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● 07.06.14

● Links 6/7/2014: Korea’s Domestic GNU/Linux Plans

Posted in News Roundup at 2:01 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Lennart: The State & Future Of Systemd

• Lennart Poettering gave a talk recently in Beijing about the state of systemd and its future ahead.

• Lennart keynoted at the joint FUDCon Beijing 2014 with GNOME.Asia 2014 event and he talked about the current position of systemd and its future going forward, while acknowledging it’s evolved more than just being a basic init system to being “a set of basic building blocks to build an OS from.”

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ NVIDIA Releases 331.89 Long-Lived Linux Driver

• NVIDIA has today released ther 331.89 Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD graphics drivers within their long-lived 331.xx graphics driver branch.

=> ↺ AMD’s GL Performance Monitor Gets Wired Up For Nouveau

• While two X.Org GSoC projects already failed this summer, student developer Samuel Pitoiset continues making great progress on his work for implementing performance counter support within the open-source Nouveau NVIDIA graphics driver.

Applications

=> ↺ Rdesktop: Access Windows Desktops Remotely From Linux

=> ↺ Transmageddon 1.2 ‘All bugs must die’

• So I finally managed to put out a new Transmageddon release today. It is primarily a bugfix release, but considering how many critical bugs I ended up fixing for this release I am actually a bit embarassed about my earlier 1.x releases. There was for instances some stupidity in my code that triggered thread safety issues, which I know hit some of my users quite badly. But there were other things not working properly either, like dropping the video stream from a file. Anyway, I know some people think that filing bugs doesn’t help, but I think I fixed every reported Transmageddon bug with this release (although not every feature request bugzilla item). So if you have issues with Transmageddon 1.2 please let me know and I will try my best to fix them. I do try to keep a policy that it is better to have limited functionality, but what is there is solid as opposed to have a lot of features that are unreliable or outright broken.

=> ↺ Transmageddon 1.2 Fixes Up GNOME Transcoding, Adds VA-API GPU Encoding

=> ↺ Corebird, An Alternative GTK+3 Twitter Client

• If you’re like me, you may not have heard much about Corebird, a native GTK+3 Twitter client. Which is a bit surprising really, as Corebird is a very nice and stable application that holds it’s own with any of the other clients out there and deserves more love.

=> ↺ PCManFM 1.2.1 File Manager Released with Numerous Fixes

• PCManFM or PCMan File Manager has reached version 1.2.1 earlier today. While there’s no official announcement on the project’s blog or homepage, we’ve dug up the changelog in order to notify our users of what’s new in this release.

=> ↺ PCManFM 1.2.1 Released

=> ↺ xargs: Obviously first

=> ↺ xaric: The simple client with pretty colors

=> ↺ xlhtml and ppthtml: Not only Word needs converting

=> ↺ xidel: Taking away the pain of XML

Proprietary

=> ↺ What are the alternatives to Skype on Linux

• It is pretty much acknowledged by now that Skype is evil. Maybe not as evil as a DRM on a brand new game, but very close. To summarize the events, Skype has been bought by Microsoft, has been spied on by the NSA, is now quitting its peer-to-peer protocol for a centralized system, and on top of that, is proprietary software. The worst of it is that just like a DRM on a game, we put up with all of this for the product. It is true that Skype at first did help users go into the VoIP realm. Its interface is intuitive, and its setup is simple. However, it is time to move on. For this, here is a list of six software to replace Skype with on Linux.

=> ↺ Pandora FMS 5.1 Released!

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Photos – PicasaWeb integration: Add the Miner

=> ↺ How To Install MythTV 0.27.2 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How To Install Atom 0.108.0 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, LXLE And Other Ubuntu Derivatives

=> ↺ How To Install KKEdit On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ Program more Minecraft Pi

=> ↺ Linux Basics: How To Find Size of Directory Commands

=> ↺ How To Install EPEL Repository On CentOS And RHEL 7

=> ↺ Install Nginx and php-fpm in Slackware 14.1 via Slackbuilds method

=> ↺ How To watch Netflix on Ubuntu based distributions

=> ↺ Half a dozen things to do after installing openSUSE 13.1

=> ↺ Things to do after installing Fedora 20

=> ↺ How To Install The NVIDIA 331.89 Driver On Linux Systems

=> ↺ How To Install LiVES 2.2.5 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ Transmageddon 1.3 Video Transcoder Released [Ubuntu Installation]

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Wine 1.7.21 released

• The Wine development release 1.7.21 is now available.

• What’s new in this release (see below for details): - Support for critical sections in the C runtime. - Unicode data updated to Unicode 7.0. - Support for interlaced PNG encoding. - Initial stub for the Packager library. - Various bug fixes.

Games

=> ↺ Here’s Your July 4, 2014 Indie Game Bundle Update

=> ↺ Two Months & Counting, LGP Remains Offline

• At the end of April LGP was migrating servers and expected to “keep downtime to an absolute minimum” while more than two months later the once leading Linux game publishing company remains offline.

=> ↺ The Most Popular Linux Gaming Articles For June 2014

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ Enlightenment’s Evas OpenGL Now Supports S3TC Textures

• Enlightenment is flying high these days with the great contributions being done by Samsung’s investment into the project.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Calligra sprint in full process

• One week-end of Calligra sprint is currently going on in the old and cozy center of Deventer in the Netherlands.

=> ↺ Cutelyst 0.2.0 Released: A Web Framework Powered By Qt 5

• The Cutelyst 0.2 release that happened today is more real-world-ready. This release features framework documentation at Cutelyst.org, a WordPress-like blog has been written using Cutelyst as an example app, API updates, and a variety of other changes.

=> ↺ Cutelyst 0.2.0 is out!

• Five months ago I announced the very first release of Cutelyst, a web framework powered by Qt 5. Time passes and I started shaping my real world applications written with it, I should probably release a newer version earlier but it’s not very nice to keep releasing API that changes a lot, however next version (0.3.0) will still contains API changes.

=> ↺ Sysadmin update: website migration

• We just finished migrating one of our stacks to a new and powerful piece of hardware. It was a major activity and took about 9 hours with around 2-3 hours of downtime per CMS. The activity is now complete, however there are a few rough edges that we’ll be ironing out over the weekend.

=> ↺ KDE HIG: Search refined

• Technically, the functions to reach those goals all bring their own interactions and workflows. For users it is necessary to perceive clearly what happens and how to achieve the desired result. Unfortunately, some uncontrolled growth in KDE applications has lead to non-standardized implementation and application-specific short-cuts.

=> ↺ Next Generation Klipper

• A few weeks ago I contacted Thomas Pfeiffer with the idea to design a new user interface for Klipper in Plasma 5.1. Surprisingly he informed me that a discussion was already started in the KDE Forums. Which is awesome as that means there was already some ideas on how the user interface could look like. Last week the number of new bug reports for KWin get lower so I started to look into Klipper for 5.1.

=> ↺ KDevelop 4.7 Beta Comes Packed With New Features

=> ↺ After Ubuntu, Windows will also follow KDE’s convergence story

• The KDE Community introduced the concept of convergence way back in 2008 with the arrival of KDE 4.x (back then it was still KDE Desktop). If you ever tried KDE on your netbook you would have noticed that the desktop that got installed was different from that you would get when you install the same iso on your desktop.

• That was convergence. KDE knew what kind of form factor you have and would offer an interface optimized for that device.

• KDE community was also developing something called Plasma Active, which was aimed at devices using touch-based interface as found on today’s smartphones and tablets.

Distributions

=> ↺ The Latest Distro Trying For Commercial Success Uses Arch & Wayland

• A new Linux distribution under development is among the latest dreaming of commercial success in hopes of finally conquering the Linux desktop and having their OS pre-installed on systems being sold in brick and mortar stores.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Scientific Linux 7 Alpha Arrives, Based On RHEL 7

• Scientific Linux, the distribution developed by produced by the Fermi Laboratory and CERN as a derivative of the open Red Hat Enterprise Linux code-base, is preparing for their RHEL7 re-spin.

=> ↺ Insider Selling: Michael Cunningham Sells 10,000 Shares of Red Hat Stock

Fedora

=> ↺ Fedora Comes Up With A Policy For Simple Patches

=> ↺ Simple Patch Policy

Debian Family

=> ↺ My Free Software Activity in June 2014

• After having put in place the infrastructure to allow companies to contribute financially to Debian LTS, I spent quite some time to draft the announce of the launch of Debian LTS (on a suggestion of Moritz Mühlenhoff who pointed out to me that there was no such announce yet).

=> ↺ Tracker.debian.org is live

• With the help of the Debian System Administrators, it’s now setup on tracker.debian.org! This service is also managed by the Debian QA team, it’s deployed in /srv/tracker.debian.org/ (on ticharich.debian.org, a VM) if you want to verify something on the live installation. It runs under the “qa” user (so members of the “qa-core” group can administer it).

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ sUbuntu MATE Remix 14.04 Alpha Now Available for Download

• We are pleased to announce today, July 4, that the Ubuntu MATE Remix 14.04 has reached Alpha stage and is available for download as Live DVD/USB images that can be installed.

• Ubuntu MATE Remix 14.04 Alpha comes as a July 4 surprise to many who believed the controversial project would become reality sooner or later. It beautifully integrates the MATE desktop environment into the latest upstream Ubuntu release.

• The distribution was developed by a few members of the Ubuntu community and provides users with an old-school graphical desktop environment, which reminds us of the good ol’ times of Ubuntu 10.04.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 14.04 vs. 14.10 Snapshot Performance Comparison

• For some brief benchmarking during Independence Day in the US, I ran some tests comparing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS stable against a fresh development snapshot of Ubuntu 14.10.

• Over Ubuntu 14.04, the Ubuntu 14.10 “Utopic Unicorn” in its current development state has the Linux 3.15 kernel (but will end up using Linux 3.16), Unity 7.3.0, Mesa 10.2 (10.3 should make it in time for Ubuntu 14.10), and GCC 4.8.3 (while GCC 4.9 should make it for 14.10).

=> ↺ The First Early Alpha Version Of Ubuntu MATE Remix 14.04 Is Now Available For Download

• As I have already written a few times already, Canonical’s Alan Pope and Martin Wimpress, one of the leading MATE developers have been working a lot at Ubuntu MATE Remix, a Ubuntu spin which uses Mate as the default desktop environment.

=> ↺ Ubuntu MATE 14.04 Alpha 1

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Cinnamon 2.2 in Mint 17 ‘Qiana’ [Overview & Screenshots]

• Cinnamon has come a long way in terms of both usability and responsiveness, and Mint 17 ‘Qiana’ stands proof of this. As mentioned in my review of Mint 17 KDE edition, this release will be supported for five years, and it will also be the base for development of future Mint releases.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Will your next car run Linux? Cars go open-source with Automotive Grade Linux

• Will your next car run Linux? Cars go open-source with Automotive Grade Linux It’s early days, but Automotive Grade Linux already looks better than most proprietary systems

• In-car tech has just gone open source with news of a new automotive-grade build of the Linux operating system. But what does this mean for your next car?

• Linux in various forms is already widely used in cars. But to date, it’s largely been used in embedded systems, the operations of which are mostly obscured from owners and drivers.

=> ↺ Automotive Grade Linux brings open source to the auto industry

Phones

Android

=> ↺ Why Android One was Google’s most important announcement at I/O

• Reaching out to the next billion connected users is a phrase that has been tossed around liberally.

• Mozilla used it when they announced their $25 smartphone initiative. Nokia’s (now Microsoft’s) Stephen Elop used it when Nokia launched the revamped Nokia Asha line last year, and again when he announced the Nokia X. Last year Google used the same phrase as it launched Android 4.4 KitKat.

• However, these companies’ efforts are still to leave a mark in the countries where the supposed next billion connected customers reside. Firefox’ $25 smartphones are yet to enter the market, neither Nokia’s Asha nor X line have turned out to be “hot items”, while affordable smartphones running KitKat are still few and far between.

=> ↺ Self-signing custom Android ROMs

• The security model on the Google Nexus devices is pretty straightforward. The OS is (nominally) secure and prevents anything from accessing the raw MTD devices. The bootloader will only allow the user to write to partitions if it’s unlocked. The recovery image will only permit you to install images that are signed with a trusted key. In combination, these facts mean that it’s impossible for an attacker to modify the OS image without unlocking the bootloader[1], and unlocking the bootloader wipes all your data. You’ll probably notice that.

=> ↺ HTC One M8 Prime to release with Android 5.0 L OS in October-December

• HTC One M8 Prime release date may happen between October and December and is set to come preinstalled with the new Android L OS.

• An XDA member leaked the roadmap of HTC in rolling out the Android L OS for its handsets. It seemed that HTC will offer the upcoming version of Android OS to its two-year-old gadgets. In a leaked document by HTC tipster @LlabTooFeR, smartphones from the past two years have all been marked with the “evaluation” stamp. Their tentative timeline is between October and December.

=> ↺ BlueZ 5.21 Adds More Android Features

• A new release is out for BlueZ, the Linux Bluetooth stack, with the developers continuing to work on the same theme of the past few months of adding Android features for BlueZ.

• This week’s BlueZ 5.21 release adds support for the following features from Android: Scan Parameters, Device Information, and Health Device. BlueZ 5.21 also adds a kernel background auto-connection feature, support for storing/loading connection parameters, and also boasts a couple fixes over BlueZ 5.20.

Free Software/Open Source

CMS

=> ↺ How Card.com Is Securing Itself and Its Users With Open Source

• “We’re heavily involved in Drupal. I’m a member of the Drupal security team and the former lead of the team for over two years,” Knaddison said. “So it’s an area where we have a fair amount of expertise and depth, and we feel that our situation is best served by fixing vulnerabilities directly in the software itself.”

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Open source to help Wales protect environment

• Using open source software solutions is helping a Welsh pilot project to manage flood risks and provide a stepping stone for future research. The Citizen Observatory Web (Cobweb) project involves citizens using their smartphone or tablets, to submit data observations within the Dyfi area in Wales, to help collect environmental data for use in evidence based policy.

=> ↺ S Korea to break away from Windows by 2020

• South Korea said that it will move away from Windows in the future to avoid dependency on the Microsoft operating system, citing the fact that Windows XP is no longer supported.

=> ↺ Korean govt to turn its back on Microsoft… and use what instead, Hangul?

• Usage of idiosyncratic software could push the Korean government away from Microsoft’s offerings and into open-source OSes like Linux

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ Automotive Grade Linux, running Android without Google, and more

• In this week’s edition of our open source news roundup, we celebrate our digital independence and take a cruise with Automotive Grade Linux. Plus more!

=> ↺ Ouya All-Access Plan, Mario Paint on Chrome, and more

Programming

=> ↺ INTERVIEW: DAMIAN CONWAY

• Damian Conway is one of the Guardians of Perl (our term) and one of Perl 6′s chief architects. But he’s chiefly a computer scientist, a brilliant communicator and an educator. His presentations are often worth crossing continents for. He was the Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at Melbourne’s Monash University between 2001 and 2010, and has run courses on everything from Regular Expressions for Bioinformatics to Presentation Aikido (and of course, lots of Perl). Which is why, when we discovered he was making a keynote at this year’s QCon conference in London in March, we braved train delays and the sardine travelling classes of the London Underground to meet him opposite Westminster Abbey.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Google introduces block on porn advertising on AdWords

• Search company extends bans on pornography ads across its network, while conservative US pressure groups claim credit

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Why Insurance Companies Are Interested in Facial Recognition Technology

• “We know in the field of aging that some people tend to senesce, or grow older, more rapidly than others, and some more slowly,” Olshansky told the Washington Post. “And we also know that the children of people who senesce more slowly tend to live longer than other people.”

Security

=> ↺ Friday’s security advisories

=> ↺ PHP Fixes OpenSSL Flaws in New Releases

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ North Korea not a threat to U.S. security

=> ↺ People or War?

• We could have built 120,000 new homes, desperately needed. Instead we spent the money on a bloody big ship. To what purpose? An aircraft carrier is of no use to defend the British Isles – land based planes can do that much better. It is to enable our armed forces to operate elsewhere, far from here. In other words, it is not for defence, it is for attack. It was ordered in the Blairite era of enthusiastic invasion of other countries.

=> ↺ Royal Navy’s biggest aircraft carrier to be named by Queen

• The Queen will formally name the Royal Navy’s biggest ever ship on Friday, with whisky replacing the more traditional champagne at the ceremony.

• She will smash a bottle of Islay malt whisky against the HMS Queen Elizabeth at the event at Rosyth dockyard in Fife, where the 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier has been assembled and fitted out.

• The Queen will be accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh at the naming ceremony, a naval tradition dating back thousands of years that combines a celebration and a solemn blessing.

=> ↺ For Wisconsin priest, social justice carries a price

• Murphy was at Volk Field that day protesting drones, unmanned aerial vehicles. It was his first arrest at Volk Field, but his eighth or ninth overall — he lost count.

=> ↺ We are a clueless nation: America’s congenital blind spot on Iraq

• As our military contemplates Iraq again, we’re beset by unchallenged magical thinking — and a dangerous narcissism

=> ↺ ​Real ‘Battle of Iraq’ is only beginning

• Ideology or religion, nationalism, self-determination, and independence appear lofty notions and goals, but in reality, it is “always … about the oil, stupid!” to paraphrase Professor Schwartz paraphrasing Bill Clinton.

=> ↺ US’s Role in Destabilizing Latin America

=> ↺ Who are we to presume to call the shots in Cuba?

• This mind-set is especially odious since the United States supported the terrible dictator Fulgencio Batista, and supported businesses and American mobsters who controlled the economy, impoverishing Cuba and its people.

• We tried to bring Castro and his government down repeatedly, attempted to kill him, and placed CIA agents and others there to stir up revolt. These actions are not in the spirit of democracy and in line with our country’s best ideals. They are in line with those who think of power, control, and empire, but who hide behind the empty invocations of manifest destiny, national security, and democracy promotion.

=> ↺ CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’

• His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files.

=> ↺ At CIA, this man’s fight against secrecy ended his career

• A 19-year veteran of the CIA claims he was fired for trying to make hundreds of once-secret documents public. Jeffrey Scudder shares his story about how his career unraveled.

=> ↺ Foreign Affairs Misreads Lumumba (the Communist)

• The root of the CIA’s intervention in Congo was an overhyped analysis of the communist threat.

=> ↺ Will the United States go to war in Iraq once again?

=> ↺ US Should Back Syria’s Assad Against ISIS

• One key to solving the ISIS crisis is hunkered down in the presidential palace in Damascus, and his name is Bashar al-Assad. Demonized by the United States and by neoconservatives long before he waged a ruthless, take-no-prisoners blitzkrieg against the American- and Saudi-supported rebellion that began in 2011, Assad has proved to everyone (with the possible exception of Secretary of State John Kerry) that he’s staying put, at least for the foreseeable future. For all intents and purposes, Assad has won the civil war in Syria, and short of an Iraq-style invasion—which isn’t in the cards— there’s no way for the United States to oust Assad. Which is a good thing, because his ouster would immeasurably strengthen the extremists who’ve led the fight against him, including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, now “the Islamic State,” the Caliphate-mongering radicals who are an Al Qaeda offshoot. On the other hand, by ending its support for the Syrian rebels, who don’t have a prayer anyway, the United States would strengthen Assad and allow him to crush ISIS.

=> ↺ Training a rebel Syrian army is the wrong way to end the bloodshed

• The revelation that General David Richards, the former head of Britain’s Armed Forces, drew up plans to train a 100,000-strong Syrian rebel army shows just how desperate the British government was to become embroiled in Syria’s brutal civil war.

• During his three-year tenure as Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, as he has now become, was deeply sceptical of the Coalition’s willingness to embark on ill-considered – and potentially catastrophic – military adventures in the Arab world.

=> ↺ UK military had secret plan — and U.S. support — to train Syrian rebels to topple Bashar al-Assad

=> ↺ Revealed: Britain’s secret plan for 100,000 Syria invasion force

• Britain was considering the option of training a massive, 100,000-strong army in Turkey and Jordan to defeat President Bashar Assad, according to a plan drawn up by a leading British general. The invasion was later scrapped as too risky.

=> ↺ Blackwater Story Is Exactly Why NYT’s James Risen Must Be Shielded from DOJ Prosecution

• James Risen of The New York Times, using recently disclosed State Department documents, has written a bombshell-of-a-story chronicling how Blackwater’s top manager threatened to kill the U.S. government’s chief investigator in 2007, thus thwarting an investigation into Blackwater’s operations just weeks before the company’s guards massacred 17 Iraqi civilians.

• The story is characteristic Risen: unflinchingly and thoroughly reported. However, Risen may not be able to write such stories in a matter of months. Instead, he may be sitting in a jail cell as a result of a case being prosecuted against him by the Obama administration.

=> ↺ U.S. confronts difficulties in arming Iraqi air forces with missiles and F-16s

• Russia sent several disassembled Su-25 fighter jets to Iraq this week, and Iran has also supplied Su-25s.

=> ↺ The Evil That Was Phoenix

• There’s a reason the CIA wanted to prevent the publication of Douglas Valentine’s 1986 book, The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam. This masterwork is more than an exposé of the US pacification program in Vietnam the book is titled after. It is an indictment of a cynical and bloody plan to kill Vietnamese.

=> ↺ Appointing ‘Sovietologist’ as a new US ambassador to Russia not the road to peace

• The Cold War against the Soviet Union became an industry in the United States.

=> ↺ ANALYSIS: Chechen Fighters Joining Iraqi Jihad is Western Plot

• With an ethnic Chechen Omar Shishani coming to the spotlight in ISIS’s activities in Iraq, analysts say Chechen war was an attempt by the Western countries to destabilize Russia through the Caucasus.

=> ↺ Ukraine: The International War-Criminal is Obama, Not Putin

=> ↺ The people of the Ukraine were sold a pack of lies

• What we are seeing going on in the Ukraine can be understood from the perspective of American political intrigue. The true elite power in America is rapidly losing power and they are in a state of panic. These people are for the most part the former “cold warriors” in America’s military and intelligence establishments and their political underlings who are handled by them. The former are mainly remnants left over from the first Bush’s reign at the C.I.A. They are “American Firsters” who cloak themselves under the banner of patriotism however their true motivation is simply power for their own self-interests.

=> ↺ US Confirms Years-Long “Secret” Military Presence In Somalia

• U.S. “unnamed officials” confirmed to Reuters on Thursday that over a hundred military troops have been operating covertly in Somalia since 2007.

Transparency Reporting

=> ↺ Swedish court sets date for Julian Assange rape case hearing

• 16 July hearing is first legal battle in the case since WikiLeaks founder sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London

=> ↺ After 2 Years of Confinement, Will Sweden Resolve Assange’s Case? Swedish Foreign Minister Won’t Say

• Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt refuses to address questions from Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman about the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is wanted for questioning in Sweden on allegations of sexual offenses. Assange’s attorneys recently asked the Swedish government to withdraw a warrant that has kept him confined in Ecuador’s London Embassy for two years. Assange has voiced fears he would ultimately be sent for prosecution in the United States if he were to return to Sweden. Assange’s attorneys say the warrant should be lifted because it cannot be enforced while Assange is in the embassy and Swedish prosecutors refuse to question him in London. Although Assange faces a warrant for questioning, he has not been formally charged. Fifty-nine international organizations have submitted reports to the United Nations challenging Sweden’s treatment of Assange. Speaking at the Almedalen political festival in Visby, Bildt refuses to address the case directly, calling it an issue for the Swedish judicial system, not its political one. We get reaction to Bildt’s comments from Assange legal adviser Jen Robinson, who also discusses the parallels between Assange and National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. “We are now seeing a trend of whistleblowers, publishers, journalists having to seek asylum and refuge in countries around the world because of their concern about prosecution in the United States,” Robinson says.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Home insulation installs ‘have collapsed because of UK policies’

=> ↺ Stopping harmful climate change is surprisingly cheap

• Saving our skins might be surprisingly cheap. To avoid dangerous climate change, the world needs to boost spending on green energy by $1 trillion a year. That sounds scarily large, but we could cover a lot of it using the subsidies currently handed to fossil fuels.

=> ↺ May I bring up climate change?

• The GOP delayed raising auto efficiency standards for 25 years, shouting it would “destroy Detroit.” Ironically, when the CAFE standards were finally raised, in Obama’s 1st year, guess what happened? (1) The GOP tried – openly and vociferously – to destroy the U.S. auto industry by refusing loans to GM and Chrysler (loans that are now 90% repaid). (2) The mileage standards are working! Mileage is rising rapidly, American drivers are saving billions at the pump, the automakers are highly profitable, the air is cleaner… a positive sum game with no negative aspects at all…

Finance

=> ↺ Robert Reich: ‘Freedom’ Is Just Another Word For Letting the Rich Get Richer

• On Monday the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Affordable Care Act, ruling that privately-owned corporations don’t have to offer their employees contraceptive coverage that conflicts with the corporate owners’ religious beliefs.

• The owners of Hobby Lobby, the plaintiffs in the case, were always free to practice their religion. The Court bestowed religious freedom on their corporation as well—a leap of logic as absurd as giving corporations freedom of speech. Corporations aren’t people.

=> ↺ Does Capitalism Inevitably Produce Inequalities?

• In a recent New York Times op-ed article, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz theorized that capitalism does not inevitably produce inequalities in wealth. Instead, he argued, today’s inequalities result from policy decisions made by politicians on all sorts of matters that affect people’s income: the tax structure that favors the rich, the bailout of the banks during the Great Recession, subsidies for rich farmers, cutting of food stamps, etc. In fact, he concluded, today there are no “truly fundamental laws of capitalism.” Thanks to democracy, people can steer the economy in a variety of directions and no single outcome is inevitable.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks, Anonymous, Bitcoin, and the First Amendment Revolution

• Journalist Phillip Dorling traced the impulse behind the Occupy movement back to the release of the U.S. Army helicopter gunship Collateral Murder video and noted how it was strongly based on the work of the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Amnesty International pointed to the role of leaked documents in triggering revolutionary global uprisings. The BBC documentary WikiLeaks: Secret Life of a Superpower also attributed their revelations as the spark for Arab revolutions, showing how U.S. cable leaks shared through social networking sites in 2010 became a powerful force that finally toppled the corrupt Tunisian dictator Ben Ali.

=> ↺ US leans on El Salvador to open up its seed market

• Grant by US agency to open markets to ‘competition’ draws protests from Salvadoran farmers and concern from NGOs

Censorship

=> ↺ ENCORE: Internet access tool that monitors the accessibility of webpages

=> ↺ Georgia Tech Researchers Target Web Censorship

=> ↺ Almost 1 in 5 websites now blocked by censorship filters in the UK

• Browse the web in the UK, and sooner or later there’s a good chance you’ll stumble across a website that’s been blocked. Sites like The Pirate Bay, Fenopy and H33t are no longer viewable due to court orders preventing access, and other sites — many perfectly legitimate — are being blocked by censorship filters.

=> ↺ Censorship By The Press

• Censorship, in most cases, is what happens in the newsroom.

=> ↺ Google’s removal of BBC article raises censorship fears

• Google — which opposed the court decision — responded by introducing an online form giving visitors to its European sites a formal route to make removal requests. In the first four days after uploading the form, Google received more than 41,000 requests.

=> ↺ Google reverses decision to remove news article links after censorship claims over ‘right to be forgotten’

=> ↺ BBCtrending: Texas teen hunter in Facebook safari showdown

• Kendall Jones is a 19-year-old from Texas, a university student and a former cheerleader – but those characteristics of her life are not what she posts about on Facebook.

=> ↺ Google has become the victim of digital censors

• The European Court of Justice ruling requiring Google to ‘hide’ stories shows the need to defend digital freedom of speech

=> ↺ Freedom Of Religion Is Obsolete, Superseded, And Harmful

• Freedom of religion was intended to guarantee freedom from governmental persecution because of private beliefs. Today, that freedom has been twisted and perverted into instead creating persecution against individuals, backed up by governmental force. It is time to abolish it as archaic and obsolete, and let the modern freedoms of opinion and speech take its place.

=> ↺ How British Liberals Sold Out Free Speech

• When the actor and comedian Steve Coogan (pictured) was made a patron of the Index on Censorship earlier this month, the British media’s guffawing could be heard round the world. Coogan, you see, is a leading light in Hacked Off, the celeb-packed censorious outfit that has spent the past three years agitating for state-backed regulation of Britain’s raucous tabloid press. For a venerable free-speech group like Index on Censorship to make the celebrity censor Coogan a patron is like the British Humanist Association giving a job to the Pope of Rome.

=> ↺ Colleges are slowly taking away your First Amendment rights

• Sept. 17 last year was a pretty bad day for the Constitution on our campuses. Robert Van Tuinen of Modesto Junior College in California was prevented from passing out copies of the Constitution outside of his college’s tiny “free speech zone.” Near Los Angeles, Citrus College student Vinny Sinapi-Riddle was threatened with removal from campus for the “offense” of collecting signatures for a petition against NSA domestic surveillance outside his college’s tiny free speech area. I mention September 17 because that was Constitution Day. – See more at: http://westhawaiitoday.com/opinion/columns/colleges-are-slowly-taking-away-your-first-amendment-rights#sthash.VbYv0a4f.dpuf

Privacy

=> ↺ FBI records: Chilling find in Bradenton dumpster

• Freshly released but heavily censored FBI documents include tantalizing new information about events connected to the Sarasota Saudis who moved suddenly out of their home about two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, leaving behind clothing, jewelry and cars.

=> ↺ Russian Government Will Force Companies To Store Citizen Data Locally

• The law which bans online businesses from storing personal data of Russian citizens on servers located abroad today passed its third and final reading in the State Duma – the Russian parliament.

=> ↺ Facebook’s study got it wrong: seeing our ‘friends’ happy can make us sad

• Only a fraction of our connections on social media are people we love. The rest are people we already probably dislike

=> ↺ Facebook Denies Timeline Manipulation Was Military Experiment

=> ↺ Journal that published Facebook mood study expresses ‘concern’ at its ethics

=> ↺ Official complaint filed over Facebook emotion study

=> ↺ A Facebook to unlike

• The bare essentials of what happened over a week in 2012 are now clear. A study was conducted, unknown to the millions of Facebook users and to the many directly affected, by researchers from Facebook and from two American universities — Cornell University and the University of California. To carry out this hidden manipulation, Facebook altered the content that appeared on certain users’ news feeds to control the number of posts that contained words with positively or negatively charged emotions.

=> ↺ Facebook: More Powerful Than the NSA?

=> ↺ No Facebook, no iPhone, no problem: how I declared my digital independence

• Why pledge allegiance to the united tech giants of America – and the surveillance for which they stand? I am one man, relatively invisible, with liberty and justice online

=> ↺ NSA targets anyone interested in online privacy

• An article published on July 3 by German public broadcaster Das Erste reveals that the National Security Agency (NSA) is using its surveillance program XKeyScore to target users of the traffic anonymizing software Tor and the Tails operating system, for deep packet inspection, data retention, and heightened surveillance.

• The article is based on “exclusive access to top secret NSA source code, interviews with former NSA employees, and the review of secret documents of the German government.” This is the first leak regarding NSA surveillance, which includes a portion of the programming source code being used by the spy agency.

=> ↺ Moscow passes law to force websites onto Russian servers

• Russia’s parliament passed a law on Friday to force Internet sites that store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so inside the country, a move the Kremlin says is for data protection but which critics see an attack on social networks.

=> ↺ ‘It’s become fashionable to bash GCHQ’ – Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood

• That’s the message from Cheltenham’s Liberal Democrat MP Martin Horwood who believes it has become “fashionable” for people to have a go at GCHQ.

=> ↺ Signs That the Supreme Court May Push Back Against the NSA

• This week, Michael Hayden, who headed the CIA and the NSA during the Bush Administration, said that if he’d been on the Supreme Court for the 9 to 0 decision requiring a warrant before cell phone searches, the vote would’ve been 10 to zero. Former Congresswoman Jane Harman also spoke in favor of the ruling.

=> ↺ Germany summons American ambassador amid espionage row

• Germany summoned the US ambassador in Berlin on Friday following the arrest of a man reported to have spied for the United States, heightening friction between the two countries over alleged US eavesdropping in Germany.

=> ↺ 4th July – Independence From America – NSA Menwith Hill

=> ↺ German IT specialist spied on by NSA

• A German student who ran a server that hid people’s IP addresses to help them stay anonymous was targeted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). What are Germany’s means for holding the NSA accountable?

=> ↺ German student from Erlangen spied on by NSA

=> ↺ German Student Under N.S.A. Scrutiny, Reports Say

=> ↺ If you’ve researched online privacy then the NSA may already be tracking you

=> ↺ ​XKeyscore exposed: How NSA tracks all German Tor users as ‘extremists’

=> ↺ How the NSA Targets Tor Users

=> ↺ If you read Boing Boing, the NSA considers you a target for deep surveillance

=> ↺ XCurrency Unveils Cryptographic Privacy Technology In Wake Of NSA xKeyScore Outrage

=> ↺ ‘Collect It All’ NSA Targets Those Seeking Web Privacy

=> ↺ Tor users are being targeted by the NSA for surveillance

=> ↺ NSA likely targets anybody who’s ‘Tor-curious’

=> ↺ NSA may be targeting Linux users for increased surveillance

• Linux Journal is reporting that apparently the NSA considers it an “extremist forum” and the NSA may also be targeting Linux users for increased surveillance. Linux Journal’s information is based on reports issues by German media that disclosed details on who the NSA has been targeting.

=> ↺ Germans reveal new NSA XKeyScore internet monitoring

=> ↺ NSA reportedly tracking any internet users who research privacy software online

=> ↺ Privacy-conscious web surfers put on NSA target lists

=> ↺ Report: NSA tracking privacy software users

=> ↺ NSA whistleblowers testify in Bundestag inquiry, disclose ‘totalitarian’ surveillance

=> ↺ Former NSA Technical Director Tells German Committee Spy Agency Has “Totalitarian Mentality”

• Testifying, Binney accused the NSA of having a “totalitarian mentality” and wanting “total information control” over citizens in breach of the US constitution. It was an approach that until now the public had only seen among dictators, he added.

=> ↺ Why a country that lived under a police state views digital privacy differently

• When it comes to spying on its own citizens the former East Germany certainly had a lock on things.

=> ↺ Crypto thwarts TINY MINORITY of Feds’ snooping efforts

=> ↺ Protect Privacy Online for Your Own Good

• Social networking site Facebook made headlines for a recently published study where it modified the emotional content of what appeared in people’s news feeds and studied the after-effect of that change on users. The experiment has been rightly condemned as an intrusion and a manipulation of unsuspecting users of the site. By not seeking informed consent of over 700,000 users in an experiment, Facebook breached broadly accepted ethical guidelines.

=> ↺ What do we want? CAT VIDEOS! How do we get them? TOR!

• The Onion Router project has fired back at the National Security Agency, after it emerged that those who use the network – and read Linux magazines – are considered worthy of surveillance.

=> ↺ NSA ‘targets’ Tor dark web servers and users

=> ↺ ‘Nowhere to hide, NSA owns the network’

=> ↺ Spook state: Uncle Sam is keeping a watch on you

=> ↺ Loophole means US could spy on Bermuda communications

=> ↺ Which Countries Escape NSA Surveillance

=> ↺ The NSA authorized to spy on ALBA and Petro Caribes

=> ↺ Why the silence on NSA spying?

=> ↺ U.S. Spying Allegations Chafe An Already Angry India

• Aiming for a fresh start in troubled U.S.-India relations, U.S. Sen. John McCain met with newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi today in New Delhi. But McCain’s two-day visit was overshadowed by reports that the U.S. National Security Agency was granted permission in 2010 to spy on Modi’s political party.

=> ↺ German army to be equipped with drones

=> ↺ NSA’s XKEYSCORE dissected: All Tor users marked as ‘extremists’

=> ↺ Germany summons US envoy over spy case

• Federal prosecutors say a 31-year-old German man was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of spying for foreign intelligence services. They did not identify the suspect or the intelligence services.

=> ↺ New spy flap may test U.S., German ties

• In the latest turn in the yearlong tensions with Germany over U.S. spying, a German man was arrested this week on suspicion of passing secret documents to a foreign power, believed to be the United States. The U.S. ambassador, John B. Emerson, was summoned to the Foreign Office here and urged to help with what German officials called a swift clarification of the case.

=> ↺ Germany Arrests Man Suspected Of Spying For U.S.

=> ↺ Germany spy arrested on suspicion of spying for NSA

=> ↺ Lenovo, IBM deal gets nod of Chinese regulators

=> ↺ Edward Snowden to speak at HOPE X NYC

• As if there weren’t enough reasons to attend HOPE X in NYC this month, now there’s a killer whistleblower panel.

=> ↺ Germany: Spy Arrested ‘is US Double Agent’ in NSA Probe

• A man believed to be a German intelligence operative has been arrested on suspicion of being a double agent for the US.

• A spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had been informed of the arrest but refused to give any further details.

• “The Chancellor was… informed of this case,” Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin.

=> ↺ Experts Speculate On Existence of Another NSA Leaker

=> ↺ Is There A Second NSA Leaker?

=> ↺ The NSA may have another leaker on its hands

=> ↺ Reforming NSA ‘is like bailing out a ship that’s already sunk’

=> ↺ NSA sued for hoarding details on use of ‘zero day’ exploits

=> ↺ Protecting privacy from U.S. spies

• Most of the public and congressional concern about the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance programs has focused on the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone “metadata” under a strained interpretation of the Patriot Act. That’s understandable, given the indiscriminate nature of the program. Fortunately, President Obama has now directed that the government obtain court approval before “querying” or searching the database of Americans’ phone records, and legislation moving forward in Congress would end government storage of the records.

=> ↺ Cory Doctorow: Security in Numbers

=> ↺ NSA Appears To Be Chaining Calls Using Phone Numbers One Hop Out As New Originating Selectors

• As Wheeler notes, this wording may also indicate the agency’s anticipation of bulk records being maintained and held by service providers, thus further limiting its splashing around in the collected metadata. But it does indicate that the recently-imposed “hop” limitation is nearly useless. Rather than simply searching one hop out from the RAS selector, the agency is having its analysts build contract chains starting from that hop and moving outward. This puts the agency right back where it was prior to the minimal restrictions placed on it by the administration’s reform measures.

=> ↺ NSA targets Tor administrators and people searching for privacy tools, reports claim

=> ↺ Image of US “overwhelmingly positive” despite the NSA scandal?

• Germans still have an “overwhelmingly positive” image of the US, according to RTL’s Editor-in-Chief Peter Kloeppel, speaking at a round table discussion centered on transatlantic relations in light of the NSA scandal.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ Editorial: Celebrating our freedoms

• INDEPENDENCE WASN’T invented in America on this day in 1776. Freedom and self-rule are concepts that predate George Washington and our other Founding Fathers by centuries.

=> ↺ ‘I am not a gun-toting, flag-waving, red-blooded American but a world citizen’: US expats on the Fourth of July abroad

• From tongue-in-cheek London to NSA-wary Berlin and skeptical Dubai, expats are coming to grips with just how unsettling ‘blind patriotism’ can be

=> ↺ Rights continue to fade away

• But as much as I’d like to wave a flag and have a grand ol’ time. I know that the land of the free has taken many steps in the wrong direction. In 2012 President Barack Obama signed into law the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). This act gave the U.S. government the right to indefinitely detain any U.S. citizen without trial, forever.

=> ↺ FGM in Sweden: School where every single girl in one class underwent procedure exposed

• The shocking scale of female genital mutilation (FGM) in a Swedish school, where every single girl in one class had been subjected to the procedure, has been revealed.

=> ↺ Information Commissioner decides Home Office must release report on EU Freedom of Movement

• A controversial report into EU Freedom of Movement, written as part of the government’s review of the balance of competencies within the European Union must be disclosed, the Information Commissioner has decided.

=> ↺ Iran 1953: US Envoy to Baghdad Suggested to Fleeing Shah He Not Acknowledge Foreign Role in Coup

• Document Casts Doubt over Accuracy of US Reports from Tehran — and Adds to Debate over Responsibility for the Coup

=> ↺ Tribal, aggressive, skilled at violence: why the British army tortured Iraqis to death

• The long history of British abuse and torture in Kenya, Malaya, Aden, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan cannot be explained as the work of a few ‘bad apples’.

=> ↺ Women duped by Met undercover officers win high court ruling

• Women claiming damages from the Metropolitan police after being tricked into forming sexual relationships with undercover officers have won a legal victory in the high court in their ongoing battle for compensation.

• Mr Justice Bean said on Wednesday that the Met could no longer rely on issuing a “neither confirm nor deny” (NCND) response to the claims for damages from the women.

=> ↺ The end of America as we know it

• Now, in the new post-constitutional America, we, too, torture. For legal purposes we do “a little sidestep” in the tradition of Charles Durning in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” We torture outside the United States and thus our Justice Department contends we are not violating the Constitution.

• It isn’t too late. There are about 50 men and women in this country who run the television industry. They are far more powerful than members of the Federal Reserve or elected officials, such as members of Congress. They and their television companies have the power to open up a debate on all of this. If not, we are in the process of losing the great American experiment without even a chance to say goodbye. It’s the end of America as we know it.

=> ↺ Air travellers need targeted protection

• Ministers yesterday said enhanced security would be in place for some time to come, while offering assurances that it will not cause “significant disruption”. It is also noteworthy that the official UK threat status remained unchanged at “substantial” – two rungs below the highest level. None the less, as school holidays begin and families head for the airports, the requirement to arrive at least two hours before take-off is likely to become closer to three hours. So accustomed have we become to removing jackets, belts and shoes that the queues tend to move faster than they once did. But there has been no relaxation in the ultra-strict measures brought in a few years ago which, for instance, prevented significant amounts of liquids being taken through security in hand luggage. Once introduced, they tend to be permanent.

=> ↺ Fireworks Are ‘Pretend War’ That Make Us OK With Real War

• Did you know that fireworks are actually a “propaganda campaign that inures us—especially the children among us—to the real wars half a world away”?

=> ↺ Letter inspired by 911 call

• The pine-cone POO-lice are doing their jobs with all do vigilance. My cousin was cleaning the pine-cones from the ground, around his motor-home. A call was placed to 911 that a motor-home was emptying its waste in the street. The city police blockaded the street and sent in five squad cars. With palms resting on their semi-automatic pistols, the police were ready for action. A pine-cone mistaken for a human poo. Police ready to shoot an American over poo or pine-cones.

=> ↺ Hate Crimes against Muslims in the West – Silence of Mass Media and Human Rights Organizations

=> ↺ Tighter airport checks likely to be permanent

=> ↺ The Obama years: ‘The trailers were great, the movie was horrible’

• As a poll of American voters ranks Barack Obama as the worst president of all time, Matt Lewis says his presidency has been a disastrous flop – talented and much-hyped but ultimately unsatisfying

=> ↺ 238 years later, would Americans still choose freedom over slavery?

• The Fifth Amendment is supposed to ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without following strict legal guidelines. Unfortunately, those protections have been largely extinguished in recent years, especially in the wake of Congress’ passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain Americans indefinitely without due process.

=> ↺ Yes, Tony Abbott has ‘stopped the boats’. But the cost is catastrophic

• If you judge political success by delivering on a three-word slogan at any cost, then Tony Abbott’s asylum policy has succeeded. He has for now, as he promised, “stopped the boats”.

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ It’s not the NSA that scares Internet experts – it’s business, survey says

=> ↺ Four biggest threats to the Internet: Pew study looks ahead to 2025

=> ↺ Neither hacking nor cyber crimes, Pew study points to another bigger threat on the net

• This was followed by another question, irrespective of the respondents said yes or no. It asked them what they believed to be the biggest threat that the Internet will face by 2015. The experts canvassed by Pew believe that the government and big online corporations are the biggest threat to the Internet, and not hacking or some other form of cyber war.

=> ↺ Threats to ‘open Internet’ loom large: experts

=> ↺ And The Biggest Threat To The Internet Is…

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Qualcomm DMCA Notice Takes Down 100+ Git Repositories

• Qualcomm has forced GitHub to take down over 100 Git repositories over alleged copyright infringement.

• Using the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), Qualcomm has forced GitHub to take down over 100 Git repositories on the basis of “Cyveillance has recently discovered the unauthorized publication, disclosure, and copying of highly sensitive, confidential, trade secret, and copyright-protected documents on the below web site. Specifically, we have confirmed that the documents whose locations and filenames identified below are confidential and proprietary to Qualcomm and were posted without Qualcomm’s permission.”

=> ↺ Qualcomm fires DMCA shotgun at alleged code thieves on GitHub – including itself

• A company claiming to represent Qualcomm has shut down a number of repositories on source-code sharing site GitHub under provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) – including at least one repository belonging to Qualcomm itself.

=> ↺ Twitter Removes Users “Pirated” World Cup Avatars

• Twitter has removed the profile pictures of several of its users after the company received a takedown notice from World Cup organizer FIFA. The football organization forbids the use of any of its official logos and emblems on social media, including pictures of the World Cup trophy.

=> ↺ Anti-piracy music industry site hacked, turned into Pirate Bay proxy

• The website of Argentina’s equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America was hacked Tuesday and transformed into a Pirate Bay proxy, serving up torrents instead of industry lobbying affairs.

=> ↺ Universal Music Can Delete Any SoundCloud Track Without Oversight

• In a bid to tackle alleged infringement, popular music sharing platform SoundCloud is offering unlimited removal powers to certain copyright holders. Responding to a complaint from a UK DJ the company admitted that Universal Music can delete any and all SoundCloud tracks without oversight.

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