Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Linux: An Evolving Trend That Is High On Demand

  When we discuss the advancement of Linux, well then several companies along with developers are playing their part in bringing up the technology, especially desktop, the area where Linux strived hard to excel. Stack Overflow conducted a survey of more than 50,000 developers that stated that nearly 21.7% choose Linux, in particular to develop on the LAMP stack. In spite of the fact that 50% of developers use the same, the rate is steadily depleting, making the competition effortless for Linux.

• When Linux is the face of kindness

  My late father, Lou Shapiro, was an early leader of UNICEF, so relief work was baked into the genetics of my family. His work was centered on emergency relief for the survivors of earthquakes and other natural disasters. Whenever there was an earthquake in the world, I knew dad would be coming home late from work—and I was so proud that some family experiencing trauma would be sleeping in a dry tent, with warm blankets and clean water, because of my dad’s work. Following in my father’s footsteps, my own relief work has been centered on digital inclusion—and open source is the tool I turn to most often.

  Let me share two stories with you in that regard. In April, a young dad visited the public library where I work. He appeared interested in using the public computers our library offers. It turns out someone had stolen his family’s only computer, a Macbook, and his tax return was due that day. When I learned about his predicament, I asked, “Would you like to borrow a Linux laptop until your family buys another laptop?” He perked up and asked, “Does this library lend laptops?” I replied, “The library doesn’t, but I do. You can bring this back to me after you’re done with it.”

• 4 open source tools I used to write a Linux book

  I spent the past year or so writing Learn Linux in a Month of Lunches, which is designed to introduce desktop Linux to non-technical users. This is a rundown of the tools I used to create the book, with the HUGE caveat that tools are just that—tools. They don’t actually do any work or planning for you. However, the right tools make the work much easier. These are the tools that were right for me.

• Desktop

  • Can Desktop Linux Conquer its Challenges?

    Despite countless inroads made by today’s best and brightest Linux distributions, it’s still difficult for the Linux desktop to get ahead. In this article, I’ll talk about the biggest challenges I’ve seen and what can be done to overcome them.

  • Windows 10 to Linux

    There is a lot of noise at the moment about Microsoft’s new operating system called Windows 10. Without repeating all the details you can have a look, say here or here or here. The essence of the story is that Microsoft is making it very difficult to avoid the new operating system. The advice being given is to not install the upgrade – which is anything but easy, since Windows 7 is supported until 2020.

  • A Windows zealot trashes Linux

    Linux has always been a fantastic alternative to Windows for many users. But there are some people who are so attached to Windows that the very idea of Linux offends them. So it was with one woman who became outraged when a Linux user tried to help her mother with some computer problems related to Windows 10.

  • The New Fullscreen Windows 10 Upgrade Nagging Reminder

  • Microsoft’s final Windows 10 nagware gets up close and personal

• Server

  • LzLabs launches product to move mainframe COBOL code to Linux cloud

    Somewhere in a world full of advanced technology that we write about regularly here on TechCrunch, there exists an ancient realm where mainframe computers are still running programs written in COBOL.

    This is a programming language, mind you, that was developed in the late 1950s, and used widely in the ’60s and ’70s and even into the ’80s, but it’s never really gone away. You might think it would have been mostly eradicated from modern business by now, but you would be wrong.

    As we march along, however, the pool of people who actually know how to maintain these COBOL programs grows ever smaller by the year, and companies looking to move the data (and even the archaic programs) to a more modern platform could be stuck without personnel to help guide them through the transition.

  • Java on the Mainframe – on z/OS rather than Linux – An opportunity well worth researching, if you run a Mainframe

    There is suddenly new interest in monitoring Java on mainframes – I’m not talking about running lots of Java VMs on Linux but about running Java against big mainframe systems on z/OS. This might be about modernising legacy COBOL applications (Java skills are easier to find than COBOL skills these days) or about extending the legacy with new business functionality. JAVA is very flexible, you can use it in DB2 stored procedures, or in CICs, or even in IMS programming (yes, IMS database is still in active use). According to BMC’s 2015 Mainframe Survey, 46% of those surveyed say that Java usage on their mainframe has increased by over 10% in the past two years; and 70% of respondees reporting growth indicated that writing new applications in Java was a key factor in this.

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • AMD has you covered: Its new Linux graphics driver already supports the Radeon RX 480

      AMD’s efforts to catch up with Nvidia on Linux are bearing fruit. AMD has historically lagged on Linux support for new graphics hardware, but its new AMDGPU-PRO 16.30 driver offers day-one support for the impressive AMD Radeon RX 480.

• Applications

  • darktable 2.0.5 Open-Source RAW Image Editor Adds Support for Canon EOS 80D

    Today, July 5, 2016, the popular darktable open-source and cross-platform RAW image editor software has been updated to version 2.0.5, the fifth maintenance release in the stable 2.0 series of the project.

    According to the release notes, darktable 2.0.5 is a modest update that implements a single feature, namely geolocation support for the watermark variable. Base support for the Canon EOS 80D digital camera is also available in this release, along with white balance presets and noise profiles.

    However, at this moment, darktable does not support the mRAW and sRAW file formats for the Canon EOS 80D digital SLR camera. This functionality should land in future updates of the application, but for now, you shouldn’t use the RAW file formats mentioned above, only JPG.

  • CF4OCL Adds OpenCL 2.1 Symbols, Offline Kernel Compiler/Linker

    There is a new release available of cf4ocl, the C Framework for OpenCL. This open-source project provides an object-oriented interface to the OpenCL API and offers various other features.

  • Guix: The Non-Aligned Universal Package Manager

    With Ubuntu releasing Snappy and Red Hat releasing Flatpak, suddenly universal package managers are in the news. Maybe we should talk about Guix too.

    Both Snappy and Flatpak have their points of interest, but exaggerated claims about both of them are all too common. In this situation, GNU Guix, which for two years has been offering packages that run on any distribution, provides a much needed reality check — to say nothing of a practical and proven alternative.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Getting Started on Pulp and Pulp Smash – A PulpQE Intern Summary

    • Launching a Centos VM in Tripleo Overcloud

    • Using Blender to Edit Videos

    • Server monitoring with Munin and Monit on CentOS 7.2

    • How to integrate Nextcloud into Ubuntu Unity

    • Linux Lexicon: Understanding The ‘ls’ Command In Linux

    • Btrfs — Getting Started With This Cutting Edge Linux Filesystem

    • You Would Never Know Where The Bug Is

  • Games

    • Defect Launches on Windows, Mac, Linux on July 26, 2016

      Defect, a sci-fi action strategy game from Three Phase Interactive where players build custom space crafts, take them into intergalactic dogfights and eventually face their own design in battle once their crew inevitably revolts, launches on Windows, Mac and Linux on July 26, 2016.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE neon Adds KDE Games

      Are you feeling too productive in your day? Then try the latest addition to KDE Neon! I’ve added the KDE Games applications to our repositories.

    • digiKam 5.0.0 is published…

      After two year of work, the digiKam team is proud to announce the final release of digiKam Software Collection 5.0.0. This main version introduces a new cycle of releases, which will be shortly released to quickly include all the fixes reported by end users.

      This release marks almost complete port of the application to Qt5. All Qt4/KDE4 code has been removed and many parts have been re-written, reviewed, and tested. Porting to Qt5 required a lot of work, as many important APIs had to be changed or replaced by new ones.

    • DigiKam 5.0 KDE Photography Software Released

      After two years of development, DigiKam 5.0 has been released as the digital photography management software from the KDE camp that’s now been ported to Qt5.

      The Qt5 port alone makes this a huge release and it does remove around 80% of the KDE-specific dependencies as in the future the developers are looking at making it Qt5-only. The dropping of many KDE dependencies is being used to make it easier to port and maintain this digital photography software on Windows, OS X, and other operating systems.

    • digiKam 5.0.0 Powerful Image Editor Officially Released, Ported to Qt5

      Today, July 5, 2016, the development team behind the digiKam open-source and cross-platform image editor software proudly announced the final release of digiKam 5.0.0.

      digiKam 5.0.0 comes two years after the release of digiKam 4.0.0. During these years, it received numerous snapshots that brought various nifty features and improvements, all of which are now present in this final build, which is available for download right now for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

    • KDE Neon 5.7 Lets You Taste the New KDE Plasma 5.7 Desktop Environment, Qt 5.7

      After informing us the other day about the availability of new ISO respins of the KDE Plasma Wayland images, ex-Kubuntu leader Jonathan Riddell has now announced the release of KDE Neon 5.7.

      For those behind on their KDE Neon reading, we’ll take this opportunity to inform them that the open-source initiative promises to offer ISO images as well as a repository that can be added on top of Kubuntu or any other Ubuntu flavor, with the most recent KDE Plasma, KDE Applications, and KDE Frameworks technologies.

    • KDE Plasma 5.7 Officially Released with Great Wayland Improvements, Many Changes

      Today, July 5, 2016, KDE has had the enormous pleasure of announcing the availability of the final KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment release.

      Yes, that’s right, the Beta testing phase is now over, and the final release of the highly anticipated KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment, which is used by default in numerous GNU/Linux operating systems, including openSUSE Leap, PCLinuxOS, Fedora, and many others, has hit the streets.

    • KDE Plasma 5.7 Officially Released

    • KDE Plasma 5.7

    • Animations on lock screen – Plasma Wallpaper support

      With Plasma 5.7 released I’m allowed to blog about new features in Plasma 5.8. One of the features missed by many users in the Plasma 5 series was the lack of animations in the lock screen architecture. With Plasma 5 we dropped support for the old XScreenSaver and went QtQuick only. Now technically it was always possible to have animations on the lock screen. Our lock screen architecture loads the QtQuick files through the lookandfeel package mechanism, which means that one could provide an animation in a lookandfeel package.

    • Synchronizing the X11 and Wayland clipboard

    • News from Randa, Café and next release

    • Interview with Matteo Pescarin

      It was a couple of years ago, I’ve grown disillusioned with the quality of the work I was able to get out of The GIMP from an artistic point of view until I started reading a couple of reviews of Krita online and decided to try it.

    • KDE Applications 16.08 Software Suite for KDE Plasma 5.7 to Land August 18, 2016

      Now that the release cycle of the KDE Applications 16.04 software suite is coming to an end, as the third and last maintenance update will arrive on July 12, it’s time for the KDE developers to concentrate their efforts on the next series.

      We’ve always wondered what will be the next version of the KDE Applications software suite for KDE Plasma 5.7, and now we know, as the release schedule of KDE Applications 16.08 has been published recently in the usual places.

    • Chakra GNU/Linux Users Can Now Test KDE Plasma 5.7, Qt 5.7 & KDE Frameworks 5.24

      The developers of the Chakra GNU/Linux rolling operating system are informing the community today, July 5, 2016, about the availability of the just released KDE Plasma 5.7.0 and Qt 5.7.0 in the testing repositories.

      As we reported earlier today, the KDE project has had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the final KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment, which already landed in the testing repos of the Arch Linux operating system, as well as today’s KDE Neon 5.7 User Edition Live ISO images. Now Chakra GNU/Linux devs have uploaded the latest KDE Plasma 5.7 packages, along with Qt 5.7 on their testing repositories.

    • KDE Plasma 5.7 released with more progress towards Wayland

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Remote Workshops

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Clonezilla Live 2.4.7-8 Adds Linux Kernel 4.6.2 & Partclone 0.2.89, Many Changes

      Steven Shiau, the developer behind the Clonezilla Live and GParted Live projects, proudly announced the availability for download of the Clonezilla Live 2.4.7-8 stable ISO respins.

    • Solus 2.0 Operating System to Introduce the Sol Package Manager, Cool Features

      Today, July 5, 2016, after a long wait, Solus Project’s Josh Strobl has had the great pleasure of announcing a new installation of the “This Week in Solus” newsletter, informing fans of the Solus operating system about the latest trends.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • Shining design – available and yet as well to come!

      The current vibrant coloured bg/theme is not the final one we’re going to release in GA. It has been intended for celebrating the new (and great) Plasma5, the default OMLx3 desktop.

      As always, we do our best possible to provide the users with an overall nice and stylish look for our loved distro.

  • Slackware Family

    • Slackware 14.2

      Slackware was familiar. I could easily go back to using it. However, I have been spoiled by my experience with opensuse. With slackware, there are no configured repos. Any install of addition software takes additional effort, though perhaps just unpacking a tar file. And security updates require periodic checking for announcements and then manual installing.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Lenovo G50 & CentOS 7.2 KDE – Really nice and cool

      CentOS 7 is an excellent choice for home use, even on a laptop that’s not Linux friendly, and it does its work well despite the challenges, the likes of Realtek, UEFI and other buzz words. Now, if only different distros could blend the good elements from their peers. In this case, Ubuntu and friends are more media friendly, and you have better smartphone support. But CentOS does the basics much better, and this means stability, consistency, and weirdly, hardware support.

      It’s like being asked whether you want to lose an arm or a leg, and you can’t have both. In theory, Ubuntu is supposed to give you that LTS fun plus the latest and greatest software, but in reality, this is not happening with Xerus. Yes, Trusty is there, and it’s still the best overall candidate for desktops, in whatever guise. CentOS comes rather close. Yes, it does have its antiquities and enterprise idiosyncrasies, but the problems are solvable. That’s a really nice thing. You can actually fix issues, and there are no surprises waiting for you the next day.

      I did invest a significant amount of energy in making CentOS 7 work on the G50 machine. We can’t ignore that. But the yield is highly positive. The outcome is worth the effort. You need the right network support and some extra repos, but after that, you can add new software, codecs, bells and whistles, drivers for other filesystems and protocols, and anything else you fancy. Well, almost. All considered, this is far more than you’d ever expect. There’s still more work to be done. I will address all sorts of issues in follow up articles, including stuff like MTP, Flash performance, adblocking, volume control, and more. And I think you will be amazed how far you can take CentOS if you set your mind to it. Hint, Gnome edition perhaps?

      Which makes it a darn good candidate for your systems. For one reason only. It needs fixing only once. It does not regress. For me, this is a hugely important attribute for anything I may consider for my production setup. CentOS 7, the biggest and most pleasant surprise this awful spring testing season. Modern hardware, here you go. Off to you guys. Do it. Do it.

    • Red Hat Wants To Repeat The Magic of Linux With Containers

      At the recently held Red Hat Summit, Red Hat’s annual user conference, containers took the center stage. The keynotes emphasized the importance of containers, both for the company, and the broader open source ecosystem.

    • The State of Flatpak In GNOME Software

      Richard Hughes of Red Hat has written a post about Flatpak and GNOME Software. His new post covers the per-user and system-wide plugins for dealing with Flatpak packages, GNOME Software interoperates well with the Flatpak command-line utility, and various other details about the current state of Flatpak integration for GNOME Software.

    • Red Hat, Eurotech Team Up On IoT Platform

      Red Hat and Eurotech have announced a jointly sponsored Eclipse Foundation project: a multi-device IoT platform based on donated Eurotech code.

    • Flatpak and GNOME Software

    • Red Hat CEO: Avoiding bloody noses, hammering home open source participation, and why Microsoft is trying to stay relevant

      Whitehurst believes that virtually all of the newer innovations in technology are happening on Linux first.

      “If you look at Hadoop – Linux only, Microsoft paid Hortonworks to port it to Windows but I don’t know anybody who actually runs it on Windows, if you look at everything happening round SDN or containers, they are Linux containers,” said Whitehurst.

      Microsoft’s plays were described as a company that is effectively playing catch-up, chasing the pack and trying to re-ignite the domination of the 90s that came about because the Microsoft Developer Network started building on Windows, said the CEO.

      Whitehurst said: “I think they are recognising that all the developers, all the cool kids, are developing on Linux now, so there is a nexus of innovation happening there and they are trying to figure out how to work in that new system.”

      Microsoft has made a play to try and stay relevant with developers that are increasingly comfortable with open source tooling and Linux as the operating system.

    • A childhood’s dream

      I will be joining the Platform Operations Team at Red Hat as a System Administrator starting from mid-July! Being part of a great family which cares about Open Source and its values makes me proud and I would really like to thank Red Hat for this incredible opportunity.

    • Finance

      • Red Hat’s (RHT) Buy Rating Reiterated at Citigroup Inc.

      • Deutsche Bank AG Reaffirms “Buy” Rating for Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

      • Yesterday Stock’s Trend: Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ:SYMC), Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Red Hat’s (RHT) Outperform Rating Reaffirmed at William Blair

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 24 – It isn’t for everybody, but then, it doesn’t try to be

        On June 23, after installing Fedora for my first ever look at the distro for this review of Fedora 24, I pinged a friend who writes about Linux seeking help for a pesky configuration problem. I was trying to get GNOME to quit demanding a password every time I walked away from the computer for five minutes or so, which I thought should be easy, but wasn’t. After finding sort of a solution for the problem, I sent him another email.

        “I would expect Fedora to have an easy way to deal with this,” I wrote. “Actually, I find very few configuration tools in this installation of Fedora, which surprises me. This must be what you get when you have server people supervising the development of a desktop OS.”

        “Exactly,” he pinged back with record speed. “I’ve never cared much for it myself. Never really found it that compelling. Arch/etc I get; Ubuntu/Mint, I also see the appeal. But Fedora and SuSE always lost me. Nothing negative about them, rather, I fail to see the appeal unless you’re someone who uses these at work.”

      • Nvidia Drivers Install Fedora 24

      • Armadillo 7 and Nikola 7.7.9 now in Fedora 24

        A new update is available in Fedora 24 fedora-updates-testing repository. This is a major version change from version 6 to 7 and since this implies an .so (dynamic library) major number bump we had to rebuild all the packages that link with armadillo:

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Bullseye, More Obnoxious Windows 10, Slack 14.2 Notes

      Today in Linux news Debian announced version 10 codename at DebConf16 currently in session. In other news Microsoft was just kidding about that whole easier-to-decline thing and Li-f-e may be switching base from openSUSE to Ubuntu. Elsewhere, several reviews warrant a mention besides Neil Rickert’s and my own thoughts on Slackware 14.2.

    • twenty years of free software — part 8 github-backup

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • IBM SoftLayer Now Ubuntu Certified Cloud Partner

          IBM’s SoftLayer cloud infrastructure division has partnered with Ubuntu to offer users certified Ubuntu Linux images, giving access to all the latest Ubuntu features, compliance accreditations, and security updates to SoftLayer customers.

        • Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux Looks To Ditch 32-Bit

          Canonical is the latest software maker looking to end support for Intel’s once-great 32-bit platform

        • E-Shelter Offers Up Managed Ubuntu OpenStack Through Canonical

          Canonical and NTT Communications-owned data centre business e-shelter have launched a joint managed OpenStack private cloud service for e-shelter customers. Advertising.

        • Ubuntu 16.10 Unity 8 – Keyboard navigation

        • Fairphone 2 and OnePlus One Ubuntu Phones Receive Bluetooth, Voice Call Support

          Marius Gripsgård was happy to announce the biggest Ubports update ever for many of the unofficial Ubuntu Phone devices that he and other contributors to this project are maintaining.

        • Canonical Announces Snappy Sprint Event in Germany to Shape Up Universal Snaps

          Today, July 5, Canonical’s David Planella has informed Softpedia about an upcoming event that aims to gather together developers and contributors from various well-known projects to work on shaping up the universal Snaps.

          Last month, Canonical informed the media about Snaps becoming universal binary format for various GNU/Linux distributions that decide to adopt it in addition to various other similar formats, such as Flatpak or AppImage.

          Snaps are currently enabled by default in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, but Canonical made it possible for users of various other operating systems, including, but not limited to, Arch Linux, Debian, and elementary OS, to use it as well.

        • Linux distros look to drop 32-bit support

        • Linux distros to ditch 32-bit support

        • Flavours and Variants

          • First Thoughts on Linux Mint 18 “Sarah”

            I am a big fan of Linux Mint and I look forward to every release. This week Mint 18 “Sarah” was released. I decided to try it out on my Dell XPS 13 laptop since it is the easiest machine of mine to base and they really haven’t suggested an upgrade path. The one article I was able to find suggested a clean install, which is what I did.

            First, I backed up my home directory, which is where most of my stuff lives, and I backed up the system /etc directory since I’m always making a change there and forgetting that I need it (usually concerning setting up the network interface as a bridge).

• Devices/Embedded

  • Arduino 101 gains faster compiler, better Curie support

    Intel and Arduino LLC have updated the Zephyr RTOS core of its Curie/Quark driven, BLE-ready Arduino 101 board, featuring a faster compiler.

    Last October, Intel and Arduino LLC announced their jointly developed Arduino 101, an Arduino Uno compatible board known as the Genuino 101 outside the U.S. Intel shipped it in January, and on April 21, released a fully open source version of the Zephyr-based RTOS that runs on the x86-compatible Intel Quark SE core inside the Intel Curie module, thereby making the Arduino 101 much more accessible. Now Intel and Arduino LLC have announced a faster new 1.0.6 version of the core’s firmware that improves communication between the Curie and the Arduino 101’s 32-bit RISC ARC core, which runs Arduino sketches.

  • Software development kit from Lumenera supports Linux ARM-based processors

    With the Linux SDK 2.1, USB 3.0 cameras from Lumenera now support Ubunti Linux, as it is used globally because of its versatility, reliability, and extensive developer libraries. Ubuntu has regular Long Term Support releases that are supported for five years, making it an ideal choice for developers. Cameras supported with this release include the Lt225, Lt425, Lt365R, Lt665R, Lt965R, Lt1265R, Lt16059H cameras, as well as the soon-to-be released Lt29059. It also supports Ubuntu versions 14.04.03, 14.04.04 and 12.04.05) on 32 and 64-bit x86 platforms and has the same common API call format as Lumenera’s Windows SDK and Linux 2.0 SDK for easy migration between platforms.

  • IoT reference design brings ARM and open source tools to Sigfox nodes

    The firm, which is already as supplier of Sigfox low data rate IoT wireless systems, is offering the reference design module based on Silicon Labs’ EZR32 wireless microcontroller, an ARM Cortex-M3 MCU.

    The reference design module offers exceptional wireless performance with -128dBm sensitivity (154dbm link budget) and bi-directional communication (100bit/s uplink and 600bit/s downlink).

  • SIGFOX Sponsored Webinar: How Do You Scale IoT/M2M Deployments Quickly?

  • ViewSonic taps Raspberry Pi 3 for $89 thin client system

    ViewSonic’s $89, VESA-mountable “SC-T25” thin client runs the Linux-based VTOS distro on a Raspberry Pi 3, and is optimized for Citrix HDX.

    ViewSonic has offered several low-cost thin clients in recent years, such as the $199 SC-U25, a collaboration with Userful. However, the SC-T25 breaks new ground with a $89 price. Its secret: building the device around the $35 Raspberry Pi 3 single board computer.

  • June Another Great Month for the Raspberry Pi

    Among other things, our Pi guy looks at the newest addition to the MagPi Essentials collection, Dave Akerman and a Raspberry Pi breaking a lofty record, and Tim Peake returning from space while leaving his Astro Pis in orbit.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • ARTIK Cloud Challenge is now live! Learn what it has in store for Tizen

        But what does Tizen have to do with ARTIK you ask? The ARTIK hardware boards have been made compatible with Tizen OS 3.0 which can cover the hardware part of the IoT development. Things don’t change much with the ARTIK Cloud platform either as it supports Tizen OS 3.0 .In the past we have talked a lot about Samsung’s smart Tizen powered TVs and how they are envisioned to be the single Home automation hub in every living room. Samsung’s SmartThings is another example, having already made compatible with Tizen OS on the Z3 it won’t be long until these data get transferred onto the ARTIK Cloud for leveraging and ease of access/control of IoT devices.

    • Android

      • The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge Review: Part 2

        Our 2016 benchmark suite attempts to really push our testing in general to a new level of depth and more importantly, more focused on the overall user experience. When reflecting upon the value of AnandTech from a testing perspective, it’s clear to me that while part of our value is running benchmarks across a wide range of phones, another part of our value is being able to run tests that others wouldn’t be able to run at all.

        With our new test suite for 2016, our extended suite of benchmarks attempts to focus on the latter to go deeper in reviews in a meaningful way. I definitely enjoy examining architectural details through microbenchmarks, but for general reviews our standard test workflow needed to be focused on user experience in a deeper way. With this in mind, we can get into the data that we were missing with part 1 of the review. Of course, if you haven’t read part 1 of the Galaxy S7 review, I highly recommend reading it first just to get a better introduction into the basics of the Galaxy S7.

      • HummingBad malware infects 10 million Android devices, millions more at risk

      • Android Nougat Takes on Mobile Ransomware

      • Android 7.0 Nougat will block screen lock ransomware

      • BlackBerry Classic Cancelled, Leaked Android Devices Are Not The Answer

      • K2 Software adds Android support and DocuSign integration, details $150M investment

      • Cheetah Mobile licenses hugely popular ‘Badland 2′ for Android, promptly ruins it with IAPs

      • Android’s latest encryption problem may make you want a new phone

      • The best Android phones you can buy [July 2016]

        It’s already July, and with an ever-increasing number of notable Android OEMs reaching maturity, we’ve seen more new handsets than usual launch this summer. We had the Huawei Mate 8 and Honor 5X at CES in January, followed later by Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge and others around the time of Mobile World Congress, and last month saw the new OnePlus 3 and Moto Z. But which ones are the best buys?…

        Whether you like a pocket-sized phone that offers more in terms of raw features, or a phablet-sized phone that sticks to stock Android, you’re sure to find something to fit your preference when you go with Android. The platform can be found on more than 80% of smartphones on the planet, and there’s a reason for that.

      • Android 6.0 Marshmallow is hitting the Samsung Galaxy A8

      • Waiting for Marshmallow? When You’ll Get the Android Update

      • How To Make Any Android Phone a Nexus

      • This Android malware has infected 85 million devices and makes its creators $300,000 a month

      • HummingBad Malware Infecting 85 million Android Devices

      • Android’s full disk encryption can be brute-forced on devices with Qualcomm chips

      • Zebra Launches Its First Android-Based Enterprise Wearable Computer

        Zebra Technologies has introduced its first-ever Android-based enterprise wearable computer, offering customers an alternative to the long-standing Microsoft Windows operating systems that has been used on its products for two decades.

        The new products include the WT6000 Industrial Wearable Computer, as well as an accessory RS6000 Wearable Ring Scanner and an HS3100 Rugged Headset that add flexibility for a wide range of enterprise users. The WT6000 runs on Android Lollipop 5.1, while the ring scanner and headset don’t include their own operating systems.

Free Software/Open Source

• Goodwill is the source code at this open coder collective

  About a year ago, Gautam Rege decided that he wanted to do something to give back to the open source community.

  Rege, along with Sethupathi Asokan, is the cofounder of Josh Software, is among the top companies working on the Ruby on Rails framework in India.

  “With an experience of many years in the open source world, we realised that there is a need to build a platform for measuring the open source contributions, which coders make every day across the world,” Rege told ET.

• Moving from a traditional product/release focused delivery model to a rolling model

  GDP was born as a “demo” project. The main goal was to provide a platform to show the software components for automotive that the different GENIVI Expert Groups were developing. This was done through a delivery model focused on publishing a stable and easy to consume version of the project every few months, a major release.

  Strictly speaking, GDP is a derivative. It is based on poky and uses Yocto tools to “create” the Linux based platform, adding the different components developed by the GENIVI Alliance together with upstream software. For the defined purpose, the release centric model works fine, especially if you concentrate your effort is very specific areas of the software stack with a small number of dependencies on the other areas, and a limited number of contributions and environments where the system should work.

  During this 2016, the GDP has grown significantly. We have more software, more contributors, more components and more target boards to take care of. Although the above model has not been not challenged yet, it was just a matter of time.

• Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository

  This article outlines the scale of that codebase and details Google’s custom-built monolithic source repository and the reasons the model was chosen. Google uses a homegrown version-control system to host one large codebase visible to, and used by, most of the software developers in the company. This centralized system is the foundation of many of Google’s developer workflows. Here, we provide background on the systems and workflows that make feasible managing and working productively with such a large repository. We explain Google’s “trunk-based development” strategy and the support systems that structure workflow and keep Google’s codebase healthy, including software for static analysis, code cleanup, and streamlined code review.

• IoT Security: What IoT Can Learn From Open Source

  When personal computers were introduced, few manufacturers worried about security. Not until the early 1990s did the need for security become widely understood. Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) is following the same pattern — except that the need for security is becoming obvious far more quickly, and manufacturers should have known better, especially given the overwhelming influence of open source.

  The figures speak for themselves. In 2014, a study by Hewlett-Packard found that seven out of ten IoT devices tested contained serious security vulnerabilities, an average of twenty-five per device. In particular, the vulnerabilities included a lack of encryption for local and Internet transfer of data, no enforcement of secure passwords, and security for downloaded updates. The devices test included some of the most common IoT devices currently in use, including TVs, thermostats, fire alarms and door locks.

• Nextcloud 9 update brings security, open source enterprise capabilities and support subscription, iOS app

• ​Nextcloud adds enterprise support and iOS appliance

  The ownCloud fork, Nextcloud is aggressively seeking private cloud business customers.

• Nextcloud Improves Security, Adds Enterprise Support

  A month ago, Frank Karlitschek, founder of the ownCloud project, forked the code to create a new company called Nextcloud. Now in its first platform release the company’s technology is getting enterprise support.

  In keeping with ownCloud’s numbering, the new release is Nextcloud 9, though the release brings more than what is available in the ownCloud 9 release that debuted in March.

  “Nextcloud is building open-source replacements for the ownCloud closed-source enterprise-only features,” Karlitschek told eWEEK. “With this release, 80 percent is done and the rest will be coming soon.”

  Nextcloud isn’t simply replicating features that already exist in ownCloud. Karlitschek said Nextcloud is also developing its own set of new and innovative features.

• Project aims to store publicly available software

  A French organisation dedicated to computational sciences has started a project to collect, organise, preserve, and make easily accessible the source code of all publicly available software.

  Inria has dubbed the project Software Heritage and says it will adopt distributed infrastructure in order to ensure long-term availability and reliability.

• Events

  • How to write an excellent event recap

  • HaL deadline extended

    There is this long-running workshop series Haskell in Leipzig, which is a meeting of all kinds of Haskell-interested folks (beginners, experts, developers, scientists), and for year’s instance, HaL 2016, I have the honour of being the program committee chair.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Support Public Education and Web Literacy in California

      Web literacy — the ability to read, write, and participate online — is one of the most important skills of the 21st century. We believe it should be enshrined as the fourth “R,” alongside Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. From our open source learning tools to our free educational curriculum, we are dedicated to empowering individuals by teaching Web literacy.

      In 2015, 65% of California public schools offered no computer science courses at all. Public schools should do more to expose students to Web literacy: a paucity of funding and the elimination of digital skills classes and curriculum are a disservice to students and the state’s future.

      On June 30, we submitted an amicus letter to the California Supreme Court urging review of the case Campaign for Quality Education v. State of California. The issue in this case is whether the California Constitution requires California to provide its public school students with a quality education. We wrote this letter because we believe that California students risk being left behind in our increasingly digitized society without a quality education that includes Web literacy skills.

• SaaS/Back End

  • How Cloud Computing is Driving Demand for Open Source Talent

    The rise of cloud computing has revolutionized the way companies and tech teams operate today. Perhaps, this is why more than half (51 percent) of hiring managers and recruiters found cloud technologies to have the biggest impact on open source hiring in 2016, according to the 2016 Open Source Jobs Report. As an open source professional, expanding one’s knowledge base to include cloud-related skills isn’t just smart, it’s almost a necessity. It also doesn’t hurt that tech professionals who have cloud experience are well compensated. Dice’s latest annual salary survey found cloud (as well as big data) skills represented the majority of 2015’s highest earners, making $131,121 to $142,845 on average. Cloud computing is a mainstay of the tech industry, which seems to continue to weigh heavy on employers’ minds as they look to make open source hiring decisions.

  • It’s Complicated, Okay (or Let’s Talk Openly about Apache Mesos’ OSS Neighbors, Friends and Rivals)

  • minimesos – The Experimentation and Testing Tool for Apache Mesos

  • Contributing to Apache Mesos: Where to Begin – Joris Van Remoortere & Michael Park, Mesosphere

  • Apache Mesos for Beginners: 3 Videos to Help You Get Started

• Databases

  • Formula E championship drives on Intellicore & Basho Riak TS

    Basho Technologies has announced Intellicore’s adoption of its Riak TS to power its Sports Data Management Platform, used by the FIA Formula E Championship to provide real time race analysis to its customers.

  • MongoDB Sets Up Real-Time Analytics Muscle with Apache Spark Connector

    The MongoDB World meetup took place last week, and there were a lot of interesting announcements made, including ones related to connecting open source database functionality to Apache Spark. From cloud developers working to incorporate databases with their deployments to enterprises that want more flexibility from their data repositories, open source databases are flourishing, and MongoDB is a leader in this area.

    At last week’s event, the MongoDB Connector for Apache Spark was announced. It is billed as “a powerful integration that enables developers and data scientists to create new insights and drive real-time action on live, operational, and streaming data.”

  • Why object storage is eating the world

    The traditional file system-and-database web backend is no longer adequate, and must make way for storage systems that manage unstructured data. In this article we will learn about the differences between structured and unstructured data, and why web storage backends must evolve to manage unstructured data.

    Traditionally, web applications use file systems and databases to store user data. This is simple to manage, as web applications generate structured data by accepting text input in forms, and saving the input to a database. However, times are changing; with the advent of social media, cloud storage, and data analytics platforms, increasing quantities of unstructured data are being pushed onto the Internet.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • SourceClear Open [Ed: Openwashing of a Microsoft-connected firm and of proprietary software by adding the word “Open”]

• Public Services/Government

  • Bulgaria Mandates That Government Software Must Be Open Source

    Over the past few years, open source tools and applications have been gaining enormous traction in parts of Europe, and cities such as Munich have been involved in a multi-year effort to transform technology infrastructure by throwing out proprietary pplications and using open source tools instead.

    Now, in the latest move on this front, Bulgaria has passed legislation requiring that government software be open source. It’s quite a commitment, and the move underscores how pervasive and flexible open source applications and platforms have become.

  • Bulgaria goes Open Source

  • Bulgarian gov writes open source into law

  • Bulgaria Demands Open Source For Public Sector Software

  • Bulgaria decrees that all government software should be open source

  • Bulgaria mandates government code be open source: Should other countries follow suit?

  • Bulgaria now requires (some) government software to be open source

  • LinkedIn open-sources URL-Detector Java library, LokiJS 1.4, and Bulgaria’s new open-source law—SD Times news digest: July 5, 2016

  • Bulgaria, EU fund eID and ePayment projects

    The government of Bulgaria and the European Union are to fund eID, ePayment and other telecommunication projects in the country, the Ministry of Information Technology announced on 22 June. All the projects, for which the ministry has EUR 10.5 million in funds are to be co-financed by project participants.

  • WT Power Breakfast: Open source perspectives from GSA Digital Service leader

    Filling in the gap from the policy perspective is Alan Chvotkin of the Professional Services Council, who will explain how policy initiatives such as OMB’s push for more open source will impact industry and government agencies.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Source Music Proponent Jason Herskowitz Joins Spotify

    Jason Herskowitz has joined Spotify. Herscowitz, who developed open-source cross-platform music player Tomahawk, has been an outspoken critic of the music industry.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Mechaduino: an open-source industrial servo motor for 3D printers, CNC machines & more

      Tropical Labs, an electromechanical systems lab based in Washington, DC., has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Mechaduino, an open-source industrial servo motor for 3D printers and other machines. Mechaduino can be used as a drop-in replacement for NEMA 17 stepper motors and drivers.

Leftovers

• Science

  • Japan Says Yes To Mirrorless Cars

    It’s clear that, at one point, glass mirrors will be a thing of the past, as companies will drop them in favor of video screens, but until then, they’ll have to wait for the legislation to change.

    Last month, however, the idea came closer to reality in Japan, which became one of the first countries to allow vehicles to use cameras instead of mirrors, as AutoNews reports.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Swedish politicians consider opening population’s medical-research DNA database for private insurance companies

    Since 1975, Sweden has taken a DNA sample from all newborns for medical research purposes, and asked parents’ consent to do so for this research purpose. This means that over time, Sweden has built the world’s most comprehensive DNA database over everybody under 43 years of age. But now, politicians are considering opening up this research-only DNA database to law enforcement and private insurance companies.

  • The Dutch & Pharma Policy: A Groundbreaking Presidency

    For the next steps, the European Commission seems rather hesitant to deliver on the tasks mandated by the Council. Drugmakers certainly feel uncomfortable with the debate around intellectual property and have even threatened to move their businesses out of Europe, should there be any changes to the IP regime. National governments, including the Netherlands, therefore will need to stand firm and prove that they are serious about what they signed off on June 17. They should guarantee that the European Commission delivers a bold and meaningful report and not another self-congratulatory inventory. And it remains to be seen how the political momentum will be maintained during the upcoming Slovak and Maltese Presidencies… In other words, June 17 was just the start rather than the end of the journey.

  • Celebrated eye hospital Moorfields lets Google eyeball 1 million scans

    Famous eye hospital Moorfields has agreed to give Google’s DeepMind access to one million anonymous eye scans as a part of a machine learning study intended to spot early signs of sight loss.

    Explicit patient consent is not required because the scans are historic, meaning the results won’t affect the care of current patients. Under the project, the hospital will also have access to related anonymous information about their eye conditions and disease management.

    DeepMind is a British AI company founded in London in 2010 and acquired by Google in 2014 for £400m. DeepMind Health was launched in February 2016 to work with clinicians in the NHS and other health services.

  • Google’s DeepMind AI to use 1 million NHS eye scans to spot common diseases earlier

    Google’s DeepMind division has announced a partnership with the NHS’s Moorfields Eye Hospital to apply machine learning to spot common eye diseases earlier. The five-year research project will draw on one million anonymous eye scans which are held on Moorfields’ patient database, with the aim to speed up the complex and time-consuming process of analysing eye scans.

    The hope is that this will allow diagnoses of common causes of sight loss, like diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, to be spotted more rapidly and hence be treated more effectively. For example, Google says that up to 98 percent of sight loss resulting from diabetes can be prevented by early detection and treatment.

  • VA Officials Pledge New Studies Into Effects of Agent Orange

    The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is expanding its efforts to determine how Vietnam veterans and their children have been affected by exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange.

    The VA will conduct its first nationwide survey of Vietnam veterans in more than three decades and request an outside panel of experts to continue its work studying the health effects of Agent Orange on veterans, their children and their grandchildren. Both initiatives were discussed Thursday in Washington at a forum hosted by ProPublica and The Virginian-Pilot on the possible multi-generational impacts of Agent Orange.

    Vietnam veterans have argued for years that their exposure to the toxic herbicide has damaged their health as well as their children’s. From 1965 to 1970, some 2.6 million U.S. service members were potentially exposed to Agent Orange, which contained a dangerous strand of the chemical dioxin. While the VA has linked Agent Orange exposure to a host of diseases in Vietnam vets, experts and veterans advocates have criticized the lack of research into the effects on future generations.

    “I believe that these individuals deserve an answer,” Linda Spoonster Schwartz, the VA’s assistant secretary for policy and planning, said in response to a question about the lack of research. “I believe that we need to at least ask the question. … This is the right thing to do.”

  • Fate of Vermont’s Historic GMO-Labeling Law in US Senate’s Hands

    As the nation’s first GMO labeling law takes effect, food policy experts are warning that its benefits could be “fleeting,” should the U.S. Senate pass a so-called “compromise” bill this week that would nullify Vermont’s historic law as well as other state efforts in the works.

• Security

  • Security updates for Tuesday

  • But I have work to do!

    There’s a news story going around that talks about how horrible computer security tends to be in hospitals. This probably doesn’t surprise anyone who works in the security industry, security is often something that gets in the way, it’s not something that helps get work done.

    There are two really important lessons we should take away from this. The first is that a doctor or nurse isn’t a security expert, doesn’t want to be a security expert, and shouldn’t be a security expert. Their job is helping sick people. We want them helping sick people, especially if we’re the people who are sick. The second is that when security gets in the way, security loses. Security should lose when it gets in the way, we’ve been winning far too often and it’s critically damaged the industry.

  • Lenovo ThinkPwn UEFI exploit also affects products from other vendors [Ed: Intel and Microsoft told us UEFI was about security but it wasn’t]

    A critical vulnerability that was recently found in the low-level firmware of Lenovo ThinkPad systems also reportedly exists in products from other vendors, including HP and Gigabyte Technology.

    An exploit for the vulnerability was published last week and can be used to execute rogue code in the CPU’s privileged SMM (System Management Mode).

    This level of access can then be used to install a stealthy rootkit inside the computer’s Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) — the modern BIOS — or to disable Windows security features such as Secure Boot, Virtual Secure Mode and Credential Guard that depend on the firmware being locked down.

    The exploit, dubbed ThinkPwn, was released by a security researcher named Dmytro Oleksiuk last week without sharing it with Lenovo in advance. However, since then Oleksiuk has found the same vulnerable code inside older open source firmware for some Intel motherboards.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Why the Sanders ‘Revolution’ Must Take on the Permanent War State

    The Sanders campaign never explicitly raised the issue of the permanent war state during the primary election contest, either. He did present a sharp contrast to Hillary Clinton when they debated foreign policy, effectively demolishing her position urging a more militarily aggressive policy in Syria. He called for a policy that “destroys ISIS” but “does not get us involved in perpetual warfare in the quagmire of the Middle East.”But he never talked about ending the unprecedented power that national security institutions have seized over the resources and security of the American people.

  • Is Coup Against Corbyn a Plot to Spare Blair from War Crimes Probe?

    In the tumultuous wake of Brexit, why has the Labour Party turned on leader Jeremy Corbyn for campaigning for the “Remain” camp, while the Conservatives have welcomed new leader Theresa Mays for doing exactly the same?

    Alex Salmond, former Scottish First Minister, has proposed one damning theory by suggesting that the Labour Party’s coup against Corbyn is an orchestrated attempt to stop him from “calling for Tony Blair’s head” when the Chilcot Report, the government’s official inquiry into the Iraq War, is published on Wednesday.

    In a blistering op-ed published Sunday in Scotland’s Herald, Salmond writes, “It would be a mistake to believe that Chilcot and current events are entirely unconnected. The link is through the Labour Party.”

  • Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”

    “According to Seidman’s account, published in the scholarly journal Jewish Social Studies”, Cohen wrote, “Wiesel substantially rewrote the work between editions — suggesting that the strident and vengeful tone of the Yiddish original was converted into a continental, angst-ridden existentialism more fitting to Wiesel’s emerging role as an ambassador of culture and conscience. Most important, Seidman wrote that Wiesel altered several facts in the later edition, in some cases offering accounts of pivotal moments that conflicted with the earlier version. (For example, in the French, the young Wiesel, having been liberated from Buchenwald, is recuperating in a hospital; he looks into a mirror and writes that he saw a corpse staring back at him. In the earlier Yiddish, Wiesel holds that upon seeing his reflection he smashed the mirror and then passed out, after which ‘my health began to improve.’)”

  • Report Shows How War Profiteers Are Now Refugee Profiteers, Too

    As Europe comes to terms with a Brexit vote fueled in large part by anti-immigrant hate-mongering, a new report exposes how war profiteers are influencing EU policy to make money from unending Middle East conflicts as well as the wave of refugees created by that same instability and violence.

  • Iraq Mourns After Weekend Bombing Deathtoll Rises Above 200 People

    The deathtoll from a massive truck bomb detonated in a Baghdad shopping district over the weekend has climbed to over 200 people, with hundreds more injured and scores still missing, making it one of the deadliest such attacks in the recent history of war-torn Iraq.

  • Iraqis want crackdown on ‘sleeper cells’ after huge Baghdad bomb

    By Monday evening, the toll in Karrada stood at 175 killed and 200 wounded, according to police and medical sources. Rescuers and families were still looking for 37 missing people.

  • Poll Disputes Claim of Obama’s Weakness

    Democrats’ hawkishness is fed by fear that Republicans will attack them as doves, a concern heightened by the charge that President Obama is disdained globally for not using more military force, a point disputed by ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

  • Iraq Inquiry: Chilcot says ‘careful analysis needed before war’

    The chairman of the UK’s inquiry into the Iraq war says he hopes future military action on such a scale will only be possible with more careful analysis and political judgement.

    His 12-volume report on the Iraq War is due to be released later – more than seven years after the inquiry began.

    Sir John Chilcot told the BBC it would criticise individuals and institutions.

    He said he hoped it would help families of the 179 Britons who died between 2003 and 2009 answer some questions.

  • Grandfather fears Iraq War report will be a cover-up

    The grandfather of a Devon soldier killed in Iraq fears the long-awaited report into Britain’s role in the conflict will just be a cover-up.

    Sir John Chilcot is due to publish his long-awaited report into the war today, seven years after hearing evidence from his first witness.

    David Godfrey, who runs a fundraising shop in Cullompton, can’t believe it’s taken so long. For him, the UK should never have gone to war in the first place.

  • Families of Iraq War dead hope British inquiry will criticise ex-PM Blair

    A British inquiry into the Iraq War delivers its long-awaited report on Wednesday, with critics of the U.S.-led invasion hoping it will condemn former Prime Minister Tony Blair while some families of slain soldiers fear it may be a whitewash.

    To be published seven years after the inquiry was set up when the last British combat troops left Iraq, the report runs to 2.6 million words – about three times the length of the Bible – and will include details of exchanges Blair had with then U.S. President George W. Bush over the 2003 invasion.

  • WikiLeaks publishes more than 1,000 Hillary Clinton war emails

    WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website, has released more than 1,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server pertaining to the Iraq War.

    The website tweeted a link to 1,258 emails on Monday that Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state. According to the release, the emails were obtained from the US State Department after they issued a Freedom of Information Act request. The emails stem from a State Department release back in February, The Hill reports.

  • Wikileaks publishes Clinton war emails

    WikiLeaks on Monday published more than 1,000 emails about the Iraq War from Hillary Clinton’s private server during her time as secretary of State.

    The website tweeted a link to 1,258 emails that Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, sent and received. They stem from a trove of emails released by the State Department in February.

    WikiLeaks combed through the emails to find all the messages that reference the Iraq War.

  • For Hillary Clinton’s Campaign, “Extremely Careless” Is a Soundbite to Celebrate
    

    When Hillary Clinton first acknowledged in March 2015 that she had indeed used a private email account — and her own server — to conduct official government business as secretary of state, it would have been hard to imagine that her campaign would 16 months later pronounce itself “pleased” that an FBI investigation concluded that she and her aides “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

  • Washington Has Been Obsessed With Punishing Secrecy Violations — until Hillary Clinton

    Secrecy is a virtual religion in Washington. Those who violate its dogma have been punished in the harshest and most excessive manner – at least when they possess little political power or influence. As has been widely noted, the Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined. Secrecy in DC is so revered that even the most banal documents are reflexively marked classified, making their disclosure or mishandling a felony. As former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden said back in 2000, “Everything’s secret. I mean, I got an email saying ‘Merry Christmas.’ It carried a top secret NSA classification marking.”

    People who leak to media outlets for the selfless purpose of informing the public – Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Drake, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden – face decades in prison. Those who leak for more ignoble and self-serving ends – such as enabling hagiography (Leon Panetta, David Petreaus) or ingratiating oneself to one’s mistress (Petraeus) – face career destruction, though they are usually spared if they are sufficiently Important-in-DC. For low-level, powerless Nobodies-in-DC, even the mere mishandling of classified information – without any intent to leak but merely to, say, work from home – has resulted in criminal prosecution, career destruction and the permanent loss of security clearance.

  • Misunderstanding Russia and Russians

    Western media has demonized Russia and President Putin with unrelenting propaganda that has dazed and confused many Russians, a condition that retired U.S. Col. Ann Wright encountered on a recent visit.

  • Chilcot Report: Parents of major killed in Iraq say Blair must now face legal action

    The parents of the 95th British serviceman to be killed in Iraq have said there would be “something terribly wrong with our political process” if the Chilcot Report did not produce grounds for the families of dead soldiers to take legal action over the Iraq war.

    Roger and Maureen Bacon lost their son Matthew, 34, a major in the Intelligence Corps, when his Snatch Land Rover was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED) in Basra on 11 September 2005.

    Speaking to The Independent hours before the long-awaited publication of Sir John Chilcot’s report on the Iraq War, Mr and Mrs Bacon accused Tony Blair of betraying their son and misleading Britain into a war that was “a total and utter catastrophe”.

  • Blair Can Be Tried For War Crimes

    There is no requirement in international law for the appropriate jurisdiction of a tribunal – or even the tribunal itself – to be in place before a crime is committed, in order for it to try that crime. The most obvious evidence of this is the Nuremburg Tribunal, which did not even exist when the crimes which it tried were committed. But in fact international law has a long tradition of arbitration or judgement by bodies which were set up after the event, but judging by the law applicable at the time of the event. It is the crime itself which must be a crime at the time it is committed. The jurisdiction of the body which tries the criminal can be created after the crime itself.

    Total nonsense has been written widely that it would be retroactive law, and thus unacceptable, for Tony Blair to be tried at the Hague for the crime of waging aggressive war. But the crime itself was very plainly already in existence when Blair committed it.

  • The 179 British personnel who died during the Iraq war

    The invasion of Iraq led to the deaths of 179 British personnel between March 2003 and February 2009.

    Tony Blair told the Chilcot Inquiry into the conflict he had “deep and profound regret” about the loss of life suffered by British troops and the countless Iraqi civilians.

  • With Brexit, Israel Loses a Major Asset in the European Union

    Britain helped moderate and balance EU decisions about the peace process, blunt criticism and even harness the member states against anti-Israel moves at the UN; voices sympathetic to the Palestinian cause could now become more dominant.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Does Jim Comey Think Thomas Drake Exhibited Disloyalty to the United States?

    As you’ve no doubt heard, earlier today Jim Comey had a press conference where he said Hillary and her aides were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” but went on to say no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute any of them for storing over 100 emails with classified information on a server in Hillary’s basement. Comey actually claimed to have reviewed “investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information” and found no “case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.”

    [...]

    I can only imagine Comey came to his improper public prosecutorial opinion via one of two mental tricks. Either he — again, not the prosecutor — decided the only crime at issue was mishandling classified information (elsewhere in his statement he describes having no evidence that thousands of work emails were withheld from DOJ with ill intent, which dismisses another possible crime), and from there he decided either that it’d be a lot harder to prosecute Hillary Clinton (or David Petraeus) than it would be someone DOJ spent years maligning like Sterling or Drake. Or maybe he decided that there are no indications that Hillary is disloyal to the US.

    Understand, though: with Sterling and Drake, DOJ decided they were disloyal to the US, and then used their alleged mishandling of classified information as proof that they were disloyal to the US (Drake ultimately plead to Exceeding Authorized Use of a Computer).

    Ultimately, it involves arbitrary decisions about who is disloyal to the US, and from that a determination that the crime of mishandling classified information occurred.

  • FBI Director Comey Preempts Justice Department By Advising No Charges for Hillary Clinton

    FBI Director James Comey took the unprecedented step of publicly preempting a Justice Department prosecution when he declared at a press conference Tuesday that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server.

    The FBI’s job is to investigate crimes; it is Justice Department prosecutors who are supposed to decide whether or not to move forward. But in a case that had enormous political implications, Comey decided the FBI would act on its own.

    “Although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case,” he said. Prosecutors could technically still file criminal charges, but it would require them to publicly disagree with their own investigators.

  • FBI Recommends “No Charges” Against Hillary Clinton

    In a surprising statement which concluded moments ago, FBI director James Comey announced that Federal officials have decided not to pursue federal charges against Hillary Clinton for her private email setup, an announcement that will send a shockwave throughout national politics.

  • FBI: Clinton ‘Should Have Known’ Private Email Server ‘No Way To Handle Classified Info’, But No Charges Will Be Sought

    But at the end of it all, the FBI found Clinton’s use of private email server to be severelty stupid, rather than criminal. Comey says the FBI found no signs of “intentional misconduct” by lawyers during personal email deletions or routine purges. Likewise, there was “no clear evidence of intentional misconduct by staffers,” but Clinton’s emails were “clearly mishandled.”

    The FBI’s final conclusion is damning, but only in terms of harsh words, not actual punishment. Clinton and her staff “knew or should have known” a private email server was “no way to properly handle classified email” — especially when housed on private server with “no full-time staff” or anything approaching the level of service one would equate with email services like Gmail. Comey also noted that Clinton used her personal domain “extensively” outside of the US, needlessly exposing sensitive information in the “presence of hostile actors.”

    James Comey also took a little time to bash her agency, stating that the FBI found the “security culture” of the State Department to be “lacking.”

  • ‘No Charges Are Appropriate’: Statement by FBI Director Comey on Clinton Email Probe

  • ‘Most Transparent’ President Signs Into Law FOIA Reform Bill That Won’t Affect His Administration

    While this is cause for some celebration, let’s not overlook what’s actually happened here. Obama has signed a bill he can saddle his successors with. Neither leading candidate seems particularly amenable to openness and transparency — not Donald Trump with his big ideas on how to change laws to make things better for him rather than for the nation, and not Hillary Clinton, who set up her own email server to route around FOIA requests.

    While touting his administration as the Openest Place on Earth, FOIA responsiveness actually took several steps backward during his tenure. His administration also spent several years fighting FOIA reform, something that was ironically uncovered by documents obtained via a FOIA request.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • How the Great Lakes Observing System Supports Regional Health, Safety, Economy

    The Great Lakes are a vital shipping channel for the U.S., annually carrying billions of dollars of cargo to and from the Atlantic. They also contain 20 percent of the world’s freshwater, have 10,000 miles of coast, and—much like the ocean—the waters of the Great Lakes heavily influence the climate in the region. Knowing what’s happening and forecasting what’s to come in Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario keep us safer, healthier, and economically sound.

• Finance/Brexit

  • Despite What Media Says, TPP Isn’t About Free Trade — It’s About Protecting Corporate Profits

    The news media and advocates of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement have repeatedly described opponents of the deal as “protectionist” or opposed to trade itself.

    For instance, after Donald Trump pressed Hillary Clinton to swear off passage of the deal, the New York Times reported that Trump was embracing “nationalistic anti-trade policies.” The Wall Street Journal said Trump expressed “protectionist views.” President Obama warned that you can’t withdraw “from trade deals” and focus “solely on your local market.”

    But opposition to the TPP is not accurately described as opposition to all trade, or even to free trade.

    In fact, the deal’s major impact would not come in the area of lowering tariffs, the most common trade barriers. The TPP is more focused on crafting regulatory regimes that benefit certain industries.

    So the most consequential parts of the deal would actually undermine the free flow of goods and services by expanding some protectionist, anti-competitive policies sought by global corporations.

    “We already have trade agreements with six of the 11 countries. Canada and Mexico — our two biggest trading partners — are in there. The tariffs are almost zero [with those countries] anyhow,” Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told The Intercept. “What’s in the deal? Higher patent and copyright protection! That’s protectionism.”

  • More in hope, less about immigration: why poor Britons really voted to leave the EU

    A popular Brexit narrative is that those left out of rising prosperity lashed out at the establishment because they could take no more punishment. They had suffered years of recession and austerity exacerbated by a Dutch auction – in which the asking price is lowered until there’s a buyer – driven by rising immigration.

    The latest NatCen British Social Attitudes Survey shows the true extent of concerns about immigration. Clear majorities thought migrants were having a net negative effect on British schools and the NHS. This was an area where there was substantial agreement between people with different levels of education. Another area in which the public was even more of one mind was in their awareness that the NHS has a funding problem.

    To find out where those left out of rising prosperity differed from the rest, however, we need to look at other survey questions. These introduce two important caveats to the popular narrative: that at least until the eve of the referendum campaign, poor Britons were not sure that leaving the EU would reduce immigration; and that it wasn’t just rising prosperity that they felt excluded from.

  • Like imperialists of old, Nigel Farage blundered ignorantly in and nicked our country from under our noses

    So farewell, for now and for a while, to the anti-Martin Luther King.

    With his charming poster of Syrians queuing forlornly in that distant corner of the UK that will forever be Slovenia, Nigel Farage reminded us that he too has a dream, albeit the reverse of Dr King’s.

    Nigel dreamed of a land where people are judged not by the content of their character, but by the colour of their skin. He also dreamed of taking this country back to the Fifties, and he has doubled out splendidly on that.

    We are transported back to the mid-1950s, of course, after the end of bread rationing but before large scale immigration from the former colonies. That mythical Elysium, sun-dappled age of innocence when Pop Larkin thought everything “perfick”, and boarding house owners had no need to express their absolute right as Her Britannic Majesty’s free born subjects to announce which potential guests they found undesirable.

  • How Nigel Farage pocketed a £7,500 pay rise after Brexit

    Shameless Nigel Farage has pocketed a whopping £7,500 pay rise by getting Britain to leave the EU.

    The outgoing UKIP chief has seen the value of his MEP wages soar since we voted for Brexit , because he is paid in euros by the Brussels Parliament.

    The shock result sent the pound plunging in value, and as of Tuesday it was down almost 9% against the Euro since the June 23 poll.

    As Mr Farage lives in leafy Kent it means his salary has effectively rocketed from £75,295 to £82,707 in just 11 days.

  • How remain failed: the inside story of a doomed campaign

    On Friday 10 June, five men charged with keeping Britain in the European Union gathered in a tiny, windowless office and stared into the abyss.

    Just moments before, they had received an email from Andrew Cooper, a former Downing Street strategist and pollster for the official remain campaign, containing the daily “tracker” – the barometer of support among target segments of the electorate. It had dropped into the defeat zone. The cause was not mysterious. “Immigration was snuffing out our opportunity to talk about the economy,” Will Straw, the executive director of Britain Stronger In Europe, recalled.

  • Canada, Europe trade deal at risk as EU gives 38 parliaments a binding say

    The European Union put its landmark free-trade accord with Canada on a slow track for approval, increasing the risk of a veto amid an anti-globalization backlash across Europe.

    The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, proposed that its first trade agreement with a fellow member of the Group of Seven leading industrialized countries face ratification by national parliaments in the 28-member bloc. A total of 38 different national parliamentary chambers, including in some cases regional assemblies, will have a binding say.

  • [Old] ‘France is totally bankrupt’: French jobs minister Michel Sapin embarrasses Francois Hollande with shocking statement on state of the country’s economy

    France’s employment minister Michel Sapin has admitted the country is “totally bankrupt”.

    The unexpected news came during a radio interview yesterday and is thought to have sent the country’s business leaders into a state of shock.

    “There is a state but it is a totally bankrupt state,” Mr Sapin said. “That is why we had to put a deficit reduction plan in place, and nothing should make us turn away from that objective.”

    Mr Sapin’s “totally bankrupt” statement is likely to cause huge embarrassment for President Francois Hollande, who will be left to undo the potential damage to his socialist government’s reputation.

  • About 100 BBC Monitoring jobs to be axed amid £4m cuts

    At least 98 jobs at the BBC Monitoring department are to be cut ahead of a £4m reduction in funding.

    The department, which has 320 staff, analyses local media from 150 countries in 100 different languages, but the operation is to be scaled down.

    The World Service said the Mazar-i-Sharif bureau in Afghanistan will be closed and new bases will open in Istanbul and Jerusalem.

    The team will relocate from Caversham Park in Reading, its base since 1942.

    The BBC said it would begin consultations with unions shortly.

    The loss of jobs will mean a reduction of nearly a third.

  • Aviva Investors says suspends UK property trust

    Aviva Investors, the fund arm of insurer Aviva (AV.L), has suspended its UK Property Trust with immediate effect, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

    “The extraordinary market circumstances, which are impacting the wider industry, have resulted in a lack of immediate liquidity in the Aviva Investors Property Trust. Consequently, we have acted to safeguard the interests of all our investors by suspending dealing in the fund with immediate effect,” a spokesman said.

    The suspension of the 1.8 billion pound fund comes a day after Standard Life Investments, the fund arm of insurer Standard Life (SL.L), suspended its 2.9 billion pound UK real estate fund.

  • EU rivals vie to wrest drug and banking agencies from London

    Milan’s new mayor Giuseppe Sala will fly into London on Wednesday, stepping up a battle between European cities competing to wrest two prestigious European Union agencies from London in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the bloc.

    The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Banking Authority (EBA) together employ more than 1,000 skilled staff from across the EU. Both are expected to relocate as a result of the so-called Brexit decision.

    The agencies are prized not only for jobs but also for their potential to act as hubs for finance and pharmaceuticals, two of Europe’s most important industries.

    That has set off a battle from Madrid to Stockholm to Warsaw as EU members seek to grab one or other organisation, in the knowledge that banks and drugmakers will want to maintain close ties with key regulators.

  • Universities take a knock post-Brexit

    European academic bodies are pulling back from research collaboration with UK academics, amid post-Brexit uncertainty about the future of UK higher education.

    While post-Brexit Britain might remain inside the European research funding system, academics in other countries are nervous about collaborating with UK institutions.

    UK-based academics are being asked to withdraw their applications for future funding by European partners.

    BBC Newsnight is aware of concerns raised by academics at Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter and Durham.

    Chris Husbands, the vice-chancellor at Sheffield Hallam, says that his researchers are already seeing significant effects.

  • Hillary’s National Security Alliance for Quivering Over Bank Prosecutions

    Again, I’m okay if Hillary wants to spend her time fearmongering about the dangers of Trump.

    But to do so credibly, she needs to be a lot more cognizant of the dangers her own team have created.

  • So long, Nigel Farage, the latest rat to jump from the sinking Brexit ship

    Hot on the heels of ‘Don’t Be A Quitter’ Dave and ‘Stabbed In The Back’ Boris, another politician leaves us to deal with the mess they created

  • ‘Brexit’ and the Democracy Myth

    There’s a theory going around that referenda are the ultimate in direct democracy. There’s something about masses of people voting for or against some major issue that causes would-be populists to go weak in the knees. But the theory is pure myth, as the Brexit debacle shows. Rather than raising democracy to a new level, referenda often drag it down.

    The classic example occurred in the early 1850s when Napoleon III, nephew of the more famous Napoleon I, engineered back-to-back plebiscites that allowed him to institute a dictatorship for nearly 20 years. Instead of democracy, France got the opposite – political prisoners by the thousands, foreign adventures, and a disastrous war with Germany.

  • Swimming Against the Loan Sharks

    Federal regulators have proposed new rules to rein in payday lenders, and those of us who’ve been fighting these legalized loan sharks for years are bracing for a major backlash from the industry while also pushing for tougher standards.

    Issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the proposal comes after years of grass roots pressure – in the face of nasty opposition by loan predators.

  • Britain needs to hire foreign experts to redo all the trade deals it voted to ditch

    Now that Britain has voted to leave the European Union, it faces the daunting task of renegotiating a long list of trade deals as a newly independent entity: all the deals the EU already has with other countries, the ones the EU is currently negotiating, and a deal with the EU itself after it leaves the bloc.

    This work will require millions of hours of work by seasoned negotiators with experience of the complex, high-stakes art of top-level government deal-making.

  • Brexit: Dual nationality on the table for Britons?

    It is more than a week since Britain voted to leave the European Union, and there is still little certainty regarding the future status of EU citizens currently living in the UK, or of British people living elsewhere in the EU.

    While many British citizens are happy to potentially wave goodbye to freedom of movement within the EU, some Britons would like to hold on to the opportunity to live and work in the other 27 countries that make up the union.

    At the weekend, German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said the remaining members should not “pull up the drawbridge” for young Britons, who largely voted to remain, and so should consider offering dual nationality to young British citizens “who live in Germany, Italy or France, so that they can remain EU citizens in this country”.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Theresa May wins more than half of MPs’ votes as Stephen Crabb pulls out and Liam Fox is eliminated

    Theresa May has taken pole position in the race to succeed David Cameron, with a comfortable advantage after securing the backing of more than half of Conservative MPs in the first round of voting.

    If the Home Secretary can repeat her triumph by winning the support of Tory members, she will be installed in September as Britain’s second female Prime Minister, after Margaret Thatcher.

    Stephen Crabb, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pulled out of the race on Tuesday evening after finishing second last with 34 votes. He backed Mrs may for leader.

    Former Defence Secretary Liam Fox was eliminated from the contest after winning the support of just 16 MPs when the results were revealed at 6.30pm on Tuesday.

  • Theresa May is bad, but the other Tory candidates are worse

    Imagine Britain’s membership of the European Union as a cat. The cat is sealed in a box with an unstable radioactive element, “Article 50”. At some point the toxicity of A50 will kill the cat – an outcome that is confirmed on opening the box. But as long as the box is sealed, moggy is simultaneously dead and alive. This state is known as Schrödinger’s EU membership, after the Austrian physicist who described something similar in 1935 to elucidate the mysteries of quantum mechanics.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Censorship Crusade: Far-Right Politician, Parents Team Up To Ban Books In Va. Public Schools

    Some parents in a Virginia county are upset about a few books on public school summer reading lists – so much so that they’re calling for censorship.

    Chesterfield County, which is just south of Richmond, has been besieged for a second-straight year by a group that is clearly under the influence of the Religious Right.

    Last year, Shannon Easter and her allies protested the inclusion of multiple titles on the Chesterfield County summer reading lists for middle and high schoolers after Easter consulted materials she found online, which were produced by organizations affiliated with a prominent far-right group: Focus on the Family (FOF).

    In 2015, Easter and her allies made enough noise that four books were removed from the summer reading list, even though librarians in the county have noted that the books on the list are merely suggestions to encourage reading – no one is required to read any of them.

  • David Stratton on censorship, ‘Sandra’ and the Sydney Film Festival

    What I proposed to the Sydney Film Festival was that if any cuts were demanded in festival films they should be publicised. There should be a press release issued and interviews given and make as much noise about it as possible, because when something is done in secrecy you can get away with a lot more.

    The director of the festival at the time felt that he could not implement that motion, and there was a valid reason for it, actually. The festival had an agreement with the Customs Department, which allowed the festival to import films without paying customs duty.

  • How one filmmaker is battling censorship in Lebanon and encouraging others to do the same

    In making her short film I Say Dust, Darine Hotait wanted to explore Arab American identity from her perspective as a New York-based American Lebanese writer and director. It just so happened that her two lead characters would be women in their 20s who share a kiss. That kiss, however, has put I Say Dust at the centre of a long-standing discussion about censorship after it was recently banned from two film festivals in the Middle East.

  • SA sides with censorship countries, says DA

    The Democratic Alliance has expressed shock at South Africa’s move to vote against a UN resolution promoting Internet freedom.

    Last week, UN member states voted on the resolution which affirms political commitment to protecting human rights online.

    It also seeks to condemn the intentional disruption of Internet access to the public.

    South Africa voted against it, together with China and Russia amongst others.

  • South Africa’s ruling party condemns its own national broadcaster for censoring political violence

    South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has condemned its own public broadcaster for practicing censorship by not broadcasting images of violent anti-state protests.

    The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was initially accused by opposition parties of pro-government bias when it brought in a policy of self censorship when violence flared as local elections approached.

  • ANC condemns broadcaster for censorship

    South Africa’s ruling African National Congress said on Tuesday the public broadcaster, accused by opposition parties of pro-government bias as local elections approach, was exercising censorship by not broadcasting images of violent anti-state protests.

  • ANC does not condone SABC censorship – Mthembu

  • ‘ANC just as clueless as the public over SABC censorship’

    The African National Congress (ANC) says it believes the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) failure to consult it on policy changes being introduced is a sign of disregard.

    Speaking at Luthuli House, ANC Chief Whip Jackson Mthembu addressed developments at the public broadcaster and media freedom.

    The ANC says it believes it should have been notified about changes made at the broadcaster, because it’s the ruling party.

  • ANC Slams Censorship at South African Public Broadcaster

    South Africa’s ruling African National Congress said it hasn’t sought to influence news coverage at the national broadcaster, countering a claim by its former acting chief executive officer, and described its current leadership as “lacking.”

  • South Africa’s ruling ANC condemns public broadcaster for censorship

    South Africa’s ruling African National Congress said on Tuesday the public broadcaster, accused by opposition parties of pro-government bias ahead of local elections, was practicing censorship by not broadcasting violent anti-state protests.

    The comments by party chief whip Jackson Mthembu represent a U-turn and may point to schisms in the ANC, which in May welcomed the broadcast ban by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) as the “best decision.”

    “When property is burnt, people of South Africa need to be shown those images, that is the ANC view. Because when you don’t show those images, that amounts to censorship,” Mthembu said in a televised media briefing.

  • Media censorship is back in all its glory!

    Now since the SABC’s COO is above the law, and at the same time the person who single handedly decide what should and should not be shown on the local media, one can only assume the he is yet another deployed cadre not fit for the job!

    Now although education may not be the alpha and omega in Africa, most people in executive positions hold some sort of tertiary qualification!

    [...]

    Lest not forget, the SABC is there to serve all people of South Africa and not only the ANC leadership with their dysfunctional policies!

  • The reality of life under Turkey’s internet censorship machine

    Turkey, the world champion in Twitter censorship, presents a tough challenge for regular internet users thanks to its growing blacklist of 100,000 banned websites.

    But determined Turks are tough. After all, they are the ones who placed the #TurkeyBlockedTwitter hashtag on world’s top trends list—while Twitter was blocked nationwide.

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • These Maps Show What the Dark Web Looks Like

    What does the dark web actually look like? Well, new research maps out the relationships between a load of Tor hidden services, and shows that many dark web sites, rather than being isolated entities, are perhaps more intimately intertwined than commonly thought.

    “The dark web is highly connected,” reads the latest OnionScan report published on Sunday. Made by security researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis, OnionScan is a tool for probing Tor hidden services for vulnerabilities and issues that might reveal identifying information about the site.

  • Ron Wyden: Obtaining ECTRs without a Warrant Is Almost Like Spying on Someone’s Thoughts

    The other thing obtaining ECTRs with NSLs would do, though, is avoid a court First Amendment review, which should be of particular concern with web search history, since everything about web browsing involves First Amendment speech. Remember, a form of emergency provision (one limited to Section 215’s phone chaining application) was approved in February 2014. But in the September 2014 order, the FISC affirmatively required that such a review happen even with emergency orders. A 2015 IG Report on Section 215 (see page 176) explains why this is the case: because once FISC started approving seeds, NSA’s Office of General Counsel stopped doing First Amendment reviews, leaving that for FISC. It’s unclear whether it took FISC several cycles to figure that out, or whether they discovered an emergency approval that infringed on First Amendment issues. Under the expanded emergency provision under USAF, someone at FBI or DOJ’s National Security Division would do the review. But FBI’s interest in avoiding FISC’s First Amendment review is of particular concern given that FBI has, in the past, used an NSL to obtain data the FISC refused on First Amendment grounds, and at least one of the NSL challenges appears to have significant First Amendment concerns.

  • UK Police Accessed Civilian Data for Fun and Profit, New Report Says

    More than 800 UK police staff inappropriately accessed personal information between June 2011 and December 2015, according to a report from activist group Big Brother Watch.

    The report says some police staff used their access to a growing trove of police data, which includes personal information on civilians, for entertainment and personal and financial gain.

    The report, which is based on Freedom of Information requests sent to all UK police forces, raises questions about the police’s ability to protect civilian data. Specifically, privacy advocates are concerned about access to Internet Connection Records, which is the new type of data that would be collected under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Bill.

    In several notable incidents, one Metropolitan Police officer found the name of a victim so funny that he attempted to take a photo of the driving license and send it to his friend over Snapchat. A Greater Manchester Police officer tipped someone off that they would be arrested, and one from North Yorkshire Police conducted a check on a vehicle on his phone whilst off-duty.

  • Paris attacks: Call to overhaul French intelligence services

    French intelligence services should be overhauled following last year’s terror attacks in Paris, a parliamentary commission of inquiry has recommended.

    Commission president Georges Fenech said all the French attackers had been known to authorities, but these had not communicated with each other.

  • 2015 Wiretap Report Doesn’t Have Much To Say About Encryption, But Does Show Feds Run Into Zero Judicial Opposition

    Whatever the government is doing with these other options can’t easily be examined by the general public because there are no reporting requirements tied to these, unlike wiretap warrants. So, the number of times where encrypted communications (not contained in locked phones) are holding up law enforcement cannot be nailed down with any certainty. The DOJ could collect and disseminate this data, but it would certainly prefer to keep its reporting requirements to a minimum, even if this data would back up Comey’s encryption histrionics.

    What hasn’t changed, however, is what wiretaps are used for: drugs. 3,367 or 4,148 issued in 2015 were for narcotics investigations. And for those of you who have followed the explosion of possibly illegal wiretaps originating from a single county courthouse in California, it’s no surprise the state issuing the most federal wiretap orders is that particular coastal “drug corridor.”

  • Thomas Jefferson’s Ghost Visits the White House

    “And so we pretty much trashed the Fourth Amendment and now spy on all Americans 24/7. The First Amendment, especially the right to free speech part, that hasn’t held up well, either,” said Obama. “And you have to take your shoes off at the airport but none of us remember why that is anymore.”

    “But Barack, a well-informed citizenry, secure in their persons and papers, who can assemble to speak truth to their government is essential,” Jefferson said. “Actually, that’s kinda the whole thing.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • To Find Out Why Schools Are Sending In Cops To Bust Third Graders, Ask The Local Prosecutor

    Who’s leading the installation of police officers inside schools and the implementation of zero tolerance policies? In New Jersey, the answer is the local prosecutor’s office.

    A little background: police were called to a third-grade class party because a nine-year-old allegedly made a racist remark when discussing the brownies they were eating. NO. REALLY.

  • Triggering Article 50 will plunge the UK into turmoil – and the EU with it. It’s mutually assured destruction

    With the rise of so many far-right parties across Europe, we could be seeing the return of fascism to the continent

  • Former Donald Trump Adviser Calls Racial Profiling “Common Sense”

    A former adviser to Donald Trump on Wednesday endorsed racial profiling and warned that mainstream Muslim American organizations are waging a covert war of cultural subversion against the United States.

    Sebastian Gorka teaches at Marine Corps University and advises law enforcement and national security officials on terrorism and irregular warfare. Last fall, he was paid $8,000 for policy consulting with the Trump campaign. On Wednesday, he spoke at the Family Research Council, a social conservative advocacy group, touting his new book Defeating Jihad: A Winnable War.

  • The Revolt Against Globalism

    There was William Galston at the European Council on Foreign Relations, listening to his fellow elitists and foreign policy honchos caviling about the rise of Donald Trump and bemoaning the fate of the European Union (EU) at the hand’s of Britain’s Euro-skeptics. As the assembled luminaries had a collective sad in their five-star hotel, wondering how the proles could’ve gotten so far out of hand, Galtson – longtime Democratic party hack, former domestic advisor to Bill Clinton, and a senior fellow at the “centrist” Brookings Institution – heard a call to arms. It was almost as if Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist and original founder and financier of the Council on Foreign Relations, had spoken to him from on high – or, rather, from below – and commanded him to spread the Word far and wide:

  • MPs From All Parties Tell Theresa May: EU Citizens In The UK Must Not Be Kicked Out

    London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron and Green MP Caroline Lucas are among those who have signed a statement urging protection for 3million EU citizens living in the UK.

    In a statement to HuffPost UK, representatives of Labour, the Conservatives, Lib Dems, SNP, Ukip and the Greens called on whoever takes over as Prime Minister to vow not to force EU nationals in the UK to leave the country.

    The future of EU migrants settled in the UK has been thrown into doubt after the front-runner for the Tory leadership, Theresa May, said their status could be part of any Brexit negotiation.

    Leadership rival Liam Fox has put forward the same view.

  • Theresa May under fire for threatening to deport EU migrants after Brexit

    The Government believes it would ‘unwise’ to guarantee EU migrants can stay in the UK

  • In Response to Trump, Another Dangerous Movement Appears

    Last week’s Brexit vote prompted pundits and social media mavens to wonder aloud if allowing dumb people to vote is a good thing.

    [...]

    In “How American Politics Went Insane,” Brookings Institute Fellow Jonathan Rauch spends many thousands of words arguing for the reinvigoration of political machines, as a means of keeping the ape-citizen further from power.

    He portrays the public as a gang of nihilistic loonies determined to play mailbox baseball with the gears of state.

    “Neurotic hatred of the political class is the country’s last universally acceptable form of bigotry,” he writes, before concluding:

    “Our most pressing political problem today is that the country abandoned the establishment, not the other way around.”

    Rauch’s audacious piece, much like Andrew Sullivan’s clarion call for a less-democratic future in New York magazine (“Democracies end when they are too democratic”), is not merely a warning about the threat posed to civilization by demagogues like Donald Trump.

    It’s a sweeping argument against a whole host of democratic initiatives, from increased transparency to reducing money in politics to the phasing out of bagmen and ward-heelers at the local level. These things have all destabilized America, Rauch insists.

  • TSA Scores Another PR Win With Assault Of Nineteen Year Old Brain Tumor Patient On Her Way To Treatment

    Rather than chalk this up to a big, bloody misunderstanding, the TSA and local authorities worked together to lock Hannah up overnight while her and her family’s baggage continued on to Chattanooga without them. Charges were dropped, but that’s not going to be the end of it. Cohen has filed a lawsuit against the TSA and Memphis law enforcement agencies.

    The TSA, meanwhile, took immediate steps to mitigate the damage by stating that Hannah’s parents should have called ahead if it didn’t want their child terrorized and tackled.

    [...]

    No apology. No admission that this might have been handled better. No recognition that the agents’ failure to listen to Hannah Cohen’s mother might have resulted in a brain tumor patient covered in less blood and fear. Just a bit of victim blaming where the TSA implies that agents may not have reacted so badly to a metal detector beep if only they’d been informed ahead of time that the alarm would go off and Hannah Cohen would react badly to swiftly escalating screening efforts.

    The most ridiculous thing about the spokesperson’s comment is that we’re supposed to believe the TSA will listen to parents of disabled travelers if they call ahead — when it’s plainly apparent they won’t listen to them when they’re STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO THEM.

  • The Death Penalty Is Largely Driven by a Small Number of Overzealous Prosecutors

    “Cowboy” Bob Macy was a legendary — and infamous — prosecutor in Oklahoma City. Elected the top law enforcer in his county five times, Macy, who died in 2011, was known for his wide-brimmed cowboy hat, his classic western bowtie, and carrying his gun in court. He was also known for his passionate advocacy in support of the death penalty. During his 21 years in office, Macy was personally responsible for sending 54 individuals to death row, an accomplishment that earned him the dubious distinction of deadliest prosecutor in America.

    Also part of Macy’s legacy was the high rate of misconduct allegations levied against him — misconduct was alleged in 94 percent of the death cases he prosecuted and substantiated in one-third of them. Courts overturned nearly half of the death convictions Macy obtained; three of those defendants were ultimately exonerated.

    The numbers paint a grim portrait of a prosecutor who once told members of a jury it was their “patriotic duty” to sentence a defendant to death. But Macy isn’t alone. He belongs to a small club of five so-called deadliest prosecutors identified in a new report released today by Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project. Together, the five prosecutors, only one of whom is still in office, secured 440 capital convictions — the equivalent of 15 percent of the nation’s current death row population.

  • The Fire Sprinkler War, State by State

    From New York to Minnesota, how homebuilders headed off mandatory fire sprinklers with help from friendly legislators.

  • Turkey’s cautionary tale

    The case of Academics for Peace in Turkey shows us academics trapped between authoritarianism and precarity, and why international solidarity has become crucial.

  • Theresa May and the love police

    Our country has failed Ahmed and many like him. And in one of the most worrying developments of all, there is increasingly little we can do about it. In recent years in a Europe-wide trend known as the ‘criminalization of solidarity’, we as ordinary citizens have lost our right to care about and help other people like him. In a seismic shift that has barely made the morning papers, we have lost our right to love certain categories of migrants.

  • Donald Trump Doesn’t Seem to Understand What Rape Is

    Donald Trump likened backers of international trade agreements to rapists on Tuesday. “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country, just a continuing rape of our country,” he said. “That’s what it is, too. It’s a harsh word: It’s a rape of our country.”

    It wasn’t the first time he’d used the word that way. He accused China of rape last month: “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country,” he said. “And that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.”

    But looking at how Trump uses the word rape, and whom he accuses of it, reveals a pattern. He uses it to demonize his political targets. At the same time, he seems to lack empathy or understanding of what rape actually is.

    “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said last year about Mexican immigrants. He defended the statement by citing a Fusion report that an estimated 80 percent of Central American women coming across the border are raped. “I use the word rape and all of a sudden everyone goes crazy,” he said last July.

  • Iceland’s Soccer Team Is Great, Its Treatment of Asylum Seekers Less So

    Some of the facts of the men’s case were in dispute, like whether the younger of the two was 16 or 19, but the legal grounds for their detention and expulsion from the country was clear. The men, identified in the local press by their first names, Ali and Majed, had arrived in Iceland seven months ago after first applying for asylum in Norway. So, despite asking for permission to stay in Reykjavik, where there is a small community of Iraqi refugees, they were deported in accordance with a European agreement known as the Dublin Regulation, which requires anyone fleeing persecution in another part of the world to stay in the first European country they reach. The terms of that agreement excuse Iceland from having to even investigate the claims of those who say they are fleeing persecution in their home countries.

    [...]

    Toshiki Toma, the Lutheran Church of Iceland’s pastor for immigrants, told The Intercept by phone that the two men, who had converted to Christianity last week, were jailed on their return to Norway, and now expect to be returned to southern Iraq, which is considered safe by Norwegian authorities.

    Toma, a native of Japan who has lived in Iceland for more than 20 years, said that he and Kristín Tómasdóttir, the parish priest at Laugarneskirkja church in Reykjavik, had received permission from the Bishop of Iceland to offer shelter the two men, in the hope that the police would respect the ancient tradition of treating houses of worship as places of sanctuary.

  • Swedish politician: Migrant rape isn’t as bad

    Swedish Left Party politician Barbro Sörman has suggested that it’s “worse” when Swedish men rape women, than when immigrants do so.

    “The Swedish men who rape do it despite the growing gender equality. They make an active choice. It’s worse imo [in my opinion],” Sörman tweeted.

    Sörman, a self-described socialist and a feminist, made the observation in response to what she claimed was excessive media focus on the fact that most of the rapes in Sweden are committed by immigrants.

  • Saudi Arabia arrests two for holding ‘dog beauty contest’ in Jeddah

    Two men have been arrested in Saudi Arabia for trying to organise a beauty contest for dogs.

    The pair had been planning a show which would find the most beautiful dog in Jeddah, a port city on the Red Sea coast.

    According to local media, three awards had already been dished out in the competition’s early stages.

  • Appeals Court: A Bunch Of Mostly-Irrelevant Information Is Not ‘Probable Cause’

    A drug conspiracy with no drugs. A house searched because a car carrying no drugs was registered to the address. It’s little things like these that add up to a successfully suppressed evidence, even if it took defendant Ricky Brown a trip to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to achieve it.

    The DEA, working with Michigan State Police, pulled over two vehicles that had left a house they had under surveillance, apparently on their way to a heroin buy set up by an informant. One vehicle, a Chevy Silverado driven by Steven Woods, was searched after a MSP traffic stop and approximately 565 grams of heroin were recovered. The other vehicle, a GMC Yukon in which Brown was a passenger was stopped as well. However, there were no drugs in this vehicle, just four cell phones.

  • Directive on Terrorism: The EU on a Securitarian and Post-Democratic Drift?

    Yesterday evening, the LIBE Committee of the European Parliament (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) adopted the draft Directive on Combating Terrorism proposed by the European Commission by 41 votes to 4 with 10 abstentions. The EPP (conservative) Rapporteur Monika Hohlmeier had turned the directive into a text that will give credence to the worst anti-terrorism and surveillance laws from across the European Union. She clearly bowed under pressure from the French Government (FR), who is seeking to whitewash its own controversial laws regarding surveillance and websites censorship at the European level. La Quadrature du Net denounces this “europeanisation” of extrajudicial surveillance and censorship, all the more considering that the process surrounding the directive is in and of itself a staggering denial of democracy: Indeed, the draft Directive will be further discussed in secret “trilogue” negotiations, which will preclude any substantial amendment during the plenary debate of the European Parliament. Under the guise of security, the European Union is undermining its own fundamental values.

  • ‘They’re Making Racism and Xenophobia Into a Legitimate Voice’

    The story of masses of Britons googling “What’s the EU?” seems to be apocryphal, unsurprisingly. But it is fair to say many people were shocked by referendum results calling for Britain to leave the European Union.

    In the wake of the vote, some say many proponents of a so-called Brexit didn’t really expect it to happen. So how did it? And what is there to be learned from the echoes between the racism and nativism demonstrated and exploited by some Leave campaigners, and certain stokers of those same sentiments closer to home?

  • Voting Rights for 70,000 Louisiana Felons Sought in Constitutional Challenge

    Kenneth Johnston, 67, served in Vietnam and attended University of New Orleans before becoming addicted to heroin in part to address the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he acquired in Vietnam. He spent 22 years in prison after a felony conviction and has been out for 23 years. Because he is on parole for life he will never be allowed to vote.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Frontier Backs AT&T’s Lawsuit To Keep Google Fiber Out Of Louisville

    Earlier this year, we noted how companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable were engaged in incessant whining about Google Fiber’s planned entry into Louisville, Kentucky. More specifically, the ISPs were upset that Louisville passed “one touch make ready” fiber rules that dramatically speed up fiber deployment times by letting licensed third-party contractors move other ISPs’ equipment when necessary. Such reforms generally help all ISPs by dramatically reducing the time it takes to deploy fiber infrastructure, often by as much as half a year.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • ‘Just’ 5% of UK Internet Users are Hardcore Pirates

      A report published by the Intellectual Property Office has revealed that around a quarter of all UK media consumers pirated at least one item during a three-month period earlier this year. Infringement of movies and TV shows are both up in 2016, but music has shown a marked decrease.

    • Internet piracy falls to record lows amid rise of Spotify and Netflix

      Internet streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix have resulted in online piracy falling to its lowest rate in years, an official report claims.

      Research commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which is tasked with fighting copyright infringement, found that 15pc of internet users illegally accessed films, music and other material between March and May.

      This is down from 18pc a year ago and was the lowest recorded rate in the five years the study has been carried out.

    • Documentary About Freeing Happy Birthday From Copyfraud Comes Out The Day After Happy Birthday Officially Declared Public Domain

      You may recall that last fall, a judge ruled that Warner/Chappell did not hold the copyright on the song “Happy Birthday,” as the company had alleged for decades (and which it used to take in approximately $2 million in licenses per year). Of course, while many in the press immediately claimed the song was in the public domain, we noted that was not what the court actually said, and the song had actually become something of an orphan work, and theoretically, someone else could claim the copyright. Indeed, the heirs of Mildred and Patty Hill (who are often cited as the creators of the song) stepped up to claim the copyright. In December, all the parties agreed to settle the case with Warner agreeing to pay $14 million to go to some of the people who had falsely licensed the song. But, part of the settlement agreement was a stipulation that the song, finally, officially be declared in the public domain.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • The Windows Zealot

    “Linux is a failed experiment,” she spit. “It has no business even existing in the tech world and I am fully capable of recovering any important files myself. I do not need your help.”

  • DRAM contract prices to rise 4-8% in 3Q16, says DRAMeXchange

    On the demand side, mobile and server applications will continue to spur demand for DRAM and help boost average contract prices for the memory in the third quarter, DRAMeXchange noted. Weak PC demand, and Windows 10 licensing scheme, which sets fees according to system specs, will further discourage PC vendors from increasing the memory content per box for their products, DRAMeXchange said.

  • Windows 10: Microsoft launches intrusive full-screen upgrade reminder

    Microsoft’s aggressive push to get users to upgrade to Windows 10 has been turned up a notch as the company begins pushing full-screen upgrade pop-up notifications to Windows 7 and 8.1.

    The “Sorry to interrupt” notification will take over the whole screen and force users to select either to upgrade at once or to be reminded later, which will cause the pop up to reappear every three days.

    Two more less prominent options, accessed via smaller links to the left, will allow the user to select to be notified three more times in total or never to be notified again.

    The screen takeover warns users that the free Windows 10 upgrade period will end on 29 July, after which Microsoft will charge a fee to install Windows 10, and forms the latest step in the company’s campaign to get users switching from the six-year-old Windows 7 and two-year-old Windows 8.1.

• Server

  • Managing your containers at Google scale

    The tooling around Linux containers has matured to the point that they are now a viable method of software packaging and deployment. The developer side of the containers equation has gotten a lot of emphasis. However, in order for containers to be a complete solution, they must not only be easy to build, but easy to deploy reliably at scale.

    A company that arguably has more experience than any other company in deploying Linux containers at scale is Google. They have been running conatiners in their own datacenters for over a decade, contributing to the upstream Linux kernel in the areas of cgroups and namespaces. Using an internal system named Borg, Google deploys about 2 billion containers per week.

• Kernel Space

  • How Open Source Can Help Telcos Evolve

    Open source developments, such as the OPEN-Orchestrator (OPEN-O) Project that is developing software for service orchestration over NFV, SDN and legacy network infrastructure, can play a key role in the evolution of telco strategies, says Marc Cohn of the Linux Foundation.

• Applications

  • BleachBit 1.12 Free System Cleaner Brings Support for Ubuntu 16.04, Fedora 24

    BleachBit developer Andrew Ziem has recently announced the availability of a new major release of the popular BleachBit open-source and cross-platform system cleaner utility, version 1.12.

    BleachBit 1.12 comes as a replacement for BleachBit 1.10, which was announced at the beginning of the year, and it looks like it has been in development since April under the BleachBit 1.11.x umbrella. During its three-month development cycle, the software has received a total of three Beta builds that have brought many changes, improvements, and a handful of new features.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • FTP server with PureFTPd, MariaDB and Virtual Users (incl. Quota and Bandwidth Management) on CentOS 7.2

    • Running JMeter with Jenkins

    • How to install Pip on Ubuntu 16.04

    • Check All The thingS!

    • Sixth week: and the framerates appear….

    • Install, Upgrade and Review of Linux Mint 18 (Sarah)

    • Install KDE Plasma 5.6 in Ubuntu 16.04/Linux Mint 18, Fedora 23/24 and OpenSUSE 13.2

    • How to Install VMware Workstation 12 on Ubuntu 16.04 / Linux Mint 18

    • How To Join Registered Nickname to Freenode IRC with Hexchat

    • FTP server with PureFTPd, MariaDB and Virtual Users (incl. Quota and Bandwidth Management) on CentOS 7.2

    • Installation Guide of Linux Mint 18 Codename ‘Sarah’ with Screenshots

  • Games

    • You like puzzle games do you? Then you need to try out ‘Patterna’ on the itch store

    • Best Buds vs Bad Guys, an action platformer made by a dad and son team on Kickstarter

      They have 16 days left with £2000/4500 of their needed funds. Hopefully we can help their journey with a few Linux backers.

    • Planet Centauri, another 2D sandbox RPG with crafting available for Linux

      Starbound, Terraria and Crea not enough for you? Planet Centauri is yet another sandbox 2D indie RPG with crafting and digging for you to sink your teeth into.

    • So I Played… FORCED SHOWDOWN

      FORCED SHOWDOWN is essentially an arena shooter with a card-based upgrade system that promises some frantic gameplay, but is it any good? I tried to find out.

    • Humble Store is doing a DRM-Freedom sale with some great Linux deals

      Another day another big sale, I love the summer. This time it’s Humble Store doing their DRM-Freedom sale and I’ve picked a few for you.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE Plasma Wayland Image Now Built on KDE Neon Infrastructure, Qt 5.7 Is Coming

      Today, July 4, 2016, ex-Kubuntu leader Jonathan Riddell announced that the KDE Plasma Wayland image received yet another update, bringing users the latest KDE and GNU/Linux technologies.

    • KDE Plasma 5.7 Release

      Tuesday, 5 July 2016. Today KDE releases an update to its desktop software, Plasma 5.7.

    • KDE neon 5.7

      When version numbers merge to a singularity we reach the perfection that is KDE neon 5.7. Featuring the newly released Qt 5.7 and the freshly built KDE Plasma 5.7.

    • Plasma Wayland Image Update

      It’s time to check in on the Plasma Wayland image for an update. Built on Neon infrastructure, this comes with the latest from KDE Git master for crack of the day fun. Actually it’s from the end of last week because we paused updates while we add Qt 5.7 but it’s close enough.

    • KDE Plasma 5.7 Due Today, A Video About It & More

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GTK Scene Kit Continues Making Progress With New API, Offloading More Work To The GPU

      GNOME developer Emmanuele Bassi has shared the latest work he’s been doing on GSK — the GTK Scene Kit and the much anticipated improvements it will bring.

      GTK GSK has been talked about for a while with striving for a scene graph and cleaning up other rendering work in the GTK+ tool-kit code-base. GSK has yet to be merged but it’s previously been talked about that it might be ready for GNOME/GTK+ 3.22 this fall.

    • GSK Demystified — A GSK primer

      Using OpenGL to generate pixel-perfect results is complicated, and in some cases it just goes against the expectations of the GPU itself: reading back data; minuscule fragments and tesselations; tons of state changes — those are all pretty much no-go areas when dealing with a GPU.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Tiny Core Linux 7.2 Officially Released, Available for Download Now

      The development team behind the Tiny Core project has been proud to announce the release and immediate availability for download of the Tiny Core Linux 7.2 operating system.

      The development cycle of Tiny Core Linux 7.2, which doesn’t bring any major changes, was pretty fast, as the distribution entered the Release Candidate stage a week ago, on June 24. Usually, the Tiny Core developers release two RC builds before the final release, but that’s not the case with Tiny Core Linux 7.2.

    • Exton|Defender OS Rebased on Fedora 24, Gets Cinnamon 3.0.6 & Linux Kernel 4.6.3

      Today, July 5, 2016, Arne Exton has been proud to announce the release of a new version of his Exton|Defender GNU/Linux operating system, bringing some of the hottest technologies available to date.

  • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon: Quick Screenshot Tour

      The release of Linux Mint 18 was very interesting from many aspects. The most interesting for me was the fact that it is the 1st release of Mint based on LTS version of Ubuntu after skipping several non-LTS versions. If you remember, up to Linux Mint 16, each new version was based on consecutive version of Ubuntu, being it LTS or non-LTS version. But since version 17 only Ubuntu LTS editions are used by the Mint team to build their own operating system. Mint 17 was based on Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint 18 is based on Ubuntu 16.04.

      The full-blown review is still ahead. For now, let’s do a quick whistle-blow tour through the Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon system with some applications you can find out of the box.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • PCLinuxOS 64 2016.07 MATE Edition Lands with Linux Kernel 4.6.3 and MATE 1.14.1

      PCLinuxOS developer Texstar has had the great pleasure of announcing the availability of July’s respin ISO image for the PCLinuxOS 64 MATE Edition operating system, version 2016.07.

      PCLinuxOS 64 2016.07 MATE comes exactly one month after the debut of June’s update of the distribution built around the customizable and lightweight MATE desktop environment, and it looks like it’s full of goodies. For example, the distro is now powered by the latest and most advanced kernel, Linux 4.6.3.

    • PCLinuxOS 2016.07 “MATE” has just been released

  • Slackware Family

    • LibreOffice 5.1.4 (bugfix release)

      The Document Foundation released Libreoffice 5.1.4 on June 23, but I was kept busy with preparing my own packaging and scripting stuff for the release of Slackware 14.2. In addition, a new release of Plasma (5.7) is near, for which I promised a Live ISO to be available on July 5.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat is open – to doing business with the NSA

      Red Hat’s annual summit held last week was a smörgåsbord of events that illustrate what the company styles as its philosophy of openness. In the rush to publicise this trait, the company forgot that it is aiding the NSA, the biggest spy outfit in the world, to snoop on others.

    • To avoid disruption, stay open [Ed: Red Hat marketing]

    • Red Hat announces 2016 Women in Open Source award winners [Ed: Red Hat femmewashing]

      Red Hat has chosen Jessica McKellar from Dropbox and Preeti Murthy, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon as the winners of the 2016 annual Women in Open Source Awards.

    • The Summit and the Bodhi

      More on this discussion by Corrinne, I applaud her efforts into making develop girl it a force to reckon with within the community. I myself was a part of “Girl Develop It” in the Seattle/Ann Arbor area and used to attend their casual meetups. I remember when I had just started to learn to code, I was afraid of asking for help. Even if I am stuck, it was hard to find someone willing to understand and provide the right guidance. “Girl Develop It” made that learning process easier for me by providing the right mentorship and guidance throughout my earlier attempts at coding. Not only I was receiving feedback but I had similar people like me trying to understand and develop confidence while learning to code. During her talk at the Summit too, she mentioned about some success stories that had helped many women across the United States. I attended this talk along with women who were a part of the Women Leadership Community-Westford. Further, I would like to thank Garima (Performance Team) for putting all the efforts to arranging this meetup and discussion for us that day.

    • Finance

      • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Broker Price Targets For The Coming Week

      • Tech Stocks News Ring: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT), Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA)

    • Fedora

      • Fedora PSA: Why is my new Fedora account listed as spamcheck_waiting or spamcheck_denied?

  • Debian Family

    • Libertine: Allowing X11 Debian Packages To Run On The Next-Gen Ubuntu Desktop

      Stephen Webb of Canonical has written about the company’s latest project, Libertine. Libertine is their new project for allowing legacy X11-focused Debian packages to run on their next-gen converged desktop with Unity 8, Mir, and Snap packages.

    • DebConf16 videos now live

    • Debian 8 Gets New Kernel Update, Five Vulnerabilities and a Regression Patched

      Exactly one week after the release of the major kernel update for the Debian GNU/Linux 8 “Jessie” operating system on June 28, the Debian Project, through Salvatore Bonaccorso, has released a new Linux kernel security update.

    • Derivatives

      • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 and 8.5 Get the Latest Debian Security Fixes, Update Now

        A few hours ago, the development team behind Parsix GNU/Linux, a Debian-based computer operating system sporting the modern GNOME 3 desktop environment, has announced that new security fixes are available for the stable Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 “Atticus” distribution, and upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 “Erik” release.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 to Introduce a New Power Manager for Ubuntu Phones, Tablets

          We’ve been asked several times by some of our readers what’s going on in the Ubuntu Touch world, the operating system that powers the Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet devices.

        • Ubuntu’s Snap Arrives on Arch’s Community Repo

          Ubuntu’s Snap package management system which was recently presented as a potential replacement for all the packages across all GNU/Linux systems sparked excitement as well as disapproval amongst Linux enthusiasts towards Canonical and their push of their Snappy format.

        • Linux letting go: 32-bit builds on the way out

          Major Linux distributions are in agreement: it’s time to stop developing new versions for 32-bit processors.

          Simply: it’s a waste of time, both to create the 32-bit port, and to keep 32-bit hardware around to test it on.

          At the end of June, Ubuntu developer Dimitri Ledkov chipped into the debate with this mailing list post, saying bluntly that 32-bit ports are a waste of resources.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Lumenera Corporation Announces the Release of Their ‘Lumenera Linux SDK 2.1’

    Lumenera, a leading manufacturer and developer of high performance digital cameras and custom imaging solutions, is pleased to announce the launch of Lumenera Linux SDK 2.1, their new software development kit designed for embedded platforms using Linux ARM based processors.

    Combining powerful features with reliable performance, the Lumenera Linux SDK 2.1 software maximizes the high-speed, high-resolution features of Lumenera’s USB 3.0 cameras. Lumenera chose to formally support Ubuntu Linux with their cameras as it is used by many development teams around the world because of its strong presence globally, versatility, reliability, and extensive developer libraries. Ubuntu has regular Long Term Support (LTS) releases that are supported for five years, making it an ideal choice for developers.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Samsung begins Production of Tizen Z2 Smartphone, October 2016 release date

        The Samsung Z1 and Z3 have sold quite well since they went on sale last year, reportedly selling over a million handsets, even though they have only been distributed to a limited number of markets so far. Now, According to shipping Information in India, Samsung have started Importing more parts to assemble their next Tizen smartphone, the Samsung Z2. Most likely it will be being put together at Samsung’s Noida assembly plant. Our sources have confirmed that we are possibly looking at an October 2016 release date.

    • Android

      • Android full disk encryption can be brute-forced on Qualcomm-based devices

      • Google’s full-disk encryption in Android can be hacked

      • Over 10 million Android devices reportedly infected with Chinese malware

      • How to tell if your Android phone has spyware

Free Software/Open Source

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla emits nightly builds of heir-to-Firefox browser engine Servo

      Mozilla has started publishing nightly in-development builds of its experimental Servo browser engine so anyone can track the project’s progress.

      Executables for macOS and GNU/Linux are available right here to download and test drive even if you’re not a developer. If you are, the open-source engine’s code is here if you want to build it from scratch, fix bugs, or contribute to the effort.

• SaaS/Back End

  • Is my OpenStack ready for Cloud Foundry?

    This year’s first Cloud Foundry Summit took place in Santa Clara at the end of May. Beyhan Veli from SAP and I gave a presentation about the Cloud Foundry OpenStack Validator, a new tool we developed as one of the results of our collaboration with SAP on the BOSH OpenStack Cloud Provider Interface project.

• CMS

  • German ecommerce software Shopware becomes open source

    Shopware, said to be the largest shop system manufacturer of Germany, released version 5.2 of its ecommerce software. One of the biggest changes is the elimination of encryption software ionCube, thus making its software 100 percent open source.

    Shopware made version 5.2 of its ecommerce software available for download. Aside from the switch to open source, Shopware also added numerous new features, which it says are the result of more than 70,000 members from its community submitting proposals for improvement. CEO Stefan Hamann: “For several years, we have encouraged an open dialogue with the community in order to more directly connect with their wishes for an ecommerce platform.”

  • Install Cockpit CMS on Ubuntu 16.04

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Sources: Microsoft Tried To Buy Docker for $4B

    At last week’s DockerCon 2016 event in Seattle there was a lot of behind-the-scenes chatter about Microsoft wanting to buy Docker for billions of dollars. Microsoft’s bid for Docker was rumored to be as much as $4 billion for the 250-person container technology startup in the last six months, according to multiple sources with contacts close to both companies.

  • Uber Drives Gains With Open-Source Development

    The popular ride-sharing company adopts an open-source development platform to speed application coding and support more than five million trips per day.

• BSD

  • PC-BSD’s Lumina Desktop Now In Beta For v1.0

    The Lumina Desktop Environment has made available their v1.0 beta release of the Qt-written desktop.

    PC-BSD developers and others continue working on Lumina as an alternative, lightweight desktop environment. While originating in the BSD world, Lumina continues to be designed to work on any Unix-like OS and is licensed under a 3-clause BSD license. Should you not be familiar with Lumina from our past articles, visit Lumina-Desktop.org to learn more about the project.

• Public Services/Government

  • Bulgaria passes law requiring government software to be open source

    Amendments have been passed by the Bulgarian Parliament requiring all software written for the government to be open source and developed in a public repository, making custom software procured by the government accessible to everyone.

    Article 58 of the Electronic Governance Act states that administrative authorities must include the following requirements: “When the subject of the contract includes the development of computer programs, computer programs must meet the criteria for open-source software; all copyright and related rights on the relevant computer programs, their source code, the design of interfaces, and databases which are subject to the order should arise for the principal in full, without limitations in the use, modification, and distribution; and development should be done in the repository maintained by the agency in accordance with Art 7c pt. 18.”

  • Every country needs to follow Bulgaria’s lead in choosing open source software for governance

    The Bulgarian Parliament has passed amendments to its Electronic Governance Act which require all software written for the government to be open source and developed in a public repository.

  • Bulgaria Makes A New Law Requiring All Government Software To Be Open Source

    From the world of open source, here comes a great news. The Bulgarian government has passed a law that has made the use of open source software in government offices compulsory. We welcome this step and hope that other governments will take similar steps and make more information accessible to the users.

  • Bulgaria Got a Law Requiring Open Source

    Less than two years after my presentation titled “Open source for the government”, and almost exactly one year after I became advisor to the deputy prime minister of Bulgaria, with the efforts of my colleagues and the deputy prime minister, the amendments to the Electronic Governance Act were voted in parliament and are now in effect. The amendments require all software written for the government to be open-source and to be developed as such in a public repository.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Building a water collection vessel from scratch

      The Engineering Academy program is offered to top students from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, as well as the School of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering in Singapore Polytechnic. The program aims to impart skills from a multitude of disciplines: electrical, electronics, mechanics, chemistry, design, and business.

      The project statement we were presented with at the beginning of the semester was: “Design a vehicle that can take two samples of water, at one meter and two meters underwater.” This posed a challenge to us as there were many intricacies of the vehicle that we had to think about, and it was a huge undertaking.

      However, we welcomed the challenge with open arms. We knew it would put all of our knowledge to the test and would necessitate the search for even more information on our own. This article will outline the very iterative process of planning and prototyping, and showcase the fruit of our labor.

Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition

  • From Mommy Bloggers to Clandestine Spies, Here’s How Monsanto’s PR Company Controls the GMO Debate

    Sen. Bernie Sanders sent out an email to supporters Friday asking them to take action against a Senate bill that would overturn Vermont’s recent legislation requiring companies to label products containing genetically modified organisms.

  • Yesterday’s Supreme Court Decision on Abortion Was a Great Victory for Women, but It Should Have Been a No Brainer

    How could a law that decimated a woman’s access to abortion for no medical reason have gotten this far?

    Without a doubt, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision dealt a major blow to those who want to prevent a woman from having an abortion. The court struck down two Texas laws that together would have shut down about three-fourths of the clinics in the state of Texas, leaving fewer than 10 clinics for 5.4 million women of reproductive age.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Tony Blair faces calls for impeachment on release of Chilcot report

    Senior figures from Labour and the Scottish National party are considering calls for legal action against Tony Blair if the former prime minister faces severe criticisms from the long-awaited inquiry into the war in Iraq.

    A number of MPs led by Alex Salmond are expected to use an ancient law to try to impeach the former prime minister when the Chilcot report comes out on Wednesday.

    The law, last used in 1806 when the Tory minister Lord Melville was charged for misappropriating official funds, is seen in Westminster as an alternative form of punishment that could ensure Blair never holds office again.

  • How the U.S. Military Promotes Its Weapons Arsenal to the Public

    A young boy “shoots” a machine gun from a Vietnam-era helicopter at the New York Air Show in 2015. There are no certain statistics for the number of Vietnamese casualties during the war, but at least 1 million died, and potentially 2 million or more. A 1991 survey found that Americans estimated that about 100,000 Vietnamese had been killed.

  • Hacked Emails Reveal NATO General Plotting Against Obama on Russia Policy

    Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, until recently the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, plotted in private to overcome President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate military tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine in 2014, according to apparently hacked emails from Breedlove’s Gmail account that were posted on a new website called DC Leaks.

    Obama defied political pressure from hawks in Congress and the military to provide lethal assistance to the Ukrainian government, fearing that doing so would increase the bloodshed and provide Russian President Vladimir Putin with the justification for deeper incursions into the country.

    Breedlove, during briefings to Congress, notably contradicted the Obama administration regarding the situation in Ukraine, leading to news stories about conflict between the general and Obama.

    But the leaked emails provide an even more dramatic picture of the intense back-channel lobbying for the Obama administration to begin a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

  • Refuse To Celebrate July 4th Militarism

    Did you know that 85 to 90 percent of war’s casualties are non-combatant civilians?

  • How Hillary Clinton Ignores Peace

    Despite neocon-instigated chaos and bloodshed across the Mideast (and now into Europe), Hillary Clinton continues to advocate more “regime change” wars with almost no fear from a marginalized anti-war movement, writes Robert Parry.

  • America Destroyed

    When I was young, America still existed. No more. Not even the blather from the 4th of July can hide the obvious fact.

    The young do not know that they have lost their country, because they are born into a time when the country is lost. To them that is normalcy.

    Besides, the young are too busy texting and describing themselves, often intimately, on social media to be aware of the fate that awaits them, lost as they are in their insouciance.

    When I was young, the police were the public’s friends. We could count on them to help us, not abuse us. False arrest was rare. Abuse of citizens even rarer. Today both are routine.

  • The Orlando Shootings: Police SWAT Team Involved in the Killings?

    The official FBI police report acknowledges shootings at 2am, it does not confirm the occurrence of killings of hostages prior to 5am. The killings started when the Police SWAT Teams stormed the Building at 5.13am. (see Timeline Below)

    The Orlando Police Department Timeline summarized in an FBI Tampa Press release not only suggests that no one was killed before 5.13am when the SWAT team broke into the building, it also confirms that the first deadly shots were fired at 5.14am and that the suspect was killed one minute later at 5.15am. This assessment was confirmed by Judge Napolitano in a Fox News report.

    [...]

    The Obama Administration, the FBI, the Media have casually dismissed the possibility of police involvement in the killings despite the statements emanating from police sources. Theater of the absurd: The official story is that the killings were ordered by the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) based in Raqqa, Northern Syria, which happens to be supported and financed by two of America’s staunchest allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in close liaison with Washington.

    The CCTV camera footage which is available to law enforcement officials will, most probably, not be made public.

  • The worst ISIS attack in days is the one the world probably cares least about

    First, they came for Istanbul. On Tuesday night, three suspected Islamic State militants launched a brazen assault on Turkey’s main airport, exploding their suicide vests after gunning down numerous passengers and airport staff. At least 45 people were killed. The world panicked; Istanbul Ataturk Airport is one of the busiest hubs in Europe and the Middle East, and it is among the most fortified. Are our airports safe, wondered American TV anchors. Could this happen here on the Fourth of July?

    Next, they came for Dhaka. Gunmen whom many have linked to the Islamic State raided a popular cafe in an upscale neighborhood in Bangladesh’s teeming capital. After a 10-hour standoff, authorities stormed the establishment; at least 20 hostages, mostly Italian and Japanese nationals, died at the militants’ hands. U.S. college students also were among the dead. The Islamic State’s reach is growing far from the Middle East, security experts fretted. Foreigners are at risk all over the Muslim world.

    Then, they attacked Baghdad. In the early hours of Sunday morning, as hundreds of Iraqis gathered during the holy month of Ramadan, a car bomb exploded in the crowded Karrada shopping district. The blast killed a staggering number of people — the latest death toll is at least 187 — including many children. The area is predominantly Shiite, making it a choice target for the Sunni extremist group.

  • Too Many Moments of Silence

    In silence we stop the world for an instant with a symbolic gesture lacking productive solutions. Courageous acts of integrity transform our intentions into new realities for ourselves and the world. When will we speak? When will we pay attention? Uncommon lives do more than stand and wait. When will we take time to really listen, learn and act upon what matters most? Do we know what that means anymore? Some say ours is a throw-away world. Do we see ourselves and others as disposable waste? Is that why we stand motionless and simply look on or look away? Perhaps we know too much about war and too little about peace.

  • Thomas Jefferson: America’s Founding Sociopath

    So, Jefferson perhaps more than any figure in U.S. history gets a pass for what he really was: a self-absorbed aristocrat who had one set of principles for himself and another for everybody else.

  • Public Eclipse of a Shining Patriot

    Such persecution continued for 88 days. The mainstream media (virtually the only media at that time) besieged Jewell’s private residence. Television networks spent $1,000 per day subletting an apartment of the tenant next door to Jewell’s so as to observe him. At any given time were an estimated 150 to 200 members of the press, some with high-intensity photo lenses, trained on every move Jewell made. The object of this maelstrom stated, “They had people over there who could read lips. They had a sound dish. They could hear everything that we said. They have a person writing down everything we said.”

    For three months this behavior was all but sanctioned by the FBI who allowed the media to be its willing handmaidens rather than act as a check on its power. That agency too kept both Richard Jewell and his mother under 24-hour surveillance as they allowed the real culprit to escape further and further away from justice. Agents lied to Jewell about seeking his participation in an anti-terror documentary to induce him to a police station where they promptly read him his Miranda rights. He correctly (and wisely) asked for an attorney. In the days which followed the FBI collected hair his samples, confiscated his truck, interrogated everyone he knew and compelled several to undergo polygraph tests.

  • President Obama’s New, Long-Promised Drone “Transparency” Is Not Nearly Enough

    The Obama administration released a summary today of the numbers of “non-combatants” it has killed outside actual war zones primarily through targeted killing strikes, as well as a new executive order aimed at creating new transparency and accountability rules for such strikes.

    Unfortunately, both the release and the new order fall far short of the standards for transparency and accountability needed to ensure that the government’s targeted killing program is lawful under domestic and international law.

  • Colombia’s Peace Finally at Hand

    With terrorist massacres hitting the news every few days, and financial markets reeling over the uncertain future of Europe, it’s no wonder pundits like Roger Cohen of the New York Times are warning that “the forces of disintegration are on the march” and “the foundations of the postwar world … are trembling.”

    But the news media have given only glancing coverage to one of the most positive developments of our time: the end to 52 years of armed conflict between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

  • Drone Death Figures Show the U.S. “Simply Doesn’t Know Who it has Killed”

    Responding to civilian casualty figures released by the White House today, international human rights organization Reprieve has expressed dismay at how little the Obama Administration appears to know about those it has killed in its covert use of lethal drones outside of war zones.

  • For Obama’s Secret Wars, the Record Suggests a Far Worse Reality

    The new White House data relates only to Obama’s first seven years in office – during which it says 473 covert and clandestine airstrikes and drone attacks were carried out in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya.

  • A Less-Secret Drone Campaign

    The public’s right to information about the drone campaign, and about counterterrorism policy more generally, should not depend on the grace of executive branch officials. Transparency should be required by law.

  • When will the White House tell us the whole truth about drone killings?

    The Situation Room, a commander-in-chief with rapidly graying hair, a cluster of grim-faced men and women debating the ethics and the legality of a killing. This is how the Obama administration has for years sought to portray its notorious global drone killing program: cautious, calculated and as conscientious as possible.

    The Obama administration just released numbers suggesting this depiction is closer to reality than fiction. It announced that drone strikes in countries excluding Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have resulted in between at least 64 and 116 noncombatant deaths during his administration. The president also issued an executive order effectively directing his successor to do as he is doing, and publish this data going forward.

  • Obama Administration Finally Releases Its Dubious Drone Death Toll

    In a long-anticipated gesture at transparency, the Obama administration on Friday released an internal assessment of the number of civilians killed by drone strikes in nations where the U.S. is not officially at war.

    According to the data, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya killed between 64 and 116 civilians during the two terms of the Obama administration — a fraction of even the most conservative estimates on drone-related killings catalogued by reporters and researchers over the same period. The government tally also reported 2,372 to 2,581 combatants killed in U.S. airstrikes from January 20, 2009, to December 31, 2015.

  • American Journalist in Rebel-Held Syria Reports Barely Dodging a Missile Strike

    An American journalist and documentary filmmaker reporting from Syrian rebel-controlled territory near Aleppo says he was nearly killed in what he suspects was a drone strike last Sunday. Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American citizen originally from New York, was sitting in a car with his driver outside the village of Khan Touman, he reports, when a missile struck nearby the vehicle.

    “We heard some drones traveling overhead about half an hour before, which is not uncommon, but there were none of the screams that you normally hear before an airstrike,” Abdul Kareem told The Intercept. “We were sitting in the car, and then all of a sudden, everything went black. It felt like the earth had split open and we’d fallen into it. In reality, the explosion had sent the car into the air.”

    A video Abdul Kareem posted after the bombing on his YouTube channel showed the damage to the vehicle, as well as his camera equipment. He says this is the fourth airstrike that has nearly hit him in the past month. Given the frequency of the near-misses, Abdul Kareem believes he is being targeted. “Locals had told me that I was being targeted by someone, but I hadn’t believed it before,” he says. “I just chalked it up to being in a war zone — bad things happen — but now it seems clear that someone is targeting me.”

    Abdul Kareem is one of the last Western journalists covering the conflict in Syria from rebel-controlled territory. Earlier this year, he helped produce a series of exclusive CNN reports from Syria with journalist Clarissa Ward. His reporting has also been featured on the British outlets Channel 4 and Sky News.

  • At Their Own Peril, Americans Are Fuzzy on History

    Because many people in the United States don’t value history very much, they tend to allow politicians to be selective in their remembering of historical events – usually to manipulate public nationalism (which now passes for patriotism) for their own dubious policy goals. For example, if Americans had focused more on the fact that historically, the Vietnamese had been fighting fiercely over the centuries to throw out foreign invaders – such as the Japanese, the Chinese, and recently the French – perhaps they would have demanded that their politicians think twice, even three times, about invading that country. And if Americans had known that the historically fractious Iraq, an artificial country that had been created by the greedy colonial powers after World War I to exploit the country’s oil reserves, they might have wisely rejected George W. Bush’s attempt at military social work in one of the most unlikely places in the Middle East for democracy to flourish.

  • In Hopeless Occupation, War Becomes its Own End

    Other occupations — Belgium in the Congo, Japan in China, France in Algeria, Russia in Afghanistan, etc. — provide ample, if imperiously unheeded warnings, because they all failed. Wasn’t British colonial rule overthrown by insurgent militias using unconventional methods against superior forces here? Milt Bearden, a 30-year CIA veteran, wrote for the New York Times, “[I]n the history of the 20th century, no nation that launched a war against another sovereign nation ever won. And every nationalist-based insurgency against a foreign occupation ultimately succeeded.” Not some, not most: every one.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • Sadiq Khan pledges “urgent action” to clean up London’s air quality

    All cars built before 2005 are to be charged an additional £10 per day to enter central London, Mayor Sadiq Khan announced today.

    The levy, which will be in addition to the existing congestion charge and will apply to all vehicles with pre-Euro 4 emission standards, is one of a package of measures aimed at cleaning up London’s poor quality air.

    City Hall says the new fee, which it dubs the ’T-charge’, would “be the toughest crackdown” on polluting vehicles by any major city around the world when it comes into effect next year.

  • Climate Change’s Iniquitous Transmission of Urgency: The Gulf South

    The “South,” both as a global region and within industrialized countries, is where the people most vulnerable to climate catastrophe are located. It is here that we find the highest concentration of fossil fuel sacrifice zones, home to low-wealth citizens who enjoy little to no access to political power in their respective nations. And it’s here that we find some of the more efficacious models of climate resistance and resilience that you’ve never, or barely, heard about.

• Brexit and Finance

  • Brexit: Which Kind of Dependence Now?

    The EU in essence is a cartel intended to suppress competition among the states of Europe — which is not to say it has had no liberalizing objectives or effects, such as freedom to move and work without visas, and disincentives for corporate subsidies. (I said this is complicated.) Competition, however, is too important to be suppressed because it reveals critical information we are unlikely to acquire otherwise. Since vital knowledge is disbursed among large numbers of people, competition is, as Nobel laureate economist F. A. Hayek put it, a unique “discovery procedure.” It’s not just a matter of freedom; it’s a matter of progress, and of life and death for those in the developing world.

  • EU Accused of Trying to Push Through ‘Toxic’ Trade Deal Ahead of Brexit

    Trade campaigners in the UK have accused the European Commission of attempting to hasten attempts to push through a controversial trade deal between Canada and the EU ahead of the UK leaving the EU. The accusations come before a meeting tomorrow of the EU Commissioners in Brussels where it’s expected the implementation of the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) will be agreed upon.

  • Nigel Farage has said ‘the real me will come out’ now he’s resigned and people are terrifed by what that means

    The leader of Ukip – a political party whose primary platform had been to push the UK towards leaving the EU – seems to have stepped down.

  • Charlotte Church ‘Shocked’ At ‘Horrifying’ Abuse After Nigel Farage Tweet

    Charlotte Church has said she is “shocked” by “horrifying” abuse she has received after tweeting about Nigel Farage in the wake of his resignation as Ukip leader.

    After the Brexit campaigner stepped down saying he “wants his life back”, the singer was one of many well-known people who vented their anger.

  • David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage described as ‘rats fleeing a sinking ship’ after Brexit vote

    David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have been described as “rats fleeing a sinking ship” following their resignations in the immediate aftermath of Britain’s historic European Union referendum.

    Guy Verhofstadt, the former Prime Minister of Belgium who now heads up the alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe, made the comparison the day after Mr Farage resigned as the leader of the UK Independence Party, saying “he couldn’t possibly achieve more”.

  • Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are unpatriotic quitters, says Juncker

    Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, has accused Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson of being unpatriotic quitters, after the pair stood back from leadership positions after the UK’s historic vote to leave the European Union.

    “The Brexit heroes of yesterday are now the sad heroes of today,” Juncker told MEPs at the European parliament in Strasbourg.

    “Those who have contributed to the situation in the UK have resigned – Johnson, Farage and others. They are as it were retro-nationalists, they are not patriots,” he said.

  • Christoph Waltz calls Nigel Farage ‘head rat’ and condemns Brexit as ‘abysmal stupidity’

    Waltz criticised Mr Farage for not failing to see through and stand up for what he had been vigorously campaigning for throughout his political career.

  • Tax haven route won’t work for post-Brexit UK, OECD says

    The United Kingdom is unlikely to try to lure international investment by becoming a tax haven after it leaves the European Union, according to an internal memo prepared by the body responsible for the drafting international tax rules.

    The head of tax at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which advises developed nations on policy, said the UK could use its freedom from EU rules to slash corporate tax but the political price would be high.

    The idea the country may cut tax on multinational companies’ profits, which could also help them avoid tax on profits made elsewhere in the EU, has been raised by some accountants and policy experts since the country voted to leave the bloc.

    “The negative impact of the Brexit on UK competitiveness may push the UK to be even more aggressive in its tax offer,” the OECD’s head of tax, Pascal Saint-Amans said in the memo, details of which were seen by Reuters.

  • Business pessimism ‘doubles after Brexit vote’

    UK business confidence has fallen sharply in the aftermath of the vote to leave the EU, research suggests.

    The share of businesses that reported feeling pessimistic about the UK economy doubled in the week after the Brexit vote.

    The figure jumped from 25% the week before the referendum to 49%, according to YouGov and the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

    Falling confidence can lead companies to pull back on investment and hiring.

    Scott Corfe, director at the CEBR, said that the figures indicated a “significant shock reaction” among UK businesses following the vote last month.

  • Disaster capitalism: the shocking doctrine Tories can’t wait to unleash

    One of the most startling aspects of the Brexit debate is the rapidity with which the Conservatives have set it behind them. Within hours of the result David Cameron was on the steps of 10 Downing Street, describing this slim majority as “a very clear result” and proposing irrevocable steps to set it in motion. Within days his chancellor, who had threatened a punishment budget only weeks earlier, was falling into line.

    The referendum was manifestly won on the basis of misinformation, and puts the UK in an extremely dangerous situation, and there are several plausible scenarios for avoiding it. Yet among the candidates to succeed Cameron, even former remainers are now voting leave. “Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May stated on joining the race on Thursday. “There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum.” All the bloodshed in the Tory leadership contest masks an underlying consensus: they are all determined to block every exit from Brexit.

  • Does Article 50 require an Act of Parliament? A brief thought-experiment.

    Here is a question: would a decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union require an Act of Parliament?

    On this question, one week or so after the referendum vote for Leave, it may be fairly said that “views differ”. Some constitutional lawyers say one thing, others say the other.

  • The Mishcon de Reya legal challenge on Article 50 – some thoughts

  • Post Brexit, trade unions must fight to protect NHS workers including those from the EU

    Trade unions must take immediate action to reassure NHS and social care staff from the EU that they are welcome and needed in the UK – and to protect the rights of all workers.

  • Sanders Organizing Grassroots Push Against TPP for DNC Platform Meeting

    Environmentalists oppose it. So do labor unions, medical professionals, and major religious groups, as well as every leading presidential candidate.

    So why hasn’t the Democratic Party gone on record opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)?

    That’s what Bernie Sanders wants to know.

  • New Jersey’s Student Loan Program is ‘State-Sanctioned Loan-Sharking’

    Amid a haze of grief after her son’s murder last year, Marcia DeOliveira-Longinetti faced an endless list of tasks — helping the police access Kevin’s phone and email, canceling his subscriptions, credit cards and bank accounts, and arranging his burial in New Jersey.

    And then there were his college loans.

    When DeOliveira-Longinetti called about his federal loans, an administrator offered condolences and assured her the remaining balance would be written off.

  • Austerity and ‘Benefits Street’ in Stockton-on-Tees

    The myths on which Benefits Street was based – namely the myth of so-called “workless communities” – are demonstrably false; however the furore it has generated demonstrates that the politics of class and representation still matter.

  • Obituary: British Austerity (2010-2016)

    Many, even on the Conservative backbenches, now question its utility. Growth in the UK stalled throughout the period, falling markedly below competitors in the global markets. The UK was positioned as the foremost adherent of this bastardised Keynesian policy which saw its own Government cannibalise its own functions in a maudlin effort to lose weight. Over the past six years spending fell 10% – similar crashes have been seen previously only in times of war or famine.

  • A Sad And Shameful Day For Puerto Rico

    “You never let a serious crisis go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel infamously said when he was President Obama’s White House chief of staff. So it is with the legislation that President Obama signs into law Thursday that offers Puerto Rico a process for managing its crushing debt.

    This bill is being heralded as a rare moment of bipartisan cooperation to solve a serious crisis, in this case the default by Puerto Rico on more than $1 billion of general obligation bonds on July 1. The island’s government has already missed payment deadlines on other bonds.

  • STRIKE! Nearly 1,000 Trump Taj Mahal Workers Walk-Off Job Ahead of Atlantic City’s Biggest Weekend of the Year

    Many workers at the Trump Taj Mahal, including those with years on the job, have seen only $.80 in total raises over the last twelve years. The cost of living in Atlantic City has risen over 25 percent in the same time period. Housekeepers, servers and other casino workers at the Taj Mahal earn an average of less than $12/ hour.

  • Them, Freeloaders.

    Comfort zones are available for us to shatter them, both physically and mentally.

  • Robert Reich’s Impossible Quest: to Save Capitalism for the Many

    Robert Reich’s latest book, Saving Capitalism For the Many, Not the Few, graphically details how current U.S. capitalism operates in stark contrast to the post-World War II period of the 50s, 60s and 70s. For Reich, the earlier period represented almost an ideal state: “the rules of the game were basically fair.” The rules defined a system in which “widely shared prosperity generates more inclusive political institutions, which in turn organize the market in ways that further broaden the gains from growth and expand opportunity.”

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Major Political News Outlets Offer Interviews for Sale at DNC and RNC Conventions

    For high-rolling special interests looking to make an impression at the presidential conventions next month, one option is to pay a lot of money to a media outlet. Lobbyists for the oil industry, for instance, are picking up the tab for leading Beltway publications to host energy policy discussions at the convention, including the Atlantic and Politico.

    And for the right price, some political media outlets are even offering special interviews with editorial staffers and promotional coverage at the convention.

  • The Busted Theory of ‘Broken Windows’ Still Has Media Defenders

    Broken Windows was always about constant police contact with vulnerable groups of people. A buffet of interactions, the theory was in some ways just a crude, physical form of surveillance. The fact that it never worked was secondary to what did work: creating a politically accepted justification for crackdowns on those populations. After all, the theory implied that the squeegee man, the subway dancers, the “loosie” sellers and the homeless were responsible for the murder rate. Broken Windows was not a failure but a hugely successful communications strategy that promoted the idea that the poor were dangerous and that the cops should be unshackled to deal with them.

    It’s time to bury that idea and reverse that strategy by listening to the stories of those who’ve been dealing with the fallout of decades of a law and order onslaught.

  • Back to the Future

    The priority now of the political “elite” is to ensure voters never again get the chance to make a choice the political class do not want. Jeremy Corbyn is the thing the political class want least.

    Do you remember when 184 Labour MPs refused to vote against the Tory benefit cuts that ruined lives and caused suicides? They did so on the grounds that their focus groups showed the public wanted benefit cuts, and so it would be wrong to oppose the Tory Welfare Reform and Work Bill.

  • Trump Taps Consultant Accused of Defrauding PAC to Lead Colorado Campaign

    Patrick Davis has denied allegations that he inappropriately steered hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by a conservative PAC to organizations linked to himself and his friends. Now he’ll lead Trump’s campaign in a key swing state.

  • On the Lost Art of Intellectual Honesty

    Politics has become a branch of PR. It is just about selling. The party, candidate or policy you are selling must be portrayed as the absolute epitome of excellence, with no flaws whatsoever. Political discourse has therefore become juvenile. It is about expensively dressed, well groomed salesmen with perfect teeth. Thought is positively frowned upon.

  • Hillary’s Mode of Governance: Boozy X Chromosomes Making Peace

    The NYT has an article describing how a bunch of apparently moronic Hillary aides believe they will govern when she becomes President. I say moronic not just because — in a week when Hillary’s spouse scored an enormous own goal by chatting up Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmack in Phoenix — numerous Hillary aides said Hillary might keep Lynch as AG.

  • Theresa May, Your New Islamophobic Prime Minister?

    A quick Google news search for “Theresa May and “Abu Qatada” reveals over 2,000 mainstream media articles in the last three days combining both. This is hardly surprising, as in her speech announcing her candidacy for Tory leader (and thus PM) May dwelt on her deportation of Abu Qatada as evidence she was qualified for the job. The May supporting Tory MP who was put up for Sky to interview immediately afterwards managed to say “Abu Qatada” three times in a two minute interview.

    Abu Qatada should indeed be a powerful symbol – but not the symbol he has become, a hate figure. He should rather be a symbol of the hate-filled and intolerant place Britain has become, and the dreadful injustice meted out to individuals both by the state and the media.

  • How Unpatriotic Is Donald Trump?

    There is little in Trump’s rambling off-the-cuff speeches and media interviews, or in his reactionary stream-of-conscious tweets, that demonstrate his understanding of patriotism. Trump is a snake oil salesman, and he is arguably in the midst of his greatest pitch to date. Smart consumers should do their research to find out the truth about the “product” they are being sold by Mr. Trump.

  • Journalistic Standards at the Guardian

    Note Ms Hinshliff’s use of inverted commas there, indicating that “media conspiracy” was the actual phrase used. Except it wasn’t. Wadsworth never used the phrase, or indeed either of the words “media” and “conspiracy” separately. What he actually said is widely available, as is video footage of him saying it. I published it yesterday, along with what I hope was a very rational consideration of what the incident did and did not signify .

  • Thoughts on the Media and the EU Referendum

    a) I did not accept the argument that the BBC was biased in the referendum campaign towards Brexit. Indeed especially in the last few days, I thought it was biased towards Remain.
    b) However the BBC had been guilty of helping promote Brexit by giving Farage massive and disproportionate publicity for many years, from when UKIP was a negligible electoral force. They were always willing to give right wings views publicity but not left wing views.
    c) The right wing print media were indeed a major problem distorting democracy. However the solution to this should be to break up media ownership, not impose government control of content.
    d) Project Fear had not succeeded in the Scottish referendum. It had seen a 35 point unionist lead cut to a 10 point lead, making it one of the most disastrous campaigns in history. The question of why Project Fear “succeeded” in Scotland but not the EU referendum was therefore a false one.
    e) Media coverage focused on the despised political class rather than the facts.

  • Hillary Cheated

    Who are you going to believe: us, or your lying eyes? That’s the good word from Democratic Party powers that be and their transcribers in the corporate media, in response to the “allegations” by Bernie Sanders supporters that the nomination was stolen by Hillary Clinton.

  • Wow. Americans Really, Really Don’t Like Trump or Clinton

    Via a new Gallup poll, more evidence comes Friday that the nation’s electorate really doesn’t like this year’s leading presidential candidates.

    Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has the dubious distinction of being the most unfavorably viewed of any candidate over the past seven decades—displacing 1964 Republican candidate Barry Goldwater from the bottom spot.

    The poll offers no smug moment for Clinton: her scores put her among the bottom four presidential candidates, with scores barely better than those of Goldwater.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Court battle looming over SABC censorship

    The Helen Suzman Foundation has launched an urgent court bid to stop the SABC from implementing its decision to censor reporting of protests.

    The application is against the SABC, its board, chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng and communications minister Faith Muthambi, the foundation said in a statement on Monday.

    It would be heard in the high court in Pretoria. The provisional court date is 29 July, but it could be moved forward pending the availability of lawyers.

    “It is impermissible for the SABC to distort or refuse to cover important news, as a result of political partisanship or otherwise.

  • Are ad-blockers killing the media?

    In the summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine, Spiegel Online’s managing editor Matthias Streitz and Privacy International technologist Richard Tynan go head to head to debate the rise of ad-blockers.

    Many publishers have voiced concern that this software – which allows users to block online adverts from their screens – is damaging their revenue streams.

    “If you consume our content, you must allow us some means of monetisation,” said Streitz. While Tynan argued that online adverts pose a security risk and ad-blockers allow users to “retain control over who the communicate with, and [minimise] the amount of data companies collect on users’ online patterns”.

  • SABC facing court challenge on censorship

    The Helen Suzman Foundation has launched an urgent application asking the High Court in Pretoria to suspend the implementation of the policy until the court has decided whether it is lawful, or pending the finalisation of an inquiry by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) into the matter.

  • Icasa to rule on SABC’s ban on protest reports

    The SABC is likely to know on 7 July whether its contentious decision to ban coverage of violent protests is valid.

  • Sanity, Shami Chakrabarti and the Ruth Smeeth Affair

    On the Chakrabarti report itself, it seems to me a model of good sense. It is interesting to note that her recommendations on what areas (including holocaust denial and the Nazis) and what language to ban from discourse, end up very closely mirroring the same rules we have adopted over the years on this blog, effectively to bar anti-Semitism.

  • Censorship reform: a concession too far?

  • Of censorship and cyberbullying

    The recent clash between Brikkuni vocalist Mario Vella and OPM aide and blogger Glenn Bedingfield has once again exposed the limitations of freedom of speech.

    Vella is widely known to be outspoken and vitriolic in his public commentary. On this occasion, however, many felt that his comment about Michelle Muscat (which was both obscene and highly personal) had ‘crossed the line’.

  • Israel Says Facebook Has ‘Simply Become A Monster’

    Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Facebook was responsible for a spate of Palestinian attacks on the country’s citizens.

    “Facebook today sabotages, it should be known, sabotages the work of the Israeli police, because when the Israeli police approach them, and it is regarding a resident of Judea and Samaria, Facebook does not cooperate” with the West Bank, Erdan said in a television interview Saturday, Reuters reported.

  • A contemporary twist to Khajuraho: A Bengaluru artist redefines censorship through art

    Applying censorship to illustrate censorship itself is what Akshita’s art intends to achieve.

  • Sony Locks Up The PSN Account Of A Man Named ‘Jihad’ Because You’ll Never Guess Why

    Terrorism is scary. That’s the entire point of terrorism, of course. The relatively meager bodycounts of acts of terror — compared with, say, most minor individual battles in either of the World Wars — are actually attempting to create some kind of political or social change amongst the victims. And guess what? It totally works! After all, western nations, the bastions of freedom and puppy dogs that we are, have reacted to what is ultimately a minor threat by reporting toddlers to the authorities, freezing the bank accounts of people with dogs whose names are a couple of letters off of the scary terror-enemy, and refusing online services to people with scary (read: Islamic) sounding names. Freedom, you see, isn’t free, and we have to pay for it with freedom.

    And the real lesson that should be learned from pretty much the entire early part of this century is that once you start the fear-ball rolling when it comes to terrorism, it gets really hard to prevent it from trampling a great deal of innocent people in some of the dumbest ways possible.

  • The SABC and censorship on Al Jazeera

    South Africa is embroiled in a national debate over media censorship. This, after the SABC made the editorial decision to stop airing video of violent protests. The SABC has maintained the move was to protect journalists from becoming victims while covering such events.

  • The SABC and media censorship

  • Like North Korea and China, SA is a huge fan of censorship, DA says

  • ‘SA unashamedly parades love for censorship on international stage’: DA

    What does South Africa have in common with China‚ Russia and North Korea? “Poor human rights track records” and they are the “biggest practitioners of censorship”‚ the Democratic Alliance’s Phumzile van Damme suggested on Tuesday.

  • ANCYL backs SABC management amid anti-censorship debacle

  • SABC facing court challenge on censorship

  • ANC is also a victim of SABC censorship: Mantashe

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • FBI Still Not Counting How Often Encryption Hinders Their Investigations

    The annual wiretap report is out. The headline number is that wiretaps have gone up, and judges still don’t deny any wiretap applications.

  • Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer

    In a dangerously flawed decision unsealed today, a federal district court in Virginia ruled that a criminal defendant has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in his personal computer, located inside his home. According to the court, the federal government does not need a warrant to hack into an individual’s computer.

    This decision is the latest in, and perhaps the culmination of, a series of troubling decisions in prosecutions stemming from the FBI’s investigation of Playpen—a Tor hidden services site hosting child pornography. The FBI seized the server hosting the site in 2014, but continued to operate the site and serve malware to thousands of visitors that logged into the site. The malware located certain identifying information (e.g., MAC address, operating system, the computer’s “Host name”; etc) on the attacked computer and sent that information back to the FBI. There are hundreds of prosecutions, pending across the country, stemming from this investigation.

  • Your Favorite Website Might Be Discriminating Against You

    And because of a little-known law, it can be illegal to test for discrimination online.

    It can be pretty convenient when Facebook processes the gargantuan amount of personal data it has on you to show you ads for the precise lemon curd recipe you never knew you were craving.

    But what are the harms associated with this kind of targeting? It’s hard to answer that question — because an overbroad law actually prohibits the kind of studies best positioned to figure it out.

    The implications go far beyond dessert — studies have shown that people are being treated differently online based on their race, actual or perceived. Websites have been found to use demographic data to raise or lower prices, show different advertisements, or steer people to different content.

  • Security Tips Every Signal User Should Know

    There are dozens of messaging apps for iPhone and Android, but one in particular continues to stand out in the crowd. Signal is easy to use, works on both iOS and Android, and encrypts communications so that only the sender and recipient can decipher them.

  • Making Sense of a Troubling Decision: New Court Ruling Underscores the Need to Stop the Changes to Rule 41

    We wrote about a case last week that was deeply disturbing: a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia held that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a personal computer located inside their home. In this court’s view, the FBI is free to hack into networked devices (aka, pretty much everything) without a warrant.

    Fortunately, this is only the opinion of a single district court judge, so it’s not controlling precedent throughout the country. But the decision makes one thing clear: we need to stop the changes to Rule 41, amendments that will make it easier for the government to get a warrant to remotely search computers.

    First, the changes to Rule 41 are going to result in a lot more government hacking. And, as the decision in the Eastern District of Virginia illustrates, that dramatic increase in government hacking is going to occur in a legal environment where judges are struggling to understand the technology and the implications their decisions will have for people’s security and privacy. If law enforcement is going to be allowed to stockpile and exploit vulnerabilities to investigate domestic crimes, there need to be stringent safeguards on the circumstances when they can do this. And it’s up to Congress, not the courts, to create those rules. If Congress allows the changes to Rule 41 to go through, they’re effectively saying: “Courts, you figure it out.” As the recent court decision shows, that is a perilous path.

    Second, the changes to Rule 41 will encourage forum shopping. As we wrote before, under the changes, law enforcement will be able to apply for warrants before judges or in districts with the most flexible view on the Fourth Amendment and its requirements. And, if last week’s decision is any indication, the FBI has a very friendly venue conveniently located near its headquarters—the Eastern District of Virginia. If the FBI is looking to obtain an expansive warrant under the new Rule 41 to search a computer whose location is hidden by “technological means,” it won’t have to travel far.

  • FBI Cameras in Seattle Need to Be Regulated by the Public — Not Secretly Imposed on the Public

    While you’re strolling the Seattle streets this summer, take a moment to look up. Thanks to the FBI, there’s a new bird in town atop the maples and the power lines: surveillance cameras housed in birdhouse-like “concealments” attached to the city’s utility poles.

    The new species was first spotted in the wild last July, and a state public-records request by KIRO 7 yielded limited information from Seattle City Light in November. But most Seattleites likely weren’t aware of their presence in the city until recently, when the U.S. Department of Justice sued the city and Seattle City Light to prevent the release of additional information about the cameras, including their locations. A federal judge promptly blocked the release of the location information, at least for now.

    Whether that decision is correct as a legal matter is complicated. The government claims, “Every FBI pole camera is associated with a particular subject or particular investigation,” and that revealing a camera’s location would have a “devastating impact” on ongoing police work.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Disabled cancer patient slammed to the ground by TSA guards, lawsuit claims

    A disabled teenage cancer patient was injured during a violent arrest by security agents at Memphis international airport, her family has alleged in a lawsuit filed against the Transport Security Administration.

    Hannah Cohen, 18, at the time of her arrest on 30 June 2015, and her mother had been on their way home to Chattanooga from St Jude’s hospital in Memphis, where Hannah underwent her final treatment for a brain tumor.

    Hannah and her mother, Shirley, told the Guardian that the pair had made the trip hundreds of times, and knew the airport security routine well. Shirley would usually go through the scanner first and wait for Hannah on the other side, since Hannah’s tumor, and numerous surgeries and treatments since she was two years old, had left her easily confused and frightened in unfamiliar situations.

    According to the complaint, the warning alarm was triggered when Hannah passed through the body scanners. Hannah attributed the alarm to her shirt’s design.

  • Racial Bias and Arrest Tech

    Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court took away a little more of your right to be free from unlawful police searches. In a 5-3 decision in Utah v. Strieff, the Court held that if the police illegally stop and search you, they can use against you any evidence they find, as long as they determine—after they’ve stopped you—that you’re one of the 7.8 million Americans with an outstanding arrest warrant.

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a fiery and spot-on dissent that forcefully demonstrates the troubling links between racial discrimination, police stops of pedestrians and motorists, arrest warrant databases, and out-of-control police surveillance technologies.

  • I’m a Former Marine Who Was on the No Fly List for 4 Years — and I Still Don’t Know Why

    “You’re on the no-fly list,” the woman at the kiosk told me. It was a Wednesday, six years ago, at Midway Airport in Chicago. I was traveling to Spokane, Washington, for my job as a dog trainer.

    I had absolutely no idea how I could have ended up on the No Fly List. I waited for Ashton Kutcher to come out and tell me I was being Punk’d. No luck.

    At least 30 federal agents swarmed me. They didn’t handcuff or manhandle me, but the sheer number of them was intimidating. I was in a state of shock, looking at them confusedly. Their expressions turned puzzled, too, when they noticed my Marine Corps shirt.”You’re on the no-fly list,” the woman at the kiosk told me. It was a Wednesday, six years ago, at Midway Airport in Chicago. I was traveling to Spokane, Washington, for my job as a dog trainer.

    I had absolutely no idea how I could have ended up on the No Fly List. I waited for Ashton Kutcher to come out and tell me I was being Punk’d. No luck.

    At least 30 federal agents swarmed me. They didn’t handcuff or manhandle me, but the sheer number of them was intimidating. I was in a state of shock, looking at them confusedly. Their expressions turned puzzled, too, when they noticed my Marine Corps shirt.

  • ‘Vatileaks’ trio including mother of newborn facing jail terms

    Vatican prosecutors have demanded prison sentences for a senior clergyman, a communications consultant and a journalist accused of involvement in “Vatileaks” – the leak of sensitive Holy See documents.

    The prosecution called for three years and nine months’ prison for communications consultant Francesca Chaouqui, who had been involved in a review of Vatican finances and is accused of both “inspiring” and of ultimate responsibility for the leaks.

  • Directive on combating terrorism: LIBE Committee must oppose dangerous provisions!

    This evening the committee of the European Parliament on Civil Liberties (LIBE) will vote on the draft directive on combating terrorism. La Quadrature du Net already warned about the dangerous provisions of this text and urges once more MEPs to oppose this text.

  • America’s Female Prison Population Has Grown 800% and Nobody Is Talking About It

    Holly Harris may wear cowboy boots to work, but the Kentucky mom and Executive Director for the US Justice Action Network (USJAN) is far from your average southerner.

    This past Saturday, June 25th, Harris talked about her work to a group of journalists and bloggers who traveled to Washington D.C. from different corners of the country to hear from leaders of the criminal justice reform movement. Harris was the first speaker at FreedomWorks’ #JusticeForAll event, and as the leader of USJAN, she set the tone for what turned out to be a fascinating conference.

  • Time Served for a Non-Violent Drug Offense? Sorry, You Still Can’t Vote if You Live in Iowa

    When Americans go to the polls in November to elect the next president, more than 5.8 million of them will be unable to vote due to a past felony conviction.

    Many of them, like our client Kelli Griffin, were convicted of a non-violent drug offense and have since recovered from drug dependence, served their sentence, and returned to their communities. But because Kelli lives in Iowa — one of three states, along with Florida and Kentucky, that disenfranchise people for life after a felony conviction — she remains a second-class citizen denied full participation in the democratic process.

  • Donald Trump, Torturer in Chief

    Among the many controversial statements made by Mr. Donald Trump, his recent one on the use of waterboarding tops them all. Speaking at a rally in Ohio, when asked if the U.S. should use waterboarding to extract confessions from prisoners, Trump said, “I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.” It was an irresponsible statement by a man who knows no moderation on serious issues.

    Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of a person, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning. It causes not only extreme pain, but also damages the lungs and the brain due to oxygen deprivation. In addition, it may cause lasting psychological damage and death. It is among the cruelest forms of torture.

  • Because the Prosecutors Withheld Evidence, This Man Has Spent 30 Years on Death Row

    The prosecution denied its misconduct for decades. Then the Supreme Court gave Terry Williams a chance for a new trial.

    The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office intentionally withheld critical evidence in 1986 when it prosecuted 18-year-old Terry Williams and won a death sentence. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Pennsylvania courts, putting the prosecution’s wrongdoing on display.

    At Terry’s trial, the prosecution told the jury a story: at age 18, Terry had killed 56-year-old Amos Norwood for “no other reason” than to rob him. The prosecutors described Norwood as a kind man who volunteered at church. But they knew much more about Norwood than they let on. When they withheld that information from the defense and from the jury, they violated the law.

    Terry had grown up in a terror-filled household, the victim of beatings by his mother and stepfather. He was six when an 11-year-old neighbor, someone he considered to be like a big brother, first lured him with promises of food — something that he often didn’t have at home — and then sexually assaulted him. Terry was repeatedly sexually abused and exploited by adults, including one of his middle school teachers.

  • Computer Crime Bill Stalls in Rhode Island

    Rhode Island legislators recently decided not to advance a bill that would have made that state’s bad “anti-hacking” law even worse. This is good news. But the struggle continues against other vague and overbroad computer crime laws.

    As EFF previously explained, this Rhode Island bill was a threat to many different kinds of innocent, common, and beneficial uses of computers. It would have further empowered prosecutors to bring charges against computer users who violate a corporate terms-of-service agreement to access confidential information, as well as whistle blowers and independent computer security researchers. It would have imposed a minimum of five years of incarceration for a first offense, even where there was no intent to obtain financial gain. It allowed for the stacking of charges, enabling prosecutors to seek even lengthier prison terms. And there was no showing that existing laws are insufficient to protect confidential computer data.

  • Independence Day Delusions

    The concept of “freedom” is at the very least ambiguous, and, at the most, destructive to those being deceived by false patriotism. The people who benefit from the uncontrolled pursuit of money push the concept of individual freedom on the rest of us, making us feel unpatriotic if we disagree. “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself,” once blathered Milton Friedman, whose economic theories made America the most unequal developed nation.

  • July 4: What the Flag Means to Me on My Birthday

    It wasn’t until many years later, while reading an issue of the armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes in Vietnam that I began thinking and feeling differently about the flag and what it represents. There was a story about an arrest and jailing for flag burning somewhere in the United States. I had recently experienced the horror of seeing numerous bodies of young women and children that were burned alive in a small Delta village devastated by napalm. Since the pilots had “successfully” hit their targets, they were feeling good and had received glowing reports that would bode well in their military record for promotions. I wondered why it was okay to burn innocent human beings 9,000 miles from my home town, but not okay to burn a piece of cloth that was symbolic of the US policies intentionally burning villagers to death with napalm. Something was terribly wrong with the Cold War rhetoric of fighting communism that made me question what our nation stood for. There was a grand lie, an American myth that was being fraudulently preserved under the cloak of our flag.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • How Do We Achieve an Open, Secure, Trustworthy, and Inclusive Internet?

    Today at the OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Digital Economy in Mexico, the Global Commission on Internet Governance released its final report, One Internet. Despite its important-sounding name, the Commission is not an official body, but a think tank convened in 2014 by the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and Chatham House, composed of a diverse panel of 29 invited experts from industry, government, academia, and civil society (including EFF Pioneer Award recipient Anriette Esterhuysen).

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Trademarks

    • Aspartame is back–and is Pepsi playing by a new branding playbook?

      Nevertheless, it turns out that trademark strategy may sometimes be better viewed as the use of generic (or nearly so) terms without any apparent interest in whether or not they meet the requirements for registration. Case in point is the announcement last week by PepsiCo, as reported here, regarding changes to its soft drink line-up and the names assigned to these products. At the heart of these moves by Pepsi is the presence or absence of the artificial sweetener, aspartame. While used for a long time, aspartame has been challenged on various health grounds, so much so that in 2015 Pepsi removed it from the formulation for its Diet Pepsi soft drink product, in favor of sucralose. Pepsi thereby hoped to capture customers who are wary for health reasons of products containing aspartame. The problem is that the removal of aspartame from the Diet Pepsi soft drink did not blunt the continuing decline in sales. The solution—bring back the diet version with the aspartame ingredient.

  • Copyrights

    • [Older] California Legislature Drops Proposal to Copyright All Government Works

      You spoke, and the California Legislature listened. We’re happy to report that A.B. 2880 was amended in the State Senate to remove the dangerous sections that EFF and over 25 other organizations opposed. Your messages to the Legislature were vital to this effort.

      The prior version of A.B. 2880 that was passed by the State Assembly would have given state government agencies vast new power to assert copyrights and trademarks over government-created work. It also would have added a broad new exemption to the California Public Records Act, the state’s version of FOIA.

    • Pirating TV-Shows and a Movie Costs Finnish Man Over €32,000

      The so-called ‘copyright-trolling’ piracy lawsuits in Finland have claimed their first victim in court. Despite operating an open Wi-Fi network, a man has been ordered to pay more than 32,000 euros in damages and costs for sharing ten episodes of the TV show “Black Sails” and a movie.

    • With Canada’s Entry, Treaty for the Blind Will Come Into Force

      A groundbreaking international agreement to address the “book famine” for blind and print-disabled people is now set to go into force after passing another key milestone today. The agreement requires countries to allow the reproduction and distribution of accessible ebooks by limiting the scope of copyright restrictions.

      The Marrakesh agreement takes aim at the global shortage of ebooks available in suitable formats for the print disabled, which in some regions is as low as 1% of published books. At the time of its completion, only 57 of the 184 member countries of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) had copyright exceptions for this purpose, and inconsistencies between them made sharing books between countries nearly impossible.

    • EFF to Copyright Office: No New Barriers to DMCA Safe Harbors

      As the debate over the future of the DMCA safe harbors heats up, the US Copyright Office is proposing a plan that could undermine those safe harbors much sooner.

      One of the myriad conditions of DMCA safe harbor protection from copyright liability (protection on which thousands of intermediaries rely to survive) is to register an agent to receive DMCA takedown notices. Last month the Copyright Office announced that it would finally be implementing a new, much cheaper and streamlined electronic registration process.

    • Chilean Proposal for Unwaivable Payments to Authors Creeps Onward to Colombia

      EFF has observed an alarming trend: when certain parties face challenges in attempting to monetize their contributions to copyrighted works, lawmakers often attempt to address it by handing out new copyright-like veto powers. We’ve dubbed this trend “copyright creep”, and it’s running rampant all over the world.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Linux Australia backflips on Appelbaum stance

  Linux Australia has done a backflip on its stance over privacy advocate Jacob Appelbaum who was recently thrown out of several software groupings following numerous accusations of sexual harassment.

• Desktop

  • Want to bring that old netbook back to life? Hands-on with Manjaro LXQt and LXLE

    Either of these would be a good choice for the N150. If I were making the choice it would be Manjaro LXQt, because I like (and trust) Manjaro, it is smaller overall, it has made a lot of the same choices I would make in packages, and it just feels a bit snappier overall on the N150. But other people might very well prefer LXLE because it is based on Ubuntu and they prefer the package selection. It’s all good.

• Kernel Space

  • Linus Torvalds Announces Linux Kernel 4.7 RC6, Things Are Getting Bigger

    Today, July 4, 2016, Linus Torvalds has had the pleasure of announcing the availability of the sixth Release Candidate (RC) version of the upcoming Linux 4.7 kernel, now ready for public testing.

  • Linux 4.7-rc6

    I’d love to tell you that things are calming down, and we’re shrinking, but that would be a lie.

  • Linux 4.7-rc6 Released, Bigger Than The Earlier RCs

    Linus noted in the release announcement about 4.7-rc6, “I’d love to tell you that things are calming down, and we’re shrinking, but that would be a lie. It’s not like this is a huge rc, but it’s definitely bigger than the previous rc’s were. I don’t think that’s necessarily a big problem, it seems to be mostly timing – we’ve just happened to get merges from most subsystems (eg networking from Davem, and all of the usual device driver subsystems from Greg, not to mention the GPU updates and all the random other subsystem maintainers). But networking (both drivers and core) is the most noticeable part.”

  • Linux Kernel 4.7 RC6 Announced By Linus Torvalds

    As reported by Marius Nestor from Softpedia, things got a little bigger this time and hopefully won’t be repeated next week for the final Release Candidate build.

  • Bcachefs Still Being Developed As A Next-Gen Linux File-System

    Announced last year was Bcachefs as a new Linux file-system derived from Bcache that aims for speed while having ZFS/Btrfs-like features. Since doing some early Bcachefs benchmarks last August, we hadn’t heard much (anything?) from the project since.

    It turns out Bcachefs is still being developed and its primary author, Kent Overstreet, continues to believe it can compete with the likes of Btrfs and ZFS as a next-generation Linux file-system.

• Applications

  • Announcing git-cinnabar 0.4.0 beta 1

    Git-cinnabar is a git remote helper to interact with mercurial repositories. It allows to clone, pull and push from/to mercurial remote repositories, using git.

  • The Widely-Used Cairo Library Has Problems Passing Its Own Tests

    The Cairo graphics library that’s relied upon by GTK+, Gecko/Firefox, WebKit, Poppler, and many other pieces of Linux software is having problems passing its own build tests.

    Phoronix reader “Darxus” who previously wrote about reasons for losing motivation in Wayland, shared some details this week about Cairo’s inability to pass its own build tests.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Confirming all use of an SSH agent

    • Unravelling Code Injection in Binaries

    • How to Install Bower on Ubuntu

    • Git, cherry-pick and push

    • Accessing your remote desktop on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud

  • Games

    • SteamOS 2.84 Beta Promises to Fix “Black Screen” Issues with Nvidia GPUs

      Today, July 3, 2016, Valve’s engineers have pushed a new build of the SteamOS 2.0 gaming operating system to the brewmaster_beta channel, patching a few issues reported by users since SteamOS 2.83 Beta.

      SteamOS 2.84 Beta is here only five days from the release of SteamOS 2.83 Beta, which was based on the latest stable Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” repositories and introduced the AMD Radeon AMD GPU-PRO RC2 and the latest long-lived Nvidia 367.27 graphics drivers with support for the Vulkan API.

    • Get ready to be scared again as Layers of Fear: Inheritance DLC has been announced

      It will be available with Linux support on August 2nd.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Kubuntu 16.04 LTS Users Receive the Latest KDE Plasma 5.6.5 Desktop, Update Now

      The Kubuntu developers announced the general availability of the latest KDE Plasma 5.6.5 desktop environment, along wit KDE Frameworks 5.23.0 in the Backports PPA repositories for Kubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) users.

• Distributions

  • Needed: A Linux Three in One Distro

    So far, that’s worked out well. Because of the work of the Linux developers and the GNU team, I now use a free and open desktop system that in most ways surpasses anything the proprietary folks offer. This has benefited the enterprise too, with data centers across the world filled with Linux serverss, not solely because Linux is free to use, but because in most cases it gets the job done better and cheaper than proprietary server operating systems.

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Future of Li-f-e: Linux for Education distribution

      We have come a long way since the first Li-f-e live media based on openSUSE was created, the current release is based on openSUSE Leap 42.1. Deployments by Indonesia’s education system is a shining example of openSUSE Education project’s accomplishment.

      The openSUSE project has stopped producing live medias for Leap and also live-installer is dropped from live medias created for the Tumbleweed distribution. As Li-f-e is primarily a live distribution we would not be able to create any more medias without live-installer. So unless this situation changes we may not have Li-f-e based on Leap 42.2.

    • openSUSE Conference 2016

      After the official part of oSC16 ended, we had a promising disussion about the (technical) future of the openSUSE wiki. If everything works out as planned, we’ll get some shiny new hardware hosted in Provo that is only used for openSUSE – and the most important thing is that we’ll have SSH access to it and can do whatever is needed without having to wait for the Provo admins.

  • Slackware Family

    • Slackware-Based VectorLinux 7.2 Beta Ships Free of systemd with Linux 4.4.14 LTS

      Today, July 3, 2016, the developers of the Slackware-based Vectorlinux GNU/Linux operating system have announced the release of the Beta build of the upcoming VectorLinux 7.2 release.

    • Slackware Linux 14.2 Released — World’s Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution

      World’s oldest Linux distribution Slackware 14.2 is finally available for download. This release brings along multiple changes on the fronts of stability and security. The update also brings the latest development tools, window managers, updated programs and desktop environments.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Testing The Red Hat/Rackspace Private Cloud

      For Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by Red Hat, we collaborate closely with Red Hat; we test the upstream OpenStack code as well as the open-sourced projects we leverage for our deployment, such as Ceph and Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director. This is done in a variety of ways, like sharing test cases upstream with the community via Tempest, creating and tracking bugs, and creating bug fixes upstream.

    • Red Hat and Eurotech partner for managing IoT edge devices

      The partnership focuses in particular on the rollout of a new, open source Eclipse Foundation project that will address requirements ranging from connectivity and configuration to application lifecycle. The co-sponsored project, Eclipse Kapua, integrates with the existing Eclipse Kura project to provide IoT developers and end users with an open platform that boosts community-driven development and helps them keep away from expensive, proprietary lock-in.

    • Red Hat, Codenvy and Microsoft team up for greater language integration

    • Finance

      • Ruling stocks in today’s market: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Reliable stocks in today’s share market: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Rating Reiterated by Pacific Crest

    • Fedora

      • Javier Igea: How do you Fedora?

        Javier Igea has been using Linux since he bought the first release of Red Hat from a book store. While he was working on his PhD in New York City, his adviser recommended that he switch from Windows to Linux. The reason for this was he was going to be doing serious numerical computations. When asked about his childhood heroes, he joked about being a little bit old. “Tarzan. Do people know about him?” He continued, “I guess I am a little old, I was born in the late 50’s.” Igea’s two favorite movies are Saving Private Ryan and Welcome to the Sticks. Javier also likes fishing for striped bass, which he describes as a strange event.

      • Network Security Toolkit (NST) Linux OS Released Based on Fedora 24, Linux 4.6

        Today, July 4, 2016, Ronald Henderson has announced the release of a new version of the Fedora-based Network Security Toolkit (NST) Linux distribution for network security analysis and monitoring.

      • Four More Changes Proposed For Fedora 25

        There are more change proposals were sent out this morning on the Fedora developer list with plans for these features in Fedora 25.

      • Fedora 24 Release Party in Sao Paulo

        Every time a new Fedora release is available, the community organizes events around the world to celebrate. Those events are necessary because they help meeting other users, contributors and, of course, it’s an opportunity to talk about Fedora.

  • Debian Family

    • Reproducible builds: week 61 in Stretch cycle

    • My work for Debian in June

      At least a little much more time lst month for helping to improve the operating system we’re working on.

    • Debian On Chromebooks

      Debian wiki has a section named “Debian On” where users can describe how to install Debian on any hardware. And there are several pages about Chromebooks.

    • twenty years of free software — part 7 git-annex

      My first Haskell program, and the only software I’ve written that was inspired by living in a particular place, git-annex has received the lion’s share of my time for five years.

      It was written just to solve my own problem, but in a general way, that turned out to be useful in lots of other situations. So over the first half a year or so, it started attracting some early adopters who made some very helpful suggestions.

      Then I did the git-annex assistant kickstarter, and started blogging about each day I worked on it. Four years of funding and seven hundred and twenty one posts later, the git-annex devblog is still going. So, I won’t talk about technical details in this post, they’ve all been covered.

    • Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” Installer Moves to Linux 4.6, Adds MIPS64el Support

      Today, July 4, 2016, Cyril Brulebois from the Debian Project has announced the release of the seventh Alpha build of the installer for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” operating system.

    • Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 7 Released

      The seventh alpha release of the Debian Installer for Stretch is now available.

    • Debian Stretch Successor To Be Codenamed Bullseye

      Taking place this week in Cape Town, South Africa is DebConf 16. One of the interesting bits of information out of that event is the codename for Stretch’s successor.

      Debian “Stretch” is the codename for Debian 9 and should be officially released in 2017. Now from DebConf 16 the codename to Stretch’s successor has been revealed: Bullseye.

    • Derivatives

      • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 “Erik” Gets New Test Build, Adds Linux Kernel 4.4.14 LTS

        Approximately two months after the release of the first Test build for the upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 “Erik” operating system series, the project’s development team announced today the availability of the second Test build.

      • A simple menu system for blind Linux users

        The Knoppix distribution goes back in time, to the era of text menus, to provide an interface for computer users who are blind.

        [...]

        The Knoppix Linux distribution has existed since November 2000. It quickly grew in popularity because it was one of the first live operating systems available; you could boot from a CD and use Linux without actually installing it. The disc itself could be your operating system, as long as you saved your data to a hard drive or to a network share. At the time this was a groundbreaking idea, and it still is, given the lack of any such paradigm for non-open source operating systems (even an OS that has since developed a live-like environment for maintenance doesn’t intend for you to use that boot disc as your OS).

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • IBM’s SoftLayer cloud gets certified Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS images

          IBM’s SoftLayer cloud division is now offering certified images of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux server platform, providing customers with access to optimised images for running on SoftLayer’s bare metal and virtual servers.

          Canonical’s Ubuntu is the most widely deployed Linux distribution for running web servers, and the most commonly used platform for organisations building and operating clouds based on the OpenStack framework.

        • Snappy Moves in the Main Arch Linux Repo, snapd 2.0.10 Released to Fedora COPR

          Today, July 4, 2016, Canonical’s Zygmunt Krynicki has had the pleasure of announcing that the Snappy implementation for Ubuntu Linux has been updated to snapd 2.0.10.

          snapd 2.0.10 comes two weeks after the release of the 2.0.9 version, which introduced full Snap confinement on the elementary OS 0.4 “Loki” operating system, among several other goodies. However, the most interesting part of today’s announcement for snapd 2.0.10 is that it also landed for Fedora 24 users in the COPR repository.

        • Ubuntu backs calls to wind down 32-bit Linux support

          ANOTHER KEY voice in the Linux world has added to calls for 32-bit builds of the OS to be scrapped to allow more developer time for the 64-bit editions.

        • Linux developers aim to phase out 32-bit system support

          Key Linux developers such as Canonical are looking to phase out support for 32-bit processors, citing their increasing rarity and that the effort required to maintain 32-bit code would be better spent on new applications.

        • Meizu MX6 Ubuntu Edition Spotted In Promo Pictures

        • Meizu releases a Ubuntu version of the MX6

          Meizu has made it a habit to release Ubuntu versions of its higher-end phones, with the MX4 and the Pro 5 being among them. Now another model gets kitted with Linux and it’s the MX6.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 18 (Sarah) Released. See what’s New?

• Devices/Embedded

  • RaspEX OS for Raspberry Pi 3 Updated with OpenCPN 4.4.0, Based on Ubuntu 16.04

    After reporting that his RaspEX operating system for Raspberry Pi devices woks out of the box with the official Raspberry Pi Touch Display 7-inch monitor, Arne Exton now informs us about the availability of a new RaspEX build.

  • CompuLab Comes Out With New Rugged, Fanless Linux-Friendly PC

    The folks at CompuLab have announced their latest Linux-friendly PC, the fitlet-RM. The Fitlet-RM is described as “the smallest PC for extreme conditions” and is fanless.

    The Fitlet-RM is the successor to the previously-reviewed Fitlet we tested last year. The Fitlet-RM is said to improve heat dissipation by 40% through a redesign of the all-metal housing. The new design is also said to be more rugged, and support a wider temperature range.

  • Top 10 Raspberry Pi add-on boards

    Did you know you can adorn your Raspberry Pi with HATs? Of course we’re not talking about hats like people put on their heads, but rather HATs: “hardware attached on top”. These are add-on circuit boards and accessories that add functionality to your Raspberry Pi.

  • Raspberry Pi Zero Becomes Mighty Miniature Minecraft Machine

    In a clever bit of miniaturization, [JediJeremy] has nearly completed a gyro-mouse controller for a Raspberry Pi Zero! Ultimately this will be a wearable Linux-watch but along the way he had some fun with the interface.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • BlackBerry will release three more Android-powered smartphones

      • 6 Things I Want From BlackBerry’s Trio of Android Phones

      • How to back up your Android

      • How to download Android 7.0 Nougat today

      • Millions of Android devices could be at risk of cyber attacks: Hacker reveals how easy it is to get around a phone’s encryption

      • Only Nexus And Samsung Android Smartphones Are Safe To Use, Security Firm Says

      • Android Auto explored: Taking Google on the road

      • Android Nougat Update Schedule & Release Date: When Will Your Android Phone Get It?

      • 8 Android Nougat features worth chewing over

        Google has announced the name of its next mobile OS as Android Nougat. Here are the 8 most exciting features you can expect from the latest version.

      • Weekend poll: what do you think of the Android ‘Nougat’ codename?

      • BlackBerry To Release Three More Android Smartphones

      • Android’s Full Disk Encryption Compromised, Affects Millions of Devices

      • HTC One M9, 10 and One A9 Gets Android 7.0 Nougat Latest Update

      • Asus ZenFone Selfie, ZenFone Zoom Receiving Android Marshmallow Update

      • Google Android Nougat: HTC 10, HTC One A9, HTC One M9 will get update

Free Software/Open Source

• Why PayPal bets on open-source

  The old way was to spend a lot of money on limited software and hardware. The new way, as PayPal’s Bill Scott, VP of next gen commerce found, is to scale out with lots of low-cost hardware and software. Open-source enables this, and to marvelously good effect.

  Scott, a firm believer in lean engineering, stands by the fact that it’s the secret sauce that fosters innovation and efficacy.

  Lean engineering, simply put, is becoming a part of the experimentation and learning cycle. The idea is to have rapid iteration and get feedback from customers quickly.

• Distributed, Open Source Chat with Vector and Matrix

  When it comes to chat, you have many choices. Facebook Messenger, Google Talk, Whatsapp, Kik, and Slack are all viable options. However, all of these choices are proprietary, and require you to use servers that you can’t run yourself. They’re highly centralized, closed source tools.

  In the open source world, IRC has been the go to solution for chat for many years, and for good reason. Anyone can run a server, there’s many clients, and it’s built on open standards. But IRC comes from a pre-mobile world, and relies on clients to maintain persistent connections to the server. It’s not the best experience on a phone.

• The Growth of the Linux and Open Source Channel since 1989

  The Linux kernel was born twenty-five years ago this summer. Since that time a thriving partner ecosystem has arisen around open source platforms built on Linux, GNU and other free and open source software products. Here’s a look at milestones in the evolution of the Linux channel and partner ecosystem.

• Living, in Limbo [Ed: Pieter Hintjens, famous Free software developer, with terminal cancer]

  “Is he getting better, or is he dying?” asked my nephew of me. How to explain? The hospital sent me home three months ago with boxes of pain killers, oxygen, a medical bed, and home care. Palliative care: aim for quality of life, not return to normal. And yet here I am, not on oxygen, not taking the pain killers, and seeing medical staff only when it’s time for my biweekly chemotherapy.

  I’m clearly not dying yet. And still, slowly losing weight and muscle. A simple walk leaves me tired and needing to sit. I wake up, make an early morning cup of chicory/coffee, drink it, then lie down again, hit by the simple effort of standing up.

  We did a CAT scan a few weeks ago. Inconclusive. Things don’t seem worse. Yet the numerous little blobs of cancer are still there in my lungs, patient. Another scan in a month, and we’ll have a better idea.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • New Malware for Windows targets firefox users.

      Below is an image of the new malware attempting to get Windows users of Firefox to install a drive-by malware labeled by Windows Defender as Trojan:Kovtar.

    • Mozilla releases Servo nightly build of web rending engine for Linux and Mac

• SaaS/Back End

  • Use Apache Spark? This tool can help you tap machine learning

  • Sparkling Water 2.0 enables machine learning with Apache Spark

  • H2O.ai uncorks Sparkling Water 2.0

  • An eight minute upgrade, motivating documentation contributions, and more OpenStack news

• CMS

  • Arastta: Community Driven & Open Source eCommerce

    Arastta eCommerce is an open source project which is driven by its community. For a relatively new startup project Arastta has a great community sharing ideas, translating into different world languages, reporting issues and bugs, contributing the source code and helping to plan the future of the project.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BMW teams with Intel and Mobileye for open-source autonomous tech [Ed: Nothing to do with “Open Source”]

  • Setup .NET Core on Ubuntu [Ed: Repeating the “Microsoft loves Linux” big lie and telling people to install proprietary Microsoft software on Linux]

• Public Services/Government

  • NITDA trains 3,700 corps members on open source software development

    National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has begun training for 3,700 corps members on open source software development programme aimed at developing and empowering fresh graduate with Information Technology skills.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Peerplays creates open-source profit sharing module

    Blockchain-based online gaming and wagering platform Peerplays, has created an open-source fee sharing module that will enable direct profit distribution to token holders by any Graphene-based blockchain platform.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Wevolver Open Source 3D Printable Robots And More (video)

      …if you are interested in creating your own 3D printed robots using a little Arduino programming, open source coding or making in general. You might be interested in some new 3D printed open source robot projects which have been published to the Revolver website for all skill levels.

Leftovers

• Science

  • Neuroscientists say multitasking literally drains the energy reserves of your brain

    Does your morning routine consist of checking emails, browsing Facebook, downing coffee, heading to the train while Googling one last idea, checking notifications, more coffee, and going through your work email? The very myriad of activities crammed into your morning, and the constant switching between them, is likely making you very tired.

• Security

  • Apache, Debian crews patch library with DoS vuln

    A file upload library used in Apache Tomcat and various Linux distributions needs patching to plug a denial-of-service vulnerability.

    Discovered by the TERASOLUNA Framework Development Team, the bug in libcommons-fileupload-java, which sits under Apache Commons FileUpload, has the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures designation CVE-2016-3092.

    Apache explains the bug here: “It occurred when the length of the multipart boundary was just below the size of the buffer (4096 bytes) used to read the uploaded file. This caused the file upload process to take several orders of magnitude longer than if the boundary length was the typical tens of bytes.”

  • More than 100 DDoS botnets built from Linux malware for embedded devices [Ed: hardware makers keeping all devices with same default password not a "Linux" issue]

    Default and hard-coded credentials have led to the compromise of thousands of Internet-of-Things devices

  • Lizard Squad hacked thousands of cameras to attack websites

  • The week in security: Ransomware mutating, IoT devices exploited for botnets

  • IoT Devices Are Being Hacked By Lizard Squad To Execute DDoS Attacks

  • Lizard Squad uses CCTVs to launch DDoS attacks against websites

  • Lizard Squad DDoS Attacks Escalate: From Video Game Networks To Online Banks, Government Websites

• Defence/Aggression

  • Dhaka Isil terrorists were drawn from well-educated Bangladeshi elite

    Terrorists who murdered 22 people in Dhaka this weekend were wealthy, well-educated young Bangladeshis whom police had previously tried to arrest, it emerged on Sunday.

  • Bangladesh police release names of restaurant attackers

    Security officials searched on Sunday for evidence and the possible masterminds of the weekend hostage-taking in an upscale restaurant in Bangladesh’s capital. The government has denied a claim by ISIS that it carried out the attack that left 28 dead, including six attackers two police officers and 20 of the hostages.

  • No second chances: Gruesome photos show five ‘meth dealers’ gunned down by police during a shootout in the Philippines’ increasingly violent war on drugs

    President Rodrigo Duterte – dubbed ‘Duterte Harry’ – has vowed to wipe out drug trafficking in the Philippines and the number of dealers killed since he came to power has risen 200 per cent.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • Vast Peat Fires Threaten Health and Boost Global Warming

    As forest fires devastated Fort McMurray, Alberta, last month, a different sort of fire may have started beneath the ground. Peat, a carbon-rich soil created from partially decomposed, waterlogged vegetation accumulated over several millennia and the stuff that fueled Indonesia’s megafires last fall, also appears in the boreal forests that span Canada, Alaska and Siberia. With the intense heat from the Fort McMurray fires, “there’s a good chance the soil in the area could have been ignited,” says Adam Watts, a fire ecologist at Desert Research Institute in Nevada.

• Finance

  • Britain faces new risks in Europe interconnector plans

    British plans for more power links with Europe to avert a looming electricity shortfall could be hindered if the country no longer has a say in European Union regulation of networks and power trading.

    Britain faces an energy supply crunch by the early 2020s as coal power stations close and its oil and gas production declines.

    To help it plans new interconnectors with France, Denmark, Belgium and Norway to provide up to 14 gigawatts of additional capacity.

  • Exclusive: New National Newspaper Launched For British People “Dismayed By Brexit”

    A new national newspaper is being launched in Britain, which will aim to “give voice to those dismayed by Brexit”.

    The New European will be published by Archant on 8 July, and will cost £2. The publisher describes it as a “pop-up” paper, which took just nine days to get into newsagents after being conceived. It will initially run for just four issues, with any further print runs to be decided by reader interest.

    In a statement Archant said: “Every issue will be a collector’s item. After the Issue 4, every week’s sale will be a referendum on the next.”

  • Parliament, Article 50, and the Leave Paradox

    Those who campaigned Leave so as to uphold Parliamentary Sovereignty are now unhappy at prospect of Parliament being sovereign about whether to Leave.

  • Britain has replaced America as the political laughingstock of the world

    It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment in the last eight days at which Britain’s politics became officially more absurd than America’s. Last week’s Brexit vote, shocking as it was, was just the starting gun. Since then both the Labour and the Conservative party leaderships have collapsed. The “Leave” campaign has swiftly backtracked (paywall) on its promises. Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, after enduring a stunning no-confidence vote, appeared to compare Israel with the Islamic State. The Conservatives’ Boris Johnson, the cheerleader of Leave and presumed next prime minister, bowed out after being stabbed in the back by his own sidekick, Michael Gove. And a leaked letter from Gove’s wife exposed the Tory party’s leading figures as little more than the puppets of media barons.

  • Secret bankers be warned: “Panama Papers” were the first shots of a “Helvetian War.”

    Let’s step back and deal with this the way that I am paid to do, with scenario and metaphor. Almost a decade before I wrote The Transparent Society, my novel EARTH (1989) foresaw a traumatic event occurring around the year 2025. The “Helvetian War” would start to unfold when a dozen newly-democratic but poor nations grow tired of asking politely for the return of trillions of dollars that were looted from them by former, kleptocratic leaders. The war scenario may be fictional, but the cassus belli is all-too real.

    “Global Financial Integrity recently found that developing economies lost $7.8 trillion in cash from 2004 to 2013 because of maneuvers like those allegedly perfected by Mossack. Illicit outflows are increasing at a rate of 6.5% a year, twice the rate of global GDP growth,” says Time Magazine journalist Rana Foroohar, adding that this drain might prove a contributing factor to the slowing economies of many developing countries, which could set off a global recession.

  • WATCH: Bill Maher rubs California’s success in the face of Republicans

    “Real Time” host Bill Maher, during his “New Rules” segment Friday, peacocked California’s thriving economy after the state raised taxes on its wealthiest citizens.

    “If Republicans are going to keep calling states ‘laboratories of democracy,’ they have to start looking at the results from the lab,” Maher said, noting that after California raised taxes on the wealthy, the state now sits sixth on the list of world’s largest economies. “Whereas states like Kansas and Louisiana that went back to the old trickle-down theory of ‘cut taxes on the rich and they’ll always do the right thing,’ are financial catastrophes.”

    Maher explained that, after former-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger left office, California elected Democrats up and down the ballot, “so we can really study what happens when liberal policies are tried unimpeded. And the only thing I have to say to Republicans about that is: scoreboard, bitches.”

  • Brexit: UKIP leader Nigel Farage resigns

    After running divisive campaign to leave the EU, Farage quits, while Britain faces economic and political challenges.

  • Credit Suisse CEO blames Brexit on low UK education spending

    Britain is paying the price for a high level of inequality and a chronic lack of investment in education which have prompted a disillusioned population to vote to leave the European Union, Credit Suisse Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam said on Sunday.

    Britain voted in a referendum on June 23 to quit the EU, a decision that has roiled financial markets and rattled businesses.

  • The three steps that mean Brexit may never happen

    The established order in any society can sometimes be wrong-footed, but they are usually not wrong-footed for long. Genuine revolutionaries know this, and they act quickly to take full advantage of any temporary advantage. Soon, however, the established order will regroup and refocus, with renewed determination.

    The generally pro-EU political class in the United Kingdom has certainly had a fright. They were not expecting to lose the EU referendum. British political leaders were so confident of victory they even casually said that the people’s decision would be implemented “straight away”. And now there is a crisis, but only for a while.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Trump Supporters Flooded Me With Anti-Semitic Taunts & Death Threats Yesterday

    I wasn’t ignorant. I knew the atrocities of the past, knew Jews were still targets of many, but I never experienced it. I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta. There were three to five Jewish kids in all of my public school classes, so not only did I never experience Anti-Semitism, but I also never experienced the unsettling feeling of being “the other.”

  • Brexit poll: ‘most Brits want General Election to be called this year’

    A majority of Britons want a General Election this year, according to an exclusive new poll.

    It also suggested if there was a second referendum now Remain would win comfortably.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Censors: Getting irrelevant?

    The fundamental clash lies in the argument whether censorship itself should make way for true certification.

  • Kalevi Kull: Censorship & Royal Society Evo Event

    Biosemiotics pioneer Kalevi Kull has sent the following letter to me in response to one of the organizers of the upcoming Royal Society public meeting on paradigm shift attempting to censor my coverage of the event.

  • All news stories must be verified, China’s internet censor decrees as it tightens grip on online media

    China’s powerful internet censorship body has further tightened its grip on online news reports by warning all news or social network websites against publishing news without proper verification, state media reports.

    China’s powerful internet tsar steps aside as another of Xi Jinping’s close allies to take over

    The instruction, issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China, came only a few days after Xu Lin, formerly the deputy head of the organisation, replaced his boss, Lu Wei, as the top gatekeeper of Chinese internet affairs.

  • China Bans Online Media From Publishing Unverified Reports

  • China says to crackdown on fake news from social media

  • China To Crack Down On Fake News From Social Media Amid Rumor-Mongering

  • China bans online media from publishing unverified content

  • China cyberspace regulator bans fake news

  • China to restrict digital media from publishing news found on social platforms

  • ‘Hearsay is forbidden:’ China aims to crackdown on fake news

  • China Media Regulators Limit Online News

  • China Says to Crackdown on Fake News From Social Media

  • China bans using social media content as “news”

  • China cracks down on news provided by social media

  • World NewsChina clamps down on online ‘false news’

  • Chinese authorities crack down on news websites sourcing stories from social media

  • China Crack Down on News Websites; Bans Them From Publishing Unverified Reports

  • China bans online media from publishing unverified content

  • China’s cyberspace regulator cracks down on false news on social media

  • Chinese internet censor bans unverified news

  • China bans online media from publishing ‘unverified’ contents

  • China bans the use of social media as a news source

  • China restricts online news sites from sourcing stories on social media

  • China says it will crack down on fake news from social media

  • China cracks down on ‘faking news’ sourced from social media

  • Lu Wei to Give Up Post as China’s Internet Czar, Deputy as Likely Successor

  • Australian Censors Overreach when classfiying video games

  • On Censorship, Press Freedom, and the SABC

    To fire journalists for covering a protest because there’s a rule that says they can’t cover protests is ridiculous. To fire people for complaining about these policies is also ridiculous. I’m really angry at the SABC and at the same time have so much respect for the journalists working there who are speaking out against these practices.

  • Europol’s online censorship unit is haphazard and unaccountable says NGO

    Europol’s Internet Referral Unit (IRU) celebrated its first birthday at the weekend, but civil liberties organisations are worried that it goes too far in its efforts to keep the Web free from extremist propaganda.

    The IRU has been up and running since July 2015 as part of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) in the Hague. The unit is charged with monitoring the Internet for extremist propaganda and referring “relevant online content towards concerned Internet service providers” in particular social media. Much was made of how the IRU could “contact social network service provider Facebook directly to ask it to delete a Web page run by ISIS or request details of other pages that might be run by the same user.”

  • Facebook and Israel clash over censorship issues

  • Israel calls Facebook a ‘monster’ for not helping to curb violence

  • Facebook defends content removal policies after Israel calls it ‘a monster’

  • Facebook hits back at Israeli complaints about sabotaging police work

  • Israel angered by Facebook hatred rules

  • Israeli daily reports fake Zuckerberg quote as fact

  • Zuckerberg’s ‘reply’ to minister: a hoax

  • Israeli Minister Calls Facebook a “Monster”

  • Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has terror victim’s ‘blood on his hands’, Israeli minister says

  • Facebook defends itself against Israel’s terror support claims

  • Facebook rejects Israeli disapproval of a lack of cooperation in censoring abusive content

  • Israeli minister slams “monster” Facebook for failure to remove violence-inciting content

  • Israeli Minister Says Facebook a ‘Monster’, Hindering Security

  • Facebook Upholds Position on Content Standards After Israeli Condemnation

  • Facebook responds to Israeli censure on alleged incitement

  • Facebook defends position on content standards after Israeli censure

  • Facebook refutes Israeli minister’s allegations; reiterates hate speech intolerance

  • Israeli ministers vow to combat incitement to terrorism on Facebook

  • Facebook ‘Sabotages Work Of Israeli Police’

  • People Are Being Killed, and an Israeli Minister Blames Facebook

  • Israeli Minister: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Has ‘Blood on His Hands’ Over Teenager’s Murder

  • Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan accuses Mark Zuckerberg of having ‘blood on his hands’ over online hate

  • Facebook is a ‘monster’ that obstructs terror investigations, says Israel’s Interior Minister

  • Israeli government: Facebook is a ‘monster’ that’s aiding terrorists

  • Israel: Facebook Has Turned Into A Monster

  • Facebook dismisses Israeli government ‘incitement’ claims

  • Analysis: What does the future of terrorists on Twitter, Facebook look like?

  • Israel accuses Facebook of complicity in West Bank violence

  • Facebook defends itself against Israeli accusations of incitement

  • Facebook rejects Israeli minister’s allegations

  • Former SABC bosses join call to end censorship at the SABC

  • Full letter from former SABC heavyweights on censorship

  • Court battle looming over SABC censorship

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • I Spy: GCHQ reaches out to Mumsnet generation in new recruitment drive [Ed: Yorkshire Post does free advertising for GCHQ today]

  • Last chance to have your say on new EU spam and cookie law

    There are just 24 hours left to respond to a public consultation on the EU’s so-called Cookie Law. The European Commission plans an overhaul of the more correctly named ePrivacy Directive before the end of the year to bring it into line with the new General Data Protection Regulation.

    The use of cookies in the UK is governed by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), based on the ePrivacy Directive, which require organisations to provide clear information about how cookies are used on their website and allow people to opt in or opt out from having non-essential cookies placed on their device.

  • What media companies don’t want you to know about ad blockers

    New York Times CEO Mark Thompson caused a minor stir a couple weeks ago when he gave a speech at an advertising conference declaring that “No one who refuses to contribute to the creation of high quality journalism has the right to consume it.” He went on to say that while the Times is “not there yet,” the company may soon prevent users with ad blockers from accessing its site.

    But newspaper executives like Thompson often focus exclusively on the drawbacks of ad blockers, leaving a big part of the story untold. Thompson did not say one word in his keynote address about the significant security benefits of ad blockers, which is ironic, because his paper was one of several news organizations that served its users ransomware—a particularly vicious form of malware that encrypts the contents of your computer and forces you to pay the perpetrators a ransom in bitcoin to unlock it—through its ad networks just a few months ago. Several major news sites—including the Times, the BBC, and AOL—had their ad networks hijacked by criminal hackers who attempted to install ransomware on readers’ computers.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • NYT’s James Risen & Abby Martin on Fighting Censorship, Endless War

    Few journalists know the cruelty of government censorship as well as James Risen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, targeted for several major stories implicating criminality by the US war machine and its national security state.

    Having just ended a seven-year legal battle, where he bravely faced jail time to protect his inside sources, Risen joins Abby Martin on The Empire Files to talk about his case and the stories he wrote that were such a threat.

  • Kenyan police are routinely executing citizens and the public is finally saying stop

    The bodies of three Kenyan men— a human rights lawyer, his client, and their driver— were found in a river northeast of Nairobi last week, beaten, bound, and mutilated. Witnesses said one of the men had his eyes gouged out and another had an ear cut off.

    The lawyer who was killed, Willie Kimani, worked with the US-based International Justice Mission. He and his client, Josephat Mwendwa, and driver Joseph Muiruriwho had been missing for over a week after attending a June 23 court hearing in Machakos County, near where their bodies were found. Mwendwa had filed a complaint against the police for shooting him without cause in April.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Why Wi-Fi Stinks—and How to Fix It

    Ask consumers in the developed world about their household Wi-Fi connection and they’ll likely tell you that lately it seems to be getting worse, not better. Some might even say, “It stinks!” Even the residents of the White House have Wi-Fi problems. In an interview with the BBC just before Super Bowl 50, First Lady Michelle Obama complained, “It can be a little sketchy. The girls are just irritated by it.”

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • The Beijing IP court gave foreign IP plaintiffs a perfect 65-0 win rate in 2015, reports one of its judges

    In terms of sheer numbers, patents don’t play the biggest role; according to the 2015 numbers cited by the judge, almost 75% of the first-instance cases reviewed by the court dealt with trademarks, while a similar majority of second-instance cases were about copyright. Moreover, the vast majority of cases by number (90%) are administrative matters, including appeals from the Chinese Trademark Office’s Trademark Review and Adjucation Board (TRAB) and the State IP Office’s Patent Re-examination Board (PRB). But it was a patent-heavy cross-section of disputes that Judge Gang singled out with considerable enthusiasm:

  • New Book: Ways To Address CBD, Nagoya Protocol Hurdles For Public Research

    The book proposes a “novel contractual framework for ‘Facilitating Transnational Exchanges of Genetic Resources within a Redesigned Microbial Research Infrastructure,’” and in particular the use of a standardized material transfer agreement “embodying a ‘take and pay rule’ that would enable unfettered public research uses of microbial materials having no known or likely commercial applications at the time of deposit in participating culture collections.”

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Linux Desktop Marketshare Just Passed 2 Percent [Ed: Microsoft-connected company and it can be higher than this, depending on which sites they hand-picked]

    Worldwide Linux marketshare has passed 2% for the first time, according to data from analytics company Netmarketshare.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Our Second Podcast with James Ramey (Codeweavers)

    Following our first podcast with ProfessorKaos64 featuring his work on SteamOS, here is the second episode this time with the president of Codeweavers, James Ramey, recorded just a couple of weeks ago. We have already had the chance to feature James Ramey regarding DX11 support in the past, and it’s a great time to reconnect with his and his team to see what are the prospects for CrossOver/WINE in the near future. Including DX12 support down the road with Vulkan!

• Kernel Space

  • Why do we use the Linux kernel’s TCP stack?

    I’m at PolyConf in Poland today, and I watched this super interesting talk by Leandro Pereira about Lwan, an ~8000 line of code web server. He talked about a bunch of the optimizations they’d done (improve CPU cache performance! be really careful about locking!). You can read more about the performance on the website & the links there.

• Applications

  • Web development using Linux – Part 2: IDE’s

    In part 1 we discussed which Linux OS to go with and in this part (2) I will give you some options for IDE’s that play well with Linux.

  • Web development using Linux – Part 3: Text Editors

  • Gravitational Teleport 1.0 Released

    We are ecstatic to announce the 1.0 release of Gravitational Teleport. For the uninitiated, Teleport is modern SSH server designed for clusters of servers and the teams working on them. The notion of “cluster” and cluster membership is central to Teleport: users can explore the nodes in a cluster, their user permissions are governed on a cluster level, etc.

  • GoSync is a Nifty GUI Google Drive Client Written in Python For Linux Systems

    It is no longer a thing of news that Google is yet to release an official drive client for Linux as they’ve done with competing platforms. This, however, hasn’t stopped the Linux community from creating both open source and proprietary softwares that would allow you access Google Drive from your Linux system.

  • GLBinding 2.1.1 Released

    Version 2.1.1 of glbinding has been released, a C++ binding to the OpenGL API.

    GLBinding 2.1.1 updates against the latest OpenGL API revisions, has updated support for OS X, enables type-safe GLboolean, and has various other fixes and improvements to these C++ bindings.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • issue #35: cgroups, sqlmap, etcd3, Elasticsearch, Charles, Packer & more!

    • Shell Prompt Control

    • Run On Last Sunday

    • Vim Refactoring Patterns

    • Use gsh to run the same command on many servers

    • Will linux shell scripting help you find job

    • Here is why Emacs uses the Meta key

    • WeeChat – grep.py for log files

    • How to deal with frequent disconnects of 3G USB Dongle on Linux Desktop

    • Arch Linux on ZFS – Embed ZFS in Archiso

    • Writing systemd Units

    • A tiny systemd convenience: it can reboot the system from RAM alone

    • Use the Nitrokey HSM or SmartCard-HSM with mod_nss and Apache

    • Monitoring and Tuning the Linux Networking Stack: Receiving Data

    • Video Editing on Linux

    • Linux Iptables Delete postrouting Rule Command

    • How to determine Linux guest VM virtualization technology

    • Hello, InfluxDB

    • How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Mycroft AI Intelligent Personal Assistant Now Available on KDE Plasma 5 Desktops

      It took him about a month since the release of the Mycroft AI application for the GNOME Shell interface of the GNOME desktop environment, but developer Aditya Mehra managed to get it running on the KDE Plasma 5 desktop as well.

    • Upcoming KDEPIM changes in unstable (KMail, Kontact, KOrganizer, etc)

    • [Older] Qt 5.8 branching & Feature Freeze

      It seems there isn’t that much objections to proposed schedule. Tony’s points are valid but after discussion with several persons we agree it isn’t necessary to postpone feature freeze because of missing platforms/versions from CI.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • CSS blend modes in Gtk+

      As part of my work on Endless, I have to maintain and adapt GNOME applications to better suit our needs. This usually includes fixing bugs, working around limitations of the toolkit, and sometimes implementing new features.

    • coala 0.7

      A large part of the coala people will be at EuroPython, we’ll have a sprint and will probably try to make a sort of mini conference with talks, workshops etc. during those sprints in parallel to hacking. Be sure to drop by if you’d like to know more.

    • Analyzing GNOME design patterns

      After learning more about “What is usability,” different ways to test usability, personas, scenarios, and scenario tasks, the research phase is over. We are now starting the usability testing phase which should be really exciting!

    • Increasing Non Billable Hours

      Think of yourself as a startup for premium customers: focus on growth. You don’t need every single contract – you want good contracts. Take your time finding good customers and producing valuable work for them. Make sure they value you – instead of increasing your billable hours, increase your value and with it the hourly bill.

    • Audio Tag Editing Features Head to GNOME Music

      GNOME Music is a capable music player for the GNOME desktop, but it lacks many of the features that make rival apps like Rhythmbox and Clementine so popular.

      I might be old school but I still to use a desktop media player to play local media files on my Ubuntu desktop, and not solely subsist on streaming those stored in t’cloud (disclaimer: I do use Spotify regularly, but only to listen to music I don’t own. I haven’t bought new music in several years).

• Distributions

  • Peek at a Point Release: Solus 1.2.1

    A lot of incredible work coalesced for Solus 1.2, ranging from improvements to our flagship desktop environment Budgie to significant performance gains in the underlying system. The Installer and Software Center were built from the ground up to address a wide variety of pain points and make the use of Solus easier for everyone. We also were the first operating system to ship the new Arc Icon Theme, not only as the default for Solus 1.2, but also the first to make it readily available in the repo.

  • Solus 1.2 Overview

  • Solus Software Center: Quick Tour

  • [Older] New Creative Linux Distros

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Say Hello to openSUSE Leap

      We are happy to announce that Linode now offers openSUSE Leap. Leap is the continuation of openSUSE’s 13.x branch with version 42.1 marking Leap’s debut in November 2015. Leap has a long-term commitment from SUSE as part of a new direction for the distribution.

    • SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2 Now in Open Beta

    • Code Together – (Come Together parody)

    • Tony Jones: Introduction to performance analysis on openSUSE using Perf

      The perf tool was introduced with kernel version 2.6.31 but several major releases later, knowing which of its many features to use when and how to interpret the results is still challenging for many users. In this talk I will present a brief overview of the performance counters provided by modern x86 hardware followed by a discussion of the various monitoring capabilities offered by perf, when to use which and how to begin to interpret the results.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat launches JBoss EAP 7

      Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 (JBoss EAP), the open source Java EE 7 compliant application server, and introduced JBoss Core Services Collection.

      According to Red Hat, with JBoss EAP 7, it aims to help enterprises use and extend their existing application investments as they begin to transition to emerging architectures and programming paradigms that will require a lightweight, highly modular, cloud-native platform.

    • Finance

      • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Given Buy Rating at Needham & Company LLC

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 24 Release Party Panama Report

        From this release party I can tell we are working on two new contributors: one from Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá and another from Universidad Interamericana de Panamá.

      • Fedora 24 Release Party Panama [Ed: not in English]

      • Software Licenses in Fedora Ecosystem

        The Fedora Operating System is made of different software packages in RPM formats. Every package must have a ‘License’ entry. The developer chooses the license. And it is the maintainer’s job to correctly mention it in the spec file. The license as mentioned in the spec file applies for that particular project.

      • What To Do After Installing Fedora 24

      • Fedora 24 Overview

  • Debian Family

    • I won’t be going to DebConf16

    • DebConf16 Open Festival day 1

    • Debian on old Linux versions

      On recent posts, I mentioned that I have a Chromebook, and that I would like to run Debian on devices that ship with old Linux versions. The Samsung ARM Chromebook is such a device, it has Linux 3.4, and that’s still what I am running on it most of the time.

      After an upgrade of Debian, systemd stopped working, and it took me some time before I could look into it. In order to boot, I had to temporarily use System V init. The bug involves the use of new interfaces, bugs in such interfaces, and how versioning would not be a solution to such cases. Cases like this are not common, so it’s no excuse to doing the right thing when developing software, like considering portability, API and ABI maintenance and not bundle. But they expose some of the challenges when trying to support different OSes on top of old versions of Linux, or maybe even new versions.

    • twenty years of free software — part 6 moreutils

      moreutils is a little love letter to the Unix Tools philosophy. It was interesting to try to find new tools as basic as cat and ls. With sponge and vidir and ifne and chronic and others, we managed to find several such tools.

    • Debian Fun in June 2016

      June marked the fourteenth month I contributed to Debian LTS under the Freexian umbrella.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition Unboxing, Still the Most Powerful Ubuntu Phone

          Today, July 2, 2016, we have the great pleasure to offer our readers an unboxing video of the Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition smartphone, which Canonical was nice enough to lend to us for an in-depth review.

        • HOWTO: Host your own SNAP store!

          SNAPs are the cross-distro, cross-cloud, cross-device Linux packaging format of the future. And we’re already hosting a fantastic catalog of SNAPs in the SNAP store provided by Canonical. Developers are welcome to publish their software for distribution across hundreds millions of Ubuntu servers, desktops, and devices.

          Several people have asked the inevitable open source software question, “SNAPs are awesome, but how can I stand up my own SNAP store?!?”

          The answer is really quite simple… SNAP stores are really just HTTP web servers! Of course, you can get fancy with branding, and authentication, and certificates. But if you just want to host SNAPs and enable downstream users to fetch and install software, well, it’s pretty trivial.

        • The Open(Snap)Store

          There has been a major update to the OpenStore today. We now fully support snaps! Due to the huge push by Ubuntu and Canonical around snaps recently, we decided to integrate snaps into the OpenStore. Thanks to some work by Marius Gripsgård (mariogrip) parsing data from snap packages was super easy (check out the click-parser library). After that it was just a matter of integrating snaps fully into the website.

        • bitmath – Now available in Ubuntu PPAs

        • Installation Media and supportability of i386 in 18.04 LTS Re: Ubuntu Desktop on i386

        • Must-Know Ubuntu Terminal Commands for a Smart User

        • Flavours and Variants

          • elementary OS 0.4 Loki

            The developers of elementary OS have released a new development snapshot. The new beta, elementary OS 0.4 Beta, carries the code name “Loki” and is built using software from the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS repositories. One of the significant new features is the removal of tools which make it easy to (accidentally) install software which has not been vetted.

          • gobanglinux “pure” openbox

• Devices/Embedded

  • 32 MB OS for Raspberry Pi 3 | Yocto Project

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Leaked specs show BlackBerry working on three Android smartphones

        The second codenamed ‘Argon’ is scheduled for release in October. It’s the most powerful of the bunch with a 5.5 inch QHD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 3,000mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 technology, 21MP rear camera and 8MP front-facing shooter, a fingerprint reader, and USB Type-C connector.

      • Cable companies take more Android box dealers to court to stamp out ‘free TV’

        Cable giants have ratcheted up their legal battle against Canadian dealers selling fully loaded Android boxes.

        With added special software, the boxes allow customers to stream a huge selection of pirated content, including live sports, on their TVs — for free.

        According to court documents, plaintiffs Bell Canada, Rogers and Quebec’s Videotron have added 11 defendants to their legal action launched in Federal Court.

        [...]

        Some small retailers say they don’t understand why they’ve been targeted.

        Small-time Android box dealer Siva Mahadeva of Markham, Ont., was “shocked and surprised” when he received a notice that his business, Ohm Computers, was named as a defendant in the case.

        “How come they are targeting us?” he says. “We don’t have money.”

      • RaspAnd 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) for Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi 2 Build 160625 with GAPPS, Wifi and Bluetooth working

      • How to sideload Android apps on a Chromebook

      • Best Android Apps Of June 2016: PlayStation Vue, BitTorrent Now, Adult Swim Keyboard And More

      • ASUS ZenFone Zoom and ZenFone Selfie start getting Android Marshmallow OTA

      • Nickelodeon releases a new app for Android TV, cable login required

      • Android N release date for Samsung devices news, rumors: Early 2017 release if not end of 2016

      • How to set the default keyboard on your Android phone

      • Android N news: Google reveals official name — Android Nougat 7.0

      • The full-disk encryption protecting your Android can be cracked

      • HTC 10, One M9, One A9 Android 7.0 Nougat Update Release Confirmed By HTC

      • Google Nexus 2016 with Android N release date, specs news: HTC Sailfish and HTC Marlin due out later this year

Free Software/Open Source

• Implementing NATO’s standards (STANAG)

  I recently joined Linnovate, and while working on one of the open source projects the company produces, we needed to process video content according to NATO’s standard agreement (STANAG) 4609: NATO Digital Motion Imagery Standard.

• Cygwin library now available under GNU Lesser General Public License

  Today, we’re pleased to announce that the next release of the Cygwin library (version 2.5.2) will be available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 3. The Cygwin library is the core of the Cygwin project, which includes a distribution of the popular GNU tools and other open source tools designed to enable easier porting of Linux applications to Microsoft Windows. This change to the Cygwin library, previously available under the GNU General Public License, opens up a variety of commercial opportunities for companies to use the newest Cygwin versions in their products.

• Universal rendering with SwiftShader, now open source

• Events

  • Boston LibreLearnLab: Call for Proposals

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • This Week In Servo 69

      In the last week, we landed 84PRs in the Servo organization’s repositories.

      One of our contributors, Florian Duraffourg, landed a patch recently that switched our public domain list matching source and algorithm, resulting in a huge speedup in page load times (~25%!). Shing Lyu tracked down and measured this unexpectedly-large gain through a new automated page load testing performance infrastructure that he has been testing. It compares Servo daily builds against Firefox for page load on a subset of the Alexa Top 1000 sites. Check it out!

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • ownCloud and Collabora make LibreOffice Online available for ownCloud Enterprise

    Collabora Online for ownCloud Enterprise immediately available, providing online editing functions for text documents, spreadsheets and presentations inside ownCloud for improved collaboration.

• CMS

  • 4 Reasons an Open Source CMS Should Be Appealing to IT

    With an open source CMS, there’s a massive development community, which alleviates the constraint of a limited pool of technical resources. That coupled with full access to the code allows organizations to drive their technical needs based on their business requirements — not the other way around. A site built for the business user reduces the need for technical support in the first place, further enabling non-technical users to take control of their online presence.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Here’s How To Get .NET Core Running On Ubuntu [Ed: How to infect GNU/Linux with a Microsoft Trojan horse and software patents trap which is not Open Source but Open Core]

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • What’s up with nano?

    As expected, the recent state of events where nano transitioned maintainership to Benno Schulenberg, and the project left GNU, has a lot of people speculating about what happened, and more disappointingly, making some pretty nasty assertions about motivations. I want to try and give a brief update on them to hopefully calm things down.

  • User freedom in the age of computer-generated software

    Many of us share a vision for the way software, free or otherwise, is developed: software is written by a programmer as “source code” and transformed through some mechanisms into “object code.” As free software activists, we are used to thinking about our legal, development, and community processes and tooling in terms of this workflow. But what happens when software which used to be written manually by humans is developed generatively through other software? How does this affect software and user freedom?

  • Unifont 9.0.01 Released

    This release includes all Basic Multilingual Plane and Supplemental Multilingual Plane scripts that are easily drawn in a 16-by-16 pixel grid up through all new Unicode 9.0 scripts. This release also incorporates changes to scripts that The Unicode Consortium altered. See the ChangeLog file for full details.

Leftovers

• Hardware

  • The Macintosh is at a new crossroads

    Late last week, Apple announced it has discontinued its Thunderbolt Display, a once-groundbreaking 27-inch monitor that functioned not only as a monitor but as a hub for MacBooks and other Macs attached to it.

    The Thunderbolt Display, which hadn’t been updated since 2011, epitomized Apple’s Mac strategy at the time of providing high-capacity, high-speed peripheral connections to set Macs apart from the pokey peripheral buses then common on PCs. The Mac was for power users; the PC was not.

  • Inside Japan’s Future Exascale ARM Supercomputer

    The rumors that supercomputer maker Fujitsu would be dropping the Sparc architecture and moving to ARM cores for its next generation of supercomputers have been going around since last fall, and at the International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany this week, officials at the server maker and RIKEN, the research and development arm of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) that currently houses the mighty K supercomputer, confirmed that this is indeed true.

  • Fujitsu turns to ARM for Post-K supercomputer

    Alternative chip architectures are taking some thunder away from Intel’s x86 at this week’s International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt.

    China’s TaihuLight, which was ranked the world’s fastest supercomputer, has a homegrown chip. And the ARM architecture, which dominates mobile-device chips, will appear in Fujitsu’s next flagship supercomputer.

  • Intel: ARM Servers To Renew Their Attack

    Up until now, server chips based on ARM Holdings’ (NASDAQ:ARMH) architecture have had little impact on the data center market, and Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) Data Center Group has continued to grow. ARM server vendors are preparing the next wave of server chips based on 14-16 nm FinFET technology. These will be much more competitive and energy efficient and could start to erode Intel’s share of the data center by 2017.

• Security

  • Progress Towards 100% HTTPS, June 2016

  • Exploiting Recursion in the Linux Kernel

  • Home Computers Connected to the Internet Aren’t Private, Court Rules [iophk: "MS Windows == insecure, therefore all computer are game"]

    A judge in Virginia rules that people should have no expectation of privacy on their home PCs because no connected computer “is immune from invasion.”
    A federal judge for the Eastern District of Virginia has ruled that the user of any computer that connects to the Internet should not have an expectation of privacy because computer security is ineffectual at stopping hackers.

    The June 23 ruling came in one of the many cases resulting from the FBI’s infiltration of PlayPen, a hidden service on the Tor network that acted as a hub for child exploitation, and the subsequent prosecution of hundreds of individuals. To identify suspects, the FBI took control of PlayPen for two weeks and used, what it calls, a “network investigative technique,” or NIT—a program that runs on a visitor’s computer and identifies their Internet address.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Hindu temple volunteer hacked to death in Bangladesh, say police

    A Hindu temple worker was hacked to death in western Bangladesh on Friday, police said, the latest in a series of attacks on religious minorities by suspected Islamists.

    Shyamananda Das, who helped to conduct prayers at the Radhamadan Gopal Bigraha Math in Jhenaidah district, was killed by three men on a motorcycle as he was walking on a highway adjacent to his temple early in the morning, police said.

  • Police blow up suspicious car near Stade de France

    French police used an explosive to blast entry to a car parked illegally near the Stade de France stadium in Paris where France and Iceland will play a Euro 2016 quarter-final match tonight.

    The blast by the stadium – which was targeted by terrorist attacks last November – caused jitters among fans arriving for the key game.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • Palm oil companies ditch landmark Indonesian ‘zero deforestation’ pact

    Major palm oil companies that backed a landmark Indonesian “zero deforestation” pact on green practices have now ditched it in favour of less strict standards, triggering criticism the companies have caved into Indonesian government pressure.

    The companies signed the 2014 Indonesia Palm Oil Pledge, or Ipop, in an agreement hailed as boosting efforts to fight rampant deforestation and annual forest fires and the haze. As part of the pledge, the firms, which include top palm oil producers and traders, pledged no development of peatlands of any depth. Peatland fires are a major source of the haze.

    But on Friday (July 1), the companies said Ipop had run its course and was no longer needed. They supported the Indonesian government’s efforts to “transform the palm oil sector” and to strengthen the country’s own certification standards called the Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil, or Ispo.

• Finance/Brexit

  • After Brexit, Germany Should Give Brits Citizenship: Minister

    Britain voted 52 to 48 percent on June 23 in favor of quitting the EU.

    Germany should offer citizenship to young Britons living in Germany given that it was largely older voters in England and Wales who voted for “Brexit” in last month’s referendum, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Saturday.

    Britain voted 52 to 48 percent on June 23 in favor of quitting the European Union, with the referendum splitting the country along several lines such as old versus young, England and Wales versus Scotland and Northern Ireland.

  • SPD urges Germany to offer citizenship to young British expats

    SPD member Sigmar Gabriel has said Britons living in Germany should get EU citizenship. His words come amid growing uncertainty in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the EU.

  • Germany should offer young Britons EU citizenship after Brexit, says German Vice-Chancellor

    Germany should offer citizenship to young Britons living in Germany, since it was largely older voters who voted to leave the European Union, the German Vice-Chancellor has said.

    Speaking at a meeting with the Social Democratic Party in Berlin on Saturday, Sigmar Gabriel, who is also the Economy Minister, said the UK’s referendum was a further reason to campaign to relax the rules on dual citizenship in Germany.

    “Let us offer it to young Britons who live in Germany, Italy or France, so they can remain European Union citizens in this country,” he said.

  • The rest of the world is laughing at the UK – but one country is explaining why they love us

    It’s been a difficult week for the UK. After voting to leave the European Union in a historic referendum, our country seems to have been split down the middle.

    Remain voters are blaming Leave voters for ‘ruining their futures’, Leave voters are telling Remain voters to stop complaining, politicians are tearing each other to shreds.

    The Prime Minister has resigned, the shadow cabinet is falling apart, we’re not sure what’s happening to our economy and there are worrying reports of increased xenophobia.

    It’s fair to say we don’t have much cause to love the UK at the moment.

    We’ve also been made the butt of the joke all over the world.

  • ‘Let EU migrants stay’ say the British public, plus voices from business and politics

    The Government and nominees to be the next Conservative Leader faced new pressure today to make a clear and unequivocal statement to reassure the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK that they would be able to stay after Brexit, and that a similar deal would be pursued to protect the status of the 1.2 million British citizens living in other EU countries.

    New research from ICM for British Future finds that 84% of the British public supports letting EU migrants stay – including three-quarters (77%) of Leave voters. Among Conservatives, support for protecting the status of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in Europe is even higher at 85%, with 78% of UKIP supporters in agreement.

    Just 16% of the public think that EU citizens should be required to leave the UK and that UK citizens in Europe should return home, with 23% of Leave voters and 15% of Conservatives agreeing.

  • The Tories played with fire and you can hear the flames crackling round you

    Writing of the British intellectuals who fell for Stalin, George Orwell came up with a sentence that applies as well to today’s conservatives as to the socialists of the 1930s. “So much of leftwing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.” I was repeating it almost hourly as I watched the frivolous, dishonest, over-privileged and over-grown adolescents who presumed to govern us skip away from the consequences of their folly.

    At a moment when Britain is more fragile and angry than I have seen it, when parliament has been silenced by the referendum, and the opposition has collapsed, they have manured the soil in which extremism flourishes.

    Before I go on, I accept that you cannot get a hearing on immigration, race and the backlashes they inspire until you acknowledge hard truths. It is not the case that everyone who voted to leave was racist, or even primarily concerned about immigration. It is arguable that the origins of our crisis lie in the last Labour government’s decision to open Britain up to hundreds of thousands it never expected to arrive.

  • British Conservatives in Chaos Over Brexit, but Labour Party’s in No Position to Pounce

    Until Thursday, the political wrangling in Britain over how, or whether, to withdraw from the European Union — a move supported by a narrow majority of the voters in last week’s referendum, but opposed by 75 percent of the members of Parliament elected just last year — seemed likely to trigger a new general election.

  • Poll reveals young remain voters reduced to tears by Brexit result

    Almost half of voters aged 18 to 24 cried or felt like crying when they heard that the UK had voted to leave the European Union, according to polls conducted for the London School of Economics.

    The findings were released last night after tens of thousands of people demonstrated in central London against the results of the referendum.

    The polling by Opinium, conducted as part of an LSE electoral psychology initiative called “Inside the mind of the voter”, found that the electorate’s verdict on EU membership prompted a far more emotional reaction than the results of most other elections or referendums.

    Overall, out of a sample of 2,113 British adults questioned between 24 and 30 June, 32% of respondents said they cried or felt like crying when they discovered the result.

  • Douglas Carswell challenged by Leave voter over broken NHS pledge

    Ukip MP claims Vote Leave only ever promised £100m a week – despite £350m a week being at the top of his Twitter profile

  • Thousands of patients could be denied life-extending drugs and treatment in wake of Brexit

    Thousands of patients could be denied life-extending drugs and treatment in the wake of Brexit , the Sunday People reports.

    NHS bosses have delayed funding for vital medicines and services because the fall in the value of the pound means they may no longer be able to afford them.

    And kidney patient Abi Longfellow, the teenager who won her battle for a wonder drug thanks to a Sunday People campaign, is one of those hit by the devastating blow.

    The cost of Abi’s drug went up by £16,000 overnight due to Brexit . When the NHS first agreed to buy the drug form the US it cost £136,000.

    But the price has now shot up to £152,000 because the pound has slumped against the dollar.

    The delays also hit cancer patients, children with gender issues, HIV patients and stroke victims.

  • EU tells Swiss no single market access if no free movement of citizens

    The European Union is to show its determination to make no concessions to the UK on Brexit terms by telling Switzerland it will lose access to the single market if it goes ahead with plans to impose controls on the free movement of EU citizens.

    The Swiss-EU talks, under way for two years but now needing a solution possibly within weeks, throws up the exact same issues that will be raised in the UK’s exit talks – the degree to which the UK must accept free movement of the EU’s citizens as a price for access to the single market.

    The Swiss are desperate to strike a deal in order to give its politicians time to pass the necessary laws to meet a February 2017 deadline imposed by a legally binding referendum in 2014.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Jeremy Corbyn exclusively reveals why he’s offering Labour MPs a peace deal – in his own words

    Britain now faces an economic and political crisis.

    Since voters decided to leave the ­European Union, financial markets have been in a tailspin.

    Threats to living standards have grown. The Prime Minister has announced his resignation, the country is divided and the Government is in disarray.

    George Osborne has finally had to agree to ditch his job-destroying plan for a budget surplus, as Labour has been demanding.

    But Tory ministers have no EU exit plan. Instead, they are threatening to make working people pay for their ­failures, with more spending cuts
    and tax rises.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • MDA ticked off for irrational censorship by Festival Director and acclaimed photographer

    Newsha Tavakolian an acclaimed Iranian photojournalist and documentary photographer, and Singapore’s cultural medallion winner Ong Keng Sen have hot out at the Singapore authorities for the unnecessary censorship of works of artistic merits.

  • ICANN: We Won’t Pass Judgment on Pirate Sites

    Following more pressure from rightsholders, domain name oversight body ICANN has again made it clear that it will not act as judge and jury in copyright disputes. In a letter to the president of the Intellectual Property Constituency, ICANN chief Stephen Crocker says that ICANN is neither “required or qualified” to pass judgment in such cases.

  • Man arrested for posting picture insulting PM in WhatsApp group

    Police have arrested a man for sharing a crude photo insulting the Prime Minister in a WhatsApp group.

    Johor police chief Comm Datuk Wan Ahmad Najmuddin Mohd said that the man was arrested in Kampung Tunku, Petaling Jaya at around 12.15pm on Saturday.

    He said the suspect, who goes by the name Pa Ya, had uploaded the photo into a WhatsApp group called “Bicara Politik Melayu”.

    “The photo has insulted and hurt the feelings of Malaysians,” he said in a statement on Saturday.

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Extreme online security measures to protect your digital privacy – a guide

    Mark Zuckerberg uses tape over his webcam.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Landlords, ISPs team up to rip off tenants on broadband

    Who would have thought that handing out free coffee and donuts in an apartment house would lead to Comcast reprimanding the building owners? That’s exactly what happened in Norcross, Ga., when cruller-baring Google representatives recently tried to tell residents about the company’s new fiber, high-speed Internet service.

    The landlord in question was reminded that he, like apartment building owners in many states, has an exclusive deal that deems Comcast the only company that can provide broadband to the building. Such deals with Comcast and other major ISPs effectively rob residents of the right to choose broadband providers, and they bar competitors from even setting foot in certain buildings.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Trademarks

    • Comodo spat shows importance of effective PR around trademark strategies

      US-based Comodo Group is the world’s largest issuer of SSL digital certificates (which are small data files that allow secure website connections, usually with an annual cost). A new entrant to the market is non-profit Let’s Encrypt, which was founded in 2014 by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) and offers similar digital certificates for free. The rivalry between the organisations turned bitter last week after ISRG executive director Josh Aas revealed that Comodo had filed three trademark applications for the term LET’S ENCRYPT.

  • Copyrights

    • BitTorrent Protocol Turns 15 Years Old Today

      Fifteen years ago a developer named Bram Cohen posted a short message online, announcing his new file-sharing tool BitTorrent. Three years later his protocol was responsible for a quarter of all Internet traffic, and now it helps people to share hundreds of petabytes of data per day.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Oracle Loses Again, Red Hat Competes With FOSS & More…

  Also included: LinuxQuestions.org has a birthday, six new distro releases, Ubuntu considering dropping 32-bit support and the feds were after Snowden.

• Desktop

  • Is Your OS Working For You Or Enslaving You?

    Essentially, folks bought a PC to use, run their applications and browse their networks and MS has installed malware on them to advertise “10”. Malware. That’s what this is. If the guy who made your OS deliberately installs malware on your PC, what are you going to do?

  • Microsoft’s Windows 10 nagware goes FULL SCREEN in final push

    As the Windows 10 free upgrade period draws to a close, Microsoft is stepping up its operating system’s nagware to full-screen takeovers.

    The Redmond software giant confirmed today it will start showing dark blue screens urging people to install the latest version of Windows. The full-screen ads will pop up on Windows 7 and 8.1 desktops from now until July 30, when the free upgrade period ends.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Check out ‘Why, Phil?’, new Linux audio webshow series

    Philip Yassin has recently started an upbeat Linux audio webshow series called ‘Ask Phil?’. Only recently started, the series has already notched up an impressive 7 episodes, most of which revolve around Phil’s favourite DAW, Qtractor.

• Applications

  • Grammar and style-checking tools for Emacs

    Grammar be hard. Both for human beings and for software programs. These days, writers who use free software generally have their choice of reliable utilities for catching spelling mistakes, regardless of what editors or word processors they use. The outlook for grammar-and-style checking is not nearly as rosy. I recently explored the options available for Emacs, and was underwhelmed with the status quo.

  • Unblock Censored Websites Using Lantern Browser in Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint

    Lantern is an open source, free software that allows reliable and secure access to open Internet. It is Internet proxy tool developed to access blocked websites anywhere in the world and it is cross-platform available for desktop OS (Linux, Mac and Windows), as well as for Android. Lantern is built by the Brave New Software Project and lead by Adam Fisk as developer, a non-profit dedicated to creating software that tackles tough global challenges, the basic idea behind this project was to allow user an unfiltered Internet access.

  • VLC media player with skins for Ubuntu/Linux Mint/other Ubuntu derivatives

    VideoLAN and the VLC development team released the new major version of VLC, 2.2.2. With a new audio core, hardware decoding and encoding, port to mobile platforms, preparation for Ultra-HD video and a special care to support more formats, 2.2.2 is a major upgrade for VLC. Rincewind has a new rendering pipeline for audio, with better effiency, volume and device management, to improve VLC audio support. It supports many new devices inputs, formats, metadata and improves most of the current ones, preparing for the next-gen codecs.

  • Kodi v17 “Krypton” Alpha 2

    Since the dawn of time, or at least since 2008 each released version has received a code name next to the version number. Giving each development iteration a code name in a certain category is kind of a tradition that is not only applicable for software but also for hardware. Google does so for Android, Intel and NVIDIA also names their chips. Who are we to break this tradition and as such we follow in their steps with a theme that started out with mythical places or names. For our v17 release we actually let the public chose the name and with an overwhelming majority they chose the name “Krypton”.

  • Kodi 17 Alpha 2 Released

  • Kodi 17 “Krypton” Media Center Gets Ready for Android 6.0, Alpha 2 Out Now

    Today, July 2, 2016, the development team behind the popular Kodi open-source and cross-platform media center software has announced the release of the second Alpha build for the upcoming Kodi 17 “Krypton” series.

    Work on Kodi 17 started in early December 2015, but it took the developers about six months to push an Alpha build to public testers, which should have arrived in May 2016. Two weeks ago, on June 21, they announced that there are only ten days left until the first Alpha hits the streets.

    Well, today is the tenth day, but we didn’t get the first Alpha. Instead, we can download the second Alpha milestone, which should be more stable and offer us an early taste of what’s coming later this year in Kodi 17. This happened because of some code issues that needed to be fixed first.

  • The Numerous Features Coming To Ardour 5.0

    If you use Ardour as your digital audio workstation software, you’ll want to read this article about the features coming to Ardour 5.0.

    Last month we talked about Ardour 5.0-pre0 and since then Ardour 5.0 has continued moving along for release later this year. The developers behind Ardour for Linux and OS X have published a feature guide for this next release.

  • 5+ Linux Video Editing Tool Tips

    Finding a video editor in Linux that isn’t severely handicapped or come with an extreme learning curve is difficult. But this article isn’t about fancy video editors. As it turns out many of the things you need to get done are easiest with a few command-line tools. The packages you’ll want to install are mpv, ffmpeg, mencoder, normalize, and sox.

  • Pitivi 0.96 Video Editor Promises Fast and Accurate Editing for Any Video Format

    The road to Pitivi 1.0 continues, and the development team was proud to announce the release of the 0.96 milestone, which is yet another step in the development cycle of the powerful, open-source video editor.

    Therefore, Pitivi 0.96 arrives with the usual bug fixes and code cleanup maintenance stuff, but it also introduces a new feature, something that the Pitivi developers like to call “Proxy editing,” and that it promises fast and accurate editing with any video file format.

    “To provide the best experience, we decided to give you the ability to seamlessly work with media formats suitable for video editing,” explained the devs. “Now you can edit and render a video project with any video files with great accuracy, thanks to proxy files.”

  • Pitivi: An Open Source and Powerful Video Editor for Linux

    Pitivi is a well known video editor, the initial release was back in May, 2004 and still in active development. It is an open source, non-linear video editor for Linux developed by various contributors from all over the world, licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). It aims to be a powerful and flexible video editor that can attract to prosumers and professionals.
    In February, 2014 the project held a fundraising campaign through Gnome foundation, the goal was to raise €100,000 for further development. The fundraiser did not reach the goal but raised above €23,000 as of 2015, which allowed partially funded development.

  • Proprietary

    • Veeam Agent for Linux, the Beta is now available!

      At Veeam, we all love virtualization and truly believe that modern data centers should be virtualized to guarantee the highest degree of Availability. However, the reality is that not every workload is virtualized. Some workloads cannot be reached through the hypervisors they run on even when they are virtualized, like in public cloud environments.

      This is one of the reasons Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE has seen such tremendous success since its initial launch in 2015. Now, that’s just one side of the story –– especially when you consider that in public cloud the vast majority of deployed virtual machines (VMs) are running one of the many flavors of Linux.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Setting up NMAS with remote Docker integration with Ubuntu docker hosts

    • Getting the most out of your Linux terminal

    • How to colorize your logs with CCZE

    • Keep your Nvidia drivers up-to-date in Ubuntu/Linux Mint via PPA

    • WineHQ 1.9/1.8/1.7 Versions for Ubuntu/Linux Mint via PPA

    • How to Setup Nginx with HTTP2 Support on Ubuntu 16.04

    • Install and Setup LXC on Ubuntu-14.04

    • How To Setup OpenVPN Server In 5 Minutes on Ubuntu Server

  • Games

    • Open source racer SuperTuxKart 0.9.2 officially released with a new website

      SuperTuxKart 0.9.2 is now officially available with new tracks, AI for more game modes, ghost racers and more.

    • Nightdive Studios are making a System Shock Linux demo after gathering feedback

      You can see their Steam forum post here. They stated later they are now doing it as they have heard us. Mac apparently is a lower priority as Linux has been in higher demand.

    • The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux

      So, basically, don’t put too much thought into the OS side of it. And ignore anyone who uses that mark as a way of claiming Linux is at it’s lowest ever level (no, I don’t hate Phoronix, I just think that’s an idiotic and uninformed headline from someone who should know better), or Linux gaming is dying or something.

    • The Ship: Remasted released for Linux, it’s quite funny

      The Ship: Remasted recently released an update that included support for Linux, the developer sent in keys so we gave it a go.

      Four of us played it in a livestream last night, and we found it to be pretty enjoyable. It’s an interesting take on the shooter/survival genre and it’s certainly one I would like to play again another time.

      The Hunt mode is the main interesting thing about the game. You’re each given a specific person on the ship to identify and murder, while watching your back for the person trying to find you. It gets quite funny!

    • Albion Online MMO final beta due on 1st of August

      Albion Online the very cool Linux-native MMO will have a final beta on August 1st that brings tons of huge changes to the game.

    • Space station building sim ‘The Spatials: Galactology’ will have day-1 Linux support now

      After speaking to the developer of The Spatials: Galactology, it seems they are now doing a day-1 Linux release.

      As I was busy, BTRE covered their initial tweets to me where they indicated they didn’t have a date.

    • Shen’s Last Gift DLC released for XCOM 2, Linux release delayed, but due soon

      Shen’s Last Gift is the next DLC available for XCOM 2 that brings in mech units to help you fight the alien menace.

    • Google releases SwiftShader, Spatials update coming to Linux, and more gaming news

      In this week’s edition, we take a look at SwiftShader, The Spatials: Galactology’s plan for a Linux release, and more.

    • Steam’s Survey Reports Another Drop For Linux Gamers In June 2016

      The June 2016 results are now out for Valve’s Steam Survey.

      The Steam Survey results report yet another month-to-month drop in Steam Linux usage with a reported -0.04% decline in Linux gamers with now putting the overall Steam Linux marketshare at 0.80%.

    • Steam Hardware Survey Shows Drop for Linux

      The current split of Steam users, according to the Steam Hardware Survey, is 95.5% for Windows, 3.6% for Mac OSX, and 0.8% for Linux. Phoronix reports that this does not count SteamOS, and there might be other “inaccuracies” with the survey, but the Linux figures are 0.04% less than they were before (a relative drop of about 4.8%).

    • New Steam Client Beta adds fixes for ‘upcoming’ Vulkan games

      So here’s something fun, the latest Steam Client Beta has ‘Fixed compatibility issues with some upcoming Vulkan games’. Begin mindless speculation.

    • Vulkan 1.0.19 Released: Still Up In The Air Whether Vulkan 1.1 Will Come This Month

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Qt5 Application Demo

    • #27: GSoC with KDE – 5

    • KDE Applications 16.08 Schedule finalized

    • KStars with Ekos arrives on Windows

    • Plasma 5.6.5 and Frameworks 5.23 now in Backports for Kubuntu 16.04

      Plasma 5.6.5 brings bugfixes and translations from the month of June thanks to contributors, while Frameworks 5.23 brings new fixes in KWallet, KWayland, Breeze and much more!

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • This Week in GTK+ – 7

    • Builder Designs

      Thanks to the wonderful design skill of Allan, Builder got a bunch of new designs this last month. Last week, after arriving home from the Toronto hackfest, I started reshaping Builder to match.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Locally-made Linux distro gets an upgrade

      You may not know it, but South Africa actually produces two maker-oriented boards offering an alternative to popular names like Arduino. One of those boards, the Blue Penguin, runs its own distro of Linux called “Guinnux”, and it just got an upgrade.

      The Blue Penguin and Guinnux is created by local company Keystone Electronic Solutions. Director and co-founder John Eigelaar runs us through the changes between the previous version, Guinnux 4, and Guinnux 5.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • Mageia 6 Release Notes

    • The next step towards Mageia 6 is here, sta1 has been released

      Everyone at Mageia is very happy to announce the release of the next step in the path to Mageia 6.

  • Arch Family

    • Arch Linux 2016.07.01 Now Available for Download, Ships with Linux Kernel 4.6.3

      It’s the first day of July, and Arch Linux users already know what this means. Yes, that’s right, a new ISO respin, Arch Linux 2016.07.01, has been made available for download.

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • GeckoLinux 421.160527.0

      GeckoLinux is one of the more recent distributions to land in the DistroWatch database. GeckoLinux (or Gecko, as I will refer to the distribution) is based on openSUSE. Gecko offers two key features above and beyond what its parent provides: patent encumbered software installed by default and live desktop editions. The openSUSE project avoids shipping software with licensing or patent restrictions and offers just two editions of Leap (a full DVD and a net-install disc). The Gecko distribution provides some extra packages, including multimedia support, and provides live discs for seven different desktop environments: Budgie, Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE and Xfce. For people who want something lighter, Gecko offers an eighth “Barebones” edition.

      I decided to try Gecko’s MATE edition which is available as a 966MB download. While I was downloading the ISO file, I looked into why Gecko uses such long version numbers, such as 421.160527.0. I learned the first part indicates which version of openSUSE Gecko uses as a base, in this case openSUSE 42.1. The second number is the date the ISO was created, 27th of May, 2016. The final number is reserved for revisions or re-builds. In this case the trailing zero indicates no rebuilds were necessary.

  • Slackware Family

    • Zenwalk 8.0 Is Based on Slackware 14.2, Gets New Desktop Layout for Xfce 4.12.1

      Jean-Philippe Guillemin, the developer of Zenwalk, proudly announced today, July 2, 2016, the final release of the Slackware-based Zenwalk 8.0 GNU/Linux operating system.

      Based on the just released Slackware 14.2 operating system, Zenwalk 8.0 is finally here, powered by Linux kernel 4.4.14 LTS, the same one that powers the monumental Slackware Linux, thus offering users support for the latest hardware devices. Zenwalk’s default desktop environment is Xfce 4.12.1, and it now ships with a new layout that’s more user-friendly than ever.

    • Slackware Release Announcement

      Slackware 14.2 brings many updates and enhancements, among which
      you’ll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available
      today: Xfce 4.12.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and
      easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.14.21 (KDE 4.14.3 with
      kdelibs-4.14.21) a stable release of the 4.14.x series of the award-
      winning KDE desktop environment. These desktops utilize eudev, udisks,
      and udisks2, and many of the specifications from freedesktop.org which
      allow the system administrator to grant use of various hardware devices
      according to users’ group membership so that they will be able to use
      items such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that appear like USB storage,
      portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players, and more, all
      without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command. Just plug and play.
      Slackware’s desktop should be suitable for any level of Linux experience.

    • Slackware 14.2 is Here, Mageia 6 STA1 is too

      Woohoo! Slackware 14.2 is here! Patrick Volkerding announced the release early July 1 saying it brings “many updates and enhancements.” Elsewhere, the Mageia project announced the first stabilization snapshot for upcoming version 6 and Dominique Leuenberger posted this week’s Tumbleweed review. The end of life for Fedora 22 is fast approaching and the end of an era is upon us as distributions drop 32-bit support.

    • Slackware 14.2 Officially Released

      Slackware 14.2 was released today to kick off July. Slackware 14.2 has been long in development while today it was christened.

      Slackware 14.2 features Xfce 4.12.1 and KDE 4.14.21 desktops, is powered by the Linux 4.4.14 kernel, glibc 2.23, BlueZ 5 for Bluetooth, GCC 5.3 is the default compiler, and various other updated packages. Slackware 14.2 is also notable for finally making use of PulseAudio.

    • Slackware 14.2 Released

    • Slackware Linux 14.2 Officially Released with Linux Kernel 4.4, without systemd

      After many months of hard work, two Betas and two RCs, Patrick J. Volkerding was extremely proud to announce today, July 2, 2016, the release and immediate availability for download of the final Slackware 14.2 Linux operating system.

      Slackware Linux 14.2 arrives two and a half months after the mid-April release of the second and last Release Candidate (RC) build, and it has now been declared stable and ready for deployment as your daily driver. Powered by the latest (at the moment of writing this article) long-term supported Linux 4.4.14 kernel, Slackware 14.2 ships with many up-to-date components and GNU/Linux technologies.

    • Slackware 14.2 released

    • sbopkg 0.38.0 is out for Slackware 14.2

      What a busy day today with all the releases for Slackware 14.2, MATE 1.14, Cinnamon 3.0 and now sbopkg 0.38.0.

      [...]

      We are finalizing SBo repository for Slackware 14.2, but at least you don’t have to wait 3 months just like previous cycle as we have prepared it since last January. Stay tune for SBo announcement on slackbuilds-user mailing list.

    • MATE 1.14 and Cinnamon 3.0 for Slackware 14.2

      Just hours since Slackware 14.2 is released, we proudly present to you MATE 1.14 and Cinnamon 3.0 for Slackware 14.2 users!!! We have been working under the hood of testing these two projects since they were released last April.

      The binary packages are compiled against Slackware 14.2 official ISO and it’s now uploaded to the usual repository in http://slackware.org.uk/msb and http://slackware.org.uk/csb. Thanks to Darren Austin for providing a place to host these two projects.

    • Bear is working for its money

      Since I made the new Slackware 14.2 data available 24 hours ago, the server has been pushing out 1.67 Terabytes of data, at an average of 155 MBytes/sec. Needless to say that this server was a good investment, I could never have managed this on my old platform.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Inc Analyst Day: Bold Aspirations Leave the Room Divided

      Red Hat Inc. (NYSE:RHT) recently concluded its Analyst Day event, making claims and laying out expectations, leaving investors and analysts somewhat divided. Key takeaways from the event include the open source software solutions provider’s ambitious goals to drive $5 billion in enterprise software revenue within the next five years.

    • Finance

      • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Has $-74.449 In Comprehensive Income

      • Share Performance Recap for: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Reiterated as Buy, Price Target Reduced to $85 Following Analyst Day: UBS

      • Zacks EPS Estimates For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Is $0.41

    • Fedora

      • Python 3 in Fedora

        At the 2016 Python Language Summit, Petr Viktorin, who is the team lead for the Python maintenance group at Red Hat, described the progress that Fedora has made in switching to Python 3 by default. He also presented some work that has been done to split up the standard library to try to reduce Python’s footprint for cloud deployments.

        Viktorin pointed to a site that is tracking Fedora’s Python 3 porting efforts. In particular, he showed the history graph that displays the progress since October 2015. Some 1300 packages are now either able to run on both Python 2 and 3 or just on 3, though there are still 1700 or so to go.

      • GSoC 2016 Weekly Rundown: Breaking down WordPress networks

        At the moment, there are not any plans to set up or offer a blog-hosting service to contributors (and for good reason). The only two websites that would receive the benefits of a multi-site network would be the Community Blog and the Magazine. For now, the intended scale of expanding WordPress into Fedora is to these two platforms.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Edu 8 Operating System Lands as a Complete Linux Solution for Your School

      Today, July 2, 2016, the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is proud to announce the general availability of the Debian Edu (a.k.a. Skolelinux) 8.0 distribution designed for educational purposes.

      Based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” operating system, Debian Edu 8 is now available for any educational institution, such as schools or universities, that want to ditch the bloated and expensive Microsoft Windows with a fresh, Linux kernel-based OS that offers them the freedom they need to fully customize the installation, as well as the unbeatable stability of Debian.

    • Debian Edu / Skolelinux Jessie — a complete Linux solution for your school

    • Debian GNU/Linux a complete Linux solution for your school

    • My Debian Activities in June 2016

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Elementary-Add Icon Theme, An Enhanced Version of eOS icons for Ubuntu/Linux Mint/Elementary OS

        • Papirus Icons Updated With Newly Designed Icons, Install in Ubuntu/Linux Mint

        • Meizu MX6 Ubuntu Phone Features 10-Core Processor, Costs €399

          After a pair of (admittedly less than clear) images leaked earlier in the week, and following bunch of codename references, we now have firmer proof that the next Ubuntu phone is, indeed, the Meizu MX6.

          A product info page passed to Android Headlines reveals more than the model: we also get the price. The phone is set to cost from €399 when it goes on sale, which is rumoured to be later next month.

        • Ambiance Lime is now Available for Ubuntu 16.04/14.04/12.04/Linux Mint

          Ambiance Lime is quite famous theme among Ubuntu users because it gives different taste to the desktop than the default orange look. It is modified version of original Ubuntu Ambiance theme and gives your desktop a fresh lime look which makes more elegant. The guy from gnome-look is carrying this theme since 12.04 precise release and made it for every release expect 15.10 Wily. It works almost in every desktop environment such as Unity, Gnome Shell, Cinnamon, Mate, others but for best results use Unity desktop and you may see some different results in other desktops. If you encounter any bug then report it and hopefully it will be fixed soon. Uniform and zonColor icons used in the following screenshots. You can use Unity Tweak Tool, Gnome-tweak-tool.

        • A New Ubuntu Phone Is In Development

        • qBittorrent New Version Released With Massive Improvements, Install in Ubuntu/Linux Mint

        • [Retro] Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) Review!

        • [Older] Canonical attempting to bill OVH for use of the “Ubuntu” trademark

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Ubuntu 16 vs Linux Mint 18 – BENCHMARKED

            Linux Mint vs Ubuntu! Which is better? In this video we put Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) up against Linux Mint 18 (Sarah) head to head with some benchmarks to see which Linux distribution performs better.

          • Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” Installation Guide with Screenshots

            Good News for the Linux Mint users is that the latest version of Linux Mint 18 along with Cinnamon and Mate desktop environment has been released on 30th June 2016. Code name for Linux Mint 18 is “Sarah” and it is released under Long Term Support(LTS) and will get support until 2021.

          • Linux Mint 18 Overview

          • Linux Mint 18 Screencast and Screenshots

          • Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” Has Been Released

            Linux Mint team announced the new version of Linux Mint. The latest version Linux Mint 18 code named “Sarah” is a long term support release which will receive updates for next 5 years. Linux Mint 18 came in two editions “Cinnamon” and “MATE”, features lots of improvements, enhanced update manager which allows to install different version of the Linux kernel, there are lots of package updates under the hood and Linux Mint 18 introduced X-Apps: “A new project called X-Apps was started and its goal is to produce generic applications for traditional GTK desktop environments. The idea behind this project is to replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment (this is the case for a growing number of GNOME applications) and to give our desktop environments the same set of core applications, so that each change, each new feature being developed, each little improvement made in one of them will benefit not just one environment, but all of them. The idea for X-Apps are: To use modern toolkits and technologies (GTK3 for HiDPI support, gsettings etc..); To use traditional user interfaces (titlebars, menubars); To work everywhere (to be generic, desktop-agnostic and distro-agnostic); To provide the functionality users already enjoy (or enjoyed in the past for distributions which already lost some functionality); To be backward-compatible (in order to work on as many distributions as possible)…” You can checkout release announcement Cinnamon and Mate.

          • Ubuntu-Based Peppermint 7 Released

          • PepperMint 7 Overview

• Devices/Embedded

  • Realtek spins wireless oriented Arduino compatible SBC

    Realtek has launched a $25, Arduino compatible “Ameba” SBC, built around a 166MHz Cortex-M3 RTL8195AM chipset, and offering WiFi and NFC.

    When you think of Realtek Semiconductor, you probably think about audio codecs, but the company makes a wide variety of other ICs and MCUs that end up on hacker boards. Realtek is now trying its hand at its own Arduino compatible SBC: the Realtek IoT Ameba Platform. The board is backed by a community site with plenty of examples of robots, drones, home automation gizmos, and more that run on the Ameba.

  • That Open, Upgradeable ARM Dev Board Is Trying To Make A Comeback

    Remember that Improve Dev Board using an open-source, upgradeable design and running Mer from 2013~2014 before the project collapsed? It’s back now in the form of a new crowdfunding campaign with some changes to the hardware and the option of a build-your-own laptop.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Tizen OS gets ported to Russia’s Elvees microprocessor

        During the Skolkovo Startup Village – Russia’s largest conference which took place last month, we had reported of a customized corporate version of Tizen OS being showcased on the Samsung Z3. Now, we have come across the news that the event also saw Tizen OS being implemented on the multi-core processor 1892ВМ14Я belonging to Russian manufacturer Elvees Multicore. The Tizen OS was ported to this ARM based processor thanks to a joint effort from the Russian consortium experts and engineers from Tizen.RU. The project proves to showcase the flexibility and open source nature of Tizen and according to the officials at the event, this implementation of Tizen OS in a Russian made hardware helps in leveraging security to higher levels, while we believe the intention is also to reduce the use of processors from foreign brands like mediatek, qualcomm, rockchip, etc.

    • Android

      • Hacker Tells How To Crack Android Encryption On Millions of Smartphones

      • Security research firm recommends that Android buyers stick to a Nexus or Samsung phone only

        Highly respected security researcher Gal Beniamini has found and demonstrated a vulnerability on certain Android phones using a Snapdragon chipset. This attack bypasses an attacked phone’s full encryption. These handsets have not yet received the May security update, which just so happened to contain a security patch against this vulnerability. Taking into account the number of Android phones which have not received the May security update, it is computed that 57% of Android phones are vulnerable to this attack.

      • Android Nougat: 7 top features we can’t wait to try out

        The official title of Google’s next operating system for Android phones has been a long time coming. First it was a sneak peek back in March, followed by a contest that let fans vote on the name (even though Google then said it would choose what it wanted anyway). But now that that’s settled, all we can do is wait for Google to introduce Nougat on the new Nexus phones this fall. (Maybe even this one.)

      • Android Tablets Are Dying – And That’s Great News

        Dell just put another nail in the Android tablet coffin. The company announced that it is killing off its Android-powered Venue slates. As more and more consumers use bigger phones and people hold on to their existing devices longer, tablet sales have been crashing for a while. But Android tablets are particularly pointless.

      • These Google Phones and Android Nougat make me doubt my iPhone’s future

        Today I’m doubting this iPhone in the face of Google’s potential with the next generation of Android Nougat devices. Specifically the HTC-made Nexus phones we’re looking at today, leaked and everything. Both of the devices have been leaked, as it were, both with very similar details – both looking like really, really good competitors for the iPhone 7. Especially if we’re speaking strictly on specifications’ terms, the iPhone 7 will need to up its game significantly just to match what Google has here.

      • Android’s full-disk encryption just got much weaker—here’s why

      • Android device updates: Shield Android TV gains Plex server support, HTC pledges Nougat updates

      • Google Maps On Android Now Features Multiple Destinations

Free Software/Open Source

• SourceForge eyes a comeback

  Years ago, SourceForge.net was the premiere hosting service for open-source and free-software projects. But, after changing hands several times, the site ran seriously afoul of the development community in 2015; its staff was accused of secretly commandeering inactive project accounts and of replacing project downloads with installers side-loaded with adware or even malware. In early 2016, however, the site changed hands yet again, and its new owners have set out to regain the community’s trust.

  To recap, SourceForge was launched in 1999 by VA Linux Systems, which was initially a hardware vendor. Over the next few years, the company acquired several other free-software related sites, including Freshmeat, Slashdot, and NewsForge (where I worked for several years). For a while, VA operated SourceForge.net for “community” open-source projects and offered a separate “enterprise” edition to corporate clients.

• NEC establishes Open Source Software Technology Centre in India

  NEC Corporation and NEC Technologies India Private Limited (NTI) announced the establishment of the “OSS Technology Centre,” an organization specializing in technical support related to the use of open source software (OSS).

• Why an international sports betting and gaming operator uses open source

  Enterprise business is one thing, but most people live down in the trenches. The common business doesn’t have a budget or staff to match the big dogs, but they do have the same needs. One of these needs is for solid, reliable server and data operations. The open-source movement has become a refuge for smaller companies, offering software and services that, in many cases, match what enterprise uses.

• The WRT54GL: A 54Mbps router from 2005 still makes millions for Linksys

  In a time when consumers routinely replace gadgets with new models after just two or three years, some products stand out for being built to last.

  Witness the Linksys WRT54GL, the famous wireless router that came out in 2005 and is still for sale. At first glance, there seems to be little reason to buy the WRT54GL in the year 2016. It uses the 802.11g Wi-Fi standard, which has been surpassed by 802.11n and 802.11ac. It delivers data over the crowded 2.4GHz frequency band and is limited to speeds of 54Mbps. You can buy a new router—for less money—and get the benefit of modern standards, expansion into the 5GHz band, and data rates more than 20 times higher.

  [...]

  Linksys doesn’t bother promoting the WRT54GL much. But La Duca mentioned the continued production of the WRT54GL recently when I interviewed him for a story on Linksys’ project to let users install open source firmware on new routers without breaking the latest FCC anti-interference rules. The WRT54GL was the first wireless router I ever purchased about a decade ago; I was surprised that Linksys still produces them, so I asked the company for more details.

• Events

  • Hadoop Summit Brings Big Data News

    Multiple Big Data vendors and efforts debut new Hadoop technologies at this week’s summit in California.

    It was a big week for Big Data, with multiple vendors making announcements at this week’s Hadoop Summit in San Jose.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla launches nightly builds of Servo web rendering engine

    • Mozilla releases first Nightly build of Servo, its next-generation browser engine

    • Servo nightly builds released for Linux and Mac, Windows and Android builds coming soon

    • Mozilla releases first Servo Nightly build

    • Servo Nightly Builds Available

      Nightly builds of the Servo web rendering engine are now available! To make the Servo engine easy to interact with, we are bundling an HTML-based browser UI. While our engine is not yet fully web compatible, we want to give a larger audience the chance to start experimenting with and contributing to Servo. We have created packages for macOS and Linux (64-bit); Windows and Android packages should be available soon.

    • Mozilla Publishes Servo Nightly (for Mac and Linux)

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Improving LibreOffice User Experience (UX)

    Effective from May 2016, Heiko Tietze has started working as a consultant to drive LibreOffice UX one step further.

    Heiko has been one of the most active UX volunteers during the last few years, and has been instrumental in a rather large number of the user interface improvements since LibreOffice 4.4.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Open source veteran Hohndel leaves Intel, joins VMware

  • VMware Hires Longtime Intel Linux Exec As Its First-Ever Chief Open Source Officer [Ed: for openwashing purposes]

  • Partnerships demonstrate universal acceptance for open source [Ed: Rather gross openwashing of Microsoft. iophk: "pushing Microsoft as "open""]

  • ‘Insights are worth pennies; decisions and actions are worth dollars’ [Ed: Microsoft openwashing again; company that yields proprietary software with back doors is not “open”]

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Blockchain Breakthrough: Peerplays Creates Open-Source Fee Sharing Module

    Despite the fact that Peerplays have helped change the shape of the Blockchain space with the development of an open-source fee sharing module, the team believe that while it won’t take long for others to catch on to the same ideas that they have, they are of the opinion that Peerplays is designed in a way that incentivizes developers to connect their own server-side games, as well as new games built on sidechains.

  • GitHub project analysis, 3D printed prosthetics, and more open source news

• Programming/Development

  • Twisted in an asyncio world

  • Pyjion

  • Automated testing of CPython patches

  • Why is Python slow?

    Python users often complain that the language is slow. Kevin Modzelewski presented some of his findings on Python’s slowness at the 2016 Python Language Summit. He works at Dropbox on the Pyston just-in-time (JIT) compiled version of Python; that project has learned some interesting things along the way about what causes Python to be slow.

  • The Python JITs are coming

    Nathaniel Smith envisions a future where just-in-time (JIT) compiler techniques will be commonly used in Python, especially for scientific computing. He presented his ideas on where things are headed at the 2016 Python Language Summit. He currently works at the University of California, Berkeley on NumPy and other scientific Python projects. Part of what he has been doing is “working on the big picture of what JITs will mean for scientific computing”.

Leftovers

• Security

  • 11 essential data security tips for travelers [iophk: "unfortunately VPNs have dated crypto"]

    I travel all over the world for my job, and for my hobbies. Although there are still plenty of places I haven’t been, I’ve visited enough foreign countries that I don’t deny it when someone calls me a world traveler. Over the years, I’ve experienced my fair share of foreign spying. I know what it’s like to be snooped on.

    I’m no longer surprised when I suddenly get gobs of spam from a country I’ve visited. My best guess is that someone in the country intercepted my email and recorded my email address. I still get porn spam in Arabic and ads for weight loss products in Mandarin. I’ve had my laptop and USB keys searched at countless borders.

  • Yet another letsencrypt (ACME) client

    Well, I apparently joined the hordes of people writing ACME (the Protocol behind Let’s Encrypt) clients.

    Like the fairy tale Goldilocks, I couldn’t find a client in the right spot between minimalistic and full-featured for my needs: acme-tiny was too bare-bones; the official letsencrypt client (now called certbot) too huge; and simp_le came very close, but it’s support for pluggable certificate formats made it just a bit too big for me.

  • Keynote – Complexity: The Enemy of Security

  • Security Holes Found in Widely-Used File Compression Library, Leaving Other Products Dangerously Exposed

  • StartEncrypt considered harmful today

    Recently, one of our hackers (Thijs Alkemade) found a critical vulnerability in StartCom’s new StartEncrypt tool, that allows an attacker to gain valid SSL certificates for domains he does not control. While there are some restrictions on what domains the attack can be applied to, domains where the attack will work include google.com, facebook.com, live.com, dropbox.com and others.

  • Unikernels Will Create More Security Problems Than They Solve

    Unikernels, the most recent overhyped technology in search of a problem to solve, have a number of claimed attributes that make them a “better choice.” One most often claimed is that they are “more secure.” This is the first in a series of articles bringing some light to the reality of unikernels so that you can think about them properly, employ them for what they are good for, and avoid the hype.

  • The Python security response team

    As the final presentation of the 2016 Python Language Summit—though it was followed by a few lightning talks that we are not covering—Christian Heimes led a discussion on the Python security response team. There have been some problems along the way that generally boil down to a need for more people working on the team.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Bangladesh siege: Twenty killed at Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka

    Twenty people, most said to be foreigners, have been killed in an attack on a cafe in Bangladesh claimed by so-called Islamic State.

    Gunmen stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe in Dhaka late on Friday before troops entered almost 12 hours later.

    Six attackers were also killed and one was arrested, officials said. Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina has declared two days of national mourning.

    At least nine Italians and seven Japanese were among those killed.

    Italy’s Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said one other Italian was still unaccounted for. Many of the Italians reportedly worked in the garment industry.

  • Where To Invade Next by Michael Moore

    Europeans regard America as “exceptional” only in its social backwardness and lack of social compassion.

• Finance

  • Joe Macare on Brexit, Rory O’Connor on the Danny Award

    UK politics are up in the air in the wake of a referendum calling for Britain to leave the European Union. The so-called Brexit campaign is drawing comparisons to that of Donald Trump, due to the nativism and racism that marked it, but what else is at work here? Joe Macare is publisher of Truthout, the news organization.

  • To Lump Him With Trump, Zakaria Lies About Sanders on Brexit

    It’s a subtle but potent lie. Sanders, unlike Trump, has long been opposed to Britain leaving the European Union. How can Zakaria casually claim two opposing positions are “largely indistinguishable”? How could the editors at Washington Post allow such a blatant falsehood to reach print?

    And it’s not an inconsequential one, either. If Brexit wreaks the havoc on the UK economy many are predicting, Washington Post’s millions of readers thinking Sanders supported such a measure would go a long way toward damaging both his credibility and that of the broader progressive movement.

    The piece, of course, is not really about Sanders or Trump. It’s clear the framing is a gimmick to hook the reader into hearing Zakaria’s boilerplate cheerleading for “free trade” while continuing the long tradition of lazy pundits lumping Sanders and Trump into the same ideological space.

  • Brexit supporters one week on: ‘It is ridiculous there was no plan’

    Under the headline “Take a bow Britain”, the paper’s edition last Saturday celebrated “the day the quiet people of Britain rose up against an arrogant, out of touch elite”.

  • In Brexit Britain the elites will run amok

    A week on from the referendum that was going to take back democracy from the elites, and we still don’t know exactly who will be taking back democracy for us. But it will be one representative of the elites or another. At the moment, it looks like Michael Gove or Theresa May will be their political face. Unless someone else in the Tory party offers them a better deal between now and September.

  • ‘We are the 48%’: tens of thousands march in London for Europe

    The hollow, bitter wit of the banners and placards was a fair indication of who took to the streets of London, in their tens of thousands, on the March for Europe on Saturday, hastily scrambled on Facebook. “And if this isn’t big enough,” said Jonathan Shakhovskoy, who is with a marketing firm in the music industry, “we’ll do it again next week, and the week after. Normalise the mood, make it less ugly.”

    “Un-Fuck My Future”, “No Brex Please, We’re British”, they read. Pictures of Whitney Houston with “I Will Always Love EU”, “Europe Innit” and “I wanna be deep inside EU”. “All EU Need is Love”, “Fromage not Farage”, “Eton Mess” and, more seriously, “Science Needs EU”. “Hell no, we won’t go!” they shouted, rounding Piccadilly Circus.

    No one was fooling themselves that these were the penitent huddled masses from Ebbw Vale or Sunderland come to beg after all for EU funding; this was a vocal segment of the 48% for whom departure from the EU is a disgrace, a catastrophe or both.

  • Post EU Referendum Racism Documented Online And It’s Really Scary

  • Brexit research suggests 1.2 million Leave voters regret their choice in reversal that could change result

    Up to 7 per cent of the people who voted for a Brexit in the EU referendum now regret their choice, new research has found.

    When the survey’s findings are projected on to last week’s vote, they would cut the Leave share by 1.2 million, almost wiping out the majority that gave Friday’s shock result.

    Research by Opinium found that 3 per cent of those who voted Remain also regretted their choice and that British people are now divided on the priorities in the negotiations ahead.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • SABC censorship allegations serious – ANC

    The allegations of censorship at the SABC are very serious and should be investigated, the ANC said on Friday.

    There was no place in a constitutional democracy for censorship and the ANC expected the SABC to deal with the allegations in a way that upheld freedom of the press, spokesperson Zizi Kodwa said.

    He said an entire institution should not be made into a problem because of one individual – SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

  • Security researcher gets threats over Amazon review

    For the average Amazon shopper, reviews are just a casual part of the experience. You might pay attention to a pun-filled review by George Takei or spend half an hour laughing at the parody reviews for “Fresh Whole Rabbit,” but you probably don’t thoroughly examine every review before buying a product.

    But for sellers, reviews are no laughing matter. Amazon retailers sometimes go to extreme lengths to guarantee good reviews, as security developer Matthew Garrett recently discovered when he wrote a one-star review of an internet-connected electric socket. When Garrett politely pointed out that the socket in question was woefully insecure, he received emails from the manufacturer claiming that the review would get employees fired and that other reviewers were campaigning to get Garrett’s review taken down.

    The socket in question is the AuYou Wi-Fi Switch, a $30 device that lets you turn the power from a wall outlet on and off using your phone. It’s a nice way to turn your lights on and off if you don’t want to invest in smart bulbs, or to turn other plugged-in devices on and off. The AuYou Switch works whether or not you’re home — so you can switch your lights on in your apartment while you’re still in your office.

  • Thin-Skinned Chinese Govt. Declares Media War On Lady Gaga For Meeting With The Dalai Lama

    It’s pretty common knowledge at this point that the Chinese government spends a great deal of time and effort attempting to censor the internet at its own whim. And, while the walls of censorship erected are penetrable with enough effort, it still results in much of the population being unable to search out information that might be embarrassing to the Chinese government, such as references to the Tiananmen Square incident, for instance. But while examples like that can make some measure of sense to outside observers, even as they still decry the censorship, the fact is that the Chinese government’s application of this censorship has been managed so erratically and unpredictably that the result is everyone watches where they step for fear of a takedown.

    Which naturally brings us to Lady Gaga, whose meeting with the Dalai Lama recently resulted in the Chinese government attempting to wipe her off of the China-facing interwebz.

  • Lawmakers Question Colorado University President Over Censorship of Students and Professors

    At least two Colorado state lawmakers have contacted the University of Northern Colorado’s president, expressing concerns after reporting by Heat Street revealed that the Bias Response Team’s behavior had restricted free speech on campus over the past two semesters.

  • ‘It is freedom of expression that gave us this vocation’ – Thandeka Gqubule

    The SABC’s economics editor, Thandeka Gqubule, who was suspended last week for challenging a decision in an editorial meeting not to show footage of violence at protests, was among journalists who picketed outside the public broadcaster’s offices in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, this morning.

    She addressed the crowd in a touching speech, which was met with resounding nods of agreement and ululation.

    In her speech, she called on the “ancestors” of journalism such as Ruth First, Peter Magubane and Can Themba to be with them in spirit as they marched to the Constitutional Court to defend freedom of expression.

  • Scores join censorship protest at the SABC

  • Crimes against journalism stop today – suspended SABC journalists

  • ANC leaders break ranks on SABC censorship

  • Zizi Kodwa slams media, starts #SaveOurSABC

  • Sanef plans to meet with MPs to discuss concerns over SABC censorship

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Run, don’t walk, from China’s Big Brother law

    China’s National People’s Congress has drafted a second version of a controversial cybersecurity law. It would bring a great deal of censorship for both foreign and domestic citizens and businesses, whether they use the cloud or not.

    China is a wasteland for the modern internet. Websites like Facebook and Google are blocked. Moreover, web traffic is monitored and censored by the government. It’s Big Brother for real.

  • People Support Ethical Automated Cars That Prioritize The Lives Of Others — Unless They’re Riding In One

    This social dilemma sits at the root of designing and programming ethical autonomous machines. And while companies like Google are also weighing these considerations, if utilitarian regulations mean less profits and flat sales, it seems obvious which path the AV industry will prefer. That said, once you begin building smart cities where automation is embedded in every process from parking to routine delivery, would maximizing the safety of the greatest number of human lives take regulatory priority anyway? What would be the human cost in prioritizing one model over the other?

    Granted this is getting well ahead of ourselves. We’ll also have to figure out how to change traffic law enforcement for the automated age, have broader conversations about whether or not consumers have the right to tinker with the cars they own, and resolve our apparent inability to adhere to even basic security standards when designing such “smart” vehicles. These are all questions we have significantly less time to answer than most people think.

  • In Bill Ford’s Future, the Cars Talk to Each Other

    Bill Ford’s seen the future, and it’s crowded.

    The great-grandson of both Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, now executive chairman of Ford Motor Co., certainly knows his way around cars. What he doesn’t know is how they’re going to get around in an increasingly congested world.

    “Some of it’s just mathematics,” Ford says. “We’re going from 7 billion people on the planet today to 9 billion by mid-century. At the same time, people are increasingly moving into cities. We’re going to see many megacities with populations of 10 million or more, and gridlock will accompany that growth.”

  • Facebook-Dependent Content Farms Will Finally Die

    Facebook has made the drastic and controversial announcement that it will value content from friends over content generated by pages of media outlets and brands. Truthfully, it’s only controversial if you are a publisher of content meant to invade the feeds of regular people.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Here’s how police arrested Lauri Love – and what happened next

    Lauri Love was arrested on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 early in the evening of 25 October 2013, when a National Crime Agency officer wearing dungarees and posing as a UPS courier told Love’s mother that Lauri himself had to come to the porch to collect his delivery.

    In his dressing gown and pyjamas, Love confirmed his identity and was then informed of the ruse and handcuffed. Over the next five hours a total of 14 NCA officers attended the property wearing agency-branded windbreakers, which were easy visible to the neighbours.

    Six of these officers had been tasked with searching for digital media which are alleged to contain evidence that the 28-year-old had criminally accessed private sector, military and government computer systems in the United States.

  • North Georgia newspaper publisher jailed over open records request

    A North Georgia newspaper publisher was indicted on a felony charge and jailed overnight last week – for filing an open-records request.

    Fannin Focus publisher Mark Thomason, along with his attorney Russell Stookey, were arrested on Friday and charged with attempted identity fraud and identity fraud. Thomason was also accused of making a false statement in his records request.

  • Cop who drew gun on man filming him says man deserved it

    In May, we told you of a lawsuit involving a Rohnert Park, California, cop who looked ready to fire his handgun at a man who was filming him. Last year’s standoff happened right outside the resident’s house. Claiming civil rights violations, the alleged victim sued (PDF) the officer and police department that is located about an hour north of San Francisco.

    The police department and officer, David Rodriguez, have now responded to the lawsuit. They essentially say it was resident Don McComas’ fault from the get go and that McComas’ own actions outside his house prompted the officer to draw his weapon on the Rohnert Park man.

    “And for a third, separate and affirmative defense, these answering defendants allege that the sole proximate cause of the injuries and damages, if any, claimed by plaintiff was the negligence and fault of the plaintiff…,” they responded in court documents. (PDF)

    Besides that, police claimed the suit should be tossed because the officer held an “objectively reasonable belief that the safety of the life of the defendants and others were imminently threatened… ” The authorities said McComas wasn’t complying with repeated orders to take his hands “out of his pocket.” McComas eventually complied, and the situation escalated. The officer continued wielding his weapon, according to the video.

  • ‘We the Prisoners’: The Demise of the Fourth Amendment

    In a carceral state—a.k.a. a prison state or a police state—there is no Fourth Amendment to protect you from the overreaches, abuses, searches and probing eyes of government overlords.

    In a carceral state, there is no difference between the treatment meted out to a law-abiding citizen and a convicted felon: both are equally suspect and treated as criminals, without any of the special rights and privileges reserved for the governing elite.

• DRM

  • Encrypted Media Extensions and exit conditions

    In March, we reported on the contentious argument surrounding the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) framework developed by a working group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). At the time, there were several active protest efforts underway to dissuade the W3C from renewing the charter for the working group in question, since that renewal was slated to come up for a vote soon. Since then, although public activism has quieted down significantly, there have been several important developments.

    To recap, the EME framework defines a set of APIs for Content Decryption Modules (CDMs) that implement some form of authentication scheme used to enable or disable playback of audio or video elements. While there is a simple, plain-text CDM defined in the specification (and even though open-source CDMs have been developed), the ultimate goal of EME is to allow media-delivery companies like Netflix or Hulu to deploy proprietary, binary-only CDMs that implement a DRM scheme.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Ford Dealership Swipes Game Image For Ad, Thinks It’s Kosher Because It Came From A DMCA Compliant Site

      A brief review of the many, many posts we’ve done here about the DMCA and its notice and takedown platform will reveal to even the casual reader that the whole thing is rife with complications, abuse, and inconsistencies. It can be a difficult realm to navigate, but there are times when an entity’s claims of ignorance just don’t ring true.

      Which brings us to one independent Ford dealership that decided to simply yoink an image from a relatively new video game and use it to advertise automobiles.

    • Video game art swiped this week by Beijing hockey team, Ford dealership

      On Wednesday, news hit the wire that a video game’s indistinguishable logo and art style had been lifted without permission, all done to advertise a wholly unrelated product. Sadly, the news brought on a real case of deja vu. As in: wait, didn’t this just happen?

      As it turns out, it had. Two very similar stories unfolded within 48 hours of each other, and they each speak to a pair of modern copyright issues: the ease with which images can be lifted and reappropriated by a lazy design firm, and how easy it is for such copycats to be busted by the court of public opinion.

    • EU to tax links to news

      Germany and Spain introduced in their legislation what some people call a “Google tax”. The idea came from the publishers. They claimed the right to get an additional copyright, “ancillary copyright”, on any news that are published online. The idea of this “tax” (that is actually not a tax) was to charge the online news sites who publish news snippets, short extracts of news, such as Google News. Even if the main target of publishers was Google News, the laws affect other similar services, for example meneame in Spain. Ultimately it could even undermine the whole concept of links to information.

      The result of this “Google tax” was a complete failure: Google decided to close Google News in Spain, while in Germany everyone except Google ended up paying the “tax”. Now, even after these clear failures, the European Commission (EC) is determined to make this error a European one; it’s considering implementing the ancillary copyright everywhere in the European Union (EU) – and on an even bigger scale than in Spain and Germany.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• 16 Cool New Storage Products For Linux, Docker Environments

  CRN has brought together news from 16 storage companies from the two conferences to provide solution providers with new ideas about how to take advantage of the growing markets for Linux and Docker technologies. Turn the page and get started.

• July 2016 Issue of Linux Journal

• Desktop

  • “Secure Boot” Strikes [Ed: obviously trouble all along]

    Remember the fears rampant when “Secure Boot” appeared? M$ could prevent installation of GNU/Linux? Well, we were told that the user/owner of the PC could disable it and normal installation would ensue. Well, there’s a case in Mexico where a model from Lenovo wherein “Secure Boot” could not be disabled….

  • In Defense of Free Software: My Case Against Lenovo in Mexico

    This article gives the history of a purchase of a personal computer. In November 2014, I bought the Lenovo Yoga 2 for its operational functions, capacity and price. I intended to install GNU/Linux, a free and open source operating system which allows for users to run, study, redistribute and improve computer software so that the whole user community benefits.

  • Apparently desktop Linux marketshare has finally hit that elusive 2% mark [Ed: Net Applications is a Microsoft-connected entity, definitely not reliable]

• Server

  • Function as a Service for Docker

  • The Benefits of Adopting DevOps in Your Enterprise

  • Chef: Now we know DevOps, how to understand DevOps metrics

    Instead of starting a potentially very long, conceptual conversation about what DevOps means, it’s more effective to identify a small but non-trivial project or area of your business that would benefit from being able to develop and deploy software faster, at scale… and more easily.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux Security Summit 2016 Schedule Published

    The keynote speaker for this year’s event is Julia Lawall. Julia is a research scientist at Inria, the developer of Coccinelle, and the Linux Kernel coordinator for the Outreachy project.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Nvidia plugin makes GPU acceleration possible in Docker containers

      It’s a conundrum: You’ve got deep learning software, which benefits greatly from GPU acceleration, wrapped up in a Docker container and ready to go across thousands of nodes. But wait — apps in Docker containers can’t access the GPU because they’re, well, containerized.

      Well, now they can.

      Nvidia, developer of the CUDA standard for GPU-accelerated programming, is releasing a plugin for the Docker ecosystem that makes GPU-accelerated computing possible in containers. With the plugin, applications running in a Docker container get controlled access to the GPU on the underlying hardware via Docker’s own plug-in system.

• Applications

  • QBittorrent 3.3.5 Released – Install on Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint and Fedora

    qBittorent is a Bittorent client which is developed to provide free software alternative of utorrent. It’s a Cross platform torrent client which provides the same features on all the major platforms like Linux, Ubuntu, Mac OS X and Windows.

  • 7 Best File Comparison and Difference (Diff) Tools for Linux

    While writing program files or normal text files, programmers and writers sometimes want to know the difference between two files or two versions of the same file. When you compare two computer files on Linux, the difference between their contents is called a diff. This description was born out of a reference to the output of diff, the well known Unix command-line file comparison utility.

  • 14 Best IDEs for C++ Programming or Source Code Editors on Linux

    C++, an extension of well known C language, is an excellent, powerful and general purpose programming language that offers modern and generic programming features for developing large-scale applications ranging from video games, search engines, other computer software to operating systems.

  • Calibre 2.61.0 eBook Viewer and Converter Updates Driver for FNAC (BQ) eReaders

    Today, July 1, 2016, Calibre developer Kovid Goyal has been happy to announce the general availability of yet another maintenance release for his popular, open-source and cross-platform Calibre ebook library management software.

    Coming only one week after the debut of Calibre 2.60, the Calibre 2.61 maintenance update brings only two new features. These are an updated driver with new firmware to allow users to connect their FNAC (BQ) eReader devices, as well as support for automatic removal of all links from a missing resource (the option is available in the Check Book component under Edit Book).

  • Calamares 2.3 out now

    I’ve just released Calamares 2.3, a feature release with a major focus on disk encryption support (see full release announcement).

    Calamares is a distribution-agnostic system installer, with an advanced partitioning feature and support for third party branding and modules. It is used by several distributions, including Netrunner, Manjaro, Tanglu, OpenMandriva, KaOS, Chakra and many others.

  • Calamares 2.3 Installer Released

  • ANNOUNCE: libosinfo 0.3.1 released

    I am happy to announce a new release of libosinfo, version 0.3.1 is now available, signed with key DAF3 A6FD B26B 6291 2D0E 8E3F BE86 EBB4 1510 4FDF (4096R). All historical releases are available from the project download page.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Clearing the Keystone Environment

    • How to Install the Nextcloud Server on Ubuntu

    • Installing Arch Linux. Part 2

    • How To Setup Bridge (br0) Network on Ubuntu Linux 14.04 and 16.04 LTS

    • Embedded Linux using Dragonboard 410c

    • How To Get A Unity-Like HUD (Searchable Menu) In Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Linux Mint, More

    • How to un-deny a host blocked by denyhosts

    • How To Install The Latest Nvidia Drivers In Ubuntu Via PPA

    • How to Use Sagator, an Antivirus/Antispam Gateway, to Protect Your Mail Server

    • How to Securely and Anonymously Share Files of Any Size Over the Tor Network with OnionShare

    • How to Install Nginx with PHP and MySQL (LEMP Stack) on CentOS 7.2

    • High-Availability Storage with GlusterFS on CentOS 7 – Mirror across two storage servers

    • Setting Up an NFS Server and Client on CentOS 7.2

    • Slow SSD #2: Protection for your Partitions

    • Using ATA Over Ethernet (AoE) on CentOS 7 (Initiator and Target)

  • Games

    • SuperTuxKart 0.9.2 Officially Released

    • SuperTuxKart 0.9.2 Racing Game Is Out with New AI Support for Soccer Mode

      Today, July 1, 2016, after many months of hard work, the development team behind the SuperTuxKart open-source racing game has been more than happy to inform the Linux community about the availability of the final SuperTuxKart 0.9.2 release.

      In mid-June, SuperTuxKart 0.9.2 received a Release Candidate (RC) build, which gave users early access to the numerous goodies coming into the final release. Among these, there’s the new AI (Artificial Intelligence) support for the soccer mode, which now offers three arenas under the “Copa Antarctica” Antarctica Cup umbrella.

    • Pro Pinball Ultra now available on SteamOS & Linux

      Pinball is something Linux has been lacking in variety, so it’s pleasing we get another! Pro Pinball Ultra is now officially available on Linux & SteamOS.

    • Interested in interactive fiction? Then you should check this Choice of Games bundle on Steam

    • Major new version of the open source itch store application

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • CentOS 6.8 image with Qt5.7, Python 3.5, LLVM 3.8

      While trying to bring my setup to package KDevelop standalone for Linux into a shape where it has a nonzero probability of me picking it up again in half a year and actually understanding how to use it, I created a docker base image which I think might be useful to other people trying to package Linux software as well. It is based on CentOS 6.8 and includes Qt 5.7 (including QtWebKit), Python 3.5 and LLVM, all built against the old CentOS libs (and thus e.g. compatible with most glibc versions out there). If you want to use it, simply install docker, and

    • Marble Maps in KDE Randa Meetings 2016

      One more year of fun and intense productivity in Randa came to an end just a few days back, and I feel so good to have been a part of it. Much progress was made by the Marble team this year by Dennis, Torsten, Friedrich, David and me. I mostly worked on the Marble Maps Android app’s navigation feature, and would like to mention the changes here very briefly…

    • KStars on Windows – Midterm evaluation

      Midterm evaluation has passed and now it’s time for a new blog post! There are a couple of weeks from the last time I’ve talked about my progress with my Google Summer of Code project.

    • Kaffeine 2.0.4 Released, Includes Major Improvements for Digital TV

      Kaffeine version 2.0.4 has been released today, substantially improving its already excellent Digital TV (DTV) support!

    • GSoC -Breath and Review

      A couple weeks ago I went to Randa Meetings, a sprint of KDE, and there I did a lot of work in Umbrello.

    • Plasma 5.6.5 and Frameworks 5.23 available in Kubuntu 16.04 Backports

    • Remote searching [KRunner/Blade]

    • Kubuntu Dojo 2 – Kubuntu Ninjas

    • Kubuntu Podcast goes Open and Unplugged

      Podcast fans will know that we were struck down with lucky show thirteen. Google Hangouts crashed out twice, and we lost the live stream. We ended up half an hour late, with no Hangouts, and a hastily make-shift YouTube live stream hooked together in record time by the #awesome Ovidiu-florin Bogdan.

    • Hacking Kdenlive at Randa

      The Randa meetings 2016 just ended, and they were a big success for everyone involved (thanks to Mario and his team for organizing this).

      We went there with an aim to work on Kdenlive’s Windows port, and we managed to achieve more than 80% of the build process.

    • The Road of Trials

      In my last blog post I said that I would work on extending support for paint operations like ‘fill’. I have done so, albeit more as a necessity in fixing the assistant code. Moreover, I have fixed a number of other paint operations which are vital in painting the various assistants Krita offers currently.

    • Randa Meetings 2016 Part II: Marble

      The Randa Meetings 2016 were centered on bringing KDE technology on every device.

    • System Settings review

      we have also a design for some single KCM’s 80%. In plasma 5.7 you will see the new Desktop Theme module, but we also have some mockups for other KCM’s here you see the appearance KCM’s

    • State of the KF5 Android CI

      I would have liked to say, “Yeah the Android CI runs!” – But we are not there yet; pretty close actually, and close enough that it already makes sense to tell about it, yet a few last Jenkins settings remain to be done and real life issues cause this to take a few more days. So, I will give a short primer on what we prepared in Randa.

    • Mid-term post.

      My midterm evaluation target was to create a static histogram in Labplot with an option to add new histogram among the given types and set visible advanced settings.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Netspeed: GNOME Shell Extension to Monitor Network Speed

    • Media Player Indicator: GNOME Shell Extension

    • Proxy Switcher: GNOME Shell Extension

    • TopIcons Plus: GNOME Shell Extension

    • Sticky Notes View: GNOME Shell Extension

    • Appkeys: GNOME Shell Extension

    • Switch Keyboard Layout Easily in GNOME Shell

    • Dash To Dock: GNOME Shell Extension

    • GNOME Shell Pomodoro Utility

      Do you need to manage your work time with Pomodoro technique? Do you use GNOME Shell? Then GNOME Pomodoro by Kamil Prusko is the right utility program for you. Once installed, GNOME Pomodoro will act like an extension and be placed on the top panel so you can control it from GNOME Tweak Tool.

• Distributions

  • Reviews

    • User’s Review On Linux Lite 3.0 – Simple, Fast & Free Linux Desktop

      Linux Lite 3.0 is the recently released free operating system based on the Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) and hence you can be assured that you’ll get support for the next 5 years. Linux Lite 3.0 offers a complete out of the box experience and it is lightweight, easy and simple to install. One of the main aspects that is being lauded by experts and everyday Linux users is the compactness with which Linux Lite 3.0 has been released. This means you can install Linux Lite and start working with it in less than few minutes.

  • New Releases

    • 4MLinux 18.0 Distro Released with Support for LibreOffice 5.2, Thunderbird 45.1

      4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki has just informed Softpedia today, July 1, 2016, about the immediate availability for download of the final release of the 4MLinux 18.0 operating system.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • July 2016 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine released

      The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the July 2016 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community.

    • Mageia 6 Is Getting Closer to a Final Release, Could Ship with Linux Kernel 4.7

      The Mageia development team announced just a few moments ago that they’d released the first stabilization snapshot (sta1) of the upcoming Mageia 6 Linux operating system.

    • Mageia 6 “Sta1″ Release Ships, Finally Switches To GRUB2

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Suse Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2 beta adds security, SDN and NFV enhancements

      Linux specialist Suse has released a public beta of Suse Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2, an upcoming update for the platform that adds support in areas such as software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) plus system security enhancements.

      Available to download now, the public beta release of Suse Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2 enables customers to evaluate and give feedback on new capabilities in the update, which is slated for release around September.

    • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Weeks 2016/25 & 26

    • HackWeek XIV @SUSE: Thursday

  • Red Hat Family

    • NRI student at Carnegie Mellon wins Open Source Award from Red Hat

      An Indian origin student at Carnegie Mellon University has won the Open Source Award organised by Red Hat, along with the director of engineering at DropBox.

      Red Hat launched the “women in open source awards” last year to honour women who make important contributions to open source projects and communities, or those making innovative use of open source methods.

    • What’s New in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.2.5

      It’s been a busy few weeks for us on the Atomic Host team, and we’re excited to announce the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.2.5! This is a big one too. For those not familiar with our release cadence, we release a new version of Atomic Host every six weeks. This enables us to balance the reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with exciting new features and capabilities from our Project Atomic upstream community in a production ready, supportable manor.

    • Red Hat, Eurotech launch open source IoT cloud platform

      Red Hat and Eurotech announced the launch of a new, open source Eclipse Foundation project to manage IoT edge devices, from connectivity and configuration to application lifecycle. The co-sponsored project, Eclipse Kapua, combines with the existing Eclipse Kura project to offer IoT developers and end-users an open platform for IoT implementations.

    • 10 ground breaking things that happened at Red Hat Summit 2016

      List: Containers, analytics, and a wedding, who said conferences were boring?

    • CloudBees intros Red Hat DevOps for enterprises

      CloudBees has joined forces with Red Hat to offer integrations on its Jenkins Platform, allowing enterprises to build, test and deploy applications.

    • Containers, IoT and Hybrid Cloud Top Red Hat Summit Announcements

      Containers and IoT announcements topped the headlines from this week’s Red Hat Summit in San Francisco, which wrapped up Thursday. Here’s a look at the news highlights that Red Hat and its partners unveiled during the event.

    • Red Hat’s Massive Opportunity In Hybrid Cloud

      Red Hat Inc (NYSE: RHT) has raised its estimate regarding the total addressable market (TAM) for hybrid cloud to $69 million by F2019.

      Pacific Crest’s Ben McFadden maintains an Overweight rating on the company, with a price target of $88.

    • Jessica McKellar, Preeti Murthy win Red Hat’s Open Source Awards

    • Talk recap: The friendship of OpenStack and Ansible

      The 2016 Red Hat Summit is underway in San Francisco this week and I delivered a talk with Robyn Bergeron earlier today. Our talk, When flexibility met simplicity: The friendship of OpenStack and Ansible, explained how Ansible can reduce the complexity of OpenStack environments without sacrificing the flexibility that private clouds offer.

    • Red Hat Summit Advocates the Power of Participation

      Red Hat hosted its annual Red Hat Summit customer event June 28-30 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, with a theme of harnessing the power of participation. Once again, the DevNation developer event, which is the successor to JBoss World, was co-located with Red Hat Summit. For JBoss, 2016 is a particularly significant year as it marks 10 years since Red Hat acquired it. At DevNation, Red Hat announced the new JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) 7 release, providing new cloud-enhanced capabilities for Red Hat’s flagship middleware platform. JBoss is now also working to help enable Java for the container era, with the launch of the MicroProfile Project, an effort to optimize enterprise Java for a microservices architecture. Java wasn’t the only focus of DevNation this year either, as Microsoft took center stage too, announcing the availability of its .NET Core for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the Red Hat Summit and DevNation 2016 events.

    • How Red Hat is tailoring OpenStack to fit … everyone

      Even though there have been no major changes announced to the OpenStack platform of late, it was still one of the most talked about subjects at this year’s Red Hat Summit. Red Hat plays a significant role in the development of the platform and is very proud of its contribution to the community.

    • New technologies foster an open-source environment

      In 2007, when 3scale, Inc. was founded, some people thought it was crazy to be investing so much time and energy into API. But Steven Willmott, CEO of 3scale, Inc., said that even at that time his team knew that the future was API-driven, and they wanted to help that happen.

    • Finance

      • Analysts and Technical Insights on Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)

      • Active Stock to Observe: Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE:NLSN), Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Given “Hold” Rating at Jefferies Group

      • salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) from Application Software – Todays Top Gains

      • Red Hat Shares Still Attractively Valued, Says Deutsche

      • Citi Sees 24% Upside In Red Hat Shares

      • Key Stocks of the Day: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Fedora

      • Fresh DNF for RHEL 7 and CentOS 7

      • Fedora 24 Workstation Installation Steps with Screenshots

      • Setting Up Nginx with MariaDB and PHP/PHP-FPM on Fedora 24 Server and Workstation

      • Installation Guide of Fedora 24 Workstation with Screenshots

      • Setting Up LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB and PHP) on Fedora 24 Server

      • Installation Guide of Fedora 24 Server with Screenshots

      • 25 Things to Do After Fresh Fedora 24 Workstation Installation

  • Debian Family

    • My Free Software Activities in June 2016

    • Debian: Reproducible builds update

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • End of an era: Linux distributions will soon stop supporting 32-bit PCs

          AMD and Intel released the first 64-bit CPUs for consumers back in 2003 and 2004. Now, more than a decade later, Linux distributions are looking at winding down support for 32-bit hardware.

          Google already took this leap back in 2015, dumping 32-bit versions of Chrome for Linux.

        • Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak Alpha 1 Released

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Mint 18 Released, No GUI Please, Atomic Host 7.2.5

            Today in Linux news, the Red Hat announcements kept on coming including the release of Red Hat Atomic Host 7.2.5. Elsewhere, Mint 18 in Cinnamon and MATE flavors was announced by Clement Lefebvre as promised. Bryan Lunduke just finished up 10 days using only a Linux terminal saying it “was too painful” and Eric Grevstad said using Linux and LibreOffice will change your life.

          • Linux Mint 18 Brings Mint-Y Theme to Linux Deskto

            The Linux Mint 18 milestone release is the first major update for the popular desktop Linux distribution in 2016 and follows the Linux Mint 17.3 update that debuted in December 2015. Linux Mint 18 is based on the Ubuntu 16.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Linux distribution released April 21 and, like Ubuntu 16.04, Linux Mint 18 is being supported as an LTS, with support until the year 2021. As was the case with previous Linux Mint distribution updates, there are multiple desktop environment choices. Cinnamon 3.0, which is developed by Linux Mint and typically is the primary deployment choice for users, brings new window tiling capabilities and default effects for window transitions and actions. Additionally, Linux Mint 18 includes a new desktop theme option called Mint-Y that brings newly styled icons to users. In terms of new integrated applications, Linux Mint 18 includes the gufw application, a graphical interface for firewall configuration. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the Linux Mint 18.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Tibbo Technology’s Tibbo Project System

    Tibbo’s latest complement to TBS is a Linux-based Tibbo Project PCB (LTPP). The new LTPP3 board runs Tibbo’s own, highly polished and updated distribution of Linux and is based on the powerful Texas Instruments 1GHz Cortex-A8 Sitara CPU. What sets the LTPP3 apart from plain vanilla products, such as Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone, is its mechanical and electrical compatibility with Tibbo’s Tibbit blocks and size-3 Tibbo Project Box enclosures. Uses for the LTPP3 include running Embedded AggreGate, Node.js and TiOS applications, not to mention use as a generic Linux board.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • How to crack Android encryption on millions of smartphones

      • Android N is now ‘Android Nougat’

      • Nougat: Google’s new Android name divides opinion

      • Galaxy Zoo iPhone/iPad app

      • The state of mobile device security: Android vs. iOS

Free Software/Open Source

• Modern open source systems management

  Open source IT systems management is undergoing a renaissance. Adopters include global, household-name enterprises, as well as a groundswell of IT operations teams that are borrowing flexible, collaborative practices from the Agile software development movement.

  Some open source IT systems management tools are familiar to most admins, with broad adoption — think Nagios or the Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana stack. Others — Docker is a prime example — burst onto the scene recently and are shaking up IT deployments.

• Code Alliance connects nonprofits with tech volunteers

  Code Alliance is a Benetech initiative that connects technology professionals to volunteer opportunities with open source software projects for social good. On the first day of the CHI4GOOD conference, we brought over 40 projects to the San Jose Convention Center to participate in a hack4good Day of Service event.

  More than 100 developers, UX designers, and researchers came together to help our nonprofit cohort with their technological needs. The nonprofits benefitted from expert technical development work, and the volunteers were gracious, skilled, and excited to leverage their professional skills to give back.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Servo Night Builds Begin, Linux Packages Coming

      The Mozilla developers working on the Servo browser layout engine and the Browser.html HTML-based web UI have kept to their goal of making a tech preview available in June.

      As of last night, the Servo developers hit their tech preview milestone we’ve been looking forward to seeing for months. Nightly builds of Servo and Browser.html have begun and they are going to be making available Linux packages shortly.

• SaaS/Back End

  • Apache OODT Big Data Project, Used By NASA and Others, Moves Forward

    In recent coverage, we’ve taken note of the many projects that the Apache Software Foundation has been elevating to Top-Level Status. The organization incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, and has squarely turned its focus to Big Data and developer-focused tools in recent months. As Apache moves Big Data projects to Top-Level Status, they gain valuable community support and more. Just this week, we reported on Bahir moving to Top-Level Status. Bahir bolsters Big Data processing by serving as a home for existing connectors that initiated under Apache Spark, and provides additional extensions/plugins for other related distributed system, storage, and query execution systems.

  • Use Apache Spark? This tool can help you tap machine learning

  • H2O.ai Unveils Sparkling Water 2.0

  • H2O.ai releases Sparkling Water 2.0, GitHub provides access to open-source data, and EMEA developers concerned with cyber terrorism—SD Times news digest: July 1, 2016

  • H2O.ai Melds Machine Learning with Spark, Via Sparkling Water 2.0

    Now, H2O.ai has announced the availability of Sparkling Water 2.0. Sparkling Water 2.0 builds off the popularity of Sparkling Water, H2O.ai’s API for Apache Spark, with additional features and functionality. New features include the ability to interface with Apache Spark, Scala and MLlib via H2O.ai’s Flow UI, build ensembles using algorithms from both H2O and MLlib and give Spark users the power of H2O’s visual intelligence capabilities.

• Databases

  • There and Back Again: The MongoDB Cloud Story

    Before it was a database company, MongoDB was a cloud company. Founded in 2007 and originally known as 10gen, the company originally intended to build a Java cloud platform. After building a database it called MongoDB, the company realized that the infrastructure software it had built to support its product was more popular than the product itself, and the PaaS company pivoted to become a database company – eventually taking the obvious step of renaming itself to reflect its new purpose.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • eBay makes mobile browsing snappier by using open source AMP technology [Ed: "AMP is an open source framework," which isn't the same as Open Source]

  • eBay adopts Google’s AMP to speed up its mobile site

  • eBay is working with Google to load shopping pages faster

  • Are Sellers Ready for eBay’s Mobile AMP Project?

  • eBay leverages Google’s AMP for faster mobile shopping

  • Google brings Accelerated Mobile Pages to e-commerce with eBay partnership

  • eBay Tries AMP: Google Encourages All Web Sites To Try Out AMP

  • eBay Inc Turns To Alphabet Inc’s AMP To Improve Its Online Shopping Page

  • eBay launches AMP support for its mobile browsing experience

  • LinkedIn Open Sources Tech for Mobile, Big Data and Java [Ed: openwashing in Microsoft's propaganda network, 1105 Media, calls LinkedIn, proprietary software, “born-again open source evangelism.”]

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Nonprofit’s Open Source Designs Reduce Cost Barriers for Startups

    A project that originated in “The Middle of Nowhere, Missouri,” as the founders call it, aims to lower the barrier to entry across a number of industries, all while maintaining a sustainable footprint. It’s called Open Source Ecology (OSE), the brainchild of Marcin Jakubowski, founder of the Factor E Farm in Missouri where OSE is based.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • The Open Building Institute – A Sustainable Way to Build Modular Housing

    • Open Building Institute is revolutionizing sustainable home building through open-source technologies

• Programming/Development

  • Pulp Smash Introduction

    Pulp Smash is a functional test suite for Pulp. It’s used by the Pulp developers and Pulp QE team on a daily basis. It’s implemented as a GPL licensed pure Python library, and getting started is as simple as installing Python and executing the following…

  • How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

    Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Oracle has quietly pulled funding and development efforts away from a community-driven technology where customers and partners have invested time and code. It all seems to be happening for no reason other than the tech isn’t currently printing money.

    It’s a familiar pattern for open source projects that have become the property of Oracle. It started with OpenSolaris and continued with OpenOffice.org. And this time, it’s happening to Java—more specifically to Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE), the server-side Java technology that is part of hundreds of thousands of Internet and business applications. Java EE even plays an integral role for many apps that aren’t otherwise based on Java.

    For months as Oracle Corporation’s attorneys have battled Google in the courts over the use of Java interfaces in Android’s Davlik programming language, Oracle’s Java development efforts have slowed. And in the case of Java EE, they’ve come to a complete halt. The outright freeze has caused concerns among companies that contribute to the Java platform and among other members of the Java community—a population that includes some of Oracle’s biggest customers.

  • C++17: New Features Coming To 33-Year-Old Programming Language

    The C++17 standard is taking shape and adding new features to the vintage programming language. This major update aims to make C++ an easier language to work with and brings powerful technical specifications.

Leftovers

• Security

  • Friday’s security updates

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • UK farming left ‘in the dark’ after Brexit, says NSA

    British agriculture has been left “completely in the dark and rudderless” since voters went to the polls to make their voices heard on European Union membership, the National Sheep Association (NSA) has stressed.

    The organisation, which works to safeguard the interests of British sheep farmers, said there has been “nothing but political rhetoric and unanswered questions” since the British public voted to leave the European Union in last week’s referendum.

• Finance

  • Hollande says competition rules need ‘adapting’ under new post-Brexit priorities

    The UK’s decision to leave the European Union has galvanized its remaining members to look anew at where they want to go as a 27-nation bloc. Part of the new policy drive should involve “adapting” competition laws, French President Francois Hollande has said.

  • Spotify’s concerns over Apple Music are obvious but it’s just manufacturing an App Store antitrust issue

    I wish to clarify upfront that I’ve never done any work for Apple or Spotify. A more elaborate disclosure can be found at the end of this post. The perspective from which I am writing this post is that of an app developer who happens to have fought hard for fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) behavior by companies wielding monopoly power. And one of the two iOS apps I’ll launch later this year will come with two different types of subscription offerings, which users can even use in combination. So I do have a strong interest in this, but for now I can’t see any wrongdoing on Apple’s part.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Lewandowski Hire Makes Journalists Choose Between Defending Their Profession and Embracing Its Demise

    Faced with the destruction of journalistic values by the corrupting effects of the profit motive, journalists can either stand up for the principles that brought many of them into the career in the first place—or else identify with the corruption, telling themselves that they’re siding with the smart money even as it destroys the institutions that form the basis for their profession.

    Both reactions were on display in the wake of CNN‘s decision to hire recently fired Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The conservative New York Post (6/24/16) quoted an anonymous “TV insider” saying that “CNN is facing a near internal revolt over the Corey hiring,”with another unnamed source saying, “Everyone at CNN — and even people who used to work there — are pissed about Trump’s former campaign manager being hired on salary.”

  • BuzzFeed’s Obama Coverage Is 99 Percent Uncritical–and Borderline Creepy

    Since its launch as a scrappy clickbait site in 2006, BuzzFeed has grown to become one of the biggest names in online media and news, venturing into serious news coverage of politics and world events in attempt to add gravitas to a name typically associated with levity and listicles. While BuzzFeed has certainly done important work of late, on issues ranging from sex harassment to AIDS in Africa, when it comes to the most powerful person on earth, however—the president of the United States—its coverage is almost uniformly uncritical and often sycophantic.

  • There Will Be No Early General Election

    Labour and Tories were neck and neck on 32% in the Mail on Sunday Survation poll on 25 June, the day before the Blarites launched their coup against the “unelectable” Corbyn. Before Corbyn became leader, Labour were consistently between 7 and 12 points behind on Survation. That Corbyn has done so well in popular opinion and in elections, is remarkable considering the Blairites who dominate his own parliamentary labour party have been conspiring and briefing against him from day one.

    The coup “rationale” is based on two lies – that Labour was struggling in the polls, and that an early general election is imminent.

    Whoever becomes the new Tory Prime Minister, there is not going to be an early general election. No new Tory PM will throw away the 30 seat gain over Labour the Tories will get from the new Boundary Commission Review.

  • British Conservatives in Chaos Over Brexit, but Labour Party’s in No Position to Pounce

    Until Thursday, the political wrangling in Britain over how, or whether, to withdraw from the European Union — a move supported by a narrow majority of the voters in last week’s referendum, but opposed by 75 percent of the members of Parliament elected just last year — seemed likely to trigger a new general election.

    Although the ruling Conservative Party is not required to call an election until 2020, most political observers expected Prime Minister David Cameron to be replaced by the leader of the campaign for a British exit from the EU, Boris Johnson, who would then want a fresh mandate from the public.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Two Courts Throw Out Turkish President’s Bid To Obtain An Injunction Against German Media Boss

    Last month, Techdirt noted that the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had broadened his assault on free speech in Germany with even more ridiculous actions. As well as demanding that the German comedian Jan Böhmermann should be punished for an admittedly rather coarse satirical poem, Erdoğan went on to seek an injunction against the German media boss Mathias Döpfner for daring to say he laughed out loud when he read the ditty in question.

  • Censorship Awareness at Caritas Girls Secondary School

  • Rock Music, Censorship, and Zimbabwe’s War of Independence

    But Rhodesian authorities were well-acquainted with the song by then, and they banned it from state-controlled radio. But underground radio loved it, and according to Ebba, the “Watch Out” single was a big seller by heavy rock standards, estimating the record sold at least 15,000 copies despite the official blackout. Entrepreneurs prevailed despite government attempts to silence them.

  • SABC censorship: Are we going back to apartheid?

    Scores of editors, journalists and members of the public picketed outside the SABC headquarters in Auckland Park, Johannesburg on Friday.

    This following the suspension and disciplinary hearings of three journalists at the public broadcaster for speaking against editorial policy changes.

    Mostly dressed in black, protesters shouted “Down Hlaudi down” and “No to censorship”.

    Karima Brown, executive editor at Independent Media, called for COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng to step down.

  • #BlackFriday: Call to unite against censorship

    A clarion call to stand up against censorship as a means of protecting the South African democracy was made on Friday when journalists, communication officers, civil society, politicians, and members of the public braced the Cape Town cold and rain, standing in solidarity with suspended journalists and against muzzling of the media by the country’s public broadcaster, the SABC.

  • Pressure mounts on SABC to drop censorship

    The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) management has come up against opposition from the media industry and civil society for cracking down on journalists who speak up about censorship at the broadcaster.

    Demonstrations were today held outside SABC offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

  • South Africans march against censorship by SABC

    Scores of journalists and members of the public on Friday braved the winter chill to protest against the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) editorial policy of not covering violent protests.

    The South African National Editors Forum called on journalists to wear black to picket outside the SABC’s offices in support of journalists who were suspended from their jobs for disagreeing with the editorial policy.

  • WATCH: Journalists protest against SABC censorship [Ed: Scandal in a nutshell: fiery protests happen, SABC not only chooses not to cover them but also suspends those who wish to.]

  • #NotInOurName: Journalists protest against SABC censorship

  • ‘Hlaudism is not journalism’ – Pickets against censorship at the SABC

  • Africa Live: Protesters shut SA-Zimbabwe border, Nigeria DJ ‘breaks world record’

  • Cope slams ANC’s ‘mutists of Parliament’ for silence on SABC censorship

  • SABC ‘censorship’ protest gains momentum

  • Scores join censorship protest at the SABC

  • Citizens, media groups vow to keep protesting against SABC censorship

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Leak Reveals Secret FBI Guidelines That Basically Give Them Free Rein To Spy On Journalists And Sources

    Eleven months ago, we wrote about a lawsuit filed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation seeking to get a copy of the DOJ’s infamous new rules for spying on journalists. The new rules came about after it had come out that the DOJ had spied on Associated Press reporters as well as lied to a court to claim that Fox News reporter James Rosen was a co-conspirator in a leak investigation. To date, the DOJ has steadfastly refused to reveal the rules.

    Thankfully, someone has now leaked the rules, or at least the 2013 version of some of the rules, which show that, contrary to what then Attorney General Eric Holder had suggested, it’s still ridiculously easy for the FBI to spy on reporters and their sources in trying to hunt down a leak. In fact, it appears that these rules, around the use of NSLs are actually separate from the rules that Holder was talking about — meaning that there’s an entirely separate path for the DOJ to spy on journalists. The rules show that the FBI can just issue a National Security Letter (NSL), the mechanism that the FBI has been known to regularly abuse without consequence and which it’s trying to expand. The “process” by which the media is supposedly protected under these new rules is that if someone in the DOJ is seeking an NSL to get phone records of someone in the media, they need to get some permission from someone else in the DOJ first…

  • Michael Bloomberg Comes Down On The Wrong Side Of The Crypto Wars: Supports Backdooring Encryption

    This is perhaps not surprising, but still disappointing. Former NYC mayor and current billionaire media/tech company boss Michael Bloomberg has come down on the wrong side of the “going dark” encryption fight. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed (possible paywall link) he scolds tech execs for daring to side with Apple over the FBI and the Justice Department on the question of backdooring encryption. Bloomberg does not appear to actually understand the issues at play.

    [...]

    Note the false framing here. Bloomberg is setting up the argument that backdooring encryption for the sake of the FBI/DOJ is “good for national security and public safety.” He’s wrong. It’s not. It’s not even close. It actually puts many more people at risk, because the only way to backdoor encryption effectively is to break that encryption and put everyone who uses it at much more risk. Yes, it means that the FBI/NSA won’t be able to track some people, but it’s a very small number of people, and they have other ways to track them without undermining the security of everyone else.

  • IoT Already at Work in 65% of Enterprises

    A majority of enterprises, 65 percent in fact, have already incorporated Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into their environments, gathering data from sensors, equipment and other devices and using it for business purposes, according to 451 Research’s inaugural Voice of the Enterprise: Internet of Things report. The most common type of data collected is of the machine sensing type (71.5 percent), followed by environmental data (20 percent) and biological data from people and animals (8.5 percent).

  • 84% of IoT Data Comes From Data Center Equipment

    Even though they may not be familiar with the term “Internet of Things” (IoT), 65 percent of organizations are collecting data from equipment, devices, or other connected endpoints. And they’re using that data for business purposes, according to an IoT study conducted by 451 Research.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Reporter kicked out of Gatineau courtroom over dress

    A reporter says she was kicked out of the Gatineau courthouse because her skirt was too short and her shoulders were exposed.

    CTV Ottawa’s Annie Bergeron-Oliver says she was in court to cover a manslaughter case Thursday morning when a male police officer approached her and said she’d have to step out.

    “Of course, I’m confused. I don’t have my cell phone out. I’m not eating. I don’t think I’ve broken any rules,” she told CFRA’s Ottawa Now. “So he pulls me outside and says ‘I’m sorry. Your skirt is too short. ‘ ”

  • Illinois Court Says State’s Cyberstalking Law Is Unconstitutional

    One of several problems with hastily-enacted laws meant to deal with advances in technology is that they often skip a step or several when being written. In many cases, the step skipped is an important one: the consideration of intent. By crafting laws that cater to subjective views of a situation — whether it’s meant to address cyberbullying or other forms of online harassment — the laws blow past, sometimes intentionally, the requirement that there be malicious intent behind the targeted actions.

    This has led to courts striking down newly-enacted laws as unconstitutional because they have skipped this step. Without this requirement in place, the laws curb free speech by enacting new limits on First Amendment expression based almost solely on subjective reading of the allegedly “criminal” content.

  • Chatbot Helps Drivers Appeal Over $4 Million In Bogus Parking Tickets

    In what is likely a sign of the coming government-rent-seeking apocalypse, a 19-year-old Stanford student from the UK has created a bot that assists users in challenging parking tickets. The inevitable result of parking nearly anywhere can now be handled with something other than a) meekly paying the fine or b) throwing them away until a bench warrant is issued.

    While a variety of bots have been created to handle a variety of tasks, very few have handled them quite as well as Joshua Browder’s “robot lawyer” — which is certain to draw some attention from disgruntled government agencies who are seeing this revenue stream drying up.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Comcast Incorrectly Bills Customer $1,775, Tells Him To Figure It Out With His Bank

    At this point it’s pretty much a monthly event: Comcast does something stupid, then only bothers to correct the problem once the press gets involved. We then get a breathless explanation from Comcast about how this sort of thing is the exception instead of the norm, despite being able to set your watch to the dysfunction.

  • Dish Agrees To Make Ad-Skipping DVR Less Useful In Settlement With Comcast, NBC Universal

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Access To Medicines Resolution Adopted By UN Human Rights Council

    A resolution on access to medicines proposed by a number of developing countries was adopted today by the United Nations Human Rights Council, as well as a resolution on enhancing capacity-building in public health. This marks yet another United Nations fora in which developing countries seek to raise the issue of access to medicines, particularly with regard to high prices.

  • First DTSA decision entered, as new trade secrets cases roll in [Ed: Anti-whistleblower law already being put to use]

    The Northern District of California appears to be the first federal court to enter a written decision under the Defend Trade Secret Act.

  • Kanye West’s ‘Famous’ music video: publicity rights vs the First Amendment

    Kanye West’s music video for “Famous” has sparked outrage for portraying naked celebrities in bed, in the form of life-like wax figures. It is not simply the nudity, but the individuals portrayed, which has led to criticism; Rihanna is seen lying next to former boyfriend and abuser, Chris Brown, alleged serial rapist Bill Cosby is featured, as well as Taylor Swift, Anna Wintour and Amber Rose. Subsequent to the release of the video, Kanye tweeted, “Can somebody sue me already #I’llwait” but later deleted it.

  • Copyrights/Culture

    • Think Tank: The Library Of Congress Has Too Many Librarians, So We Should Reject New Nominee To Run It

      When you get quotes like that — especially on the record — for someone retiring from a longstanding job, you know things were bad. And Hayden appears by almost any measure to be perfect for the job. She’s run large libraries, showing that she has the knowledge and administrative skills to run the Library of Congress. She’s also got experience dealing with a variety of policy issues, including ones around surveillance and access to information. I’ve spoken to many people who either know or have worked with Hayden, and I can’t recall ever hearing such levels of praise about anyone.

      But, of course, some are unhappy about this. But with such a supremely qualified nominee, the attacks have been weird and getting weirder. We recently wrote about a laughable complaint that Hayden was “pro-obscenity” because she fought against mandatory porn filters on all computers in libraries. And now someone has pointed out a complaint from Hans von Spakovsky from the Heritage Foundation, claiming that Hayden is unqualified for the position… because she’s a librarian. Really.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Why I’m Unlikely to Ever Return Microsoft’s Love

  Every time I write an article criticizing the depth of Microsoft’s proclaimed love of Linux, as well as questioning the motive behind it, I receive return criticism, often from places I would’ve, in the past, least expected, such as from within the GNU/Linux community. In places like Slashdot, some open source subreddits, and even occasionally on FOSS Force, there are commenters who accuse me of letting the past blind me to the great work that Microsoft is now doing for Linux and open source.

• Not Love

  I had seen GNU/Linux once before in my life. At a previous school, the husband of one of the teachers installed it on a PC in my presence. He couldn’t get it working…. Still, I read that GNU/Linux did not crash. I needed that. I was willing to make the effort to download and install GNU/Linux if I could have only that. Our Internet connection was a few KB/s on dial-up… I spent two weekends and five evenings downloading an .iso CD-image with FileZilla or something on a Mac in the lab. I had never burned a CD before but tried once copying the file to the CD. That wouldn’t boot. I discovered CD imaging… So, on the second try, I had a CD that would boot on the machines. I first did one machine and it wouldn’t start X. Having never seen X before, this was a problem but it turned out all I needed was the scanning frequencies for the CRT in a configuration file. Google helped me find those for each of my five different kinds of monitors. Suddenly, the PCs were useful with GNU/Linux.

• Linux Under the Hood: Silence of the RAM

  Now that I see the events of the last week chronicled clearly in front of my very eyes, maybe the disparaging old junk man was right after all. I’m shameless enough to admit my own idiocy as long as it leads to learning from my mistakes. Maybe Linux isn’t rocket science, but installing RAM was sure beginning to feel like it.

• Check out our new issue plus win an ebook bundle!

• Desktop

  • 30 days in a terminal: Day 10 — The experiment is over

    When I set out to spend 30 days living entirely in a Linux terminal, I knew there was a distinct possibility I would fail utterly. I mean, 30 days? No GUI software? No Xorg? Just describing it sounds like torture.

    And torture it was. Mostly. Some moments, though, were pretty damned amazing. Not amazing enough to help me reach my 30-day goal, mind you. I fell short—only making it to day 10.

• Server

  • Permabit offers deduplication to Linux masses – almost

    Permabit has moved beyond OEMs, making the latest release of its dedupe technology available as a Linux software package so that ISVs, professional services folks and systems integrators in its Hybrid Cloud Professional Services partners programme can use it.

    Previously it was available to OEMs in Albireo (dedupe) and Virtual Data Optimizer or Virtual Data Optimizer, VDO (dedupe+compression+thin provisioning) form.

    VDO v6 is designed for the cloud service provider market, Permabit says, and the VDO for Hybrid Cloud package simplifies VDO installation and configuration in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) data centres.

  • What are Linux containers?

  • Does your company have a plan for adopting containers?

    Linux containers are definitely attracting a lot of attention as cloud-native alternatives to virtual machines for application isolation and deployment, but where does your company sit on the adoption spectrum?

    As organizations grapple with how best to make business decisions in the face of challenges from limited resources, both human and capital, and find the speed of competition rapidly advancing, they must look to not just new technologies but new paradigms in order to stay afloat. Many organizations are looking to Linux containers as a part of this solution.

  • Using nano-segmentation Apcera looks to bring cloud trust to Docker container deployment

    Highly secure trusted cloud platform provider Apcera, Inc. today announced the release of its own approach to securely managing Docker containers in production at scale. The product is an enterprise-ready orchestration framework called the Apcera Trusted Cloud Platform and it is designed to address today’s gaps in container deployment, management and scalability with an eye for trust and security.

  • Analyst Angle: NFV and cloud driving changes in core network licensing models

    As telecom operators move toward NFV, SDN and cloud architectures, licensing models will need to adapt to new deployment methods

  • DevOps done right: Five tips for implementing database infrastructures

    DevOps couldn’t be hotter. To cope with modern customer demands, applications need to be developed, tested and put into production swiftly. Industry experts have been preaching about DevOps for faster, more reliable software development. Gartner expects this development approach will go mainstream by the end of 2016.

  • How Linux and Open Source Are Powering Comcast’s Massive Infrastructure

    Comcast is a heavy user of Linux, and it touches everything: from back-end servers to customer facing devices like X1 products. Muehl said. “Comcast, like so many others, is a very Linux-heavy operating system company.”

    Comcast’s choice of Linux flavors is interesting. “Generally speaking, we’re more on the open-source side of those Linux distributions than the commercial side of those Linux distributions,” said Muehl. Comcast is using Ubuntu and CentOS.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Bad Voltage Episode 70 Has Been Released: Delicious Amorphous Tech Bubble

• Kernel Space

  • Tokyo: Automotive Linux Summit

    Engineers will gather in Tokyo July 13-14 for the annual Automotive Linux Summit, a conference where auto-industry stakeholders discuss the adoption of an open-source Linux-based platform for in-vehicle infotainment.

    The two-day summit brings together automotive systems engineers, Linux experts, developers and other players.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Google open sources SwiftShader, a library for high-performance graphics rendering on the CPU

    • Google Opens Up High-Performance Software Graphics Rasterizer

    • “Radeon Settings” GUI Control Panel May Be Open-Sourced For AMD Linux Users

    • Extra Steam Linux Gaming Benchmarks Of The AMD Radeon RX 480

    • New SteamOS Beta Bundles Interesting AMDGPU-PRO Driver

    • AMD Is Launching A New Beta Program For Their Drivers

    • AMDGPU-PRO 16.30 Released With RX 480 Support

    • AMD Radeon RX 480 On Linux

      After weeks of anticipation, AMD’s high-end Radeon RX 480 “Polaris” graphics card is officially launching today! This graphics card starts at just $199 USD (or $239 USD for the 8GB version) and has day-one Linux support! There’s available open-source driver support as well as an AMDGPU-PRO update that’s expected today for those wanting to make use of this newer hybrid Linux driver stack. I’ve been testing the Radeon RX 480 under Linux the past week under both driver stacks and have my initial results to share this morning.

    • Check out this AMD video talking about Vulkan (and DirectX12)

    • AMDGPU-PRO Driver 16.30 Officially Released with Support for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

      Today, June 29, 2016, AMD released the final version of the AMDGPU-Pro 16.30 graphics driver for GNU/Linux operating systems, bringing support for new technologies like the Vulkan API.

    • Radeon RX 480: RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. AMDGPU-PRO – Interesting CPU/Power Difference

    • For Those Interested In GPGPU Compute, Here Are Many Radeon RX 480 OpenCL Tests

    • AMD Posts Sign-Up For Radeon Software Beta Testing

    • Compare Your Linux System’s OpenGL Performance Side-By-Side With The Radeon RX 480

  • Benchmarks

    • The OpenGL Speed & Performance-Per-Watt From The Radeon RX 480 To Radeon HD 4850/4870

      With the Radeon RX 480 Linux review now being out of the way and our various other RX 480 Linux benchmarks, the latest results I have to share with being a benchmarking fanatic are RX 480 results with high-end AMD GPU tests of each generation going back to the Radeon HD 4850/4870 (RV770) days. This article has high-end GPUs from the RX 480 to RX 200, HD 7900, HD 6900, HD 6800, HD 5800, and HD 4800 series compared side-by-side with the latest open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver code. Not only is the raw performance being looked at but the system power consumption was also being polled in real-time for looking at the performance-per-Watt too. For any other benchmarking fanatics curious about the Radeon GPU evolution over the past eight years (RV770 launch in 2008), here are the numbers to enjoy.

• Applications

  • Pitivi 0.96 — Cogito Ergo Proxy

  • Pitivi 0.96 Released With Proxy Editing Support

    In addition to proxy editing, Pitivi 0.96 also has timeline changes, transformation box, setting changes, user interface improvements, the start of allowing custom keyboard shortcuts, and support for Flatpak packages.

  • Calamares 2.3 Universal Linux OS Installer Released with Full-Disk Encryption

    Today, June 30, 2016, the Calamares team was proud to announce the final release and immediate availability for download of the Calamares 2.3 distribution-independent system installer.

    Calamares is currently being used in numerous popular operating systems, including, but not limited to, KaOS, Apricity OS, Chakra GNU/Linux, Netrunner, Sabayon, and OpenMandriva. It is the universal installer framework that many GNU/Linux distributions should adopt as it’s now one of the most advanced system installers.

  • etcd3: A new etcd

    Over the past few months, CoreOS has been diligently finalizing the etcd3 API beta, testing the system and working with users to make etcd even better. Today etcd v3.0.0, the distributed key value store developed by CoreOS, is available.

    In practice, etcd3 is already integrated into a large-scale distributed system, Kubernetes, and we have implemented distributed coordination primitives including distributed locks, elections, and software transactional memory, to ensure the etcd3 API is flexible enough to support a variety of applications. Today we’re proud to announce that etcd3 is ready for general use.

  • Zend Framework 3 Released!

    After 17 months of effort, hundreds of releases, tens of thousands of commits by hundreds of contributors, and millions of installs, we’re pleased to announce the immediate availability of Zend Framework 3.

  • ANNOUNCE: virt-viewer 4.0 release

  • Virt-Manager’s Virrt-Viewer 4.0 Released

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • 5 SSH Hardening Tips

    • Make Peace With Your Processes: Part 5

    • How to Install VLC 3.0 Nightly on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

    • Fifth week at GSoC: push information from the daemon!

    • Fast Tracing with GDB

    • Pretty Print directory of .json files

    • Blender and Flatpak

    • Linux Lexicon: Working With Directories In Linux

    • Tutorial on Signal Processing in Linux with Octave

    • Create Your Own “Neural Paintings” using Deep Learning

    • Install Avactis Shopping Cart on a CentOS 7 VPS

    • Install Nagios core 4.1.1 on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) Server

    • Client-Side Performance

  • Games

    • Oxenfree, an adventure game with supernatural elements, available on Linux

      This well-received indie title has been ported over to Linux. Combining plenty of elements of 80s teen movies and packaging them in a polished adventure, Oxenfree may be worth checking out if you’re a fan of adventure games.

    • Space station management game, The Spatials: Galactology, is confirmed to be coming for Linux

      This is an expanded and reimagined version of the management sim, The Spatials. It’s yet to be released but the developers have confirmed that a Linux version is in the works.

    • Crush Your Enemies looks like a fun and simple RTS coming to Linux this July

      Crush Your Enemies from Vile Monarch and Gambitious Digital Entertainment looks like a pretty fun little RTS game and it’s coming to Linux on July 13th.

      You can pre-order it right now on Games Republic (this supports us a little), or directly from Steam if you prefer. Which will give you a Steam key at release.

    • Some essential mods to try in XCOM 2 that don’t break the balance or change gameplay

      I love XCOM 2, it’s probably my favourite strategy game right now. The problem is, it’s still a bit of a buggy mess, a lovable mess mind you.

      I’ve played 47 49 hours of the game, and I do feel like certain aspects of it are lacking. I will keep searching for you, but here’s some quick picks. There’s thousands of modifications available for XCOM 2, so even these took a while of sifting through junk.

    • ZED by Eagre Games reaches the funding goal, developer thanks GOL and the Linux community

      I’m never one to shy away from patting my fellow Linux users on the back, so here it is *pats*. Thanks to the Linux gaming community and our own contributor BTRE, ZED by Eagre Games has passed the funding goal on Kickstarter.

      They now need less than $2,000 to hit their first stretch-goal, so hopefully they will hit that as it sounds like it will be a very nice thing to have.

    • Nightdive Studios aren’t sure when the Linux version of the System Shock remake will be available

      I shot off a message to Nightdive Studios about their Linux plans for System Shock since Linux is a stretch goal. The reply doesn’t fill me with confidence to pledge right now.

      My question: “About the Linux stretch goal, is that for a Linux version after the initial Windows release or for a same-day Linux release?”

    • silence about ‘The Silent Age’, a point-and-click adventure for which a Linux port was promised

    • imprint-X from Morgondag is now on Kickstarter, a causal puzzle game set on an Asteroid Base

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Enlightenment DR 0.21.0 Release

  • Enlightenment 0.21 Released With Its Much Better Wayland Support

    Another Enlightenment release, another round of significant Wayland improvements.

  • Enlightenment 0.21.0 Desktop Environment Released with Better Wayland Support

    Today, June 30, 2016, Mike Blumenkrantz from the Enlightenment project has had the great pleasure of announcing the final release of the Enlightenment DR 0.21.0 desktop environment.

    Enlightenment is a free window manager/desktop environment distributed under an open source license for all and any GNU/Linux operating system that wants to either adopt it as the default user interface or include it in the software repositories.

    The main goal of the Enlightenment desktop environment is to be as lightweight as possible, but at the same time beautiful, and last but not least, provide users with the latest, cutting-edge technologies.

• Distributions

  • Reviews

    • [Corrected URL:] Hands on with KaOS Linux: Not just another derivative distro

      If you are interested in a small Linux distribution which is a bit out of the mainstream, KaOS Linux could be just the ticket for you. It is independently developed, not derived from any of the larger Linux distributions, and it is absolutely focused on the KDE desktop. Just those two things really set it apart — not just YAUD (Yet Another Ubuntu Derivative), and not available in a variety of desktops.

  • New Releases

    • Peppermint 7 Released

      Peppermint 7 launched a few days ago. Peppermint is a lightweight Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with an emphasis on speed and simplicity. Although the name is similar to Linux Mint, the projects aren’t directly related. Peppermint originally was envisioned as a “spicier” alternative to Mint—whatever that means!

      Many distros come with a wide assortment of feature-rich applications, and that’s great for power users who need those apps. But older machines can struggle to cope with those demanding distros. Peppermint solves the problem by offering a carefully curated suite of web apps that perform tasks traditionally handled by native apps. It’s an approach that will be familiar to any Chromebook users reading this article.

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2 to Ship with GNOME 3.20, Public Beta Out Now

      Today, June 30, 2016, SUSE has had the great pleasure of announcing the availabilty of a public beta release of its upcoming, commercial SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2 operating system.

    • openSUSE.Asia Summit 2016 | Logo competition announced

      Preparations for the openSUSE.Asia Summit is rolling. Following tradition, we are back with the logo contest. We are looking for a logo reflecting openSUSE and its community in Asia. The contest is open now and ends on 3 August 2016. “Geeko Mystery Box” will be sent as an appreciation for the best logo designed.

    • openSUSE.Asia Summit | Call for Sponsorships is open

    • HackWeek XIV @SUSE: Wednesday

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Summit showcases how to organize chaos

    • Big Value From Software-Defined Storage Requires New Skills

    • Enterprise Application Platform 7: Java is here to stay

    • Linux Cloud Storage Advances

    • What 3 things do customers looks for in a product?

    • Red Hat Insights Brings Predictive Analytics to Containers, OpenStack and Virtualized Infrastructure

    • Red Hat improves container support with enterprise platform upgrade

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux ‘getting in the way’ and needs to evolve, says product director

    • Jim Whitehurst: The power of participation

    • Red Hat Unleashes the Power of Linux Containers with Industry’s Broadest Solution Set

    • Red Hat Delivers Container Security Scanning with RHEL

    • RHEL 8 promises relief from dependency hell, more integration

      Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is hitting maturity as a server OS with widespread enterprise adoption, so RHEL 8 updates should focus on security and stability, and integration with various tools.

    • Compliance and security number one topic at C-level

    • Amadeus floating high on cloud nine

    • Red Hat in container lead; making money, analysts say

    • Containers and open source: How Red Hat is winning the market over

    • Red Hat Enlarges OpenShift Container Management

    • Red Hat and Microsoft partner to reduce development hassles

    • Red Hat’s monitoring service can now peer inside your containers

    • Red Hat Summit Hosts a Wedding – for Real.

    • $13 billion Red Hat threw a wedding on stage at its big conference — with the CEO as ring bearer

    • The power of open-source development

      As Paul Cormier, EVP of Engineering and president of Products and Technologies at Red Hat, Inc., led the keynote address on Day Two of Red Hat Summit 2016 at Moscone N & W in San Francisco, he began by looking back over the early days of the summit. Cormier looked back at the vision and the evolution of open source and said he was amazed at what has happened over the past 12 years and at how IT is evolving.

    • Unrequited Microsoft, Red Hat in the Way, LinDoz

      Christine Hall penned an opt-ed today saying that she remembers Microsoft’s dirty tactics, tactics they still employ while professing love for Linux. The media can fawn all they want, but Hall will never trust them. Elsewhere, Jack Germain said LinDoz is a “smooth Windows-Cinnamon blend” and Jamie Watson had nice things to say about KaOS 2016.06. Mint 18 Cinnamon and MATE editions are planned for this week and Red Hat said “RHEL is getting in the way.”

    • How to respond to direct, harsh criticism at work

      Open organization culture emphasizes the giving and receiving of direct feedback, often in public channels, and, frequently, in ways that feel less diplomatic than you might expect. I’ve coached a many new Red Hat associates through their initial experiences with this phenomenon, which can be uncomfortable. Normally, the harsh-sounding feedback is focused on the work at hand, the outcomes that work seeks to achieve, or the impact that a decision had on somebody.

    • Red Hat touts Linux experience as container differentiator

      With containers built on Linux, Red Hat believes vendors touting products in this space can do so effectively only when they have the ability to fully support a commercial Linux distribution.

    • $13 billion Red Hat threw a wedding onstage at its big conference — with the CEO as ring bearer (RHAT)

    • Midokura Achieves Certification With Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 8

    • Red Hat CEO is making history of his own

    • Cloud, containers, and analytics in focus for Red Hat enterprise play

    • Red Hat ramps up container and hybrid cloud support at Summit event

    • Red Hat Announces 2016 Women in Open Source Award Winners

    • OpenShift diversified: How Red Hat has tailored its platform for everyone | #RHSummit

    • Three open-source partners and a wedding: A groundbreaking keynote at Red Hat Summit | #RHSummit

    • Developers getting more out of Red Hat between containers and .NET Core 1.0 | #RHSummit

    • Innovative ‘Women in Open Source’ recognized at Red Hat Summit | #RHSummit

    • From space exploration to technology innovation at Red Hat Summit | #RHSummit

    • Red Hat Insights predictive analytics tool gets updates for managing risks, containers and private cloud

      Red Hat unveiled its latest version of Red Hat Insights Wednesday at the company’s annual summit. Here’s what you need to know about the new features and how it works.

    • Red Hat and Eurotech Launch End-to-End, Fully Open Source IoT Cloud Platform Project

      Co-sponsored Eclipse Kapua project based on Eurotech Everyware Cloud software and driven by Red Hat’s open source expertise and leadership

    • Container networking closing the gap on virtualization

      In order to be a great application developer, do you need to understand the stacks and orchestration? David Ward, CTO of Engineering and chief architect at Cisco Systems, Inc., argued that is not the goal. The underlying infrastructure is very complex, and if exposed to too much of it, an application developer may not write applications. Exposing that infrastructure is not the goal at Cisco Systems.

    • Community engagement key to open-source projects

    • Scientific Linux 6.8 to Be Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8, RC1 Is Out Now

      Today, June 30, 2016, Connie Sieh from the Scientific Linux development team has had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the first Release Candidate (RC) of the upcoming Scientific Linux 6.8 operating system.

    • Keynote at US tech summit ends with onstage wedding

    • A Red Hat wedding

      On the second day of the Red Hat Summit this week, attendees found themselves invited to a wedding during one of the general sessions.

      The groom was Matt Hargrave, a Red Hat client from Texas, and, it probably goes without saying, a huge fan of the company. The bride was Shannon Montague, a sign language interpreter.

    • Oh, Red Hat. Contain yourself and your ‘new innovations’ talk

      Red Hat is going full tilt after bringing containers and traditional Linux apps together under its management with a raft of announcements.

    • Red Hat drives home need for cultural change to keep up with pace of innovation

    • Keeping customers involved in design and activity | #RHSummit

    • Containers swiftly becoming the de facto route to storage | #RHSummit

    • Red Hat showing solid growth; poised for more, analysts say | #RHSummit

    • Closing the gap to outer space with open source | #RHSummit

    • From space exploration to cloud innovation at Red Hat Summit | #RHSummit

    • Merging the ‘right stuff’ in IoT software | #RHSummit

    • Three open-source partners and a wedding: A groundbreaking keynote at Red Hat Summit

    • Application Software Under Review — Oracle, Red Hat, Marketo, and Paycom Software

    • Red Hat Cloud Business Seen Hot Topic At Investor Day

    • Red Hat CloudForms Expands Public Cloud Management with Google Cloud Platform, Improves Microsoft Azure Capabilities, and Adds Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Support

    • Red Hat Storage VP sees different uses for Ceph, Gluster

      Red Hat Storage showed off updates to its Ceph and Gluster software and laid out its strategy for working with containers at this week’s Red Hat Summit in San Francisco.

    • Finance

      • Application Software: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Position of the day

        Outlined as the total market value of all unsettled shares of the company, the current market cap for the Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Application Software is valued at 12701.65. The dominant statistics will authorize the investment community to govern the size of Red Hat, Inc. compared to the sales or total assets figures. Consequently, investors will be able to grasp the rudimentary determinant of asset distribution and all kinds of risk-return parameters for stocks together with the stock mutual funds. Nevertheless, it is a common misunderstanding that a greater share price directs towards a larger company where stock price might also twist the definite worth of the organization.

      • Revenue Update on Red Hat Inc(NYSE:RHT)

      • Shares of Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) Sees Large Outflow of Money

      • Right Management Consultants Inc’s (NYSE:RHT) Sentiment is 1.09

      • Notable Runners: Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Red Hat Summit 2017 Dates Announced

      • Analyst Rating Update on Red Hat (RHT)

      • Sentiment Report: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)

      • Red Hat Insights Brings Predictive Analytics To Containers, OpenStack And Virtualized Infrastructure

      • Red Hat, Inc. Stock Momentum Hits Weakness

      • Analyst’s Rated Stocks: EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) , Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Short Term Price Target on Red Hat (RHT)

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 24 Debuts in Workstation, Cloud and Server Editions

      • What makes up the Fedora kernel?

        Every Fedora system runs a kernel. Many pieces of code come together to make this a reality.

        Each release of the Fedora kernel starts with a baseline release from the upstream community. This is often called a ‘vanilla’ kernel. The upstream kernel is the standard. The goal is to have as much code upstream as possible. This makes it easier for bug fixes and API updates to happen as well as having more people review the code. In an ideal world, Fedora would be able to to take the kernel straight from kernel.org and send that out to all users.

      • Fedora Ambassadors: Communicating about Design

        This week is busy and continues to keep the pace of previous weeks. A lot has happened this week in the Fedora Project and I’ve taken on a few new tasks too. In addition to existing work on Google Summer of Code, Community Operations, Marketing, and more, I wanted to take some time this week to focus on CommOps Ticket #71. This ticket originally focused on improving accessibility of design resources for Fedora Ambassadors. However, after an interesting conversation with Máirín Duffy on the Design Team workflow, I discovered the availability was not the main issue. Instead, it seemed like communicating was an area needing focus.

      • Investigating Python

        I have been trying to implement private projects on Pagure, while doing that I was struggling with certain design of a function and while doing that I constantly have to switch between shell, editor and at times browser.

      • When is a kernel bug not a kernel bug?

        Think of this scenario: You’re sitting at your shiny Fedora install and notice a kernel update is available. You get all excited, update it through dnf or Gnome Software, or whatever you use, reboot and then things stop working. “STUPID KERNEL UPDATE WHY DID YOU BREAK MY MACHINE” you might say. Clearly it’s at fault, so you dutifully file a bug against the kernel (you do that instead of just complaining, right?). Then you get told it isn’t a kernel problem, and you probably think the developers are crazy. How can a kernel update that doesn’t work NOT be a kernel problem?

      • Notes on PXE booting with Fedora

        The typical method of installing Fedora on a desktop distribution is via some physical media (CD/DVD once upon a time, USB sticks these days). Fedora also supports PXE boot installation. I ended up doing a PXE install for some recent hardware that was shipped to me as that was the best supported method. The Fedora instructions are good but I still ran into a few hiccups. These are my notes which might be useful for others (or be wrong, YMMV). This was also a UEFI only setup.

      • UEFI virt roms now in official Fedora repos

        Kamil got to it first, but just a note that UEFI roms for x86 and aarch64 virt are now shipped in the standard Fedora repos, where previously the recommended place to grab them was an external nightly repo. Kamil has updated the UEFI+QEMU wiki page to reflect this change.

      • Fedora Design Suite considered “best of the basics”

        Do-it-yourself site MakeUseOf recently highlighted Fedora Design Suite from their article “6 Linux Distros Designed for Artists, Musicians and Editors“. They also called the Fedora Design Suite as the “best of the basics”.

      • Fedora 22: End Of Life, 2016 July 19

        With the recent release of Fedora 24, Fedora 22 will officially enter End Of Life (EOL) status on July 19th, 2016. After July 19th, all packages in the Fedora 22 repositories will no longer receive security, bugfix, or enhancement updates, and no new packages will be added to the Fedora 22 collection.

  • Debian Family

    • Free software activities in June 2016

    • RMarkdown and Metropolis/Mtheme

      Nick Tierney asked on Twitter about rmarkdown and metropolis about whether folks had used RMarkdown-driven LaTeX Beamer presentations. And the answer is a firm hell yeah. I have been using mtheme (and/or a local variant I called ‘m2′) as well as the newer (renamed) release mtheme for the last year or two for all my RMarkdown-based presentations as you can see from my presentations page.

    • DebCamp16 day 6

      Redirect one person contacting the Debian sysadmin and web teams to Debian user support. Review wiki RecentChanges. Usual spam reporting.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Canonical Releases Snapcraft 2.12 Snaps Creator with New Parts Ecosystem, More

          Today, June 29, 2016, Canonical has had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the highly anticipated Snapcraft 2.12 Snappy creator tool for the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

        • Is Canonical the Victim of High Expectations?

          When Ubuntu was new, those who questioned it were mostly Debian developers, disgruntled because they were not hired or because Ubuntu failed to acknowledge its debt to Debian. Today, however, a vocal minority seems to view Canonical Software, the company behind Ubuntu, as a Microsoft in the making. From being the uncritical darling of open source, Canonical is closely and cynically scrutinized, and its motives constantly questioned.

          So how did this transformation happen? Suspicion about corporations is hardly new in open source, yet Canonical seems singled out in a way that SUSE or Red Hat only occasionally are.

        • Don’t want to pay for Windows 10? Try Ubuntu – the free operating system

          In the ever-changing world of high-tech gadgets and gizmos, a whole load of jargon is thrown our way that many of us don’t necessarily understand.

          In our regular series What is… we tackle a tech term or object and explain what it means so you can understand it a bit more.

          Here we explain Ubuntu, an alternative operating system that works across PC, tablet and more.

        • Canonical 32-bit PC Support Being Dropped for Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Snap Packages Can Now Run on Any Linux Distro

        • Exclusive: Meizu MX6 Ubuntu Edition Promo Images Surface

          Meizu had introduced three new smartphones back in April, the Meizu M3, M3 Note and the PRO 6 flagship. This China-based company is expected to introduce a couple of more devices this year, and the Meizu MX6 handset seems to be the next in line. Its predecessor was announced back in July 2015, and it sported a really compelling spec sheet, while it wasn’t that expensive at all. The Meizu MX5 shipped with a 5.5-inch fullHD display, 3GB of RAM and the Helio X10 64-bit octa-core processor, which was MediaTek’s flagship processor back then. The MX5 also came with a full metal body, and its 20.7-megapixel rear-facing camera was also quite capable.

        • New Ubuntu-Powered Meizu Smartphone Codenamed ‘Midori’ is in the Works

          There are reports that Meizu’s upcoming smartphone codenamed “Midori” will run on a new edition of Ubuntu.

        • Meizu MX6 Spy Shot Leaked Along With Specs and Price

          It has been a couple of months since the Meizu PRO 6 was announced, and the phone has got its fair share of popularity. Meanwhile, the Chinese manufacturer is believed to be working on the next MX flagship, the Meizu MX6. Today, we have spotted a new spyshot of the phone along with its specs and price have surfaced online on Chinese site Weibo.

        • Ubuntu 16.10 Alpha 1 Is Out for Opt-in Flavors, Final Release to Land October 13

          Believe it or not, the development cycle of the next Ubuntu release has started, and a first Alpha build is now officially released, today, June 30, 2016, as expected based on the release schedule for Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak).

        • Logic Supply Is Giving Away a CL100 Ubuntu-Powered Mini-PC, Here’s How to Win

          Logic Supply informs Softpedia about a new contest they’ve put together to promote their fanless and ventless industrial PCs, and they’re giving away one of the new CL100 ultra-compact mini-PCs powered by Ubuntu Linux.

        • Got Dust? Logic Supply Launches Dirtiest PC Contest with #GoFanless Campaign

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Alpha 1 Arrives with MATE 1.14 Built Entirely Against GTK 3.18

          • Lubuntu 16.10 Alpha 1 Officially Released with LXDE and Linux Kernel 4.4 LTS

          • Ubuntu Kylin 16.04 Alpha 1 Now Available for Chinese Users with Linux Kernel 4.4

          • Cinnamon 3.2 Desktop Environment to Adopt New Menu Layout, Add Many Improvements

          • Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” Cinnamon and MATE Editions Officially Released

          • Linux Mint 18 KDE & Xfce Editions to Land in July, Along with 17.3 Upgrade Path

          • Linux Mint 18 Final First Look

          • Linux Mint 18.1 to Come with Cinnamon 3.2 & MATE 1.16, Flatpak and Snap Support

          • Linux Mint 18 MATE & Cinnamon Editions Released

          • Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” Cinnamon released!

          • MeX Operating System Brings Cinnamon 3.0 & Linux Kernel 4.6 to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

            Today, June 30, 2016, Arne Exton has released a new build of his MeX GNU/Linux distribution, based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.

            Shipping with the Cinnamon 3.0.5 desktop environment (Cinnamon 3.0.6 is now the latest version available) and borrowing some of the technologies from the Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” repositories, MeX Build 160630 is now available for download powered by the Linux 4.6 kernel.

          • Review: Linux Mint 18 (Sarah)

            If you were looking to jump the Ubuntu ship completely, then we recommend taking a look at our recent Review of Fedora 24. It’s equally as good as Mint 18 and equally worthy of your consideration.

            Between Linux Mint 18 and Fedora 24, we reckon it’s exciting times in the Linux world. With the exception and onset of the boring world of vanilla Ubuntu releases, Linux feels reinvigorated and fresh once again. Jump on board, because it can only get better from here.

          • Linux Mint 18 Screenshot Tour

          • Declare independence from Windows 10 by downloading Linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah’ now!

            As we approach the Fourth of July weekend, I begin thinking about independence. I am very proud of my forefathers for defeating the British — our now-ally — and creating our great nation, the USA.

          • Monthly News – June 2016

            The Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint 18 will be announced this week. They successfully passed QA (quality testing) yesterday and they’re on their way towards a stable release.

          • Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” MATE released!

            The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” MATE Edition.

• Devices/Embedded

  • RPi 3 add-on loads up on sensors, wireless radios

    Matrix Labs’s FPGA-driven “Matrix Creator” IoT daughter board for the Raspberry Pi 3 is loaded with sensors, 802.15.4 radios, and a mic array.

    The disc-shaped Matrix Creator add-on for the Raspberry Pi is based on AdMobilize’s successfully Kickstartered Matrix home automation and surveillance hub. AdMobilize spun off Matrix Labs, which has now built this cheaper, board-level version of the product.

  • Denver Mini Maker Faire Roundup

    We told you about NixCore in a links post last fall. This is a small Linux-based router board with a dev board add-on option. [Drew] himself was on hand giving live demos and selling boards. $30 is a pretty good price for this small SBC that’s not quite a Pi or an Arduino nor an ESP8266.

  • Atom-based gateway taps new open source IoT cloud platform

    Eurotech’s rugged, IP40 protected “ReliaGate 20-26” IoT gateway runs Red Hat Linux on a Bay Trail Atom, and has cellular, GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth options.

    Eurotech’s ReliaGate 20-26 is the latest in a line of Internet of Things gateways, such as the ReliaGate 10-11, based on a TI AM3352 Sitara SoC, and the Intel Atom Z510-based ReliaGate 50-21. For the ReliaGate 20-26, Eurotech advances to a more modern “Bay Trail” Atom E3800.

  • Rugged COM Express Type 6 modules adopt Skylake and Braswell

    Win Enterprises unveiled a COM Express Compact module for Intel Braswell, following two COM Express releases for Skylake. They all operate from -40 to 85°C.

    The Win Enterprises MB-73450 is a 95 x 95mm COM Express Type 6 Compact computer-on-module that supports Intel Pentium and Celeron N3000, as well as Intel Atom x5-E8000, system-on-chips from the 14nm “Braswell” family. The module is the third in a new wave of Win Enterprises COM Express modules with Intel chips released in recent months.

  • Tough Mini-PC with up to four GbE ports runs Linux Mint on AMD SoC

    CompuLab’s Fitlet-RM is a rugged mini-PC that runs Linux Mint on an AMD A10 Micro-6700T, and offers -40 to 70°C operation, WiFi, and up to four GbE ports.

  • Transcend Wifi SD Card Is A Tiny Linux Server

    He read a post about these cards on the OpenWRT forums. They’re all a similar configuration of a relatively large amount of memory (compared to the usual embedded computer), a WiFi chip, and an ARM processor running a tiny Linux install. The card acts as a WiFi access point with a little server running on it, and waits for the user to connect to it via a website. It also has a mode where it will connect to up to three access points specified by the user, but it doesn’t actually have a way to tell the user what its IP address is; which is kind of funny.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • New Nexus 2016 specs rumors follow Android Nougat announcement

        Google’s meticulously planned transition from the Android N to the Android Nougat naming scheme has been closely followed by fresh Nexus 2016 news.

        The internal specs for these next two Android phones has been leaked, and they’re both shaping up to be promising sequels to the current Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X, according to Android Police.

        As we’ve reported on in the past, HTC is making both handsets this year, but we finally have a clearer idea of the power being put into the larger Android Nougat smartphone, codenamed HTC ‘Marlin’.

      • Android Without Google: A Brief And Mostly Uninspiring History

        Profit margins on hardware tend to be slim, and because Google enforces strict conditions on the inclusion of its app store and services, phone makers don’t have much room to stand out with their own software if they want to include any Google elements at all. Analyst firm Canaccord believes many Android phone makers are merely breaking even or losing money.

      • Google is working on a virtual reality version of Chrome for Android devices

        Google wants the entirety of the internet to be explorable in virtual reality, and it’s started using its mobile Chrome browser to make that happen. The latest beta and developer versions of Chrome for Android include support for the open source WebVR standard, reports Road to VR. The dev version also makes mention of a “VR Shell” feature that, in the future, will enable mobile device headsets to browse any website regardless of whether it uses WebVR.

      • Android N’s name is officially Nougat

      • It’s Official: Android N Is Android Nougat

      • Android malware earned a Chinese hacking group over $500,000 per day

      • Google is not giving India an Android Neyyappam

      • Dell says it’s done making Android tablets, won’t push new updates to existing ones

      • PlayStation Vue Arrives on Android

      • Cracking Android’s full-disk encryption is easy on millions of phones – with a little patience

      • Best Free Android Games

      • Google finally reveals the official name for Android N

      • Amazon Prime will knock $50 off an Android phone if you look at Amazon’s lock-screen ads

      • BlackBerry is working on 3 new Android phones, codenamed Neon, Argon, and Mercury

        Despite reports of lackluster sales for its first Android smartphone, BlackBerry is tripling down on the platform in the coming year. According to a person briefed on the company’s plans, the Canadian manufacturer will be releasing one phone per quarter for the next three quarters.

        Codenamed Neon, Argon, and Mercury, the trio will target a range of form factors and price points, according to the briefed individual.

      • Android N is now Android Nougat

        Google announced on Snapchat today that Android N, the latest version of Android, will now go by Android Nougat. The announcement comes after the company said at I/O last month that users could submit suggestions for the name online.

      • Six Points on The Samsung Galaxy Note 7: AKA The Best Android Phone of 2016

        This year’s Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is going to be EPIC. And that is very good news for long-standing fans of the phablet line, because last year Samsung really dropped the ball and did not bring the Galaxy Note 5 to the UK. Instead it pushed the Galaxy S6 EDGE+ — a bigger, more expensive version of the Galaxy S6. This initiative didn’t go down well at all. In fact, it was kind of a PR disaster for Samsung, who, at the time, wasn’t having the best of luck anyway.

      • Android OnePlus 3 Review

        A new Android smartphone is making waves for being half the price but full of features. Rich Demuro has his review of the OnePlus 3 in today’s Tech Report. Up until now, you probably haven’t heard of the brand OnePlus – so far they’ve built two smartphones but you needed an invite to buy one. Third time is a charm. Rich describes the phone as beautiful with plenty of features but the price is what you’ll really love — $400 unlocked is the official price tag. The OnePlus aims to be the Apple iPhone of Android — one phone each year with improvements to make it better.

      • Android will make it easier for you to turn off annoying push notifications

      • ASUS ZenUI Launcher now supports all Android devices running 4.3 and above

      • Google Maps for Android is finally rolling out multi-waypoint directions

      • LevelDropper: Auto-rooting Android malware bypasses Google Play security

      • Yandex’s Android browser now supports third party ad-blocking extensions

      • Dell stops selling Android devices

      • 1.2 million infected: Android malware ‘Hummer’ could be biggest trojan ever

      • Google Maps for Android now lets you navigate to multiple destinations on a single trip

      • Android Pay just added 115 new banks (and no, not Capital One)

Free Software/Open Source

• Questions loom about the future of open source at VA

  The CIO for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs sought to reassure stakeholders that the agency was committed to open source in the future, but with Congress pressuring the agency to give up the homegrown health record system VistA, the open source community is a bit perplexed.

• Watch out for job offers from Google after this open source course

  Over five lakh polytechnic students from 500 colleges across Tamil Nadu would begin training on open source software from Friday, learning more about the nitty-gritties of ‘free’ software under a programme run by the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay along with the Tamil Nadu government.

• Bombay Stock Exchange: Open source is a mindset

  Open source is still gaining momentum in the industry worldwide. Despite naysayers, open-source software and hardware are making believers out of a broad array of users. In the case of Bombay Stock Exchange, LTD (BSE), the transition has been cost efficient, as well as has improved order processing power.

  By switching from proprietary hardware to open source, Kersi Tavadia, CIO of BSE, reported going from being able to process 10 million orders a day to 400 million. Even with the increase, the new open-source hardware is only using 10 percent capacity.

• GitHub releases data on 2.8 million open source repositories through Google BigQuery

  GitHub today announced that it’s releasing activity data for 2.8 million open source code repositories and making it available for people to analyze with the Google BigQuery cloud-based data warehousing tool.

  The data set is free to explore. (With BigQuery you get to process up to one terabyte each month free of charge.)

  This new 3TB data set includes information on “more than 145 million unique commits, over 2 billion different file paths and the contents of the latest revision for 163 million files, all of which are searchable with regular expressions,” Arfon Smith, program manager for open source data at GitHub, wrote in a blog post.

• How one company is using open source to double its customers’ mobile business

  Most retailers today stay a step or two behind when it comes to modern technology, especially on the mobile side. Sawyer Effect, LLC, a consultant for J.Crew Group, Inc., has been using Red Hat, Inc.’s open-source product Ansible, an IT automation engine, to get its customer’s mobile business up to speed and greatly improve its business.

• Can Capital One change banking with open source, mobile apps, and NoSQL?

  Oron Gill Haus of Capital One came to MongoDB World to present on Hygieia, an open source DevOps dashboard built on MongoDB. Behind that dashboard lies an ambition to change the customer banking experience – no small feat. Prior to his keynote, Haus shared his team’s story with me.

• How bank Capital One developed an open source DevOps visualisation tool based on MongoDB

  In order to keep up with customers’ expectation of a proactive service available 24×7 on many devices, US bank Capital One moved to an agile DevOps structure and a year ago released its own DevOps dashboard.

  While visualisation tools were available for continuous integration, scanning and testing, Capital One’s development team was unable to find one that provided a complete overview of the whole production process. The dashboard they developed, called Hygieia, was open sourced to encourage rapid development. It is currently in version 2.0.

  VP of engineering Gil Haus explained some of the thought processes that went into the creation of Hygieia.

• What is DC/OS?

  What if we could take the total amount of power in any cloud computing datacentre and provide a means of defining that as one total abstracted compute resource? This notion has given brith to DC/OS, a technology base built on Apache Mesos to abstract a datacentre into a single computer, pooling distributed workloads and (allegedly) simplifying both rollout and operations.

• Can you imagine a world without open source?

  I worked as a Linux kernel developer in the areas of scheduler and power management. It was fascinating to gain a deeper understanding and contribute to development in these areas. After a while, I felt the need to gain more breadth in my understanding of computer systems. A holistic view would not only help me better contribute to Linux, but would also enable me to explore other domains in a computer system. Towards this end, I chose to pursue graduate studies in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of Carnegie Mellon University, which offers a wide range of courses in computer systems and is carrying out cutting edge research in this field too.

• Asian firms must embrace ‘open innovation’ to remain competitive

  Businesses in Asia should embrace the “open source way of innovating” to gain agility and speed, and ensure they are delivering services that their customers want.

  That was the key message delegates should take away from the Red Hat Summit here this week, said Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, Red Hat’s Asia-Pacific senior vice president and general manager, who underscored the need for a collaborative platform and apply the concepts of open source to the world’s markets,.

• Google and GitHub are Opening a New Window on Open Source

  Where can you find millions of open source code repositories? That would be on GitHub, of course, and with all those code repositories, one would think that analyzing them would lead to some interesting conclusions about open source in general, correct?

  That’s the thinking behind a new offering from GitHub in partnership with Google. The two have produced a new open dataset on Google BigQuery, a low cost analytics data warehouse service in the cloud, so that anyone can get data-driven insights based on more than 2.8 million open source GitHub repositories. The move brings new data analytics capabilities to BigQuery.

• Open Source Gospel From Cisco’s Lauren Clooney

  Companies that traditionally focused on proprietary software are now playing catch up in order to compete by utilizing open source development.

• My condolences, you’re now the maintainer of a popular open source project

  Marc Andreessen, creator of the Netscape web browser, famously said “software is eating the world.” I’d like to posit that it’s actually open source software that’s eating the world, and I have a couple of data points to back me up.

  First, a conclusion from the 2015 Future of Open Source survey: “Seventy-eight percent of respondents said their companies run part or all of its operations on OSS and 66 percent said their company creates software for customers built on open source. This statistic has nearly doubled since 2010.”

• Tip: Try these open-source investigative journalism tools

  The Investigative Reporters and Editors conference took place in mid-June in New Orleans, and one of the sessions at the event looked at open-source tools for investigations.

  This ‘Steal my tool’ session highlighted a number of useful open-source investigative platforms, which Sam Berkhead, engagement editor at IJNet, listed in this article published after the conference.

• Events

  • What’s holding your conference back

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla involves the community in its “open-source” rebrand

      Mozilla is bending the terms of the rebrand with a “branding without walls” open-source initiative.

    • Mozilla Firefox 47.0.1 Is Now Available in the Arch Linux and Solus Repos

      Mozilla quietly delivered the first point release of the Mozilla Firefox 47.0 web browser to users of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems on the day of June 28, 2016.

      However, because the built-in updater of the Mozilla Firefox web browser doesn’t work on GNU/Linux distributions, users have to wait for the latest version of the software to be first pushed by the maintainers of their operating systems on the main repositories before they can upgrade.

• SaaS/Back End

  • Solving business issues with a Big Data approach | #HS16SJ

  • The big leap: How one company moves data across platforms | #HS16SJ

  • BMC evolving with Hadoop to launch new data solutions | #HS16SJ

  • Open vs. Open Source: How one proprietary company utilizes Hadoop open-source software | #HS16SJ

  • The rapid rise of digital culture … and the fallout | #HS16SJ

  • Enabling discovery with the next-gen platforms | #HS16SJ

  • Is Hadoop becoming the center of gravity for data? | #HS16SJ

  • The plot thickens: Converged vs. connected in the data apps race | #HS16SJ

  • Keeping it together: Organizing endless data streams | #HS16SJ

  • The sweet spots of cloud access and organization overhaul | #HS16SJ

  • How to bring ‘intelligence’ to data handling | #HS16SJ

  • Natural selection: Is Apache the environment of evolution for Big Data? | #HS16SJ

  • Airtel Leverages Cloudera Enterprise to Improve Customer Experience and Product Personalization

  • Airtel adopts Cloudera for business intelligence

  • Airtel moves customer data on an open source platform

  • ​RightScale can help you pick out the right public cloud

    For example, let’s say you need a local cloud in Australia. With the tool, you’ll see that Google can’t help you while the others can. Or, for instance say you’ve tied your business to Oracle and you want Oracle Linux as your operating system. The program will quickly and easily tell you that AWS and Azure are the clouds for you.

  • The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache® Bahir™ as a Top-Level Project

    Apache Bahir bolsters Big Data processing by serving as a home for existing connectors that initiated under Apache Spark, as well as provide additional extensions/plugins for other related distributed system, storage, and query execution systems.

  • Bahir is the Latest Big Data Project to Advance at Apache

    Recently, we’ve taken note of the many projects that the Apache Software Foundation has been elevating to Top-Level Status. The organization incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, and has squarely turned its focus to Big Data and developer-focused tools in recent months. As Apache moves Big Data projects to Top-Level Status, they gain valuable community support and more.

  • Open Source Is Key to the Modern Data Center, Says EMC’s Joshua Bernstein

    Flexibility, freedom, innovation and integration is the answer. The question is why should the enterprise build on open source? How can a business survive if it gives away everything? Joshua Bernstein, Vice President of Technology at EMC, makes the case for enterprise open source in his MesosCon North America keynote.

  • Do you spend more time solving vendor problems than business problems? | #HS16SJ

  • Is Hadoop ready for the enterprise world? | #HS16SJ

  • How one company is creating a united open-source community | #HS16SJ

  • New search engine makes data instantly searchable, increases data retention | #HS16SJ

  • Hadoop and Docker: ‘The shift from scale up to scale out’ | #HS16SJ

  • Is a secondary system for analytics necessary? | #HS16SJ

  • ‘It’s not a Hadoop-only world’: Casting a wider data net | #HS16SJ

  • IBM’s Massive Spark Initiatives Include an Offering for Data Scientists

• Databases

  • MongoDB launches Atlas, its new database-as-a-service offering

    MongoDB, the company behind the eponymous open source database, is launching Atlas today, its third major revenue-generating service.

    Atlas is MongoDB’s database-as-a-service offering that provides users with a managed database service. The service will offer pay-as-you-go pricing and will initially allow users to deploy on Amazon Web Services (AWS), with support for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform coming later.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Giving Linux and LibreOffice a Try for Your Home Office

    Running your home office on a tight budget? There’s a way to get all of your software—operating system (OS), productivity suite, scores of applications—completely free. It’ll cost you, but not in the way you might think.

    This life-changing alternative is Linux, which gives you more flexibility, more have-it-your-way customization, and more control than Windows or OS X users could ever dream of. I caution that it’ll cost you because it’s decidedly not for everyone. While it’s far friendlier today than it was a year or even six months ago, Linux still requires you to invest, nay, enjoy some time spent setting up and tinkering with your PC.

  • New LibreOffice Vulnerability Patched in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Debian and Arch Linux

    Today, June 30, 2016, Canonical published a new security notice to inform users of the Ubuntu Linux operating system that the latest LibreOffice builds have landed in the repositories.

  • From Microsoft to LibreOffice: How Italy’s military is starting its march to open source

    In the past few years a growing number of Italian public bodies have chosen to ditch proprietary software for open source.

    But most of these decisions have been taken at the local level, while in general the country’s central government has seemed more reluctant to follow the open-source path.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Keynote: The New Open Source Data Center [Ed: Why on Earth does EMC speak about “Open Source Data Centre”? It’s a proprietary software company with back doors.]

  • Dirk Hohndel Leaves Intel to become VMware’s Chief Open Source Officer [Ed: Dirk Hohndel leaves criminal company to help EMC’s openwashing]

  • VMware Appoints Dirk Hohndel as Chief Open Source Officer

  • Open Source Patents : Boon or Bane? [Ed: “Open Source Patents” is a fiction]

  • Microsoft updates .Net to 1.0 with new libraries and tools

  • Open Source .NET Core 1.0 Released by Microsoft [Ed: Open Core is NOT Open Source]

  • Microsoft Spreads Open Source Love With .Net Core 1.0 [Ed: Microsoft and “Love” in the same headlines. In reality, the company attacks FOSS]

• Funding

  • DuckDuckGo: The Little Search Engine That Gives Back Big

    The company’s website says, “DuckDuckGo is a general purpose search engine that is intended to be your starting place when searching the Internet. Use it to get way more instant answers, way less spam and real privacy, which we believe adds up to a much better overall search experience.”

    [...]

    Proprietor Gabriel Weinberg says his once-personal project (founded in 2008) isn’t making anyone wealthy, but he and his workers live decently, and he says they’re doing well enough that giving money to open source projects doesn’t hurt their budget.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Progress report from FísicaLab project

    Many changes has been done internally to facilitate the aggregation of new modules. But at UI has been some changes too. One of them is at the contextual menu of conversion factors. Now the menu only display the conversion factors available for the selected field.

  • Friday Free Software Directory IRC meetup: July 1st

  • libbrandt GSoC midterm status update

    the GSoC midterm evaluation finished this week and it’s time for a status update on the libbrandt auctioning library project.

  • GNUCash News: If you want to build on a Mac

• Licensing/Legal

  • Understanding open source licenses

    Open source licenses are licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition — in brief, they allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared. To be approved by the Open Source Initiative (also known as the OSI), a license must go through the Open Source Initiative’s license review process.

    There has been an increase release of open source software from the day of Linux. Today most popular frame works like bootstrap and software such as Atom IDE used by developers are open source. We often never worry about using open source code but do you know what the license under which the frame you’re using was released means?

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Build your own open source solar panels

    Do-it-yourself electricity generation is still difficult and expensive. The inventors of the SunZilla project aim to make it easier, cleaner, portable, quiet, and completely open source.

    The SunZilla system is designed to replace diesel and gasoline-powered generators for portable and emergency power: camping, events, mobile phone charging station, provide power to refugee camps, or keep the lights on during a power outage. Two people can set it up in a few minutes. It is modular and plug-and-play. Leonie Gildein is one of the five SunZilla engineers, and kindly answered some questions about the project.

  • Lessons From The Downfall Of A $150M Crowdfunded Experiment In Decentralized Governance

    Hype around blockchain has risen to an all-time high. A technology once perceived to be the realm of crypto-anarchists and drug dealers has gained increasing popular recognition for its revolutionary potential, drawing billions in venture-capital investment by the world’s leading financial institutions and technology companies.

    Regulators, rather than treating blockchain platforms (such as Bitcoin or Ethereum) and other “distributed ledgers” merely as tools of illicit dark markets, are beginning to look at frameworks to regulate and incorporate this important technology into traditional commerce.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Mechaduino Powerful Open Source Servo Motor (video)

      Tropical Labs has this week unveiled a new open source industrial servo motor it has created in the form of the Mechaduino which takes the form of an affordable solo that is Arduino compatible.

      Check out the video below to learn more about this new Mechaduino servomotor which is taken to Kickstarter to raise $7500 over the next 20 days to go into production.

    • Will Open-Source Work For Chips?

      The open source movement, as we know it today, started in the 1980s with the launch of the GNU project, which was about the time the electronic design automation (EDA) industry was coming into existence. EDA software is used to take high-level logical descriptions of circuits and map them into silicon for manufacturing. EDA software starts in the five digits, even for the simplest of tools, tacking on two or three zeros for a suite of tools necessary to fully process a design. On top of this, manufacturing costs start at several million dollars.

    • DIY Off the Grid: Open Building Institute to Change Face of Home Construction & Home Ownership

    • Building Your Own Home From Open Source Blocks

      What if your next house were to cost 1/10th of the average home while sporting a long list of high-tech hyper-ecological features? With the help of the Open Building Institute (OBI), which is designing affordable, ecological housing accessible to everyone – you may be able to do just that.

      [...]

      OBI is following the same open source methodology that has made the Internet so successful — sharing the source code with a free license. Google and Facebook and many other Internet companies use open source software on the backend because large scale collaboration generally leads to superior technology. Open source hardware follows the same approach from electronics to 3-D printers.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Openfunds launches global standard for fund data interchange

    The standard is published on the openfunds website and can be used by anyone free of charge.

Leftovers

• Google Calendar is down and people are freaking out

  If you depend on Google Calendar to manage your every minute, today isn’t exactly your day.

  Google Calendar went down on Thursday morning, preventing people from accessing their schedules.

• Science

  • Light Pollution Is Throwing Off the Seasons

    We already know that light pollution has made the Milky Way invisible to one third of humanity. Now researchers have found that it might also be fast-forwarding the arrival of spring in the UK.

    In a study published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers describe how night-time light pollution is causing early budburst—emergence of new leaves on a tree—in four common types of British tree: ash, oak, sycamore and beech. The researchers based their findings on data collected by citizen scientists and satellite imagery giving information on levels of light pollution in areas across the UK.

    “For the last 13 years, a bunch of citizen scientist have been noting the time at which four common tree species come into budburst,”Richard ffrench-Constant, paper co-author and an entomologist at the University of Exeter, told me. “We found that budburst correlates with the amount of artificial light in an area.”

  • Stephen Hawking: Humankind is still greedy, stupid and greatest threat to Earth

    Physicist Stephen Hawking says pollution coupled with human greed and stupidity are still the biggest threats to humankind.

    During an interview on Larry King Now, the science superstar told King that in the six years since he’s spoken with the talk show host people haven’t cleaned up their act.

    “We certainly have not become less greedy or less stupid,” Hawking said. “The population has grown by half a billion since our last meeting, with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100.”

    He noted that the massive problem of pollution has only grown in the last five years.

• Hardware

  • How Sony, Microsoft, and Other Gadget Makers Violate Federal Warranty Law

    There are big “no trespassing” signs affixed to most of our electronics.

    If you own a gaming console, laptop, or computer, it’s likely you’ve seen one of these warnings in the form of a sticker placed over a screw or a seam: “Warranty void if removed.”

    In addition, big manufacturers such as Sony, Microsoft, and Apple explicitly note or imply in their official agreements that their year-long manufacturer warranties—which entitle you to a replacement or repair if your device is defective—are void if consumers attempt to repair their gadgets or take them to a third party repair professional.

• Security

  • Hackers want you to continue ignoring this critical home cybersecurity flaw

  • Microsoft Office 365 Hit With Massive “Cerber Ransomware” Attack

    The Cerber ransomware is here to lock down your important documents and force you to pay ransom in the form of bitcoins. This malware targets the Office 365 documents and even plays a creepy audio warning message demanding the ransom.

  • This malware pretends to be WhatsApp, Uber and Google Play

    Hackers are stealing credit card information in Europe with malware that can spoof the user interfaces of Uber, WhatsApp and Google Play.

    The malware, which has struck Android users in Denmark, Italy and Germany, has been spreading through a phishing campaign over SMS (short message service), security vendor FireEye said on Tuesday.

  • Dangerous keyboard app has more than 50 million downloads

  • Study: Encryption use increase largest in 11 years

    Enterprise use of encryption saw the largest increase over the past year in over a decade, according to a report released today by the Ponemon Institute.

    But encryption technology spending as percent of total IT security budgets has gone down, said John Grimm, senior director of security strategy at Thales e-Security, which sponsored the report.

    In 2005, the first year of the report, only 16 percent of enterprises were using encryption extensively. The percentage increased gradually to 34 percent last year, then jumped to 41 percent this year.

  • Extracting Qualcomm’s KeyMaster Keys – Breaking Android Full Disk Encryption

  • Hacked!

  • Security advisories for Wednesday

  • Security updates for Thursday

  • Over 100 DDoS botnets built using Linux malware for embedded devices

  • LizardStresser botnet targets IoT devices to launch 400Gbps attacks

  • LizardSquad botnet changes colour to use IoT for 400Gbps attacks

  • Crooked Cameras? New CCTV Botnet Drives Massive DDoS Attack

  • LizardStresser IoT botnet launches 400Gbps DDoS attack

  • 25k connected cameras used as botnets; can your CCTV be hacked?

  • Huge CCTV Botnet Uncovered

  • Thousands of hacked CCTV devices used in DDoS attacks

  • Lizard Squad’s IoT botnet launches 400Gbps DDoS attack

  • Intel is said to mull sale of its security business

    Intel is considering selling its security business as the company tries to focus on delivering chips for cloud computing and connected devices, according to a news report.

    The Intel Security business came largely from the company’s acquisition for US$7.7 billion of security software company McAfee. Intel announced plans to bake some of the security technology into its chips to ensure higher security for its customers.

  • Ransomware Attacks May Trigger Breach Notifications

    A powerful California congressman is pushing the federal government to treat ransomware attacks on medical facilities as data breaches and require notifications of patients.

    The pressure is coming from Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and follows comments from officials at the Department of Health and Human Services about the department’s plan to issue guidance to health care organizations about ransomware attacks. The Office for Civil Rights section of HHS, which has responsibility for health information privacy, will provide guidance on how to handle ransomware attacks, and Lieu is eager to ensure that the guidance specifically addresses how ransomware attacks relate to data breach regulations.

  • Exploring and exploiting Lenovo firmware secrets

    Hi, everyone! In this article I will continue to publish my research of Lenovo ThinkPad’s firmware. Previously I shown how to discover and exploit SMM callout vulnerabilities on example of SystemSmmAhciAspiLegacyRt UEFI driver 1day vulnerability. Also, I introduced a small toolkit called fwexpl that provides API for comfortable development of firmware exploits for Windows platform. My previous Lenovo exploit was able to execute custom code in SMM, such conditions allow relatively easy bypass of BIOS_CNTL security mechanism which protect firmware code stored inside SPI flash chip on motherboard from unauthorized modifications by operating system (BIOS_CNTL bypass also was discussed in my another article “Breaking UEFI security with software DMA attacks”).

  • How to Compromise the Enterprise Endpoint

    Symantec is a popular vendor in the enterprise security market, their flagship product is Symantec Endpoint Protection. They sell various products using the same core engine in several markets, including a consumer version under the Norton brand.

    Today we’re publishing details of multiple critical vulnerabilities that we discovered, including many wormable remote code execution flaws.

    These vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets. They don’t require any user interaction, they affect the default configuration, and the software runs at the highest privilege levels possible. In certain cases on Windows, vulnerable code is even loaded into the kernel, resulting in remote kernel memory corruption.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Gun nut mom went back for more bullets before executing daughter

    Police say that Christy Sheats, the gun nut mom who shot dead her two daughters during a family confrontation that spilled into a Texas street, returned inside to reload before executing her child in view of horrified neighbors. She was still shooting when cops arrived, which is why they killed her.

  • Christy Sheats’ Daughters Beg For Their Lives In Chilling 911 Tapes

    The daughters of Texas mom Christy Sheets can be heard begging for their lives in 911 recordings released by police.

    The 42-year-old woman allegedly grabbed a gun and killed them Friday after calling a family meeting.

    In calls from Taylor Sheats, 22, and Madison Sheats, 17, they both can be heard begging their mother to put the gun down. “Please, don’t shoot. Please, I’m sorry. Don’t do it,” one of the young women urges.

    The voice of a man, presumably the girls’ father, Jason Sheats, 45, can be heard saying: “I’m sorry! I promise you whatever you want.”

  • Texas gun advocate shoots and kills her two daughters

    In March, Christy Sheats, 42, wrote on Facebook: “It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away, but that’s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semiautomatic weapons.”

  • Islamic Radicalisation Surges In German Jails

    The trial of an Islamic State fighter in Germany has revealed the extent to which Salafists have infiltrated prisons and are radicalising Muslim criminals.

  • High Court grants legal challenge against British arms sales to Saudi Arabia

    British courts could ban the Government from signing off arms sales to Saudi Arabia after the first hurdle to a legal challenge was cleared.

    The High Court on Thursday granted a judicial review into the legality of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia after a bid by campaigners and lawyers, who say the sales are unlawful.

    MPs on the international development committee and MEPs in the European Parliament earlier this year called on the Government to stop selling weapons to the autocratic petro-state.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • ACLU Files Challenge To CFAA Over Blocking Research Into Discrimination Online

    There’s been a lot of talk lately about the possibility of discrimination being built into the algorithms that determine our lives. In the past year, multiple publications have discussed what happens when algorithms are racist in a time when algorithms decide more and more of our lives. Just recently, we talked about judges using proprietary algorithms in sentencing, and how those algorithms themselves may judge people based on things like skin color. And just a few days ago, there was a fascinating NY Times article about inherent bias in artificial intelligence systems. I even went to a conference recently, where there was a whole discussion on the question of what do you do “if your algorithm is racist.” It’s not an easy question to answer, honestly, but one thing that we should not be doing is holding back research into these systems.

    And yet… that’s exactly what’s happening. And the culprit, once again, is the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA), which we’ve written about for years. The law, which is woefully out of date, and was passed (literally) by a Congress that was freaked out over the movie WarGames, is supposed to target evil “computer hackers.” But it’s written so broadly, including terms like “unauthorized access” or “exceeding authorized access,” that it’s been used against things like violating a terms of service (that you didn’t read or even agree to) or against downloading too many files. And that’s scaring the hell out of researchers.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • These fires are huge, hidden and harmful. What can we do?

    As forest fires devastated Fort McMurray, Alberta, last month, a different sort of fire may have started beneath the ground. Peat, a carbon-rich soil created from partially decomposed, waterlogged vegetation accumulated over several millennia and the stuff that fueled Indonesia’s megafires last fall, also appears in the boreal forests that span Canada, Alaska and Siberia. With the intense heat from the Fort McMurray fires, “there’s a good chance the soil in the area could have been ignited,” says Adam Watts, a fire ecologist at Desert Research Institute in Nevada.

    Unlike the dramatic wildfires near Fort McMurray, peat fires smolder slowly at a low temperature and spread underground, making them difficult to detect, locate and extinguish. They produce little flame and much smoke, which can become a threat to public health as the smoke creeps along the land and chokes nearby villages and cities.

• Finance

  • With The Brexit In The Bag, ‘Vote Leave’ Starts Vanishing Away Its Promises And Faulty Math

    In the aftermath of what is generally considered to be a Bad Idea, the forces behind the UK’s exit from the European Union has pulled up stakes on its website and shut the whole thing down. The problem is that it looks more like an attempt to bury the past than to warmly greet the future it helped create, as Wired’s Matt Kamen notes.

  • Brexit is great news for the rest of the EU

    Democrats across Europe are in shock over Brexit, when they should be jubilant. That a slim majority of British voters – primarily English and Welsh – have acted against their own short- and long-term economic interests to leave us is a blessing. For decades British governments have played a double game: getting all the benefits of EU membership while opting out of its burdens, in the meantime undermining and even blackmailing the club from within. All of this is now over.

  • Article 50: decoding Donald Tusk’s careful remarks

    So: Prime Minister David Cameron avoided blurting out any notification under Article 50 at yesterday’s European Council meeting.

  • Carney Signals Rate Cuts as Brexit Chaos Engulfs Political Class

    Mark Carney signaled the Bank of England could cut interest rates within months as the central bank tries to shield an economy rattled by the shock of Brexit and the chaos engulfing Britain’s political classes.

  • Stop Giving Chickens Away, Bill Gates

    If you are talking about a short-term food donation to stave off hunger, such as after an earthquake, go ahead, please help. But for any long-term good to come of all this, it must respect the realities of the local market, and it must be sustainable. Free chickens are unlikely to do that.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Leave donor plans new party to replace Ukip – possibly without Farage in charge

    The Brexit campaign’s biggest financial donor has said he is considering backing a new political party taking in members of Ukip, Labour and the Conservatives.

    In a sign that the referendum aftershocks already rocking the Conservative and Labour parties could be spreading to Ukip, the insurance multi-millionaire and Ukip funder Arron Banks criticised the party’s growth and proposed harnessing Brexit support in a new party. When asked if Farage would be in charge, he said the Ukip leader “may have had enough”.

  • ‘Donald Trump’ emails British MP asking for money – receives ‘warm hope’ his ‘repugnant’ campaign will fail

    Glasgow East MP Natalie McGarry also finds it extraordinary that the anti-immigration US billionaire appears to be approaching foreign nationals with his ‘beggging bowl’

  • Burn It All Down

    Unless Lin-Manuel Miranda does a musical of his life, Bernie’s just a footnote in the history books. But the stigma that he won via a set of tricks to include the “superdelegate system,” some election fraud, and overt partisanship by the Democratic National Committee and much of the media, never mind what Obama does with the FBI report into her mishandling of classified information, lingers like the smell of ripe sh*t in a stadium toilet.

  • This is the creepiest thing David Cameron has ever said

    He will say Britons believe in “certain values”, adding: “To belong here is to believe in these things. And it means confronting head-on the poisonous Islamist extremist ideology. Whether they are violent in their means or not, we must make it impossible for the extremists to succeed.”

    It’s expected Cameron will introduce a counter-extremism bill in his Queen’s Speech later in May. Planned measures include introducing new orders to ban extremist organisations and restrict people who seek to radicalise youngsters.

  • Top Clinton aide was “frustrated” with her boss’ e-mail practices

    We already knew that Hillary Clinton’s e-mail and mobile device issues were likely a pain for State Department employees—and even some foreign governments. But new testimony recorded on Tuesday by one of Clinton’s top aides illuminates the extent of those headaches.

    Huma Abedin is the vice-chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign and the former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to Clinton during her stint as secretary of state. She was deposed on June 28 by an attorney representing the conservative action group Judicial Watch as part of discovery for a lawsuit being brought against Clinton. Judicial Watch published the transcript of that deposition yesterday, and Abedin revealed what she knew about Clinton’s use of the mail server and how she was “frustrated” with the technical glitches caused by Clinton’s mobile device and e-mail travails.

  • Feds ask for 27-month delay in release of Clinton staff emails

    The Obama administration on Thursday asked a federal court to delay until October 2018 the release of 14,000 pages of emails from aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

    In a court filing on Wednesday, administration lawyers said the State Department miscalculated the amount of material it would need to process the documents as part of a lawsuit with the conservative organization Citizens United.

    As a result, the government asked for a 27-month delay to release the emails, which were originally due out on July 21.

    “State deeply regrets these errors, and is working diligently to correct them as quickly as possible,” the lawyers said.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Risky business: Journalists around the world under direct attack

    Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley introduces our journalism in danger issue, which explores the pressures reporters face as they do their jobs in this 250th issue.

  • Reddit Censoring Anti-Islamic Speech Following Istanbul Bombings

    Once again, it seems that Reddit’s primary hub for breaking news is silencing users trying to discuss the latest incident of Islamic terror in Turkey

  • China’s internet censorship chief steps down

    China’s top internet regulator, who oversaw a severe tightening of internet freedoms during his tenure, has stepped down, reports said on Wednesday.

    Lu Wei – named as one of the world’s 100 most influential people last year by Time magazine – had been in charge of supervising controls on online expression since taking over as head of the Cyberspace Administration of China in 2013.

    China censors online content it deems politically sensitive, while blocking some western media websites and the services of companies including Facebook, Twitter and Google.

  • China Replaces Internet Censorship Chief

    Chinese authorities announced Wednesday that the head of internet censorship in the country, Lu Wei, will be replaced by his deputy Xu Lin, official news agency Xinhua reported.

    Lu Wei, dubbed as China’s ‘internet tsar’, will step down from his post as director of Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s top web regulator, and will be succeeded by Xu, one of the deputy directors of the organization, according to a decision made by the central committee of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC).

    Before taking charge of CAC, the 56-year-old Lu was head of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee in Beijing.

    In the same career trajectory, Xu occupied the same post in Shanghai between 2013-2015.

  • The Man Who Nailed Jello to the Wall

    On March 8, 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton hailed the arrival of a new era, one in which the internet would mean the triumph of liberty around the world. He dismissed China’s fledgling efforts to restrain online speech. “Good luck,” quipped Clinton. “That’s sort of like trying to nail Jello to the wall.”

  • China replaces top internet regulator and censor with deputy

    China has replaced its internet regulator, Lu Wei, the hard-liner responsible for leading the government’s efforts to tighten control over domestic cyberspace and export the ruling Communist Party’s philosophy of web control.

  • China’s controversial ‘internet czar’ Lu Wei surprisingly steps aside, lets his deputy take over

  • China swaps cyber czars

  • China appoints new internet regulator

  • Lu Wei, China’s Internet Gatekeeper Stepping Down

  • China’s controversial internet czar stepping down from post

  • China replaces top ‘internet czar’ in unexpected move

  • China replaces its internet czar. Will its policies change, too?

  • China replaces internet czar

  • Cyberspace office names new head

  • China replaces Internet regulator

  • Mainland China replaces top internet regulator and censor with his deputy

  • China’s new internet chief set to maintain tight grip on web

  • China’s top internet regulator steps down

  • China to Replace Top Internet Regulator

  • China internet regulator Lu Wei to step down – report

  • China’s top Internet Regulator Likely to step down soon: Report

  • China’s feared “internet czar” Lu Wei is unexpectedly stepping down

  • China’s new top censor: A ‘political star’ rises

  • China appoints Xu Lin as head of internet regulator

  • China Replaces Head Of Cyberspace Affairs, Other Officials: State Media

  • China names new Internet regulator head: Xinhua

  • China’s Top Internet Regulator Said Planning to Step Aside

  • China’s powerful internet tsar steps aside as another of Xi Jinping’s close allies to take over

  • Chinese government cracks down on search ads and “banned content”

  • Baidu’s Woes May Benefit Yahoo and Bing: Forbes

  • China tightens up rules for Baidu and other search engines following scandal

  • China clamps down on undisclosed search ads

  • Baidu hit by fresh regulations

  • China Orders ‘Objective, Fair and Authoritative Results’ in Internet Search Engine Rules After Baidu Probe

  • China releases new search advertising rules following Baidu scandal

  • Sanef, journalists take censorship fight to SABC’s doorstep

  • South Africa: SABC Censorship – DA Writes to Parliament for Unusual Meeting of Communications Committee

  • Artist’s Artwork On Khajuraho Is A Witty Comment On Censorship

    Visual artist Akshita Chandra is a student at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bengaluru. In her seventh semester at the institute, she had to submit a project based on any historical event.

  • Apple gets patent for remotely disabling iPhone cameras, raising censorship fears

    A patent granted to Apple may allow iPhone cameras to be disabled by infrared sensors. This seems logical enough for concerts, but what about protests?

  • DMCA Notices Nuke 8,268 Projects on Github

    Popular code repository GitHub has just published its transparency report for 2015. While receiving a relatively modest 12 subpoenas for user data last year, the site also handed seven gag orders. It also received large numbers of DMCA notices which took down more than 8,200 projects.

  • MPAA’s Domain Name ‘Policing’ Results in First Suspensions

    Several “pirate site” domain names have been suspended following complaints from the MPAA. The websites in question all use domain names that are managed by the Donuts registry, which assigned the Hollywood group as its “trusted notifier.” MPAA and the domain registry are happy with results so far and hope that other key players will join their efforts.

  • Subaru owners complain of SiriusXM ‘censorship’ frustrations

    Some Subaru owners have complained of alleged ‘censorship’ frustrations when listening to SiriusXM satellite radio.

    A 2016 Subaru Outback owner, Vince Patton, raised concerns after his stereo would switch to SiriusXM’s preview channel #001 after he had been listening to certain comedy channels and restarted the car, according to an Automotive IT News report spotted by Forbes.

  • How Subaru Is Playing ‘Nanny’ By Flipping Satellite Radio Channels In Its Cars

  • Turkey Censors News, Social Media After Terror Attack

  • Turkey’s internet censorship after the Istanbul attack is nothing new

  • Sen. Cruz Slams Administration’s Censorship of ‘Islamist Terrorism’: ‘Orwellian Doublethink’

  • Cruz focuses on ‘radical’ Islam at testy hearing

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • US courts didn’t reject a single wiretap request in 2015, says report

    The number of wiretaps authorized by the courts in 2015 rocketed compared to the year before, says a new report.

    According to the annual wiretap report released on Thursday, which outlines how many real-time intercept requests were submitted by state and federal law enforcement agencies, the courts allowed 4,148 wiretaps during the last calendar year, up by 17 percent on the year-ago period.

    Most were issued by state courts. The majority of wiretaps were authorized in California, which accounted for 41 percent of all applications.

    New York came in second with 17 percent of wiretaps for the year.

    But not a single wiretap request was rejected during 2015, the report showed.

  • How many US wiretap requests were rejected in 2015? Not a single one.

    A new federal report shows that the number of surveillance requests skyrocketed in 2015, and that courts approved every single one of them. That’s right, not one single wiretap request was rejected during 2015.

    The U.S. government’s annual wiretap report details how many real-time intercept requests were submitted by state and federal law enforcement agencies. The most recent edition of this report, released today, says America’s courts allowed 4,148 wiretaps during the last calendar year, up by 17 percent from the previous year.

    Most of the wiretap requests in the most recent report period were issued by state courts, and California approved the most of all states — a whopping 41% of all applications.

  • A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in the Lavabit Case

    It’s been one of the worst-kept secrets for years: the identity of the person the government was investigating in 2013 when it served the secure email firm Lavabit with a court order demanding help spying on a particular customer.

    Ladar Levison, owner of the now defunct email service, has been forbidden since then, under threat of contempt and possibly jail time, from identifying who the government was investigating. In court documents from the case unsealed in late 2013, all information that could identify the customer was redacted.

  • Lavabit founder confirms feds’ Snowden spy efforts led to encrypted email service shutdown

    Lavabit founder Ladar Levison last week confirmed what had been an open secret: That he shuttered his encrypted email service in 2013 because of the federal government’s pursuit of former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

    In a statement issued June 24, Levison said that the gag order that had enforced his silence had been lifted. “After three years, and five separate attempts, the federal judge overseeing the case has granted Mr. Levison permission to speak freely about [the] investigation,” the statement read.

  • Snowden’s email provider confirms it was an investigation target

    It’s a poorly kept secret that officials targeted Lavabit’s secure email service as part of their investigation into Edward Snowden’s leaks. Heck, the US government inadvertently leaked the truth itself. However, a gag order has prevented Lavabit from publicly acknowledging this… until now. In a statement, company founder Ladar Levinson can finally confirm that law enforcement pursued Lavabit in order to access Snowden’s communications. When the investigation began, authorities wanted the provider to hand over an encryption key that would not only expose Snowden, but all 410,000 Lavabit customers. It’s no wonder that Levinson decided to close shop — it’s hard to advertise private email when the feds can theoretically spy on any of your users.

  • Government websites to use HTTPS encryption from October

    GOVERNMENT DIGITAL SERVICES (GDS) websites will use HTTPS encryption from 1 October, according to new security guidelines. And about time too.

    In addition, all services will have to publish a Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) policy applicable to their email systems.

  • Leaked FBI documents reveal secret rules for spying on journalists with National Security Letters

    Today, The Intercept published leaked documents that contain the FBI’s secret rules for targeting journalists and sources with National Security Letters (NSLs)—the controversial and unconstitutional warrantless tool the FBI uses to conduct surveillance without any court supervision whatsoever.

  • US efforts to regulate encryption have been flawed, government report finds

    US Republican congressional staff trying to find a middle ground on encryption have said previous efforts to regulate privacy technology were flawed and that lawmakers need to learn more about technology before trying to regulate it, according to a report released on Wednesday.

    The 25-page white paper – entitled Going Dark, Going Forward: A Primer on the Encryption Debate – does not claim any magical solution to the fight over encryption software that has roiled western capitals for more than two years. It was written by Republican staff on the House committee on homeland security, led by representative Michael McCaul, who has proposed a bipartisan top-level panel of encryption experts with senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat.

    But the document remains notable nonetheless for its measured language and criticism of other lawmakers who have tried to legislate their way out of the encryption debate. It also sets a new starting point for Congress as it mulls whether to legislate on encryption during the Clinton or Trump administration.

  • Facebook is chipping away at privacy – and my profile has been exposed

    Quietly, over the last year, Facebook has killed the concept of a private account.

    The site has always had a love-hate relationship with privacy: it’s long offered some of the most granular controls of any social network for choosing who sees what content, letting users make posts visible on a sliding scale from “everyone” to “only me”.

    That’s increasingly important for Facebook, which has seen a reduction of 21% in “original sharing”, users making posts about their own life. As people have become more aware of the downsides of sharing personal details publicly, it seems that they’ve stopped sharing altogether. Letting them have some control over who sees what they post is an important part of restoring trust.

  • Facebook wins privacy case, can track any Belgian it wants

    In a somewhat unexpected twist, Facebook has won a legal battle against Belgium’s data protection authority, which had sought to prevent Facebook from tracking non-Facebook (or not-logged-into-Facebook) users, both on the Facebook website itself but also via the company’s Like and Share buttons that can be found in even the darkest depths of the known universe.

    The Brussels appeals court dismissed the case on Wednesday, saying that the Belgian CPP (Commission for the Protection of Privacy) had no jurisdiction over Facebook, which has its European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.

    “We are pleased with the court’s decision and look forward to bringing all our services back online for people in Belgium,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

  • Facebook Wins Belgian Court Case Over Storing Non-User Data

    Facebook Inc. won an appeal overturning a Belgian privacy ruling that prompted the social network to block people without an account from accessing its site within the country.

    The Brussels Court of Appeal said the nation’s data protection authority couldn’t prevent Facebook from storing data from non-users in a fight over measures the technology giant says help it combat hacking attacks.

    “Belgian courts don’t have international jurisdiction over Facebook Ireland, where the data concerning Europe is processed,” the Brussels court of appeal said in a ruling Wednesday, referring to the company’s European headquarters. The court also said there was no urgency to rule on the case since Belgian court proceedings only started in mid-2015 over behavior that started in 2012.

  • My Activity Dashboard — How To Know How Much Google Knows About You

  • Google’s My Activity reveals just how much it knows about you

    Google has rolled out new tools to let users see what its ad-tracking service has learned about them, and to let users opt in or out of a new personalised ads service.

    The addition to Google’s account settings, called My Activity, allows users to review everything that Google has tracked about their behaviour – across search, YouTube, Chrome, Android and everything else – and edit or delete it at each step.

    If you use Google for everything you do, you might be surprised by just how much it catalogues about your comings and goings on the internet.

  • Another Terrorist Watchlist Leaks, This One Compiled By Thomson Reuters

    Thomson Reuters’ “global screening solution” pulls from hundreds of other databases, including sanctions lists, law enforcement lists, and compiled data from regulatory agencies. The collection doesn’t cause too many problems in the United States, but as Joseph Cox of Motherboard points out, it’s a bit more a problem when deployed in Europe.

    [...]

    As we’ve seen from other terrorism blacklists, the US government is no better at drawing conclusions or checking its lists for false positives on a regular basis. The fact that Thomson Reuters database pulls from hundreds of sources is probably better than the FBI/DHS method of shrugging people onto terrorist watchlists based on hunches, surnames, or camera ownership. It’s still disturbing that a private entity can control access to various services around the world by selling a watchlist to corporate customers, but there’s no reason to believe this private blacklist is any worse than those compiled by various governments.

  • US Intelligence Agencies To Americans Travelling Abroad: Trust No One, Use Burner Phones, They’re All Out To Get You

    The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has been going through something of an awkward phase the last few years. The Office, which is a part of the White House, and is supposed to direct and coordinate various parts of the intelligence community, has been trying to figure out how to be more open and “transparent” to the public since the Snowden documents began flowing. Given that historically the intelligence community has focused on being as secret as is humanly possible, it’s not very good at this whole transparency thing. And sometimes it’s just really, really awkward. Just try (really) to watch this video it put out on Wednesday, telling US travelers abroad to fear everyone and everything.

  • Encryption thwarting Feds, terrorists going dark … or not, actually

    Despite repeated warnings by the Obama administration over the use of encrypted communications by criminals, the government says that it encountered less encryption last year than in 2014.

    This according to the latest US Courts Wiretap Report on government surveillance requests, which was published this month.

    The report, which logs federal and state wiretap authorizations, finds that law enforcement officials encountered encrypted communications during wiretaps just seven times in 2015, compared to 22 times in 2014.

  • US border control could start asking for your social media accounts

    The US government is proposing making social media accounts part of the visa screening process for entry into the country.

    US Customs and Border Protection’s proposed change would add a line on both the online and paper forms of the visa application form that visitors to the US must fill out if they do not have a visa and are planning on staying for up to 90 days.

    The following question would be added to both the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) and I-94W forms: “Please enter information associated with your online presence—Provider/Platform—Social media identifier.”

    The information will be optional, for now, but the proposed change published by the US Federal Register states that “collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide Department of Homeland Security (DHS) greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case.”

  • Amazon Dash buttons may get a new brand blitz

  • Here’s What Facebook’s Big New Change Really Means

  • Mobile messaging apps vying for dominance in Asia and beyond

  • App providers ordered to fulfill ’6 obligations

  • China tightens rules for mobile app developers

  • App providers face new data collection regulations in China

  • China issues regulations on mobile APP collection of user data

  • Mobile app developers in China hit with draconian new rules

  • New Regulations Could Make Apple Part of China’s Surveillance and Censorship Machine

  • Alexa does not like when you ask her about the NSA

    Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa is pretty good at answering most questions. But if you ask her if the NSA is monitoring you right now? She turns herself off.

  • Defending Human Rights in a Digital Age

  • Federation Council Approves Controversial Anti-Terrorism Laws

    The upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council (FC), has passed a controversial anti-terrorism legislation package, the Interfax news agency reported Wednesday.

    The laws include far-reaching surveillance initiatives, harsher punishments for inciting or justifying terrorism online, and an increase in the number of crimes with which children aged between 14 and 17 can be charged. The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved the laws on June 24.

    Independent Duma Deputy Dmitry Gudkov took to social media to call the vote a “revolution” after five of the 170 council members voted against the legislation. The FC usually passes legislation unanimously.

  • Guy Asks Indian Supreme Court To Ban Encrypted WhatsApp… Because People Plan Raves With It

    And, yes, he also tossed in the “fear! terrorists!” argument as well, because of course. And it’s not just WhatsApp. He also wants a variety of other messaging platforms, such as Telegram, Hike and Viber, banned for using encryption (even though the implementations on many of those platforms is questionable). Of course, we don’t need to go through all the reasons why this is dumb. Strong encryption is much more likely to help protect the private information of the general populace from people looking to do bad things with it than it is to help terrorists in their planning. Could terrorists use it? Yes, just as terrorists can use other neutral, but important technologies for bad purposes. But we don’t go and ban them entirely just because they can be misused.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Donald Trump renews support for waterboarding at Ohio rally: ‘I like it a lot’

    Donald Trump offered renewed support on Tuesday for the use of torture while repeatedly comparing a proposed free trade agreement to rape.

    Trump, who has often praised the use of waterboarding and has spoken positively about alleged war crimes committed by American troops, said at a campaign rally, “We have to fight fire with fire”, after referencing the penchant for beheadings by Isis.

  • Texas Judge Indicted For Making Secret 10-Year Deal With Red Light Camera Company

    The market for red light cameras obviously can’t sustain itself, even with certain legislators drooling over the prospect of installing these revenue generators at every intersection.

    Part of the problem is the technology is still incredibly fallible. Cameras have issued tickets to walls, parked vehicles, and many, many drivers obeying all traffic laws. Millions of dollars of refunds have been paid out by municipalities who once thought they’d have to do nothing more than sit back and let the cash roll in.

    Citizens aren’t fans, so legislators have often pushed these through with a minimum of discussion. Major players in the traffic cam industry lobby hard for placement of their products — sometimes going as far as to engage in good old analog bribery and corruption.

    Officials, both public and private, have been indicted (and convicted) for their participation in the proliferation of traffic cams. Not that the cameras themselves were necessarily illegal, but because the only thing better than an uptick in public funds is an uptick in private funds.

  • Silicon Valley’s Leaky Pipeline Problem

    The latest data point from a Bloomberg analysis reveals that nearly 1,900 U.S. entrepreneurs received venture capital funding for their startups, 2009-2016. Of those, just 141 were women.

    So, then, you have to ask: Which women? Because things are even worse for women of color. A recent report from #ProjectDiane showed that from 2012 to 2014, African American female founders effectively received next to no venture funding. Of the 10,238 funding deals during that period, only 0.2 percent (24, total) went to African American women entrepreneurs.

    What’s happening here? If you believe that entrepreneurial capacity and talent are evenly distributed by gender and race, then why is there this vast difference in how men versus women, versus women of color, are able to tap venture funding?

  • Chagos islanders cannot return home, says Supreme Court

    Former residents of the Chagos Islands who were forcibly removed from their homeland more than 40 years ago have lost their legal challenge to return.

    Families left the Indian Ocean islands in the 1960s and 70s to make way for a US Air Force base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the group of islands.

    An Immigration Order preventing anyone from going back was issued in 1971.

    The Supreme Court – UK’s highest court – upheld a 2008 House of Lords ruling that the exiles could not return.

  • Apostates refused service at Wegmans bakery – fear of invoking offense led to discrimination, says Ex-Muslims of North America

    Wegmans, a chain of 89 grocery stores, refused to bake and decorate a cake for a private celebration for those who have left the faith of Islam.

    The request included a picture of the Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) name and logo, with a caption of “Congratulations on 3 years!”, but was refused by an associate from the Fairfax branch of the popular chain, stating that the request was “offensive”.

  • Scientology Seeks Captive Converts Via Google Maps, Drug Rehab Centers

    Fake online reviews generated by unscrupulous marketers blanket the Internet these days. Although online review pollution isn’t exactly a hot-button consumer issue, there are plenty of cases in which phony reviews may endanger one’s life or well-being. This is the story about how searching for drug abuse treatment services online could cause concerned loved ones to send their addicted, vulnerable friends or family members straight into the arms of the Church of Scientology.

  • No decision after hearing for UK man accused of hacking FBI, NASA

    After two days of evidence, Lauri Love still does not know whether he will be extradited to the United States.

    In hearings at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, the Judge heard from 15 witnesses for the defence, but none from the prosecution. Lauri Love, 31, of Stradishall, has been accused by the US authorities of hacking into the US Federal Reserve, NASA, the FBI, and the Missile Defence Agency.

    He was first arrested by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) in October 2013 and was released on bail in July 2014. US prosecutors claim that Love’s alleged offences were not politically motivated and were instead designed to “to disrupt the operations and infrastructure of the US government” by stealing classified data and personally identifying information of government and military personnel.

  • Johnny Manziel’s Lawyer Accidentally Texts The AP And Then Threatens To Sue Them If They Report On It

    It’s become common game by many in America and elsewhere to crap on lawyers whenever the opportunity presents itself. This is done unfairly in many cases, with a lack of understanding of what the adversarial nature of our legal system requires of legal advocates. For instance, a lawyer that strongly advocates for a client accused of something terrible isn’t himself or herself terrible. That’s the duty of the job.

    But for one of the lawyers on the staff of Johnny Manziel, the seemingly troubled and frequent guest of the court who was once primarily known as a football player, it appears both that proper lawyer-ing is a bit more difficult than for most and that he’s a bully to boot. As you may have heard, Bob Hinton, who had been tasked with representing Manziel in his domestic abuse court case, accidentally texted the Associated Press information about his attempts to settle the case in a rather unfavorable light with respect to his client.

  • Rhode Island Governor Dumps Revenge Porn Bill In Favor Of Upholding First Amendment

    In an unexpected turn of events, Rhode Island’s governor has chosen the First Amendment over the hot button issue of revenge porn. One of several bad bills recently introduced by legislators (the others being a dreadful CFAA clone and badly-written “cybercrime” bill) is dead, killed by a politician who actually realized the potential damage to free speech it might have caused.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Under Cable Lobbying Assault, FCC Commissioners Waffling On Cable Box Competition Plan

    The cable industry’s relentless lobbying assault on the FCC’s plan to bring competition to the cable box appears to be working. As we’ve been covering, cable lobbyists have been filling editorial sections nationwide with all manner of misleading dreck, claiming the FCC’s plan (which you can read here (pdf)) will increase piracy, hinder innovation, hurt minorities, and rip giant holes in the time-space continuum. They’ve also engaged in the time-honored tradition of paying lawmakers that have no idea how technology works to make all manner of false claims about what the FCC’s plan actually does.

  • Kickbacks And Legal Tricks Are Protecting Mega-ISPs From Apartment Broadband Competition

    And that’s probably the least creative trick ISP lawyers use. Crawford notes that carriers also convince landlords to sign deals that prohibit any other ISP from even advertising their services on the property.

  • Dear Landlord: Don’t Rip Me Off When it Comes To Internet Access

    When building owners get kickbacks from big providers it’s the tenants who lose

• DRM

  • Xbox Fitness Users Shelled Out Big Bucks For Workout Programs They’ll Soon Be Totally Unable To Use

    In late 2013, Microsoft launched Xbox Fitness for the then-new Xbox One. The fitness program leaned heavily on the Kinect motion sensor you’ll recall Microsoft initially and ingeniously forced everybody to buy — even though many users had no interest in the accessory. Xbox Fitness included 30 free training sessions, but also allowed users to pay significantly more for additional workouts, including shelling out $60 for P90X routines, to individual Jillian Michaels videos that cost users $12 each. These users likely assumed that once they bought these workouts, they’d be able to use them indefinitely.

    Those users apparently didn’t get the memo that we no longer own the things we buy.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • African Group Proposes Patents And Health Programme At WIPO

    This week in the World Intellectual Property Organization patent law committee, the African Group submitted an updated proposal for a work programme on patents and health that would help developing countries tailor patent law to their circumstances.

  • US Sees Weak African IP Protection, But Not Enough To Lose Unilateral Trade Benefits

    The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) today (29 June) released its annual report on the eligibility of African nations for unilateral trade benefits offered by the US. While some countries were praised for progress on intellectual property protection, others were found to be weak in this area, but none were removed from eligibility for that reason. Overall, reporting on IP rights varied widely in the report.

  • TAFTA/TTIP Just Got Harder: Brexit Is ‘A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare’ Says EU Trade Commissioner

    After the dramatic and largely unexpected victory of the “Brexit” (Britain Exit) camp in the UK — those who want the country to leave the European Union — politicians around the world are trying to work out what the implications will be. For the UK, of course, it meant an immediate trashing of the UK pound against the US dollar; for the US, it meant the loss of a reliable ally within the EU camp.

    [...]

    As that mentions, trade is one area where the UK played a key role for the US, and its departure from the EU will make negotiations for the TAFTA/TTIP deal, now dragging on into their fourth year, even harder, since the UK was one of the main countries pushing for it. The European Commission is worried: after the results of the Brexit vote were known, the EU’s commissioner for trade, Cecilia Malmström, called it “A midsummer night’s nightmare,” (original in Swedish.)

  • Will the USPTO’s “Patents 4 Patients” Program Even Make It Off the “Cancer Moonshot” Launch Pad?

    Second, in the field of biology specifically, there is considerable debate about whether there are any laws of nature at all. The Evolutionary Contingency Thesis states that there are no laws of biology, since biological relationships are the result of evolutionary forces—random mutations, environmental variables and selection pressures, and multiple functionally equivalent adaptions. As Stephen Gould put it vividly: “evolution is like a videotape that, if replayed over and over, would have a different ending every time.” That a particular sequence of amino acids codes for a specific protein is just as much a result of contingent evolutionary forces as the ability of aspirin to stop headaches: neither was a necessary outcome of the universe. Or to put in the terms overused by the Supreme Court, neither of these are on the level of Einstein’s E=mc2 or Newton’s universal law of gravitation.

  • WIPO Patent Law Committee Adopts Work Programme; Good Omen, Some Say

    World Intellectual Property Organization members attending this week’s patent law committee meeting agreed on a work programme, reflecting divergent views on patents and health, exceptions and limitations, and patent quality.

  • Trademarks

    • You’ll Never Guess Which Portmanteau Everyone Is Suddenly Trying To Trademark

      It had to happen. There was no avoiding it. It’s quite common for individuals, and sometimes even businesses, to surf the wave of a popular news cycle and attempt to translate some story into a trademark to exploit. A good percentage of the time, this is done as something of a short-term squatting attempt, where some word or phrase becomes suddenly popular and someone races to trademark it in order to license or sell it to another entity. Other times, it’s simply done to capitalize on the sudden popularity of a word or phrase directly.

      You already know where this is going. Yes, the “Brexit” trademarks are starting to pour in, almost literally in the case of Sam Adams Boston Lager maker Boston Beer.

    • NRA Trademark Complaint Over Yes Men Parody Takes Down 38,000 Websites

      You may have seen last week a website called ShareTheSafety.org, which was an impressively detailed parody site, pretending to be from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and gunmaker Smith & Wesson about a “buy one, give one” handgun program — where it claimed you’d buy a handgun, and a free handgun would then be sent to an inner city individual “in need” of a gun. The parody was deep and thorough — including setting up another domain, NRApress.org, in order to post a single press release about this program, and which cleverly is designed with actual links to actual NRA press releases and, if you just go to the main domain, it redirects to the NRA’s actual press site. The site definitely fooled a few people, and there were lots of questions popping up on Twitter about whether or not it was real or parody.

      Of course, a day or so after it started spreading, it was revealed that famed pranksters The Yes Men were behind it. They also posted a promo video and a fake press conference announcing the program (the fake press conference being a fairly common Yes Men trope).

  • Copyrights

    • Marrakesh Treaty brought into force by Canada accession

      Canada has become the key 20th nation to accede to the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled. This means the treaty will come into force on September 30, three months after Canada’s accession.

    • WIPO Treaty On Copyright Exceptions For Visually Impaired Enters In Force

      The World Intellectual Property Organization treaty to facilitate access to books in special formats for visually impaired people will enter into effect, as the 20th member state acceded to the treaty today.

      As a result of the accessions, the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled will enter into effect on 30 September 2016, according to sources.

    • Malibu Media Sues Its Former Lawyer Over Missing Funds, Breach Of Bar Rules

      All aboard the schadenfreude express! It appears that when you base your business model on dubious litigation, you also to attract dubious litigators. (See also: Righthaven, Prenda Law.) So, this latest development in the Malibu Media saga — brought to our attention by Sophisticated Jane Doe of Fight Copyright Trolls — is perhaps less surprising than inevitable.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Microsoft Scared into Changes, 5 Reasons to Ditch

    Following a small claims court judgment against them, Microsoft announced they would be making declining their Windows 10 upgrade easier. Why not just switch to Linux as Daniel Robinson highlighted five reasons you should. My Linux Rig spoke to Christine Hall of FOSS Force about her “Linux rig” today and Bryan Lunduke had some thoughts on Canonical’s collaboration myth. Dedoimedo reviewed GeckoLinux 421 and Gary Newell tested Peppermint 7 on his new Lenovo Ideapad.

  • After Multi-Month Tone Deaf Shitshow, Microsoft Finally Lets Users Control Obnoxious Windows 10 Upgrade

    Microsoft’s decision to offer Windows 10 as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 made sense on its surface. It was a nice freebie for users happy to upgrade, and an effective way to herd customers on older Windows iterations onto the latest platform to help consolidate support expense. But Microsoft’s upgrade in practice has seen no shortage of criticism from users annoyed by a total lack of control over the update, and Microsoft’s violent tone deafness in response to the complaints.

    For example a Reddit post from an anti-poaching organization made the rounds earlier this year after the 17 GB automatic Windows 10 update resulted in huge per megabyte charges from their satellite broadband ISP. Microsoft’s response to these complaints? Ignore them. As complaints grew, Microsoft finally provided a way to fully disable the forced upgrade, but made sure it involved forcing users to modify the registry, something Microsoft knew full well less technical users wouldn’t be comfortable attempting to hurdle.

    [...]

    Things have been escalating ever since, often to comedic effect. But this week things changed somewhat with the news that Microsoft has struck a $10,000 settlement with a California woman who sued the company after an ill-timed Windows 10 upgrade brought her office computers to a crawl. The woman took Microsoft to court after support failed to help resolve the issue, a spokesman saying Microsoft halted its appeal of the ruling “to avoid the expense of further litigation.”

  • Microsoft pays $10,000 to unwilling Windows 10 updater

  • The Linux Setup – Christine Hall, FOSS Force

    On my main desktop, I use Linux Mint 17.1, Rebecca. My main laptop, a 64-bit machine, is running Mint 17.2 Rafaela. The laptop got updated from Rebecca so I could write a review, but the desktop never got upgraded because it’s a 32-bit machine and would require another download, which I haven’t had the time to do. I have another laptop running Bodhi, which might be my favorite distro, but I can be more productive with Mint.

  • Linux Mint 18 Finally Arrives — Download Cinnamon and MATE Edition ISO Files Here

    The wait for the summer’s hottest Linux distro is over and you can finally download the release version of Linux Mint 18 “Sarah”. Often called the best Linux distribution for desktop PCs, Mint 18 comes loaded with new features and Linux 4.4 LTS Kernel.

  • No means no: Windows 10 nagware’s red X will stop update – Microsoft

    Microsoft will change the controversial way it has been force-feeding people Windows 10 upgrades.

    The Redmond spreadsheet maker said that when someone clicks on the red “X” to close its infamous your-Windows-10-upgrade-is-ready pop-up, they will actually hold off the installation rather than accept it.

  • Fleeing Slavery Gives Opportunity To ARM And GNU/Linux

    That Other Operating System has bitten millions of users: crashing, freezing, slowing down, refusing to boot, endless re-re-reboots, malware, EULA from Hell, etc. Now there’s “10” trying to outdo malware in conversion of the use of your hardware to M$’s purposes, enhancing/preserving monopoly. I was bitten 16 years ago by crashing. My employers were bitten by malware. Many others were tired of the Wintel treadmill and fled to lower cost and more efficient GNU/Linux.

• Kernel Space

  • IBM Opens New York Bluemix Garage for Cloud Blockchain Application Development

  • Can IBM Really Make a Business Out of Blockchain?

  • IBM Opens Blockchain Garage in New York City

  • IBM targets cloud developers by taking Bluemix Garage to NYC; targeting fintech, blockchain, emerging technology

  • IBM’s Bluemix Garage to Spearhead Blockchain and Fintech

  • IBM opens New York garage for blockchain on the cloud developers

    IBM has opened a new Bluemix Garage in New York, to offer the city’s developers, entrepreneurs, and fintech firms the use of blockchain on the cloud.

  • IBM Opens New York Bluemix Garage for Cloud Blockchain Application Development

    IBM on Tuesday announced a new Bluemix Garage in New York, located at Galvanize’s newly launched New York campus in SoHo. This enables developers and enterprises to work with IBM Blockchain code in the cloud. As with IBM’s other garages in San Francisco, London, Nice and Toronto, the New York Garage will invite startups and enterprises to collaborate in a creative environment outside of their traditional office setting.

  • Project Triforce: Run AFL on Everything!

    This is a pretty long blogpost, so for those who want to jump right to the code:

    TriforceAFL: A modified version of AFL that supports fuzzing using QEMU’s full system emulation.

  • Graphics Stack

    • The Updated AMD Polaris Firmware Blobs Needed For RX 480 Support Land

      One day ahead of the Radeon RX 480 “Polaris” launch, the necessary firmware updates for the production graphics card support have landed in linux-firmware.git.

    • AMD RX 480 released, AMD will possibly open up Radeon Software

      The next generation of AMD GPU’s have launched, and it begins with the AMD RX 480. Benchmarks are now out there along with plenty of info.

      I don’t have the card myself as I have no contacts at AMD, but luckily Phoronix managed to bag a card and he’s done plenty of testing as you can imagine. I will be referencing the green site due to other sites obviously focusing on Windows.

• Applications

  • Announcement: GnuCash 2.6.13 Release

  • Beamforming in PulseAudio

    In case you missed it — we got PulseAudio 9.0 out the door, with the echo cancellation improvements that I wrote about. Now is probably a good time for me to make good on my promise to expand upon the subject of beamforming.

  • Oracle Releases VirtualBox 5.0.24 to Add Better Linux 4.6 Support, Fix Bugs

    Today, June 28, 2016, Oracle has announced the general availability of the VirtualBox 5.0.24 virtualization software for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to install Nginx, MongoDB, NodeJS and host MeteorJS applications on an Ubuntu VPS

    • How to install Backdrop CMS with Nginx on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS

    • How To Setup Open Source Discussion Platform Discourse On Ubuntu Linux 16.04

    • ESP8266 PWM revisited (and reimplemented)

    • Shortcuts – online tool help.

    • PHP shapefile library

    • Stupid RCU Tricks: Ordering of RCU Callback Invocation

  • Games

    • SteamOS update 2.83 beta released, new Nvidia and AMD drivers hit

      Today SteamOS has a new beta, which brings a much newer Nvidia driver to the table and a fresher build of the new AMD PRO driver.

      The Nvidia driver is now 367.27 and AMD GPU PRO is now at RC2. The Nvidia driver was especially out of date, so to have both updated is really going to help it.

    • SteamOS 2.83 Beta Brings AMD Radeon GPU-PRO RC2 and Nvidia 367.27 Video Drivers

      Today, June 29, 2016, Valve’s engineers working on the SteamOS gaming operating system based on the stable Debian GNU/Linux 8 “Jessie” distribution have released a new Beta update.

      SteamOS Brewmaster update 2.83 is now available for early adopters, it was pushed to the brewmaster_beta, and it comes one month after the release of the previous Beta version, SteamOS 2.80, to enhance both the Nvidia and AMD Radeon graphics drivers.

    • The Linux Gamer takes a look at Pac-Man 256

      The Linux Gamer does some really awesome videos and his editing is really quite brilliant at times. Take a look at his thoughts on Pac-Man 256.

      When I’m super rich he’s high on my “must employ” list.

    • System Shock remake heads to Kickstarter, Linux is the first stretch-goal

      While it’s sad to see it as a stretch-goal, I have big faith in Nightdive Studios due to their previous good support of Linux. System Shock is being remade and it’s probably going to be funded quite well.

      System Shock is a complete remake of the genre defining classic from 1994 built by a team of industry veterans. Remember Citadel.

    • A new Civilization VI video shows off England, they aren’t talking about the Linux release for now

      A new video for Civilization VI shows off the English, but they don’t seem to want to talk about the Linux version at the moment.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Mutter Updated for GNOME 3.20 to Fix the X11/Wayland Copy and Paste Interaction

      The GNOME developers are always hard at work patching bugs in the popular desktop environment used by default in many GNU/Linux operating systems, and today they’ve updated the GNOME Shell and Mutter components.

    • Can’t make it to GUADEC this year

      I loved attending the GNOME Users And Developers European Conference (GUADEC). I want to go back, but it’s hard to get away for such a long trip.

    • Moving to the project phase in Outreachy

      I’ve coded the research phase in blue, and the usability testing phase in red.

      As you can see, we moved pretty quickly through the research phase, learning about “What is usability,” different ways to test usability, personas, scenarios, and scenario tasks. And Ciarrai, Diana, and Renata have done very well here.

      We’ve taken the last week to settle into a project focus, and figure out who wants to do what. And today, we are officially starting the usability testing phase!

• Distributions

  • Alpine Linux 3.4.1 Released with Linux Kernel 4.4.14 LTS, Latest Security Fixes

    Today, June 28, 2016, Natanael Copa, the creator of the Alpine Linux distribution, was proud to announce the immediate availability of the first point release of Alpine Linux 3.4 series.

  • Makulu’s LinDoz Is a Smooth Windows-Cinnamon Blend

    That technical issue aside, The MakuluLinux line is one of my favorites. Unlike typical distros, Makulu strays from some of the mainstream primary applications.

    It also has a set of the most commonly used software preinstalled regardless of the desktop flavor selected. For example, it uses the WPS office suite.

    If you fancy the Cinnamon desktop, you will feel right at home with MakuluLinux. If you cut your computing teeth on Microsoft Windows, you will be particularly enamored with the LinDoz Edition.

  • Reviews

    • Hands on with KaOS Linux: Not just another derivative distro

      For an application first demonstrated a year ago, GigJam still feels tantalizingly unfinished, with a limited number of services you can connect to, frustrating bugs when connecting to Microsoft’s own services, no way to work offline and an interface you’re unlikely to figure out without reading the documentation (and even then may find frustrating).

      It’s also a fascinating glimpse into what the Microsoft Graph can unlock. The ability to filter your CRM leads information based on your meetings, or your email based on your unfulfilled orders, or your tasks based on the emails about what you’re supposed to be doing — and share that view with your colleagues — could make you hugely productive. The ability to see the PowerPoint and the Word document you’re going to use in a meeting, along with the emails everyone has had from the people you’re meeting with so you know what they care about, could be a great way to prepare for the meeting. And you can do all that without sharing more information than you want (probably). It’s a fantastic idea, but Microsoft really needs to improve the execution.

  • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • SolydXK 201606 KDE Screenshot Tour

  • Gentoo Family

    • Sabayon 16.07 Ships with Linux Kernel 4.6.3, Introduces the First LXQt Flavor

      Today, June 28, 2016, the developers of the Gentoo-based Sabayon Linux computer operating system have had the great pleasure of announcing the general availability of new respin ISO images for the month of July 2016.

      Right on the schedule, Sabayon 16.07 Live ISO images are now available for download, switching the OS to the latest Linux 4.6.3 kernel from the deprecated Linux 4.5 branch that shipped with the May ISO respins of the GNU/Linux distribution, Sabayon 16.05.

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • GeckoLinux 421 Plasma review – It ain’t no dragon

      I heard a lot of good praise about this little distro. My inbox is flooded with requests to take it for a spin, so I decided, hey, so many people are asking. Let us. The thing is, openSUSE derivatives are far and few in between, but the potential and the appeal are definitely there. Something like CentOS on steroids, the way Stella did once, the same noble way Fuduntu tried to emancipate Fedora. Take a somewhat somber distro and pimpify it into submission.

      GeckoLinux is based on openSUSE Leap, and I chose the Plasma Static edition. There’s also a Rolling version, based on Tumbleweed, but that one never worked for me. The test box for this review is Lenovo G50. But wait! Dedoimedo, did you not recently write in your second rejection report that GeckoLinux had failed to boot? Indeed I did. But the combo of yet another firmware update on the laptop and a fresh new download fixed it, allowing for a DVD boot. Somewhat like the painful but successful Fedora exercise back in the day. Tough start, but let’s see what gives.

    • La Mapería

      It is Hack Week at SUSE, and I am working on La Mapería (the map store), a little program to generate beautiful printed maps from OpenStreetMap data.

    • HackWeek XIV @SUSE: Tuesday

  • Red Hat Family

    • Lenovo and Red Hat advance partnership with telco push

      Two Triangle tech titans are teaming up to create cloud solutions for the changing telco space: Lenovo and Red Hat.

      It’s not their first collaboration, says Brian Connors, vice president of next generation IT and business development in Lenovo’s Research Triangle Park-based Data Center Group.

      Red Hat even invested in Lenovo’s RTP executive briefing center, where its technology is currently “displayed prominently as customers come in.”

    • The darling of the open-source movement

    • Red Hat Keynote: Robots, Cloud and IoT, oh my!

    • The tricky task of balancing edge and core services

    • Managing data management under international regulations

    • The revolution will be digitized: Open-source and the next industrial revolution

    • Wearer of the Red Hat: RH Professional of the Year

    • Red Hat CEO issues call to arms for open source participation

      Broadening the strength and depth of the open source community has always been a goal that has been supported by vendors and businesses alike, but a call to arms for a greater participation was the message that Red Hat wanted to get across at its annual summit.

      The Red Hat Summit in San Francisco was an opportunity for CEO Jim Whitehurst to talk about the ideology of open source during his keynote presentation, and a message of changing hierarchies underpinned much of what he said.

    • Whitehurst: Free OSS Red Hat’s biggest competition in Asia

      Red Hat still faces a major challenge convincing organisations to pay for its services, especially in markets such as China where there is widespread use of free, open source alternatives, says CEO Jim Whitehurst.

    • Red Hat focuses on making containers enterprise ready at Red Hat Summit 2016

    • Dell Unveils New OpenStack Extensions at Red Hat Summit

    • Red Hat Delivers JBoss EAP 7 Foundation for Hybrid Cloud Applications

    • Red Hat Summit/DevNation: Tightening the Knot With Microsoft

    • Red Hat closes on latest acquisition

    • Red Hat Updates the Hybrid Cloud Capabilities to Its Java Based JBoss EAP 7 Platform

    • Red Hat explains its acquisition of API management tools maker 3scale

    • JBoss updated to version 7

    • Red Hat to acquire API management provider 3scale

    • Red Hat Adds Variety to Container Management

    • Red Hat Summit/DevNation: It’s Containers All the Way Down

    • Red Hat Doubles Down on Containers, Takes a Swipe at CloudFoundry

      On the first day of the Red Hat Summit, Linux vendor Red Hat makes some incremental container announcements and belittles its competitors.

    • Red Hat CEO: “open source is making the impossible possible”

    • Red Hat Summit: Improving Productivity Through Collaboration

    • Red Hat beefs up container security, adds new storage functionality

    • Red Hat JBoss Targets Cloud-Native Apps

    • What you missed in Cloud: Acquisitions and APIs

    • Red Hat builds Linux container security scanning into RHEL

    • CPLANE NETWORKS Launches Red Hat OpenStack Bundle to Fast-Track Cloud Deployments

    • Finance

      • 2 Sizzling Hot Tech Stocks: Twitter, Inc. (TWTR), Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

    • Fedora

      • Container technologies in Fedora: systemd-nspawn

        Welcome to the “Container technologies in Fedora” series! This is the first article in a series of articles that will explain how you can use the various container technologies available in Fedora. This first article will deal with systemd-nspawn.

      • Fedora 24 upgrade

        Fedora 24 was released last week, so of course I had to upgrade my machines. As has become the norm, there weren’t any serious issues, but I hit a few annoyances this time around. The first was due to packages in the RPMFusion repos not being signed. This isn’t Fedora’s fault, as RPMFusion is a completely separate project. And it was temporary: by the time I upgraded my laptop on Sunday night, the packages had all been signed.

      • Fedora Flock 2016

        I’ve been working on a shirt design for this year’s Fedora Flock in Krakow, Poland and figured that I’d share what I’ve put together! I’m also including some of my earlier attempts at the design as well to show my thought process as well. Ps. for those who may not be familiar with landmarks and iconic images of Krakow (and yes, I too am one of you too… much research was needed!) here’s a list of some of the imagery that I tied to incorporate in the designs.

      • A F24 user story

        Honestly, nothing from the features in the announcement of the Fedora 24 release didn’t manage to excite me intro upgrading my desktop from an old, out-of-support Fedora. It’s main task is to edit digital photography and for some years a Linux solution is decent at it.

      • PHP version 7.0 in Fedora 25

        FESCO have approved, for Fedora 25 the upgrade from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.0.

      • How to install Nvidia Drivers in Fedora 24

      • Zodbot… upgraded

        We have upgraded our beloved evil super villain IRC bot on freenode from an old version of supybot-gribble to a new shiny version of limnoria ( https://github.com/ProgVal/Limnoria ). This doesn’t change much in the interface, but it does mean we are using something that is maintained and gets updates and is a good deal more secure. If you notice problems please do let us know with a Fedora Infrastructure ticket.

      • GSoC – Journey So Far ( Badges, Milestones and more..)

        2 days ago, I woke up to a mail from Google saying that I passed the mid term evaluations of GSoC and could continue working towards my final evaluation. “What a wonderful way to kick start a day, I thought”.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 16.10 Alpha 1 to Come Only in Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Kylin & Lubuntu Flavors

          In only two days from the moment of writing this article, we will be able to get a very early taste of the upcoming Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system, as the first Alpha build should be released, as planned, on June 30, 2016.

        • Canonical, Snappy and the marketing value of collaboration

          Canonical implies it is collaborating with nearly every major Linux distro for its Snappy project. It is not. And what could have been a marketing win for it is now a loss.

        • How to install MongoDB community edition on Ubuntu Linux

          MongoDB is a NoSQL database that avoids the traditional structure of relational databases in favor of document-oriented JSON-like objects. What this translates to is the integration between application and data is faster and easier. If that’s not enough, consider this: MongoDB is one the databases preferred by big data and large enterprise companies, including Adobe, Craigslist, eBay, FIFA, Foursquare, and LinkedIn.

        • No WhatsApp, but fixes set to come for Ubuntu Phone

          Users of the Ubuntu Phone will have to get used to the fact that popular Android apps like WhatsApp are unlikely to be made available for the platform, at least not in in the short term.

          Facebook owns WhatsApp and the communications app now has more than a billion users.

        • Ubuntu Developers Discuss Again About Dropping Support For 32-bit x86

          Ubuntu developers are once again pondering the possibility of dropping support for i386 (32-bit x86) as installation media for their Linux distribution.

          The matter of dropping Ubuntu i386 ISOs has been brought up many times the past few years, but ultimately it’s kept getting pushed back for users still running Ubuntu Linux on old hardware and other reasons. Dropping Ubuntu for i386 keeps getting brought up namely for the installer media rather than the i386 package archive itself.

        • Meizu “Midori” Ubuntu Phone Coming Soon?

        • When should i386 support for Ubuntu end? Help Canonical decide

          Are you running i386 (32-bit) Ubuntu? We need your help to decide how much longer to build i386 images of Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and all the flavors.

          There is a real cost to support i386 and the benefits have fallen as more software goes 64-bit only.

• Devices/Embedded

  • COMs run Android on quad- or octa-core Samsung SoCs
    

    Boardcon announced a pair of 70 x 58mm COMs that run Android on Samsung’s quad-core, Cortex-A9 S5P4418 and octa-core, Cortex-A53 S5P6818 SoCs.

    The MINI4418 and MINI6818 computer-on-modules are “compatible” with each other, as well as with Boardcon’s earlier MINI3288, which is based on the quad-core, Cortex-A17 Rockchip RK3288. The new COMs instead tap two Samsung SoCs: the quad-core, Cortex-A9 S5P4418 for the MINI4418, and the octa-core, Cortex-A53 S5P6818 for the MINI6818. The MINI6818 supports applications such as “sensitive home automation, security, and industrial applications,” whereas the MINI4418 supports “MID, multimedia advertising, intelligent control terminals, and smart instrumentation,” says Boardcon.

  • Expansive Mini-ITX board runs Linux on Skylake

    Axiomtek’s “MANO0500” Mini-ITX board supports 6th Gen Intel Core, Pentium, and Celeron CPUs, and offers three SATA, two GbE, and mini-PCIe with SIM.

    Mini-ITX boards are typically among the first form-factors to support new Intel Core chips along with COM Express modules. We’re not sure why Axiomtek, one of the more prolific of embedded vendors, waited so long to launch its first 6th Generation Intel Core (“Skylake”) based Mini-ITX board, but it’s a welcome edition. Back in April, the company announced a Skylake-based PICO500 SBC using the smaller Pico-ITX form factor.

  • Ludicrously cheap HDMI capture for Linux

    Lately I have had the need to do real time video capture from HDMI devices as of late for a project, and while looking around the internet found that all of the capture cards that are aimed at gamers (windows / OSX support only) or full blown production capture (Very expensive, more inputs than I need). The other downside is that all of these options either have no Linux drivers at all, or if they do, they have a Linux driver that is behind an NDA, and those cards are in the $800+ range.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Watchmaster App Released for Tizen on the Gear S2

        WatchMaster features a collection of 200+ high quality and unique watch face designs that up to now have been available for Android wear devices, but have now finally been released for the Tizen based Gear S2.

        The company has many capable designers, such as Liongate, Pluto, Excalibur and Monostone that create a wide variety of watchfaces that include: Analog to illustration, moonphase, ambient and animation design. If your looking some aesthetically pleasing watches to enhance your individuality then they are definitely worth a look.

    • Android

      • A first look at Google’s Science Journal app

        Google recently announced the release of its Science Journal app, a tool intended to “inspire future makers and scientists.” All you need to get started is an Android phone—it will make use of the sensors on your phone and offers a digital science notebook to record your findings. The app is free and slated to be released open source later this summer. Google has already released microcontroller firmware for Arduino-based sensors on GitHub.

      • Google phone might not be the best move for Android

        It’s like the early 2000s again. With Apple finally launching the first ever iPhone, there is talk about Google doing something similar. Of course, that happened and it didn’t, with the Nexus line the closest thing to a “Google phone”. Fast-forward nearly a decade, Google is rumored to once again try its hand at actually becoming a smartphone maker too. Like Apple. It doesn’t make business sense, of course. But what if it were true? What if Google din put out a “gPhone”? It definitely can, like the Pixel C Android tablet. But if it did, this non-Nexus Google-made Android smartphone would be an atrocity for consumers. Here are the reasons why.

      • I’ve Given Up On Sony

      • Slack for Android picks up full Android Wear support in latest update

      • Google is actively breaking my Android workflow

      • Cerberus anti theft gets fingerprint sensor support, Android N features, and bug fixes in version 3.4

      • Google Expands Android Pay To Asia, Singapore To Gain First Access

      • Android fragmentation may not be as pronounced as Google’s distribution numbers would have you believe, Apteligent report says

      • Twitter starts showing a Night Mode toggle on Android

      • Amazon will start subsidizing Android phones with ‘special offer’ ads on the lock screens

      • Netflix Gets New ‘N’ Logo on Android

      • Android Apps Turn Chromebooks Into Macbook Killers

        When Chromebooks launched in the summer of 2011, they seemed destined to fail, much like the underpowered, internet-dependent netbooks that came before them. But in the five years since, Chromebooks have defied expectations, becoming the most used device in US classrooms and even outselling Macs for the first time this year. Still, people complain about their inability to run useful software, but that’s all about to change.

      • Android apps could turn Chromebooks into MacBook killers