (bribed or subsidised) to fool or scam the public. Here is how much money Gates has made last year:
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., was up $9.1 billion during the year.
Wow, what a giver! He just keeps getting richer at a pace of about 10% per year. Last year was more than 10%. Is this a cause for celebration? This wealth came from somewhere, he wasn’t created in a vacuum. Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire himself, helps glorify the looting in his publication:
The world’s 400 richest people added some $92 billion to their collective wealth in 2014, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. As of Dec. 29, they were all worth a combined $4.1 trillion.
The reasons we have hunger in the world include the fact that just 80 people or so have the same combined wealth as 3,500,000,000 people (the poorer people). It is a wealth distribution issue. The 400 richest people probably have as much in combined wealth as the poorest 5,000,000,000 or so people (the latter figure is a conjecture, the former is established). Watch another billionaire, Rupert Murdoch, using his Wall Street-centric media to once again whitewash the name-shifting “Bill Gates Investments” (basically a Gates Foundation extension that does not need to pretend not to be after money). That what happens when you have much to dodge. Gates invests in big polluters and even worse companies than that. The Gates Foundation wishes not to be seen as an investment vehicle, but the decoupling is merely cosmetic. Gates supports private prisons (to control the poor) by investments in G4S and reportedly in GEO. Here is last month’s article from Mother Jones:
Is the Gates Foundation Still Investing in Private Prisons?
[...]
In recent years, the GEO Group has faced accusations of detainee abuse and substandard care in multiple states. In 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Detention Oversight reported that GEO Group’s Adelanto facility near Los Angeles had committed “several egregious errors” in administering medical care to detainees. (GEO Group has repeatedly dismissed allegations of mistreatment.) More recently, a group of former immigrant detainees in Colorado sued the company for making them work around the prison for minimal pay, sometimes under the threat of solitary confinement. (The GEO Group said detainees were working under a “volunteer work program” and that its $1-per-day wages met federal standards.) The Gates Foundation Trust did not respond to requests for comment directed through a foundation spokesperson.
According to the Gates Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates—the only members of the trust’s board—have defined areas that the trust will not invest in, “such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that [Bill and Melinda Gates] find egregious.” Tobacco companies fall into that category.
The trust’s last reported investment in the GEO Group took the form of a $2,148,790 bank loan. (The Gates Foundation Trust did not issue the loan itself. The term “bank loan” refers to a type of corporate debt that companies with low credit ratings occasionally sell through a conventional bank to get extra cash.) The asset was reported in a tax form filed with the Internal Revenue Service this October, but is accurate only through October 2013.
Bank loans can yield higher returns for investors than stocks or bonds, but their ownership is harder to trace independently.
In April, after demanding Gates divest from the GEO Group, supporters of a coalition of immigrant, Native American, and Latino rights groups rallied outside the foundation’s Seattle headquarters. The foundation eventually accepted more than 10,000 petitions from the activists and promised to submit their grievances to the trust.
“Bill Gates needs to be transparent about whether they’re still investing in GEO Group,” says Mariana Ruiz Firmat, managing director for Presente, which organized that protest. “It’s really problematic for the foundation, which claims to invest in communities of color. By investing in GEO Group now or in the past, that goes against communities of color.”
It’s not just prisons that Gates makes the news for. There is also the GMO venture he profits from, causing health issues (pesticides and mutations of genes) just so that he can secure a profitable monopoly on food. As one site put it last month:
At least 124 food and outreach organizations, as well as 26 individual scientists, have signed onto a letter sent to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation protesting ongoing human trials of genetically modified (GM), beta-carotene-enriched bananas intended for Africa.
The GM bananas, which never underwent animal trials, are currently being administered to 12 students attending Iowa State University (ISU), presumably without full disclosure as to the many unknown risks involved.
According to the letter, the trials are taking place under the guidance of Dr. Wendy White, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition. Funding for the trials came from a grant issued by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We, the undersigned, representing diverse constituencies from across Africa and the world, working towards food sovereignty, are strongly opposed to the human feeding trials taking place at the Iowa State University involving the so called genetically modified (GM) ‘super banana,’” reads the letter.
Here is how The Ecologist put it: “Among the controversial projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the development and testing of a biofortified GMO banana developed to boost its iron, Vitamin E and pro-Vitamin A content.
“To this end the Foundation, via its Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, has so far given $15 million to Queensland University of Technology for the program run by Professor Dr James Dale, with a latest tranche of $10 million handed over this year.”
Here again we see what Gates makes money from. Quite a good doer, eh? He seems to be following the footsteps of his father, who himself seems to be a businessman masquerading as good doer until his nineties. “Bill Gates Sr.,” says a Gates-connected site, “the 89-year-old father of the Microsoft co-founder, has resigned voluntarily from his position on the Costco Wholesale Corp. board, according to a regulatory filing from the Issaquah, Wash.-based company.”
If Bill Gates junior has another 30 or so years to harm the world for profit, then we are really in serious trouble. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft at 12:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The latest reports about Gates’ attempt to buy the hearts and minds of the young generation by taking over the schools system in the US
THE Gates Foundation has been Bill Gates’ private front group for advancing his for-profit interests under the guise of goodwill or charity. Gates is not the only plutocrat who uses such mechanisms to camouflage his agenda, but he is probably the biggest among them. A lot of charities are basically a sham (self-feeding money vacuums that call for public input or taxpayers' money) and explaining to the public why this is so is not harming charity but defending the integrity or real charities. They have gotten a bad reputation because of people who exploit them, not just for tax-exempt status.
“The thing that motivates Gates to get involved is that he profits from it.”The other day there was a widely published report about Gates’ intervention in a taxpayers-funded system that he seeks to privatise for profit (we wrote many articles about Gates’ abduction of the US education/schools policy). It is probably the biggest and most lucrative such system except the US Army (trillions in money flow, excepting black budget). “When he took the stage,” said the article, “Bill Gates used the word “naive” — four times — to describe himself and his charitable foundation.”
Well, apparently he is not willfully ignorant. He knows damn well what he is doing. Valerie Strauss, a respected critic of Gates, recently wrote about Bill Gates buying agenda in the US public sector, primarily education. Her piece in an American journal of record stated: “In terms of dollars spent, Gates is the leading billionaire/millionaire who has poured money into school “reform” in recent years. Such philanthropy has raised questions about whether American democracy is well-served by wealthy people who pour so much money into their pet projects — regardless of whether they are known to be useful in education — that public policy and public funding follow in their wake.”
Here is an article about this original report from Strauss:
Gates has been credited by some and blamed by others for the spread of Common Core, which was initially adopted by 44 states and the District of Columbia. Since then, several states have repealed Common Core altogether, while others are making changes to the testing or are reviewing the standards.
The thing that motivates Gates to get involved is that he profits from it. It has nothing to do with sharing, it is about power. Moreover, based on this other new report, Gates is now giving cheques to the White House, possible in order to promote Windows in computer science:
The White House also announced $20 million in private donations to train 25,000 computer science teachers by 2016. Donations came from companies like Google and Microsoft and individuals like Bill Gates, Napster founder Sean Parker, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and others.
Notice how both Microsoft and Bill Gates put money in there. Microsoft is not a charity, so we can safely assume that the monetary gift has been justified as serving Microsoft’s bottom line. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Bill Gates at 12:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
–Bill Gates
Summary: Bill Gates finds himself under scrutiny as people who are very close to him turn out to be making money from pedophilia
MR. GATES AND THE Gates Foundation are not going to comment on this incident. The ‘brand’ would be hurt. Distancing itself would be wise, but to dissociate from the crime would not be trivial.
“The amusing thing — not that child abuse is in any way amusing — is that he actually uses Google (not Microsoft) at Gates’ home.”We already wrote many articles about how Bill Gates gets children addicted to malware (like a drug dealer), but his staff goes further by trading pedophilia out of Gates’ own home. The amusing thing — not that child abuse is in any way amusing — is that he actually uses Google (not Microsoft) at Gates’ home. The British press has this to say:
An engineer employed at the home of Bill and Melinda Gates has been charged with possession of child porn after he was discovered to have more than 6,000 images depicting rape and sexual abuse.
Rick Allen Jones, 51, of Seattle, allegedly had thousands of images stashed on his home computer, according to court documents this week.
Here is what the press in Seattle (close and in some ways connected to Gates) wrote about this incident. The American press speaks of this interesting bit:
Jones has not been jailed, but he is ordered to stay away from all children.
Get this.
No jail after trading thousands of photos of child rape. If it was legal, Gates’ Corbis would probably have monetised that too. Perhaps — just perhaps — being close to Gates contributed to this (knowing politicians and having secret access to the system helps). Gates never ends up in jail, no matter how many crimes and how severe the crime he commits (there are many examples like this photography business, not just driving violations). Gates himself got arrested in the past, but he was rich enough to pay his way out of jail. Moreover, this is not the first time that Gates employs criminals (at a very high level even) who go to prison or even kill people. Examples were given here before. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Microsoft, Vista 8, Windows at 11:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”
–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive
Summary: Windows is not designed to be secure and Microsoft is not even trying to make it secure when advised on how to make it so
YESTERDAY we wrote about the latest extensive evidence that Skype is a spy. Microsoft knows damn well that it is being used to spy on people, but it does not bother hardening the proprietary software program or even fix critical bugs that facilitate wiretapping (e.g. through weak encryption). Security is simply not the goal.
“Security is simply not the goal.”Today we learn that the NSA, which Microsoft tells about flaws before even fixing them (hence providing the NSA with back door access), sure is enjoying access to the latest version of Windows even if it is fully patched and up to date. For several months now Microsoft just didn’t bother patching the holes. Google, which banned Windows for internal use but remains negatively affected by Google users who are on Windows-running PCs, shows Microsoft a serious flaw (local back door) in the very latest Windows. Microsoft just simply does nothing for three months (except showing the NSA, as usual), whereupon Google increases pressure on Microsoft: [via]
Google has made public the details of a security vulnerability in Windows 8.1 a mere 90 days after disclosing it to Microsoft, sparking debate over the wisdom of the online giant’s Project Zero security initiative.
The bug, which was privately reported to Microsoft in September, can potentially allow a logged-in user to execute code on Windows 8.1 machines with administrator privileges.
What we learn from this is that Google tried responsible disclosure, as was the case when the OpenSSL flaw was discovered by Google, well before a Microsoft-connected firm gave it a name, a logo, and very irresponsibly sent out the word, even before OpenSSL’s own site was patched.
Google waited patiently for months, but Microsoft is simply not interested in the security of Windows. Those who are using Windows are not able to patch the flaw themselves because it is proprietary software. It serves to show why every company — not just individual — should shun Windows where security is a priority (it’s a top priority everywhere). Sony is being severely hit by a doxing problem that reportedly started with cracking of Microsoft Windows. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
01.02.15
Posted in News Roundup at 4:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
The Security issue of Linux Journal always makes me feel a little guilty. It turns out that although I have a fairly wide set of technology skills, I’m not the person you want in charge of securing your network or your systems. By default, Linux is designed with a moderate amount of security in mind. For that, I am incredibly grateful. If you struggle with maintaining security in your environment, this issue hopefully will encourage and educate as opposed to making you feel guilty. My goal this year is to learn and be encouraged by the Security issue, not just feel bad.
-
-
At least two members of Linux Australia have criticised the attitude of members who have raised questions about an iTWire staff member who attempted to contest the organisation’s elections.
Both Noel Butler and Russell Coker took a diametrically opposite position to that of others following the nomination for treasurer by David M. Williams, a columnist for iTWire in the past and an infrequent contributor for the last two or three years.
-
-
Well we’re into the last few days of 2014 here in the Linux blogosphere, and fortunately the tequila supplies down at the Broken Windows Lounge continue to hold strong.
The weather outside may be frightful, but the refreshments — like the software — remain nothing short of delightful.
It didn’t take long for bloggers to slip into a sentimental mood as they reminisced about the waning year, and a heartening post from Jim Zemlin over at Linux.com only helped things along.
“2014 was a tipping point where companies decided there was too much software to write for any one company to do it by themselves,” Zemlin wrote. “They are shedding commodity software R&D by investing in ‘external R&D’ with open source.
-
Users of GNU/Linux don’t even need to read the GPL to be legal and can probably forget about malware and possibly even firewalls in their homes. They can leave that to the router if at all. The average user doesn’t have to install much software at all as most desktop distros include a web browser that people want to use, multimedia software and an office productivity suite like LibreOffice.
-
Kernel Space
-
Graphics Stack
-
Tom has landed some measurable RadeonSI LLVM performance improvements to his LLVM branch that provided important code generation features for Southern Islands GPUs and newer (Radeon HD 7000 series and newer). The important code generation features now implemented in his branched AMDGPU LLVM back-end are machine scheduling and sub-reg liveness support. With the current machine scheduler, the schedule model is not yet completed and could be improved further, according to Tom, but the results are already positive.
-
Earlier this week I showed benchmarks of AMD’s incredible year for their open-source Linux driver and how the open-source Radeon Gallium3D driver moved closer to performance parity with Catalyst. One of the lingering questions though is how does the Catalyst 14.12 Omega Linux driver from December compare to the latest Catalyst Windows driver? Here’s some benchmarks looking at the latest open and closed-source drivers on Linux compared to the latest Catalyst Windows release.
It’s been a while since last delivering a Windows vs. Linux Catalyst comparison at Phoronix, but found the time to be right for going along with our year-end recaps and performance reviews. Earlier this week I also posted the Intel Windows vs. Linux OpenGL performance comparison. The same Core i7 4790K Haswell system was used with this AMD Linux vs. Windows benchmarking. As shared in that Intel article, Windows 8 was being very unstable on this particular system so for all of the testing I had to revert to running Windows 7 rather than Windows 8.1.
-
Applications
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
-
The developer of both ‘Heroes of Steel RPG’ and ‘Star Traders: 4X Empires’ has confirmed Linux ports will happen for both games this year.
-
Braveland Wizard is the sequel to the first Braveland that our Samsai took a look at last year. The first game had a lot of positive reviews, and it seems the second is doing well too.
-
Golden Game Barn has released the first episode of its courtroom drama visual novel Regeria Hope for free on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
I ring in the new year with a digiKam Recipes update. This version features two new recipes: Remove Keywords from Photos and Add Web Interface to digiKam with digiKamWebUi. In addition to that, the updated and expanded Deal with Bugs in digiKam recipe now explains how to generate backtraces.
-
-
Make sure to check out the January 2015 issue of ImagineFX where Krita receives the Artist Choice award! That’s appreciation with a vengeance! ImagineFX is the #1 resource for concept artists and illustrators in the entertainment industry. It is a great resource if you are looking to level up your art skills.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
Shouldn’t the GNOME Software “app store” include non-GUI (CLI) packages? That’s one of the questions being asked yet again by users.
Starting in December and continuing into January are various Fedora development threads of users questioning various GNOME motives with their GNOME Software program. In particular, right now, the GNOME Software application center doesn’t like CLI-only packages for installation but only those with a GUI. Additionally, GNOME Software is limited in showing packages for non-GNOME desktop environments unless certain parameters are set.
-
I spent last night writing a GNOME application to duplicate a ton of USB devices. I looked at mdcp, Clonezilla and also just writing something loopy in bash, but I need something simple my dad could use for a couple of hours a week without help.
-
Richard Hughes’ latest announcement isn’t of another open-source hardware project but rather a new GNOME software application.
-
-
LQ ISO recently surpassed 55,000,000 Linux downloads
-
New Releases
-
4MRescueKit provides its users with software for antivirus protection, data backup, disk partitioning, and data recovery. It is distributed in the form of a multiboot CD, which includes four (extremely small) operating systems. Each of the systems tries to follow the UNIX philosophy (Small is beautiful. Make each program do one thing well).
-
Ballnux/SUSE
-
Red Hat Family
-
Siddhesh pushed into glibc-2.18 upstream performance improvements of about eight times for the slowest path of the pow function inside glibc. Other functions received significant performance improvements too thanks to improving the multi-precision code-path.
-
Mathematical function implementations usually have to trade off between speed of computation and the accuracy of the result. This is especially true for transcendentals (i.e. the exponential and trigonometric functions), where results often have to be computed to a fairly large precision to get last bit accuracy in a result that is to be stored in an IEEE-754 double variable.
-
Fedora
-
-
At EMEA FAD in Leverkusen, we started planning events and activities in EMEA for the fiscal year 2016 (starts on March 1, 2015). Right after that, I asked others, who couldn’t attend the FAD, to provide their input. Today, I put it all together on a new wiki page that should help us organize events where we want to promote Fedora in the next year.
-
Debian Family
-
-
If you have appropriate (U)EFI hardware, please try this image and let me know how you get on, via the debian-cd and debian-boot mailing lists.
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
Much like Xiaomi, Meizu has had a great 2014. The company has launched several great devices which are very affordable at the same time, which let this China-based smartphone manufacturer to sell tons of units. The company has launched not one, but two flagship handsets this year, the Meizu MX4 (September) and MX4 Pro (November). The latest handset this company has launched is the M1 Note handset, or the Blue Note, as it’s called in China. This device was launched quite recently actually and surprised many people by what it has to offer. This is a rather powerful mid-high end handset which costs only 1,999 Yuan (16GB version) in China, which is about $322.
-
-
Phones
-
Tizen
-
Samsung Electronics announced today, one week prior to the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, that all of their Smart TVs this year will be powered by the Linux-based Tizen operating system.
-
Android
-
If the 40 free applications that Amazon gave away last week wasn’t enough to satiate your hunger for new apps, the company is back today with even more goodies for your Android device.
Amazon is now offering 33 paid Android apps for free as part of its latest Free App of the Day Bundle. There are games and utilities packed inside of the bundle, including big names like Monopoly, République, Thomas Was Alone, Lyne, and Angry Birds Star Wars.
-
OnePlus has been quietly developing its own Android 5.0 Lollipop based ROM for the OnePlus One. Following the controversy with Cyanogen licensing in India, the company had announced that it will be providing an early build to customers, which will replace the Cyanogen OS on their devices.
-
So you’ve unwrapped, unboxed and cuddled your new smartphone to death. Candy Crush? Check. Instagram? Check. Staring at the screen wide-eyed and full of excitement but have no idea what to do next? Check.
-
-
Android 4.4.4 KitKat update is now available for Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy Tab 4.10.1.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 10.1 owners can now enjoy the perks that comes with the new update. Verizon shared the improvements that come along with the firmware.
The tablet has now a self activation support and ICC ID information added to Settings. The bugs such as VPN and Chrome cast connectivity issues are fixed. There are also pre loaded applications and services such as Find My Mobile, Kids Mode Widget, Email Widget and My Verizon (10.0.710).
-
The iPhone 6 is a spectacular smartphone. I reviewed the iPhone 6 earlier this year and while there are a few things that could certainly be improved, I said that the phone was clearly one of the best smartphones in the world. And it still is. From handset design and build quality to performance and the supporting third-party app ecosystem, the iPhone 6 is a class leader in almost every key area.
-
For months now there’s been Coreboot developers working on Intel Broadwell support (primarily from Google and focused on future Chromebook support). With the start of the new year and hopefully seeing more Broadwell hardware on the market soon, that support is coming along in Coreboot.
-
Events
-
This blog was pending on me from long time. I got a chance to attend typoday.in 2014 conference At Symbiosis International University, Viman Nagar, Pune in February. This was the my second conference specifically on typography domain after National workshop on calligraphy and typography in 2007.
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
What a year for OpenStack! With two shiny new releases, two excellent summits on opposite sides of the Atlantic, countless new features, and an ever-growing community of users and developers, it truly has been a year of progress for OpenStack.
-
As reported here earlier, a new KPGM study on cloud computing trends at enterprises shows that executives are very focused on extracting business metrics from their cloud computing and data analytics platforms. That suggests that we’re going to continue to see the cloud and the Big Data trend evolve together this year.
-
This will not be a good year for those that believe in human progress. At least, not if enterprise software is any indication.
-
Databases
-
MemSQL Inc. has returned to the limelight four months after its landmark funding round with the release of an open-source connector for its namesake database that simplifies the process of importing data from external sources. The launch is the latest milestone in the startup’s efforts to remove the barriers that keep information siloed in the enterprise.
The ability to act on real-time events without any logistical delays is useful in applications ranging from ad optimization to signal intelligence processing. The real-time analytics capability is one of the reasons MemSQL received a capital infusion from the Central Intelligence Agency’s investment arm as part of its September round.
-
With more than 10,000 downloads of MongoDB now occurring daily, many organizations are using MongoDB to consolidate a raft of proprietary document repositories using an inexpensive open source platform that scales significantly higher than its counterparts.
-
BSD
-
The Ports package management system in FreeBSD has seen 6024 commits from 160 individuals in the past quarter. Among the updates for users to find with the FreeBSD Ports 2015Q1 state compared to the last quarterly snapshot is pkg 1.4.3, new keywords and USES, a dependency on LLVM Clang 3.4, Firefox 34, Chrome 39, Python 2.7.9, Ruby 2.0.0.598, GCC 4.8.3, GNOME 3.14, Cinnamon 2.4.5, and X.Org 1.14.
-
OPNsense combines the best of open source and closed source firewalls. It brings the rich feature set of commercial offerings with the benefits of open and verifiable sources combined with a simple BSD license. This makes OPNsense the platform of choice for users, developers and commercial partners.
Companies that want to use OPNsense to create a branded version, extend its features, or even create a fork and build upon the same codebase are allowed to do so under the 2-clause BSD license.
-
Project Releases
-
I’ve released man-pages-3.76. We’ve just passed 12k commits in the project, and this release, my 158th, marks the completion of my tenth year as maintainer of the man-pages project.
-
Openness/Sharing
-
-
Open Hardware
-
InMoov is the world’s first life-size, open source robot, and currently also the cheapest ever built. It’s software back end is all open source and the parts are constructed from 3D printed plastic
-
Palin’s son, Trig, was just trying to help wash the dishes. The dog was lying in front of the sink, so he did what a lot of other kids would probably do. Palin saw a sort of “overcoming all obstacles” message in this and decided to share.
-
-
New Year fireworks in Manchester were delayed by an excruciating four minutes after a tram got in the way of the display.
Videos show an excited crowd counting down to midnight only for the sky above Picadilly to remain dark.
“Five, four, three, two one: Let’s have the fireworks!” announces the show’s host – but none follow.
-
-
More than 12 million viewers watched Big Ben ring in the new year amid a spectacular fireworks display on BBC1 – but it failed to hit the highs of last year’s celebrations.
The 15-minute New Year’s Eve Fireworks programme had an average of 12.3 million viewers (63%) from 11.55pm, down from 13.7 million viewers (67.5%) for the same broadcast in 2013.
-
Science
-
In the cult film Back to the Future 2, Doc Brown and Marty McFly land in 2015, a futuristic land of flying cars and hovercrafts. As the New Year dawns, which of their predictions were hits – and misses?
-
Security
-
The identity of the Sony hackers is still unknown. President Obama, in a December 19 press conference, announced: “We can confirm that North Korea engaged in this attack.” He then vowed: “We will respond. . . . We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States.”
The U.S. Government’s campaign to blame North Korea actually began two days earlier, when The New York Times – as usual – corruptly granted anonymity to “senior administration officials” to disseminate their inflammatory claims with no accountability. These hidden “American officials” used the Paper of Record to announce that they “have concluded that North Korea was ‘centrally involved’ in the hacking of Sony Pictures computers.” With virtually no skepticism about the official accusation, reporters David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth deemed the incident a “cyberterrorism attack” and devoted the bulk of the article to examining the retaliatory actions the government could take against the North Koreans.
-
Doxing is not new; the term dates back to 2001 and the hacker group Anonymous. But it can be incredibly offensive. In 2013, several women were doxed by male gamers trying to intimidate them into keeping silent about sexism in computer games.
Companies can be doxed, too. In 2011, Anonymous doxed the technology firm HBGary Federal. In the past few weeks we’ve witnessed the ongoing doxing of Sony.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
Already, we’re hearing that President Obama is a traitor, that he is surrendering America to Fidel Castro and the communists, and betraying the Cuban people and the cause of freedom and democracy for wanting to lift the 54-year-old Cold War-era U.S. embargo against Cuba.
That is precisely the way that the national-security establishment felt about Kennedy and actually much worse.
Already, we’re hearing that President Obama is a traitor, that he is surrendering America to Fidel Castro and the communists, and betraying the Cuban people and the cause of freedom and democracy for wanting to lift the 54-year-old Cold War-era U.S. embargo against Cuba.
That is precisely the way that the national-security establishment felt about Kennedy and actually much worse.
It began with the CIA’s plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, an invasion that would be carried out by Cuban exiles but secretly funded and directed by the CIA in order to provide U.S. officials with “plausible deniability” with respect to their role in the operation.
What did that mean? It meant that the CIA would lie to the American people and the world about the U.S, government’s role in the operation. And it would also mean that under the CIA’s plan, the newly elected president would immediately become the nation’s liar-in-chief, a secret that the CIA would obviously have over his head for the rest of his time in office.
Keep in mind that the CIA plan was concocted before Kennedy got into office. Once Kennedy was sworn in, the CIA presented him with the plan. Kennedy was dumb to go along with it, a point that he later acknowledged. But the fact is that he fell hook, line, and sinker for the CIA’s assurances to him that the invasion would be a smashing success, that the Cuban people would rally against Castro, and that no air U.S. support would be needed.
It began with the CIA’s plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, an invasion that would be carried out by Cuban exiles but secretly funded and directed by the CIA in order to provide U.S. officials with “plausible deniability” with respect to their role in the operation.
What did that mean? It meant that the CIA would lie to the American people and the world about the U.S, government’s role in the operation. And it would also mean that under the CIA’s plan, the newly elected president would immediately become the nation’s liar-in-chief, a secret that the CIA would obviously have over his head for the rest of his time in office.
Keep in mind that the CIA plan was concocted before Kennedy got into office. Once Kennedy was sworn in, the CIA presented him with the plan. Kennedy was dumb to go along with it, a point that he later acknowledged. But the fact is that he fell hook, line, and sinker for the CIA’s assurances to him that the invasion would be a smashing success, that the Cuban people would rally against Castro, and that no air U.S. support would be needed.
-
Documentary filmmaker discoveres 1944 CIA report that revealed the existence of underground atomic weapon program in the area of St. Georgen an der Gusen, according to local media.
-
-
A network of underground tunnels and bunkers used by the Nazis to develop an atomic bomb has been discovered in Austria by a filmmaker.
-
An underground weapons bunker built by Nazis to test nuclear and chemical weapons has been unearthed in Austria.
-
A huge, secret, underground Nazi weapons factory, believed to have been built for the development and planned manufacture of nuclear weapons and other WMDs, has been uncovered in Austria.
-
A SECRET underground complex built by the Nazis towards the end of World War II that may have been used for the development of weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear bomb, has been uncovered in Austria.
-
St. Georgen an der Gusen is a small market town in Upper Austria. Quiet and picturesque, it’s hard to imagine that during WWII, it was selected to be the business center for the SS in exploiting slave labor. Now another secret have been unearthed.
-
A Nazi nuclear bunker was discovered in Austria under a large weapons factory.
The complex, which features a network of tunnels and bunkers used by the Nazis to try to to build an atomic bomb, was discovered in Austria by filmmaker Andreas Sulzer.
-
A filmmaker has found a secret network of underground bunkers used by the Nazis to develop an atomic bomb.
Located in the hills surrounding the Austrian town of St. Georgen an der Gusen, the vast site covers an area of up to 75 acres. It is believed that it could be connected to the nearby Bergkristall factory, an underground facility where Nazi scientists and engineers developed the Messerschmitt ME 262, the world’s first jet powered fighter plane.
-
Suspiciously high radiation levels around the Austrian town of St. Georgen an der Gusen had long fueled theories that there was a buried bunker nearby where Nazis had tested nuclear weapons during WWII. Those suspicions came one step closer to being confirmed last week after the opening of a 75-acre underground complex was dug out from below the earth and granite used to seal off the entrance, the Times of Israel reports. The excavation team was led by Austrian filmmaker Andreas Sulzer, who says the site was “likely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich”—a facility that probably relied on forced labor from the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and may have even been the testing location for a nuclear bomb, the Daily Mirror reports.
-
An Austrian filmmaker believes he has discovered a huge Nazi “secret weapons facility” in an underground complex near the remains of the Mathausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, where thousands of Jews were killed.
-
Austrian documentary filmmaker Andreas Sulzer found the 75-acre complex just outside the small town of St. Georgen an der Gusen, near Linz. This site is not far from the Bergkristall factory, where the Messerschmitt Me 262 — the first operational jet-powered fighter — was invented.
Sulzer noticed that an Austrian physicist who was recruited by the Nazis had mentioned about the subterranean site in his diary.
It was built by slave labourers who lived in the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.
The exact location of this Nazi factory was determined with the help of intelligence reports and radiation tests that revealed that the radioactivity levels at the site were higher than normal.
-
The 75-acre facility, located near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen, is believed to have been used to create and test weapons of mass destruction and was deemed so important to the Nazis that the head of the SS and Hitler’s right hand man Heinrich Himmler, even oversaw its development.
-
An underground Nazi labyrinth where slaves laboured on high-tech weapons including a secret nuclear missile programme has been uncovered in Austria.
The 75-acre facility near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen is described as the ‘biggest secret weapons facility of the Third Reich,’ after it was unearthed by documentary maker Andreas Sulzer.
-
-
A labyrinth of secret underground tunnels believed to have been used by the Nazis to develop a nuclear bomb has been uncovered.
[...]
Excavations began on the site after researchers detected heightened levels of radiation in the area – supporting claims that the Nazis were developing nuclear weapons.
-
Huge web of tunnels covering area of 75 acres reinforces claims Nazis were working on developing WMDs
-
The facility, which spans an area up to 75 acres, is thought to be an extension of the underground Bergkristall factory, where the world’s first operational jet fighter was produced. According to the Sunday Times, the Nazis took pains to hide the research facility, even as Bergkristall was inspected after the war.
-
On Wednesday, as 2014 came to a close, the United States and allied forces formally turned over combat operations in Afghanistan to Afghans, officially ending the longest war in America’s history, and starting a new struggle for recognition among many military families who say they already feel forgotten.
-
America’s $400 billion Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, is slated to join fighter squadrons next year—but missing software will render its 25mm cannon useless.
-
The American public and its political leadership will do anything for the military except take it seriously. The result is a chickenhawk nation in which careless spending and strategic folly combine to lure America into endless wars it can’t win.
-
Now, there is no journalism without fact-checking, so let’s dig in on the president’s statement. Afghanistan no longer is under threat from the Taliban, and all terrorism has been taken care of. Instead of an economy based on corruption, smuggling and opium production, Afghanistan is a thriving consumer society. Women walk the streets in mini-skirts, and elections happen without incident. An American can stroll among Kabul’s cafes and quaint bazaars with his head held high and his safety guaranteed by grateful Afghans. America and its allies’ investment of over 3,400 lives and four trillion dollars has paid off. Also, all the dead Afghans, whatever.
Oh, wait, none of that is true.
-
Transparency Reporting
-
The Supreme Court will soon join other federal courts in making briefs and other filings available electronically, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced Wednesday.
The changes will come “as soon as 2016,” the chief justice wrote in his annual year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary.
-
In a holiday special, we feature an exclusive Democracy Now! interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In July, Amy Goodman spoke to Assange after he had just entered his third year inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he has political asylum. He faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States. In the United States, a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as State Department cables. In Sweden, he is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct, though no charges have been filed. During his interview, Assange talked about his new book, which at that time had not yet been released, titled, “When Google Met Wikileaks.” The book was later published in September.
-
Finance
-
Nearly all of the roughly US$370 million in bitcoin that disappeared in the February 2014 collapse of Mt. Gox probably vanished due to fraudulent transactions, with only 1 percent taken by hackers, according to a report in Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, citing sources close to a Tokyo police probe.
-
Finnish politicians reacted to President Sauli Niinistö’s appeal for leadership on structural reforms with their own suggestions of what might be cut from the government’s budget. The SDP and the Finns Party say there is no room to cut spending that goes to support low-income Finns.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
An open secret in Washington, D.C., journalism was unexpectedly shared with frustrated voters across the country on Sunday’s edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Anyone who’s ever watched an elected official from either major political party be interviewed by a serious journalist has probably angrily asked aloud, “Why don’t they ask him about XYZ?!” Or, “Why did they let him get away with that answer?!”
One of the most obvious and serious reasons is time constraint. Reporters, whether on TV or print, are almost always only allowed a small window of time to ask elected officials a set of questions.
But one of the other lesser known reasons is access. Competition in political journalism is fierce and having access to big names in D.C. is everything. If a congressman thinks he’s treated unfairly or too aggressively by a reporter, he may simply choose to give his time to someone he thinks is more fair (i.e., more “friendly”).
-
While the public believes the people they elect to Congress create legislation and policies, their role is increasingly theatrical.
-
Censorship
-
Egypt’s highest appeals court on Thursday ordered a retrial for three imprisoned journalists from Al Jazeera’s English-language service, implicitly acknowledging critical procedural flaws in a case that rights advocates have described, from the men’s arrests to their convictions, as a sham.
But the decision offered no guarantees that the journalists, who have been imprisoned for more than a year and now face a potentially lengthy second trial, would be freed anytime soon.
-
The Indian government has blocked a clutch of Open Saucy websites including Github because they were carrying “anti-India” content from the head-lopping terror group ISIS.
-
Next time you see your government proposing internet censorship laws of any kind, remember this incident where the Indian government crippled their own software industry so they could be seen to be doing something about terrorism. Their department of telecommunications has blocked 32 web sites — including archive.org and Github — as if to illustrate why it’s bad to allow anyone the power to block web sites arbitrarily (ETI claims it’s 60+). They’ve blocked entire slices of multi-purpose web infrastructure because one of their functionaries found something about ISIS somewhere on it, according to TechCrunch.
-
Privacy
-
The British government is considering a program that would see the most promising tech graduates spend some time working for the GCHQ signals intelligence agency, the U.K.’s equivalent to the NSA, before they move into the private sector.
As per a Thursday article in The Independent, confirmed to me by the Cabinet Office on Friday, the scheme would give the U.K. a rough equivalent to the system in Israel, where many tech entrepreneurs have come out of Unit 8200 of the Israel Defence Force. Unit 8200 is also a signals intelligence operation, and the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks is a notable spinout.
-
In fact, some of the most significant information about the NSA’s surveillance programs still remain secret. Despite one of the most significant leaks in American history and despite a promise to declassify as much information as possible about the programs, nearly two years later the government still refuses to provide the public with the information it needs. For example, government officials still have not answered a simple, yet vitally important, question: what type of information does the NSA collect about millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans (or the citizens of any other country, for that matter)? And the government still refuses to release some of the most significant decisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—the secret court tasked with monitoring the government’s surveillance programs.
-
I’ve been working through the NSA’s reports to the Intelligence Oversight Board. Given that we know so much about the phone and Internet dragnets, I have been particularly interested in how they got reported to the IOB.
By and large, though, they didn’t. Even though we know there were significant earlier violations (some of the phone dragnet violations appear in this timeline; there was an Internet violation under the first order and at least one more of unknown date), I believe neither gets any mention until the Q1 2009 report. These are on the government’s fiscal year calendar, which goes from October to September, so this report covers the last quarter of 2008. The Q1 2009 reports explains a few (though not the most serious) 2008-related phone dragnet problems and then reveals the discovery of the alert list, which technically happened in Q2 2009.
-
The NSA got a lot of criticism for releasing its IOB reports on December 23, just as everyone was preparing for vacation. But there were three reports that — at least when I accessed the interface — weren’t originally posted: Q3 and Q4 2009 and Q3 2010 — all conveniently important dates for the Internet dragnet (I’ll have more on what they didn’t disclose soon).
-
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) pressed top Obama administration officials on the use of cell-site simulators, which can unknowingly sweep up the cell phone signals of innocent Americans.
-
First, this is ABC News, one of the outlets notorious for laundering intelligence claims; indeed, it is possible this is a limited hangout, an attempt to preempt one of the most alarming revelations in Bamford’s book. While the report doesn’t say it explicitly, it implies the claims of whistleblowers Kinne and Faulk prove Hayden to have lied in his CIA Director confirmation hearing, in response to the softball thrown by Hatch. In any case, the briefing about this disclosure appears to have gone exclusively to SSCI (with follow-up briefings to both intelligence oversight committees afterwards), the committee that got the apparently false testimony (and not for the last time, from Michael Hayden!). But by briefing the Committee, it also gave Jello Jay an opportunity — and probably, explicit permission — to sound all stern about a practice the Committee likely knew about.
-
What if there were one thing we could do today to make it harder for the NSA and other intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on millions of people’s email communications, without users having to change their habits at all?
There is. It’s called STARTTLS for email, a standard for encrypting email communications. 2014 saw more and more email providers implementing it.
-
We’ve long worried about the government’s use of IMSI catchers or cell site simulators. Commonly known as a “Stingray” after a specific device manufactured by the Harris Corporation, IMSI catchers masquerade as a legitimate cell phone tower, tricking phones nearby to connect to the device in order to track a phone’s location in real time. We’re not just worried about how invasive these devices can be but also that the government has been less than forthright with judges about how and when they use IMSI catchers.
This year the public learned just how desperately law enforcement wanted to keep details about Stingrays secret thanks to a flurry of public records act requests by news organizations across the country. The results are shocking.
-
I’m still trudging through NSA’s reports to the Intelligence Oversight Board, which were document dumped just before Christmas. In this post, I want to examine why NSA is redacting one FISA authority, starting with this section of the Q1 2011 report.
-
Techdirt has noted that the NSA chose to release embarrassing details of its illegal surveillance of Americans on Christmas Eve. By an interesting coincidence, the French government picked the same date to enact a hugely controversial new surveillance law, which had been passed back in 2013, and will now enter into operation almost immediately, at the start of 2015. One of its most troubling aspects is the vagueness of its terms. As reported by Le Point, here’s what can be collected (original in French)…
-
Civil Rights
-
-
-
-
-
-
Nashville’s police chief is raising stunning new allegations regarding the U.S. Secret Service, saying local agents once asked his officers to fake a warrant.
Even more disturbing, Chief Steve Anderson said he complained to top Secret Service officials in Washington, and they did not seem to care.
-
Oceanfront views, 24-hour doorman, heated pool, and perhaps best of all, a “private tunnel to the beach.” This $3 million Palm Beach, Florida penthouse could be yours, but unfortunately it isn’t because this prize has already been claimed by a former high-level U.S. official who helped pave the way for the over decade-long “war on terror,” which has been a near complete catastrophe.
Iraq is aflame, the Islamic State is on the rampage, the situation in Afghanistan worsens by the day, and thousands of Americans—and many more Iraqis and Afghans—have died during the post-9/11 conflicts. Meanwhile, the combined cost of the “war on terror” comes to an estimated $1.6 trillion.
But if the American people got screwed on the deal, a lot of former senior government officials who played important roles in this debacle have done quite well for themselves. It’s New Year’s Eve and I need to write a final sendoff to 2014, so I thought I’d take a look at the fortunes (literally) of some of these figures: Former CIA director George Tenet and former FBI director Louis Freeh (I’ll cover former Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge in a New Year’s post).
Consider Tenet. As head of the CIA, he missed multiple signs of a major Al Qadea attack directed against the United States, called the case against Saddam building Weapons of Mass Destruction a “slam dunk,” and approved the Bush administration’s torturing of terror suspects.
In any fair world Tenet would be tried for criminal incompetence. Instead, he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom and after resigning in 2004 (at which point his agency salary was south of $200,000), he received a $4 million advance to write a memoir. In it, he confessed to “a black, black time” a few months after 9/11 when he was sitting at home in his favorite Adirondack chair thinking about the tragedy that killed 3,000 Americans on his watch and asked, “Why me?”
-
Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Mark Udall can perform yeoman’s service in upholding the rule of law and government accountability before his term concludes on Saturday.
Protected by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, the senator can publicly disclose the already redacted 6,700-page “Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program.”
-
One of the many, many problems Jeb Bush faces in his quest for the Oval Office is his break from Republican orthodoxy on president Ronald Reagan’s legacy. In 2012, Bush told a group of reporters that, in today’s GOP, Reagan “would be criticized for doing the things that he did”— namely, working with Democrats to pass legislation. He added that Reagan would struggle to secure the GOP nomination today.
-
Government censorship of the Internet is a cat-and-mouse game. And despite more aggressive tactics in recent months, the cats have been largely frustrated while the mice wriggle away.
But this year, the challenges for Silicon Valley will mount, with Russia and Turkey in particular trying to tighten controls on foreign-based Internet companies. Major American companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google are increasingly being put in the tricky position of figuring out which laws and orders to comply with around the world — and which to ignore or contest.
-
A number of downtown Oakland transit lines were detoured due to a protest against police brutality that took place in the area on Wednesday evening.
Protesters met at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland around 9 p.m. for the New Year’s Eve march.
Reports on Twitter suggested somewhere around 100 to 200 people were marching, accompanied by a large police presence.
-
The grand jury decisions not to indict police officers Darren Wilson and Daniel Panteleo in the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner can be seen as another example of the racist and criminal history of United States justice.
-
Scores of protesters at the helm of the ongoing nationwide movement against police violence stormed the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Wednesday, aiming to “evict” officers they accused of “perpetrating police brutality on our citizenry.”
Five of the roughly 25 demonstrators who linked arms in the lobby of the police department were arrested in the headquarters, the St. Louis Police Department told Al Jazeera. Police pepper-sprayed and forced other protesters off the premises.
-
Fox 45 fired the reporter and cameraman involved with a story that claimed protesters against police brutality were shouting “to kill a cop,” the Baltimore City Paper reports.
-
US House members admitted they had not read the entire $585 billion, 1,648-page National Defense Authorization Act, which predominantly specifies budgeting for the Defense Department, before it was voted on Thursday in Congress.
-
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) mounted a largely symbolic bid Friday to end the White House’s authority to indefinitely detain Americans without trial.
The conservative Republican senator offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that was immediately blocked.
“The bottom line is that there is simply not enough time left before we adjourn to debate even a single amendment, and surely not a single amendment of this complexity,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who objected to Lee’s request to debate his amendment. Levin added that he had previously supported a similar measure.
-
-
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) sanctioned giving federal lands belonging to indigenous Americans to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the British Australian multinational, Rio Tinto.
-
A DOZEN years after its creation, the International Criminal Court is foundering. So far it has brought just 21 cases in eight countries, all of them in Africa. Only two have resulted in convictions — of relatively obscure Congolese rebel leaders. Though 139 countries signed the founding treaty, the United States, Russia, China, India, Israel and every Arab nation but Jordan have declined to join. The most horrific crimes against humanity perpetrated in the world in the past decade — in North Korea, Syria and Sri Lanka, among other places — remain outside the ICC’s reach.
[...]
Pending such opportunities, the court may be tempted to pursue more quixotic initiatives. This month chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda reported that she was “assessing available information” on “enhanced interrogation techniques” by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which is an ICC member. This month’s Senate Intelligence Committee report on cases of torture may increase the impetus behind that probe. But the alleged crimes committed by U.S. personnel, though shocking, are not grave enough to meet the ICC’s high bar for prosecution — and it would be politically foolish for the court to pursue U.S. targets.
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
The hotel chain and some others have a petition before the FCC to amend or clarify the rules that cover interference for unlicensed spectrum bands. They hope to gain the right to use network-management tools to quash Wi-Fi networks on their premises that they don’t approve of. In its view, this is necessary to ensure customer security and to protect children.
-
Reclassifying ISPs as common carriers is seen by many as the easiest way to bring back Net Neutrality.
-
DRM
-
Apparently, having a functional Widevine CDM support will allow you to watch Youtube Movies as well, but since I already pay for Netflix I did not want to test these Youtube rentals. Another test which failed was my attempt to watch television on horizon.tv, the content streaming network of my provider (UPC/Liberty Global). Even with a UserAgent spoofer and all browser cookies removed, that site still detected that I was visiting using a Chrome/Chromium browser and kept presenting an annoying popup to force me to switch to a different browser because Chrome does not support Silverlight anymore (on Mac OSX and Windows 64-bit at least, remember their NPAPI depreciation). No way around that, even though I was fairly sure that Horizon TV also used Widevine for Digital Rights Management (DRM) in the past. Guess I still have to use Firefox with Pipelight for that, then.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Copyrights
-
STIM disagrees. The collection society says that previous cases involving hoteliers have ended with licenses being obtained which enable hotel guests to listen to music while on the premises. Furthermore, other car rental companies in Sweden have already agreed to pay a per-stereo levy so Fleetmanager should also pay, STIM argues.
This is not the first music-related copyright case to hit the car sector this year. In July, the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies launched a class action lawsuit against Ford and General Motors over the CD-ripping capability of their cars. In November the group followed up with fresh legal action against Chrysler and technology partner Mitsubishi.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 8, Windows at 1:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Windows is yesterday’s problem
Summary: Even the most Microsoft-friendly Web surveys (where Windows-oriented sites are grossly overrepresented) show a sharp decline in Windows usage and gains are attributed to Chromebooks
IN THIS GNU- and Linux-dominated world (except in desktops/laptops) we need not write so often about the demise of Windows. In fact, we have not been doing that for months. Windows is rotting on its own while platforms like RHEL and Android thrive.
“Windows is rotting on its own while platforms like RHEL and Android thrive.”Watch how Microsoft spins the latest figures that demonstrate the collapse of Windows, even on desktops/laptops. As one blogger put it, “I woke up today, on the first day of January, and read Mechatotoro’s post about the jaw-dropping December 2014 market share statistics for Windows 8*.
“While the optimistic Winbeta site claims the market share loss is due to the traction gained by Windows 10, I doubt it.”
That is complete nonsense. Vista 8 was probably the worst-performing version of Windows since the 1980s (adoption rates worse than Vista) and the next vaporuware (Vista 10) started 20 months ago and is still not released. To say that Windows usage is declining because of some experimental build is simply delusional, but then again, these are Microsoft boosters we’re talking about. Their loyalty to Microsoft transcends logic and facts. The boosters cannot shoot the messenger either because Net Applications is closely connected to Microsoft. Therein lies the great irony.
One blogger has complained the the press (e.g. the Wintel-friendly corporate media) is not covering this major finding:
December Was a Disaster for Windows 8.x…Why Aren’t We Hearing about It?
[...]
Windows 8 and 8.1 combined seemed to have lost a whooping 7.07% market share! They went down from 18.65% in November to 11.58% in December. That is something! Why aren’t we hearing about this in all the (pro-Windows) tech sites??
For those who wonder what has been gaining at Windows’ expense (other than mobile devices where Android reigns supreme), “Data reveals Chrome OS might have been a roaring success in December”. To quote this report: “Stats published earlier today by analytics company NetApplications suggests that Google’s operating system, Chrome OS, might have a bumper month thanks possibly to Christmas sales.
“Data compiled for the month of December 2014 shows that Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 suffered significant dips while Windows XP and OSes classified as “Other” have increased significantly.”
We too bought a Chromebook, but we installed GNU/Linux on it. Chromebooks are significantly cheaper than ‘fat’ laptops with Windows, so no wonder Microsoft is so nervous and afraid of Google. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
Further Recent Posts
- Watchtroll a Fake News Site in Lobbying Mode and Attack Mode Against Those Who Don't Agree (Even PTAB and Judges)
A look at some of the latest spin and the latest shaming courtesy of the patent microcosm, which behaves so poorly that one has to wonder if its objective is to alienate everyone
- The Productivity Commission Warns Against Patent Maximalism, Which is Where China (SIPO) is Heading Along With EPO
In defiance of common sense and everything that public officials or academics keep saying (European, Australian, American), China's SIPO and Europe's EPO want us to believe that when it comes to patents it's "the more, the merrier"
- Technical Failure of the European Patent Office (EPO) a Growing Cause for Concern
The problem associated with Battistelli's strategy of increasing so-called 'production' by granting in haste everything on the shelf is quickly being grasped by patent professionals (outside EPO), not just patent examiners (inside EPO)
- Links 5/1/2017: Inkscape 0.92, GNU Sed 4.3
Links for the day
- Links 4/1/2017: Cutelyst 1.2.0 and Lumina 1.2 Desktop Released
Links for the day
- Financial Giants Will Attempt to Dominate or Control Bitcoin, Blockchain and Other Disruptive Free Software Using Software Patents
Free/Open Source software in the currency and trading world promised to emancipate us from the yoke of banking conglomerates, but a gold rush for software patents threatens to jeopardise any meaningful change or progress
- New Article From Heise Explains Erosion of Patent Quality at the European Patent Office (EPO)
To nobody's surprise, the past half a decade saw accelerating demise in quality of European Patents (EPs) and it is the fault of Battistelli's notorious policies
- Insensitivity at the EPO’s Management – Part V: Suspension of Salary and Unfair Trials
One of the lesser-publicised cases of EPO witch-hunting, wherein a member of staff is denied a salary "without any notification"
- Links 3/1/2017: Microsoft Imposing TPM2 on Linux, ASUS Bringing Out Android Phones
Links for the day
- Links 2/1/2017: Neptune 4.5.3 Release, Netrunner Desktop 17.01 Released
Links for the day
- Teaser: Corruption Indictments Brought Against Vice-President of the European Patent Office (EPO)
New trouble for Željko Topić in Strasbourg, making it yet another EPO Vice-President who is on shaky grounds and paving the way to managerial collapse/avalanche at the EPO
- 365 Days Later, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas Remains Silent and Thus Complicit in EPO Abuses on German Soil
The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO's abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them
- Battistelli's Idea of 'Independent' 'External' 'Social' 'Study' is Something to BUY From Notorious Firm PwC
The sham which is the so-called 'social' 'study' as explained by the Central Staff Committee last year, well before the results came out
- Europe Should Listen to SMEs Regarding the UPC, as Battistelli, Team UPC and the Select Committee Lie About It
Another example of UPC promotion from within the EPO (a committee dedicated to UPC promotion), in spite of everything we know about opposition to the UPC from small businesses (not the imaginary ones which Team UPC claims to speak 'on behalf' of)
- Video: French State Secretary for Digital Economy Speaks Out Against Benoît Battistelli at Battistelli's PR Event
Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')
- When EPO Vice-President, Who Will Resign Soon, Made a Mockery of the EPO
Leaked letter from Willy Minnoye/management to the people who are supposed to oversee EPO management
- No Separation of Powers or Justice at the EPO: Reign of Terror by Battistelli Explained in Letter to the Administrative Council
In violation of international labour laws, Team Battistelli marches on and engages in a union-busting race against the clock, relying on immunity to keep this gravy train rolling before an inevitable crash
- FFPE-EPO is a Zombie (if Not Dead) Yellow Union Whose Only de Facto Purpose Has Been Attacking the EPO's Staff Union
A new year's reminder that the EPO has only one legitimate union, the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO), whereas FFPE-EPO serves virtually no purpose other than to attack SUEPO, more so after signing a deal with the devil (Battistelli)
- EPO Select Committee is Wrong About the Unitary Patent (UPC)
The UPC is neither desirable nor practical, especially now that the EPO lowers patent quality; but does the Select Committee understand that?
- Links 1/1/2017: KDE Plasma 5.9 Coming, PelicanHPC 4.1
Links for the day
- 2016: The Year EPO Staff Went on Strike, Possibly “Biggest Ever Strike in the History of the EPO.”
A look back at a key event inside the EPO, which marked somewhat of a breaking point for Team Battistelli
- Open EPO Letter Bemoans Battistelli's Antisocial Autocracy Disguised/Camouflaged Under the Misleading Term “Social Democracy”
Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term "social democracy" whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by 'King' Battistelli
- EPO's Central Staff Committee Complains About Battistelli's Bodyguards Fetish and Corruption of the Media
Even the EPO's Central Staff Committee (not SUEPO) understands that Battistelli brings waste and disgrace to the Office
- Translation of French Texts About Battistelli and His Awful Perception of Omnipotence
The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
- 2016 in Review and Plans for 2017
A look back and a quick look at the road ahead, as 2016 comes to an end
- Links 31/12/2016: Firefox 52 Improves Privacy, Tizen Comes to Middle East
Links for the day
- Korea's Challenge of Abusive Patents, China's Race to the Bottom, and the United States' Gradual Improvement
An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population's interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
- German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, Who Flagrantly Ignores Serious EPO Abuses, Helps Battistelli's Agenda ('Reform') With the UPC
The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
- Links 30/12/2016: KDE for FreeBSD, Automotive Grade Linux UCB 3.0
Links for the day
- Software Patents Continue to Collapse, But IBM, Watchtroll and David Kappos Continue to Deny and Antagonise It
The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters' creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)
Content is available under CC-BY-SA