01.05.14

Use Bitcoin, Boycott Pierre Omidyar’s PayPal

Posted in Finance at 5:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Pierre Omidyar and Richard Branson, photo by Pierre Omidyar

Summary: Why we need to divert support (e.g. monetary means) towards those who challenge the status quo, where the gap between rich and poor is wide and rapidly widening

RECENTLY, the FSF’s President [1] and OSI’s President [2] both made it into the press in relation to Bitcoin. which some associate with FOSS [3]. “BitHub Pays Open-Source Developers in Bitcoin,” says one recent headline [4]. Bitcoin generally helps us bypass the international banking cartel, which may seemingly be working in a state of competition but is actually a self-sustaining monster which is very political. It censors, it incriminates, and it also buys (almost literally) our politicians.

“Public figures we now have about unemployment are quite bogus and very deceiving at best.”Over the past month we’ve accumulated many examples of economic injustices that are reinforced by banks. We hope to show that a better world is possible once the Big Banks are off their high horse.

Here in the UK, poverty is becoming a real issue, as confirmed by a new report [5]. Great Britain is better known for its billionaires, not for those whom the media ignores. The UK is making it harder for the unemployed to even get housing [6]. Philanthropy is for the most part a publicity stunt [7] and unlike in France, where a ‘millionaire’s tax’ has been passed [8], here in Britain we’re forced to compete with the millionaires and billionaires (who evade tax) using alternative paradigms and business models [9], It’s not looking too good [10] because hatred/xenophobia [11] (e.g. blaming immigrants baselessly [12]) and general fear [13] become new tools of distraction (fearing the poor and other races/nationalities, ignoring the real issue which the UK’s immigration minister speaks of [14]). People are dying because of these policies [15-18] and the delusion of dependence on oligarchs continues to distract everyone from the real villains [19-20]. Our fundamental services in the economy (e.g. post office and healthcare, like the rail system) are being privatised to create more new oligarchs, essentially stealing what is public. The situation seems to be worse in the UK than in the rest of the EU, where money is at least trickling down from the government to people, at least sometimes [21]; this is one thing that oligarchs would not do. Banks in Europe don’t get the levels of bailout they get in the UK [22], so it’s clear that the City of London (financial centre) still dominates British politics (British MPs just got a serious pay rise [23]). Greece is another sad story [24] and it helps show why austerity would be a horrible deal for the UK [25].

In the US, like in the UK, many people are on zero-hours contracts [26], so even those who are considered “employed” are not really properly employed (that’s 10% of so of the British population). Public figures we now have about unemployment are quite bogus and very deceiving at best.

“…people who act as intellectuals are deprived and marginalised unless they play ball for the plutocrats.”Looking at the United States, which by some criteria is the only Western country to have a wider economic disparity than the UK, there is another round of war on the poor [27-28], to the point where simple illnesses kill the poor [29] (eliminating them). There are signs of hope in New York [30] and Seattle [31] because of new elected officials, but overall the picture is grim because of homelessness and corruption [32-33] (Wall Street in particular plays a role, creating a “crisis” [34-35] to justify cuts). There are far better ways for dealing with the situation [36-37], but since these would not serve the oligarchs, nothing is going to change for the better. Oligarchs don’t like democracy [38-40]; it’s a threat to them. Oligarchs are doing incredibly well for themselves [41-43] (sometimes at the expense of taxpayers [44-48]), whereas others risk going hungry [49] or even dead [50-52]. Many workers are treated like cattle [53-55] and it is making more people furious, leading some to action [56-58] like marches [59].

The problem can be seen in other English-speaking countries. In Australia, for example, the headline “Childcare workers asked to hand back wage rise” [60] recently received a lot of attention. It sure seems like the oligarchs at the top just keep hoarding more and more, giving back nothing at all to those below them, even when their business is doing well [61-62] (owing to the actual work of those at the bottom). In universities it is exceedingly easy to see economic injustice [63-65]; people who act as intellectuals are deprived and marginalised unless they play ball for the plutocrats.

“In prior years Assange helped expose tax evaders (with help from Elmer) and he continues to possess copies of documents that can destroy corrupt banks”At the end of the day there’s room for hope. And why? Because activism on the Internet is proving to be effective. WikiLeaks recently exposed plans to suppress anti-Keystone activists [66-67]. making it clear why plutocrats (especially in the UK these days [68-69]) want Julian Assange killed [70]. He created a tool of effective resistance and he is its main maintainer and public faces. In prior years Assange helped expose tax evaders (with help from Elmer) and he continues to possess copies of documents that can destroy corrupt banks. Sarah Harrison, the British girlfriend [71] of Assange (who is Australian), recently explained why Pierre Omidyar is part of the banking cartel [72-73] and therefore must not be trusted, especially with his media ventures [74]. He used economic embargo against Wikileaks before he started spinning the story [75] (Wikileaks is already being maligned by the same institutions [76]).

We need to use Bitcoin, not PayPal. And we need to remember what the likes of Omidyar think of people like Edward Snowden, who are made enemies of the state because oligarchs (like Omidyar), make it so [77-78]. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Software activist calls for ‘truly anonymous’ Bitcoins to ‘protect democracy’

   Free software advocate Richard Stallman has warned Bitcoin owners who believe they are untraceable that it is, in fact, easy for governments to track users, and called for a for “truly anonymous” crypto-currency to “make democracy safe”

2. Bitcoin: Open source money whose time has come

   The recent bubble — and reports of criminal activity — may have scared off onlookers, but there’s little question bitcoin has arrived

3. Contribute to open source and you could make some (Bit)coin

   Tip4Commit enables people to tip open source contributors with digital currency

4. BitHub Pays Open-Source Developers in Bitcoin

   Privacy software provider WhisperSystems has announced that it is integrating bitcoin with open-source code hosting site GitHub to launch a new service, Bithub. This service will offer the company’s developers an easy and fair way to fund their work on its open-source security systems.

5. Report reveals the new face of UK poverty

   The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2013 report offers the latest figures on poverty across the UK, revealing a growing social crisis.

6. Buy-to-let property supremo shuts door on housing benefit tenants

7. The Front Man: Bono (In the Name of Power) by Harry Browne

8. France passes 75% ‘millionaire’s tax’

9. The food co-op where shoppers are happy to work

   All members of the Park Slope Co-op are required to work 2.75 hours every four weeks. Jobs vary from working on the check-out to unloading deliveries to working in the office upstairs.

10. Which will be the big economies in 15 years? It’s not a done deal

    Will China, Russia and Mexico, governed by extractive elites, really do so well? Is Europe such a write-off? And what about Britain?

11. Britons ready to welcome migrants from Bulgaria and Romania, poll finds

12. Government delays EU immigration report because it is too positive

    A review into the impact of EU migration on Britain has been delayed because the Government feared it was too positive.

    The latest part of Whitehall’s Balance of Competences study, which looked specifically at freedom of movement, had been due to be released yesterday. But, according to reports, it has now been shelved until next year because Theresa May, the Home Secretary, takes issues with its findings.

13. The fear Economy

14. Pay better wages, minister tells Domino’s Pizza boss

    The boss of Domino’s Pizza should “probably pay his staff a little more” if he wants to recruit extra workers, the UK’s immigration minister has said.

15. Ministers scrap £20m scheme to keep elderly warm

16. Make no mistake: Iain Duncan Smith wants the end of social security

    Don’t let the bluster, incompetence and misinformation obscure the Quiet Man’s true, Tory purpose: destroying the welfare safety net

17. Suppressed report: welfare reform link to homelessness and food bank use

    The number of people using food banks in the county has “increased sharply”. The total number of users of the four operational Trussell trust food banks in Kent in 2012-13 was 1,618. The total for the same four food banks, for the first six months of 2012-13 alone had almost doubled to 3,195. These figures are likely to understate the true extent of food poverty in the county, the report notes, as they do not take account of the myriad other sources of local food aid, such as soup kitchens.

18. Food poverty in UK has reached level of ‘public health emergency’, warn experts

    Hunger in Britain has reached the level of a “public health emergency” and the Government may be covering up the extent to which austerity and welfare cuts are adding to the problem, leading experts have said.

    In a letter to the British Medical Journal, a group of doctors and senior academics from the Medical Research Council and two leading universities said that the effect of Government policies on vulnerable people’s ability to afford food needed to be “urgently” monitored.

    A surge in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, a decrease in the amount of calories consumed by British families, and a doubling of the number of malnutrition cases seen at English hospitals represent “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” they write.

19. Brainwashed by the cult of the super-rich

    Last week, Tory MP Esther McVey, Iain Duncan Smith’s deputy, insisted it was “right” that half a million Britons be dependent on food banks in “tough times”. Around the same time, the motor racing heiress Tamara Ecclestone totted up a champagne bill of £30,000 in one evening. A rich teenager in Texas has just got away with probation for drunkenly running over and killing four people because his lawyers argued successfully that he suffered from “affluenza”, which rendered him unable to handle a car responsibly. What we’ve been realising for some time now is that, for all the team sport rhetoric, only two sides are really at play in Britain and beyond: Team Super-Rich and Team Everyone Else.

20. The One Percent Solution: Oligarchs to the Rescue!

    Here our earnest authors come up against a very 21st-century conundrum: the ever-widening notion that the fate of our liberties should be taken out of the hands of governments and given to … corporations and oligarchs. This is the logic behind the move by Glenn Greenwald and other dissident superstars to “partner” with hi-tech oligarch Pierre Omidyar, “leveraging” Greenwald’s control of Edward Snowden’s NSA documents to create a profitable new media venture. This would be the same Omidyar whose PayPal cut Wikileaks off at the financial knees in its hour of greatest peril, whose “microfinancing initiatives” have led to mass suicides among the debt-ridden poor in India and who now appears driven to monetize dissent in the same way he’s monetized poverty relief. It’s unlikely that hard-hitting exposes of hi-tech corporate chicanery will feature overmuch at Pierre’s new plaything.

21. Horizon 2020: Investing in our future

    With nearly €80 billion on offer, the EU’s new research and innovation programme…

22. Europeans trying to complete deal on bad banks

    European finance ministers are taking another crack at an issue that’s bedeviled them: how to handle failing banks at an EU level.

23. MPs set to receive 11% pay rise

    MPs are set to receive an 11% pay rise when a parliamentary watchdog publishes its final recommendations on salaries this week.

24. Greece’s million unpaid workers

    “The public sector is exporting its problems to the private sector,” he says. “When the state is squeezed – as it has been frequently – the easiest thing is to postpone payment to suppliers. Hence a liquidity problem in the private sector.”

25. Autumn Statement: Osborne to give upbeat forecast

    But he will say there must be no let up in austerity if he is to finish the job of paying off Britain’s debts.

    Millions will have to wait longer for a state pension, he will confirm.

    And there will be an extra £1bn of cuts from the budgets of government departments for each of the next three years.

26. Zero-hours contracts: 5.5m Britons ‘are on deals offering little guaranteed work’

    As many as 5.5 million Britons could be signed up to work contracts that promise them less than three hours of work a week, five times more than existing estimates, new figures suggest.

    A survey of 5,000 members of Unite, Britain’s biggest union representing more than 1 million people, found that 22% of workers employed by private businesses had deals that offered little or no guarantee of work and pay.

27. US economy losing ‘up to a $1bn a week’ after jobless benefits cut

    The US economy is losing up to a billion dollars a week because of the “fiscally irresponsible” decision to end long-term unemployment benefits, a Harvard economist said on Friday.

28. North Carolina Shows How to Crush the Unemployed

    The U.S. is about to cut the maximum duration of public support for the unemployed. The federal extension of unemployment insurance expires on Jan. 1. To see the consequences, look at North Carolina.

29. Guy Gets Sick, Spends Few Hours in Hospital Then This Happens….

30. Mayor Bill de Blasio challenges New York’s millionaires with higher taxes

    Seven inches of snow dumped over New York on his second day in office is not the only blizzard Bill de Blasio, the newly instated mayor, is having to negotiate. He is also heading into a political blizzard over his plans to tackle inequality by raising taxes on the very rich.

    The 109th mayor used his inaugural speech on 1 January to issue a liberal clarion call of the type not heard in New York – or arguably anywhere else in the US – for at least 20 years. As the first Democratic mayor to take office in the city since 1994, he vowed to take on what he has dubbed “the Tale of Two Cities” – the vast income gap that sets a sparkling and buoyant Manhattan apart from the grinding poverty found in the outer boroughs.

31. It Begins: Seattle Mayor Will Issue Executive Order to Raise City Workers’ Mininum Wage to $15/hr.

    Getting a $15/hr minimum wage for all of Seattle is going to take longer, but it is going to happen or be put to the voters.

32. As 2014 begins, New York City’s homeless population continues to grow

    According to the 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) presented to Congress by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in November, nearly 64,000 people, including 22,000 children, are homeless in New York City.

33. Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward

34. Clarifying the Crisis

35. RT TV Interview: How Wall Street Bankrupted Detroit

36. What would Robin Hood do: How cash handouts are remaking lives in Brazil

37. What America Would Look Like If Libertarians Got Their Way

38. Obama’s Prostitution of Democracy

    At the cross-roads, the sign directing traffic appears to be to the Right, the Left, under the misleading sign “Under Construction,” is in process of being permanently closed off, obstructions everywhere, barriers at every quarter-mile, a monstrous sign, “PRIVATIZATION,” instructing the foolhardy to turn back and take the right fork.

39. Capitalism and Democracy: Year-End Lessons

    Yet the country’s biggest banks are using “their” money and laws (that they often wrote) to block municipalities’ use of eminent domain. “Their” money includes the massive bailouts Washington provided to them since 2007. Big bank directors and major shareholders – a tiny minority – fund the politicians, parties and think-tanks that oppose municipalities’ use of eminent domain. In these ways, capitalism systematically undermines democratic decision-making about economic affairs.

40. A Q&A with Richard Wolff

41. Chomsky: It Is All Working Quite Well for the Rich, Powerful

    The term neoliberal is a bit misleading. The doctrines are neither new, nor liberal. As you say, big business and the rich rely extensively on what economist Dean Baker calls “the conservative nanny state” that they nourish. That is dramatically true of financial institutions. A recent IMF study attributes the profits of the big banks almost entirely to the implicit government insurance policy (“too big to fail”), not just the widely publicized bailouts, but access to cheap credit, favorable ratings because of the state guarantee and much else. The same is true of the productive economy. The IT revolution, now its driving force, relied very heavily on state-based R&D, procurement and other devices. That pattern goes back to early English industrialization.

42. The Richest World Leaders Are Even Richer Than You Thought

43. HP gives CEO a $1.5m pay rise amid worldwide layoffs

    SELLER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP’s CEO Meg Whitman has been given a pay rise of $1.5m, despite ongoing job cuts and protests at the firm, as the giant enterprise IT company starts to show signs of recovery under her leadership.

44. Meet Nicholas Moore, America’s Highest Paid Road Worker

    Macquarie Group Limited is a publicly traded banking, financial, advisory, investment, and fund management services headquartered in Sydney, Australia. In the United States, it has pushed for the privatization of public infrastructure and assets and operates major toll roads including Chicago’s Skyway, Indiana’s Toll Road, and the Dulles Greenway in Virginia, where area residents complain that higher tolls are pushing traffic into residential areas. The firm also owns a stake in Acquarion, a private, for-profit water service provider in New England, and is a major investor in K12 Inc., a for-profit provider of poorly performing “cyberschools.” K12 Inc. receives 86% of its revenue from taxpayers.

    U.S. taxpayers and toll payers contribute to making Moore “America’s Highest Paid Road Worker.” Moore made $8.8 million in compensation in fiscal year 2013, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek . Macquarie’s top executives are also well compensated making an estimated $53 million in combined compensation in fiscal year 2013. In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013, Macquarie reported $6.7 billion in revenue (this amount converted from Australian to U.S. dollars).

    “Why are we sending taxpayer revenue to executives and shareholders abroad when we need to be investing in America, rebuilding our roads, bridges and other infrastructure?” said Lisa Graves, Executive Director for the Center for Media and Democracy.

45. The U.S. Government Is Paying Through the Nose For Private Contractors

    The budget debate now consuming Washington often seems to come down to guns versus butter, or at least its contemporary manifestation, Reaper Drones versus food stamps.

    What gets lost in the increasingly caustic rhetoric is just how inefficient the U.S. government is when it spends, especially when it is outsourcing tasks to hugely profitable private companies.

46. Google execs saved millions on private jet flights using cheaper Nasa fuel

47. Feds Spent $180k On Liquor Days Before & During Government Shutdown

48. U.S. Government Sells Remaining GM Stock, Loses $10.5 Billion

49. Low-wage food service workers get a union at two Smithsonian museums

50. After 30 hours of work, Mita Diran collapsed and died

    ON SATURDAY copywriter Mita Diran tweeted about working for 30 hours straight at her Indonesian agency job.

51. Workers in Bangladesh Torch Wal-Mart Supplier

52. Bangladesh Garment Factory Ablaze As Worker Anger Boils

53. Get a clue, McDonald’s: Chain tells workers how much to tip their pool cleaners, dog walkers, and masseuses

    Corporate giant that told workers to go to church and return their presents has more tone-deaf advice to offer

54. Ayn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire

    The invisible hand waves bye-bye to Eddie Lampert, whose business plan has run Sears into the ground

55. Sen. Warren and 6 others introduce bill barring employers from rejecting job seekers for bad credit

    It is, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts says in an email, a small issue. But the Equal Employment for All Act would make a big difference for job-seeking Americans with poor credit ratings. The bill would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to stop employers from requiring or suggesting that applicants disclose their credit history and from procuring a consumer or investigative report. It also bars employers from disqualifying job seekers based on a poor credit rating or other
    information on their creditworthiness.

    Warren was joined in sponsoring the legislation by Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

56. Top 10 Ways the US is the Most Corrupt Country in the World

    While it is true that you don’t typically have to bribe your postman to deliver the mail in the US, in many key ways America’s political and financial practices make it in absolute terms far more corrupt than the usual global South suspects. After all, the US economy is worth over $16 trillion a year, so in our corruption a lot more money changes hands.

57. The Pathology of the Rich – Chris Hedges on Reality Asserts Itself pt1

58. David Simon: ‘There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show’

    The creator of The Wire, David Simon, delivered a coruscating speech about the divide between rich and poor in America, and how capitalism has lost sight of its social compact.

59. So the march is on. Fifteen years after Granny D started her…

    So the march is on. Fifteen years after Granny D started her march across the United States in the name of “campaign finance reform,” we will begin our march across New Hampshire (the long way), in the name of “corruption reform.”

60. Childcare workers asked to hand back wage rise

61. CEOs with Platinum Plated Pensions Want to Raise Social Security Eligibility to 70

    According to a new report, CEOs at the forefront of the drive to “fix the debt” by slashing Social Security and Medicare, possess personal retirement funds worth an average of $14.5 million, and three have retirement nest eggs worth more than $100 million. The average Social Security check is $1,308 per month.

62. Washington Post: The Problem With Populism

    Raising taxes on the wealthy is similarly popular–as the Washington Post’s own polling has shown–which makes it unclear why the Post is worried that “many Americans are uncomfortable with the notion of the government redistributing income.” If anything, they’d like to see more of it.

63. Elderly Adjunct College Professor Dies in Poverty

    According to the Sept. 22, 2013 edition of GPB News , part-time workers provide a distressing 75% of college instruction. They receive no benefits and no security. The pay is dismal. At one state college in Alabama , instructors are paid less than $1,800.00 for teaching a course. To make ends meet, some instructors must work two or three jobs, leaving them exhausted and demoralized. The quality of instruction inevitably suffers because of such dire conditions.

64. At Some Other Berkeley

    At UC Berkeley, the California public university system’s flagship campus, on November 20, 2009, in the early morning hours, dozens of students occupied and barricaded themselves inside Wheeler Hall, a beautiful neoclassical building at the center of campus that hosts more classes than any other campus building. Throughout the day, thousands of students, faculty, and campus workers massed outside Wheeler to support the students holed up inside.

    [...]

    While the student movement at Berkeley, with some notable exceptions, struggled to build on the 2009 mobilization the following year after administration repression, the resonance of anti-tuition hike struggles in California in 2011 with the national Occupy movement led to an explosion of protest activities throughout the state university system that fall. Berkeley was no exception. What began as a decently-attended protest on November 9 ballooned into a major standoff with off-campus police called in to respond to the erection of tents on the grassy knoll adjacent to the “Mario Savio Steps” on historic Sproul Plaza. Hundreds of students linked arms to nonviolently prevent the tents from being taken down by external riot police and withstood police brutality in return.

    In one widely-circulated video, a female student and faculty member are seen being grabbed by their hair and thrown to the ground while nearby students scream in pain as they are jabbed in the abdomen with batons. Berkeley Professor and former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass and his wife and fellow faculty member Professor Brenda Hillman also suffered police violence as they stood with students. Graduate student organizers sustained broken ribs, sprained wrists, and badly bruised torsos; some have reported longer-lasting psychological trauma.

65. Protest over free education for all Quebec children ends peacefully

    On International Human Rights Day, protesters occupied the offices of Quebec’s Education Minister for several hours on Tuesday in order to raise awareness of the plight of non-status children in Quebec.

66. WikiLeaks Reveals One Company’s Silly Strategy to Silence Anti-Keystone Activists

    A corporate presentation made public by WikiLeaks reveals exactly how the energy industry sees pesky climate activists: as a bunch of “radicals,” “realists,” “idealists, and “opportunists.” Also, as a real threat, judging from evidence that Canadian energy giant Suncor hired the consulting firm Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, to help it nip populist opposition to development Alberta, Canada’s vast oil reserves—which depends on the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline—in the bud. (Suncor told InsideClimate News that it never hired Stratfor, but its name comes up 11 times in this 35-page presentation, embedded below.)

67. Wikileaks reveals failed plans to suppress anti-Keystone activists

    The presentation was prepared by Stratfor, a global intelligence firm based in Texas, for what appears to be Suncor Energy, Canada’s largest oil sands producer. (While Suncor denies ever having commissioned or seen the presentation, the company’s name is mentioned a total of 11 times throughout.) It breaks down nearly two dozen environmental organizations, including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation,World Wildlife Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, into four basic categories: radicals, idealists , realists and opportunities and then sets out potential strategies for dealing with each, such as intentionally delaying negotiations or, as is proposed in this slide, ignoring them…

68. Ecuador president Rafael Correa: ‘Britain is violating Julian Assange’s human rights’

69. No charges ever pressed: Assange marks three years of UK detention

70. The Drone That Takes Out Julian Assange

    While it might be a stretch to imagine that Julian Assange is on Barack Obama’s infamous kill list- there is a overt trend to brand journalists as terrorists. If the objective behind this trend is successful, it might grant Michael Grunwald his sadistic wish after all. For example, this week it was revealed that British police are examining whether Guardian newspaper staff should be investigated for terrorism offenses over their handling of data leaked by Edward Snowden, Britain’s senior counter-terrorism officer said on Tuesday.

71. A very middle class enemy of the State: How DID an ex-pupil of £30k-a-year Sevenoaks School in Kent end up in exile in Berlin… clutching a laptop of UK state secrets… via a ‘romance’ with Julian Assange?

72. WikiLeaks’ Sarah Harrison: ‘How can you take Pierre Omidyar seriously?’

    WikiLeaks staffer who accompanied Edward Snowden to Russia, attacks the eBay founder for not helping the ‘PayPal 14′

73. Pierre Omidyar in 2009: “Anybody who publishes stolen info should help catch the thief”

74. Pierre Omidyar’s Leaky Struggle to Become a Press Freedom Fighter

75. WikiLeaks, Press Freedom and Free Expression in the Digital Age

    The story started in December, 2010, when PayPal suspended its relationship with WikiLeaks and the foundation accepting donations on their behalf for a period of several months. Today, PayPal can be found as one of several payment options available to support WikiLeaks’ work.

76. Wikileaks movie ‘The Fifth Estate’ named 2013′s biggest box office flop by Forbes

77. Government whistle-blowers to Edward Snowden: Don’t come home

78. Voice of Russia radio interview about spies, oversight, whistleblowers, and Snowden.

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01.03.14

Links 3/1/2014: Games

Posted in News Roundup at 12:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Links 3/1/2014: Applications

Posted in News Roundup at 12:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Links 3/1/2014: Instructionals

Posted in News Roundup at 12:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Fedora 20 Brings Wayland to GNOME and Abandons Blobs

Posted in GNOME, GNU/Linux, Red Hat at 12:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Binary blobs like AMD’s Catalyst driver are being marginalised by Fedora, which is also starting to introduce Wayland in GNOME-based distributions

THE previous post dealt with the state of Wayland in KDE. Well, it’s not just KDE which moves in this direction. The main patron of GNOME, namely Red Hat, is leaving proprietary graphics drivers behind [1,2] (the less, the merrier) and also moving to a more manageable graphics stack. Fedora is improving GNOME 3 and the GNOME Shell [3,4], which it now tied more closely to Wayland [5]. This is significant. With other work which aims to improve the desktop experience (e.g. Systemd [6]) we are bound to see many projects following, and not just direct Fedora derivatives like Korora [7]. The Fedora project is probably the biggest driver of GNU/Linux development, rivalled only by Debian, which still isn’t leaning towards Systemd [8,9]. What Fedora does affects not only RHEL, but also the world’s most used server operating system (close to Debian), CentOS [10].

Watch closely what Fedora is doing because what Red Hat decides on typically becomes a de facto standard for the rest of us. The good news is, the graphics stack in Linux seems to be repelling blobs (with root privileges), which are the most likely component to ever act as a backdoor (unless it already exists). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Fedora 20 Linux: Problems Supporting AMD Video Hardware

   Fedora 20, the newest version of the Linux-based operating system affiliated with Red Hat (RHT), has been out only for a few weeks. But it is already creating challenges for Linux users with AMD graphics hardware, which is not supported in some cases on the new release. It’s a reminder of the way that dependence on proprietary device drivers can drastically hinder open source adoption.

2. Will there really be no AMD Catalyst driver packaged by RPM Fusion for Fedora 20?

3. Fedora 20 Delivers Updated Gnome Software Center

   Fedora 20 delivers a sleek new software manager for the Gnome Shell that is perfectly user-friendly. This new software manager also takes advantage of the header bars introduced with Gnome 3.10. I have taken an extensive look at the re-designed Gnome Software Manager, and now its time to show off the goods.

4. DJANGO UNCHAINED: Don’t let ‘preview’ apps put you off Fedora 20

   If you’re a fan of GNOME 3 and the GNOME Shell, Fedora 20 will be a welcome update. This release sees an upgrade for Fedora’s default GNOME spin, bringing the desktop to GNOME 3.10.

   Fedora’s live desktop CD has used GNOME by default for many years now. Once upon a time that was completely unremarkable. However, since Ubuntu now has Unity, OpenSUSE pours its effort into KDE and Mint has worked hard to divorce Cinnamon 2.0 from GNOME 3, Fedora is, well, just about all GNOME has left these days.

5. GNOME Shell Wayland Benchmarks From Fedora 20

   While an X.Org Server is still used by default on Fedora 20 “Heisenbug”, Wayland has become a viable option for early adopters and developers wishing to work on Wayland software compatibility and/or testing. All the packages are needed on a Fedora 20 installation to launch a GNOME Wayland session and begin working, including support for XWayland in order to run X11-dependent games and applications.

6. KDBUS & Systemd Now Yields A Working System

   Open-source developers this week achieved a pleasant late Christmas present for Fedora users of having a working system with using the in-development Linux kernel DBus implementation (KDBUS) paired with the latest systemd code can now yield a booting system.

7. Interview: Chris Smart of the Korora Project

8. Init wars: Debian inclining towards upstart

9. Debian Still Debating Systemd vs. Upstart Init System

10. Progress Being Made On CentOS 7, Based Off RHEL7

    The CentOS community developers focused on their rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 have already begun playing with the RHEL7 Beta source packages to form CentOS 7.0.

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Links 3/1/2014: Android News

Posted in News Roundup at 12:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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The Age of Wayland in KDE

Posted in GNU/Linux, KDE at 11:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: An alternative to X Server is gaining traction in the world of KDE

FOR a period of time a couple of years ago Wayland made some headlines; Canonical has since then moved on to its own (with Canonical copyrights) X Server replacement, so Wayland did not make many headlines in 2013. But Wayland is making a bit of a comeback, not in Unity or GNOME (which now has version 3.11.3 in focus [1,2,3]) but in KDE.

KDE 4.12 was recently made available [4], potentially attracting many news users [5]. With the leadership of BlueSystem there is a shift towards Wayland [6], which becomes ever more real in the Qt- and Wayland-Powered Hawaii 0.2 Desktop [7,8].

Judging by where KWin development is going, Canonical is unlikely to ever revisit it (Kubuntu is no longer part of Canonical) and Wayland may be central in KDE’s future, including on Plasma-powered devices such as tablets. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Eye of GNOME 3.11.3 Allows for Transparent Backgrounds

   The GNOME developers announced recently yet another development release towards Eye of GNOME 3.12, the default image viewer application for the upcoming GNOME 3.12 desktop environment.

2. GNOME Display Manager 3.11.3 Fixes PAM Re-authentication Issue

   The GNOME developers behind the GDM (GNOME Display Manager) software have announced a few days ago the immediate availability for download and testing of version 3.11.3 of the default login manager app for the GNOME desktop environment.

3. GNOME Software 3.11.3 Adds More Featured Apps

   The GNOME Project has announced a few days ago that a new development release towards the stable GNOME Software 3.12 application for the GNOME desktop environment is available for download and testing, introducing two new features and lots of bugfixes.

4. KDE 4.12 Performance Updates Revealed

   The Majority of the changes for this release can be found in the excellent selection of KDE applications. Several applications come with new features and increased stability. If you want to see the latest improvements for KDE 4.12, we have all the exciting details.

5. Why Do Users Choose KDE?

   Popularity polls for software are questionable indicators at best. However, with KDE receiving just under a third of the votes in LinuxQuestion’s Members Choice for 2011 and 2012 and in Linux Journal’s 2013 Readers’ Choice Awards, there’s enough consistency to call KDE the most popular Linux desktop environment.

   Admittedly, if you add all the choices that use GNOME technology (Cinnamon, GNOME, Mate, and Unity), then KDE loses its position. But if you consider a desktop environment as a combination of both the shell and the underlying technology, KDE’s position is unchallenged. At a time when half a dozen choices are available, KDE’s one-third is probably as close to dominance as any desktop is likely to get.

6. Retrospection

   It’s now almost one year since I started my job at BlueSystem to work full time on KDE software. It’s a perfect time to look back and do some retrospection as well as trying to look into the future.

   Of course my focus of work was on KWin, but especially over the last months I worked all over the KDE workspaces. Overall we have achieved a great result. KWin is running in near production-ready quality after the port to Qt 5 and the Plasma workspaces are also in a very good shape already. I tend to mentially compare the experience with the state of Plasma 1 six years ago which was just a few weeks before the first release. We are in a better state and there is still lots of time till we will do our Plasma 2 release.

7. Qt & Wayland-Powered Hawaii 0.2 Desktop Released

8. Wayland-Powered Hawaii 0.2 Desktop Released

   The Maui project have released a completely new Wayland powered desktop named Hawaii 0.2, which promises to bring a new generation of desktop experience for GNU/Linux users. This desktop promises to bring a completely new out of box experience GNU experience for users and ships the latest and greatest open source software out there. The desktop environment uses Qt 5.2 as the toolkit backed by qtwayland module.

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Links 3/1/2014: Linux (Kernel) News

Posted in News Roundup at 10:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Kernel Space

• Btrfs-Progs To Be Updated In Tandem With The Kernel

• Download Linux Kernel 3.13 Release Candidate 5

  It’s not Christmas yet, but Linus “Santa” Torvalds came down the chimney and announced that the fifth Release Candidate of the upcoming Linux kernel 3.13 is now available for download and testing, for all you good Linux geeks out there.

• GrSecurity Continues Hardening The Linux Kernel

• The 50 Watt Power Regression Is Believed To Be Fixed

• Linux 3.13-rc6

• ‘Fairly small’ Linux 3.13-rc6 released

• Happy Birthday, Linus Torvalds!

  44 years ago, somewhere in Helsinki, the capital and the largest city in Finland, was born Linus Benedict Torvalds, the founding father and the chief architect of the Linux kernel.

• Linux 3.13 Kernel Development Will Be Dragged Out

• Linux: Then and Now

  In this short article we want to remind everyone how Linux evolved over two decades, thanks to an infographic posted by the Linux Foundation two years ago to mark the 20th anniversary of Linux.

• Linux 3.13 Kernel HDD File-System Benchmarks

  The Christmas benchmarks we have to share on Phoronix today are of testing the XFS, Btrfs, and EXT4 file-systems on the Linux 3.13 development kernel compared to Linux 3.12 from a high-performance hard drive. Earlier this month results were shared on Phoronix that indicated file-systems on a solid-state drive slowing down with this new Linux kernel, but is that also the case for HDDs?

• Torvalds: Linux devs may “cry into our lonely beers” at Christmas

  Linus Torvalds has let release candidate five for version 3.13 of the Linux kernel into the wild for some festive footling.

• Linux 3.13-rc5 released

  Torvalds seems to be content that last week has been calmer since rc4 and he expects that things will calm down over the next week. About 40 percent of Linux 3.13-rc5 is driver related changes and updates including GPU, networking and sound; 15 percent are architecture updates specifically powerpc; 10 percent pertains to filesystems (ceph/cifs); 10 percent is about documentation; while core kernel (scheduler) and mm (numa) fixes make up the rest of the rc5.

• Linus Torvalds’ Leadership Defines 2013 As The Year Of Linux

  Zemlin, in his report, notes that more than 1.5m Android, which is based on linux software, phone activations are happening every day. Many high-tech cars such as the Cadillac CTS sedan and the all-electric Tesla Model S run Linux.

• Reiser4 Is Now Available For The Linux 3.12 Kernel

  While we’re mid-way through the Linux 3.13 kernel development cycle and the Linux 3.12 kernel has been out for almost two months, the Reiser4 file-system is finally available for this latest stable kernel release series.

• A Summer Spent on the Linux Kernel Virtual File System

• Linux Kernel 3.12.6 Is Now Available for Download

• SDN in 2014: More Adoption and More Money for Vendors

  Software-defined networking (SDN) emerged in 2013 to be one of the hottest trends in networking. SDN wasn’t invented in 2013, it’s a concept that has its roots in a Stanford University thesis co-authored by Martin Casado in 2005, “The Virtual Network System.” The term SDN emerged in 2009. Ironically, Casado, the man who helped to create the SDN revolution, said in a video interview earlier this year that he no longer knew what the term SDN meant, because the definition has blurred as networking vendors big and small adopt the term to fit their own definition.

• Exclusive Research: How Are Enterprises Deploying SDN?

• VIDEO: David Meyer, OpenDaylight Technical Steering Committee Chairman

• Video: Changing the World One Line of Code at a Time

  I recognize at least 5 of the voices in the video: Jim Zemlin, Richard Stallman, Eben Upton, Mark Shuttleworth and of course Linus Torvalds.

• The Genius Of Linux Is Community, Not Technology

  Linux never fulfilled its original promise as an old-school desktop operating system. But its everywhere in 2013, driven by a vibrant community.

• ZRAM Finally Promoted Out Of Staging In Linux Kernel

• Linux Foundation Highlights Linux for Mobile, Cars, Gaming, Cloud

• ‘Big’ Linux 3.13-rc4 released by Linus Torvalds

• Linux 3.13-rc4 Kernel Released, But It’s Too Big

• Download Linux Kernel 3.13 Release Candidate 4

  Linus Torvalds has just announced a few minutes ago, December 15, that the fourth Release Candidate of the upcoming Linux kernel 3.13 is now available for download and testing.

• Android’s ION Proposed For Mainline Linux

• What is Linux? Can I use it? (very bad article)

• Knock: A Linux kernel patch for NAT-compatible, stealthy port knocking

• Linux’s New Game: the Internet of Things

  That’s because all of Linux’s huge advantages – zero cost, reliability, security, customisability – are vitally important in this sector, which is about linking together things that have not hitherto been connected. Adding computational and networking capabilities to this new class of devices must be as cheap as possible, and that means Linux (and other open source components) have an unbeatable advantage here. It is therefore surely only a matter of time before Linux dominates this sector as completely as it does elsewhere.

• The Top 10 Best Linux Videos of 2013

• Linux Kernel 3.12.5 Is Now Available for Download

  Greg Kroah-Hartman has just announced a few minutes ago, December 12, that the fifth maintenance release of the Linux kernel 3.12 is now available for download.

  Even if it was released just 4 days after Linux 3.12.4, it looks like Linux kernel 3.12.5 is not as big as the previous two maintenance builds, as it only contains various updated drivers (networking, SCSI, USB, Xen), a couple of sound updates, and several ARM improvements.

Graphics Stack

• NVIDIA Optimus Linux Power Battery Tests

• Intel Pentium G3220 On Linux

• Intel Celeron, Pentium Haswell HD Graphics On Mesa 10.1-devel

• X Server Security Disaster: “It’s Worse Than It Looks”

  There’s X.Org Server security vulnerabilities — even for vulnerabilities going back two decades — from time to time and in related components of the Linux graphics stack. Parts of the X.Org stack can be in fairly rough shape given the age of X11, but a very poor picture of it was painted at the Chaos Communication Congress. It was stated that the X.Org security is even worse than it looks.

  At the 30th Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) last week in Germany, Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher who previously reported X.Org vulnerabilities, gave a presentation. Covered in the presentation at the very well known CCC conference in Germany were client-side issues and then an entire half of the presentation devoted to the X.Org Server.

• More Changes Coming For DirectFB 1.8

  While most of the Linux desktop world is focused around Wayland, X11, and Mir for the basis of the display technologies, DirectFB has continued marching forward and picked up many features this year and there will be another batch of features presented soon with DirectFB 1.8.

• Intel Releases A Boatload Of Haswell Documentation

  As an extra holiday present for Linux and open-source fans, Intel has quietly released a large batch of new programming documentation that covers their latest-generation Haswell graphics cores. The new “programmer’s reference manuals” cover the 2013 Haswell HD Graphics, Iris Graphics, and Iris Pro Graphics. This massive batch of documentation is spread across twelve volumes and does document their hardware registers.

• X.Org Server 1.16 Planned For A July Debut

• Wayland’s Weston Was Rapidly On The Rise This Year

  After yesterday recapping Mesa’s development this year and LLVM’s growing development, up today are some statistics concerning Wayland and its Weston compositor this year from the Git side.

• Features Coming To Wayland, Weston 1.4

  Last week was marked by the first Wayland/Weston 1.4 Alpha release ahead of the planned general availability in January. For those that aren’t up to date on all of the development activity, I’ve now had the time go through and highlight all of the major changes that landed in Git.

• Intel’s Beignet OpenCL Is Still Slowly Baking

  While Intel’s open-source OpenGL Linux driver improved a lot in 2013, sadly not advancing as much is the Intel OpenCL Linux driver for GPGPU support.

  As covered by several Phoronix articles, Intel’s work to deliver (open-source) OpenCL support to the Linux desktop that can take advantage of Ivy Bridge and Haswell graphics cores is Beignet. Beignet still seems to be rather an after-thought and not a big focus of the Intel Open-Source Technology Center developers; most Beignet activity is still done by Intel China developers.

• 2013 Was A Stellar Year For Mesa

• The Vivante Mesa Driver Is Still Brewing

  Going on for a while now has been the “etnaviv” driver project to create an open-source user-space graphics driver for the Vivante GC embedded GPUs. Work has slowed up to the Git repository as of late, but there still is the yet-to-be-mainlined Mesa classic driver.

• X.Org Server 1.15 Release Has Several New Features

  While X.Org Server 1.15 was delayed from its September release target over having no new features at the time, the final release of X.Org Server 1.15 is now available.

• NVIDIA Optimus Linux Power Battery Tests

• Intel Broadwell Support Continues To Land For Linux

  Intel Broadwell support continues to be tidied up within the Intel Mesa DRI and DRM kernel drivers to hopefully make for a smooth launch of Intel’s next-generation processors within a few months time.

• xorg-server 1.14.99.905

• It’s Easy Getting Intel Graphics To Work On SteamOS

  While Valve only advertises NVIDIA graphics driver support in the SteamOS Beta released on Friday, I already found that AMD Radeon GPUs work with Catalyst on this Debian Linux derived OS. With a simple tweak, Intel HD Graphics can also run quite fine on SteamOS.

• iFixit opens a Steam Machine prototype, finds a modular computer

• NVIDIA 2013 Linux Graphics Driver Year-In-Review

  For the ninth year in a row I am issuing year-in-review articles concerning the state of NVIDIA’s (and separately, AMD Catalyst) Linux graphics driver and the accomplishments the driver’s made in the past calendar year along with benchmarks of all notable driver releases this year. NVIDIA’s made a lot of progress on the Linux front this year, especially for any Linux gaming stakeholder, so let’s get started on our 2013 NVIDIA Linux Year-In-Review.

• Intel Haswell Linux Performance Improved A Lot In 2013

  With the end of the year quickly approaching, at Phoronix I have been re-testing all of the Linux graphics drivers to see how the performance has changed in 2013 and the features added/removed over the calendar year. I’ve been doing these annual Linux driver yearly recaps going back to 2005 when Linux GPU drivers were in their infancy compared to Windows. Yesterday I started with the NVIDIA 2013 Linux Year-In-Review of their first-rate binary driver while today I have some performance tests done for Intel’s latest-generation Haswell graphics hardware.

• AMD Catalyst 13.12 GPU Driver For Linux Released

• Mesa Support Comes For Adaptive Vsync

• X.Org Server: 1,047 Warnings Reduced To Zero

  Keith Packard has been working on an X.Org Server clean-up of the aging code-base and he’s managed to reduce the number of generated warnings down to zero.

  With the X.Org Server code originating from the X Server code-base that’s been under development for the past 25 years, there’s lots of crufty old code still present that was written before ANSI C was even standardized. Over time, the code has gotten out of shape and doesn’t comply with today’s best practices.

Benchmarks

• 6-Way End-Of-2013 Linux Benchmarks

• ASUS Zenbook Prime Linux Benchmarks

• Linux 3.13 Kernel Power Consumption Benchmarks

• Intel Core i3/i5 Sandy Bridge & Ivy Bridge Linux Performance Update

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