06.10.16

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Hands-on with Ubiquity and Calamares: Two Linux installers side-by-side

  I will wrap this up with just a few words about Linux Mint 18, since I used it to write this. The Release Candidate is on the mirrors now but I haven’t seen an announcement of it yet. I assume that the RC announcement will come along very soon. I have installed it so far on a couple of my systems with absolutely no problem – as evidenced by the screen shots and descriptions above. My first impression is that it is just what we have come to expect from Linux Mint, a solid distribution which looks good and works well. Cinnamon 3.0 seems very nice, although I haven’t had a chance to really look at the new features yet.

  Based on past releases, having the Release Candidate out now means that the final release will probably be made before the end of the month.

• Desktop

  • Do Sony Vaios Dream of Ubuntu MATE?

    For years I’ve been toying with the idea of tinkering with Linux and seeing what this whole open source thing is all about. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve been mostly a Windows (and sometimes an OS X) user for most of my adult life (and a Commodore 64 and Apple IIe user when I was much less of an adult). In truth though, I’ve always had a healthy respect for those who dabble in the arcane arts of open source. The DIY aesthetic reminds me of the kids in high school shop class who would make their own guitars, and the punk bands I knew who would record demo tapes in their garages and tour the country in rusty, decades-old vans. The community exudes a spirit of exploration and an overall attitude of “permission be damned” that, as an outsider, I admire.

  • Maru OS exits private beta, lets you use an Android phone as a Linux desktop

    Maru OS is a platform that lets you run both Google Android and Debian Linux on a smartphone. Use your device as a phone, and it’ll act like any other Android phone. Connect an external display, mouse, and keyboard and you’ve got a full-fledged Debian Linux desktop environment.

  • Maru OS finally arrives, promising a desktop experience for Nexus 5 users

  • Nexus 5 Becomes a Linux Computer with MaruOS (Continuum for Android)

  • MaruOS is like Continuum for Android, turns the Nexus 5 into a Linux computer

  • Linux desktop apps take a cue from Docker packages

    Flatpak delivers Linux desktop apps across distributions with a single download, but it also relies on Red Hat’s controversial systemd

  • How Windows 10 became malware

    I asked her whether she had accidentally clicked “OK” on any upgrade notifications, ignored any warnings that she had received or gotten any other notices about the upgrade. No on all counts, she answered before leaving to wrestle with her new operating system.

    I admit to having been skeptical. Would Microsoft really take over someone’s computer without warning and install a significant chunk of software without explicit permission? That’s what malware does, I thought, not software from one of the biggest tech firms on the planet with the largest operating system installed base on desktop and laptops PCs.

    Turns out, she was right. And I wasn’t the only tech writer whose spouse had this experience: The same thing happened to the wife of PC World’s Brad Chacos.

    All this made me wonder: If software from any other company behaved the way the Windows 10 upgrade does, would it be considered malware?

  • We are not tricking anyone into installing Windows 10: Microsoft [Ed: Microsoft is lying, again.]

    Microsoft said it is not tricking users on Windows 7 and 8.1 to upgrade to Windows 10, as was recently reported.

    Recent changes in the way the Windows 10 upgrade is delivered to customers is an effort to ensure that everyone who wants their free upgrade to Windows 10 receives it, said Microsoft.

• Server

  • Preventing break-ins on your Linux system

    All too often we hear about breaches in security where usernames and passwords were obtained and published online. Most of the time, what’s revealed is that most passwords are very simple or iterative of a previous version (e.g., 12345 followed by 123456 on the next change). Implementing password requirements can help keep weak passwords out of your environment. These forced changes have their pros and cons, but when it comes down to it there are still flaws in authentication.

  • iTWire shows Linux Australia the right way to host a server

    An iTWire article appears to have resulted in Linux Australia seeing the folly of not having proper arrangements in place for hosting its website.

    Further, a member of Linux Australia has suggested the office-bearers should resign en masse for not anticipating a breakdown in hosting the organisation’s website recently.

    Linux Australia secretary, Sae Ra Germaine, posted to the Linux-aus mailing list in April to explain why the organisation experienced server downtime, ultimately because the team charged with managing this task, while recognising a risk of disruption, did not engage with the University hosting the server instead choosing only to liaise with ex-employees, and discontinued searching for a new host between December 2015 and March 2016.

  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Docker partner for the containerized data-center

    Docker, with its containerized technology, is leaping into the enterprise with its Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) partnership.

• Kernel Space

  • More DRM Code Gets Aligned For Linux 4.8 Via DRM-Next

    Complementing the significant amount of Intel DRM driver code already vetted and queued up for the Linux 4.8 cycle via DRM-Next, more code was pulled in last night for the various Direct Rendering Manager drivers in preparation for this next kernel cycle later in the summer.

  • Linux Kernel 4.1.26 LTS Has Many CIFS, MIPS, EXT4, Btrfs, and ARM64 Improvements

    Yesterday, we reported on the release of Linux kernel 4.6.2, Linux kernel 4.5.7, Linux kernel 4.4.13 LTS, and Linux kernel 3.14.72 LTS, and it now looks like Linux kernel 4.1.26 LTS has been released into the wild as well.

  • Linux Kernel 3.18.35 LTS Released with MIPS, Btrfs & EXT4 Fixes, Updated Drivers

  • Linux file system + LTFS tape = Nodeum’s cold storage

    LTFS – the Linear Tape File System – seemed like a great idea when it emerged but not many storage vendors seem to have made much of it. It puts a file system on top of a tape library and turns it into something like a tape-NAS, making it suitable for archive use cases.

  • Graphics Stack

    • GLFW 3.2 Released With Vulkan Support

      The cross-platform GLFW library that provides an API similar to SDL for abstracting out differences in window creation, contexts, inputs/events, and more, is now up to version 3.2.

  • Benchmarks

    • Latest AMDGPU-PRO Ubuntu Linux Performance vs. NVIDIA, Including The GTX 1080

      Last week when posting my initial NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Linux review the Radeon Linux performance numbers I included were from the latest open-source driver stack, since that’s what most Phoronix readers seem interested in as of late given the rapid progress recently of OpenGL 4.x support inside Mesa, the hybrid driver stack also using the AMDGPU kernel driver, etc. But some people expressed curiosity over the AMDGPU-PRO performance relative to NVIDIA particularly with their new GTX 1080 graphics processor. So here is a fresh NVIDIA vs. AMDGPU-PRO graphics card comparison on Linux.

• Applications

  • Git 2.8.4 Source Code Management System Brings More Bug Fixes and Improvements

    Git, the open-source and cross-platform distributed version control system, has been updated to version 2.8.4, a maintenance release that adds assorted bugfixes and new features to the current stable 2.8 branch of the software.

    Git 2.8.4 is the fourth point release in the Git 2.8 stable series, released three weeks after the third maintenance build. Git 2.8 is a major update that everyone should use, as it brought many exciting new features, such as parallel fetch of submodules, the ability to tell Git not to guess your identity, as well as support for turning off Git’s smudge and clean filters.

  • Atom 1.8 Hackable Text Editor Lets Users Move Selected Text Left and Right

    A couple of days ago, we were in for a great surprise: we saw the release of Atom 1.8, a new milestone of GitHub’s open-source, cross-platform and powerful hackable text editor, bringing various new features and many bug fixes.

  • Proprietary

    • Infocyte HUNT Delivers First Agentless Threat Hunting Solution for Linux Platforms

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Linux Lexicon: Basic Linux Commands

    • How to get started with LightZone

    • How to Automate Web Application Testing With Docker and Travis

    • Basic shell commands after Putty SSH logon

    • Secure WordPress Login with Two Factor Authentication using privacyIDEA

    • Installing and Securing Nginx Websites on Linux with a Free SSL/TLS Certificate from Let’s Encrypt

    • Getting started with IRC

  • Games

    • Hitman 2016 Looks Like It Could Be Coming To Linux

      It’s looking quite possible like Hitman 2016 will be released for Linux.

      Linux gamers appear very excited this morning after Linux references for the game appeared on SteamDB. SteamDB Linux references generally have panned out more often than not but there isn’t any official announcement yet of Hitman 2016 coming to Linux.

    • HITMAN looks like it’s coming to SteamOS & Linux

      This is one series I had hoped we would get and it looks like we will be. HITMAN (the new 2016 version) looks like it’s coming to SteamOS & Linux.

    • OpenKeeper, another open source game engine, this time for Dungeon Keeper II

      I really do love open source game engines. Keeping older titles alive on new platforms and bringing bug fixes with them. This time Dungeon Keeper II gets the treatment.

    • Yooka-Laylee, the open-world platformer coming to Linux has a new trailer, release delayed

      Yooka-Laylee, from the “key creative talent” behind Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country has a new trailer. The release has also been delayed until 2017.

    • Torment: Tides of Numenera delayed until 2017, partnering with a publisher

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Enlightenment 0.20.9 Desktop Environment Out Now with 20 Improvements and Fixes

    A new stable version of the Enlightenment 0.20 lightweight and eye-candy desktop environment/window manager has arrived, version 0.20.9, which might just be one of the last maintenance versions in the series.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE Neon User Edition 5.6 Launches Based on Latest Stable KDE Plasma 5 Desktop

      Ex-Kubuntu leader Jonathan Riddell announced the general availability of the KDE Neon User Edition 5.6 operating system, based on the latest KDE technologies.

      Finally! There’s now a user edition of the KDE Neon project, an open source initiative that promises to bring the latest KDE software to PCs, always. KDE Neon is known for being both a layer on top of any Ubuntu or Kubuntu-based operating system, as well as an operating system distributed via installable ISO images.

    • KDE Neon User Edition 5.6 Is Released So You Can Easily Experience Plasma 5.6

      The first User Edition release is out for KDE Neon, which allows you to easily experience the latest Plasma stable experience and other updated KDE components.

      KDE Neon continues to be based off of Ubuntu but with packaging the very latest KDE components. KDE Neon Developer Edition packages up all of the latest KDE Git code while this KDE Neon User Edition 5.6 release is riding on the Plasma 5.6 stable series.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Solus 1.2 Is Coming Soon with a Much-Improved Installer, Many New Features Exclusive

      Solus 1.2 is coming very soon, believe it, and we had the pleasure of chatting with Solus Project leader Ikey Doherty during the last few days about various Solus-related things, including what’s coming in the major release.

  • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Tails 2.4 Screenshot Tour

    • Manjaro Linux 16.06 Screenshot Tour

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • [Novell] Enter into the web “Wayback Machine”

  • Red Hat Family

    • Container and Microservices Myths: The Red Hat Perspective

      What are containers and microservices? What are they not? These are questions that Lars Herrmann, general manager of Integrated Solutions Business Unit at Red Hat, answered recently for The VAR Guy in comments about popular container misconceptions and myths.

    • An open process for discovering your core values

      I’d read The Open Organization (and many other articles along the way) as I tried to navigate the path forward, discover my authentic leadership and management style within this (still very foreign) context, and lead change in a non-threatening manner. I’d adopted and promoted “All Hill” language and events to help break down siloes. We’d engaged in an All Hill “strategic visioning” process that was faculty/staff-centric, rather than being led by the board, and that resulted in some new relationships, dialogue, and common language. We had hired, retired, or exited many faculty and staff, resulting in an organization that was suddenly fairly evenly split—almost exactly one third newer personnel, one third in the three-to-ten-year range, and one third employees who had been at the school more than a decade (half for more than 20 years). And we were still very, very far from being an “open organization.”

    • Finance

      • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Fundamental Star Rating Report

      • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Price Target and Share Rating Check

      • Ruling stocks in today’s market: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • 2 Sizzling Hot Tech Stocks: Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), Xerox Corporation (XRX)

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 24 Final status is NO-GO

        The decision of the Fedora 24 Final Go/No-Go Meeting is NO-GO.

      • Fedora 24 Has Been Delayed Once More

        Today was a Go/No-Go meeting and the Fedora stakeholders have determined the final release must slip by another week.

        Due to outstanding F24 blocker bugs, it’s been determined to delay the official Fedora 24 release by another week in hopes of being able to clear out the blockers. The next Go/No-Go meeting will happen on 16 January to see if Fedora 24 can then ship.

      • Fedora 24 Linux Has Been Delayed, It Should Now Launch on June 21, 2016

        Well, believe it or not, the upcoming Fedora 24 Linux operating system has been delayed once more, this time due to a bug in the GRUB2 bootloader, where the OS wasn’t capable of booting on a Dell Precision M6800 machine with Windows 10.

        The decision to delay the June 14 release of Fedora 24 was taken today, June 9, during the usual Fedora 24 Final Go/No-Go meeting. This is the fourth delay for the Fedora 24 Linux operating system, and it now looks like the final launch should happen on June 21, 2016.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” Live Editions Are Now Available to Download

      We reported last week on the general availability of new install mediums for the Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” operating system, as well as the release of the last update for Debian GNU/Linux 7 “Wheezy.”

      It took a week, but the Debian Project team manage to publish, just a few moments ago, the Live DVD editions of the Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” distribution, which are specially designed Live flavors built around various popular desktop environments. These can be used to showcase the latest Debian release to your friends or customers.

    • Derivatives

      • Tails, the anonymity-focused Linux distribution with deep Tor integration, reaches version 2.4

        Tails is a Linux distribution most famously used by Edward Snowden. Boot Tails from a live DVD, USB drive, or SD card and it will turn any PC into a more private and anonymous system. Tails forces all network activity to go through the Tor network, preserving anonymity and bypassing Internet censorship. Shut down your computer and the memory will be wiped, with no trace of the Tails activity left on the system.

        This important Linux distribution has been advancing steadily with release after release since I last covered it with the release of Tails 1.4. The project just released Tails 2.4 on June 7, 2016.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • An Insider Scoop on Ubuntu 16.10 – Major Expectations

          The Ubuntu Online Summit which went underway during the first week of May saw a lot of discussions and planning for Ubuntu 16.10. The three-day long event showed us some glimpses on what to expect from “Yakkety Yak“.

          So to all those who missed out the event or eager to know more about the Ubuntu 16.10, here’s some sneak peek on the major expectations that is bound to come bundles with Ubuntu 16.10.

        • Ubuntu 16.10 Continues Planning For The Linux 4.8 Kernel

          Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is shipping right now with the Linux 4.4 kernel while for the Ubuntu 16.10 release in October they are expected to jump ahead to Linux 4.8.

          With being an LTS+1 release, they are more liberal in their packages for this release that’s codenamed Yakkety Yak. Linux 4.7 should land in July and Linux 4.8 should be officially released around the end of September, if all goes well and the release candidates don’t drag on for Linux 4.7 or 4.8.

        • Linux Kernel 4.8 To Power Upcoming Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak)

          Upcoming Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) will be driven by Linux Kernel 4.8

          The Canonical headquarters of Ubuntu is finally gaining movement on the development of the Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system.

        • Canonical Respond to Web Browser App Icon Brouhaha

          The design team as Canonical has responded to concerns raised in the community about the design of the Ubuntu Web Browser icon.

          But if you were hoping for a resolution, you’ll be left wanting.

        • Microsoft Launches “Huge Improvements” for Ubuntu Bash in New Windows 10 Build

        • Windows 10 build 14361 includes huge improvements to Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Another Fedora 24 Delay, Mint 18 Beta Released

            Clement Lefebvre today announced the availability of Linux Mint 18 Beta in the Cinnamon and MATE flavors. Jan Kurik announced another delay in Fedora 24 development due to a bug that keeps Windows from booting after GRUB installation. Elsewhere, Jonathan Riddell announced the release of KDE neon for users and, apparently, there’s been another Ubuntu “brouhaha” to report. Microsoft’s Anthony Doherty was quoted as saying they’re not tricking anyone into upgrading to Windows 10 while Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols today said that Microsoft is going “all open source, all the time.”

          • Linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah’ BETA available now

            With all of the negative press surrounding Windows 10, many folks in my private life are asking me about alternatives. Believe it or not, Linux is often the answer. The first thing I ask them is, for what do you use your computer? Almost everyone tells me things like Facebook, email, and word processing. Well, a combination of Google Chrome and LibreOffice on top of an easy-to-use distro meets those needs perfectly.

          • Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon, MATE betas released

            Last week, Clem Lefebvre took to the Linux Mint blog to announce that the beta releases of the upcoming Linux Mint 18 release were “just around the corner.” Just under a week after that announcement, Lefebvre has made good on his promise, publishing download links to the Mint 18 beta.

            The Cinnamon release comes in at 1.6 GB while the MATE release is an even larger 1.7 GB, which is strange considering MATE is supposed to be the more conservative, lighter-weight version of the two. In the Cinnamon edition, the desktop has been upgraded to version 3.0; you can see an overview of its features in the Linux Scoop video below. Meanwhile, MATE was bumped to version 1.14.

          • Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” Cinnamon – BETA Release

          • Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” MATE – BETA Release

          • May 2016 Donation Totals [Susan Linton: Bodhi Linux Gets $1111 Donation, Largest Ever]

• Devices/Embedded

  • How Bitcoin’s Blockchain tech could aid IoT interoperability

    One of the main themes of this year’s Embedded Linux Conference and OpenIoT Summit was the challenge of bridging the growing number of Internet of Things (IoT) standards. Many speakers were hopeful about the potential for achieving functional interoperability, if not a unifying standard, and there were even calls for a possible merger between two of the largest open source efforts: AllSeen and IoTivity.

  • Carrier board aims DragonBoard 410c SBC at UAV apps

    Gumstix and Arrow launched a customizable DragonBoard 410C expansion board for UAV and MAV applications, that adds NimbeLink LTE and camera support.

    Gumstix and Arrow Electronics announced the availability of a $149 variant of its AeroCore 2 board called the “AeroCore 2 Expansion Board for DragonBoard 410C.” This more advanced version of the existing Gumstix AeroCore 2 baseboard for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) uses Arrow’s DragonBoard 410C SBC for its controller brain, rather than usual Gumstix DuoVero COM. The combo not only offers a far more powerful Linux and Android compatible computer, but also a new MIPI-CSI-2 camera connector along with a connector for a NimbeLink LTE radio.

  • Imagination’s new router chips could save open source firmware from FCC rules

    A company that designs MIPS processors for networking hardware says it is developing technology that would allow installation of open source firmware on wireless routers while still complying with the US Federal Communications Commission’s latest anti-interference rules.

    The FCC now requires router makers to prevent third-party firmware from changing radio frequency parameters in ways that could cause interference with other devices, such as FAA Doppler weather radar systems.

  • Small footprint open source hypervisor makes highly efficient use of hardware virtualization technology in Imagination’s MIPS CPUs

  • Meet Mycroft, the open source AI who wants to rival Siri, Cortana, and Alexa

    It might bear a passing resemblance to ET, but Mycroft’s smart home system is more than a pretty face: it’s an attempt to define what it means to be human through technology.

    The first seeds of the open source home hardware AI platform that was to become Mycroft came to Joshua Montgomery during a refit of a Kansas maker-and-enterpreneurship space he was setting up. Montgomery wanted the building to have the same abilities as the systems seen on classic sci-fi films and series.

    “It was inspired by the Star Trek computers, by Jarvis in Iron Man,” Montgomery told ZDNet. He wanted to create the type of artificial intelligence platform that “if you spoke to it when you walked in the room, it could control the music, control the lights, the doors” and more.

  • Open source hypervisor runs multiple OS in IoT designs

    Designed for a small footprint, the L4Re hypervisor, which is maintained by Kernkonzept, can run on the hardware virtualization technology in MIPS CPUs. The aim of this is to provide more efficient context switching and to make better use of CPU cycles.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Gear IconX, the ear buds with a standalone player, oh and it runs Tizen

        We have recently covered many news stories relating to the Gear Fit 2, but there was also the announcement of another Tizen based fitness wearable that we kinda overlooked, the Gear Icon X. At the time of the release it was not confirmed as a Tizen wearable device, which later our sources close to the situation confirmed, “Houston we have another Tizen device”.

    • Android

      • OnePlus 3 Camera Samples Released; Smartphone Leaked in Numerous Images

        There is little left to the imagination when it comes to the OnePlus 3. The smartphone has been subjected to numerous leaks ahead of its June 14 unveil, and now, we get treated with camera samples, and some leaked pricing details.

        After releasing camera samples a few days ago, OnePlus has released more images to show what the OnePlus 3 camera can do. The four images are stunning; capturing movement, depth of field, and colours adeptly.

        [...]

        The company in the meanwhile has also released the kernel and device tree of OxygenOS to the community for further development.

      • No Oxygen Open Source — Personal Apology Regarding Misreporting

        Yesterday, we pushed out an article where we claimed that OnePlus had open sourced OxygenOS. The basis of our claim was the recent activity on OnePlus’s github. Based on the information that we had on hand at that exact moment, and a precursory look at the code that indicated a lot of code pulled over from CAF, we wrongly concluded that OnePlus had open sourced part of OxygenOS.

        What happened in fact was that OnePlus released the device tree and some HALs for the OnePlus 2. This is still big news by itself, as it will be of great use for 3rd party development efforts on the OnePlus 2. However, it is not in any way related to OnePlus open sourcing their OS.

      • OnePlus releases OxygenOS as open source, or not [UPDATED]

      • GIF whatever is on your Android screen with ‘Mirror’

      • Lenovo Phab 2, Phab 2 Plus, Phab 2 Pro hands on

      • London Android developers told us what they’re excited and scared about right now

      • Top 10 Best Android Indian Smartphones – June 2016 Edition

      • YouTube has a new way to save on data costs for Android users in India

      • Asus ZenFone 2 Laser, ZenFone Max Now Receiving Android Marshmallow Update

      • Google set to finally reveal the official name for Android N

      • We’ll soon know Android N’s full name

      • How Google Ramps Up Security for Work And Play With Android N

      • Android M running on only 10.1 per cent devices: report

      • Samsung Galaxy Note 6/Note 7 Details: Advanced Iris Scanner Feature, Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow And Launch Date Revealed

      • Paranoid Android is back with new ‘all new features’, ‘new team members’ and more

      • Paranoid Android is back with a big new release

      • Chrome 51 on Android brings tabs back

      • Chrome 51 for Android arrives with improvements to scrolling and battery life, removes merged tabs

      • Android-x86 6.0 Promises to Let You Run Android 6.0 Marshmallow on Your PC

      • Android-x86 6.0-RC1 Released With OpenGL ES Via Mesa, Linux 4.4.12

      • Google Working on Proprietary Android, Analyst Says

      • Report: Google to Make Android Proprietary in 2017?

      • How to run Android on an iPhone

      • Finally, Android on the iPhone

      • Apple planning to bring iMessage to Android at WWDC claims source

      • Rumor: Apple to debut iMessage for Android at WWDC 2016

Free Software/Open Source

• Open source data logger board is Arduino compatible

  The $60 Arduino-compatible “Mayfly Data Logger” board has 128KB flash, offers Grove module and XBee wireless expansion, and targets environmental apps.

  EnviroDIY.org, an open source spinoff of the Stroud Water Research Center in Pennsylvania, announced the EnviroDIY Mayfly Logger in December, and began selling it on Amazon in mid-May, as reported in this Adafruit blog entry from May 31. Although primarily designed for environmental monitoring — especially for the “citizen science” community water quality monitoring projects encouraged by Stroud and EnviroDIY — the Mayfly Data Logger can be used for any sensor-driven data logging, especially when remote operation is necessary.

• Events/Courses

  • Software Freedom Conservancy’s Karen Sandler On FOSS and the IoT

    A fascinating interview conducted by Jenn Webb at this year’s OSCON with Karen Sandler, open source evangelist and executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, was uploaded to YouTube this week. These thoughts of hers really hit home — “We’re only as safe as our weakest leak…. With the Internet of Things, all the software that seems not-so-critical is becoming critical — because everything talks to each other and interacts with each other. And so free and open source software has never been so important.”

  • Down the Right Corridor: Dynatrace Jump-Starts Cloud Foundry Unit Testing

    During the Cloud Foundry Summit last month, applications performance management services provider Dynatrace announced a partnership with Pivotal, Cloud Foundry’s steward. The object? Open the floodgates for performance metrics from the PaaS platform.

  • BBQ and forking

    Last night we had our first Nextcloud BBQ!

  • Online course targets open source SDN development

    The Linux Foundation, the body promoting the open source software ecosystem, has introduced a new online training course for engineers who want to move into networking, with the skills necessary to manage a software-defined network (SDN) deployment.

  • New Course from The Linux Foundation and Open Daylight Project Focuses on SDN

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Help Make Open Source Secure

      Open source software is used by millions of businesses and thousands of educational and government institutions for critical applications and services. From Google and Microsoft to the United Nations, open source code is now tightly woven into the fabric of the software that powers the world. Indeed, much of the Internet – including the network infrastructure that supports it – runs using open source technologies. As the Internet moves from connecting browsers to connecting devices (cars and medical equipment), software security becomes a life and death consideration.

    • Mozilla starts $500K fund to find security holes in software

    • Mozilla Starts $500000 Fund to Help Open Source Projects with Security Audits

    • Mozilla launches new fund to help prevent the next Heartbleed

    • Mozilla will foot the bill for your open source software security audit

    • Mozilla creates open source security fund in bid to prevent another Heartbleed

    • New Mozilla fund will pay for security audits of open-source code

    • Mozilla launches Secure Open Source (SOS) Fund

      Open source software is ideal for security. Its transparency allows code to be publicly reviewed and audited. This not only helps to detect bugs and vulnerabilities, but intentional backdoors too. In contrast, closed source software can be a mystery to users — who knows what is lurking in your favorite such programs?

    • Mozilla Firefox 47.0 Lands in All Supported Ubuntu OSes, Arch Linux, and Solus

      The Mozilla Firefox web browser has landed today, June 9, 2016, in the software repositories of all supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, on June 8 on the Arch Linux repos, and on June 10 for Solus.

    • Firefox 47 Debuts With 13 Security Advisories

      Mozilla provided 13 security advisories with Firefox 47. The updated browser also supports encrypted HTML5 video support.

      Firefox 47, which Mozilla released on June 7, provides users of the open-source Web browser with a baker’s dozen security updates and a number of incremental feature improvements.

    • Firefox 48 Enables Electrolysis, Brings “Largest Change Ever” By Bringing Multi-process

      Mozilla is finally rolling out the much-anticipated multi-process feature in its Firefox web browser. Named Electrolysis, this project is being called the biggest change ever made to Firefox. To give you the power-user ability and avoid crashing, Electrolysis will split the Firefox UI and content rendering processes.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Bruce Byfield Talks ‘Designing With LibreOffice’

    Byfield’s thoughtful book on design using LibreOffice can help improve the quality of both online and print material you create with LibreOffice — or even with its progenitor, OpenOffice.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • HPE gives open source developers access to The Machine [Ed: not at all open, just built on top of open, available to open source developers]

    HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE (HPE) has opened up The Machine, its next-generation project to reinvent the computer that doesn’t exist yet, to developers.

  • Microsoft Lays Out Details on its Plans for Apache Spark [Ed: EEE, nothing FOSS from Microsoft]

  • ​Why Microsoft is turning into an open-source company [Ed: But ALL the core products are proprietary]

    Let’s go through the list shall we? Microsoft just released its own version of FreeBSD for Azure. So what, you say? Who uses FreeBSD? Well, you’ve probably heard of a little company called Netflix. Then, there’s Citrix, Array Networks, Gemalto. and Netgate, which already have virtual appliances on the Azure Marketplace.

• BSD

  • Debian Artwork, Not-so-FreeBSD, and Slack Updates

    Today in Linux news Niels Thykier, of the Debian release team, put out the call for Debian 9 Stretch artwork. The Register covered the announcement of a Microsoft FreeBSD release and Slackware-current received more updates today. Also, let’s take a closer look at the new development structure for Firefox beginning with version 48.

  • Microsoft Creates Its Own Distribution Of FreeBSD Operating System

    Microsoft has released its own FreeBSD distribution and offered official support to Azure users. The kernel level changes/investments made by Redmond will be up-streamed into the official FreeBSD 10.3 release. Justin T. Gibbs, the FreeBSD Foundation’s President, called its an important milestone for the community.

  • Microsoft has created its own FreeBSD image. Repeat. Microsoft has created its own FreeBSD image

    Microsoft has created its own cut of FreeBSD 10.3 in order to make the OS available and supported in Azure.

    Jason Anderson, principal PM manager at Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center says Redmond “took on the work of building, testing, releasing and maintaining the image” so it could “ensure our customers have an enterprise SLA for their FreeBSD VMs running in Azure”.

  • Microsoft Spins Its Own FreeBSD Image For The Cloud

  • Microsoft Releases FreeBSD Virtual Machine Image for Azure

  • Microsoft creates its own FreeBSD distribution to run on Azure

  • Microsoft creates own distribution of FreeBSD for Azure developers

  • Microsoft supports popular FreeBSD open-source OS with new Azure virtual-machine image

  • Microsoft announces its own FreeBSD to ensure Azure support

  • Microsoft publishes its own FreeBSD distro… kind of

  • Microsoft creates its own FreeBSD

  • FreeBSD Now Available on Microsoft’s Azure

  • Microsoft loves FreeBSD so much it has made its own VM image for Azure

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • gettext-0.19.8 released

  • denemo @ Savannah: Release 2.0.10 is imminent!

  • GNU wget 1.18 released

  • Friday Free Software Directory IRC meetup: June 10th

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Open access: All human knowledge is there—so why can’t everybody access it?

      He went some way to achieving that goal of providing general access to human knowledge. In 1856, after 20 years of labour as Keeper of Printed Books, he had helped boost the British Museum’s collection to over half a million books, making it the largest library in the world at the time. But there was a serious problem: to enjoy the benefits of those volumes, visitors needed to go to the British Museum in London.

      Imagine, for a moment, if it were possible to provide access not just to those books, but to all knowledge for everyone, everywhere—the ultimate realisation of Panizzi’s dream. In fact, we don’t have to imagine: it is possible today, thanks to the combined technologies of digital texts and the Internet. The former means that we can make as many copies of a work as we want, for vanishingly small cost; the latter provides a way to provide those copies to anyone with an Internet connection. The global rise of low-cost smartphones means that group will soon include even the poorest members of society in every country.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • open source modular design: the business benefits

      Open source hardware, as defined by the Open source Hardware Association, lowers the barriers to innovation by making reuse and redesign explicitly allowed from day one, without needing to involve a lawyer. You are explicitly allowed to make money from it. That’s expected and encouraged. Open source hardware has one very interesting difference from software. Nobody seriously expects hardware to be free, so the business model for open source hardware is the same as proprietary. People pay for objects.

Leftovers

• European Commission Update: Revised SPC tender now open!

• Health/Nutrition

  • Who Makes Sure Hospital Mergers Do No Harm? Almost Nobody.

    Mergers have become commonplace as hospital mega-chains increasingly dominate the American health-care market. But these deals often go unscrutinized by state regulators, who fail to address potential risks to patients losing access to care, according to a new report released today.

    MergerWatch, which analyzes the hospital industry and opposes faith-based health care restrictions, surveyed health care statutes and regulations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It found that only 10 states require government review before hospital facilities and services can be shut down. Only eight states and the District of Columbia mandate regulatory review when hospitals enter into more informal partnerships rather than full-scale mergers, closing a loophole that exists in other states for deals to pass with minimal state oversight.

  • Federal Report Appears to Undercut EPA Assurances on Water Safety In Pennsylvania

    Since 2009 the people of Dimock, Pennsylvania, have insisted that, as natural gas companies drilled into their hillsides, shaking and fracturing their ground, their water had become undrinkable. It turned a milky brown, with percolating bubbles of explosive methane gas. People said it made them sick.

    Their stories — told first through an investigation into the safety of gas drilling by ProPublica — turned Dimock into an epicenter of what would evolve into a national debate about natural gas energy and the dangers of the process of “fracking,” or shattering layers of bedrock in order to release trapped natural gas.

    But the last word about the quality of Dimock’s water came from assurances in a 2012 statement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the federal department charged with safeguarding the Americans’ drinking water. The agency declared that the water coming out of Dimock’s taps did not require emergency action, such as a federal cleanup. The agency’s stance was widely interpreted to mean the water was safe.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The US Is Preparing to Oust President Evo Morales

    US intelligence agencies have ramped up their operations intended to remove Bolivian President Evo Morales from office. All options are on the table, including assassination. Barack Obama, who sees the weakening of Latin America’s “hostile bloc of populist states” as one of his administration’s foreign-policy victories, intends to buoy this success before stepping down.

    Washington also feels under the gun in Bolivia because of China’s successful expansion in the country. Morales is steadily strengthening his financial, economic, trade, and military relationship with Beijing. Chinese businesses in La Paz are thriving – making investments and loans and taking part in projects to secure a key position for Bolivia in the modernization of the continent’s transportation industry. In the next 10 years, thanks to Bolivia’s plentiful gas reserves, that country will become the energy hub of South America. Evo Morales sees his country’s development as his top priority, and the Chinese, unlike the Americans, have always viewed Bolivia as an ally and partner in a relationship that eschews double standards.

  • Where Do Matters Stand?

    Today life on Planet Earth is far less secure than during the darkest days of the Cold War. Whatever threat global warming poses, it is miniscule compared to the threat of nuclear winter. If the evil that is concentrated in Washington and its vassals perpetrates nuclear war, cockroaches will inherit the earth.

  • Sanders’s Contribution toward Mideast Peace

    While victorious Hillary Clinton is expected to pivot right to attract disenchanted Republicans, Alon Ben-Meir hopes she will at least adopt Sen. Sanders’s more evenhanded approach toward peace negotiations between Israel-Palestine.

  • One Man’s War

    Memorial Day is over. You had your barbeque. Now, you can stop thinking about America’s wars and the casualties from them for another year. As for me, I only wish it were so.

    It’s been Memorial Day for me ever since I first met Tomas Young. And in truth, it should have felt that way from the moment I hunkered down in Somalia in 1993 and the firing began. After all, we’ve been at war across the Greater Middle East ever since. But somehow it was Tomas who, in 2013, first brought my own experience in the U.S. military home to me in ways I hadn’t been able to do on my own.

  • Obama’s Nuclear Paradox

    Kyl is no longer in the Senate. But his modernization plan lives on. In fact, it’s metastasized into a nearly $1 trillion program over a 30-year period. Sure, given reports of a decrepit network of labs and manufacturing facilities, funds for some upgrade of the nuclear complex makes sense. You don’t want the most dangerous weapons in the world to be housed in substandard accommodations. But the modernization plan goes way beyond any reasonable concerns for safety.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Gen. Petraeus Leaked Classified Info To Journalists, Sent Sensitive Documents To Non-Secure Email Accounts

    General Petraeus, despite turning over “little black books” filled with classified info to his mistress/biographer (Paula Broadwell), is now serving out his mild non-sentence by suffering through high-paying speaking gigs. The government — “punishing” one of its own — ended up implying there was somehow a difference between Petraeus and others who turned over classified information to journalists.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • Whistleblower: EPA Official Covered Up Methane Leakage Problems across US Natural Gas Industry — News Release from NC WARN

• Finance

  • Tell Leader Nancy Pelosi to Stand Against the TPP

    The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has never been on a shakier footing, given widespread (and well justified) public mistrust of the process and the outcome, opposition from all of the Presidential candidates, and to top it all off a decidedly lackluster forecast even from the administration’s own International Trade Commission. Is it too much to hope that the TPP is on its last legs?

    Perhaps, yes. It would be a critical error to underestimate the political power of the industry sectors that have been pushing the TPP negotiations through this decade. And those powerful forces may have one final trick up their sleeve. According to our sources on Capitol Hill, TPP proponents are planning to schedule a vote immediately after the election, during the “lame duck” session of Congress, in the short window when the old Congress continues to sit before the new one takes office. Members of the “lame duck” Congress may have already retired or been voted out of office, yet they still have the authority to make law. As a result of their minimal accountability to their constituents during this period, it is inappropriate that a vote on TPP should come before the lame duck session.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Trump Exists Because We Wanted Him

    If not Donald, someone else would be Trump. America has been waiting for him.

  • The Absolute Best, Most Terrific Reporting on Trump University

    Trump University promised to help students get rich. Enrollees would study the wisdom of The Donald and get mentoring from other terrific businesspeople. But a class-action suit by former students and a suit brought by the New York attorney general allege that the unaccredited “school” mainly helped students part with the money in their wallets. (Trump has called the suits a “scam” and “thug politics.”)

  • Clinton’s Curious California Victory

    The Democratic Party’s California primary made it hard for pro-Sanders independents to vote, with many denied the right ballots and many young voters forced to vote “provisionally,” giving Hillary Clinton a boost toward victory, writes Rick Sterling.

  • Why Sanders must continue his campaign

    With former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now having finally won enough pledged delegates to sew up the Democratic nomination for president, the months-long calls for Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) to abandon his campaign have finally ceased being senseless. This is not, however, to say that they should be heeded. They should not. Sanders should continue his campaign, even as he lightly modifies its aims and tonalities. The modifications should track the reasons for continuing the campaign, which are three in number.

    The first reason for continuing the campaign is the easiest and most obvious: Much still can happen between now and the Democratic convention later this summer. Clinton is not yet entirely out of the woods where her use of private email to conduct public business is concerned. While a full-on indictment looks unlikely, it is not yet out of the question; nor is further fallout from the secretary’s inaccurate account of the State Department rules that she stands accused of having violated. It is accordingly important for the Democratic Party to have its other principal candidate for president at the ready, how ever unlikely it is that he will be needed for this particular purposes.

  • Anthem for Bummed Youth

    But maybe that was as it should be. After all, this entire campaign has been a long lesson in democratic dysfunction.

  • Bernie or Bust? No, It’s Justice or Bust

    Oh brothers and sisters, what an odd time. I hear great energy going into whether or not Bernie should now concede or how the next few weeks look if he stays in the race as he proclaimed he would late Tuesday night. Will Bernie delegates or supporters disrupt the DNC convention? That’s another point to consider for pundits and others. Bernie or bust is one group’s battle cry, while others call for Party unity. I think all of these issues are missing the point and the moment at hand.

    Bernie repeated the theme during his speech that this campaign, this political revolution, is about changing this country and addressing the issues he has framed so well over the last year. To the extent that we can exert pressure on the Democratic Party or even on the American public to support those changes, staying in the fight is critical for Bernie.

  • Pfizer CEO Can’t “Distinguish Between the Policies” of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

    As we look for signs of which presidential candidate major corporations will see as best serving their interests, the head of the largest pharmaceutical company in the world is saying he can’t really tell.

    Ian Read, the chief executive of Pfizer, said that he cannot “at this moment distinguish between the policies that Donald Trump may support or those that Hillary Clinton may support.”

    Read, attending the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference last week, was asked who makes him “more nervous.” He said he’s more concerned about control of Congress. “I’m sort of more focused really on understanding where the House control is going to be and where the Senate control is going to be,” Read said.

  • Wasserman Schultz Has a Change of Heart, But Too Little, Too Late

    The DNC chair and Florida congresswoman changed her mind on an important issue but she and other corporate Democrats continue to betray the legacy of their party.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Experts call for easing internet censorship

    Several media experts have demanded the government ease internet censorship due to the enforcement of the 2008 Information and Electronic Transaction (ITE) Law.

    “Every stakeholder should pay attention to this messy law, which has violated the principle of network neutrality, because it could penalize everyone for defamation,” Arfi Bambani, the Alliance of Independence Journalists (AJI) secretary-general, said during a discussion in Jakarta on Wednesday.

    Network neutrality principle means that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally. Hence, it promotes the idea of open internet, which upholds transparency and proscribes censorship, he added.

  • Activists urge govt to ensure net neutrality in Indonesia

    The Internet should be an equal world for all of its users, without any discrimination in terms of accessing content or expressing ideas, activists have said. However, the 2008 Information and Electronic Transaction (ITE) Law has failed to preserve that principle, they said, and most likely, the revised version of the law would as well.

    “Every stakeholder should pay attention to this messy law which has violated the principle of network neutrality, because it could penalize everyone for defamation,” Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) secretary general Arfi Bambani said during a discussion in Jakarta on Wednesday.

  • Ethiopia’s New Cybercrime Law Allows for More Efficient and Systematic Prosecution of Online Speech

    The Ethiopian government has passed a dangerous cybercrime law that criminalizes an array of substantive computer activities including the distribution of defamatory speech, spam, and pornography online among others offenses. The law, dubbed the “Computer Crime Proclamation,” was passed, the government says, in an effort to more accurately attune the country’s laws to technological advances and provide the government better mechanisms and procedures to “prevent, control, investigate, and prosecute the suspects of computer crimes.”

    While the law aims to facilitate and accelerate the way in which the country penalizes computer crimes, it criminalizes legitimate forms of online speech. Based on the law’s exhaustive list of offenses and penalties that are grossly disproportionate to the outlined crimes, it will undoubtedly have a chilling effect and could serve as a tool for silencing political opposition, which relies heavily on online publishing since the government has cracked down on traditional media.

  • Gov. Cuomo’s BDS Blacklist Is an Affront to Free Expression

    The Supreme Court has made it clear that government can’t punish entities on the basis of free expression, such as boycotts.

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order this week requiring state agencies and authorities to divest from any company or institution that supports the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. The order not only threatens to punish constitutionally protected political speech but also requires the state of New York to create a blacklist of allies of the movement, which BDS supporters describe as an effort to ensure human rights for Palestinians.

    “It’s very simple: If you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you,” Cuomo said when he announced the order.

    The directive requires all agencies and departments over which the governor has executive authority as well as certain public benefit corporations, public authorities, boards, and commissions to divest funds from any company or institution supporting BDS. The entities are also banned from investing in those companies in the future.

  • Appeals Court Bounces Defamation Suit Against American Hustle Over Microwave Scene

    Nearly two years ago, we wrote about a bonkers lawsuit against the makers of the film American Hustle, brought by a journalist who used to make remarks about what microwaves do to the food we eat. The lawsuit was essentially over Jennifer Lawrence’s character, who had been built up in the film as a complete know-nothing whack-job, misinterpreting a historical article by Paul Brodeur in the film. This kind of thing is not remotely actionable, and such portrayals are not only protected against the libel and defamation claims Brodeur made by that pesky First Amendment thing we have, but in the context of the film there was simply zero chance of Brodeur suffering any harm from an insane character’s misunderstanding of his article’s position. I took the time to write about it because the idea of someone suing over this is hilarious, but the court forced to listen to this insanity couldn’t take the same snarky position I did.

  • Kangana Ranaut on Censorship of Queen: Nothing Vulgar About a Bra

  • Freedom of expression, my foot; there has to be censorship: Mukesh Khanna

  • Certification, Not Censorship, Says Arun Jaitley Amid Talks Of ‘Adult With Caution’ Category

  • Govt has nothing to do with the film’s censorship: Sukhbir Badal

  • Right cut: Why ‘Censor Board’ must stick only to certification

  • No censorship on TV, so why censor films, asks filmmaker Goutam Ghose

  • Bollywood joins political row over Punjab drug film censorship

  • Bollywood comes together to fight against Udta Punjab censorship

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • West Virginia community built to house NSA staffers is up for auction

  • Former ‘Spy Town’ Sugar Grove Station Up for Auction in West Virginia

  • Spy town for sale: Slightly used, move-in ready, no cellphones allowed

  • One entire US spook base: Yours for $1m+

  • Home Secretary must ‘go further’ to address concerns over IP Bill

  • Protecting legal privilege in IP Bill is ‘complex’ but essential – Bar Council

  • Snoopers’ Charter back in the Commons

  • UK: Liberty poll finds widespread ignorance of Snoopers’ Charter

  • Liberty Survey Finds British Opposition to Snoopers Charter

  • Here’s why people are so worked up about the ‘Snooper’s Charter’

  • The Investigatory Powers Bill is the stop-and-search of the digital age

  • Labour hails Theresa May climbdown on surveillance powers

  • SNP to vote against Snoopers’ Charter at third reading

  • SNP MPs Will Vote Against the Investigatory Powers Bill Unless Significant Amendments Are Made

  • SNP to oppose “dubious legality” of Tory mass spy surveillance

  • UK Parliament debates Snooper’s Charter

  • Investigatory Powers Bill passes through Commons after Labour backs Tory spy law

  • After Apple’s objections, UK removes encryption backdoors from Investigatory Powers Bill before passing

  • The UK’s Controversial Investigatory Powers Bill now Goes to the House of Lords for Final Approval

  • UK passes spy bill, but Apple’s encryption safe

  • Controversial ‘spy bill’ passed by UK House of Commons

  • UK Commons passes Investigatory Powers Bill, no backdoor clause

  • Investigatory Powers Bill passes without a hitch

  • Snoopers’ Charter: House of Commons passes surveillance bill

  • SECRET REPORT: UK spies have more data than they know what to do with

  • Blighty brings in a new spying law

  • Snoopers Charter passes in House of Commons with Labour support

  • Investigatory Powers Bill approved by House of Commons

  • MPs Wave Through Snoopers’ Charter in Face of Public Opposition

  • Investigatory Powers Bill Is Passed By Parliament

  • Snoopers’ charter to become law after MPs vote overwhelmingly in favour of new internet surveillance laws

  • Majority of UK MPs back Investigatory Powers Bill in vote

  • Unions won the battle on Snoopers’ Charter (even if others lost the war)

  • 444 MPs push Investigatory Powers Bill forward into House of Lords

  • Apple-Opposed ‘Investigatory Powers’ Surveillance Bill Moves Closer to Legality in UK

  • IP Bill’s metadata stores “more intrusive” than comms data—top UK cop tells Ars

  • MPs Have Voted to Approve the Snooper’s Charter

  • Britain passes internet spy bill

  • UK MPs pass Investigatory Powers Bill

  • UK Government passes spy bill with strong majority

  • UK government votes in favour of Snooper’s Charter

  • Government’s surveillance review “a stitch up”, says MP

  • News publishers continue fight for stronger source safeguards as snooper’s charter clears Commons

  • Why Investigatory Powers Bill remains an ‘acute concern’ to national and regional press

  • UK Parliament passes Investigatory Powers Bill

  • Bill is needed to keep us all safe

  • Alistair Carmichael MP writes: Snoopers’ Charter debate was a circle of Hell even Dante could not have imagined

  • UK’s Mass Surveillance Bill Slightly Less Awful Than What Could Have Been

  • Snooper’s charter: Most Britons unaware of Tory plans, survey finds

  • Snoopers’ Charter: MPs start debating liberty and privacy

  • Victory for millions of workers as Tories drop law letting police spy on unions

  • SNP demands late changes to snoopers’ charter

  • Jeremy Corbyn faces major rebellion as Labour dithers over spy vote

  • A vital check

  • Spy bill makes Commons progress

  • Human rights concerns spur review of investigatory powers bill

  • New digital surveillance law passed by British lawmakers

  • Snoopers’ Charter: Met Police says IP Bill needed to ‘help find you innocent’

  • UK surveillance bill passes House of Commons with bulk powers facing review

  • Digital surveillance law passed in UK Parliament

  • Snoopers’ Charter: MPs vote 444 to 69 to approve a third reading

  • Britain’s spies can now keep fighting our enemies in the digital age

  • Despite hacking and snooping fears, web surveillance legislation sails forward

  • Investigatory Powers Bill gets vote of approval from MPs

  • Can the Government read your texts? How the Snooper’s Charter will affect you

  • Bill on GCHQ’s intercept powers passes Commons vote with huge majority

  • How Bad Is Burr-Feinstein Anti-Encryption Legislation?

    Proposed anti-encryption legislation known as “Burr-Feinstein,” filed in the wake of Apple’s legal showdown with the FBI, had such alarmingly broad business ramifications that apparently common sense prevailed. According to a Reuters report, sources in Congress say the bill had trouble gaining support and will probably not be introduced this year.

    Ever since Apple’s refusal to assist the FBI in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters — and the subsequent legal battles — encryption has been on the minds of law enforcement and national security hawks.

  • Rule 41: Bitcoiners, Torrenters, And TOR Users — FBI Can Catch You With A Single Warrant

    A new update to the Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of the Criminal Procedure has been proposed which will empower FBI to gain remote access to any device after obtaining a single search warrant authorized by any federal judge in the United States.

  • UK startup offers landlords continuous, deep surveillance of tenants’ social media

    Here’s Source Assured’s pitch: landlords, if you write a requirement for tenants (and prospective tenants) to let us access their social media accounts into your lease/application process, we’ll scrape all that data, use an unaccountable system to analyze it, and produce libelous, life-destroying dossiers on them that you can use to discriminate against people who seek shelter, the most fundamental human need after sustenance.

    And this is the UK, where 40% of the national wealth is in the form of property in the southeast, where whole neighborhoods are being razed and replaced with high-rise safe-deposit boxes in the sky for offshore millionaires, where defined-benefits pensions are a laughable memory of the distant past, where the entire country is leveraged to the eyeballs to afford shelter, and where, consequently, even the tiniest, eensiest bobble in the value of property threatens the entire nation.

  • Intelligence: Ban The NSA

    A growing number of American politicians (and their constituents) are calling for the elimination of the National Security Agency (NSA).

  • Here’s The GCHQ Chief Who Will Defend Us From Terror [Ed: so many GCHQ puff pieces]

    A reassuring thought – this is the man charged with defending us from the threat of global terror.

  • Terrorist groups acquiring the cyber capability to bring major cities to a standstill, warns GCHQ chief

  • ‘The web is changing our definitions of privacy’: Britain’s spy chief reveals he is worried about his children sharing too much online

  • Spies In Denial: GCHQ Boss Says Snowden Didn’t Kick Off Debate Over Surveillance

    For all the idiotic things said about Ed Snowden, at least US bureaucrats appear to have come around to the idea that he helped kick off a necessary debate on surveillance powers and privacy. Just recently we had former Attorney General Eric Holder admit that Snowden “performed a public service by raising the debate.” And regular surveillance apologist and former Defense Department lawyer Jack Goldsmith just said that “Snowden forced the intelligence community out of its suboptimal and unsustainable obsession with secrecy.”

  • Mitsubishi Outlander Just The Latest ‘Smart’ Car That’s Trivial To Hack And Control

    Yet another vehicle heavily advertised as being “smart” has proven to be notably less secure than its older, dumber counterparts. This week, researchers discovered that flaws in the Mitsubishi Outlander leave the vehicle’s on-board network vulnerable to all manner of hacker attack, allowing an intruder to disable the alarm system, drain the car’s battery, control multiple vehicle functions, and worse.

    The app for most “smart” vehicles connects to a web-based service hosted by the manufacturer. This service in turn connects to a GSM module inside of the automobile, letting a user control the vehicle from anywhere. While convenient, this has proven to be problematic when poorly implemented — something Nissan recently discovered after the company failed to implement any real authentication, letting an attacker use the Leaf app to track a driver’s driving behavior, physically control the Leaf’s heating and cooling systems, and drain the car’s battery.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Another Day, Another Horrible Ruling That Undermines The First Amendment And Section 230

    Not sure what’s going on in California, but it’s been suddenly issuing a bunch of really bad rulings concerning Section 230 of the CDA (the most important law on the internet). As we’ve explained many times, Section 230 says that online services cannot be held liable for actions of their users (and also, importantly, that if those platforms do decide to moderate content in any way, that doesn’t impact their protections from liability). This is massively important for protecting free speech online, because it means that platforms don’t have to proactively monitor user behavior out of fear of legal liability and they don’t feel the need to over-aggressively take down content to avoid being sued.

    Over and over again the courts have interpreted Section 230 quite broadly to protect internet platforms. This has been good for free speech and good for the internet overall (and, yes, good for online companies, which is why some are so against Section 230). But, as we’ve been noting, Section 230 has been under attack in the past year or so, and all of a sudden courts seem to be chipping away at the protections of Section 230. Last week we wrote about a bad appeals court ruling that said Section 230 did not protect a website from being sued over failing to warn users of potential harm that could come from some users on the site. Then, earlier this week, we wrote about an even worse ruling in San Mateo Superior Court (just a block away from my office…) exempting publicity rights from Section 230.

  • Oklahoma Cops Debut Tool That Allows Them To Drain Pre-Paid Cards During Traffic Stops

    In it, the CBC’s Neil MacDonald pointed out that being “not from around here,” coupled with rental vehicles and cash — made visiting Canadians little more than rolling ATMs for “drug interdiction task forces” sporting nifty acronyms and friendly asset-sharing partnerships with federal agencies.

  • Amos Yee gains global attention and claims he is a “political threat”

    Teenage blogger Amos Yee, has grabbed international media attention again when he was featured in the US-based political talk show, The Rubin Report. The video-blogger who has about 40,000 subscribers on his Youtube channel Brain and Butter, is facing charges for posting anti-religious content on his Youtube and for failing to show up to Court.

    In talking to Rubin, Amos styled himself as atheist who specialises in refuting religion by using its own teachings (via the Bible or the Quran). Amos further discussed the recent charges and claimed that he has been targeted by the government because he is a “political threat”.

  • European Parliament Calls for Investigation of Secret CIA Torture Sites

    The European Parliament on Wednesday condemned the “apathy shown by member states and EU institutions” over torture in secret CIA prisons in Europe.

    A non-binding resolution, passed 329-299, urged member states to “investigate, insuring full transparency, the allegations that there were secret prisons on their territory in which people were held under the CIA programme.” It also called on the European Union to undertake fact-finding missions into countries that were known to house American black sites.

    The resolution named Lithuania, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom as countries complicit in CIA operations.

    The Parliament also expressed “regret” that none of the architects of the U.S. torture program faced criminal charges, and that the U.S. has failed to cooperate with European criminal probes.

    Despite banning torture when he came into office, President Obama has fought all attempts to hold Bush administration officials accountable, including by invoking the state secrets privilege to block lawsuits, and delaying the release of the Senate Torture Report.

  • Corrupt Crown Prosecution Service Bins Action on Extraordinary Rendition and Torture

    Anybody who is in any way surprised at today’s announcement that nobody will be prosecuted for extraordinary rendition and torture, is in deep denial about what a corrupt and rotten state the United Kingdom is.

    Among the many documents the Metropolitan Police (who are genuinely furious) handed to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and which now lies in a bin, is my own sworn evidence of the complicity in torture of Jack Straw and senior FCO officials. I therefore now publish the statement I made to the Metropolitan Police.

    I should explain this is not my language. The Metropolitan Police officers interviewed me for two days at my home and then wrote the statement which I signed. This is not the signed copy because I did not have a photocopier at my home. Two copies were printed off on my printer, one of which I signed and gave to them. This is the other copy, and is exactly the same as the signed copy.

  • Facebook Outreach Tool Ignores Black Lives Matter

    When Facebook launched a new system in January to help news outlets and other groups target posts to particular audiences, a representative of the New York Times said it had the potential to kindle “vibrant discussions” within “niche Facebook communities” that might otherwise get lost amid the social network’s 1.6 billion users. And indeed, in the system’s first several months, software algorithms have generated hundreds of thousands of special tags for connecting to even the most obscure groups, including 7,800 Facebook users who are interested in “Water motorsports at the 1908 Summer Olympics.”

    But there’s one set of people who can’t be reached via Facebook’s system: those interested in Black Lives Matter, the nationwide grassroots movement protesting police violence against black people.

  • Local Jails Profit From Warehousing State Prisoners

    Louisiana’s prisons are so overcrowded that more than half the state’s prisoners can’t fit in them and have been sent to serve their sentences in county jails instead, where they occupy more than 75 percent of the beds normally reserved for local detainees awaiting trial or serving short sentences. In Mississippi, state prisoners take up more than 55 percent of local jails’ beds; in Kentucky, the proportion is more than 45 percent.

    These numbers, released today as part of a Prison Policy Initiative report on “jail leasing,” expose the extent of a practice that advocates say harms prisoners and raises ethical questions about public institutions profiting off incarceration. But as some states embark on efforts to reduce prison populations, local officials who for years have received financial incentives to house state prisoners in their jails are now faced with the threat of a loss of revenue.

  • Homeowner Sues Police After Pursuit Of Shoplifter Leaves Him With No Home To Own

    This is what was left of Leo Lech’s home after the Greenwood Village police were done with it. Lech had done nothing wrong. In fact, he wasn’t even home. By the point the local PD had decided to turn a standoff with a suspect into a one-house reenactment of the Battle of Fallujah, the only person inside was Robert Jonathan Seacat — originally wanted for nothing more than shoplifting.

    This was all fully justified, according to the police chief, because Seacat had opened fire on police officers during the standoff.

    According to Lech’s lawsuit, those shots — five of them, nine hours into the standoff — by Seacat were met by tear gas, flash bangs, and “72 chemical bombs.” Sure, it turns out Seacat had a backpack (and lower intestine) full of drugs, but the police didn’t know that when they began their assault. Of course, the complete destruction of an unrelated family’s house was considered copacetic because no one died.

  • How Muhammad Ali Touched Lives

    The death of boxing great Muhammad Ali touched many people, especially those fortunate enough to have known him as a brash and brave young man who transformed sports and challenged the Vietnam War, as Mollie Dickenson recalls.

  • Muhammad Ali Understood the Racist Roots of War and Militarism

    With all the discussion and debate these days about intersectionality and the need for progressives to link our movements against racism and against war, the name of Muhammad Ali belongs right up in our pantheon with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Howard Zinn, and so many other women and men who fought and continue to fight those linked battles together.

    In the history of our movements for peace and for justice, the most strategic activists, analysts, and cultural workers were always those who understood the centrality of racism at the core of U.S. wars. They grasped the ways in which US militarism relied on racism at home to recruit its cannon-fodder and to build public support for wars against “the other” – be they Vietnamese, Cambodians, Nicaraguans, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Somalis, Yemenis, Afghans, or anyone else.

  • Committee Rejects Rep. Castro Plea to Let Library of Congress Drop ‘Alien’

    Democrat Rep. Joaquín Castro criticized Republicans for blocking the Library of Congress from dropping the use of the term “alien” to refer to immigrants, saying the refusal demonstrates how the GOP became the party of Trump.

  • Republicans Force the Library of Congress to Keep Saying “Illegal Alien”

  • Use of term ‘illegal alien’ stirs heated debate in Congress

  • Lawmakers trade ‘hate,’ ‘censorship’ barbs in ‘illegal alien’ debate

  • GOP Insists Library of Congress Retain “Illegal Aliens”

  • House balks at Library of Congress plan to drop term ‘illegal alien’

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • EuroDIG 2016: Multi-Stakeholder Soul-Searching

    Some 800 registered participants gathered for the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) in Brussels today to talk about internet privacy, security and access. Besides the topical issues, the opening sessions speakers came back time and again to the discrepancy of theory and practice of the much-belaboured “multi-stakeholder principle.”

  • NTIA, ICANN Tick Another Box On Way To IANA Transition

    The United States Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today it found the proposal developed by the global internet multistakeholder community to fully privatise oversight over the central root zone of the internet domain name system (DNS) satisfactory.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • New Ideas Coming For WTO TRIPS Council; But Also Old Debate Over EU Drug Seizures

    The European Union presenting its new Trademark Directive during this week’s meeting of the World Trade Organization intellectual property council heard concerns of possible seizures of generic medicines transiting through Europe. Meanwhile, the new Council chair’s attempts at revitalising discussions between member states received general approval. And a new agenda item on e-commerce was launched.

  • Copyrights

    • Canada Post Drops Lawsuit Over Crowdsourced Postal Codes

      Geocoder, the Ottawa-based company that managed to develop a database of postal codes using crowdsourcing techniques, has settled a controversial lawsuit brought by Canada Post. Canada Post sued in 2012 claiming intellectual property rights in postal codes. Geocoder did not copy the postal codes, however. Instead, it used crowdsourcing to develop a database containing over one million Canadian postal codes after asking people to submit their postal codes with their address. The database is freely available under a Creative Commons licence and is enormously valuable for organizations that need access to the data but are unable to pay the steep fees levied by Canada Post. While many open data advocates have long argued that this information should be available under government open data initiatives, Canada Post has steadfastly refused.

    • Canada Post Drops Ridiculous Copyright Lawsuit Over Crowdsourced Postal Code

      That freely-available Canadian Postal Code Geocoded Database became so useful that NGOs and others started using it for serious purposes, much to the chagrin of Canada Post, which provided the “official” database of postal codes and was really rather keen to license it to you for a hefty sum.

    • For NYT, Fair Use Depends on Who’s Doing the Using

      Politico (6/9/16) reports that the New York Times is under fire for demanding that two media critics—Daniel Hallin and Charles Briggs—pay the newspaper a total of $1,884 for using three brief quotes from Times articles in their new book Making Health Public.

    • Uruguay Politicians Give Unanimous Preliminary Approval To Copyright Reform, Publishers Fight It Anyway

      That last point about the unanimous cross-party political support shows that the copyright maximalists care as little about democracy as they do about the public. All they want is to retain the privileges they have enjoyed for hundreds of years, and to hell with anyone else.

    • Judge Rejects Oracle’s Attempt To Get Court To Reject Jury Verdict Over Java API Copyright

      Following the jury verdict finding in favor of fair use for Google and its use of Oracle’s Java APIs (if you haven’t yet, you should listen to our podcast about the trial), Oracle asked Judge Alsup to basically ignore the jury ruling. Specifically, Oracle asked Judge Alsup to rule that “as a matter of law” that Google’s use was not fair use, thus negating the need for the jury to settle any dispute. This is actually how the original Alsup ruling in this case came about. After the first trial had a jury find Google had infringed, Alsup said that, as a matter of law, APIs were not eligible for copyright protection and effectively dumped the jury ruling… until the appeals court overturned that ruling and sent the case back for a second trial focused solely on the fair use question.

    • CJEU says that fair compensation for private copying cannot be funded through general state budget

      Can the ‘fair compensation’ for private copying pursuant to Article 5(2)(b) of the InfoSoc Directive be funded through a Member State’s general state budget?

      This is in a nutshell the issue that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had been asked to consider in EGEDA, C-470/14, a reference for a preliminary ruling from the Spanish Supreme Court seeking clarification about the compatibility of Spanish law on private copying with EU law.