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05.17.15

Links 17/5/2015: NuTyX Saravane 15.05, Panasonic and Firefox OS

Posted in News Roundup at 11:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Because Personal Drones Aren’t Subject To Enough Ridiculous Rules, A Graffiti Artist Uses His To Tag A Six-Story Billboard

    Drones are a problem. The FAA has subjected private drone use to all sorts of ridiculous stipulations. Law enforcement agencies seem to feel drone operation should be left to the pros, and are suddenly sprouting privacy concerns whenever a citizen flies one over something of theirs. Our nation’s three-letter agencies want to be able to deploy drones almost anywhere without oversight, even though they’ve proven to be much less efficient than boots on the ground. Then, of course, there are those piloted by the CIA — the kind that kill foreigners (and the occasional American) with almost no oversight, and what oversight there is has “bought in.”

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Pentagon Takes Charge
    • Interactive graphic: Drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan over time
    • Is US Drone Warfare Here to Stay?

      In the mean time, strikes are expanding in other regions of the world: they fly from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, just north of the Horn of Africa, to strike Yemen and Somalia.

    • Former CIA official claims agency botched call on Arab Spring – new book

      The Central Intelligence Agency failed to anticipate the Arab Spring uprisings and then erroneously believed those revolts would hamper Al-Qaeda’s strength in the region, according to a new book by a former deputy director of the CIA.

    • New push to give Pentagon the lead on drone strikes
    • Family of man killed by U.S. drone strike backs ‘hostage czar’

      The family of an American captive killed in a drone strike said Wednesday it would welcome the creation of a hostage czar to coordinate government efforts to free those held.

    • US to transition control of ‘secret’ drone strikes from CIA to Pentagon after hostage mishap

      The deaths of an Italian and an American in a covert CIA drone strike in Pakistan — and the rhetorical contortions required of the president when he informed the world — have breathed new urgency into a long-stalled plan to give the Pentagon primacy over targeted killing of terrorists overseas.

    • Moving the Drone Program from the CIA to the Pentagon Won’t Improve Transparency

      Generals aren’t better than spooks when it comes to reporting civilian casualties.

    • ANALYSIS Counting the cost of US drones: Local wars killing local people

      As the Bureau revealed recently, the accidental killing of American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giorgio Lo Porto by the CIA in January now means at least 38 Westerners have been killed by covert US drones in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

    • Searching for Hostages Isn’t CIA’s Top Priority, Insiders Say
    • Who’s in charge? Nobody

      Today, as a 38-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, I can’t tell who is running our wars.

    • The Mass Torture of Obama’s Drone Strikes

      In Pakistan alone, drone attacks have killed between 400 and 1,000 civilians and over 100 children.

    • We Need a Full, Transparent Review of the US Targeted Killing Program

      But to the families of hundreds of Pakistani and Yemeni victims of US drone strikes, the United States has offered only silence. President Obama stated that he decided to release information about the January strike because “the Weinstein and Lo Porto families deserve to know the truth.” They certainly do. And so do Yemeni and Pakistani families who have lost their loved ones and who thus far have been denied even simple acknowledgment. The contrast is glaring, unfair, and likely to increase the already strong anti-American sentiment the lethal force program has caused abroad.

    • Did America’s drone strikes lose Yemen?

      Earlier this year, the U.S. announced a new policy for drone exports, purportedly part of a broader effort to work with other countries to “shape international standards” on the use of drones and compel recipient states “to use these systems in accordance with international law.” But, as “Death by Drone” shows, the U.S. drone program is fundamentally flawed and should not be perpetuated. The Obama administration’s recent admissions that its drone strikes killed its own citizens only underscore this fact.

    • Quick Takes: Drone Strikes

      Without transparency, there is no accountability. The facts validate this. According to CNN, the Obama administration has become famous for launching “signature strikes.” These drone attacks choose targets merely based on patterns of suspicious behavior by a group of men, rather than identification of a particular militant. That is our government’s current criteria for sending a drone strike, and it is alarmingly flexible.

    • Obama’s Drone War: Indiscriminate Killing and Selective Apology

      I wish Obama regretted,apologised, and mourned the deaths of thousands of non-Western victims of U.S. drone attacks, duly compensated the family members of the dead, and the severely maimed victims in Pakistan and elsewhere. Distressingly, Obama’s only regret was U.S. drone attackers didn’t know the presence of Weinstein and Le Porto at the al Qaeda camp in the first place. His regret implies, had the attackers been aware of Weinstein’s and Le Porto’s presence at the camp, they would have definitely called a halt to the attack. Conversely, there’s altogether a different strategy for U.S. drone attacks. The attackers don’t bother to know if there are innocent Pakistani, Afghan or Yemeni women, children and elderly in and around their targets.

    • Two US Citizens Released by E Ukraine Militia Have Links to CIA – DPR Head

      Two US citizens released by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) forces in eastern Ukraine are linked to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), DPR head Alexander Zakharchenko said Saturday.

    • Shared battlefield goals trump ideology among Syria rebels – for now

      Hardline Islamists fighting side-by-side with groups backed by the United States have made gains in northern Syria in recent weeks while showing rare unity, which some fear may be short-lived.

      An Islamist alliance calling itself Army of Fatah, a reference to the conquests that spread Islam across the Middle East from the seventh century, has seized northwestern towns including the provincial capital Idlib from government forces.

      The alliance, which includes al-Qaeda’s wing in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, and another hardline militant group, the Ahrar al-Sham movement, is edging closer to the coastal province of Latakia, President Bashar al-Assad’s stronghold.

    • CIA-Backed, ‘Vetted Moderate’ Syrians … Now Openly Working with Al-Qaeda

      As if “coordinating” with al-Qaeda is functionally different from “aligning” with al-Qaeda.

    • His Brother’s Keeper

      The Dalai Lama’s older brother deeply regrets accepting CIA aid. It ‘contributed to the complete destruction of Tibetan culture.’

    • Macedonian Opposition Uses CIA and Soros Funds to Hire 2,000 Violent Thugs for Sunday Protest
    • SCF: CIA and Soros NGO Finance SDSM and Destabilization of Macedonia

      What occurred in Macedonia was a classic disinformation ploy to mire the democratically-elected government in a bogus political scandal. The ploy is directly from the CIA playbook and it is now being carried out against Presidents Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, and Michelle Bachelet of Chile. All face financial scandals cooked up by the CIA and its owned and operated media in the three nations.

    • CIA warns Washington about possible new Balkan Wars – report

      If the United States, after the terrorist attacks in Kumanovo, continue with the policy of unconditional support for the Albanians and if the EU continues to tacitly pass over the revival of the “Greater Albania” project, it could lead to the formation of the Orthodox Alliance of Serbia, Greece, Macedonia and Bulgaria, perhaps even the third Balkan War, writes Serbian daily “Kurir”, quoting “Informer”.

    • Documents: Green Beret Who Sought Job At CIA Confessed To Murder

      On September 14, 2011, the CIA sent an alarming message to the Pentagon: a decorated U.S. special operations commando admitted during a job interview with the agency to hunting down and killing “an unknown, unarmed” Afghan man.

    • Report: Green Beret confessed to killing Afghan during CIA interview

      Special Forces Maj. Mathew Golsteyn was stripped of a Silver Star for valor after the Army investigated the alleged 2011 confession.

    • Army weighs if ex-Green Beret hero should be dismissed
    • Case against former Green Beret accused of murder is delayed because of CIA ties

      The hearing for a former Green Beret soldier accused of murder by the Army has been delayed in part because of the same organization that brought him scrutiny in the first place: the CIA.

    • Pope Francis Explains To Children How War Profiteers Never Want Peace

      Pope Francis did not mince words when he told a group of children gathered at the Vatican that some people will never want peace because they profit off of war.

      “Some powerful people earn their living off making weapons,” the pope said, in a translation provided by Rome Reports. “For this reason, many people do not want peace.”

      He also called the weapons business an “industry of death,” according to Catholic Herald.

      The pontiff spoke in front of roughly 7,000 children at the Vatican on Monday, in a visit sponsored by the Fabbrica della pace (“Peace Factory”), a non-governmental organization that operates educational programming in primary schools with the purpose of promoting cross-cultural understanding.

    • Jeb Bush’s “gaffe”: A revealing comment on the Iraq war

      On Tuesday, Bush phoned into the Sean Hannity program on Fox to begin the process of retraction and correction, claiming that he had “interpreted the question wrong, I guess.” He added, “I was talking about, given what people knew then.” When Hannity repeated Kelly’s question about the 2003 invasion, Bush stalled, saying, “That’s a hypothetical.”

    • The Phony ‘Bad Intel’ Defense on Iraq

      Jeb Bush’s stumbling start to his presidential bid has refocused attention on Official Washington’s favorite excuse for the illegal, aggressive and disastrous war in Iraq – that it was just a case of “bad intelligence.” But that isn’t what the real history shows, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern recalls.

    • Robert Gates: Jeb Bush should have been prepared for Iraq question
    • Jeb Bush: How serious is his Iraq War flub?

      It took Jeb Bush nearly a week to settle on an answer about the Iraq War. Many Republicans worry about what this says regarding his presidential campaign skills.

    • Things In Politico That Make Me Want To Guzzle Chateau Petrus

      In which we learn that the CIA would have preferred to have tortured one guy to death.

    • Operation Gladio: The Untold Story of the Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia

      Williams quotes FBI whistle blower Sibel Edmonds who said, “Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every major terrorist incident by Chechen rebels (and the Mujahideen) against Russia. Between 1996 and 20002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every single uprising and terror related scheme in Xinjiang (aka East Turkistan and Uyhurstan). Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned and carried out at least two assassination schemes against pro-Russian officials in Azerbaijan.”

    • Documentary is a searing indictment of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan

      Drone is a searing indictment of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, which between 2004 and 2013 killed as many as 200 children, compared with 49 high-profile militants – and as many as 3,646 people in total, according to the film. One horrifying tactic described in the documentary is a double wave of bombing: After the first strike kills and injures people on the ground, rescuers who flock to the scene to help are bombed by a second attack. This has resulted in a reluctance to help the injured, who cry out for help for hours because nobody goes to help them, the film explains.

    • Papering Over Extra-Judicial Killings

      The Obama administration, like its predecessor, holds that the “exceptional” U.S. has the right to enter other countries to kill “terrorists,” but it would never tolerate, say, Cuba targeting CIA-trained terrorists harbored in Miami, one of many double standards posing as international law, as Coleen Rowley notes.

    • After betrayal comes hope for a better future

      On Oct. 22, 1963, the Supreme Court upheld a death penalty ruling for Hwang on charges of spying for the North. On Dec.14, Hwang was executed by a firing squad. A reporter who covered the Ministry of Defense watched the execution in order to quell suspicions that Park had sneaked Hwang out of the country.

    • Debate targets Ukraine: who’s to blame for this tragedy?
    • Deadly discrimination

      FATA is an area where the media cannot go and research …

    • Zoe Kravitz talks drones and Hollywood’s racism

      There’s something to be said about choosing to go to war for your country and having to leave your family. You go and you get dirty and you get bloody and you sacrifice yourself. People really think about what they’re doing in those situations. There’s a human contact. You have to look into the person’s eyes you’ve just killed and understand what it means. And when that’s taken away, it’s scary, because the human aspect of war — and war is human instinct, I believe — is gone.

    • The drone war is supposed to kill al-Qaeda leaders. It’s killing way more than just them.

      Council on Foreign Relations fellow Micah Zenko dug up a 2011 assessment, from Pentagon official Michael Vickers, that there were “perhaps four important Qaeda leaders left in Pakistan, and 10 to 20 leaders over all in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.”

    • Inside Muse’s ‘Drones’ Strike: Matt Bellamy on High-Concept LP
    • Muse’s Matt Bellamy: ‘I always perceived Obama as a likeable guy, but he makes kill decisions’
    • U.S. domestic drone debate: Supported abroad, suppressed at home

      The problem with Obama’s overemphasis on the use of drones for counterterrorism is that it does nothing to address the underlying political problems that allow terrorist organizations to flourish. Because the United States is forced to partner with local governments – many of them authoritarian or military-led regimes – to gain access to sovereign airspace in order to carry out drone strikes, its ability to then pressure its allies to make necessary political reforms is seriously limited.

    • To count or not to count
    • When It Comes to Drone Body Counts, Whose Body Counts?

      From Vietnam to Pakistan, the business of counting deaths by American hands has never been simple math.

    • Counting the Dead in the Age of Drone Terrorism
    • Legality of Drone Warfare or Illegality of Drone Assassination? Let a Real Debate Begin!

      The bottom line is that all law, but most importantly international law, which is sometimes called “soft law” due to its lack of formalized international police enforcement, derives its legitimacy and power from principles of reciprocity and equality, not from the double standards that Harold Koh, John Yoo and other war enablers have worked at legalizing inside and outside our government. International legal principles must therefore not only be rooted in universal Kantian ethics but must also be efficacious and pragmatic, not counterproductive as more and more research is showing is the case with US drone assassination policy that serves to promote and increase terrorism worldwide. To stand the test of time regardless of evolving technology, international law must “work” from all participants’ standpoints, not just those nations which view themselves as most militarily powerful at the moment. Unfortunately the Nuremberg Principle has largely been forgotten that wars of aggression, aka wars of choice, are the supreme crime because they encompass and lead to all other war crimes, regardless of whether utilizing low end box cutters or high end drone and satellite technology.

    • Protecting American Citizens From Drones

      No doubt the military will claim that dropping ordnance from drones is more accurate than bombing from bombers, bombers that the military claimed during World War Two were accurate enough to drop a bomb into a pickle barrel. While it is true that drones are often more accurate than bombers, the drone program has been sold on it ability to minimize “collateral damage,” a euphemism for unintended deaths near the target that would be called manslaughter if a citizen did it.

    • The Military Industrial Complex behind the never-Ending War on Terror (4-4)

      In other words, when it came to counting, civil society rode to the rescue, though the impact of the figures produced has remained limited indeed in this country. In some ways, the only body count of any sort that has made an impression here in recent years has been sniper Chris Kyle’s 160 confirmed Iraqi “kills” that played such a part in the publicity for the blockbuster movie American Sniper.

    • Drone Deaths v. Broken Windows

      The outrage of Baltimore residents after the fatal police abuse of Freddie Gray spilled over into ugly rioting, drawing media condemnation and public disapproval. But a different attitude prevails toward U.S. drone assassinations around the world despite many civilian deaths, a contradiction addressed by Nat Parry.

    • American Support for Drone Strikes Plummets When Innocent US Civilians Killed

      US policymakers need to know the answer to a simple question about American attitudes toward drones. Does the widely-reported strong public support for drone strikes drop off when confronted with the reality of civilian casualties? Of course those policymakers are not alone in their need for such information. Advocacy groups and others would also benefit from knowing whether—and to what degree—American attitudes are contingent on such aspects of drone warfare. Disappointingly, most of the time and money spent on opinion polls asks only generic questions about Americans’ attitudes toward drone strikes against terrorists. These surveys fail to seek information about public attitudes in the face of drone operations that, in reality, often cause civilian deaths.

    • Civilian Casualties, Drones, Airstrikes and the Perils of Policy

      Last week, the Daily Beast breathlessly reported an “exclusive” story, alleging that Department of Defense officials admitted that anti-ISIS airstrikes had killed what the Beast characterized as “innocents.”

    • Exclusive: Pentagon Admits Anti-ISIS Strikes Killed Civilians
    • Pentagon Admits that Airstrikes against ISIS Led to Civilian Deaths; Group Claims Victims Include 31 Children, 19 Women

      Officials at the Pentagon have claimed that the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria against ISIS has been precise and accurate. However, an internal military investigation claimed civilians were caught in the crossfire.

    • Mr. Obama: Who Apologizes For the Other Drone Victims?

      A little over a week ago, a somber President Obama delivered early morning remarks on the tragic deaths of Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, two hostages who were accidentally killed by U.S. drone strikes in the tribal regions of Pakistan. It was a rare moment for several reasons: the President openly acknowledged the loss of these men through a covert program, and he took personal responsibility for all of our counter terrorism operations, including these recent ones. But as he offered condolences to the families of Weinstein and Lo Porto, and promised a thorough review of intelligence failures, the President opened himself up to criticism of an unmanned aerial program that has killed thousands – including thousands of civilians according to some reports – in a host of countries.

    • The Tyranny of One Man’s Opinion

      President Barack Obama has rejected not only the theory but also the practice of due process by his use of drones launched by the CIA to kill Americans and others overseas. The use of the CIA to do the killing is particularly troubling and has aroused the criticism of senators as disparate in their views as Rand Paul and John McCain, both of whom have argued that the CIA’s job is to steal and keep secrets and the military’s job is to further national security by using force; and their roles should not be confused or conflated, because the laws governing each are different.

    • When states kill: individuals pay ultimate price of geopolitical strife

      We are also living in an era when technology allows states to use unmanned drones to kill alleged terrorists and, in the process, maims or kills civilians. According to data from human rights group Reprieve, analysed by the Guardian in 2014, US drone strikes that attempted to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1147 people, including children, mainly in Pakistan but also in Yemen.

    • Defense of drones reads like Pentagon press conference

      Robby Rothfeld’s April 30 defense of drone bombings was surprising and alarming. He starts by assuring us that he has devoted his lifetime to nonviolence, so we can feel OK about what’s coming. We should stay on guard, however. His rationalizations are thoroughly unoriginal: a) we are at war, b) this is the best way to prosecute the war because b1) drones are accurate and kill only bad guys, and b2) fewer of our people will be endangered. And by the way, if you only knew all the secret stuff, you’d be on board.

    • U.S. excuses its civilian casualties, but not Israel’s

      This is not a “gotcha” column. But before reviewing American drone and airstrike policy, it is not inappropriate to remind the president and company that hubris is an unattractive trait.

      Last summer, as Israel was defending itself from Hamas rockets fired at its civilian population often from within the civilian population of Gaza, the White House was vehement in its criticism of Israel. A White House spokesman called Palestinian casualties, “totally unacceptable and totally indefensible.”

    • When the Government Kills

      If the U.S. was wrong about what Israel was doing, what about what the U.S. was doing? And specifically, what it was doing to American citizens?

    • A Debate Over How Long Democracy Can Wage Battles in Shadows
    • Israeli veterans say permissive rules of engagement fueled Gaza carnage

      The war last summer between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead and reduced vast areas to rubble. On Monday, a group of Israeli veterans released sobering testimony from fellow soldiers that suggests permissive rules of engagement coupled with indiscriminate artillery fire contributed to the mass destruction and high numbers of civilian casualties in the coastal enclave.

    • The IDF’s New Tactics

      Several months ago, a young woman working in Kibbutz Dorot’s carrot fields noticed a piece of paper lying on the ground with a short inscription in Arabic. It looked like a treasure map. She put it in her pocket. Some time later, she gave it to her friend Avihai, who works for Breaking the Silence, an organisation of military veterans who collect testimony from Israeli soldiers to provide a record of everyday life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Avihai was in the middle of interviewing soldiers about their experiences during Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip last summer. He recognised the piece of paper as a leaflet that had been dropped by an Israeli plane above Palestinian neighbourhoods in the northern part of the Strip; the wind had blown it six miles from its intended landing point.

      The leaflet helps explain why 70 per cent of the 2220 Palestinians killed during the war were civilians. The red line on the map traces a route from a bright blue area labelled Beit Lahia, a Palestinian town of 60,000 inhabitants at the north edge of the Strip, and moves south through Muaskar Jabalia to Jabalia city.

    • The Day After
    • Israeli veterans allege gross misconduct during Gaza war
    • Michael Jansen: The waning Intifada
    • EU is keeping Tripoli in the dark about military action, says Libya’s UN ambassador

      Libya has said it is deeply alarmed over EU proposals to take military action against the smugglers responsible for despatching tens of thousands of desperate migrants across the Mediterranean.

    • ‘NYT’ plays shameless propagandist for Israel’s threats to kill Lebanese civilians

      Israel is preparing for another war that kills masses of civilians– and it’s preparing its propaganda campaign early with the New York Times happy to help.

    • Should we use our special operations troops as assassins? Is it right, or even smart?

      I believe if we continue on this path our special operations forces will be seen as villains, as is the CIA today. Ultimately the US too will be judged by the means used to enforce our policies, not just as the policies themselves. We pride ourselves on being the exceptional nation, the exceptional City on a Hill of Matthew 5:14), the one those on the Mayflower hoped to build. The world might hold us to the standard we set for ourselves, and which we have for long boasted about — and see us as just more global gangsters.

    • State-sanctioned killing

      Two issues have dominated the national public discourse in Australia over recent weeks, both of which relate to different manifestations of state-sanctioned killing. The first involved a sometimes highly charged discussion of the impending execution of two Australian citizens in Indonesia for their roles in a drug importation syndicate called the Bali 9, and the legal and moral foundations for capital punishment. In pleading for the commutation of the death penalty in the Bali 9 case the Australian Government enunciated its implacable opposition to capital punishment.

    • Saudis Drop US-Made Cluster Bombs in Criminal War on Yemen

      Costa Rica condemns Saudi Arabia’s dropping US-made cluster bombs on Yemen, in defiance of international law, including the Convention on Cluster Munitions that specifically outlaws the development, production, distribution, stockpiling, and use of cluster munitions, including the cluster bombs the Saudis have used since March 26 in their uncontested air attack on Yemen with an estimated 215 jet fighters from nine countries. (The Saudis are also bombing people in Syria and Iraq.)

    • Techno-Financial Capital and Genocide of the Poorest of the Poor

      Today, the Euro-American powers actively support the absolutist regime of Saudi Arabia as it bombs and slaughters thousands of Yemeni civilians and resistance fighters. Yemen is the poorest country in the Gulf region.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Ex-CIA chiefs scold New York Times for outing secret officers

      A group of 20 former leaders of the CIA issued a scathing criticism of The New York Times on Monday for “outing” the identities of three top officials whose names had largely been a secret.

    • 20 Ex-C.I.A. Officials Fault The Times

      In a recent interview in the Lawfare blog discussing his decision to publish the names of three undercover Central Intelligence Agency officers, Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, defended the decision on the grounds that the benefits of public accountability outweigh the risk to these officers.

    • 20 Senior Former CIA Officials Criticize NYT For Publishing Names of Covert Operatives

      Twenty senior former CIA officials—including every CIA Director (including DCIs) dating back to William Webster (1987-91)—wrote a letter to the NYT to take issue with NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet’s defense (in this interview on Lawfare) of his decision to publish the names of the three covert CIA operatives in a story a few weeks ago.

    • Court won’t reveal money details of CIA ‘torture’ program

      A federal judge has rejected a journalist’s lawsuit seeking to reveal more financial details about the CIA’s detention and interrogation program for terror suspects.

    • CIA didn’t forcibly drug war-on-terror detainees before interrogations, says CIA

      VICE News has obtained and published 39 pages of redacted documents from the CIA that shed new light on the treatment of CIA detainees after 9/11.

    • CIA Investigation Minimizes Use of Drugs on Rendition & Black Site Detainees

      The documents were released to Jason Leopold at VICE News, who posted a comprehensive article examining them earlier today. Leopold and I have previously written on the subject of drugging prisoners, and examined an earlier Department of Defense IG report on the subject a few years ago, as well as the use of mefloquine at Guantanamo, about which more below.

    • CIA Drugging of 9/11 Detainees and Jeb Too Dumb to Run
    • Did the CIA Drug Detainees for Information in the War on Terror?

      But newly declassified documents obtained by VICE show that the CIA conducted its own investigation prior to the Senate’s. Despite claims of those held in black site prisons who reported being forced to take “mind-altering” substances, the CIA would not confirm these claims.

    • CIA reorganizes — again. What could go wrong?

      But mixing and mingling analysts and operations officers as a general proposition is a terrible idea. Operations officers are charged with carrying out government policy on the ground; analysts are supposed to be sifting through intelligence to figure out if policy is working. When the analysts get too close to policy, they’re likely to be seduced by it, to ignore signs that it’s gone off the tracks.

      That possibility is more dangerous than ever because the CIA is more involved in carrying out policy than ever. When the agency’s 2013 budget leaked, it showed the CIA is now spending more money on covert action programs than on collecting human intelligence. Another sign of the times: Earlier this year, the CIA’s top paramilitary officer was named chief of its spying branch.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Creepy Ads Use Litterbugs’ DNA to Shame Them Publicly

      In the case of Hong Kong’s Face Of Litter campaign, the creative team teamed up with Parabon Nanolabs, a company out of Virginia that has developed a method to construct digital portraits from small traces of DNA. Parabon began developing this technology more than five years ago in tandem with the Department of Defense, mostly to use as a tool in criminal investigations.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Former CIA Director Porter Goss Registers to Lobby for Turkey
    • Former CIA Boss Goss Hired to Lobby for the Turkish Government
    • Turkey hires ex-CIA director to lobby US Congress
    • Charter School “Flexibility” Linked to Major Failures; $3.3+ Billion in Taxes Spent (Part 3)

      The “accountability” criterion was added in 2010 following Obama’s reauthorization of ESEA. after which Secretary Arne Duncan pledged in a blueprint on school choice that charter schools receiving funding under the program would now be held to even higher standards of accountability than traditional public schools.

      [...]

      For decades, a small group of millionaires and billionaires, like the Koch Brothers, have backed a legislative agenda to privatize public education in America. Lobbying groups funded by them, like the corporate bill mill ALEC (the “American Legislative Exchange Council”), have been pushing states to create and expand charter schools outside of the authority of the state public school agencies and local school boards, confining the state to limited oversight of whether authorizers have adequate policies, not over how charters spend tax dollars.

    • WATCH: How the CIA Helped Make “Zero Dark Thirty”

      Behind the scenes, the CIA secretly worked with the filmmakers, and the movie portrayed the agency’s controversial “enhanced interrogation techniques” — widely described as torture — as a key to uncovering information that led to the finding and killing of bin Laden.

    • CIA-embedded Hollywood liars and their lies

      Zero Dark Thirty, written by Mark Boal and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was a detestable work for many reasons. The film, released in December 2012 to much critical acclaim, was promoted as the true story of the decade-long hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, assassinated by the US military in Pakistan in May 2011.

      [...]

      Hersh points out in his lengthy piece that bin Laden was not living secretly at the time of his killing in a well-guarded hideout, as depicted in the film, but “had been a prisoner of the ISI [Pakistani intelligence service] at the Abbottabad compound since 2006.” He further explains “that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011 [seconded by Zero Dark Thirty], but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer [a “walk-in”!] who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US.”

      So there was no intense debate at CIA headquarters as to whether bin Laden was actually living at the location in question, an important sequence in Bigelow’s film. In the face of rather wishy-washy superiors, Maya boldly insists it is a “100 percent” certainty that the house’s mysterious resident is indeed the al Qaeda leader. In actual fact, Pakistani officials had acknowledged to their American counterparts he was there in Abbottabad (“less than two miles from the Pakistan Military Academy,” and “another mile or so away” from “a Pakistani army combat battalion headquarters,” observes Hersh) and even handed over a DNA sample to prove the point.

      Nor was there a deadly shoot-out at the compound. The Pakistani military and intelligence deliberately stood down and let the US Navy Seal team do its dirty work. “An ISI liaison officer flying with the Seals guided them into the darkened house and up a staircase to bin Laden’s quarters,” writes Hersh. Bin Laden was unguarded and unarmed, living on the third floor of the “shabby” house “in a cell with bars on the window and barbed wire on the roof.”

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Belgian privacy bods slam Facebook for its ‘disregard’ of EU laws

      THE SOCIAL NETWORK Facebook come under fire yet again from the Belgian Privacy Commission, which has critcised the website’s “disregard” for European law.

      Documents seen by The INQUIRER show that the Belgian Privacy Commission warned Facebook on Friday that it’s “make or break” time for the company to respect the private lives of internet users.

    • The CEO and the CIA

      Hayden called up the CEO of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina. “HP made precisely the equipment we needed, and we needed in bulk,” says Robert Deitz, who was general counsel at the NSA from 1998 to 2006. Deitz recalls that a tractor-trailer full of HP servers and other equipment was on the Washington, D.C. Beltway, en route to retailers, at the very moment Hayden called. Fiorina instructed her team to postpone the retailer delivery and have the driver stop. An NSA police car met up with the tractor-trailer and the truck proceeded, with an armed escort, to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

    • Does Carly Fiorina have foreign policy cred?

      In 2007, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden was wrestling with a pressing question, one that would rattle the secretive organization long after his tenure: How, he wondered, could the U.S. spy agency continue to fulfill its mission in a society that increasingly demanded more transparency and public accountability?

    • Judge: Arpaio’s Attorney Must Consult CIA On Paid Informant’s Data Dump

      The revelation that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio hired computer consultant Dennis Montgomery to investigate an alleged conspiracy by the Central Intelligence Agency is creating ripples in the contempt of court case against the sheriff.

      On Friday, United States District Court Judge Murray Snow instructed the sheriff’s attorney to contact the chief counsel for the CIA to apprise them the sheriff’s office could be in possession of CIA data.

      During the first round of the contempt hearing in April, Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan gave a few cryptic details about why the sheriff’s office had hired Montgomery as a paid informant.

      Sheridan said Montgomery “had information that the CIA hacked into individual bank accounts.” The chief deputy testified he believed there were 50,000 Maricopa County residents impacted.

    • NSA/CIA whistleblower Dennis Montgomery intervenes and files motion to disqualify federal judge G. Murray Snow in Arpaio contempt trial

      The pleadings explain the basis for the disqualification and are supported by the sworn declaration of renowned ethics professor and expert Ronald Rotunda. Caught in the judge’s “crossfire” of his “contempt” for Sheriff Joe Arpaio is whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, whose due process, attorney/client privileges, work product and intellectual property rights have been violated.

  • Civil Rights

05.16.15

Links 16/5/2015: MAME Free Software. Rust 1.0, New Wine

Posted in News Roundup at 11:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • MAME is going open source to be a ‘learning tool for developers’

    The folks who maintain MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) are aiming to make the project completely open source in order to expand both its pool of supporters and its utility to developers and historians.

    This is notable because MAME is seen to be the premier emulator for arcade games, and the volunteers who maintain it have done laudable work to preserve artifacts of the game industry in a playable state.

  • MAME going open-source

    Given the scale of MAME, built over nearly two decades by so many contributors, accomplishing a change in licensing is a project in itself. One contributor reports that the licensing proposed is “BSD3 for core files and BSD3,GPL2 or LGPL2 for drivers/emulators”

  • Popular arcade game emulator MAME is going open source

    Unlike most vintage console or computer games, arcade games can be both difficult to find and expensive to buy, so many arcade fans use emulators to create their own homebrewed arcade systems. The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) has become the most popular emulator for gamers who want to play classic arcade games in their home, and now the team behind MAME has decided to make the emulator completely open source.

  • CommunityCube: Open-source, Privacy First Server

    CommunityCube is a plug-and-play open source, small server designed to build a cooperative, fair internet where users’ privacy and rights are protected. It was originally conceived of in 2013, inspired by the Edward Snowden disclosures, when the founders recognized the need for a consumer-level product to protect privacy and anonymity.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Announcing Rust 1.0

        Today we are very proud to announce the 1.0 release of Rust, a new programming language aiming to make it easier to build reliable, efficient systems. Rust combines low-level control over performance with high-level convenience and safety guarantees. Better yet, it achieves these goals without requiring a garbage collector or runtime, making it possible to use Rust libraries as a “drop-in replacement” for C. If you’d like to experiment with Rust, the “Getting Started” section of the Rust book is your best bet (if you prefer to use an e-reader, Pascal Hertleif maintains unofficial e-book versions as well).

      • Mozilla-backed Rust language stabilizes at version 1.0

        New programming languages come and go. Most of them remain nothing more than academic toys or niche novelties. Rust, development of which is sponsored by Mozilla, might be one of the exceptions. The new language reached the 1.0 milestone today, marking the point at which its feature set is stabilized and developers can start to use it without having to worry too much about their code getting broken by a major change.

      • Rust 1.0 Language Officially Released
      • Firefox 38.0.5 Beta Arrives with Proprietary Pocket Integration

        Firefox 38.0.5 Beta was just released by Mozilla, and it bring a few new features that should really surprise users of this Internet browser.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Rackspace: Expect more of a leadership role in OpenStack community

      In this Q&A, Rackspace’s Private Cloud VP and GM discusses the state of the OpenStack community and the company’s plan to strengthen its role in it.

    • Your Very Own Cloud: Get There with ownCloud

      ownCloud has been getting a lot of attention for its flexibility, and because interest in private clouds is on the rise. You can move beyond what services such as Dropbox and Box offer by leveraging ownCloud, and you don’t have to have your files sitting on servers that you don’t choose, governed by people you don’t know. Here are our latest updated resources for getting going with ownCloud, literally in minutes.

  • Business

    • Zarafa in Movement: A Short Story about Communication, Sharing and No Outlook

      Earlier this year, we from Zarafa, have informed our ecosystem about the direction of Zarafa’s future product development. It was one, very long newsletter where we showed how we see the world of communication & sharing. Most people only remembered one thing, though: Zarafa stops Outlook. In some cases, people felt like the world has come to an end. Of course, we understand such emotions. But of course, such a big decision is not made overnight. I would like to take a moment to explain how our discontinuation of the Zarafa MAPI client is only one part of our mission to create an open source communication & sharing platform.

    • Openwashing

  • Project Releases

    • Wine Announcement

      The Wine development release 1.7.43 is now available.

      What’s new in this release (see below for details):
      - Improved support for Shell Browser windows.
      - Some more API Sets libraries.
      - Read/write operations support with built-in devices.
      - Major Catalan translation update.
      - Support for WoW64 mode on ARM64.
      - Various bug fixes.

    • Wine 1.7.43 Works On Desktop Shell Window Support
    • Wine 1.7.43 Improves Windows Explorer Functionality

      Wine developers have announced that a new version of the application has been made available and is now available for download. It’s full of interesting features and numerous fixes.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Autodesk’s Ember Goes Open Source

        It’s one thing to claim a commitment to an open source philosophy, and another altogether to build an open source business. MakerBot ran afoul of the maker community as they accused the company of shifting away from an open source business model. There was much gnashing of teeth directed at Bre Pettis.

  • Programming

    • LLVM’s Clang Adds Support For ARM/AArch64 v8.1a

      ARM v8.1a is a revision to ARM’s AArch64 64-bit architecture. ARMv8.1-A is a backwards-compatible revision to the ARMv8.0 architecture while native ARMv8.1-A hardware is expected by late 2015.

Leftovers

05.15.15

Links 15/5/2015: GNOME 3.16.2, GNU Guix 0.8.2

Posted in News Roundup at 11:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Top tips for finding free software

    Instead of MS Office, try LibreOffice, which contains a word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation software and much more. It borrows its design heavily from older versions of Office so it should be familiar. Even better, it can open and save Microsoft Office documents, and with each release it gets faster and more Office compatible.

  • Open-source and EMC (code)

    EMC’s commitment to open-source is changing the way the company does business — but it can be hard for such a large, established company to become accepted in that space. Brian Gracely, senior director of EMC {code}, is helping the company make that transition. While talking with theCUBE during EMC World 2015, Gracely laid out an overview of his work.

  • Handing On The Baton

    As a result, the Board unanimously elected Allison Randal as its new President yesterday. She is a fantastic choice, with long experience at the heart of the free and open source movement as well as in the business use of open source at all scales. She’s been chairing the ongoing in-person Board meeting and continuing the move towards an OSI that enables people to make things better in open source as well as stewarding licenses.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • DefCore, project management, and the future of OpenStack

      Rob Hirschfeld has been involved with OpenStack since before the project was even officially formed, and so he brings a rich perspective as to the project’s history, its organization, and where it may be headed next. Recently, he has focused primarily on the physical infrastructure automation space, working with an an enterprise version of OpenCrowbar, an “API-driven metal” project which started as an OpenStack installer and moved to a generic workload underlay.

    • Oracle Refines Big Data Focus with New Hadoop Analytics Tools

      This week researchers at Gartner threw cold water on the notion that everyone everywhere is adopting Hadoop, the open source framework for culling fresh insights from large data stores. Their latest study showed that Hadoop is presenting difficulties for some enterprise users, and found that there are not enough trained Hadoop experts.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • How to put the R programming language to work

      We tend to think of programming languages as general purpose, able to deliver any kind of application given enough time and enough code. But sometimes you want a language focused on solving one class of problem as efficiently as possible — think SQL for database programming.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Auto industry first to get wireless charging open standard

      One of the most eagerly anticipated mobile device innovations is widespread application of wire-free inductive charging. Nobody will miss lugging power bricks around, looking for outlets to plug them in, and fumbling with cable connectors with attendant potential for port damage through extended or rough use. Along with the obvious convenience and non-mechanical connectivity’s durability are the minimal likelihood of corrosion with all electronics enclosed and protected from water or oxygen in the atmosphere, enhanced safety for medical implants enabling recharging/powering through the skin rather than penetrating wires creating opportunity for infection, and non radiative energy transfer.

Leftovers

  • The Circus of UKIP – on a TV near you!

    The Circus of UKIP has parked up in town and election or not its show rumbles on.

  • Science

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • ‘Wrong as Often as Right’ Is Good Enough When Reporting on an Official Enemy

      So the sensational stuff in the article is what local South Korean journalists said they were told by South Korean intelligence about that country’s bitter rivals. But South Korean intelligence is a reliable source, right?

      Well, no—not according to the Post. In the article’s eighth paragraph, the reporters note: “The NIS report could not be independently verified. NIS’s claims turn out to be wrong as often as they are right.”

      Is it really the Washington Post‘s policy to base stories on claims that are “wrong as often as they are right”?

    • Migrant crisis: EU plan to strike Libya networks could include ground forces

      European plans for a military campaign to smash the migrant smuggling networks operating out of Libya include options for ground forces on Libyan territory.

      The 19-page strategy paper for the mission, obtained by the Guardian, focuses on an air and naval campaign in the Mediterranean and in Libyan territorial waters, subject to United Nations blessing. But it adds that ground operations in Libya may also be needed to destroy the smugglers’ vessels and assets, such as fuel dumps.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Bee Survey: Lower Winter Losses, Higher Summer Losses, Increased Total Annual Losses

      Losses of managed honey bee colonies were 23.1 percent for the 2014-2015 winter but summer losses exceeded winter numbers for the first time, making annual losses for the year 42.1 percent, according to preliminary results of the annual survey conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership (http://beeinformed.org), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Apiary Inspectors of America.

    • AP, Review-Journal Miss Jeb Bush’s Yucca Mountain Flip-Flop

      Speaking in Nevada on May 13, Bush told a group of reporters that Yucca Mountain will not likely become the permanent storage location for the nation’s nuclear waste. The Associated Press story quoted Bush saying the project “stalled out” and reported that he “said the waste dump shouldn’t be ‘forced down the throat’ of anyone.” And according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Bush also said “we need to move to a system where the communities and states want it.”

  • Finance

    • Some of David Brooks’ Best Friends Are Progressives–So Long as They Don’t Scare the Wealthy

      Clinton also strengthened and lengthened copyright and patent monopolies. These are forms of government intervention in the market that have the same effect on the price of drugs and other protected items as tariffs of several thousand percent. In the case of drugs, the costs are not only economic, but also felt in the form of bad health outcomes from mismarketed drugs by companies trying to maximize their patent rents.

      And the federal government directly intervenes to redistribute income upward when the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates to slow job creation, keeping workers at the middle and bottom of the income distribution from getting enough bargaining power to raise their wages.

      In these areas and others, David Brooks’ center-right politicians, as well as “opportunity” progressives, are every bit as willing to use the government to intervene in the market as people like Warren and de Blasio. The difference is that the politicians Brooks admires want to use the government to redistribute income upward, while Warren and de Blasio want to ensure that people at the middle and bottom get their share of the gains from economic growth. (Their agenda is laid out in more detail in this report from the Roosevelt Institute.)

    • URGENT: Senate backtracks on TPP fasttrack — call Congress to oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership

      Just days after the Senate rejected the Obama administration’s bid to fast-track the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership, they’ve backtracked, and now they’re getting ready to rush fast-track through.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Lack of Oversight of Charter Schools Designed as a Plus; $3.3+ Billion Spent (Part 2)

      “The waste of taxpayer money—none of us can feel good about,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education just last month.

      Yet, he is calling for a 48% increase in the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) quarter-billion-dollar-a-year ($253.2 million) program designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—an initiative repeatedly criticized by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls.

  • Privacy

    • Internet.org Expands to Malawi Amidst India Backlash

      Facebook’s Internet.org project this week expanded into Malawi, bringing free Web services to subscribers of Telekom Networks Malawi (TNM) and Airtel Malwai.

    • Privacy groups baulk at US government’s ‘fake’ surveillance reform

      US RIGHTS AND PRIVACY GROUPS have reacted quickly to oppose the recently passed US Freedom Act, and asked Congress to reconsider and ensure that bulk data collection is prevented and that personal privacy is preserved.

    • Facebook’s Quest To Absorb The Internet

      Facebook never wants you to leave, so it’s swallowing up where you might try to go. A few years back, its News Feed brimmed with links to content hosted elsewhere. News articles, YouTube clips, business websites, ads for ecommerce stores.

    • Federal Appeals Court Rules NSA Spying Illegal

      A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of billions of U.S. phone records is illegal, dealing a startling blow to the program just as Congress is weighing reforms to the government’s expansive surveillance authorities.

    • France passes new surveillance law in wake of Charlie Hebdo attack

      The French parliament has overwhelmingly approved sweeping new surveillance powers in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris in January that killed 17 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery in Paris.

    • USA Freedom Act Passes House, Codifying Bulk Collection For First Time, Critics Say

      After only one hour of floor debate, and no allowed amendments, the House of Representatives today passed legislation that seeks to address the NSA’s controversial surveillance of American communications. However, opponents believe it may give brand new authorization to the U.S. government to conduct domestic dragnets.

    • Tor Cloud Shut Down Amid Lack of Support

      The Tor Project has shuttered its cloud proxy service citing security vulnerabilities, usability bugs and a lack of resources.

      Tor offers its users the capacity to surf the Web anonymously, bouncing traffic through a series of relay servers so that no observer at any point can tell where that user’s traffic is traveling to or coming from. The Tor Cloud Project essentially offered a platform for creating network bridges within Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Compute in order for users to evade censorship.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Why net neutrality rules have angered some small Internet providers

      Giant Internet service providers are roaring mad about new net neutrality rules and the reclassification of broadband as a common carrier service. Reaction among small ISPs is more diverse, but some of them say they will be saddled with legal costs so high that it will prevent them from upgrading equipment that provides Internet service to small towns and rural areas.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Why streaming services will not end piracy

        With the arrival of Netflix in Australia, there have been suggestions that people no longer have a valid reason to indulge in unauthorised downloading of movies. Such reasoning is short on logic.

      • Mega Rolls Out Legal Heavyweights to Refute Piracy Claims

        Mega.co.nz has today published an independent report which refutes claims that the site is a piracy haven. The analysis, carried out by Olswang, an international law firm that previously worked with the UK government on copyright issues, concludes that claims in a 2014 NetNames report have “no factual basis whatsoever.”

05.14.15

Links 15/5/2015: Skrooge Releases, Linux 3.14.42, Linux 3.10.78

Posted in News Roundup at 9:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • An Unlikely Ambassador

    I would consider myself an unlikely Linux ambassador. Not that I hide any Linux use or fascination but that I am not out there on a mission to encourage or convert people to Linux. Mostly it would be an occasional conversation about me using Linux for something or a conversation where I am explaining that there are more operating systems then just Windows or OS X. Most of the time my Linux conversations are with those that already have some connection to Linux. To be honest I have probably been a much bigger “Ambassador” to LibreOffice than to Linux; and I am not an uber LibreOffice or ODF fan boy but one that believes for most basic users it will work just fine without all the Microsoft expense. All of that has taken a slight detour within the past couple of weeks.

  • Desktop

    • HP is Putin Ubuntu Linux on Russian computers

      Some Windows partners, such as Dell, offer Linux-based operating systems as an alternative, but this is few and far between. HP, however, is planing to sell machines in Russia running the Ubuntu operating system. I suppose you could say the company is Putin (puttin’) Linux on the desktop there!

    • Legacy Modernization Applications for Linux

      Like many companies, your company may depend on Linux for its main operating system. For nearly a quarter century, Linux has been pivotal for organizations all over the world. While it definitely comes with a number of benefits, it’s important to remember that any system built on Linux is still susceptible to old age. After enough time, your software could even become obsolete. According to Gartner, for example, the average data center is nine years old. However, after seven years, Gartner says that these data centers begin becoming outmoded. This helps illustrate why legacy modernization is such a vital process to carry out regularly.

    • Terminal Emulation Applications for Linux

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Skrooge 1.12.0 released

        The Skrooge Team announces the release 1.12.0 version of its popular Personal Finances Manager based on KDE Frameworks.

      • Skrooge 2.0.0 Beta available

        The Skrooge Team announces the availability of 1.99.75 version of its popular Personal Finances Manager based on KDE Frameworks. This is a Beta version intended for users willing to help us by testing the KF5 port before the final Release.

      • Simple Qt container optimization you should do on your code

        Most of us know we shouldn’t let our containers detach. QList, QVector, QString, etc. are implicitly shared. Copying them is cheap, but when we call a non const member function it will detach and trigger a deep copy.

      • Qt 5.5 Now Plans To Ship At The End Of June

        Qt 5.5 has been running behind schedule for some time while now The Qt Company is trying to get it back on track and to officially ship Qt 5.5 by the end of next month.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME Asia 2015 impressio

        I must to congrat all the enthusiasm and effort from many young students supported by experienced people, leaded by Estu Fardani. There are lots of Linux users in Indonesia and I saw the willing to contribute with the GNOME project. I met Estu in person and I found more friendly local people: my new dear friend Deetah, Harris, Utian, Aris, Kukuh, Fahmi, Moco, Pico, Siska, Lenin & the awsome Sendy!

      • GNOME 3.16.2 released

        The second update of GNOME 3.16 is out with many bug fixes, documentation improvements, translations updates, and more. We hope you’ll like it.

      • GNOME 3.16.2 Released

        GNOME 3.16.2 was announced this afternoon by Red Hat’s Matthias Clasen. The GNOME 3.16.2 release contains numerous bug fixes, documentation updates, translation updates, and other minor work. GNOME 3.16.2 release information can be found via this mailing list post.

      • Orca Open Source Screen Reader Receives Major Update for GNOME 3.16.2

        We reported earlier this week that the hard-working developers behind the acclaimed GNOME desktop environment used by default in numerous GNU/Linux distributions, including Ubuntu GNOME and Fedora, are preparing the second and last point release of GNOME 3.16.

      • GNOME Shell and Mutter Get Minor Updates for GNOME 3.16.2

        The GNOME Project has just announced the general availability of the GNOME 3.16.2 desktop environment, the second and last maintenance release of the 3.16 series.

  • Distributions

    • The death of Foresight Linux

      There are many different Linux distributions, and some last for longer periods of time than others. Foresight Linux is a distribution that has finally reached the end of the road, and will no longer be developed.

    • Reviews

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Wins SIIA Software CODiE Awards for Best Cloud Management Solution and Best Open Source Innovation

        Red Hat CloudForms and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Earn Prestigious Industry Recognition

      • Fedora

        • The One Problem I Have So Far With Fedora’s DNF Package Manager

          There’s one gripe I continue to have with DNF but at least it doesn’t mean the end of the world… DNF is mostly a drop-in replacement to the Yum command and when calling yum on Fedora 22 it will end up redirecting to dnf. One of the few exceptions though to where DNF is a drop-in replacement for Yum is supporting the –skip-broken argument.

        • Fedora 21 vs. Fedora 22 Benchmarks

          For those curious how the performance of Fedora 22 is shaking out, here’s some early benchmarks comparing the Fedora Workstation 21 and Fedora Workstation 22 (with all updates as of the final freeze) in various workloads.

          Plenty of Fedora 22 benchmarks are in the works now that this Red Hat backed Linux distribution is gearing up for release and has settled down with its many changes and new features. The Fedora 22 state tested was with the Linux 4.0.2 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.16.1, Mesa 10.5.4, and GCC 5.1.1 while using an EXT4 file-system. On the same exact Intel ultrabook, Fedora 21 was also re-benchmarked both in stock form and with all available updates as of 12 May.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Mouser adds to open source board sales channel

      The distributor’s Open Source Hardware Technology website now has an updated product selector which allows users to select a board from 30 different parameters including processor type and speed, memory and expansion capabilities, wireless and wired networking, user interface options, video connectivity.

    • CHIP: $9 Linux ‘micro-computer’ hits $1m Kickstarter funding in four days

      THE CHIP ‘MICRO-COMPUTER’ that costs just $9 (£5.85) has reached over $1m in funding just four days after arriving on Kickstarter.

    • Raspberry Pi Model B+ price cut to just $25

      The Raspberry Pi B+, which was previously priced at $35, has had its price cut to just $25. The price cuts have already gone into effect on the primary Raspberry Pi stockist websites: RS Components in the UK (£16) and MCM Electronics in the US ($25).

      According to Raspberry Pi, the price reduction was made possible by “production optimizations,” though no specifics were given. At first glance, there don’t appear to be any board- or component-level changes, though Raspberry Pi might not have updated its product images yet.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • In Free Software, it’s okay to be imperfect, as long as you’re open and honest about it

    In the FOSS world, people seem more likely to really see the person, not just the community they belong to. And from a person, they expect that they really and honestly feel sorry if they made a mistake. And they seem to be more forgiving if a FOSS contributor admits a mistake and apologizes than if a proprietary software company does. It’s not only individuals, though. It seems like even companies in the FOSS field are expected to be more open and honest than those in the proprietary software field.

  • Free Software and Free Culture: Open Source’s Influence on Society

    In an age when Microsoft (MSFT) is floating the idea of open-sourcing even Windows, it’s clear that open source has pretty much conquered the world of software—or the parts of it that matter, at least. But, in a lot of ways, the weight of open source is now extending into many other realms, defining how people interact and collaborate well beyond the context of computers. That’s a fascinating issue, and it gives the key to understanding what could be the ultimate legacy of the free and open source software movements.

  • 5 open source remakes of classic PC games you won’t want to miss

    Buying the latest games will typically get you top-quality graphics and an iTunes-ready soundtrack, but that won’t necessarily translate into compelling gameplay. And even if it does, there’s no guarantee you’ll be kept entertained for more than a few hours. The solution? Try one of these open source takes on classic PC games.

    Sure, the graphics won’t be as good. There is no chance you’ll want to download the soundtrack, and there will probably be odd glitches and bugs here and there. But, you can be sure the central concept will be great (it’s what inspired the remake in the first place). It’ll have been developed by people who love it, rather than just because they want your cash. And as, in most cases, the projects are still evolving — with new features, content, missions, expansion packs — you’ll want to keep playing for a long, long time.

  • Google stomps on scammers — and helps open source

    A recent rules change to Google Adwords may make it easier for open source projects to protect their good reputation

  • Cloud Security Alliance, Waverley Labs Collaborate On Open-Source Software-Defined Perimeter Spec

    The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a group that promotes security best practices for cloud computing, is making progress on its plans to develop a software-defined perimeter (SDP) framework for protecting Internet-connected systems against a range of security threats.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Letter To Mozilla

        We are a group of Free Software advocates from Melbourne Australia and supporters of the Mozilla Foundation and its goals. While we would usually hold Mozilla in high esteem, on this International Day Against DRM we feel compelled to join the FSF and Defective By Design in condemning Mozilla’s decision to include proprietary mechanisms (Encrypted Media Extensions) in Firefox.

        We understand that you are trying to do what makes content owners comfortable lest they not allow their content on your browser; you have outlined this in the article “DRM and the Challenge of Serving Users”. However it seems that your focus is on the short term, compromising your values to retain existing users, rather than protecting them in the longer term. That article significantly neglects any mention of the harms caused by such proprietary technologies, and how they lead users to inflict this harm upon themselves.

      • FREE Firefox?

        The challenge is, going from the Firefox start page, find a way to download the FREE version, without using external websites (so no Google search).

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Nexenta Extends Its Market Leadership in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage at OpenStack Summit; End-to-End Integration Into OpenStack Framework
    • Pentaho ignites Apache Spark orchestration

      Orlando-based open source analytics company Pentaho is ‘in the process of being acquired’ by Hitachi Data Systems, but the brand appears strong enough to be retained 100% intact inside of the new parent company.

    • How to become a valued OpenStack contributor

      Most PTL’s are elected because they are the most technical contributor on a particular project. They are rarely elected for leadership skills. Most of our top technical contributors struggle with leadership, and naturally shy away from it. This frequently leads to dysfunction in community dynamics, as the PTL continues to focus on contributing at a very high level, and puts limited effort into leadership work. Doing things like setting project vision, tracking and celebrating milestones, providing team members with actionable feedback, and sharing the project vision with community members outside the project are all good ways of exhibiting leadership. Doing those things as a part time effort can yield limited results in terms of team unity, and effectiveness. My suggestion to open source project leaders is to earmark considerable time for leadership work, and scale back direct contribution work. A well empowered, motivated, and effective team can produce much more velocity than a PTL individually focused on strong contribution, and ignoring leadership responsibilities in order to do it.

  • CMS

    • Open source a clear choice for CMS development

      As time went on, we simply continued to ride the open source path. We assembled a huge collection of functional applications we had built for client sites that could be added to and modified for new ones. Shopping carts, contact forms, opt-in email list managers, employment opportunity listings, content editors, slide shows, all built as open source using PHP.

      A few years later came the emergence of Content Management Systems, which contained—as a package—many of the functional elements we previously had relied upon our own resources to create. Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and others were emerging as the default new development platforms for most digital agencies who had followed the same path as ours.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Free Software Foundation announces deputy director search

      The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Boston-based 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect freedoms critical to the computer-using public, would love to find an experienced, Boston-based deputy director to expand our leadership team.

  • Licensing

    • Linux Foundation Updates SPDX Compliance Effort

      Back in 2010, the Linux Foundation first launched its Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) effort that helps to build out and identify software components in a standardized manner. Since then, use of SPDX has grown, and on May 12 the SPDX 2.0 specification was announced. The new specification aims to be even more comprehensive in helping organizations understand the open-source licenses that are used as part of an application deployment.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Source Project Hopes To Offer $23,000 EV With 186 Miles Range

      An open source project is currently in the works to build an electric vehicle powered by in-wheel motors.

      The goals are ambitious: 1) Build an electric vehicle with a minimum range of 186 miles that can theoretically be put into production and sold for under $22,700. 2) Share the design so that others can replicate or customize the platform. 3) Do it all in less than a year.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • The Jeb Bush Adviser Who Should Scare You

      Paul Wolfowitz not only championed the Iraq War—he obsessively promoted a bizarre conspiracy theory.

    • Ignorance and attempts to rewrite WWII history – that’s what makes me sick

      Everybody in this country is perfectly aware of the fact that we were allies with the British, the French, and of course, the Americans whom we gloriously linked-up with on the River Elbe in April 1945. But we also remember how from the very beginning, in 1939, the West was hoping to orient Hitler to the East and make the German socialists and the Russian communists kill each other. Yes, Moscow did get tons of American supplies under the Lend-Lease Act passed in 1941, and the Northern convoys to Murmansk were a manifestation of real heroism by the Royal Navy. We also cherish the memory of the French Normandie-Niemen air squadron and Le Resistance, but the Russians will never forget that we had to suffer three long years, until our brothers in arms finally landed in Normandy in 1944. That reduced the distance between D-day and VE-Day for them to just 10 months, while for the Russians it was 46 long months of war… For the first time since 1941 Moscow really celebrated Victory on March, 26, 1944 – the day the Soviet troops crossed the River Prut and recaptured the state border. By the time the allies crossed the Channel three months later the Red Army had started its victorious march across Europe, liberating Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Norway. The heaviest price we paid during this operation was for ousting German troops from Poland: 600,000 Soviet soldiers were killed on Polish soil.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Born Kneeling

      Rusbridger and his extraordinary wig go on and on as a pretend opposition outlet, their reputation much dented by recent hysterical unionist output which exceeds the Daily Express. But Rusbridger’s continued usefulness to the establishment is not in doubt. The pose of publishing the most harmless of Prince Charles’ letters does little to help a threadbare disguise.

  • Censorship

    • David Cameron to unveil new limits on extremists’ activities in Queen’s speech

      A counter-terrorism bill including plans for extremism disruption orders designed to restrict those trying to radicalise young people is to be included in the Queen’s speech, David Cameron will tell the national security council on Wednesday.

      The orders, the product of an extremism task force set up by the prime minister, were proposed during the last parliament in March, but were largely vetoed by the Liberal Democrats on the grounds of free speech. They were subsequently revived in the Conservative manifesto.

  • Privacy

    • [tor-relays] Please enable IPv6 on your relay!
    • Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook

      Exposure to news, opinion and civic information increasingly occurs through social media. How do these online networks influence exposure to perspectives that cut across ideological lines? Using de-identified data, we examined how 10.1 million U.S. Facebook users interact with socially shared news. We directly measured ideological homophily in friend networks, and examine the extent to which heterogeneous friends could potentially expose individuals to cross-cutting content. We then quantified the extent to which individuals encounter comparatively more or less diverse content while interacting via Facebook’s algorithmically ranked News Feed, and further studied users’ choices to click through to ideologically discordant content. Compared to algorithmic ranking, individuals’ choices about what to consume had a stronger effect limiting exposure to cross-cutting content.

    • NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors

      The Intercept’s Lee Fang has highlighted a few examples of loud National Security Agency allies that have financial ties to the agency and mass surveillance. The list includes Stewart Baker, the general counsel to the NSA from 1992 through 1994, Fox News military analyst Jack Keane, Retired General Wesley Clark, former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey, former Republican National Committee chair Jim Gilmore, former NSA director Mike McConnell, and Center for Strategic and International Studies President John Hamre. They have surfaced regularly in the media to denounce Snowden, and in the case of Woolsey, to call for Snowden to be “hanged by his neck”.

    • Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors

      Due to the secretive nature of the agency’s work, NSA contracts are often shielded from public disclosure, and identifying financial links between pundits and the agency’s web of partners is tricky. But the work of journalists and whistleblowers such as James Bamford, who was assigned to an NSA unit while serving in the Navy, gives us a sense of which companies work for U.S. intelligence agencies. Drawing largely from these disclosures, The Intercept has identified several former government and military officials whose voices have shaped the public discourse around government spying and surveillance issues but whose financial ties to NSA contractors have received little attention. These pundits have played a key role in the public debate as the White House and the agency itself have struggled to defend the most controversial spying programs revealed by Snowden’s documents.

    • House votes overwhelmingly to end NSA’s mass collection of phone records

      The House overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill Wednesday to dial back the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects and stores data from nearly every landline or cellphone call dialed or received in the United States.

    • Senator Bob Corker Says NSA Should Be Spying On More Americans, Not Fewer

      Senator Bob Corker, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appears to now be calling for the NSA to spy on more Americans, rather than fewer, arguing that the metadata collection program that is currently being debated in Congress is so small that he considers it negligent.

    • Corker calls NSA surveillance program shockingly small

      Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said Wednesday he was shocked to learn this week how little data the National Security Agency is actually amassing in its controversial collection of Americans’ phone records.

    • The NSA’s Call Record Program, a 9/11 Hijacker, and the Failure of Bulk Collection

      The fact is, U.S. intelligence agencies knew of al-Mihdhar long before 9/11 and had the ability find him. In the years, months, and days before 9/11, the NSA already had access to a massive database of Americans’ call records. Analysts—at NSA or CIA—could have easily searched the database for calls made from the U.S. to the safehouse in Yemen. They simply didn’t.

  • Civil Rights

    • U.S. marshal involved in road rage incident in South County

      A U.S. marshal was among four people cited for assault in an apparent case of road rage Sunday, authorities said.

      A man who was involved in the incident told a TV reporter that it began with a honk and moved to a parking lot, where a man in another vehicle approached him holding a gun and punched him in the face with it.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Cable Industry Tries To Distance Itself From Decades Of Poor Service By Eliminating The Word ‘Cable’

      Annoyance with the cable industry appears to have reached the tipping point, with consumers fed up with skyrocketing prices, inflexible programming options and some of the worst customer service in any U.S. industry. The cable industry’s ingenious solution? Stop using the word cable. Last week, the cable industry held its annual trade conference, previously dubbed “The Cable Show.” Trying to distance itself from the aging, negative associations with the word “cable,” the industry has decided to rename the conference The Internet & Television Expo.

05.13.15

Links 13/5/2015: GNU/Linux PCs in Russia, Fedora 22 Freeze

Posted in News Roundup at 6:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 10 Linux Dream Jobs – What’s Yours?

    What’s your Linux dream job? The Linux Foundation recently asked our Twitter followers to share their ideal Linux careers. Many responded that they’re already living the dream, working as sysadmins and developers (or by simply getting to use Linux in their everyday tasks.) While others imagine fulfilling careers not yet within their grasp. Here are 10 of our favorite responses, along with a few resources for learning more about each dream Linux career path.

  • New to Linux? 5 Apps You Didn’t Know You Were Missing

    When you moved to Linux, you went straight for the obvious browsers, cloud clients, music players, email clients, and perhaps image editors, right? As a result, you’ve missed several vital, productive tools. Here’s a roundup of five umissable Linux apps that you really need to install.

  • From Windows XP to Linux: Adding to the List

    Yesterday on Datamation, Matt Hartley wrote what could best be described as a reminder piece about the folks using Windows XP at home or in small businesses having options when it comes to replacing that particular operating system, and that the best option — go ahead and say it with me — is Linux.

  • Solar Sail Spacecraft Runs Linux and Uses SSH, Says Bill Nye

    The idea of solar sails was first introduced in popular culture by none other than Carl Sagan, more than 40 years ago. This particular technology was not a priority for scientists in the past decades, with very few exceptions, but The Planetary Society and Bill Nye want to change that by launching a small spacecraft called CubeSat that will be powered by light.

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • Rackspace CEO Takes a Positive Spin from AWS for OpenStack Growth

      Rackspace reported its first quarter fiscal 2015 results on May 11, with company executives sounding very optimistic about the company’s future prospects.

      For the quarter, Rackspace reported net revenue of $480 million, for a 14.1 percent year-over-year gain. Net income for the first quarter was reported at $28.4 million, up from $25.4 million in the first quarter of 2014.

      [...]

      Rackspace’s cloud fortunes today are somewhat tied to the open-source OpenStack cloud platform, which it helped to create. Rhodes sees potential for OpenStack both in the public cloud space as well as the private.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Goodbye Foresight Linux

      It’s with great sadness in our hearts that we write this article to you all, but it appears that in an email to the Foresight Linux’s mailinglist, Michael K. Johnson announces the retirement of the distribution.

    • Foresight Linux Announces The End Of Development
    • Material Design-Inspired Papyros Shows Great Progress

      It’s been a while since we heard about Papyros, the Linux distribution that used the Material Design concepts from Google, but developers have released a short video that illustrates the work they’ve done so far.

    • New Releases

    • Slackware Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • End of Foresight and What Makes Fedora Different

          Foresight Linux officially called it quits yesterday due to a lack of developers. The project hasn’t seen a release in over two years, but it’s still sad when a distribution shuts down. Across town, Pete Travis posted a passionate open letter to Fedora on why it should remain true to its philosophy and Bruce Byfield pondered the age old mystery, “Why can’t Ubuntu play well with others?”

        • Fedora 22 Final Freeze

          Today is an important day on the Fedora 22 schedule[1], with a significant cut-offs.

        • Fedora 22 Linux Will Arrive on May 26, Final Freeze Now in Effect

          The Fedora Project is preparing to release their latest and greatest Linux kernel-based operating system, Fedora 22, which will arrive as expected later this month, on May 26, 2015.

        • Fedora 22 Is Now Under Its Final Freeze

          Today marks the final freeze for Fedora 22 with plans to officially release this Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution update later in May.

        • Fedora Workstation 22 Is Looking Great, Running Fantastic

          As the Fedora 22 release approaches, there will be more benchmarks coming along with other tests (e.g. the latest X11 vs. Wayland, Fedora 22 graphics performance, etc). For today’s article I just wanted to make a few remarks about Fedora Workstation 22. Fedora Workstation 22 feels like a nice evolutionary upgrade over Fedora 21. GNOME 3.16 and these upstream improvements represent a bulk of the user-visible changes in Fedora 22. Below the hood there’s the GCC 5.0 compiler, Mesa 10.5, Perl 5.20, Linux 4.0, and many other package updates. If GNOME isn’t your thing, Xfce 4.12 is present along with the premiere of the LXQt desktop environment. The latest KDE Plasma 5 / Frameworks 5 packages are also present in Fedora 22. Many of the other Fedora 22 workstation/desktop changes have already been detailed in numerous Phoronix articles.

    • Debian Family

      • systemd: Type=simple and avoiding forking considered harmful?

        I wonder if systemd shouldn’t do more to detect problems during services initialization, as the transition to proper notification using sd_notify will likely take some time. A possibility would be to wait 100 or 200ms after the start to ensure that the service doesn’t exit almost immediately. But that’s not really a solution for several obvious reasons. A more hackish, but still less dirty solution could be to poll the state of processes inside the cgroup, and assume that the service is started only when all processes are sleeping. Still, that wouldn’t be entirely satisfying…

      • Run Debian 8 Jessie with on Raspberry Pi 2 with RaspEX

        The creator of numerous GNU/Linux distributions are very excited to introduce us to RaspEX today, a distro based on the Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 (Jessie) and created to run on the Raspberry Pi 2 computer board.

      • Derivatives

        • Linux Top 3: Tails 1.4, 4MLinux 12 and TinyCore Linux 6.2

          Nearly a year after Tails 1.0, and the Tails 1.4 release is now available. Tails – short for The Amnesic Incognito Live System and is a privacy focussed Linux distribution.

        • Tails 1.4 is out

          Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.4, is out.

          This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible.

        • Tails 1.4 Updates the Windows 8 Camouflage to Work with the I2P and Unsafe Browsers

          Tails 1.4 Updates the Windows 8 Camouflage to Work with the I2P and Unsafe Browsers

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • 2015 is shaping up to be the Year of Ubuntu

            Ubuntu has been making big promises since 2011 when they chose Unity to be at the center of their universe. And while they failed to deliver on Ubuntu TV or Ubuntu for Android, they’ve got other tricks up their sleeves.

          • Snappy Ubuntu Linux Now Used in Networking, Refrigerators

            With its number of uses growing, the Snappy Ubuntu Core Linux operating system is now coming to network switches and refrigerators.
            Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind the open-source Ubuntu Linux operating system, today announced an expansion of its push to embed Linux in everything from phones to refrigerators—and now network switches. The Snappy Ubuntu Core Linux operating system, a minimal version of Ubuntu Linux that provides an improved updating and security model, is designed for embedded devices and the Internet of things (IoT).

          • ICU Vulnerability Closed in Ubuntu 15.04

            Canonical has published details in a security notice about an ICU vulnerability that has been found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

          • Erle-Copter, Ubuntu Core Edition: the first drone with apps

            Although Ubuntu is best known for its desktop/server distro—which was recently updated to 15.04—the last few years have seen the project’s ambitions have grown considerably. For example, there’s the Ubuntu phone, which is beginning to win plaudits. In turn, solving the particular demands for a mobile platform led to new approaches and technologies that appeared again in Snappy Ubuntu, a “transactionally updated Ubuntu for clouds and devices.”

          • Erle Robotics’ Ubuntu Core Drone Is The First Drone With Support For Third Party Apps
          • The Latest OTA Update For Ubuntu Touch Brings A Huge List Of Changes

            As we had anticipated correctly last week, Canonical has released an OTA update for Ubuntu Touch (OTA 3.5), an update which brings fixes for over 15 bugs, some 3G enhancements, fixes for a bunch oc calendar sync problems, removed some crashes regarding ubuntu-keyboard and indicator-network, fixed the bug that drained the battery when the phone was used in airplane mode, patched some routing problems and the suspend problems have been removed.

          • New Ubuntu Touch Update Brings 3G and Location Services Improvements

            Today, May 12, we are happy to inform all Ubuntu Phone users that the Ubuntu Touch developers have just announced the release of the OTA 3.5 update for Canonical’s mobile operating system.

          • Why Can’t Ubuntu Play Well With Others?

            Last week, founder Mark Shuttleworth opened the Ubuntu Online Summit with a challenge to Linux desktop developers.

            “I’m issuing a call to people who participate in every desktop environment,” he said, “to set aside our differences, to recognize that the opportunity now is bigger than those differences, to create experiences that spans phones and tablets, and PCs, to bring all of our applications, none of which are on one desktop environment or another.”

            His words were rhetorically stirring — and provoked no major response whatsoever. Although some news sites reported his words without comment, probably most companies and projects have heard too many similar calls to action for this one to be effective.

          • Loli Papelk + Ultra Flat Icons, Install In Ubuntu
          • System76 Meerkat is a cute Intel Broadwell-powered Ubuntu Linux computer [Review]

            Imagine if every time you wanted a Windows computer, you had to buy a Mac, format the hard drive and install Microsoft’s operating system. That would suck, right? This is pretty much how it is for Linux users, sadly. If you are a user of a Linux distro such as Fedora or Ubuntu, for the most part — unless you are a system-builder — you have to buy a Windows machine, and install your preferred operating system.

            What if you want to buy a computer with an operating system such as Ubuntu pre-installed? Enter System76. The company sells computers — both desktops and laptops — running the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system. Recently, the company began selling the Meerkat — a mini computer based on Intel’s NUC. I have been using the computer for a few weeks now, with both Ubuntu and Windows 10 and I am ready to share the experience with you.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 with Unity 8 and Linux Kernel 4.0 Runs on a Lenovo Tablet

            Now, we all know that you can use Ubuntu on a tablet device, so this may not come as news to you, but seeing the next-generation Ubuntu 15.10 Desktop Next on a Lenovo ThinkPad 8 Bay Trail tablet might interest you.

          • Ubuntu continues its push into IoT devices

            Today marks the start of IoT World in San Francisco, and TelecomTV is onsite to record a series of executive video interviews and product demos. As the telecoms sector shifts its focus from vertically-aligned M2M solutions towards more horizontal IoT platforms, we expected to see yet more jostling for position amongst platform providers and OS developers.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) Release Schedule

            Announced by Mark Shuttleworth on May 4, 2015, Ubuntu 15.10 (codename Wily Werewolf) will be released later this year on October 22, 2015, according to the preliminary release schedule that was made public today.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) to Use Linux Kernel 4.1, Most Likely

          • Flavours and Variants

            • A preview of the MintBox Mini

              CompuLab has a long history of working with the developers of Linux Mint. The MintBox 2 is a good example of their cooperation, and it has gotten very positive reviews on Amazon. Now there’s a new product called the MintBox Mini and one of the Linux Mint developers has a preview of it.

            • Windows Users Are Top Downloaders of elementary OS “Freya”

              A month after elementary OS “Freya” was released to the public, the developers have made public some details about the platforms that download it and the results are pretty surprising. From the looks of it, the Windows users are the main downloaders of this Linux OS.

            • It’s optional for now, but Linux Mint expects to switch to systemd next year

              Despite recent reports suggesting the contrary, Linux Mint isn’t committed to avoiding systemd, the controversial project taking Linux by storm. In fact, Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint’s project leader, expects the next major releases of Linux Mint to use systemd by default.

              No, Linux Mint isn’t switching to systemd immediately. The Linux Mint 17.x series and Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 will continue to use Upstart and SysV init, with systemd available as an option you can choose yourself. Linux Mint is giving systemd some time to mature before switching, but—with upstream projects and the Linux ecosystem as a whole moving towards systemd—Mint realizes it doesn’t have an option in the long term.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why tools like Docker, Vagrant, and Ansible are hotter than ever

    The complexity of application stacks keeps going up. Way, way up. Application stacks have always been complicated, but never like this. There are so many services, so many tools, so much more compute power available, so many new techniques to try, and always the desire, and the pressure, to solve problems in newer and cooler and more elegant ways. With so many toys to play with, and more coming every day, the toy chest struggles to contain them all.

  • 3 big lessons I learned from running an open source company

    It all sounds so straightforward: Put your code up on GitHub or start/join a project at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), build a community of like-minded individuals, start a company, take in some funding, and then IPO. Or maybe not. One thing is certain: Running an open source company has unique challenges and opportunities. Although much has been written on the subject of open source and community building, I’d like to share three critical lessons learned in my travels as a co-founder and CTO of a venture-backed open source company.

  • Gaming Community Asks for Open Source GOG Galaxy Client

    GOG Galaxy is a new gaming client for the GOG distributions service, but for now it’s only available for the Windows platform. As a response, the GOG wish list now shows the open source GOG Galaxy client as the most requested item.

  • Events

    • GNOME.Asia summit 2015

      Every moment spent was mesmerizing in the summit. Day 0, 7th May 2015 Thursday was the workshop day in the auditorium of the Computer Science Department. Presentations by Andika Triwidada on “GNOME Indonesia Translation”, Akshai M for “MicroHOPE(Micro-controllers for Hobby Projects and Education)”, David King on “Writing your first GNOME application”, and Ekaterina Gerasimova, Alexandre Franke on the topic “How to make your first contribution” were out of the box informative.

    • LibrePlanet forever! Watch five sessions from 2015 online

      We’re happy to announce that recordings of five sessions from LibrePlanet 2015 are now online. Whether you couldn’t make it to the conference and are watching these for the first time, or attended and want to see them again, we hope you enjoy.

    • Last chance to register for the Randa Meetings 2015

      If you are interested in participating in this year’s Randa Meetings and want to have a chance to be financially supported to travel to Randa then the last 24 hours of the registration period just began.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Communication is the key to herding cats

      John Dickinson is Director of Technology at SwiftStack and Program Team Lead (PTL) of the OpenStack Swift project. Last year, he gave us an update on Swift’s progress with Storage policies: Coming to an OpenStack Swift cluster near you for Opensource.com. In this follow up interview, John offers tips for improving community collaboration on open source projects, and gives us a preview of his upcoming OpenStack Summit talk.

    • Mixed Quarterly Results for Hadoop-Focused Hortonworks

      The end of 2014 was a momentous time for Hortonworks, which focuses on the Hadoop Big Data platform. The company had a successful IPO, driving home how focused many enterprises are on yielding more useful insights from their troves of data than standard data mining tools can provide.

    • Q&A Sessions with Cloud and Big Data Thought Leaders

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Open-source texts would have wider use in state colleges

        Students facing eye-popping costs of college textbooks could save substantial amounts of money under a bill that would encourage the use of electronic texts.

        The House on Tuesday approved a pilot program and study of so-called open-source texts that faculty could assign instead of traditional books that can cost students as much as $1,200 a year. The bill, which passed 144-0, next heads to the Senate.

        It would establish a task force to develop plans for the best use of open-source texts through an existing program at Charter Oak State College.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

      Google Inc., taking a new approach to enterprise security, is moving its corporate applications to the Internet. In doing so, the Internet giant is flipping common corporate security practice on its head, shifting away from the idea of a trusted internal corporate network secured by perimeter devices such as firewalls, in favor of a model where corporate data can be accessed from anywhere with the right device and user credentials.

    • Tuesday’s security updates
    • Beware the ticking Internet of Things security time bomb

      IBM’s Andy Thurai didn’t quite put the words into former RSA CTO Deepak Taneja’s mouth, but did prompt him by asking at the start of a TIE Startup Con panel in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month whether Internet of Things security is a “time bomb ready to explode.”

    • VENOM, don’t get bitten.

      CVE-2015-3456 (aka VENOM) is a security flaw in the QEMU’s Floppy Disk Controller (FDC) emulation. It can be exploited by a malicious guest user with access to the FDC I/O ports by issuing specially crafted FDC commands to the controller. It can result in guest controlled execution of arbitrary code in, and with privileges of, the corresponding QEMU process on the host. Worst case scenario this can be guest to host exit with the root privileges.

    • For Venom security flaw, the fix is in: Patch your VM today

      The QEMU fix itself is now available in source code. Red Hat has been working on the fix since last week.

    • VENOM Bug In QEMU Escapes VM Security
    • 11-Year-Old Bug in Virtual Floppy Drive Code Allows Escape from Virtual Machines

      Popular virtualization platforms relying on the virtual Floppy Disk Controller code from QEMU (Quick Emulator) are susceptible to a vulnerability that allows executing code outside the guest machine.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • U.S. Military Proposes Challenge to China Sea Claims

      The U.S. military is considering using aircraft and Navy ships to directly contest Chinese territorial claims to a chain of rapidly expanding artificial islands, U.S. officials said, in a move that would raise the stakes in a regional showdown over who controls disputed waters in the South China Sea.

    • It’s a Conspiracy! How to Discredit Seymour Hersh

      Max Fisher, now at Vox, learned well during his apprenticeship under Marty Peretz at The New Republic. This week, he was among the first to try to smear Seymour Hersh’s piece in the London Review of Books, which argued that pretty much everything we were told about the killing of Osama bin Laden was a lie. Most importantly, Hersh’s report questions the claim that Washington learned of OBL’s whereabouts thanks to torture—a claim popularized in the film Zero Dark Thirty.

      There’s a standard boiler plate now when it comes to going after Hersh, and all Fisher, in “The Many Problems with Seymour Hersh’s Osama bin Laden Conspiracy Theory,” did was fill out the form: establish Hersh’s “legendary” status (which Fisher does in the first sentence); invoke his reporting in My Lai and Abu Ghraib; then say that a number of Hersh’s recent stories—such as his 2012 New Yorker piece that the United States was training Iranian terrorists in Nevada—have been “unsubstantiated” (of course, other reporters never “substantiated” Hersh’s claim that Henry Kissinger was directly involved in organizing the cover-up of the fire-bombing of Cambodia for years—but that claim was true); question Hersh’s sources; and then, finally, suggest that Hersh has gone “off the rails” to embrace “conspiracy theories.”

    • Seymour Hersh Details Explosive Story on Bin Laden Killing & Responds to White House, Media Backlash

      Four years after U.S. forces assassinated Osama bin Laden, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has published an explosive piece claiming much of what the Obama administration said about the attack was wrong. Hersh claims at the time of the U.S. raid, bin Laden had been held as a prisoner by Pakistani intelligence since 2006. Top Pakistani military leaders knew about the operation and provided key assistance. Contrary to U.S. claims that it located bin Laden by tracking his courier, a former Pakistani intelligence officer identified bin Laden’s whereabouts in return for the bulk of a $25 million U.S. bounty. Questions are also raised about whether bin Laden was actually buried at sea, as the U.S. claimed. Hersh says instead the Navy SEALs threw parts of bin Laden’s body into the Hindu Kush mountains from their helicopter.

    • Sy Hersh’s bin Laden Story First Reported in 2011 — With Seemingly Different Sources

      R.J. Hillhouse, a former professor, Fulbright fellow and novelist whose writing on intelligence and military outsourcing has appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times, made the same main assertions in 2011 about the death of Osama bin Laden as Seymour Hersh’s new story in the London Review of Books — apparently based on different sources than those used by Hersh.

    • Smuggled Syrian documents enough to indict Bashar al-Assad, say investigators

      A three-year operation to smuggle official documents out of Syria has produced enough evidence to indict President Bashar al-Assad and 24 senior members of his regime, according to the findings of an international investigative commission.

      The prosecution cases against the Syrian leaders focus on their role in the suppression of the protests that triggered the conflict in 2011. Tens of thousands of suspected dissidents were detained, and many of them were tortured and killed in the Syrian prison system.

    • Fox News Defends Jeb Bush’s “Disastrous” Iraq War Answer

      Fox News defended Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush after he said he would still have authorized the invasion of Iraq “given what we know now,” claiming that Bush simply misunderstood the question.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Prince Charles’s letters to ministers to be published

      They’ll be examined for evidence of any pressure brought to bear by a hereditary monarch-in-waiting on elected ministers, and for any evidence that government policy was changed following the prince’s intervention.

    • Prince Charles’s black spider memos to be published on Wednesday

      Prince Charles’ secret letters to British government ministers expressing frank views that the government has warned could undermine his political neutrality will finally be published on Wednesday.

    • Prince Charles Asked By Michael Crick About His Secret ‘Black Spider Memos’, It Didn’t Go Well

      Prince Charles clearly doesn’t want to talk about his ‘black spider’ memos to ministers, which are about to be released, after his aide was filmed body blocking a reporter who tried to ambush to ask about the secret letters.

      The memos, written to various government departments between 2004 and 2005, will be released at 4pm after a 10-year legal battle by The Guardian.

      They are understood to show Charles’ disagreeing with government policy.

      As Charles arrived at Marks and Spencer’s flagship store near Marble Arch on Oxford Street in London, Channel 4 News’ Michael Crick asked if he was “worried” about the letters and if he was still writing to ministers – and whether he thought he was behaving “unconstitutionally” in doing so.

    • A battle over these 27 bits of paper has cost you more than £275,000.

      Secret letters that Prince Charles wrote to Tony Blair’s ministers are finally being revealed after a fight lasting several years.

      It’s a battle that’s cost taxpayers more than £275,000 and needed a ruling by Britain’s highest court.

      So why has there been such a long wrangle over some bits of paper? Here are all your questions answered.

    • Release of Prince Charles’s letters shows the point of freedom of information

      The publication of letters Prince Charles sent to government ministers is a triumph – of sorts – for the Freedom of Information Act.

      The point of the act is to enable the public to understand better how those in authority are governing us. The release of the letters allows us a limited peek behind the curtains to see how the heir to the throne has been seeking to influence government policies.

      But boy, what a struggle. The government has fought very hard for a decade to prevent the disclosure of 27 pieces of correspondence between the prince and ministers in Tony Blair’s government.

    • UK Prince Charles’ letters to ministers finally made public

      Prince Charles said British troops were under-resourced during the war in Iraq, according to letters from him published on Wednesday which the government had tried to keep secret in case they cast doubt over the future king’s political neutrality.

      The comment about the armed forces came in a letter from the 66-year-old prince to former Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004, one of 27 letters he wrote to former ministers in 2004 and 2005 which were released to the public after a decade of government attempts to block publication.

    • Queen’s restraint is exception to rule of meddling monarchs

      The determination of Queen Elizabeth II to avoid any action or utterance that might be deemed “political” has become the status quo. Little is known about her personal passions or politics. If she has any – and she surely has – she keeps them to herself.

      But monarchs and future monarchs, even since the end of executive monarchy, have always meddled. It is Elizabeth, not her son Charles, who is the exception rather than the rule.

    • Prince Charles ‘Black Spider’ letters released: Heir to the throne described opponents to badger cull as ‘intellectually dishonest’

      People opposing a cull of badgers to prevent the spread of tuberculosis in cattle were described by Charles as “intellectually dishonest” in a letter revealing that he has long been in favour of the controversial process.

      In a letter to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2005, the Prince criticised what he described as the “badger lobby” for objecting to the killing of badgers while disregarding the slaughter of cattle which contract the disease.

    • Prince Charles’s ‘black spider memos’ show lobbying at highest political level

      A cache of secret memos between Prince Charles and senior government ministers has been released after a 10-year legal battle, offering the clearest picture yet of the breadth and depth of the heir to the throne’s lobbying at the highest level of politics.

      The 27 memos, sent in 2004 and 2005 and released only after the Guardian won its long freedom of information fight with the government, show the Prince of Wales making direct and persistent policy demands to the then prime minister Tony Blair and several key figures in his Labour government.

      From Blair, Charles demanded everything from urgent action to improve equipment for troops fighting in Iraq to the availability of alternative herbal medicines in the UK, a pet cause of the prince.

    • Prince Charles ‘black spider’ memos reveal lobbying of Tony Blair

      A cache of secret memos sent by Prince Charles to senior UK ministers has finally been published, following a 10-year freedom of information battle between the Guardian and the government. The letters reveal that Charles lobbied ministers, including the former prime minister Tony Blair, on a wide range of issues, including agriculture, the armed forces, architecture and homeopathy.

    • Prince Charles – Letters finally out – conspiracy theorists disappointed?

      There will be many disappointed people today I’d guess. Clarence House has released a statement that the publication of these letters will “only inhibit” the Princes ability to express concerns. Complete rubbish, if a member of the Royal Family is sending letters of a non-personal nature to those in our government, its of utmost importance that UK citizens are privy to their contents.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Energy and the US Dollar: May Issue of TerraJoule.us

      Imported energy as a share of total US energy consumption last year fell to just 11.16%, continuing a dramatic downtrend since 2005, when dependency stood at 30%. This is nothing short of a revolutionary trend-change, especially when you consider the gargantuan energy consumption of the US, which stands just shy of 100 quadrillion btu per year. Because US energy consumption overall has either bottomed, or is set to advance at least a little, the next dramatic move lower in the energy deficit will come in 2017, as LNG exports really get underway. TerraJoule.us believes global currency markets have not yet discounted these coming changes. Viewpoints overall about energy use, production, renewables, and global trade remains firmly anchored to an era that ended roughly a decade ago. Moreover, it’s astonishing that anyone who was watching markets a decade ago could possibly think the US Dollar is headed for trouble today. The US will become energy independent by 2019, according to the TerraJoule.us forecast. While the swings in fossil fuel trade are the driver for this change, the gains in renewables that will start hitting harder in the latter part of the decade will perfect and ensure this new era. Energy independence has typically been a subject for geo-political analysts. However, for our purposes, it’s the effects on the US Dollar and the impact on energy transition more broadly which are the main concerns for energy-focused investment, and the energy mix to 2020.

    • Nepal needs ‘sustainable aid’, says water charity

      In the aftermath of the 7.3-magnitude tremor in Nepal this week, Seattle-based NGO Splash has launched a campaign to raise $500,000 (£320,000) for its water projects in Kathmandu.

  • Finance

    • The Future of Jobs and Wages: A Conversation with Economist Richard Wolff

      WTO, TPP, NAFTA, CAFTA, and a host of trade agreements are causing America to hemorrhage jobs and the resultant downward pressure on wages. Add the productivity gains realized from automation and technology and the future of jobs in America looks pretty bleak. The government is cutting back on social programs and privatized welfare systems dependent upon the whims of the wealthy didn’t work for Louis the XVI or any other aristocracy throughout history. How will American workers support their families and keep our economy vibrant? There is a way but it will take courage. However, the long-term benefits are sustainable and fair. Professor Wolff talks to Tim Danahey and tells us how.

    • European Union VAT and my bookstore

      I really, really dislike this, but EU law leaves me no choice. I’m not comfortable blatantly ignoring tax law. I don’t think the EU could really do anything to me, but I wouldn’t be shocked if a future EU-US treaty were to suddenly make me responsible for years of back VAT. And I would like the option of visiting the EU in the future, rather than risk trouble because I’m evading taxes.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Groups Add to Evidence in “Whistleblower” Tax Fraud Claim Against ALEC

      Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy sent federal authorities new evidence today that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is falsely passing itself off as a tax-exempt charity and effectively using taxpayer dollars to subsidize its lobbying on behalf of private interests.

      Common Cause filed a supplement to its three-year-old tax whistleblower complaint against ALEC, and the two groups sent a joint letter to Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen demanding an investigation, collection of fines and back taxes, and the revocation of ALEC’s status as a tax-exempt charity. Supporting evidence available here.

  • Censorship

    • Greatest Threat to Free Speech Comes Not From Terrorism, But From Those Claiming to Fight it

      We learned recently from Paris that the western world is deeply and passionately committed to free expression and ready to march and fight against attempts to suppress it. That’s a really good thing, since there are all sorts of severe suppression efforts underway in the west – perpetrated not by The Terrorists but by the western politicians claiming to fight them.

  • Privacy

    • Welcome to the ad business, Verizon

      AOL’s fastest-growing business is advertising technology, which few people understand, like, or value.

      In its acquisition announcement this morning, Verizon Wireless declared its $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL, the Internet stalwart, to be a driver of its “over the top,” or Internet-delivered, content strategy.

    • Feds drop case in which cops nailed webcam to utility pole to spy on house

      The Justice Department on Tuesday withdrew its appeal of a lower court’s December ruling that said it was illegal for police to attach a webcam to a utility pole and spy on a suspected drug dealer’s house in rural Washington state for six weeks.

      The government did not comment on its decision to drop the appeal in a brief filing to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

      The video camera operated 24 hours a day. Footage was synced to the computer of a Kennewick Police Department detective who could operate the camera from afar via its pan-and-zoom capabilities.

  • Civil Rights

05.12.15

Links 12/5/2015: Jailhouse 0.5, KDE Applications 15.04.1

Posted in News Roundup at 5:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • IBM partners with Ionic to speed up mobile business app development
  • IBM Embraces Open Source RAD Platform

    To make it simpler for organizations to embrace an open source framework for rapid application development (RAD), IBM has thrown its weight behind the Ionic open source RAD platform.

  • Open Networking Foundation Taps Open Source Director

    The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), today announced the appointment of Dr. Bithika Khargharia as the director of product and community management. Bithika’s service to ONF is being provided by Extreme Networks, an ONF member company where Bithika is a principal architect of solutions and innovation. She will continue in her role at Extreme Networks while also taking on her new responsibilities with ONF.

  • Community is More Important Than Code

    You hear it all the time: Linux and Free/Open Source software depend on contributors. After all, someone has to make all that great software. But what does this really mean? You might think you don’t have any useful skills, or it will be drudgey and no fun, or people will yell at you. The Linux/FOSS universe is very large, and it is quite possible to find yourself in communities that are drudgey and no fun, and people yelling at you. Which is pointless and punitive; why bother? It’s not as though we lack opportunities to enjoy pointless and punitive endeavors.

  • How Comcast is Using OpenDaylight

    Comcast joined the OpenDaylight Project today and we wanted to share how we’ve been using the OpenDaylight platform and how it fits into our long-term network direction.

  • ​How open source Apache’s ‘survival of the fittest’ ethos breeds better software

    From HTTP Server, to Hadoop and Cassandra, there’s no doubting the effectiveness of the Apache Software Foundation in fostering open-source innovation.

    Yet the other side of its collaborative, consensual approach is the freedom it gives people to duplicate software engineering efforts, which in other contexts might be seen as wasteful.

  • Share your software, says NASA guru

    He said instead of software’s inherent value being its cost, it was better as a means to an end. “The value isn’t in the software, it’s in the utility that the software provides.”

    “My call to action is … is there something in your portfolio of products or services that you can open source.”

  • Six Ways Open Source Benefits Your Business

    Open source software projects ensure transparency, enabling community collaboration to improve overall quality. However, the guarantees that come with vendor-backed software projects help ease IT concerns and greatly benefit end users. To maximize business potential, companies are now turning to commercial open source options.

    In commercial open source, backing from a vendor ensures the availability of product support and lets users know that the product is suited for commercial use, even for non-technical end users. According to Olivier Thierry, chief marketing officer of Zimbra, the mutually beneficial relationship between commercial vendor and community creates a powerful positive feedback mechanism that improves all aspects of the software. Any ecosystem needs support from its end users and trained experts if it intends to thrive, and commercial open source creates a platform where new opportunities and innovation can be sparked by this input. However, to make it work for your business, you need to identify the main goals of your commercial open source initiative and ensure transparency, flexibility and long-term value are central aspects of your plan.

    This slideshow features six ways to leverage commercial open source software for your business.

  • EMC creates inaugural open source project
  • New technology and open source at EMC
  • Top chipmakers in open source MIPS push

    Qualcomm Atheros, Lantiq (part of Intel) and Broadcom have joined the Prpl Foundation.

  • Events

    • 15th Anniversary Linuxwochen Vienna

      As all the last year in May the event row called Linuxwochen makes it stop in Vienna and I represented Fedora there. This year it was an special event as the Linuxwochen could celebrate their 15th anniversary. And this years event was indeed special, normally this event is compared to others a smaller one as it is from Thursday to Saturday. But this year it was on Thursday already crowded and it looked some more Germans have found their way to Vienna. Also both of the workshop I gave in Vienna was an success and as always filled with people.

    • GNU Guix talk at OpenTechSummit, Berlin, May 14th
    • Minutes of FUDCon APAC 2015 planning meeting

      We had our weekly planning meeting today. Comparing to earlier Fudcon planning meeting with today’s, we have done lots of progress. Most of the things are already in good shape including Travel, Accommodation, FUDPub, Website and Scheduling etc.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Pivotal and Mirantis forge Partnership to deliver Cloud Foundry on OpenStack

      Mirantis, the pure OpenStack company, has forged a partnership with Pivotal to integrate and deliver the Cloud Foundry-based platform-as-a-service on OpenStack-based cloud infrastructure. Under the deal Pivotal will support Pivotal Cloud Foundry, a distribution of Cloud Foundry, on Mirantis OpenStack.

    • Myth Busting the Open-Source Cloud Part 4

      The idea of open source software development projects is to bring many people and organizations together from around the world to work on a common initiative or goal. It is quite communal in nature. That means lots of different entities are going to be weighing in on code development, design, revisions, security and other issues throughout the lifetime of the project.

      [...]

      To date, more than 150 companies have agreed to support the mission of OpenStack by providing architectural input, contributing code or integrating the code into their business offerings, the community says.

    • GE Launches Cloud Foundry ‘Industrial Dojo,’ Contributes to Open Source to Foster Continued Development of the Industrial Internet
    • Mesosphere’s Data Center Operating Systems Heads to AWS and Azure

      Using DCOS, developers and operators don’t need to focus on individual virtual or physical machines but can easily build and deploy applications and services that span entire data centers. Here’s more on Mesosphere’s news and some relevant excerpts from our recent interview with the company’s Ben Hindman (shown).

    • OpenStack Kilo Cloud Platform Gains Nine New Capabilities

      OpenStack Kilo—the 11th release of the open-source OpenStack cloud project since NASA and Rackspace first launched the effort in 2010—was officially released on April 30, providing cloud administrators with new features and capabilities. A key focus in OpenStack Kilo was stability, as 7,257 bugs were fixed during release cycle. However, bugs weren’t the only focus, as OpenStack Kilo also introduced a new project to the integrated release, as well as new features. The Ironic bare-metal service makes its debut in OpenStack Kilo, enabling cloud administrators to provision bare-metal services alongside virtual resources. In the OpenStack Swift storage project, erasure codes have been added, providing new data protection capabilities. The OpenStack Keystone identity project, meanwhile, gained new federation features, enabling multicloud federation. In all, 1,494 individuals affiliated with 169 organizations contributed to the cloud platform release. The top companies contributing code for Kilo were Red Hat, HP, IBM, Mirantis, Rackspace, Yahoo, NEC and Huawei. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the key innovations in OpenStack Kilo.

    • Intel and Cloudera are Making Headway on the Big Data Scene

      Cloudera and Intel, which have had a significant partnership together are out with many new details on how their Hadoop-focused partnership has accelerated innovation in big data over the past year. Through collaborative efforts they’ve deliered solutions focused on security, optimization of core Hadoop technology in four releases of the Cloudera distribution, and greater manageability.

    • Akanda Releases Version 1.0, the Open Source Network Virtualization Solution for OpenStack
    • DreamHost’s NFV spin-off unveils a network orchestration service for OpenStack

      Akanda Inc., the startup that spun out of DreamHost last year to monetize the network virtualization technology powering its public cloud, has released the first stable version of the software with the promise of helping organizations decouple operations from the underlying infrastructure. It has a high bar to meet from the outset.

    • Akanda and Cumulus Networks Partner to Provide Simplified Virtual Networking for OpenStack

  • Storage

  • Funding

  • BSD

    • Broadwell Graphics, HDMI 4K & Other Features Land In DragonFlyBSD

      Earlier this month we wrote about DragonFlyBSD having experimental Broadwell graphics support and now this updated DRM driver code has landed in the BSD distribution. Besides supporting the new Intel Broadwell HD/Iris Graphics, there’s also a number of other new features.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 6 Will Look To Switch To C++11 By Default

      With GCC 5 the C compiler changed its default to C11/GNU11 and now for the next version, GCC 6, C++11 might become the default C++ language compiler target.

    • Musl Libc Support Lands In Mainline GCC

      Musl has long aimed at being a lightweight, simple, free, and correct libc library. However, hindering its adoption has been out-of-tree patches required against GCC for supporting the Musl C library. Fortunately, Musl support has now been merged into GCC.

    • GNU inetutils 1.9.3

      The GNU inetutils team is proud to present version 1.9.3 of the GNU networking utilities. The GNU Networking Utilities are the common networking utilities, clients and servers of the GNU Operating System.

  • Project Releases

  • Licensing

    • Why doesn’t the FSF release GPG-signed copies of its licenses?

      While verified copies of our licenses can be useful, this is unfortunately a project that sounds straightforward at first, but all the corner cases found in the wild muck it up.

      One relatively frequent request we receive is for the FSF to provide GPG-signed copies of our licenses. GPG is a tool that lets users cryptographically sign or encrypt documents and emails. A GPG-signed document lets anyone who receives it know that they have received the exact same document as the one that was signed. By providing signed documents, users will be able to easily ensure that they have received an unmodified copy of the license along with their software. It’s also possible that some system of signing the documents could help projects tracking the use and adoption of various free software licenses. Providing these signed documents is a simple task: run a command and publish the documents. A trivial investment of resources, or at least that is how it appears at first.

    • SPDX v2 simplifies open source license dependency tracking

      The Linux Foundation has updated its SPDX standard to v2.0, enhancing the ability to track complex open source license dependencies to ensure compliance.

      The Linux Foundation (LF) released version 1.0 of the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) standard in 2011, promoting it as a common format for sharing data about software licenses and copyrights. Now the LF’s SPDX workgroup has released version 2.0 of the standard, with new features that let you relate SPDX documents to each other to provide a “three-dimensional” relationship view of license dependencies.

    • Linux Foundation’s SPDX Workgroup Announces New Open Compliance Standard
    • SPDX Updates Open Source License Compliance Standards

      Software licenses aren’t very useful if no one adheres to them—and adhering to licenses gets tough quickly when you’re dealing with complex supply chains of software whose numerous, ever-moving parts are licensed differently. That’s why the Linux Foundation’s Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) working group has rolled out an updated specification designed to make open source licensing simpler.

    • Protecode Announces Support for SPDX 2.0

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Project To Build Open Source, Street-Legal EV Underway

      Some of the world’s greatest minds are hard at work developing an affordable, long-range electric car for the masses, but the technology needed to do so may already be out there. The Luka EV project at HackaDay is utilizing readily-available open-source information in an attempt to build a 186-mile EV that weighs less than 750 kg/1,653 lbs and only costs around $22,000.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • We thought we could tweet our way to a socialist paradise. The election changed that

    One of the biggest shocks of this election is the realisation that you can’t get a socialist paradise on Earth by tweeting. Or even by putting up really angry statuses on Facebook. Who knew? Actually, as people who do this kind of thing all follow each other, it seems that many of them still don’t realise. In the echo chambers some of us inhabit online, everyone not only votes Labour but crows about it in 140 characters.

  • Vicious Tories

    The Tories will be even worse in this parliament.

  • After Labour Loses With Austerity, US Media Tell Them to Move to the Right

    While it promised to “reverse the Government’s top-rate tax cut, so that those with incomes over £150,000 contribute a little more to help get the deficit down,” it also vowed to “not increase the basic or higher rates of income tax or national insurance.”

  • Nepal earthquake, magnitude 7.4, strikes near Everest

    A major earthquake has struck eastern Nepal, two weeks after more than 8,000 people were killed in a devastating quake.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Swedish court rejects Assange arrest appeal

      Sweden’s highest court has rejected a bid by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to overturn the arrest warrant against him for sexual assault allegations, which means he could yet be sent to the Nordic country for questioning.

    • Assange appeal rejected by Sweden’s supreme court

      Sweden’s highest court has thrown out Julian Assange’s appeal against his arrest warrant, dashing his immediate hopes of an end to his three-year confinement in Ecuador’s embassy in London.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • What Do Iran Trade Sanctions Have to Do With California Pistachios?

      Amid an epochal drought with no end in sight, farmers in California’s Central Valley have entered a veritable well-drilling arms race to capture water from fast-depleting aquifers, causing large swaths of land to sink and permanently reducing its ability to hold water. But none of that has reined in the pistachio industry’s relentless expansion. Acreage devoted to pistachios grew more than 20 percent between 2012 and 2014; at a conference in March, nut magnate Stewart Resnick, co-owner and president of Wonderful Pistachios, urged growers to plant more, more, more, claiming that the tasty nuts deliver an even tastier $3,519 average per acre profit. (Resnick’s team also beseeched growers to invest some of their windfall in lobbying to maintain industry-friendly water rules.)

  • Finance

    • EU’s New Digital Single Market…Isn’t

      It is one of life’s little ironies that the market where geography plays a diminished role – the online sector – is also one where national boundaries are still a huge problem, particularly when it comes to material under copyright, which is often “unavailable in your country” – a ridiculous situation. That’s also the case for the European Union, one of whose core features is the single marketplace. That may be true for analogue goods, but it certainly isn’t for digital ones.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Oh THAT Bernie Sanders: Meet the Press Resumes Talking About Clinton’s Chief Challenger

      The reference to Sanders “suddenly getting into the teens” appears to be a reference to polling of Democrats in New Hampshire, where the Vermont senator got 18 percent support in the last Bloomberg poll, and in Iowa, where he was the choice of 15 percent in the latest Quinnipiac poll.

    • Feds Spent $3.3 Billion on Charter Schools, with Few Controls (Part 1)

      “The waste of taxpayer money—none of us can feel good about,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education just last month.

      Yet, he is calling for a 48% increase in the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) quarter-billion-dollar-a-year ($253.2 million) program designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—an initiative repeatedly criticized by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls.

      CMD’s review of appropriations reveals that the federal government has spent a staggering sum, $3.3 billion, of taxpayer money creating and expanding the charter school industry over the past two decades, but it has done so without requiring the most basic transparency in who ultimately receives the funds and what those tax dollars are being used for, especially in contrast to the public information about truly public schools.

  • Privacy

    • Worker fired for disabling GPS app that tracked her 24 hours a day [Updated]

      A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

    • ​Facebook to Release Its Own Search Engine

      It seems that Facebook is taking an aim at Google by experimenting with its own search engine which will prevent users from leaving the platform.

    • British Snoops GCHQ Openly Recruiting Hackers As Government Seeks More Surveillance Powers

      Now that the Conservative Party has secured a majority government in the UK, it’s pushing ahead with plans to expand the surveillance state with the Communications Data Bill, also known as Snooper’s Charter, which would require communications providers from BT to Facebook to maintain records of customers’ internet activity, text messages and voice calls for a year. This may have emboldened GCHQ, the British spy agency and chief NSA partner, which has, for the first time, openly called for applicants to fill the role of Computer Network Operations Specialists, also known as nation-state funded hackers.

      According to a job ad for a Computer Network Operations Specialist, a student or graduate will have to have, or soon have, “a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree incorporating ethical hacking, digital forensics or information security”.

    • Warrantless airport seizure of laptop “cannot be justified,” judge rules

      The US government’s prosecution of a South Korean businessman accused of illegally selling technology used in aircraft and missiles to Iran was dealt a devastating blow by a federal judge. The judge ruled Friday that the authorities illegally seized the businessman’s computer at Los Angeles International Airport as he was to board a flight home.

    • Nowhere to Run or Hide in the Technology Age

      Free tech is about much more than free software. It’s more than just being able to see and modify code and deeper than the rivalry between proprietary and FOSS or Windows versus Linux. It’s not just about computers. Free tech is also about freedom and rights, and keeping our lifestyle from being destroyed by the misuse of technology.

    • Amateurs Produce Amateur Cryptography

      Anyone can design a cipher that he himself cannot break. This is why you should uniformly distrust amateur cryptography, and why you should only use published algorithms that have withstood broad cryptanalysis. All cryptographers know this, but non-cryptographers do not. And this is why we repeatedly see bad amateur cryptography in fielded systems.

    • BitTorrent’s encrypted P2P chat app Bleep launches publicly for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac

      BitTorrent today launched its encrypted P2P chat app Bleep. You can download the first stable version for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac from bleep.pm.

  • Civil Rights

    • The CIA Did Not Drug Detainees Before Interrogations, Says the CIA

      The CIA subjected “war on terror” detainees it held captive at black site prisons to sleep deprivation, rectal feeding, waterboarding, ice-water baths, painful stress positions, beatings, mock executions, mock burials, and threats of sexual abuse.

    • Government Tells Jeffrey Sterling He’s No General Petraeus; Defends 20-Year Sentence Recommendation

      No sooner had General Petraeus received a mild scolding for handing over pages and pages of classified information to his biographer/mistress than the defense team handling Jeffrey Sterling’s case saw a point of entry to argue that the proposed sentence of 19-24 years in prison was too severe.

      Petraeus, who was also a CIA official, received two years probation and a $100,000 fine. The defense has asked for something more in line with recent prosecutions of whistleblowers and leakers: something between Petraeus and John Kiriakou (30 months), as it were.

    • Prosecutors: Ex-CIA officer in leak case is different from Petraeus, others

      Federal prosecutors on Thursday defended their use of the Espionage Act to prosecute a former CIA officer who leaked information to a New York Times reporter and suggested it was “mistaken” for him to receive a sentence far below what federal guidelines call for because he gave materials to a journalist, rather than a foreign government.

    • CIA leaker Sterling sentenced to 42 months in prison

      A federal judge sentenced ex-CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling Monday to serve 42 months in prison for leaking to a New York Times reporter details of a clandestine agency program aimed more than a decade ago at impeding Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

    • Bangladesh blogger Ananta Bijoy Das hacked to death

      A secular blogger has been hacked to death in north-eastern Bangladesh in the country’s third such deadly attack since the start of the year.

    • Bangladeshi secular blogger Ananta Bijoy Das hacked to death in third fatal attack this year

      Ananta Bijoy Das, a Bangladeshi writer known for advocating science and secularism, was hacked to death by masked men wielding machetes while on his way to work Tuesday morning.

      Das died instantly in the attack, police in Sylhet city told the Associated Press. He is the third Bangladeshi writer to be killed in less than four months.

    • Ralph Nader

      Consumer advocate and political reformer Ralph Nader speaks with Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff about his latest book “Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President 2001-2015;” the conversation covers topics from trade treaties and Democratic presidential candidates, to Gaza, Israel and AIPAC.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Small ISP stands up to Rightscorp’s “piracy fishing expedition” and wins

        Online copyright enforcer Rightscorp contacts alleged Internet pirates, sometimes on their cell phones, and demands $20 per song from them. It’s a business that has led to tens of thousands of payment demands, but Rightscorp is far from profitable.

      • Rightscorp Fails in Bid to Unmask Pirates Using DMCA

        Anti-piracy monetization firm Rightscorp has failed in its bid to unmask alleged Internet pirates. The company attempted to use the DMCA to force ISP Birch Communications to expose its customers’ identities but the company stood strong. A federal judge in Atlanta has now ruled in favor of the ISP by quashing Rightscorp’s subpoena.

05.11.15

Links 11/5/2015: Linux 4.1 RC3, OpenELEC 6.0 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 2:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom firms join MIPS open-source push

    Qualcomm Atheros, Lantiq (part of Intel) and Broadcom have appointed representatives to the board of the Prpl (‘purple’) Foundation, organisation set-up by Imagination Technologies to support open-source software on the MIPS architecture.

  • Events

    • OSCAL Open Source Conference Albania – DAY 1

      Held in Tirana and with attention on gathering free libre open source technology users, developers, academics, governmental agencies and people who share the same idea. Oscal aimed to inform and promote that software should be free and open for the local community and governments to develop and customize to its needs; that knowledge is a communal property and free and open to everyone. The conference is supported and organized by Open Labs, the community that promotes free libre open source culture in Albania since 2012.

    • User stories at Summit and more OpenStack news

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Big data challenges? Look at your people, not your technology

      As anyone pursuing a big data initiative knows, every big data strategy really has two components: the technology and the people. The technology part is actually very simple to solve, relative to the people. As long as you’re not trying to crack big data problems with relational database technology from 2004, this piece of the equation shouldn’t be a big scary beast.

    • Pivotal rolls out Hadoop distro update, new query optimizer

      Just a few months ago, Pivotal announced that it would open source its entire big data stack: the Pivotal HD distribution, Pivotal Greenplum Database, Pivotal GemFire real-time distributed data store, Pivotal SQLFire (a SQL layer for the real-time distributed data store), Pivotal GemFire XD (in-memory SQL over HDFS) and the Pivotal HAWQ parallel query engine over HDFS. These updates, says Michael Cucchi, senior director of Outbound Product at Pivotal, underscore Pivotal’s continued commitment to supporting that open source strategy.

  • CMS

  • Education

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open source, beyond technology

      Here at Opensource.com, the staff, community moderators, and contributors strive to show how the ideas underpinning open source go beyond technology and apply to all aspects of life and society. Imagine organizing a conference around that idea.

    • Open Hardware

      • What if a robot can sense what you think

        Surrounded by small yet sturdy pieces of 3D-printed plastic, a Macintosh and a couple of 3D-printers, sits 22-year-old Diwakar Vaish at New Delhi-based A-SET Training & Research Institute’s robotics lab watching a robot move its mechanical joints to groovy songs from old Bollywood movies. Vaish, who has a faint smile playing along his lips while watching the show, has jolted the robotics sector with his new first ever 3D-printed humanoid robot.

      • Hackaday Prize Entry: Open Source Diesel

        But what about the motors themselves? For his entry to The Hackaday Prize, [Shane] is designing an open source engine. It’s small, it’s a two-stroke, and it’s diesel, but it’s completely open hardware; a great enabling project for all the open source dirt bikes and microcombines.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Khronos Group Releases Final SYCL 1.2 Specification

      The Khronos Group today announced the official release of the SYCL 1.2 specification. SYCL is the Khronos Group’s single-source heterogeneous programming language that serves as an abstraction layer for utilizing OpenCL while writing standard C++ code.

Leftovers

  • Google killing PageSpeed website service

  • Hardware

  • Security

    • Top OpenStack Security Dev from Nebula Didn’t go to Oracle, He Went to Netflix

      Lots of chatter in my news feeds the last few days about Oracle allegedly hiring most of Nebula’s OpenStack devs. Trouble is it’s not entirely accurate.

      [...]

      I can’t speak to the rest of Nebula staff, and no doubt some of them have landed at Oracle – but not all.

    • The Internet of Things to take a beating in DefCon hacking contest

      Hackers will put Internet-connected embedded devices to the test at the DefCon 23 security conference in August. Judging by the results of previous Internet-of-Things security reviews, prepare for flaws galore.

    • The Increasing Problem Of FOSS Mailing List Flooding Attacks

      Recently, I have received a large amount of subscription confirmation emails. These mails are from public mailing lists, especially lists of Free and Open Source Projects, included but not limited to OpenBSD, FreeBSD, GNU Project, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Qt. The “subscribers” are from multiple IP addresses. After I shared my experience to social networks, I have found more than 10 victims of the same attack, included a famous Chinese tech-blog writer. One of us received more than 10k email for 24 hours. Some of our emails have already stopped operating and refusing all new incoming emails.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • The Killing of Osama bin Laden

      A worrying factor at this early point, according to the retired official, was Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden’s upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis. ‘The Saudis didn’t want bin Laden’s presence revealed to us because he was a Saudi, and so they told the Pakistanis to keep him out of the picture. The Saudis feared if we knew we would pressure the Pakistanis to let bin Laden start talking to us about what the Saudis had been doing with al-Qaida. And they were dropping money – lots of it. The Pakistanis, in turn, were concerned that the Saudis might spill the beans about their control of bin Laden. The fear was that if the US found out about bin Laden from Riyadh, all hell would break out. The Americans learning about bin Laden’s imprisonment from a walk-in was not the worst thing.’

  • Censorship

    • The left has Islam all wrong: Bill Maher, Pamela Geller and the reality progressives must face

      Whatever her views on other matters are, Pamela Geller is right about one thing: last week’s Islamist assault on the “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest she hosted in Texas proves the jihad against freedom of expression has opened a front in the United States. “There is,” she said, “a war on free speech and this violent attack is a harbinger of things to come.” Apparently undaunted, Geller promises to continue with such “freedom of speech” events. ISIS is now threatening to assassinate her. She and her cohorts came close to becoming victims, yet some in the media on the right and the center-right have essentially blamed her for the gunmen’s attack, just as far too many, last January, surreptitiously pardoned the Kouachi brothers and, with consummate perfidy to human decency, inculpated the satirical cartoonists they slaughtered, saying “Charlie Hebdo asked for it.”

  • Privacy

    • Snoopers’ charter set to return to law as Theresa May suggests Conservative majority could lead to huge increase in surveillance powers

      The Conservatives are already planning to introduce the huge surveillance powers known as the Snoopers’ Charter, hoping that the removal from government of the Liberal Democrats that previously blocked the controversial law will allow it to go through.

      The law, officially known as the Draft Communications Data Bill, is already back on the agenda according to Theresa May. It is expected to force British internet service providers to keep huge amounts of data on their customers, and to make that information available to the government and security services.

    • US reviews use of cellphone spying technology

      Faced with criticism from lawmakers and civil rights groups, the U.S. Department of Justice has begun a review of the secretive use of cellphone surveillance technology that mimics cellphone towers, and will get more open on its use, according to a newspaper report.

    • 7 reasons why the feds shouldn’t mess with encryption

      Information security professionals were overwhelmingly opposed to a plea to rethink encryption by the Department of Homeland Security at last week’s RSA conference.

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • You Can’t Defend Public Libraries and Oppose File-Sharing

        Public libraries started appearing in the mid-1800s. At the time, publishers went absolutely berserk: they had been lobbying for the lending of books to become illegal, as reading a book without paying anything first was “stealing”, they argued. As a consequence, they considered private libraries at the time to be hotbeds of crime and robbery. (Those libraries were so-called “subscription libraries”, so they were argued to be for-profit, too.)

05.10.15

Links 10/5/2015: Linux Mint 17.2 and Android M Plans

Posted in News Roundup at 4:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Illegitimate Government: News Blackout on London Protest

    Legitimacy is a different question to legality. The government is undoubtedly legal under the current rotten system, but its legitimacy is a different question entirely. Legitimacy lies on the popular consent of the governed. With an extreme government supported by only 23% of the population, actively planning to inflict actual harm on many more than 23% of the population, there are legitimate philosophical questions to be asked about the right of the government to rule. With so many, particularly but not exclusively young people, now reading sources like this one and not being enthralled by the mainstream media, today’s protest is but a start.

  • Labour Urgently Needs Gallery Vernissages

    State propaganda and corporate media are wasting no time in promoting their candidate for leader of the pretend opposition: Chuka Umunna. He ticks absolutely all the right boxes. Private school educated, son of a High Court judge (which did not hold back his career to become a multi-millionaire lawyer) and entirely London based. Umunna has only ever moved out of the M25 on an aeroplane.

  • Science

    • Data science, the future of digitisation

      Large corporations such as Amazon, Ebay, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn are as much data science companies as they are leaders of specific domains.

      Global data science market is projected to be worth $320 billion by year 2020, says Graham Williams, data scientist at data processor company Togaware as well as the Australia Taxation Office.

    • Immense potential for data science domains

      The open source tools for data science domains such as data mining, analytics and big sata, previously used mostly by IT Industry, are increasingly becoming important for governments around the world, said Graham Williams, data scientist at Togaware and Australia Taxation Office. He was speaking at the three-day Workshop on “Data Mining and Analytics with R”, organized by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) at Technopark.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Legislators Introduce Bill Calling For Nationwide Ban On Non-Disparagement Clauses

      Non-disparagement clauses are one of the stupidest things any company can enact. In most cases, it’s almost impossible to enforce them, no matter how artfully crafted. Most aren’t. Most non-disparagement clauses found lying around the internet have been lazily copied and pasted from pre-existing bad ideas instituted by other companies.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Climate change a “hoax,” says key business advisor to Aussie prime minister

      The climate-change-as-new-world-order-conspiracy trope is going strong south of the equator, with the chairman of Australia’s Business Advisory Council claiming that climate science is filled with “dud predictions.” Maurice Newman, who previously served as chancellor of Macquarie University and headed up the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, expressed his views in an opinion piece (subscriber only) published Friday in The Australian.

  • Finance

    • MEPs unimpressed with Commission’s ISDS proposal

      Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström tried to convince MEPs that there are ways to keep the Investment-State Dispute Settlement in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership deal (TTIP). But unimpressed lawmakers failed to greet it as a full-fledged reform.

  • Censorship

    • BBC Wants Google to Remove Top Gear’s IMDb Page

      BBC Worldwide has sent tens of thousands of takedown requests to Google this week, but not all reported links are as bad as they claim. In fact, the company is targeting the IMDb pages of several of its own shows, including Top Gear and The Game, as well as one of Dailymotion’s homepages.

  • Privacy

    • Code Red Media Launch in Perugia

      Simon and I have known each other for years, way back to 2002, when he gave one of the earliest Winston Awards to David Shayler, in recognition of his work towards trying to expose surveillance and protect privacy. That award ceremony, hosted by comedian and activist Mark Thomas, was one of the few bright points in that year for David and me — which included my nearly dying of meningitis in Paris and David’s voluntary return to the UK to “face the music”; face the inevitable arrest, trial and conviction for a breach of the Official Secrets Act that followed on from his disclosures about spy criminality.

    • Anything to Say? unveiled in Berlin

      Last week artist Davide Dormino unveiled his sculpture celebrating whistleblowers in Alexanderplatz, Berlin.

    • Prison Messaging Service No Longer Claims It ‘Owns’ All Of Your Communications

      We recently wrote about some dangerous terms of service from a big prison messaging service, JPay, in which the company claimed to flat out own any content that anyone sent through its service. While the company itself did not appear to be doing stupid things to enforce this, this clause did allow prison guards to put one prisoner in solitary confinement after his sister posted a video he had sent via JPay to social media. The prison claimed it was doing so to protect JPay’s intellectual property.

    • I Give Up on Google: Free is Too Expensive

      The most recent example being retiring Classic Maps. That’s a problem, because the current Maps mysteriously doesn’t show most of my saved (“starred”) places. Google has known about this since at least 2013. There are posts all over their forums about it going back to when what is now “regular” Google Maps was beta. Google employees even knew about it and did nothing. For someone that made heavy use of it, this was quite annoying.

    • How To Keep NSA Computers From Turning Your Phone Conversations Into Searchable Text

      As soon as my article about how NSA computers can now turn phone conversations into searchable text came out on Tuesday, people started asking me: What should I do if I don’t want them doing that to mine?

      The solution, as it is to so many other outrageously invasive U.S. government tactics exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is, of course, Congressional legislation.

      I kid, I kid.

      No, the real solution is end-to-end encryption, preferably of the unbreakable kind.

      And as luck would have it, you can have exactly that on your mobile phone, for the price of zero dollars and zero cents.z

  • Civil Rights

    • Re:publica — The War on Concepts

      In my view this, to date, includes the four wars — on drugs, terror, the internet, and whistleblowers. No doubt the number will continue to rise.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Mega Consults Legal Team Over New Piracy Report

        A new Hollywood commission report investigating the revenue sources of more than 600 supposedly infringing sites has controversially included file-hosting site Mega. The listing marks the second time in a matter of months that the cloud-storage service has been accused of online piracy via an industry-connected report. Yet again, the report’s authors are refusing to comment.

      • Trial of Torrent Site Admin and Hosting Provider Concludes

        An intriguing case dating back more than 3.5 years ended this week when two men went on criminal trial in Sweden. One was the former sysop of a 26,000 member private BitTorrent tracker. The other provided the site with web hosting and allegedly refused to take the site down when copyright holders asked.

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