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12.22.16

Nokia is Now Officially a Patent Troll, Almost 6 Years After Microsoft Turned It Into One

Posted in Apple, Microsoft, Patents at 8:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

As we correctly predicted way back in 2011…

Nokie phone
Nokia suing everyone… except Microsoft.

Summary: Few days before Christmas Nokia decides that the backlash from the media would be minimal enough to finally show its true colours and rear its ugly head again, putting a tax on phones that actually sell (unlike Nokia’s)

VERY LATE LAST NIGHT (as late as 2 AM) we wrote about a story which Nokia probably hoped the media would not notice/cover all that much (hence the timing/date in the year). Nokia is a patent troll now. “Meanwhile,” as this article puts it, “Apple has accused Nokia of using the ‘tactics of a patent troll’.” It’s not just about Apple as Nokia will go after Android OEMs next (if it hasn’t already).

It’s the ‘Microsoft effect’. The company likes turning other (usually vulnerable) companies into a pile of patents, weaponised against Microsoft’s rivals. There are many examples of that which we’ve covered here over the years.

“It’s the ‘Microsoft effect’. The company likes turning other (usually vulnerable) companies into a pile of patents, weaponised against Microsoft’s rivals.”We have already found about a hundred reports about this in English, in spite of Christmas absence of many reporters (even from large British publishers, US publishers and several people at IDG [1, 2]). The Finnish English-speaking media touches the subject and Wall Street media puts it behind a paywall. Tripp Mickle and Matthias Verbergt say that “Apple Inc. and Nokia Corp. ​filed competing lawsuits over intellectual property used in the iPhone and other Apple products.”

Worth seeing in this case is what Apple finds out about the network of trolls (typically shrouded in secrecy). With evidence admissible by the courts about the patent trolls of Nokia and Microsoft we can improve our information here (growingly extensive and occasionally praised by people who come here in order to understand cryptic trolls.). Florian Müller says “First court hearings in the new Nokia v. Apple dispute will most probably take place in Munich in a few months. I’ll probably go and listen.”

“We believe that the date of the press release was designed (or intended) to dodge negative press coverage.”He also quotes Apple’s spokesperson as saying that Nokia “is now using the tactics of a patent troll to attempt to extort money from Apple…”

He is “not mincing words anymore,” Müller adds, and someone from Finland agrees with him. Finns do not blindly support Nokia. We speak to some Finns who are extremely upset at Nokia. It’s a national embarrassment to some.

As for IAM, it thinks it’s favourable to have patent lawsuit from a troll-like Nokia, but it lacks a vital
disclosure; Nokia’s patent troll MOSAID (now called “Conversant”) has paid IAM, which recently did a lot of puff pieces for it. Maybe that’s just IAM’s business model…

IAM says “Apple is against patent owners doing what they want with their patents to maximise their value.”

Whose value? And to whose advantage? And at whose expense?

“Not sure how that helps R&D,” IAM says, but Benjamin Henrion has already responded to them by saying “that helps P&L [patents and litigation], not R&D.”

We believe that the date of the press release was designed (or intended) to dodge negative press coverage. █

Links 22/12/2016: VirtualBox 5.1.12, Qt 5.8.0 RC, IPFire 2.19

Posted in News Roundup at 7:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

    • ALSA 1.1.3 Released For Linux Sound

      Version 1.1.3 of the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) was released today.

    • A Holiday Gift From Conexant: an ALSA Driver For Recent Cherry Trail SOC Based Devices

      Late on Monday Simon Ho of Conexant announced the release of a driver for the company’s driver for CX2072X codec to the ALSA-devel mailing list. I have to add a tip of the proverbial hat to Pierre Bossart who shared the information in kernel.bugzilla.org where I found it. According to Mr. Bossart we can expect “a follow-up machine driver soon from Intel.” The machines where sound has been a problem have Intel SST sound on the SOC which uses the Conexant codec. On those systems the “sound card” is simply not detected.

    • Suzuki Joins Automotive Grade Linux to Expand Technology Development through Open Source Collaboration

      Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative open source project developing a Linux-based, open platform for the connected car, today announced that Suzuki is joining The Linux Foundation and Automotive Grade Linux as a Platinum member.

      “Adopting an open source approach to software development is a key part of our technology strategy and will help us to keep pace with the rapid advances happening across the auto industry,” said Hisanori Takashiba, Executive General Manager of Research & Development at Suzuki Motor Corporation. “Joining Automotive Grade Linux expands our R&D capabilities and enables us to collaborate with hundreds of developers across the industry on new automotive technologies.”

    • Graphics Stack

      • RADV Radeon Vulkan Code Enables More Driver Features

        The RADV Radeon Vulkan driver in Mesa has seen some activity last night to enable more fine-grained features.

        RADV now enables shaderImageGatherExtended. The image gather extended functionality for shaders is described via the Vulkan registry as “indicates whether the extended set of image gather instructions are available in shader code. If this feature is not enabled, the OpImage*Gather instructions do not support the Offset and ConstOffsets operands. This also indicates whether shader modules can declare the ImageGatherExtended capability.”

      • Haswell OpenGL 4.0 / FP64 Support In Mesa Might Finally Be Close To Merging

        It appears that ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 for Intel Haswell graphics hardware might finally be merged soon into Mesa and thereby exposing OpenGL 4.0 support.

        While Broadwell and newer Intel hardware has OpenGL 4.5 support in Mesa, the Haswell support is left behind as while it can reach OpenGL ~4.1, it’s currently at OpenGL 3.3. The blocking extension from Haswell having OpenGL 4.0 is the big ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 extension, but the code has been sitting around for a while.

    • Benchmarks

      • Blender & Darktable OpenCL Benchmarks On 13 NVIDIA GPUs

        For those into Blender modeling or Darktable for your RAW photography workflow, hopefully you find these latest OpenCL benchmarks interesting. The NVIDIA 375.26 Linux driver was used for benchmarking. The cards tested based upon what I had available included the GTX 680, GTX 760, GTX 780 Ti, GTX 950, GTX 960, GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti, GTX 1050, GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060, GTX 1070, and GTX 1080. The tests in this article are just on the NVIDIA side with having no new AMDGPU-PRO release available for testing since my last 16.50 comparison and the open-source stack still leaving a lot to be desired and not yet trying out the brand new ROCm release, but I plan to work on benchmarks of that over Christmas if the stack holds up.

      • Linux Workstation/Server Distribution Benchmarks For Winter 2016

        The latest for your enjoyment of our year-end comparison articles and benchmarks is a fresh comparison of various workstation/enterprise/server oriented Linux distributions when looking at relevant workloads. Testing for this distribution comparison being done from a Core i7 6800K Broadwell-E system while a desktop-focused Linux desktop comparison for winter 2016 will be posted still before year’s end.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Best GNOME Distro, Linux All-in-One, PIXEL for PCs

        Today was another busy day in Linux news with the top story being the release of Red Hat’s third quarter 2017 financial report. Third quarter revenue missed analysts’ expectations and cut full year forecast along with the resignation of CFO all added up to a rough night for Red Hat stock. Elsewhere, Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the release of PIXEL for PC and Mac and The Document Foundation introduced MUFFIN, a “tasty new user interface” for LibreOffice. Blogger Dedoimedo chose the best GNOME distro of the year and Andy Weir covered Acer’s new all-in-one PC that’s available with Linux.

      • GTK 3.89.2 Released With Vulkan Renderer, Continued GDK/GSK Changes

        Matthias Clasen shifted focus today from working on the new recipes program to putting out a new development release in the road to GTK4.

        GTK+ 3.89.4 is the new GTK4 development snapshot released today. This the experimental Vulkan renderer implementation that co-exists alongside the OpenGL back-end. Related, the GDK and GSK (Scene Kit) rendering code continues to be refactored. Some changes to handling include now only drawing the top-level windows and always re-drawing the whole window. GTK has also been working towards EGL X11 support — as an alternative to the GLX X11 code — while the EGL Wayland support is obviously already there.

      • Best Gnome distro of 2016

        Ever since Gnome 3 came to life, I struggled with how it was realized and what it did, a far cry (but not Far Cry, hi hi) from its predecessor. It was functionally inferior to its rival, and it is the chief reason why MATE and Cinnamon came to life. Then, over the years, it slowly evolved, and now, at last, the combination of its core elements and a thick layer of necessary extensions allows for a decent compromise. Throughout 2016, I tested more Gnome releases than ever before, I was quite pleased with the results, and now we will select the best candidate for this year.

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Asus, T-Mobile have CES surprises in store for Android users

          As the end of December approaches, visions of sugar plums are dancing in Android fans’ heads as they await the big event. Not Christmas—we’re talking about CES 2017. While there are more rumors than you can shake a stocking at, several companies have already begun to promote their upcoming announcements.

        • 2016 and Android: 5 Things That Still Stand Out

          2016 was, to be honest, not exactly the best year in recent memory. From the nastiest presidential election we may ever see (until the next one in four years) to the early deaths of some of the great entertainers and people of this world, there was a lot to be sad about. But even in tech or Android specifically, we saw Samsung go through the Note 7 recall, carriers go extra shady on this “unlimited” idea, and even Google kill the Nexus line. What a year.

          And now with that depressing glob of snot on your mind, let’s talk about five (or six) things that are still standing out from 2016 as we head into 2017. Because even if 2016 sucked, a lot of stuff did happen!

        • Our Favorite Android Smartphone of 2016

          While we are still bringing in votes for the DL Reader’s Choice for Phone of the Year (POTY), we are ready to present you with our choice(s). In 2016, we saw a plethora of great smartphones from a number of makers, which made for a very exciting and busy year.

          Because there was such a high number of fantastic phones, it was actually quite the struggle to choose a single one as our favorite. As you will see, we have a couple runner ups this year, only because we didn’t want to have a three-way tie for favorite.

        • LG announces five new phones you probably won’t care about

          Ahead of CES, LG has announced four new phones in the K series — the K10, K8, K4, and K3 — that will make their debut at the trade show. LG will also showcase the Stylus 3, which offers an “improved writing experience” that mimics the “feel and feedback of an actual pen.”

Free Software/Open Source

  • 5 open source gift ideas for non-techies

    It’s getting down to the wire here for the holidays. You know, that time when we all realize that we’ve completely neglected to get gifts for people. While reading through our very excellent gift guide, a thought occurred to me: Those unfortunate souls with lives devoid of technological wonder… they need presents, too. So what do we get them? What do we present to these people whose interests diverge so greatly from our own? I’m glad you asked. I made a list.

  • What is Odoo Open Source ERP?

    Odoo’s open source application offerings range beyond ERP to include such features as CRM, website building, eCommerce and BI.

    Belgium-based Odoo made a name for itself under its previous name of OpenERP, an open source ERP application that quickly gained traction, especially in Europe. Over the past few years, however, the company has expanded into many more areas of the enterprise application landscape.

  • Swift Is Old, Why Should I Use it?

    A central concept to Swift is the Binary Large OBject (BLOB). Instead of block storage, data is divided into some number of binary streams. Any file, of any format, can be reduced to a series of ones and zeros, sometimes referred to as serialization. Start at the first bit of a file and count ones and zeros until you have a block, a megabyte or even five gigabytes. This becomes an object. The next number of bits becomes an object until there is no more file to divide into objects. These objects can be stored locally or sent to a Swift proxy server. The proxy server will send the object to a series of storage servicers where memcached will accept the object, at memory speeds. Definitely an advantage in the days before inexpensive solid state drives.

  • Ticketmaster Chooses Kubernetes to Stay Ahead of Competition

    If you’ve ever gone to an event that required a ticket, chances are you’ve done business with Ticketmaster. The ubiquitous ticket company has been around for 40 years and is the undisputed market leader in its field.

    To stay on top, the company is trying to ensure its best product creators can focus on products, not infrastructure. The company has begun to roll out a massive public cloud strategy that uses Kubernetes, an open source platform for the deployment and management of application containers, to keep everything running smoothly, and sent two of its top technologists to deliver a keynote at the 2016 CloudNativeCon in Seattle explaining their methodology.

  • Events

    • LibrePlanet 2017 will return to MIT thanks to SIPB, March 25-26, 2017

      This is the fourth year the FSF will partner with MIT’s Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) to bring this two-day celebration of free software and software freedom to Cambridge, MA. Registration for LibrePlanet is now open, and admission is gratis for FSF members and students.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox takes the next step towards rolling out multi-process to everyone

        With Firefox 50, Mozilla has rolled out the first major piece of its new multi-process architecture. Firefox 50 is also Firefox’s current stable release.

        Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari all have a multiple process design that separates their rendering engine—the part of the browser that reads and interprets HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—from the browser frame. They do this for stability reasons (if the rendering process crashes, it doesn’t kill the entire browser) and security reasons (the rendering process can be run in a low-privilege sandbox, so exploitable flaws in the rendering engine are harder to take advantage of).

  • SaaS/Back End

    • 3 highly effective strategies for managing test data

      Over the last year, I’ve researched, written, and spoken coast-to-coast on strategies for managing test data, and the common patterns you can use to resolve these issues. The set of solutions surrounding test data are what I call “data strategies for testing.” Here are three patterns for managing your own test data more effectively. If after reading you want to dig in more deeply, drop in on my presentations on these patterns during my upcoming presentation at the upcoming Automation Guild conference.

    • Tuning OpenStack Hardware for the Enterprise

      As a cloud management framework OpenStack thus far been limited to the province of telecommunications carriers and providers of Web-scale services that have plenty of engineering talent to throw at managing one of the most ambitious open source projects there is. In contrast, adoption of OpenStack in enterprise IT environments has been much more limited.

      But that may change as more advanced networking technologies that are optimized for processor-intensive virtualization come to market. Some of the technologies we have covered here include single root input/output virtualization (SR-IOV) and Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK). Another technology includes using field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) in Network Interface Cards, to make them smarter about how to offload virtualized loads.

    • Q&A: Hortonworks CTO unfolds the big data road map

      Hortonworks has built its business on big data and Hadoop, but the Hortonworks Data Platform provides analytics and features support for a range of technologies beyond Hadoop, including MapReduce, Pig, Hive, and Spark. Hortonworks DataFlow, meanwhile, offers streaming analytics and uses technologies like Apache Nifi and Kafka.

      InfoWorld Executive Editor Doug Dineley and Editor at Large Paul Krill recently spoke with Hortonworks CTO Scott Gnau about how the company sees the data business shaking out, the Spark vs. Hadoop face-off, and Hortonworks’ release strategy and efforts to build out the DataFlow platform for data in motion.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Public Services/Government

    • EC reports examine value of open government, help inspire for implementation

      This month, the European Commission published two reports, the first providing inspiration for the implementation of open government services, the second providing insight on the social value of these services, with advice on how to foster their use and increase their impact. The reports are part of the ‘eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020′, which aims to modernise public administration, achieve the Digital Single Market, and engage more with citizens and businesses to deliver high quality services. The reports are targeted at European policy makers.

Leftovers

  • Norwegians are about to lose their FM radio and they’re not happy about it

    In just a matter of weeks, Norway will tune out FM radio for good and become the world’s first country to switch over to digital-only transmissions.
    Norway’s government has decided that the nation’s FM airwaves will fall silent from January 11, 2017, starting in Nordland and gradually moving south.

    After nearly a century of the analogue system, which revolutionised music listening with high-fidelity stereo sound compared to mono AM transmissions, the changeover to Digital Audio Broadcasting’s advanced version (DAB+) will render the country’s almost eight million radio sets obsolete.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Lead Contaminated Drinking Water Is Much More Prevalent Than You Think

      In 2001, Washington, DC changed the chemical used to treat the city’s water from chlorine to chloramine. The switch was supposed to limit byproducts in the water that arise during the disinfection process. It turned out, however, that chloramine also has the particularly powerful trait of corroding lead pipes, which allows the toxic metal to show up in faucets and drinking water.

      Authorities from the water utility knew of the astronomical lead levels in 2001 but, for fear of repercussion, kept mum. It carried on for 3 more years, and as many as 42,000 children in the womb, or less than 2 years old, were exposed to extreme levels of lead, which can cause serious cognitive, and behavioral problems in children, as well as hearing, and weight loss, and fatigue. The DC water crisis from 2001 to 2004 is still considered by experts to be the worst such calamity in modern American history.

  • Security

    • Most ATMs in India Are Easy Targets for Hackers & Malware Attacks

      Hacking is a hotly debated subject across the country right now, and it’s fair to say that the ATM next door is also in danger. It has been reported that over 70 percent of the 2 lakh money-dispensing ATM machines in our country are running on Microsoft’s outdated Windows XP operating system, leaving it vulnerable to cyber attacks.

      Support for Windows XP was discontinued by Microsoft in 2014 which means that since then the company hasn’t rolled out any security updates for this Windows version.

      While it doesn’t make sense for banks to continue using outdated software, security experts feel that the practice stems from legacy behaviour, when physical attacks were a bigger threat than software hacks.

    • 20 Questions Security Pros Should Ask Themselves Before Moving To The Cloud

      A template for working collaboratively with the business in today’s rapidly changing technology environment.

      Everywhere I go lately, the cloud seems to be on the agenda as a topic of conversation. Not surprisingly, along with all the focus, attention, and money the cloud is receiving, comes the hype and noise we’ve come to expect in just about every security market these days. Given this, along with how new the cloud is to most of us in the security world, how can security professionals make sense of the situation? I would argue that that depends largely on what type of situation we’re referring to, exactly. And therein lies the twist.

      Rather than approach this piece as “20 questions security professionals should ask cloud providers,” I’d like to take a slightly different angle. It’s a perspective I think will be more useful to security professionals grappling with issues and challenges introduced by the cloud on a daily basis. For a variety of reasons, organizations are moving both infrastructure and applications to the cloud at a rapid rate – far more rapidly than anyone would have forecast even two or three years ago.

    • Report: $3-5M in Ad Fraud Daily from ‘Methbot’

      New research suggests that an elaborate cybercrime ring is responsible for stealing between $3 million and $5 million worth of revenue from online publishers and video advertising networks each day. Experts say the scam relies on a vast network of cloaked Internet addresses, rented data centers, phony Web sites and fake users made to look like real people watching short ad segments online.

      Online advertising fraud is a $7 billion a year problem, according to AdWeek. Much of this fraud comes from hacked computers and servers that are infected with malicious software which forces the computers to participate in ad fraud. Malware-based ad fraud networks are cheap to acquire and to run, but they’re also notoriously unstable and unreliable because they are constantly being discovered and cleaned up by anti-malware companies.

    • Linux Backdoor Gives Hackers Full Control Over Vulnerable Devices [Ed: Microsoft booster Bogdan Popa says “Linux Backdoor”; that’s a lie. It’s Microsoft that has them.]

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Keeping Cheerful in a Difficult World

      It has been a difficult couple of days at the end of a difficult year. Individual lone wolf terrorism is impossible to stop completely. Fortunately, although it commands the headlines when it occurs, it is quite incredibly rare. Terrorism remains almost the least likely of freak deaths you could suffer, and everywhere in Europe is thousands of times less likely than the comparatively mundane event of dying in an ordinary traffic accident. Yet the perception of the terrorism risk is entirely wrong – for precisely the same reason that recent surveys show that people massively overestimate the number of Muslims in the population. Relentless media propaganda takes its toll.

    • US Military Returns Land to Japan, but Okinawa Isn’t Celebrating

      When US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and top American military brass join Japanese officials for a much-anticipated land return ceremony on December 22 (Japan time), they will mark the largest handover of property by the United States in a generation. Okinawa, once the independent Ryukyu kingdom, has been part of Japan since the 1870s and after World War II was administered by the US military until 1972 when the islands reverted to Japanese control. But the US never really left and still has roughly half of its 50,000 troops and its greatest concentration of military bases on just 0.6 percent of Japanese territory.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • 39 Chernobyl children to spend Christmas in Ireland

      A group of 39 children with special needs will fly into Dublin from Chernobyl this afternoon before heading to homes all around the country for the best Christmas holiday of their lives.

      The very special visit follows an historic move by the UN this month, to designate an ‘International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day’ for the future.

      Adi Roche from Chernobyl Children International (pictured) says it’s heart-warming that thirty years on – the survivors of the world’s worst nuclear disaster are not being forgotten: “I tried it one more time, last April at the General Assembly, not sure whether it would fall on deaf ears or not,

    • Judge rules school children can pursue climate change lawsuit against Washington State

      Eight Seattle children should have “their day in court” to argue that Washington State and others aren’t protecting them from climate change, a judge ruled.

      King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill allowed the young petitioners to move ahead in their case against the state, writing that “it is time for these youth to have the opportunity to address their concerns in a court of law, concerns raised under statute and under the state and federal constitutions.”

      The petitioners, between 12 and 16 years old, had asked the judge last month to find the state Department of Ecology in contempt for failing to adequately protect them and future generations from global warming.

    • Storm Barbara set to batter UK and cause Christmas chaos

      Storm Barbara is set to bring strong winds and Christmas chaos to Britain, according to forecasters.

      Gusts of up to 90mph are predicted to hit the UK, with the worst of destruction expected between Friday evening and Christmas Eve morning.

      Scotland appears likely to suffer the most, while pockets of Northern Ireland, north Wales and north England could also feel the full force.

      Forecasters warned the potential for structural damage and disruption to some transport services means the storm’s impact could be felt long after the winds have subsided.

    • Fog in the south east threatens Christmas travel

      Fog across the south east has disrupted flights at Heathrow, Gatwick and City airports, British Airways says.

      The delays in London come as people travelling for Christmas were warned to expect disruption across the UK as Storm Barbara approaches.

      The Met Office said the worst of the weather was expected on Friday and Saturday, with gusts of up to 90mph forecast in parts of Scotland.

    • Storm Barbara AND Storm Conor to wreak havoc on Christmas Day in double mega storm

      Strong gales of up to 100mph are expected to smash into Britain with the arrival of the freak storm – with many predicting travel cancellations.

      And during Christmas it”s beginning to look likely that another storm will strike in the aftermath of Storm Barbara.

  • Finance

    • U.K. Companies Plan 2017 Price Hikes as Pound Drop Lifts Costs

      If you’ve ever gone to an event that required a ticket, chances are you’ve done business with Ticketmaster. The ubiquitous ticket company has been around for 40 years and is the undisputed market leader in its field.

      To stay on top, the company is trying to ensure its best product creators can focus on products, not infrastructure. The company has begun to roll out a massive public cloud strategy that uses Kubernetes, an open source platform for the deployment and management of application containers, to keep everything running smoothly, and sent two of its top technologists to deliver a keynote at the 2016 CloudNativeCon in Seattle explaining their methodology.

    • Google avoided US$3.6b in taxes in 2015: report

      Last year, Google, along with Microsoft and Apple, came under attack during an Australian Senate hearing into tax avoidance.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • A Spy Coup in America?

      As Official Washington’s latest “group think” solidifies into certainty – that Russia used hacked Democratic emails to help elect Donald Trump – something entirely different may be afoot: a months-long effort by elements of the U.S. intelligence community to determine who becomes the next president.

      I was told by a well-placed intelligence source some months ago that senior leaders of the Obama administration’s intelligence agencies – from the CIA to the FBI – were deeply concerned about either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump ascending to the presidency. And, it’s true that intelligence officials often come to see themselves as the stewards of America’s fundamental interests, sometimes needing to protect the country from dangerous passions of the public or from inept or corrupt political leaders.

    • Emanuel releases private emails, ending court fight

      After fighting in court to keep his private email accounts completely concealed from public view, Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday released a trove of messages from throughout his nearly six years in office and announced a new city ban on using private email to conduct official business.

      The records released by his administration showed Emanuel has frequently used a private Gmail account and another personal, unofficial email address — mayor_re@rahmemail.com — to communicate with top aides, business leaders, political supporters, national media figures and others who wanted to discuss city government with him.

    • Unsealed Clinton Email Warrant Asks Court To Maintain Secrecy Of Investigation James Comey Publicly Announced To Congress

      The FBI’s search warrant for Anthony Weiner’s laptop was unsealed and released yesterday. This isn’t the warrant the FBI originally used to seize and search the laptop. That one was looking for evidence related to allegations Weiner sexted an underage girl.

      This warrant is the second search warrant for the same laptop, related to the discovery of emails to and from Hillary Clinton on it. This discovery during an unrelated search prompted Comey to write a letter to Congress informing it that he was going to be diving back into the Clinton email investigation.

      The second dive into emails stored on the laptop by former Clinton aide (and estranged spouse of Anthony Weiner) Huma Abedin resulted in the discovery of nothing the FBI hadn’t already seen. Comey apologized for getting everyone hot and bothered by his shouting of “CLASSIFIED!” in a crowded electoral season, but believed his actions were justified because he feared this information would likely leak anyway.

    • Celebrity isn’t just harmless fun – it’s the smiling face of the corporate machine

      Now that a reality TV star is preparing to become president of the United States, can we agree that celebrity culture is more than just harmless fun – that it might, in fact, be an essential component of the systems that govern our lives?

      The rise of celebrity culture did not happen by itself. It has long been cultivated by advertisers, marketers and the media. And it has a function. The more distant and impersonal corporations become, the more they rely on other people’s faces to connect them to their customers.

      Corporation means body; capital means head. But corporate capital has neither head nor body. It is hard for people to attach themselves to a homogenised franchise owned by a hedge fund whose corporate identity consists of a filing cabinet in Panama City. So the machine needs a mask. It must wear the face of someone we see as often as we see our next-door neighbours. It is pointless to ask what Kim Kardashian does to earn her living: her role is to exist in our minds. By playing our virtual neighbour, she induces a click of recognition on behalf of whatever grey monolith sits behind her this week.

      [...]

      The celebrities you see most often are the most lucrative products, extruded through a willing media by a marketing industry whose power no one seeks to check. This is why actors and models now receive such disproportionate attention, capturing much of the space once occupied by people with their own ideas: their expertise lies in channelling other people’s visions.

    • U.S. government loses to Russia’s disinformation campaign: advisers

      The U.S. government spent more than a decade preparing responses to malicious hacking by a foreign power but had no clear strategy when Russia launched a disinformation campaign over the internet during the U.S. election campaign, current and former White House cyber security advisers said.

      Far more effort has gone into plotting offensive hacking and preparing defenses against the less probable but more dramatic damage from electronic assaults on the power grid, financial system or direct manipulation of voting machines.

      Over the last several years, U.S. intelligence agencies tracked Russia’s use of coordinated hacking and disinformation in Ukraine and elsewhere, the advisers and intelligence experts said, but there was little sustained, high-level government conversation about the risk of the propaganda coming to the United States.

    • 2016: The Year the Media Broke

      Rupert Murdoch’s bid for a full takeover of Sky TV demonstrates graphically that the extreme concentration of media ownership has not yet run its course. It also yet again underlines the extent to which the Leveson Inquiry was barking entirely up the wrong tree. There is no question to which the correct answer is increased government control over free speech. Any inquiry into the media should look first and foremost at its highly concentrated ownership and how to instil more pluralism. It is probably now too late to expect that a vibrant, diverse traditional media is achievable. We can however be cheered by the continuing decline of the political influence of the mainstream media, as illustrated by its “Fake News” panic.

      Even five years ago, if the mainstream media carried a meme that was fundamentally untrue, the chances of persuading public opinion of its untruth were almost minimal. Similarly if they wished to ignore an inconvenient truth, it would be very hard indeed to get it out to a significant number.

      Four years ago, when the official version of the Adam Werritty affair was front page news for days, causing the resignation of the Defence Secretary, I discovered that in fact the real scandal ran much deeper. Werritty – who had an official pass but no official position – had held at least eight meetings with Matthew Gould, now Cabinet Office anti-WikiLeaks supremo. Gould had at the time of some of the meetings been ambassador to Israel, at the time of others Private Secretary to two different Foreign Secretaries, David Miliband and William Hague. On at least one occasion it was acknowledged by the FCO that Mossad were also present. For the three meetings which occurred while Gould was Private Secretary, I requested the diary entries under the Freedom of Information Act. The meetings were held on 8 Sept 2009, 27 Sept 2010 and 6 Feb 2011. The FCO sent me, in reply to my Freedom of Information request, the diary entries for those three days with only the dates – the rest was 100% redacted, in the interests of national security.

    • Vox’s Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest, Explained

      One of Vox’s major investors—second only to Comcast—is General Atlantic. The New York–based private equity firm invested $46.5 million in Vox Media in December 2014, roughly six months after the flagship website Vox.com launched. As part of the deal, General Atlantic VP Zachary Kaplan got a seat on Vox Media’s corporate board (as is common in large investment rounds). General Atlantic also invests in several technology and media companies Vox Media covers, without Vox disclosing this fact.

      [...]

      General Atlantic was also one of three lead investors in a $1.5 billion fundraising round for AirBnb in December 2015. While Vox has been critical of AirBnb’s high-profile problems with racist users, the New Money vertical was quick to defend the San Fransisco room-sharing giant after New York state passed restrictive legislation—again, without any disclosure of General Atlantic’s investment: “New York’s Crackdown on ‘Commercial’ Airbnb Listings Is Misguided” (11/18/16).

      When asked for comment on their disclosure policy, Vox managing editor Lauren Williams wrote back, “That’s something we’ve been thinking about, and we plan to post one in the new year.” A follow-up email asking whether Vox covering companies owned by its major investors was a potential problem has had no response so far.

      [...]

      While Vox coverage of its corporate parents, siblings and cousins isn’t uniformly positive, all too often it is. Even in stories that aren’t more or less verbatim PR copy, disclosures ought to be mandatory—especially when it’s as direct as covering Comcast and NBC corporate. For startups, major investors are tantamount to ownership in every sense of the word, and since traditional media companies disclose ownership, there’s no reason why this same standard wouldn’t apply to venture capital and private equity-backed New Media outfits.

      Complexity is no excuse for not disclosing obvious conflicts, nor does it justify running a major media site for two-and-a-half years without a public, clearly worded code of ethics. Vox Media has raised over $300 million and has a staff reportedly of over 400 people. With all those resources, perhaps they can take a week off and hash out a coherent ethics guide that reflects the economic realities of PE- and corporate-backed “disruptive” media.

    • Sources Tell Me… Fake News, Kuwait and the Trump DC Hotel

      It is fully normalized now in American mainstream journalism to build an entire story, often an explosive story, around a single, anonymous source, typically described no further than “a senior U.S. official,” or just “a source.”

      For a writer, this makes life pretty easy. They can simply make up the entire story sitting in their bedroom, inflate a taxi driver’s gossip into a “source,” or just believe an intern they tried to pick up at happy hour who says she saw an email written by her supervisor saying their manager heard something something. The story goes viral, often with an alarming headline, and is irrefutable in an Internety way, demanding critics prove a negative: how can you say it didn’t happen?!?!?

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Thailand’s military-appointed Assembly unanimously passes an internet law combining the world’s worst laws

      On Dec 15, an amendment to Thailand’s 2007 Computer Crime Act passed its National Legislative Assembly — a body appointed by the country’s military after the 2014 coup — unanimously, and in 180 days, the country will have a new internet law that represents a grab bag of the worst provisions of the worst internet laws in the world, bits of the UK’s Snooper’s Charter, America’s Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the dregs of many other failed laws.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Twitter is ‘toast’ and the stock is not even worth $10: Analyst

      Twitter is “toast” as a company and the stock is not even worth $10, according to a research note published Tuesday, following the departure of another top executive at the social media service.

      The microblogging platform’s chief technology officer, Adam Messinger, tweeted that he would leave the company and “take some time off”, while Josh McFarland, vice president of product at Twitter, also said he was exiting the company. Both executives announced their departure on Tuesday.

      Meanwhile, last month, Adam Bain stepped down as chief operating officer last month to be replaced by chief financial officer Anthony Noto, who has yet to be replaced. Twitter has also lost leaders from business development, media and commerce, media partnerships, human resources, and engineering this year.

    • European Officials Accuse Facebook of Misleading Them on WhatsApp Deal

      European competition officials filed charges on Tuesday against Facebook, accusing the social media giant of making misleading statements to receive regulatory approval for its $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp, the internet messaging service.

      The accusation, which could lead to a fine of up to 1 percent of Facebook’s yearly revenue, meaning a penalty of about $200 million, comes amid growing tension with Europe’s policy makers over how the company is able to dominate much of the region’s digital world.

    • In Major Privacy Victory, Top EU Court Rules Against Mass Surveillance

      The European court’s panel of 15 judges acknowledged in their ruling that “modern investigative techniques” were necessary to combat organized crime and terrorism, but said that this cannot justify “the general and indiscriminate retention of all traffic and location data.” Instead, the judges stated, it is acceptable for governments to engage in the “targeted retention” of data in cases involving serious crime, permitting that persons affected by any surveillance are notified after investigations are completed, and that access to the data is overseen by a judicial authority or an independent administrative authority.

      The case was originally brought in December 2014 by two British members of parliament, who challenged the legality of the U.K. government’s Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, which forced telecommunications companies to store records on their customers’ communication for 12 months. That law has since been replaced by the Investigatory Powers Act, which was recently approved by the British parliament and is expected soon to come into force.

      Though the U.K. voted to leave the European Union earlier this year, Wednesday’s decision remains — at least in the short term — highly significant, and will prove to be a severe headache for British government officials. The ruling will now be forwarded to the U.K.’s Court of Appeal, where judges there will consider how to apply it in the context of national law. It may result in the government being forced to make changes to controversial sections of the Investigatory Powers Act, which enable police and spy agencies to access vast amounts of data on people’s internet browsing, instant messages, emails, phone calls, and social media conversations.

    • Complete Victory: EU Supreme Court Rules Blanket Logging Requirements Blanketly Unconstitutional

      The EU Supreme Court (European Court of Justice) has ruled that no European country may have laws that require any communications provider to perform blanket indiscriminate logging of user activity, stating in harsh terms that such measures violate the very fundamentals of a democratic society. This finally brings the hated Data Retention to an end, even if much too late. It also kills significant parts of the UK Snooper’s Charter.

      This morning, Luxembourg time, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) presented its damning verdict. In a challenge brought by plaintiffs in Ireland and Sweden, it was argued that forcing telecommunications providers – ISPs and telecom companies alike – to log all activity of their users, in case law enforcement may need it later, was simply incompatible with the most fundamental privacy rights laid out in the European Charter of Human Rights. The court agreed wholesale.

    • Parliament must change the Investigatory Powers Act in response to CJEU ruling

      The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has issued a judgment that could force the Government to change the Investigatory Powers Act – just weeks after the surveillance law received royal assent.

    • Yahoo email scan shows U.S. spy push to recast constitutional privacy

      Yahoo Inc’s secret scanning of customer emails at the behest of a U.S. spy agency is part of a growing push by officials to loosen constitutional protections Americans have against arbitrary governmental searches, according to legal documents and people briefed on closed court hearings.

      The order on Yahoo from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) last year resulted from the government’s drive to change decades of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment right of people to be secure against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” intelligence officials and others familiar with the strategy told Reuters.

    • Europe’s highest court declares UK ‘snooper charter’ illegal

      Britain’s controversial ‘snooper’s charter’ has been delivered a blow from the EU with its highest court ruling that the government’s “indiscriminate retention” of emails is illegal.

      The ruling could trigger challenges against the UK’s new Investigatory Powers Act, passed into law in November, which allows for the sweeping collection and storage of people’s emails, text messages and internet data.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Anonymous’ Barrett Brown Is Free—and Ready to Pick New Fights

      When Barrett Brown was arrested in his home by FBI agents in 2012—a moment captured by chance in a public videochat streamed to his fans and haters alike—the hacker group Anonymous was an online force to be reckoned with. Just nine months earlier the group had hacked the private intelligence firm Stratfor and dumped five million of its emails, the crime to which Brown would later be tied and sentenced to five years in prison.

      Today, just a few weeks after Brown walked out of Texas’s Three Rivers Federal Correctional Institute, Anonymous has shrunk to a thin imitation of the hacker army it once was. But with or without the hacktivist group that he championed, Brown can’t imagine a better time to resume his work as a journalist and radical information agitator. “When things deteriorate, when the system destroys itself as it’s doing right now and does so in such an obvious and disgusting way, my ideas seem less crazy,” he says.

    • VIDEO: “Relatively Free” Barrett Brown out of prison and already hard at work

      Alex Winter and production company Field of Vision have released a short documentary on Barrett Brown’s release from FCI Three Rivers and the six-hour drive to his new residence, a halfway house near Dallas. The twenty-minute film called ‘Relatively Free’ features a skinnier, longer-haired Barrett discussing his time in federal prison, the fight for press freedoms to come under a Trump administration, and why his case is a “jackpot case” for reformers, should they choose to make use of it.

    • Dear TSA: The country is not safer because you grab vaginas

      Eventually your heart gets hardened when you hear about nightmarish scenarios with the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA. With my elite status as a TSA Precheck and a CLEAR traveler, I’d grown accustomed to breezing through the security screening process in five minutes or less.

      Randomly selected for additional screening? Child, please — not “Diamond on Delta” me. So when I was selected in a nearly completely empty Detroit Metropolitan Airport last night, I thought it was ridiculous.

      [...]

      The supervisor told me he would call his manager. He did. I repeated my protests: I have a Homeland Security background. This is a severe violation of my privacy and civil liberties. Please just let me get the scan again. I do not want my vagina patted.

      The agent began to insist that it was a backhanded pat around the upper thigh. At the same time, the manager says I can go through it or be escorted out. I really weighed my options. Did I really need to get on this plane to New York? I did.

    • Google sued by employee for confidentiality policies that ‘muzzle’ staff

      A product manager at Google has sued the company over its allegedly illegal confidentiality rules, which, among other things, prohibit employees from speaking even internally about illegal conduct and dangerous product defects for fear that such statements may be used in lawsuits or sought by the government.

      The alleged policies, which are said to violate California laws, restrict employees’ right to speak, work or whistle-blow, and include restrictions on speaking to the government, attorneys or the press about wrongdoing at Google or even “speaking to spouse or friends about whether they think their boss could do a better job,” according to a complaint filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of California for the city and county of San Francisco.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Global Average Internet Connection Speeds Reaches 6.3 Mbps in 3Q16

      The average connection speed is just that, the average of the all the connections that are made to Akamai’s global content delivery network platform. In contrast, the global average peak connection speed, which measures the highest speeds, was reported at 37.2 Mbps, for a 16 percent gain over the third quarter of 2015.

      Once again, South Korea was reported to be the top nation on the planet for average connection speed, with 26.3 Mbps. In contrast, the average connection speed for the U.S was reported at 16.3 Mbps. Singapore had the top peak speed at 162 Mbps, while the average peak connection in the U.S was 70.8 Mbps.

    • Canada Calls Broadband a ‘Basic’ Service, Funds Rural Expansion

      Canada’s communications regulator announced a C$750 million ($560 million) fund that companies like Rogers Communications Inc., BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. can tap to subsidize high-speed internet projects in rural parts of the country.

      The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said broadband internet should be seen as a “basic” service across the country. The C$750 million will be distributed over five years and doled out based on applications from telecommunications carriers.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Australian Govt Advisory Body Digs in Over Fair Use & Geo-Unblocking

        A final inquiry report published by the Australian government’s Productivity Commission is steadfastly maintaining the position that citizens should have the right to use VPNs to access geo-restricted content. The advisory body is also unmoved when it comes to delivering fair use exceptions, stating that rightsholder objections are based on flawed and “self-interested” assumptions.

12.21.16

Good Luck to Apple in Exposing the Network of Patent Trolls That is Connected to Microsoft, Nokia, Ericsson, BlackBerry and Other Failed Mobile Players

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Patents at 8:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

When all else fails, throw patents at the competition (through trolls so as to avert counteraction)?

Nokia trolls
Image from BusinessKorea

Summary: With billions of dollars at stake (maybe over a trillion in the long run), the attempt to claw revenue using patents rather than actual sales has become complicated because of plurality of intermediaries, which Apple is trying to tackle with a new antitrust complaint

“In a major antitrust lawsuit Apple charged that Acacia is illegally breaking terms of patents acquired from Nokia,” according to The Street. This is pretty major news and definitely something that warrants a 2 AM article. Florian Müller has already produced a long blog post about it, accompanied by or coupled with the relevant documents.

“Readers can find details like a detailed history in our Wiki page about Acacia, including the hiring (by Acacia) of people from Microsoft and this troll’s repeated attacks on GNU/Linux.”As a reminder to our readers, Acacia is a Microsoft-connected troll. Readers can find details like a detailed history in our Wiki page about Acacia, including the hiring (by Acacia) of people from Microsoft and this troll’s repeated attacks on GNU/Linux.

“For a long time,” Müller wrote today, “I had hoped someone would finally do this. Last year I called out Nokia and others on their privateering ways, and it turned out that Nokia had industrialized the concept of privateering to a far greater extent than anyone else. My list of PAEs fed by Nokia contained all of the defendants in Apple’s antitrust suit–Acacia and Conversant (technically, Apple is also suing particular subsidiaries of those)–and more. That post prompted attempts by Ericsson and Nokia to explain away their privateering ways.”

Nokia‘s patents have also been passed to another anti-Linux/anti-Google troll called MOSAID (renamed “Conversant” since). These were, for a fact, passed at Microsoft’s instructions, as reported in the mainstream media at the time. There’s more on that in the Korean media. When it comes to patents, Nokia is still enslaved by or subservient to Microsoft.

“What does the future of dying mobile giants have in store then?”The full story isn’t just Apple hitting back at Nokia. “Breaking news,” Müller wrote later, “Nokia sues Apple in US and Europe over alleged patent infringement […] Venues: Eastern District of Texas, three German courts: Düsseldorf Mannheim Munich…”

Europe is a growing and increasingly attractive hub for patent parasites already, I’ve told Müller (who probably agreed). Germany and sometimes the UK (London) are favoured among those parasites (see Ericsson's troll choosing London for legal attacks — quite unprecedented a move for such an entity). “For the troll that Nokia is now,” Müller noted, “suing Apple in the ED of Texas is very appropriate. […] When Nokia was still making mobile devices, it had a predilection for the District of Delaware. Now: Eastern District of Texas. Times change…”

I told him that BlackBerry does the same thing now, having lost the market (to which Müller nodded with a retweet). We wrote about this earlier this week and earlier this year.

What does the future of dying mobile giants have in store then? Passage to trolls (the PAE type) that will tax everyone, everywhere? “Something big always seems to happen at Christmas in the patent market,” IAM wrote. “Remember the RPX Rockstar patents purchase a couple of years ago?”

Remember that IAM is partly funded by MOSAID/Conversant, i.e. part of the same ‘gang’. As for Rockstar, we wrote quite a few articles about it, e.g. [1, 2]. It’s like a front for Microsoft (Rockstar Consortium is a patent troll owned by Microsoft, Apple, BlackBerry, Ericsson, and Sony). As for RPX, it’s also a patent troll, with Microsoft having joined it 6 years ago.

“My list of PAEs fed by Nokia contained all of the defendants in Apple’s antitrust suit–Acacia and Conversant (technically, Apple is also suing particular subsidiaries of those)–and more.”
      –Florian MüllerNina Milanov, an occasional EPO sceptic, told Müller, “I hope Apple sees it through. Every time you settle, to some extent the troll has won.”

True.

“Last time Nokia sued Apple in Germany,” Müller responded, “it was extremely lucky. Key patents have expired. Will be more interesting this time around.”

If Apple gets to the bottom of all these satellite proxies that are patent trolls, it will be a good service not just to Apple but also to Android/Linux. iOS and Android command the market and all that the losers can do right now is attempt to tax those two. Even Oracle is trying to accomplish that. █

Accusations of Administrative Council (of the EPO) Complicity in Illicit Retaliation Against Appeal Boards at the Behest of Battistelli

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The Chinchilla Man of the Administrative Council too, under Battistelli’s instructions (tail wagging the dog), tried to remove a judge

The Chinchilla Man of the Administrative Council

Summary: The Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation is coming under fire for its role in weakening the appeal boards and the confidence in already-granted EPs (European Patents) continues to erode

EARLIER TODAY we noted that a comments thread about the EPO‘s patent scope had turned more interesting than the ‘article’ (self-promotional piece) itself. People have been noting that this diversionary tactic from the EPO can backfire pretty badly on the EPO.

“Julian Cockbain” (possibly a pseudonym but not for sure) said that “the problem is not with Tomatoes II but with the EBoA’s craven reaction to the Biotech Directive in G-1/98. Correctly decided then, the problem would not have arisen now…”

“One more example of the fundamental lack of accountability of the executive in the European patent system.”
      –AnonymousWe have been writing about this for a number of years. The EPO should never have granted patents on plants, seeds and animals in the first place. Now it pays the price and people will lose confidence in their EPs. The following three comments were all posted anonymously, presumably by domain experts afraid of retaliation for their open expression of views. “The decision by the President of the EPO [that's Battistelli] to stay all the concerned proceedings cannot be appealed before the Boards. One more example of the fundamental lack of accountability of the executive in the European patent system,” said one comment. Yes, it helped expose how out-of-control the EPO has become.

Another comment said that “it’s clear that in the long term the Enlarged Board cannot remain independent of the EU, particularly once [sic] the UPC is up and running” (that should be if, not once). The boards are in general under attack from Battistelli, who is pushing hard for the UPC and will sort of oversee the boards until a UPC booster finally becomes their President (see some background on Carl Josefsson's role in UPC training). To quote the full comment: “The EPO chose to bring itself under the jurisdiction of the EU when it brought the Biotech Directive into the EPC rules. Now it has to stay proceedings to sort this all out. There is no point granting/maintaining patents which are not valid according the Biotech Directive. It’s clear that in the long term the Enlarged Board cannot remain independent of the EU, particularly once the UPC is up and running and presumably the CJEU will then be looking at patent cases at lot more regularly as the final appeal court for the UPC. We clearly cannot have 2 final patent courts in Europe and this is a good opportunity to start the process of allowing the CJEU to take over the responsibilities of the Enlarged Board.”

“As the EBA did not abide by the wishes of the AC (and of the president) in this matter, it was relocated to Haar.”
      –AnonymousOne person asked: “Why bother about separation of powers? It started with the house-ban of a member of the BA by the president of the EPO a while ago. It continued. As the EBA did not abide by the wishes of the AC (and of the president) in this matter, it was relocated to Haar. As long as the AC has not amended the Rules, there is no objective reason to stay any proceeding. By staying the proceedings, the BA are also touched. Another good way to retaliate.”

We recently argued that the Administrative Council was complicit and under the control of Battistelli rather than it being the other way around (as it ought to be). As the Administrative Council is controlled by Battistelli's pet chinchilla (alluding to the darker side of his life), this is hardly surprising. █

With Lucy Neville-Rolfe Out (Confirmed Today!) and Chaos in the EPO’s Management, the UPC’s Prospects Look Worse Than Ever in the UK and Europe as a Whole

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

So long Lucy and thanks for nothing…

Neville-Rolfe and Battistelli

Summary: ‘Battistelli’s women’ seem to have been removed from their job, only days after Battistelli’s Vice-President Mini Minion (Minnoye) quietly announced his early exit from the EPO

THE EPO‘s management is starting to shake up as affairs have been rocky and criticism comes from the European media (except German media) on a more regular basis. As for Lucy, showing off her connections to Battistelli (see photo above), she too is out, not long after we leveled/directed criticism at her, speaking against what she did (as did other people, usually anonymously).

For details regarding what Lucy did, revisit this 7-part series:

Combine this with the planned departure of Minnoye, a principal/key part of Team Battistelli. We are not the only ones celebrating the news about EPO’s Vice-President Minnoye resigning. Here is a new comment (from today) about it:

Let VP1 never forget that life and the world are what we make them by our social character; by our adaptation or want of adaptation to the social conditions, relationships, and pursuits of the world.

To the selfish, the cold, and the insensible, to the haughty and presuming, to the proud, who demand more than they are likely to receive, to the jealous, ever afraid they shall not receive enough, to those who are unreasonably sensitive about the good or ill opinions of others, to all violators of the social laws, the rude, the violent, the dishonest, and the sensual, to all these, the social condition, from its very nature, will present annoyances, disappointments, and pains, appropriate to their several characters.
The benevolent affections will not revolve around selfishness; the cold-hearted must expect to meet coldness; the proud, haughtiness; the passionate, anger; and the violent, rudeness.

Those who forget the rights of others, must not be surprised if their own are forgotten; and those who stoop to the lowest embraces of sense must not wonder, if others are not concerned to find their prostrate honour, and lift it up to the remembrance and respect of the world.

Lucy Neville-Rolfe is out too, only a few weeks after her UPC debacle. Here is the only report about it (that we have found so far). Interesting timing. Perhaps she didn’t like what people said or maybe her supervising authority took into account what people had said about her appalling decisions. Hard to tell without some leaks that help shed light on that foolish, ill-informed move from Lucy…

“Out,” MIP says this afternoon, “Baroness Neville-Rolfe.” This news is evidently very fresh: “The government announced today that Baroness Neville-Rolfe has been appointed as Commercial Secretary (Minister of State) at the Treasury, meaning she will leave her current post at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).”

What will that mean for the Unitary Patent? Nothing good, that’s for sure. The assurances came from Lucy (intention to ratify), so what happens now?

This following new comment suggests somewhat of a chaotic situation in EPO HR (and by extension the management) right now, just shortly after Bergot had another go at entrapping SUEPO (only to be rebuffed). Someone who looked at the phone book said this about Bergot and Nadja Merdaci-Lefèvre (mentioned last year):

Also heard another interesting development so far remained rather unoticed but which shows that there are big cracks in Battistelli’s galaxy:

The FR ex Lieutnant-colonel from intelligence services (don’t laugh) who had been recruited at administrator’s level by PD HR to officially deal with “social dialogue and communication” (actually she worked at preparing files to charge SUEPO officials to get them fired) and then bombarded within no time at director’s level (after another fake selection procedure), would now be back to square one (see the phone book).

Game over, exit the “social dialogue” work with PD HR.

Apparently a sudden and rather unexpected change of both dept and function (now she is simple Private “head of service” position in charge of security). At first glance this position would suit better her profile but when one remembers the shamble around the dismissals…one may worry for “security at EPO”.

In any case something big must have happened between the two ladies who once were the best pales in town. Trusting PD HR is a risky bet: the later acts exactly as her mentor (Battistelli) does: find one to blame with her wrongdoings.

Loyalty is really overrated

If anyone could kindly take it upon him/herself to investigate this and send us some information, we would greatly appreciate it. Where there is smoke there is usually a fire. █

Links 21/12/2016: Red Hat’s Results Not Positive, Raspberry Pi Goes for Debian

Posted in News Roundup at 6:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • OECD STI Outlook 2016: more open source in software, hardware and wetware

    Open source development practices will create further communities of developers, not only in software but also in hardware (Open Source Hardware, OSH) and “wetware”, for example in do-it-yourself synthetic biology. Together with the continued fall in the costs of equipment and computing, this creates greater opportunities for new entrants — including individuals, outsider firms and entrepreneurs — to succeed in new markets.

  • Google Open Up a Cool Collection of Cryptographic Security Tests

    With 2016 closing out, there is no doubt that cloud computing and Big Data analytics would probably come to mind if you had to consider the hot technology categories of the year. However, steady progress has been made in security software as well, and now Google has released Project Wycheproof, a collection of security tests that check cryptographic software libraries for known weaknesses that are used in attacks.

    This newly open sourced project, named for Mount Wycheproof, apparently the smallest mountain in the world, features a code repository on GitHub.

  • Kickstarter Open Sources its Own iOS and Android Apps

    If you’re familiar with Kickstarter, you know that it and other crowdsourced funding sites have helped fund numerous open source applications. Kickstarter actually has its own engineering team, though, and now that team has made the announcement that it is open sourcing its own Android and iOS creations.

    You can go to the team’s Android or iOS Github pages and find repositories. “The native team at Kickstarter is responsible for building and maintaining features for Android and iOS,” the team reports. The open source toolsets may be especially useful for startups to leverage.

  • Events

    • 2016 Hacktoberfest ignites open source participation

      DigitalOcean launched Hacktoberfest in 2014 to encourage contribution to open source projects. The event was a clear success, and in terms of attendance and participation goals reached, it’s also clear that Hacktoberfest has become a powerful force in driving contributions to open source. The lure of a t-shirt and specific, time-limited goals help new contributors get started and encourage existing contributors to rededicate themselves and their efforts.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Announces “MUFFIN” User Interface

      The Document Foundation today announced MUFFIN, a new user-interface concept for LibreOffice.

      MUFFIN is short for “My User Friendly & Flexible INterface.” MUFFIN focuses on a “personal UI” depending upon a user’s habits, is deemed user-friendly, and is flexible. These different UI elements will be available with the upcoming LibreOffice 5.3 and offer options for the default UI, a single toolbar UI, a sidebar with a single toolbar, and a new experimental “notebook bar” interface.

    • LibreOffice 5.3 to Launch with MUFFIN, a User-Friendly and Flexible UI Concept

      Immediately after informing Softpedia today, December 21, 2016, about the launch of a new LibreOffice Extension & Templates website, The Document Foundation company announced MUFFIN, a new tasty user interface concept for LibreOffice 5.3 onwards.

    • The Document Foundation announces the MUFFIN, a new tasty user interface concept for LibreOffice

      The Document Foundation announces the MUFFIN, a new tasty user interface concept for LibreOffice, based on the joint efforts of the development and the design teams, supported by the marketing team.

    • Oracle is cracking down on Java SE users who think it’s free

      ORACLE HAS begun an aggressive campaign of chasing licence fees for use of payable elements of its Java software.

      The company, which acquired Java owner Sun Microsystems in 2010, has already lost a case over the fair use of Java APIs in Google’s Android operating system, but as it awaits another appeal hearing, it’s going after a myriad of other companies that are using elements of the open source software that aren’t actually free.

      Oracle has been hiring a legal team this year to bolster its License Management Services, which in turn has forced companies to hire compliance specialists, as it looks like Oracle has made 2017 the year of kicking ass.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

Leftovers

  • Velvet Underground, Sly Stone to Receive Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award

    The Velvet Underground, Sly Stone and Nina Simone are among the artists who will be awarded the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2017, the organization behind the Grammys announced Monday.

  • How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

    To die-hard fans, Apple Inc.’s Macintosh sometimes seems like an afterthought these days.

    Mac upgrades, once a frequent ritual, are few and far between. The Mac Pro, Apple’s marquee computer, hasn’t been refreshed since 2013. The affordable and flexible Mac mini was last upgraded in 2014. And when a new machine does roll out, the results are sometimes underwhelming, if not infuriating, to devotees.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • The thousands of U.S. locales where lead poisoning is worse than in Flint

      A Reuters examination of lead testing results across the country found almost 3,000 areas with poisoning rates far higher than in the tainted Michigan city. Yet many of these lead hotspots are receiving little attention or funding.

      ST. JOSEPH, Missouri – On a sunny November afternoon in this historic city, birthplace of the Pony Express and death spot of Jesse James, Lauranda Mignery watched her son Kadin, 2, dig in their front yard. As he played, she scolded him for putting his fingers in his mouth.

    • Old Dutch potato chips recalled over salmonella concern

      OTTAWA – Old Dutch Foods Ltd is recalling one of its potato chip brands because of possible salmonella contamination.

      The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says Old Dutch brand Cheddar and Sour Cream Potato Chips are sold in 66 gram and 255 gram bags.

    • China’s marriage rate is plummeting because women are choosing autonomy over intimacy

      One of the greatest fears of Chinese parents is coming true: China’s young people are turning away from marriage. The trend is also worrying the government.

      After a whole decade of increases in the national marriage rate, China witnessed its second year of decline in the number of newly registered unions in 2015, with a 6.3% drop from 2014 and 9.1% from 2013. This was accompanied by a rise in the age of marriage, which increased by about a year and a half in the first 10 years of this century.

  • Security

    • 5 Open Source Network Security Tools SMBs Should Consider

      You might think that because your business is small you aren’t an attractive target for hackers.

      But you would be wrong.

      According to the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), 82 percent of small business owners believe that they are not a target for cyberattacks, but 43 percent of last year’s cyberattacks targeted SMBs. And a single attack can cost SMBs up to $99,000.

      Cyberattacks of all kinds are on the rise with data breaches increasing 15 percent over the past year, NCSA says. And ransomware, attacks that freeze up organizations’ systems until they pay a ransom, has become particularly prevalent; in just the first three months of 2016, U.S. ransomware victims paid out $209 million to attackers, compared to $25 million for all of 2015.

    • Wednesday’s security updates
    • Rakos Malware Is Infecting Linux Servers And IoT Devices To Build Botnet Army

      In case you’re facing a problem of your embedded devices going overloaded with networking and computing tasks, there are chances that it might be due to some foreign elements trying to lure your ‘smart’ device into joining a botnet cult.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Two Derby terror suspects are ‘strict Muslims who fell out with neighbour for wearing shorts’

      A refugee who says he lives below the home where two Derby men were arrested for alleged terror offences said they were strict Muslims who fell-out with him for wearing shorts.

      Haji Ahmadi said he “had the shock of his life” when he discovered his neighbours in Leopold Street had been held in a major anti-terror probe in which six people were arrested – four were from Derby.

      Mr Ahmadi has lived on the ground floor of the home for five months and the former Afghan soldier said two of the four city men who have been arrested lived there when he arrived.

    • Can Indigenous Okinawans Protect Their Land and Water From the US Military?

      Three weeks ago, on a bus ride to Takae, a small district two hours north of Okinawa’s capital of Naha, a copy of a local newspaper article was passed around. “Another Takae in America,” the headline read, over a photograph of the Standing Rock Sioux marching against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. At the top of the page, someone had scribbled “water is life” in red ink. As we drove through the foothills along the coast, the article made its way around the bus—behind me, a woman said to another, “It’s the same struggle everywhere.”

      We were headed to the US military’s Northern Training Area, also known as Camp Gonsalves, which stretches over 30 square miles of Okinawa’s subtropical forest. Founded in 1958 and used for “terrain and climate-specific training,” the US military likes to call the training area a “largely undeveloped jungle land.” What they don’t like to acknowledge is that the forest is home to some 140 villagers, thousands of native species and dams that provide much of the island’s drinking water. Though Okinawans have long opposed US presence on the group of islands, their purpose on this day was to protest the construction of a new set of US military helipads in the forest of the Northern Training Area, which they consider to be sacred.

      Since 2007, Okinawans have been gathering in Takae to disrupt the construction of six helipads for the US Marine Corps, which come as part of a 1996 bilateral deal between Japan and the United States. Under the agreement, the US military would “return” 15 square miles of its training ground in exchange for the new helipads—a plan Okinawans say will only bolster the US military presence on the islands and lead to further environmental destruction.

    • US ‘got it so wrong’ on Saddam Hussein, says CIA interrogator of the Iraq dictator

      The US “got it wrong” about Saddam Hussein and Iraq, the CIA analyst who interrogated the former dictator has said.

      John Nixon had numerous conversations with the deposed leader and now says that America was critically mistaken about their intervention Iraq in a number of ways.

      In particular, he claims, the CIA’s view of Hussein’s attitude to using chemical weapons was wrong.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Solar and wind power keep breaking cost records – but Poland and Hungary resist
    • President Obama bans some ocean drilling areas forever

      President-elect Donald Trump may be staffing his administration with anti-environmentalists, but that isn’t stopping President Barack Obama from using his final weeks in office to protect the planet.

      The president is invoking a provision in a 1953 law known as the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act in order to indefinitely block drilling in large sections of the Arctic and Atlantic, according to CNBC on Tuesday. This will include most of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in the Arctic and 31 underwater canyons in the Atlantic.

    • Trump’s coal revival plan won’t work; clean energy tech is already cheaper

      Trump is likely to roll back several of the current administration’s clean energy policies, such as the 30% Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar power deployments, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) and U.S. support for the 195-nation Paris Agreement.

    • Going green in China, where climate change isn’t considered a hoax

      In mid-November, while Americans were preoccupied with election returns, China sent some of its clearest signals yet that it will continue to pursue an international leadership role on issues including climate. At an international climate change summit in Marrakech, the Chinese government reasserted its commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The government announced that its aggregate emissions will peak by 2030 or earlier, and that its emissions per dollar of economic output will decline sharply.

  • Finance

    • Uber’s Loss Exceeds $800 Million in Third Quarter on $1.7 Billion in Net Revenue

      Even as Uber Technologies Inc. exited China, the company’s financial loss has remained eye-popping. In the first nine months of this year, the ride-hailing company lost significantly more than $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. In the third quarter, Uber lost more than $800 million, not including its Chinese operation.

      At the same time, the company’s revenue has continued to grow even after leaving the world’s most populous country. Uber generated about $3.76 billion in net revenue in the first nine months of 2016 and is on track to exceed $5.5 billion this year, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

    • Multilateral investment court would impede measures on climate change

      A multilateral investment court would lock in greater exposure, larger scope and the “highest possible level of legal protection and certainty”. Furthermore, due to inherent systemic issues with specialised and supranational courts a multilateral investment court would create a high risk on expansive interpretations of investors’ rights.

      A multilateral investment court would strengthen investments vis-à-vis democracy and fundamental rights. This undermines our values and ability to respond to crises.

    • EU court rulings a ‘real disappointment’ to multinationals in state aid cases, says expert

      A Spanish tax break that was only available to Spanish companies acquiring foreign companies constituted a ‘selective’ tax advantage in breach of EU state aid rules, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said in two cases, overturning previous decisions of the EU General Court.

    • India surpasses Britain to become world’s fifth largest economy

      As Britain grapples with a depreciating pound sterling in a post-Brexit era and India continues to grow rapidly since its economic liberalization in 1991, the two have swapped spots in the rankings of world economies.

      For the first time in 150 years, India has surpassed its erstwhile colonial master in terms of GDP, which is now the fifth largest in the world after the U.S., China, Japan and Germany.

    • ECJ Advocate General Says EU Commission Cannot Make Trade Deals Without Member States

      Not all parts of the European Union-Singapore trade agreement “fall within the EU’s exclusive competence and therefore the agreement cannot be concluded without the participation of all of the Member States.” This is the result of an opinion of the European Court of Justice Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston published today.

      The Singapore Free Trade Agreement can only be concluded by the European Union and the member states acting jointly, according to the decision which clearly divides issues that fall under EU competency compared to such that need member states acting as well.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • The Electoral College Desecrates Democracy—Especially This Time

      The Electoral College was created 229 years ago as a check and balance against popular sovereignty. And, with its formal endorsement of Donald Trump for the presidency, this absurd anachronism has once again completed its mission of desecrating democracy.

      As of Monday afternoon, the actual vote count in the race for the presidency was: Democrat Hillary Clinton 65,844,594, Republican Donald Trump 62,979,616. That’s a 2,864,978 popular-vote victory. Yet, when the last of the electors from the 50 states and the District of Columbia had completed their quadrennial mission early Monday evening, the Electoral College vote was: Trump 304, Clinton 227.

      So-called “faithless” electors split from Trump and Clinton, casting votes for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former secretary of state Colin Powell, Ohio Governor John Kasich, former congressman Ron Paul, and Native American elder (and Dakota Access Pipeline critic) Faith Spotted Eagle.

    • Trump’s still going wrong on Twitter

      When the President-elect speaks, people listen — and governments, businesses and ordinary citizens scramble to parse, interpret and, given his power, make snap decisions about how to respond.
      The post-election, pre-presidential Donald Trump has used social media with the same abandon as his campaign self — yes, to get his message out, unfiltered by the media he loathes, but also as a bludgeon against critics, a tool for disseminating misinformation and, as he nears the inaugural, an outlet for breeding confusion in business and international relations, purposefully or not.

    • Trump Leading Folks Astray

      During the election campaign, Trump used Twitter as a means to sidestep legitimate news media which tended to criticize or add commentary. He wanted to control everything in his stream of propaganda.

      However, while skilled at producing his content in volume, he had a very high error rate and/or showed himself to be a compulsive liar. He’s still doing that. He must know that one can fool some of the people all of the time but not all the people. Mustn’t he?

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Dental Firm Tries To Dodge Section 230 With Trademark Claims; Runs Headfirst Into Anti-SLAPP Law

      Abbey Dental of Las Vegas doesn’t like the number of negative reviews that are piling up at Pissed Consumer. But that’s about all it (and its lawyers) know. It seems to understand that taking on Pissed Consumer with a defamation lawsuit would be a complete failure, as would be any effort it made to sue individual reviewers. Nevada has an anti-SLAPP law in place, which would fit Abbey Dental’s attempt to artificially resuscitate its reputation to a tee.

      So, instead of handling this in the normal way (which would also be the route least likely to succeed), the company has decided to take a more oblique approach: a lawsuit filed in federal court (to better dodge the state’s anti-SLAPP law) centered on a variety of tremendously stupid trademark infringement claims.

    • South Carolina Senator Wants To Charge Computer Purchasers $20 To Access Internet Porn

      A state senator from South Carolina thinks he can save his constituents from a mostly-imaginary parade of horribles by erecting a porn paywall. Only none of this paywall money will go to porn producers or actors. Instead, it will all go to the fine state of South Carolina… you know, theoretically… if there were actually any way to effectively enforce this.

    • Encryption App ‘Signal’ Fights Censorship With a Clever Workaround

      Any subversive software developer knows its app has truly caught on when repressive regimes around the world start to block it. Earlier this week the encryption app Signal, already a favorite within the security and cryptography community, unlocked that achievement. Now, it’s making its countermove in the cat-and-mouse game of online censorship.

      On Wednesday, Open Whisper Systems, which created and maintains Signal, announced that it’s added a feature to its Android app that will allow it to sidestep censorship in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, where it was blocked just days ago. Android users can simply update the app to gain unfettered access to the encryption tool, according to Open Whisper Systems founder Moxie Marlinspike, and an iOS version of the update is coming soon.

    • Thailand’s military-appointed Assembly unanimously passes an internet law combining the world’s worst laws

      On Dec 15, an amendment to Thailand’s 2007 Computer Crime Act passed its National Legislative Assembly — a body appointed by the country’s military after the 2014 coup — unanimously, and in 180 days, the country will have a new internet law that represents a grab bag of the worst provisions of the worst internet laws in the world, bits of the UK’s Snooper’s Charter, America’s Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the dregs of many other failed laws.

      Under the new law, sending “false computer data” is a criminal offense, as is transmitting material affecting “the maintenance of national security, public security, national economic security or public infrastructure serving public interest or cause panic in the public” — and ISPs are co-liable with their users if they fail to pre-emptively censor this broadly defined material.

      The statue mandates vaguely defined cryptographic back doors, and bans possession of “information that the court has ordered to be destroyed” — while also appointing a committee to order the removal of “dangerous content.”

    • Rosset by Barney Rosset review – a publisher’s fight against censorship
    • Turkey maintains Tor block, flicks social networks offline for 12 hours
    • Turkey’s answer to most problems is Internet censorship as it blocks Tor and social media

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • All General Obligations To Retain Traffic Data Found Illegal Under EU Law

      Combining a case brought by a group of UK politicians and organisations (698/15 Watson) and a Swedish case started by telecom operator Tele Sverige (C-203/15 Tele2 Sverige), the court declared both the British and Swedish data retention provisions illegal under EU law.

      Only targeted retention fighting serious crime is possible, with tight limitations applying, also with regard to access, according to the judges. Exfiltrated data for these cases must be stored inside the EU, too, the decision notes. Once more the court with this ruling reminded EU legislators about the severity of indiscriminate data collections.

    • US State Police Have Spent Millions on Israeli Phone Cracking Tech

      When cops have a phone to break into, they just might pull a small, laptop-sized device out of a rugged briefcase. After plugging the phone in with a cable, and a few taps of a touch-screen, the cops have now bypassed the phone’s passcode. Almost like magic, they now have access to call logs, text messages, and in some cases even deleted data.

    • CJEU judgment says UK Government’s bulk retention of our communications data is illegal

      The Court of Justice of the European Union today published the final judgment in relation to the Tom Watson MP (and formerly David Davis MP) case regarding the lawfulness of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA).

    • 4 Most Common Myths About Tor You Should Learn About

      Tor has become such a popular application in online anonymity circles that people have been using its name mistakenly to refer to the concept it operates under (onion routing). What it is, how it works, and what it can do is still mostly unclear to most people who use it on a daily basis which often leads to complacency based on certain slight misconceptions about its mechanism. Although using onion routing offers several advantages, it’s important to note what its limitations are. Understanding the risks associated with Tor can help you better protect yourself from measures that would compromise your privacy.

    • Investigatory Powers law setback: Blanket data slurp is illegal—top EU court

      The UK’s recently passed Investigatory Powers Act hit a major snag on Wednesday morning, when Europe’s highest court ruled that the “general and indiscriminate” retention of citizens’ data communications is unlawful where it is not being slurped for serious crime cases.

    • European Information Security Advisory Says Mandating Encryption Backdoors Will Just Make Everything Worse

      More and more entities involved in government work are coming out in support of encryption. (Unfortunately, many governments are still periodically entertaining backdoor legislation…) While recognizing the limits it places on law enforcement and surveillance agencies, they’re not quite willing to sacrifice the security of everyone to make work easier for certain areas of the government.

      [...]

      One agent’s facially-invalid search warrant is the same agent’s legally-unassailable judicial order. This is enough of a problem in the US, where multiple federal districts have resulted in contradictory opinions on identical legal arguments. In the European Union, the problem is only exacerbated. Not only are there multiple courts, but also multiple nations, all with their own laws. Sure, there’s an attempt to unify guidance on technical/legal issues under the EU, but only so much can be done. Deciding what is or isn’t abusive use of government-mandated backdoors is going to be far from consistent. And that, of course, requires a unified European stance on encryption backdoors, which isn’t likely to happen either.

      Ultimately, ENISA concludes that tech advancements do pose legitimate challenges to law enforcement/national security efforts, but backdoors are no way to solve the problem. But the solution it does suggest isn’t much better. Here in the US, courts routinely defer to Congress when the remedy sought isn’t within their power. Over in the EU, ENISA suggests legislative measures are the wrong approach.

    • EU’s highest court delivers blow to UK snooper’s charter

      “General and indiscriminate retention” of emails and electronic communications by governments is illegal, the EU’s highest court has ruled, in a judgment that could trigger challenges against the UK’s new Investigatory Powers Act – the so-called snooper’s charter.

      Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime is justified, according to a long-awaited decision by the European court of justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg.

      The finding came in response to a legal challenge initially brought by the Brexit secretary, David Davis, when he was a backbench MP, and Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, over the legality of GCHQ’s bulk interception of call records and online messages.

    • EU accuses Facebook of misleading it in WhatsApp takeover probe

      The European Commission has charged Facebook Inc (FB.O) with providing misleading information during its takeover of the online messaging service WhatsApp, opening the company to a possible fine of 1 percent of its turnover.

      However, the statement of objections sent to Facebook will not affect the EC’s approval of the $22 billion merger in 2014, the Commission said in a statement on Tuesday.

      Facebook becomes the latest Silicon Valley target of EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who has demanded Apple (AAPL.O) pay back $14 billion in taxes to Ireland and hit Google (GOOGL.O) with two market abuse investigations.

    • EU charges Facebook with giving ‘misleading’ information over WhatsApp

      The European commission (EC) has filed charges against Facebook for providing “misleading” information in the run-up to the social network’s acquisition of messaging service WhatsApp after its data-sharing change in August.

      The charges will not have an affect on the approval of the $22bn merger and is being treated completely separately to other European cases against Facebook, but could lead to Facebook being fined up to 1% of its global turnover in 2014 when the merger was approved, which was greater than $10bn for the first time.

    • EU Commission calls out Facebook over terms of Whatsapp takeover

      FACEBOOK HAS been accused of misleading regulators over its $19bn (later upped to $22bn) takeover of mobile chat platform WhatsApp.

      The European Commission is investigating the possibility that Facebook either out-and-out lied or negligently withheld data that was relevant to the takeover, specifically regarding the company’s ability to swipe data from the app to power its “personalisation”.

      Facebook will have until the end of January next year to respond to a “Statement of Objections” which will then potentially lead to a full investigation.

      If it turns out that Facebook really did lead the commission a merry dance, it could impose a fine equivalent to 1 percent of turnover, or $180m based on 2015 revenue.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Being an Apostate at Christmas

      “Don’t tell them you took me to Church yesterday and for God’s sake, don’t bring up Christianity.”

      These were the words hissed at me a few years ago by my mother, as we prepared for the onslaught of relatives coming over for dinner. If I am spending it with my mother’s side of the family, then this is how the standard Christmas Day begins — and this conversation sets the scene for the rest of the day.

      For those of you that are wondering, I left the religion that was assigned to me by my family at birth — Islam — when I was 19, and I was halfway through my first year of university. I found several different flaws with its teachings and had several objections to various parts of the Qur’an. I discovered Christianity a year later when a friend casually asked if I fancied going to a church service. I went on to explore it until, finally, I was baptised in December, 2014.

    • A three-second laser strike cost Barry Bowser everything

      That led to a 21-month prison sentence, though Bowser was released after 11. Prison cost him more than time; Bowser also lost several teeth.

      As we drove the few miles to the scene of his crime, Bowser told me that he had just come from a denture-fitting appointment at an orthodontist’s office, needed after a race riot at the county jail where he had been held at the request of federal authorities.

      “I got busted in the mouth with a lock in a sock, knocked my teeth out,” he said. “That was my first day in Fresno County jail.”

      And all for making a poor decision with a laser pointer.

    • “Her Life Depends on Obama Taking Action Now”: 100,000+ People Demand Obama Free Chelsea Manning

      As President Obama’s term nears to a close, more than 100,000 people have signed a petition urging Obama to commute the sentence of Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking more than 700,000 classified files and videos to WikiLeaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. foreign policy. Manning has been held since 2010 and been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement and denied medical treatment related to her gender identity. In a letter to President Obama, Chelsea Manning wrote, “The sole relief I am asking for is to be released from military prison after serving six years of confinement as a person who did not intend to harm the interests of the United States or harm any service members. I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks as the person I was born to be.” For more, we speak with Chase Strangio, staff attorney at the ACLU, who is representing Manning in a lawsuit against the Pentagon.

    • Google sued over policies ‘barring employees from writing novels’

      Google is being sued over its internal confidentiality policies which bar employees from putting in writing concerns over “illegal” activity, posting opinions about the company, and even writing novels “about someone working at a tech company in Silicon Valley” without first giving their employer sign-off on the final draft.

      The lawsuit, revealed by industry news site The Information, accuses Google of breaching California labour laws through its confidentiality provisions, by preventing employees from exercising their legal rights to discuss workplace conditions, wages, and potential violations inside the company.

      It has been brought by an individual employee under a Californian act that allows employees to sue on behalf of co-workers; if the employee wins, the state gets 75% of the penalty, while the remaining payout would be split among Google’s employees. The maximum fine in Google’s case is almost $4bn.

    • Hope Not Hate reports huge response to Nigel Farage legal fund appeal

      Hope Not Hate says it has been overwhelmed by the response to an appeal to crowdfund possible legal action against Nigel Farage after he said the organisation, which combats political militancy, was itself extremist.

      Farage attracted significant criticism after saying the widower of the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox was tainted by extremism for supporting Hope Not Hate, which Farage called “violent and undemocratic”.

      Hope Not Hate, which campaigns mainly against rightwing extremism but also on areas such as militant Islamism, wrote to Farage warning him to withdraw the comments and apologise or face legal action.

    • First Amendment Defense Act Would Be ‘Devastating’ for LGBTQ Americans

      Earlier this month, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, through his spokesperson, told Buzzfeed they plan to reintroduce an embattled bill that barely gained a House hearing in 2015. But this time around, they said, the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) was likely to succeed due to a Republican-controlled House and the backing of President-elect Donald Trump.

    • Poland is in the middle of an existential struggle over the shape of its democracy

      Over the past week, the Polish parliament controlled by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party passed legislations dismantling the current primary education system, finalizing its overhaul of the country’s constitutional court, and de facto limiting the freedom of assembly. A chaotic night on Friday has both sides of the political conflict accusing each other of a coup d’etat. Since then, opposition lawmakers have been occupying the parliament’s main hall. Meanwhile, on the streets of the country’s cities, people have been protesting tirelessly nearly every day. The desperation is palpable: some protesters have been blocking politicians’ cars with their own bodies, while others are camping out in front of the parliament in the middle of Poland’s frigid December. We’re only days away from Christmas, when Poles usually turn to the hearth. This year, for many of them, far more stressful than last-minute gift-shopping and making heaps of holiday pierogi is a political crisis for the history books. What is going on in Poland, which was supposed to be the former Soviet bloc’s beacon of democracy and a poster child of European Union integration?

    • Exclusive: Pirate Party MP Meets Edward Snowden In Moscow

      Birgitta Jónsdóttir has been back on Icelandic soil for less than twelve hours when we meet. During the previous three days, the Pirate Party MP, privacy activist and former Wikileaks volunteer quietly travelled to Moscow, where she took part in a documentary with Dr. Lawrence Lessig, and the world’s most famous whistleblower: Edward Snowden. The three were brought together by French journalist and documentarian Flore Vasseur, who has previously interviewed Birgitta and Lessig for the French media in her ongoing coverage of the current troubled state of democracy.

    • UK Police, GCHQ May Have Arrested Innocent Refugee, Not People Smuggling Kingpin

      The UK National Crime Agency (NCA) and secret intelligence service GCHQ are facing an embarrassing failure as it appears that the Eritrean man they accused as being one of the world’s “most wanted people smugglers” may actually be a victim of mistaken identity, according to Italian prosecutors.

      The high profile investigation has taken an embarrassing turn for the worst as the NCA and GCHQ appear to have seized the wrong man and the real criminal, a man named Medhanie Yehdego Mered, remains at large.

      In June 2016, British authorities claimed they had captured a human trafficking kingpin, nicknamed ‘The General.’ Mered was arrested and extradited to Italy on suspected charges of running a trafficking network, where he sent thousands of migrants to Europe, with many of them perishing at sea.

  • DRM

    • The kickstarted Pebble smartwatch is now a division of Fitbit, so they may “reduce functionality” on all the watches they ever sold

      If you’re one of the 60% of Pebble employees who didn’t get a job offer from Fitbit, the company’s new owner, you’re probably not having a great Christmas season — but that trepedation is shared by 100% of Pebble customers, who’ve just learned (via the fine print on an update on the Pebble Kickstarter page) that the company may soon “reduce functionality” on their watches.

      The watches are among the many cloud-based Internet-of-Things products that are reliant on the ongoing maintenance of server infrastructure for normal functionality. This problem is exacerbated by the widespread IoT deployment of DRM to lock devices into manufacturer-controlled infrastructure — thanks to laws like section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, developers who create software to replace cloud functions with alternative/self-hosted servers, or with local computing, face potential jail sentences and millions in fines. Add to that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which has been used to threaten and even jail researchers who improved services but violated their terms of service to do so, and the IoT space is the land of the contingent, soon-to-be-bricked devices: memory cards, cars, car batteries, phones, and home automation systems — not to mention printers.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

No Justice at the EPO, Whose Underlying Purpose Was (Originally) to Do Patents Justice

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Those who will suffer the most are investors in EPs that no longer have a high perceived (or even practical) value

Sign

Summary: People correctly point out that the institutional crisis at the EPO extends to aspects other than fake trials against staff and affects actual stakeholders, who have pumped billions of Euros into the EPO only to see EPs turn to dust (or their value diminish considerably)

THE EPO has been rather quiet after the latest meeting of the Administrative Council, but union-busting attempts are still being made, even a week or so before Christmas.

At IP Kat, writers are still publishing friends’ and colleagues’ pieces. First it was Bristows that 'hijacked' IP Kat for UPC propaganda (to reach a broader audience and promote an agenda); now it’s EIP that sort of does the same with Darren Smyth having a colleague over, at least with disclosure (“This Kat is grateful to his colleague Andrew Sharples”). As a reminder, Smyth too is part of the UPC echo chamber and this article about the EPO was mentioned here briefly earlier this week. We will cover this today because the comments are noteworthy, more so than the article itself. As nearly everyone points out, the EPO behaves irresponsibly, as usual, probably in preparation for spin about patent quality at the EPO.

“One could argue that there is no provision in the EPC to deny applicants the patent they are entitled to by staying the proceedings and that the EPO is therefore acting “contra legem”,” one person wrote. Here is another take on it:

It is outrageous that the EPO is staying proceedings, whilst presumably still collecting renewal fees. I would love to know the legal basis for doing this.

The staying of opposition proceedings is perhaps even more absurd. This will simply mean that opposed patents will remain valid and enforceable unless and until a national court decides on their validity. If the EPO thinks the patents aren’t valid the indefinitely staying opposition proceedings is achieving the exact opposite as it has completely removed an Opponent’s opportunity to invalidate a granted European Patent.

“I can understand the EPO carrying on with searches for first applications and PCT filings but for other EP application,” another person insisted, “it does not make sense. If the EU guidance finds its way into the EPC, applicants might wish to withdraw their application and the search fee will only be refunded if the search has not yet started. Further, with publication of the search report, the applicant would be required to respond to the objections raised, for which they would not have the benefit of knowing how the rules were to be changed.”

“Jurisprudence is not highly esteemed in the EPO These days,” noted another person. “The EU-Commission, responsible for the BioT Directive, the model for Rule 26 EPC, can dictate how Article 53b and Rule 26 EPC are to be applied. Separation of Powers?”

Well, that is long gone! Look at the EPO itself. It’s a clusterfunk [sic]. Another person wrote that “the evidence, moral argument or even legal basis for “Patent protection is not appropriate for such procedures and their products” appears nowhere. Wish I could say that this surprised me.”

Lack of respect for actual laws is now a hallmark of everything that happens at the EPO, including so-called ‘disciplinary procedures’. A comment from another thread claimed that the attack on actual “independent” judges (collective punishment) whom Battistelli does not like “is mere retaliation, not only from the president but also from the AC.” Here is the full comment:

By no means I approve the transfer to Haar. But one thing has to be clear: it is mere retaliation, not only from the president but also from the AC.

Both have never accepted that the EBA has not acted in the way they wanted in the case of the suspended member.

It therefore remains a disgrace if the legislative and the executive try to interfere with the judicial. Separation of powers is a fundamental guarantee which should not be tampered with.

One of the members of the EBA who participated in the decision Art 23 has retired. Normally when a chairman of a BA retires, there is an article in the internal journal of the EPO (the Gazette). For this chairman, there is nothing. Is this a mere coincidence? I doubt it.

And going back to the other thread, another comment along the same lines:

It would be very interesting to read or watch an interview with the Administrative Council members presenting their vision(s) on the implementation of rule of law at the European Patent Office.

In particular, how the cornerstones of rule of law are seen by the Administrative Council:

Legality, i.e. legislative powers belonging to a representative body;

Balance/separation of powers, i.e. balance of legislative, executive, and judicial powers;

Independent judiciary, i.e. review of decisions and interpretation of law by an independent body.

The European Patent Office is in charge of taking generally binding decisions for the territory of 38 European countries, which implies adherence to rule of law as a fundamental principle of governance.

“The European Patent Office is in charge of taking generally binding decisions for the territory of 38 European countries,” says the key part, yet not many people — certainly not the German media — ever bother reporting about the many scandals. A comment posted in The Register offered the following advice to EPO staff (similar to advice from Florian Müller):

Find alternative work?

Those who really matter, those who scrutinize patents, are highly skilled. Surely they would be warmly welcomed in almost any tech company. When the EPO just grinds to a halt that should concentrate a few of those flabby minds.

Leaving the EPO can actually make things worse in the sense that it lets Team Battistelli replace veteran staff with temporary, clueless, inexperienced “rubber-stampers”, fulfilling what seems to be his awful vision for the EPO (replace the “P” with an “R” for Registration). █

“China” is to Watchtroll (and the Bucket of Patent Maximalists) What “Russia” is to Clinton and DNC

Posted in America, Asia, Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 8:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Scare tactics and vengefulness from the Patent Maximalists’ Lobby

Watchtroll

Summary: The growing embrace of “China” as the convenient bogeyman for those who oppose patent reform and wish to see a resurgence of patent chaos, from which they personally profit at victims’ expense

THE USPTO may be in self-perpetuating denial about it, but software patents are a dying breed in the US as courts don’t tolerate them. The EPO, in the mean time, moves in the opposite direction, but we’ll leave the EPO out of this post’s scope.

Unhappy With Insufficient Number of Lawsuits and Collateral Damage

Paul Morinville, a prominent opposer of patent reform in the US (and part of Watchtroll’s ilk), whines that “PTAB procedures are now invalidating nearly 90% of all patents they evaluate.” Yes, so what? Alice and other cases are pretty clear about it and PTAB, unlike patent examiners, is not being pressured to just bless every patent in the name of “production” or “success” (again, a growing problem at today’s EPO).

Morinville picks on Google (large company as his latest scapegoat) and some of his online friends already heckle me for pointing that out. To quote his article: “Over the next decade, the Supreme Court would eliminate injunctive relief and then for all intents and purposes, invalidate their patents first under Bilski and then under Alice. The courts also changed the way claims were written, thus invalidating thousands of patents retroactively. The America Invents Act’s PTAB procedures are now invalidating nearly 90% of all patents they evaluate. The courts also radically reduced damages for patent infringement.”

That’s good. But wait until Morinville brings up the bogeyman again — the same bogeyman that David Kappos has been summoning recently.

Let’s Envy China

“With China strengthening its patent system,” Morinville says, in probably the most ludicrous part of the whole article. China is actually weakening patents by granting almost everything that comes through SIPO’s doors, causing a patent hyper-inflation and an epidemic of trolling. How is that desirable to anyone but the patent microcosm? These anti-AIA think tanks and lobbyists (like Morinville), who want more lawsuits and more litigation, continue to infest the Web and a lot of them congregate around Watchtroll these days. This pattern of China-blaming or China-shaming mirrors what the Democratic Party in the US has been doing with Russia as of late.

Watchtroll wants the USPTO and the courts to start another race to the bottom and give/approve patents on everything, just like SIPO in China. One might call it “the litigation lobby” — for all it want is more and more lawsuits (which the lobby profits from). Watch another new Watchtroll article, this time by Steve Brachmann, the henchman of Quinn. So people who don’t even develop anything insist that “China” is the threat and that “Chinese patent guidelines” are a threat to the US rather than to China itself.

What kind of post-truth nonsense have we sunk to here?

Watchtroll, in another new article, says “Keep it Cordial” while Quinn attacks everyone who does not agree with him, even judges (see the image at the top).

What a nasty Web site this is. For IBM’s patent chief to occasionally link to it probably takes some guts because it says a lot about IBM, which has gone rogue (even IBM employees now protest/object to the management over that infamous Trump fawning).

China’s Growing Trolls Epidemic

China’s situation with regards to patents is not good. As we have been pointing out since the summer, SIPO grants far too many patents, including software patents. “This is especially true for software patents where the scope of patent protection is rather vague,” says this new article from China, which also mentions Xiaomi, a company that got trolled through India, as we noted before. To quote the relevant part:

As Chinese smartphone brands work to carve out a spot in the major-league global smartphone industry, they are increasingly being dragged into an international patent war with foreign tech firms.

The latest case saw San Francisco-based audio tech firm Dolby Laboratories lodge a lawsuit against Chinese smartphone companies Oppo and Vivo in India, accusing them of infringing on its patented technology. Back in 2014, Chinese tech firm Xiaomi was barred from selling phones in India after Sweden-based Ericsson filed a complaint with an India court alleging patent infringement.

The Ericsson-Microsoft patent trolls strategy (using trolls as proxies) was mentioned here twice this month [1, 2] and Xiaomi is again being mentioned by the Microsoft Windows-powered IAM (with other Microsoft connections). It is again embellishing Microsoft's patent extortion against Linux as follows:

The May agreement between Microsoft and Xiaomi was undoubtedly the IP deal of the year and it was also an excellent example of how patents can play a role in broader commercial agreements. Under the terms of the deal, Xiaomi undertook to pre-load Microsoft products on to more of its mobile devices, the two sides agreed to a cross-licence and the US software giant transferred 1,500 patent assets to the Chinese company. The transaction provides an excellent foundation for Xiaomi as it looks to grow its business in the US and for Microsoft as it continues its penetration of the Chinese market.

This is misleading. All we have here is patent extortion by Microsoft against Linux, even in China where the government of China took a strong stance against it (even leaking a list of Microsoft patents that are secretly being sued to blackmail Chinese companies like ZTE). We believe that Huawei, the world’s leading Android OEM these days, is still able to resist Microsoft’s Mafia-like tactics. Microsoft repeatedly failed to sign a patent deal.

The bottom line is, China has become a dangerous place patents-wise. Is that desirable to anyone but the patent microcosm? Of course not. █

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