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● 04.22.14

● Links 22/4/2014: More GNU/Linux Gains, Syria Updates

Posted in News Roundup at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ Will Enterprises Be Next to Warm Up to Chromebooks?

• Chromebooks–portable computers that run Google’s Chrome OS platform–are seeing rapid adoption in many niche markets, including the education market, but the holy grail for Google is to get them in the hands of enterprise users. To achieve that goal, there needs to be a solution that bridges the world of Windows applications with Chrome OS. And, Google and others are working on exactly that challenge.

=> ↺ Digitimes Research: Microsoft facing difficulties in 3 major segments

• As for the partner relations, PC brand vendors are gradually accepting Google’s Chrome OS and even trying to provide dual-OS solutions. Microsoft’s Surface tablets also created a conflict of interest with its tablet vendor partners. With Windows-based smartphones continuing to fall behind Android-based models, most smartphone vendors have placed less attention on Windows Phone and started dropping support after the software giant’s acquisition of Nokia.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 3.15 RC2 Released by Linus Torvalds, Things Go Back to Normal

• “It’s been a week, so here’s another rc. And while -rc1 was one of the biggest rc’s in memory, rc2 looks fairly normal. We had a few niggling issues fixed, but it really wasn’t anything horribly worse than usual. It might be a bit bigger than most -rc2′s, but let’s wait to see after rc3 whether things are actually busier than usual. Quite often rc2 is calmer than rc3, with it taking a week for some issues to show up,” Linus Torvalds said in the announcement.

=> ↺ Linux 3.15 rc2

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ AMD Catalyst 14.4 Brings Full OpenGL 4.4 Support To Linux

• The R9 295X graphics card was announced earlier this month and consists of two R9 “Hawaii” GPUs and 8GB of video memory. However, given the rather poor and not too useful CrossFire support under Linux, the R9 295X will likely not be too beneficial. The R9 295X also costs $1500 USD, so it’s out of the hands of most Linux gamers.

=> ↺ NVIDIA Will Soon Probably Introduce OpenCL 1.2 Linux Support

=> ↺ Linux 3.15 Lands Some DRM Graphics Driver Fixes

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Ubuntu 14.04 LTS vs. Oracle Linux vs. CentOS vs. openSUSE

• Since last week’s release of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS we have been busy benchmarking Ubuntu 14.04 in a variety of configurations. Already some of the Ubuntu “Trusty Tahr” benchmarks we have done recently include 12.04.4 vs. 13.10 vs. 14.04 benchmarks, a 20-way graphics card comparison, server benchmarks, and results in many other articles. We are in the process of doing a larger, server/enterprise-oriented Linux distribution. More distributions are still being tested, but to get a new week of benchmarking started at Phoronix, here are some results of Ubuntu Linux, Oracle Linux, CentOS, and openSUSE.

=> ↺ Clang Fights GCC On AMD’s Athlon AM1 APU With Jaguar Cores

• For this benchmarking we used the stock compilers available through the Ubuntu 14.04 “Trusty Tahr” archive, which provided GCC 4.8.2 and LLVM Clang 3.4 — the current stable versions of each compiler. The CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS set were “-O3 -march=native” to optimize the generated code performance for this particular hardware. GCC 4.8 introduced AMD Jaguar support while LLVM Clang 3.4 followed with the support. GCC 4.9 will already land AMD Excavator (bdver4) support.

Applications

=> ↺ Is it time for Adobe products to come to Linux?

• The issue of Adobe possibly releasing its products for Linux is not a new one. It seems to pop up every once in a while in various articles and discussion threads here and there. There was even a petition to encourage Adobe to release its software for Linux. But is it a good idea? Should Adobe finally begin releasing its products for Linux? I think it would be a smart move on Adobe’s part and I’ll tell you why in this column.

=> ↺ Collectl: An Advanced All-in-One Performance Monitoring Tool for Linux

=> ↺ sed: I wouldn’t dream of explaining it

=> ↺ sendip: Packets and their contents

=> ↺ sentaku: More menu-like options for the cli

=> ↺ ses: emacs strikes again

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Command-Line Cloud: gcalcli

=> ↺ How to install VMWare 10.0.1 on Fedora 20 x86_64

=> ↺ How to get information about graphics card (GPU) on Linux

=> ↺ Schedule Your Jobs in Linux With CRON

=> ↺ How to download webcomics from the command line on Linux

=> ↺ How To Install Ubuntu Tweak Tool 0.8.7 On All The Supported Ubuntu Systems

=> ↺ How To Install Bitcoin 0.9.1 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Elementary OS

=> ↺ How To Install Conky Manager 1.2 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Elementary OS

=> ↺ Launch secure LXC containers on Fedora 20 using SELinux and sVirt

=> ↺ How To Install Chatty 0.6.1 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Elementary OS

=> ↺ How To Install CodeSlayer 4.1.1 On Ubuntu And Linux Mint

=> ↺ How To Install KchmViewer 6.1.1 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS And Their Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How To Install RubyRipper 0.6.2 On On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS And Their Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How To Install PAC Manager 4.5.3.9 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia And OpenMandriva

=> ↺ Learning Emacs

=> ↺ Troubleshooting Linux Applications Without Using the Command Line

• The most powerful tool at your disposal is the command line. With tools like the gdb and strace commands, you have everything you need to help figure out what is causing that application to die. For those unwilling to learn the command line, your tools are a bit less powerful, but still quite helpful. Although the GUI tools won’t give you the raw data needed to send to developers, they will help you troubleshoot the issue at hand. These tools will also give you a deep peek into your system…and who doesn’t want that?

=> ↺ How To Install GNOME 3.12 On Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 Trusty Tahr

• As a reminder, Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 Trusty Tahr, powered by a version of Kernel 3.13.9 optimized by Canonical, is using GNOME 3.10 as the default desktop environment.

Games

=> ↺ Nuclear Dawn FPS/RTS Hybrid to Get a Linux Version After All

=> ↺ Nuclear Dawn Linux support moving out of beta

• Valve’s effort in pushing Steam OS and Linux gaming seems to be paying off. Developers and publishers who thought Linux to be a non-viable option now are porting their games to that platform. And so is GameConnect, the developer behind the RTS and FPS hybrid Nuclear Dawn. After a very long silence, they have just announced that their game is ready for Linux. Back in February, the GameConnect confirmed in an email that no one was working on the Linux version, so it was at a standstill while both the Windows and Mac version were well on their way and working 100%.

=> ↺ Nuclear Dawn Update Has Full Linux Support

• Nuclear Dawn, the post-apocalyptic first-person RTS hybrid video game powered by Valve’s Source Engine, is now out of beta on Linux — two years after the game was formally released for Windows gamers.

=> ↺ Circuits, A Puzzle Game With A Difference And It Sounds Good

=> ↺ Millie Colourful Puzzle Game Released On Steam For Linux

=> ↺ Let’s Play: Dead Island: Riptide

=> ↺ Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs Might Get a Linux Version

• To be fair, there already are some publishers that have shown their support for the game, and 2K is probably the biggest one of them. The newly-announced Civilization Beyond Earth will be arriving on Linux, although the port is being handled Aspyr Media, which is not exactly ideal.

=> ↺ KartSim, A Multiplayer Kart Racing Game

=> ↺ Star Citizen Video From PAX, Featuring Game-play & Looking Stunning

• Star Citizen is a game you cannot help but get excited over. A new video has surfaced from PAX where parts of the game where shown off and it doesn’t disappoint. Move over Eve Online!

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ Cross-Desktop Collaboration During FreeDesktop Summit 2014

• Taking place earlier this month in Nürnberg at the SUSE office was the 2014 FreeDesktop Summit where members of GNOME, KDE, Unity, and LXDE-Qt desktops collaborated over joint topics important to the success of the Linux desktop in a cross-desktop world.

=> ↺ Freedesktop Summit 2014 Report

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Linux Voice – Kate wins the advanced text editors group test

• Nice to see that our work on Kate is awarded.

=> ↺ Monday Report #12 – Amazement!

• Here’s a short video he shot (the colors is of course the phone – we’re not going for a sepia theme just yet… or are we?). Just look it! Look I tell you what – you go to a design office and go “hey you know what a group of dedicated individuals working together in cooperation can do faster and better than you?” and then show them the widget theme and the activity the cooperation and just the wonder of it.

=> ↺ KDE 4.14 Release Schedule Published

=> ↺ I am GSOCer this year

• Hello planet! Okay, that’s not even a word, GSOCer..! but I am selected in Google Summer of Code 2014 with KDE. My project is Integrating Plasma mediacenter with Plasma Next and porting it to KF5 and Qt5. My mentors are Sinny Kumari and Shantanu Tushar Jha.

=> ↺ GSoC 2014: Improving the QML/Javascript Language Support of KDevelop

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME Developer Adds Tablet Support To Wayland’s Libinput

• The libinput library that’s a generic means of handling Linux input devices so the support can be standardized and shared amongst other Wayland compositors and other possible “clients”, now has patches for tablet support.

Distributions

Screenshots

=> ↺ Lubuntu 14.04

=> ↺ Edubuntu 14.04

=> ↺ Ubuntu Studio 14.04

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Docker: Container virtualization goes mainstream

• Red Hat and Ubuntu are Linux rivals and they disagree on many technical details, but they do agree on one thing: Docker, a container technology is going to be a major virtualization technology in the years to come.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Linux Top 3: Ubuntu 14.04, Debian Gives Squeeze More Life and Red Hat Goes Atomic

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS

• Ubuntu 14.04 was released recently and as usual the other flavors of Ubuntu have also been updated to 14.04 including Ubuntu GNOME. Ubuntu GNOME tends to get overlooked a bit, given all the attention that goes to the main Ubuntu release. However, that’s a shame since it has quite a lot to offer anyone who prefers the GNOME interface to that of Unity.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 14.04, AntiX Review, and Robolinux 7.4.2

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Rugged Linux box offers Ethernet access to serial gizmos

• Taiwan-based Korenex, owned by Beijer Electronics Group, has been spinning its Linux-based, JetBox industrial controller and router computers since at least 2007, with more recent models including the circa-2011 Jetbox 9345-w. The new JetBox model 5300-w is one of its lower-end boxes, run by a 185MHz Atmel AT91RM9200 processor, and supported here with just 64MB of RAM.

=> ↺ Pogoplug Safeplug review – anonymous browsing instantly

Phones

Android

=> ↺ Android kitchen computers feature transparent touchscreens

• Cloudproject and Elam Kitchen have launched a line of Android-based home furnishings and appliances that feature transparent multitouch displays.

=> ↺ NASA sending Google’s Project Tango smartphone to space to improve flying robots

• Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first Google smartphone to be sent up to the ISS and strapped to SPHERES: in 2011, a Nexus S was sent up too, also with the intention of augmenting NASA’s SPHERES with more sensors.

=> ↺ Google ramps up Android security, scans all apps now

• Mixed news this week for Android users as Google changes its approach in protecting Android devices against malicious apps code.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Telerik Open Sources Mobile App UI Software Code

• The offering makes the source code of 38 UI widgets in the Kendo UI Core publicly available for use by both commercial and non-commercial developers. In addition, developers have access to related tools for mobile app development, such as templates and input validation. The resources are available from both Telerik’s website and a GitHub repository.

=> ↺ Why an open source community beats access to tech support

• I’ve been using Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS), for the websites I manage for over four years now. Though there may be some quirks in working with an open source product, I cannot imagine doing it any other way.

=> ↺ 7 skills to land your open source dream job

• “Work on stuff that matters” is a famous call to action from founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Tim O’Reilly. But, how about working on stuff that matters while getting paid for it? There are an abundance of open source-related jobs out there if you’ve got the right skills.

• Mark Atwood, Director of Open Source Engagement at HP gave a talk on How to Get One of These Awesome Open Source Jobs at the Great Wide Open conference in Atlanta, Georgia this year (April 2 – 3). His talk was originally targeted to students, but he later removed the “Advice for Students” part because the seven tips below really apply to anyone looking to score their open source dream job.

Events

=> ↺ Call For Participation is Open for the Xen Project User Summit in New York City

=> ↺ Schedule is Set for LinuxCon and CloudOpen

• The Linux Foundation has announced the keynote speakers for its LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America event, which takes place August 20-22 at the Sheraton Chicago. It looks like it will be a good event, and the CloudOpen schedule looks particularly compelling. LinuxCon has actually sold out every year since its debut, and the CloudOpen part of the conference has been increasing in scope.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ Apache OpenOffice hits 100-million download milestone

• “Apache OpenOffice has been downloaded 100 million times,” reads an announcement by The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) which oversees more than 170 Open Source projects and initiatives. ASF, a non-profit corporation, provides organizational, legal, and financial support for a broad range of over 170 open source software projects. Apache projects deliver enterprise-grade, freely available software products that attract large communities of users. The pragmatic Apache License makes it easy for all users, commercial and individual, to deploy Apache products.

=> ↺ Rebuilt LibreOffice 4.2.3 packages fix KDE-related bug

Education

=> ↺ Code.org on reaching the next 100 million computer scientists (SIGCSE keynote)

Funding

=> ↺ Google Is Financing A Lot Of Great Open-Source Work This Summer

• Google just announced their list of accepted student projects for this year’s Google Summer of Code. After going through all of the projects on the list for the different upstream open-source projects involved, there’s a ton of improvements to be worked on by students this summer and financed by Google. This is perhaps the most exciting Google Summer of Code ever.

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Munich praises open source development community

• The German city of Munich is complimenting the free and open source software development community for providing fast and easy assistance. On the blog of the city’s IT department, Peter Onderscheka, business unit manager for IT stategy and IT security, writes how the developers’ quick responses helped the city implement new services. Examples include sending alerts about new job openings, a solution based on Phplist, and an online order form for coupons, using Pdfsam.

• “Users of open source products can easily get in touch with the developers, pose questions, propose features and even help fix bugs”, Onderscheka writes. “The developers usually respond immediately.”

• “These informal and direct contacts provide straightforward and free access to the core developers of open source software”, he adds.

• Onderscheka thanks two developers in particular, Michiel Dethmers, from the Netherlands, who is involved in the Phplist project, and Italian Andrea Vacondio, helping the the city tweak Pdfsam.

• Choosing the Phplist newsletter solution allowed Munich to rely on the feedback from the community “which answered in detail our questions about security.”

Openness/Sharing

Open Data

=> ↺ The daily mission to spread open data at Open Knowledge

• She has a passion for technology and design. Moving from Italy to Berlin has taken Beatrice to the heart of technology in Europe. But, it was a trip to Stockholm, Sweden that led her to join Open Knowledge.

Programming

=> ↺ Programming is fun – the free software column

• Computer programming is an art and is essential to the way we live. Computing provides the bricks and mortar of our lives, it’s an important component in the way our world is built and shouldn’t be tucked away under sufferance in a dry and dusty science classroom as an adjunct to something else. Programming is fun and practical and useful, and makes things happen. Just by grasping a few concepts, anyone can be a programmer and turn a game on its head, make something work – and this is a world that the Raspberry Pi was made for, a tool such as Meccano and Lego that is useful and fun for both teachers and pupils alike, and is as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

=> ↺ Open Source Better Than Proprietary Code

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ The Latest ‘Cosmos’ Explains How Corporations Fund Science Denial

• The most amazing thing about Fox’s new Cosmos series is that it exists at all. A program that is, at its core, educational, airing at 9 p.m. on Sunday and competing with shows like Game of Thrones…in what universe does that happen?

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Fukushima disaster: Tokyo hides truth as children die, become ill from radiation – ex-mayor

• The tragedy of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster took place almost three years ago. Since then, radiation has forced thousands out of their homes and led to the deaths of many. It took great effort to prevent the ultimate meltdown of the plant – but are the after effects completely gone? Tokyo says yes; it also claims the government is doing everything it can for those who suffered in the disaster. However, disturbing facts sometimes rise to the surface. To shed a bit of light on the mystery of the Fukushima aftermath, Sophie Shevardnadze talks to the former mayor of one of the disaster-struck cities. Katsutaka Idogawa is on SophieCo today.

=> ↺ Russia won’t import GMOs, has ‘enough space and opportunities to produce organic food’

• The importation ban, issued with the consent of the Russian parliament, was initiated in late February. As the orders trickle down, a widespread monitoring effort will be placed over the Russian agricultural sector. Imports will be heavily inspected to assure that GMOs aren’t entering the country. This new all-out ban strengthens very restrictive policies already put in place. Current Russian law requires producers to label any product containing GMOs in excess of 0.9 percent of the product.

Security

=> ↺ The Heartbleed drama queens

• The news is rife with screeching reports about the Heartbleed vulnerability, with some news outlets questioning the security model of open source. If you aren’t familiar with it, Heartbleed is “…a security bug in the open-source OpenSSL cryptography library, widely used to implement the Internet’s Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol” according to Wikipedia. While it certainly is a bad thing, it’s also not the armageddon of the Internet that some in the media have been proclaiming it to be, and it’s not a harbinger of doom for open source software development either.

=> ↺ Easter egg: DSL router patch merely hides backdoor instead of closing it

• First, DSL router owners got an unwelcome Christmas present. Now, the same gift is back as an Easter egg. The same security researcher who originally discovered a backdoor in 24 models of wireless DSL routers has found that a patch intended to fix that problem doesn’t actually get rid of the backdoor—it just conceals it. And the nature of the “fix” suggests that the backdoor, which is part of the firmware for wireless DSL routers based on technology from the Taiwanese manufacturer Sercomm, was an intentional feature to begin with.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ MANPADS to Syria Rebels: Good or Bad Idea?

=> ↺ Syrian rebels get SA-16 anti-aircraft missiles after receiving advanced anti-tank weapons

• Syrian rebels have been sighted wielding anti-aircraft weapons in various combat sectors including the Damascus region in the last few days. Just as on April 6, debkafile was the first publication to disclose the arming of Syrian opposition forces with their first US weapons, BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles, our military sources now reveal that they have also acquired – and are using – Russian-made 9K310 Igla-1 aka SA-16 anti-tank rockets, which have an operational range of 5.2 km.

=> ↺ US ordered to release memo in Anwar al-Awlaki drone killing

• Federal court rules in favour of ACLU and New York Times to force release of papers describing legal justification for strike

=> ↺ Obama ordered to divulge legal basis for killing Americans with drones

• The Obama administration must disclose the legal basis for targeting Americans with drones, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in overturning a lower court decision likened to “Alice in Wonderland.”

=> ↺ Obama Will Finally Have to Explain Why the US Can Kill Americans with Drones

• In the years-long conversation about President Barack Obama’s incredible drone wars, we’ve heard opaque, albeit scintillating, references to threat matrices and kill lists. But there’s one thing we’ve never heard: What is the president’s legal rationale for extrajudicial killing of Americans with drones?

=> ↺ 55 al-Qaida militants reported dead in Yemen after US-backed air offensive

• At least 55 al-Qaida militants have been killed in Yemen, the country’s interior ministry claimed after an intensive weekend air offensive in which US drones are believed to have been involved.

=> ↺ In Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and now Ukraine: catastrophe follows US and Nato meddling

• Different though Ukraine is from Iraq and Afghanistan there are some ominous similarities in the Western involvement in all three countries, says Patrick Cockburn

=> ↺ More than 100 hate-crime murders linked to single website, report finds

• Stormfront founder Don Black, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, criticized Miller for giving users of his site a bad reputation. “We have enough of a problem with how we are portrayed without some homicidal whack job coming along and reinforcing that,” Black told the Daily Beast. After he was banned from Stormfront, the SLPC said Miller posted more than 12,000 times on a similar forum, Vanguard News Network, whose slogan is “No Jews, Just Right.”

=> ↺ A Key Test for International Law

• In truth, if colonial conquest and force majeure are legitimate grounds of sovereignty, and if extermination of a population can wipe out the legal right to self-determination, then in international law Britain has the right to Diego Garcia and to give it as tribute to their US overlords. But if international law has any relationship of any kind to principles of justice, then Britain should not be permitted to reap the dubious benefit of genocide. What international law actually is in the neo-conservative era is the real question before the UN tribunal now looking at the Diego Garcia question.

=> ↺ Missile Strikes in Yemen and Weapons to Syria: the US Steps Up its Middle East Military Interventions

• American drone missile attacks and air strikes killed more than three dozen people in southern Yemen over the weekend. The carnage coincided with press reports that the Obama administration is moving to ship advanced weapons to “rebel” groups fighting the Assad government in Syria.

=> ↺ Seymour Hersh: Turkey Behind 2013 Sarin Gas Attack in Syria

• Turkey was behind the horrific Aug. 21, 2013, sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of innocents in a Damascus suburb “to push [President] Obama over the red line” and strike Syria, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh claims in the London Review of Books.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Cumbrian nuclear dump ‘virtually certain’ to be eroded by rising sea levels

• Britain’s nuclear dump is virtually certain to be eroded by rising sea levels and to contaminate the Cumbrian coast with large amounts of radioactive waste, according to an internal document released by the Environment Agency (EA).

=> ↺ James Dyson Is Designing A Giant Vacuum-On-A-Boat To Clean Ocean Trash

• James Dyson invented the best vacuum cleaners. Now, with the M.V. Recyclone barge, he’s applying the same ideas to sucking up plastic pollution from the world’s rivers. We talked to him about his plans.

=> ↺ ‘Cowboy Indian Alliance’ Steps Forward in Earth’s Time of Need

• In the week ahead, a coalition of tribal communities, ranchers, farmers and allies calling itself the ‘Cowboy Indian Alliance’ plans to lead a series of protests, ceremonies, and direct actions in the heart of Washington, DC in order to drive home their united opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and the destructive expansion of tar sands mining and fossil fuel dependence it represents.

=> ↺ Canadian aboriginals see no compromise on oil sands pipeline

=> ↺ Study: Fuels from corn not better than gas

• Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration’s conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.

Finance

=> ↺ Spain’s ‘Robin Hood’ swindled banks to help fight capitalism

• They call him the Robin Hood of the banks, a man who took out dozens of loans worth almost half a million euros with no intention of ever paying them back. Instead, Enric Duran farmed the money out to projects that created and promoted alternatives to capitalism.

Censorship

=> ↺ Twitter blocks two accounts critical of Turkish govt

• Twitter executives have admitted that the company has blocked two Turkish social media accounts which were used to leak secret government documents and accuse authorities of widespread corruption.

Privacy

=> ↺ How to run your own e-mail server with your own domain, part 1

=> ↺ Taking e-mail back, part 2: Arming your server with Postfix and Dovecot

=> ↺ Taking e-mail back, part 3: Fortifying your box against spammers

=> ↺ Taking e-mail back, part 4: The finale, with webmail & everything after

=> ↺ Putin’s ‘Clapper’ Moment: What He Said Vs. What Russian Intelligence Actually Does

• Snowden’s puzzling single-question Q&A with Russian president Vladimir Putin on the topic of domestic surveillance prompted many to believe this was an indication that he was, at the very least, under control of Russian intelligence, if not actually acting in concert with it. Putin took the apparent softball and lined it right down the middle, responding with a series of statements and denials that made Russia appear to be the antithesis of the US government: tightly controlled intelligence built on respect for its citizens’ privacy.

=> ↺ Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City

• A sergeant in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department compared the experiment to Big Brother, even though he went ahead with it willingly. Is your city next?

=> ↺ Hollywood-style surveillance technology inches closer to reality

• When sheriff’s deputies here noticed a burst of necklace snatchings from women walking through town, they turned to an unlikely source to help solve the crimes: a retired Air Force veteran named Ross McNutt.

=> ↺ How Urban Anonymity Disappears When All Data Is Tracked

=> ↺ U.S. digital spying mesh network for freedom presents a problem

Civil Rights

=> ↺ Police raid home searching for owner of Twitter account mocking mayor

• Covered by the Peoria Journal Star in Illinois this week, seven members of the Peoria Police Department executed a search warrant yesterday in order to discover the identity of someone operating a fake Twitter account that parodied Peoria mayor Jim Ardis (pictured above). The police seized multiple mobile phones in addition to computers stored at the residence. Three people at the home were brought into the police department for questioning and two members of the household that were working at the time were picked up by police from their place of employment and taken to the station.

=> ↺ Sweden Goes Full Retard, Requires Registration Of Every Individual Playing Lottery

• Sweden, like most European countries, has a number of governmentally-run state lotteries that are an efficient extra tax on the people who can’t math properly. Because of the jackpot sizes (nine-figure euro or dollar amounts), they are still hugely popular. From June 1, the Swedish state lottery requires people who want to buy a simple lottery ticket to identify and register.

=> ↺ Science teacher’s suspension spurs petition drive

• A popular Los Angeles high school science teacher has been suspended after students turned in projects that appeared dangerous to administrators, spurring a campaign calling for his return to the classroom.

DRM etc.

=> ↺ Home entertainment implementations are pretty appalling

• Which left dealing with the installed software. The BDT-230 is based on a Mediatek chipset, and like most (all?) Mediatek systems runs a large binary called “bdpprog” that spawns about eleventy billion threads and does pretty much everything. Runnings strings over that showed, well, rather a lot, but most promisingly included a reference to “/mnt/sda1/vudu/vudu.sh”. Other references to /mnt/sda1 made it pretty clear that it was the mount point for USB mass storage. There were a couple of other constraints that had to be satisfied, but soon attempting to run Vudu was actually setting a blank root password and launching telnetd.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Five Things to Know About How Corporations Block Access to Everything From Miracle Drugs to Science Research

• Should a company be able to patent a breast cancer gene? What about a species of soybean? How about a tool for basic scientific research? Or even a patent for acquiring patents (see: Halliburton)?

• Intellectual property rights are supposed to help inventors bring good things to life, but there’s increasing concern that they may be keeping us from getting the things we need.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Google Asked to Censor Two Million Pirate Bay URLs

• The Pirate Bay reached a dubious milestone today, as copyright holders have now asked Google to remove two million of the site’s URLs from its search results. According to Google this means that between one and five percent of all Pirate Bay links are no longer discoverable in its search engine.

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