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● 01.23.13

● Links 23/1/2013: Cinnarch 2013.01.23, BackBox 3.01

Posted in News Roundup at 11:25 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Linux pros saw a giant salary leap in 2012: Dice

• Following up on its January 2012 study that found tech salaries had finally started to climb again, IT careers site Dice today published an annual update showing not just a continuing trend in that respect, but also a huge boost for those in the Linux field.

=> ↺ Will 2013 finally be the Year of Linux ?

• There has been some debate and consideration in recent years about when the Linux gaming platform will officially gain ground? Critics and market skeptics have wondered when it will really take off and it will be Linux’s turn to procure large portions of the market share. New games and gaming consoles geared toward this system have left many asserting that 2013 will finally be the “year of Linux.” But why?

=> ↺ OpenArtist Is a Linux Distro Prodigy

• Despite its youth, openArtist is the picture of a full-fledged Linux distro with a slew of specialty features for graphics production. Among its strong points is the universal approach it takes toward bundling software. If it’s useful to graphic artists, openArtist makes it accessible. Open source, freeware, public domain, abandonware, commercial, even — gasp — Windows programs are included.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Puts Out Linux 3.4 “LTSI” Kernel

• From the Linux Foundation’s Consumer Electronics Workgroup is a Linux 3.4 kernel that’s part of their Long-Term Support Initiative. The LTSI Linux 3.4 kernel will be maintained for two years while back-porting some of the features of newer Linux kernel releases.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Nouveau Can Beat NVIDIA With Cairo In Select Cases

• Chris Wilson has shared his testing experience of Cairo with NVIDIA ION hardware on the open-source Nouveau driver and the closed-source NVIDIA blob. In certain situations, the Cairo performance does better with Nouveau than the official NVIDIA Linux driver.

Applications

=> ↺ Record Your Linux Desktop Experience with FDesktopRecorder

=> ↺ Professional Graphics Creation on Linux

• There is far more to multi-media production on Linux than GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), the beloved drawing and painting program, though it seems that is all there is because it gets all the attention. GIMP is wonderful, but there is an entire universe of profession-level multi-media creation applications in all creative arenas: drawing and illustration, photography, desktop publishing, music, and movies and videos. Today we’ll look at my recommend Linux distributions for multi-media production, graphics creation applications. Then in future installments in this series we’ll dive into audio production, video production, CAD, 3D printing, and other industrial programs.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Learn Linux and Become a Tech with Levinux

=> ↺ How To Quickly Secure A CentOS Web Server

=> ↺ Restarting GNOME Shell using Terminal, or How to use SIGHUP

=> ↺ ikog: An extensive to-do list

=> ↺ Parole – Simple media player

=> ↺ Rsync guide & tutorial

=> ↺ Introduction to GNU R on Linux Operating System

=> ↺ How to build a Linux router

=> ↺ Installing Nginx With PHP5 (And PHP-FPM) And MySQL Support On Fedora 18

Games

=> ↺ Valve urges users to get Ubuntu and join Linux beta for Steam

=> ↺ Open Source Game Consoles: Defiinitely Coming Soon

• As we’ve been reporting, hardware devices running gaming platforms built on open source are quickly heading our way. Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, which makes Steam for Linux and very popular game platforms and bundles for Windows and the Mac, has recently confirmed rumors that Valve will release its own Linux-based gaming hardware, and an early prototype was displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ The many Profiles of Enlightenment’s E17

• There are many desktop environments in active development, but none is as customizable as the E or Enlightenment Desktop Environment. But of all those desktop environments, its development (or public releases) has been comparatively slow.

• Enlightenment is one of those projects that caught my attention years ago, but which I decided, after playing with it for sometime, that it was not yet ready for prime time. I’ve been quietly tracking its development since.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ NetworkManager in GNOME beta supports AP operation

• In the latest GNOME 3.8 beta, NetworkManager makes the transition from version 0.9.6.4 to a pre-release version of NetworkManager 0.9.8. In addition to setting up an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network, where the Wi-Fi hardware and drivers support it, it is now able to set up an access point. The next major release of the network configuration program, which is used in many other desktop environments, also supports 4G LTE network modes, bridge master devices and bridge ports. It is also able to automatically activate a VPN for certain network connections. The recently released Fedora 18 already uses a pre-release version of NetworkManager 0.9.8 which includes these features.

Distributions

=> ↺ Kali Linux – A Teaser into the Future.

• Originally, BackTrack Linux was developed for our personal use but over the past several years, it has grown in popularity far greater than we ever imagined. We still develop BackTrack for ourselves because we use it every day. However, with growth and a huge user base, we have an obligation to ourselves, our users, and the open source community to create the best distribution we possibly can.

• With this in mind, about a year ago a bunch of us at Offensive Security started thinking about the future of BackTrack and brainstormed about the features and functionality we’d like to see in the next and future revisions. One of our main topics of conversation was the option of swapping out our custom development environment for a fully fledged Debian-compliant packaging and repository system.

=> ↺ BackTrack rebuilt as Kali Linux

• Penetration testing platform BackTrack has been relaunched as Kali Linux after a major restructure.

• The creators of Backtrack told SC details of the new Debian platform are being kept under wraps, adding the system is a “fully fledged Debian-compliant packaging and repository system”.

=> ↺ Exe GNU/Linux, New Distro with Trinity

• No three letters look any more strange to Linux users than exe, which is why a new distro named Exe GNU/Linux caught me by surprise in today’s Distrowatch Weekly. Ladislav Bodnar, our exalted Keeper of the Record, recently added Exe to the Distrowatch.com database and that was my cue to boot it up.

=> ↺ SolusOS Shows off GNOME Fork in New Alpha

• It’s hardly been a week since the developers at SolusOS announced their fork of GNOME Classic. Dubbed Consort, it set the Linux world abuzz last week. Today the team announced the first release with that new desktop: SolusOS 2 Alpha 7.

New Releases

=> ↺ Cinnarch 2013.01.23

=> ↺ BackBox 3.01

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat expands cloud management services

• Today, anyone can set up a cloud. Managing it, though, is another story. So it came as no surprise last year, when Linux-giant Red Hat announced updates to its open hybrid cloud solutions portfolio, following the acquisition of ManageIQ, a leading provider of enterprise cloud management and automation solutions.

=> ↺ Red Hat Strengthens Its Presence In Cloud With ManageIQ

• Cloud is the future and depending on who you are and how you use it, it can be good or bad for you. Talking strictly about enterprises cloud is the way to go. Red Hat, the most successful open source company continues to strengthen it’s cloud portfolio and signed an agreement to acquire ManageIQ last moth.

Fedora

=> ↺ Fedora Linux considering switching out MySQL for MariaDB

=> ↺ Blu Ray Ripping on Fedora 18

• After doing so searching on Blu Ray ripping on Linux I found that no one seemed to have a good how to for Blu Ray Ripping on Fedora 18. I also was not finding a method that worked consistently for free, or close to free. I found a great piece of software called MakeMKV. I was able to get Blu Ray ripping working fast and easy.

• MakeMKV is free to try for 30 days, after that the ask for 50$ for the purchase. I really think this is a good buy. It was one of the better programs I have found for Blu Ray ripping and they support Linux.

=> ↺ Fedora 18 revisited: Cinnamon, Xfce, LXDM, and a ‘wow’ for anaconda

=> ↺ Gnome 3.6 System Settings Changes for Fedora 18

• The system settings manager has received some attention for the release of Gnome 3.6. The settings manager itself has been improved with larger and more visible icons. Many of the settings modules have been upgraded as well. There are now several new options and preferences to choose from, so be sure to look around.

=> ↺ Fedora 18 Spherical Cow Gnome Review: Stable and efficient with professional looks but has Gnome 3 agonies!

• Fedora has always intrigued me to keep track of the latest happenings in the Linux world and especially what’s brewing at the RHEL stable! Also, if I think of a comparable distro to Ubuntu, Fedora is the only legitimate choice! Just like Ubuntu, Fedora also inspires innumerable spins (like Kororaa, Fuduntu, of which I am a big fan now!). So, when the release note of Fedora came on 15th Jan, I was quick to download all the four versions (Gnome, KDE, XFCE and LXDE). This is the first review of the series and I start with the Gnome spin.

=> ↺ Weekend Project: Setting up MythTV on Fedora 18

=> ↺ Anaconda “fun” moment

=> ↺ End Of MySQL Begins? Fedora Linux Switches To MariaDB

• There is serious time ahead for Oracle owned technologies such as MySQL, Java and many more. MySQL’s open source nature was questioned recently and now Fedora seems to be putting the first nail as the project is planning to switch to MariaDB. Jaroslav Reznik (Red Hat’s Fedora project manager) stated that “MariaDB, which was founded by some of the original MySQL developers, has a more open-source attitude and an active community. We have found them to be much easier to work with, especially in regards to security matters.”

Debian Family

=> ↺ First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu considers “huge” change that would end traditional release cycle

• In the nine-year history of Ubuntu Linux, a new version of the operating system has come out every six months. But Canonical, Ubuntu’s developer, is considering ditching that model in favor of one that produces an entirely new version only once every two years—while speeding up the overall pace of development by adopting a “rolling release” cycle in between.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Video Q&A This Week

=> ↺ Community Driven Ubuntu Phone Core Apps

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

=> ↺ Android Candy: WiFi Analyzer

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Fifty shades of open source

• To many, open source is black and white — software is either open or not. Jack Wallen sees the new world order in shades of gray and begs the open source community to be more open in their attitude.

=> ↺ Monetizing open source platforms — something new?

• Sharing software code via free open source has been around since the 1980s and has enjoyed much success. Open source has been applied to content, websites, technological parts, and other materials. Can and should an open source platform be monetized?

=> ↺ element22 Launches φmod Open Source Conceptual Data Model Project

=> ↺ 9 Things That Are Never Admitted About Open Source

• You might think that a group of intelligent people like the members of the free and open source software (FOSS) community would be free of hidden taboos. You might expect that such a group of intellectuals would find no thought forbidden or uncomfortable—but if you did, you would be wrong.

• Like any sub-culture, FOSS is held together by shared beliefs. Such beliefs help to create a shared identity, which means that questioning them also means questioning that identity.

=> ↺ Open Source Camera On Its Way

• Because when we talk about software, we don’t talk about something made of physical objects, we talk about basically ideas and concepts, that never get out of the digital realm (or don’t usually get out). Making hardware is not easy — there are so many external factors over which you have no control – and usually it requires decent financial investment. So it’s a really big thing when someone actually makes open source hardware.

=> ↺ Open Source Skills Continue to Have Clout in the Job Market

• Career site Dice.com is out with results from its 2013-2012 Salary Survey, which confirms that times are getting much better for people seeking technology-focused jobs. And, in particular, the results reflect a trend that we saw gaining pace last year, which is that skills with open source platforms and tools can greatly increase your likelihood of getting hired and commanding a top salary. Here is more on what Dice found.

=> ↺ 2013-2012 Dice Salary Survey

Events

=> ↺ PowerLinux Users Group: Founding Meeting

• Every renaissance starts with one thing that you can point your finger at and say “that’s where it all began.” Sometimes you realize that moment while you are right in the middle of it, but most times you can’t define it until well after it happens.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Mozilla Unveils Firefox OS Developer Phones

• Mozilla today unveiled two new developer preview phones that feature the browser maker’s Firefox OS.

• The phones – dubbed Keon and Peak – are being developed via Spanish phone maker GeeksPhone in partnership with Telefonica.

• “This week we are announcing our new Firefox OS developer preview phones because we believe that developers will help bring the power of the web to mobile,” Mozilla said in a blog post.

=> ↺ Mozilla unveils open source Firefox smartphone

=> ↺ Mozilla Unveils First Two Firefox OS Phones

• After news of its development throughout all of last year, Mozilla’s Firefox OS platform for smartphones has made an official debut on two phones that will ship to developers working on apps. The phones will ship to developers in February, but won’t become available to everybody until later this year. As we’ve reported, Mozilla is primarily targeting emerging markets with the phones, but there have been signs that they may be marketed throughout Europe and in the U.S. Here are more details.

• You can find Mozilla Hacks’ post on the new phones here. According to the post, the phones have the following specs and names:

Business

=> ↺ Small Business Trends: Linux & Open Source in 2013

• A lot of small businesses are reluctant to try Linux because they think it means moving away from Microsoft Windows, and you can’t blame them. Change is disruptive, and while a lot of software applications are cross-platform, most aren’t, so leaving Windows often means leaving favorite software behind.

Funding

=> ↺ Open-source handheld seeks support

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ German public Projektgruppe advocates Interoperabilität

• A parliamentary committee in Germany has called for a change in national laws to enable ‘public administrations’ to open source their software and make it free to the private sector.

• According to parliamentary member Jimmy Schulz, government departments in Germany are currently prohibited from being part of the free software development process.

=> ↺ As Obama heads back to office, a battle rages over the tech that got him reelected

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ Open Source Design Tools for Human Rights Activists

• The world’s premier human rights organizations often have entire communications teams with dedicated graphic designers to celebrate their work. But not every organization can afford to have a designer. Even those organizations that do have design gurus may decide, for strategic reasons, to keep tight control over their workflow so that they are not bombarded with too many requests. Not to worry! There are several open source design tools that allow anyone to create killer flyers, posters, icons, or campaign — the only limit is your imagination. More importantly, learning basic design allows you to approach your human rights work more creatively and reach audiences with more diverse forms of storytelling.

Open Hardware

=> ↺ Interview with Jenn Karson, co-founder of Vermont Makers

• I am the founder of two small studios, Sesamedia and Studio Ju Ju. I’m also a co-founder of Vermont Makers. I was introduced to open source technologies and Arduino (and SparkFun) in 2007 when I was working toward an MFA in Design and Technology at the San Francisco Art Institute. I mainly use the Arduino to build interactive sound installations and sound art pieces, and I also help creative and community initiatives use open-source software like Joomla! and WordPress.

=> ↺ How Electric Vehicles Could Gain From Open Sourcing

• Can carmakers learn from the open source industry? Yes, if they build a strong business model around it and throw away discarded business practices.

Programming

=> ↺ GitLab 4.1 adds sign-up pages and public repositories

Leftovers

=> ↺ Wikipedia Moving Data Centers

• The Wikimedia Foundation is moving its data center today away from their original home in Tampa, Florida to Virginia. According to the Wikimedia technical team, even though all reasonable precautions have been taken, it is still prudent to expect major disruptions in service during the transition. The move today culminates a plan that began nearly four years ago.

=> ↺ The Enemization of Everything or an American Story of Empathy & Healing?

=> ↺ Beijing’s stellar Idle No More coverage: The SinoFile

• Maybe this is China’s way of telling Harper: ‘Hey, we’re not so different, you and I.’

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ Greater transparency in police forces

• In a greater step towards transparency, South Yorkshire and Cleveland Police Forces have announced that they will publish full details of dismissals and resignations due to disciplinary circumstances on their websites.

=> ↺ Five Days Before Latest College Shooting, TX Legislator Introduced ALEC/NRA Bill to Allow Guns on Campus

=> ↺ End the drone strikes against children in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

=> ↺ The DOJ’s Torturer-Protection Program

• Scott Shane at the New York Times reports that “in more than six decades of fraught interaction between the agency and the news media, John Kiriakou is the first current or former C.I.A. officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information to a reporter.” Kiriakou succumbed to mounting legal bills and months of pressure from federal prosecutors by agreeing to a plea bargain under which he will serve thirty months for the crime of confirming to a reporter the identities of two former colleagues associated with the agency’s Bush-era extraordinary-renditions and torture programs: Deuce Martinez and Thomas Donahue Fletcher. The former was involved in harsh interrogations and later went to work with the principal architects of the CIA’s torture program, Bruce Jessen and James Elmer Mitchell. The latter was a principal coordinator of the extraordinary-renditions program. Shane’s report ably recounts the essential facts surrounding the Kiriakou case. It falls a bit short, however, in examining the broader policy issues raised by the case.

=> ↺ Spy Bases: 9 Secretive HQs of the World’s Intelligence Agencies

=> ↺ Law Blog Fireside: Jeh Johnson On War, Zero Dark Thirty, and Paul Weiss

=> ↺ Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou: Justice Department is Targeting Whistleblowers

=> ↺ Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley’s New Film Exposes Hidden Truths of Covert U.S. Warfare

=> ↺ Afghanistan’s colossal intelligence failure

• Close observers of Afghanistan are not likely to be surprised by recent allegations contained in a United Nations report that the Afghan National Security Directorate, the CIA’s leading counterterrorism partner in South Asia, used whips and electric shocks to squeeze confessions out of suspected insurgent detainees. There are many ways to describe the directorate, or NDS as it is locally known, but a model of modern intelligence gathering and investigative efficiency is not one of them.

=> ↺ Feds dispute CIA leaker’s contrition

• Former CIA officer John Kiriakou—who’s expected to be sentenced Friday to two and a half years in prison for giving a journalist the name of another CIA officer involved in the terrorist interrogation program—is trying to minimize the seriousness of his actions and is falsely claiming to be a whistleblower, prosecutors charged in a court filing last week.

=> ↺ What Zero Dark Thirty gets wrong about Guantánamo lawyers

=> ↺ Gitmo prosecutor not backing down

=> ↺ Thoughts on John Kiriakou whose Portrait will be Unveiled January 23, 2013, in Washington, D.C.

=> ↺ ‘Dirty Wars’ Film Brings Global War on Terrorism Out of the Shadows

• “The world is a battlefield,” is the tagline for Dirty Wars, a documentary that premiered days ago at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The film produced by Nation national security correspondent Jeremy Scahill and Big Noise Films director Rick Rowley attempts to bring the US global war on terrorism out of the shadows by spotlighting the CIA agents, special forces operators, military generals and US-backed warlords who are waging this war. The film also follows Scahill as survivors of night raids and drone strikes are located and interviewed about their experiences.

=> ↺ Rather than Lying to Congress, CIA Now Blows It Off

• Five months into Obama’s first term, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta caused a scandal by telling Congress about Blackwater-staffed assassination squads deployed under the Bush Administration; we would ultimately learn the program was run by a still-active mafia hitman.

=> ↺ Why would President Obama say a “decade of war” is over when it isn’t?

• President Obama’s inaugural address made him sound like a new man. “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war,” he said. He told us that “a decade of war” is ending under his watch.

• How did Americans hear that pledge? If you’ve been paying attention to the United States’ increasingly dangerous shadow wars, its proxy wars, its drone wars — or “kinetic operations,” as some call them — you were likely very surprised and put off to hear the President say that “lasting peace” doesn’t “require perpetual war.”

• “We see what you are doing, Mr. President,” I thought to myself. “How could you say such a thing?” Hearing such a blatant misrepresentation of reality made me feel as if I was a child again, and my parents were telling me what they thought to be a harmless lie.

=> ↺ The problem with torture

• Torture has racial underpinnings. Rarely do those that torture do so to individuals like themselves.

=> ↺ Obama misleads over end to war

=> ↺ THE WAR THAT OBAMA FORGOT

=> ↺ Panetta: U.S. Assistance to French in Mali Could Serve as Model

=> ↺ Anarchists: the FBI thinks you are paranoid

• The ACLU has published an internal FBI “Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit” publication titled “Anarchist Extremism Overview.” It lists a number of First Amendment protected activities that supposedly dangerous anarchists engage in, including “creat[ing] a political statement” and “generat[ing] media coverage for their cause.” The presentation is heavily redacted.

=> ↺ Sh*t the FBI says

=> ↺ Obama’s Inaugural Speech Misleadingly Suggests End to Perpetual War

• President Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address for his second term. It was a veritable stew of historical quotes from American history laced with several nods to progressive positions and achievements. It acknowledged past struggles launched by US citizens for equality and justice but mostly lacked a vision for what Obama hoped to accomplish in his second term.

=> ↺ The Audacity of Fluff: A Critical Reading of Obama’s Inaugural Address

• President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address is unlikely to be much remembered by future generations. Its authors have a talent for “rhetorical craftsmanship,” as James Fallows astutely noted. But to what end?

• Were hard truths expressed? Were complicated concepts rendered in clarifying language? Were the disagreements that divide us insightfully characterized? Was an argument advanced? No, the craftsmanship was marshaled in place of substance rather than in support of it. The president expertly associated himself with certain ideas and evoked certain impressions.

• He burnished his brand rather than acting like a leader.

=> ↺ Undermining International Humanitarian Law

=> ↺ Mohamud Trial: FBI Agents Detail Involvement In Alleged Bomb Plot

• Undercover agents worked with Mohamud on a plan to bomb Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square two years ago.

=> ↺ Half-Jewish, Half-Arab Woman Sues FBI, TSA, Frontier Airlines Over 9/11 Strip Search

• A half-Jewish, half-Arab Ohio woman is suing Frontier Airlines, the FBI, TSA and other government agencies after she says was removed at gunpoint from a flight on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, strip-searched and jailed because of her ethnicity.

=> ↺ White House Keeps Secrets as CIA Agent Goes to Prison

=> ↺ Obama’s CIA Director Pick Called for Censoring the Media

• Naturally he meant in the Muslim world. He certainly wouldn’t apply that formula to the United States or Rush Limbaugh.

=> ↺ John Kiriakou Hopes Aaron Swartz’s Death Sparks Discussion Of Prosecutorial Overreach

=> ↺ CIA nominee once wrote censorship was acceptable, denied absolute rights exist

=> ↺ Brennan at the CIA Might Surprise Us

=> ↺ John Brennan Said What? CIA Nominee Denied Existence Of Universal Human Rights

• Current counterterrorism adviser to the president and CIA director nominee John Brennan wrote in his 1980 graduate thesis unequivocally that “absolute human rights do not exist.” r. In answering the question, “Are there universal human rights?” he sums up over 200 years of classical liberal thinking in the English Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. To refute this he just cites Edmund Burke and Jeremy Bentham in dismissing natural rights as simple nonsense. To this he concludes that human rights are subjective, and that “the reality of human rights is therefore determined by the morality of the individual and the legal code of the state.”

=> ↺ CIA FOIA Request Denied before Hillary’s Benghazi Testimony

=> ↺ Inside the Ring: CIA in Benghazi

=> ↺ JI chief slams US free hand to CIA on drone strikes

=> ↺ Govt giving CIA free hand: PTI

=> ↺ Pak seeks US explanation on manual allowing CIA to launch drone strikes in country

• Pakistan has asked the US to halt its highly controversial drone campaign following reports that US President Barack Obama’s administration was planning to give the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) a “free hand” to continue its remotely-controlled war in tribal regions.

• According to a foreign ministry official, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar raised the issue in a meeting with Richard Olson, the US ambassador in Islamabad, reports The Express Tribune.

=> ↺ CIA admits full monitoring of Facebook, Google, Youtube and other social networks

=> ↺ Drones in Our Time – by Rosa Brooks

=> ↺ Nine killed in US assassination drone attacks in Yemen

• At least nine people have been killed in two separate US assassination drone attacks in Yemen.

=> ↺ Yemen minister urges ground ops, not drones, against militants

• A cabinet minister criticized on Tuesday the use of pilotless U.S. drones against suspected al Qaeda militants in Yemen, a tactic that has outraged communities in targeted areas, and urged a move to ground operations to avoid hurting civilians.

=> ↺ PBS’s Rise of the Drones charts robots among us

• The ever-shifting lines between ground-breaking technology and morality and ethics are being drawn into sharp focus once again, both in the shadowy world of cyberspace and in the more mundane day-to-day details of everyday living, as this week’s Nova program Rise of the Drones illustrates.

=> ↺ UN To Investigate Impact Of Drones

=> ↺ Human Rights Minister condemns use of drones in Yemen

=> ↺ Activists protest in Des Moines against drone plan

=> ↺ Activists protest Iowa Air Guard drone plans

• Peace activists called Wednesday for the Air Force to drop plans to establish a drone operation center in Des Moines.

• Waving signs that said “No War Drones, Des Moines,” about 20 activists protested outside the Des Moines Air National Guard Base. The military plans to pilot drone aircraft at the base, now that the 21 F-16 jets based there will be removed.

=> ↺ Schumacher targets drones with bill

=> ↺ Inauguration Day: Two Nobel Laureates, Drones Apart

• In the most blatant act of symbolism, as Africa is now threatened by a President who touted the importance of his African roots four years ago, Obama reaffirmed his Presidential oath today on both Abraham Lincoln’s Bible – and that of Martin Luther King – on the day dedicated to Martin Luther King.

=> ↺ Author Teju Cole: Twitter Strike on Drones

• “Why Twitter? Why not Twitter?” Nigerian-American author Teju Cole tells anchor Marco Werman about his latest series of tweeted tales. The topic: drone strikes. A heavy topic for just 140 characters but Cole says it’s the best platform to get the word out there. With more than 70,000 followers, perhaps he’s right.

=> ↺ Civilian Drones in US Could Possibly Be Hijacked for Use in Attacks

=> ↺ Former Obama Official Defends Drone Program, Calls For More Transparency

=> ↺ ‘Drones make US extremely unpopular in Pakistan’

=> ↺ Charlottesville City Council Talks Drones, Stormwater and More

=> ↺ The drone warrior

• There is a lot of angst about President Obama’s selection of former Senator Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., for Secretary of Defense. There are several complaints about Hagel, some of them legitimate, but the biggest seems to be that he learned the same lesson about the Iraq war that most of the country did — that it was a colossal mistake.

Cablegate

=> ↺ Postcards from Julian Assange

=> ↺ WikiLeaks Legal Adviser: “We Steal Secrets” Overlooks Key Facets of Julian Assange’s Persecution

• Alex Gibney’s new documentary, “We Steal Secrets,” bills itself as “the Story of WikiLeaks,” but our guest Jennifer Robinson, a legal adviser to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, claims it misses key facts

=> ↺ Assange’s extradition is only the tip of the iceberg

• Frank Symeou explained how his 21-year-old son, Andrew, spent a year in horrendous prison conditions in Greece. Eighteen months after he was extradited he is still waiting for the trial to start. Edmond Arapi described his 12-month battle against extradition to Italy where, with no notice whatsoever, he had been sentenced to 16 years for murder. Ultimately, Italian judges were persuaded that Arapi could not possibly have committed the crime and the wrong man had been convicted. He had spent weeks in custody, torn from his young family.

=> ↺ Justice for the PayPal WikiLeaks protesters: why DDoS is free speech

• There is no weapon on the planet more powerful than speech.

• In recent years, the digital revolution has led to new and unique ways for people to express themselves, and speech has flourished around the world, bringing it closer together. As a lawyer and as someone who promotes the advancement of individual liberties, I was fascinated by the advent of online speech, which was quickly followed by the advent of online protest.

=> ↺ The Uses of Paul Farmer: The Doctor and the Haitian Machine

• We spoke cordially for two hours. Farmer said he hoped his words would give me pause. But they haven’t.

• I found him to be defensive, wishy-washy and self-contradictory.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ From Walden to the White House

• For civil disobedience to be justified, something must be so wrong that it compels the strongest defensible protest. Such a protest, if rendered thoughtfully and peacefully, is in fact a profound act of patriotism. For Thoreau, the wrongs were slavery and the invasion of Mexico. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it was the brutal, institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow South. For us, it is the possibility that the United States might surrender any hope of stabilizing our planet’s climate.

=> ↺ “We will respond to the threat of climate change” – Looking ahead from the Inaugural Address

Finance

=> ↺ Global Inequality Skyrockets: Report Says Top 1% Have Increased Wealth By 60% Over Last Two Decades

• The world should work to end extreme wealth by 2025 and reduce the massive inequality has has skyrocketed over the past twenty years, the anti-poverty group Oxfam states in a new report [pdf].

• While discourse on inequality has grown more prominent in recent years thanks to Occupy Wall Street and major institutions highlighting the problem of extreme inequality, the focus has largely been on only one-half of the problem: ending extreme poverty. Though Oxfam praises the efforts to eradicate extreme poverty, the group urges people to “demonstrate that we are also tackling inequality- and that means looking at not just the poorest but the richest.”

=> ↺ How Goldman Sachs beat the Volcker Rule

• It has no been more than 2½ years since President Obama signed the Volcker Rule into law, as part of the broader Dodd-Frank financial reform package. And in that time Wall Street bankers have learned a very important lesson: Don’t be too quick to honor Washington’s wishes.

• The Volcker Rule was intended to prevent banks from taking too many risks with their own money, including in areas like private equity and hedge fund investing. The idea was that banks primarily exist to serve clients rather than to enrich themselves via levels of proprietary and principal account investing that could (theoretically) lead to another Lehman-style collapse.

=> ↺ Councillor resigns in protest of use of ‘lie detector’ tests

• A councillor from Cornwall Council has resigned in protest of the council’s use of lie detectors to help catch benefit cheats. We congratulate Councillor Ferguson for taking the the moral high ground when it comes to privacy and proportionality in councils.

• Councillor Ferguson took exception to the Council signing up to a contract with Capita to provide “voice risk analysis” as part of a scheme to help combat benefit fraud. The contract comes at a cost of £50,000 with the Council promising that the system could save at least £1 million. However, there is little evidence to suggest that this technology actually even works.

=> ↺ An Example of Petty Corruption and Cronyism at State

• Part of the the Department of State, the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA), among other things, issues all U.S. passports. Passports are a huge cash cow, generating enough money alongside visa fees to self-fund the Bureau.

=> ↺ Report: DOJ Criminal Chief Lanny Breuer Stepping Down

=> ↺ The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street from prosecutions

• A new PBS Frontline report examines a profound failure of justice that should be causing serious social unrest

=> ↺ White House won’t block short-term debt-limit increase

=> ↺ New Audits Reveal VBA Crisis Worsening

• In a new audit, Veterans’ Disability Benefits: Timely Processing Remains a Daunting Challenge, the GAO notes that VBA’s paper-based claims processing system involves “multiple hand-offs, which can lead to misplaced and lost documents and can cause unnecessary time delays.”

• The official report concludes in all-too familiar fashion that waiting times have increased for veterans in part because VBA regional offices have shifted resources away from appeals and toward claims in recent years. The GAO confirms that VBA processes new and easy claims first, which often leaves older, complicated claims gathering dust.

=> ↺ Hungary students win dispute over tuition fee

=> ↺ An action-packed thriller is about to unfold in Davos, Switzerland

• In secret meetings in tiny rooms, the rich plot to get even richer

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ In the Fight for Secrecy, Are the Koch Brothers Like Rosa Parks?

• Civil rights organizations like the NAACP and groups dedicated to overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision have found common ground in recent months, coming together under the “Money Out, Voters In” banner to fight the dual threats of money in politics and voter suppression. But on the other end of the political spectrum, right-wing activists like Karl Rove are drawing parallels between heroic African-American civil rights activists in 1950s Alabama and privileged 1%ers like the Koch brothers, arguing that a 1958 Supreme Court ruling protecting the NAACP’s membership list should allow the super-rich to write million dollar checks without the public ever knowing.

=> ↺ Another Walker Aide Sentenced to Prison in Secret “John Doe” Investigation

• Another top official to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker during his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive has been sentenced to two years in prison for embezzling funds intended for families of veterans. The sentencing appears to close a chapter in the ongoing “John Doe” investigation into corruption and misconduct in the Walker County Executive’s office, but the book remains open.

Censorship

=> ↺ GitHub blocked in China

• The project hosting site GitHub is currently inaccessible from China, cutting off the country’s developers from the valuable resource. A ViewDNS.info check shows that the service cannot be looked up throughout China. The blocking is frustrating many Chinese developers who cannot access one of the world’s major repositories of open source software. As the country’s firewall controllers rarely give any information on why sites are blocked, it is suggested by some that github.com is being blocked because of a dispute over a train ticket booking plugin.

=> ↺ Valley gun manufacturer: BOA froze funds over product

Privacy

=> ↺ Facebook Is Recycling Your Likes To Promote Stories You’ve Never Seen To All Your Friends

• If Facebook‘s new Graph Search feature has you thinking a little harder about what you’ve “liked” for fear that an ironic dalliance in years past could come back to embarrass you, here’s one more thing to worry about. Facebook is now recycling users Likes and using them to promote “Related Posts” in the news feeds of the user’s friends. And one more thing, the users themselves have possibly never seen the story, liked the story or even know that it is being promoted in their name.

=> ↺ Google Transparency Report shows rise in data requests

• That is 17% up on the same period the previous year, and 71% more than 2009′s corresponding months.

=> ↺ Google & Your Data

=> ↺ Why Skype (real-time) is losing out to WeChat (async)

• I would agree with most of your points about why WeChat is more usable than skype. Time and time again, we see that the reasons why specific apps are more popular can be explained in terms of usability. But it’s also important to see that user features are deeply embedded in existing cultural norms.

=> ↺ Alert: Our Privacy About to be Destroyed in Brussels?

• The consideration of the “data protection” privacy regulation is in progress in the European Parliament, with a vote in the consumers committee (IMCO) on Wednesday. It is the object of an unprecedented lobbying campaign, mostly driven by US companies. If citizens don’t act, banks, insurance companies and Internet service operators will have a free hand to collect, process, store and sell all of our personal data, which will enable them to know and direct all that we do online and offline.

=> ↺ US Corporations Win Against Privacy in EU Parliament Consumer Committee

• The “consumer” (IMCO) committee of the European Parliament just voted to soften protection of EU citizens’ privacy, caving in to the lobbying of giant US companies1. This is the first of many upcoming votes and tells us a lot about the balance of powers in the Parliament. It should act as a wake up call for citizens to defend their right to privacy against the illegitimate collection, process and trade of their personal data.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ A Letter I Wish Progressive Groups Would Send to Their Members

• With President Obama’s second term underway and huge decisions looming on Capitol Hill, consider this statement from Howard Zinn: “When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.”

• [...]

• Corporate power, climate change and perpetual war are running amok while civil liberties and economic fairness take a beating. President Obama has even put Social Security and Medicare on the table for cuts.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Review: What to expect from Mega’s free 50GB of cloud storage

=> ↺ Opinion: January 22, 2013: To the MIT community

• President Reif has asked me to lead a review of our involvement in the events that began in Fall 2010, when the library system learned that large numbers of articles were being downloaded from JSTOR, up through Aaron Swartz’s shocking suicide on January 11. Among the thousands of news articles and postings over the past week — many strongly critical of MIT — there was at least one comment that saw a glimmer of encouragement that the administration has assigned this task to a faculty member strongly identified with the ideals of free and open access to information on the Net, the same ideals that Aaron championed so passionately. I’m grateful and humbled by President Reif’s expression of confidence, and I’ll try to approach this review with fairness and with respect to Aaron’s memory, to his family, and to our community.

=> ↺ My thoughts on Aaron Swartz, and the benefits of openness

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