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● 11.25.14

● Links 25/11/2014: Tizen News, Jolla Tablet Past Million

Posted in News Roundup at 5:14 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Wormhole in Interstellar Movie Designed with a Linux OS – Gallery

• The Interstellar movie has been released not long ago and it was an instant success, despite some of the criticism that has been expressed by a number of physicists. To make thinks even more interesting, at least for Linux users, it looks like the production team used Linux to built the black hole in the movie.

=> ↺ ‘Less’ means more to malware authors targeting Linux users

• Using the “less” Linux command to view the contents of files downloaded from the Internet is a dangerous operation that can lead to remote code execution, according to a security researcher.

• At first glance, less appears to be a harmless command that outputs a file’s content to a terminal window and allows the users to navigate forward and backward through it. Less does not allow file editing, which is a job for file editors like the widely used vi, but has the benefit of displaying data on the fly without needing to load an entire file into memory. This is useful when dealing with large files.

=> ↺ Antarctic ice might be thicker than previously thought, reveals Linux powered underwater robot seaBED

• SeaBED, a submersible robot powered by Linux, was recently used to scan the huge frozen ice sheets across Antarctica. That has helped scientists get detailed and high-resolution 3-D maps of the frozen continent for the first time. Researchers at the British Antarctic Survey will now be able to know more regions which had earlier been difficult to access because of the hostile conditions prevailing in the area.

Desktop

=> ↺ Dirt-cheap laptops might be this year’s stocking stuffer

• Chromebooks, the low-cost compute devices that run Google’s Chrome OS, haven’t necessarily been showcased in Black Friday circulars, but they’re making an impression nonetheless. Although prices vary, Chromebooks generally range from $200 to $350 or so, and now come loaded with up to 1TB of Google Drive storage, too.

=> ↺ System76 Sable Touch: The state of touch support in Linux

• Based on specs alone, this is a pretty sweet rig. The all-in-one form factor makes for a sexy package. And like every System76 machine I’ve ever used, the performance and aesthetic element seriously impress. Having Linux with touch screen support is like a child at Christmas. Sure, we’ve had touch screens for a long, long time — but the first time you use Linux with such a machine of this caliber, you feel something akin to that first time you used Linux. And Ubuntu Unity really shines in the touch screen environment. Out of nowhere, you realize just what Canonical was going for when they re-invented that wheel.

=> ↺ Black Friday deals from Acer: Laptops and Chromebook

• Chromebook 11 — This Chromebook is normally priced modestly at $199, but on 11/28 Best Buy will make it even lower at $149. That’s a good deal for a laptop with 11.6-inch screen, Intel Celeron processor, and 2GB of memory.

=> ↺ DisplaySearch: Global notebook PC market grew 10 percent

• Chromebooks, which are forecast to reach 5 percent (8 million units) of total global notebook PC shipments…

Server

=> ↺ Linux admins: It’s time to relearn the art of compiling apps

• It used to be that open source software was released only as source code and had to be compiled wherever it was needed. Obviously, that’s changed. Today, some will even tell you that compiling source is an improper and problematic way to install software. Tomorrow, it may become more standard than they think.

• While compiling source is still the basis of many BSDs (though you can get binary packages easily enough), package management came to Linux early on with RPM and branched out everywhere ever since. Package support on Debian and Ubuntu is simply massive. Fedora has a huge number of packages, as do RHEL and CentOS, though the packages available for the latter are generally far older for legacy and stability reasons.

=> ↺ Cray to Evaluate ARM Chips in Its Supercomputers

• ARM partners Cavium, Applied Micro and PathScale also make news at SC14 as ARM continues its push into the HPC space.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Start It Up Episode 4: Internet for All, Open-Source Coding, and Treehouses

• Jason Denizac, a Code For America Fellow, is helping Chattanooga reap the benefits of open source coding, and Aaron Irizarry is making it easier for ordinary people to interact with technology. Find out how easier and greater access to data can improve the quality of life for Chattanoogans.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Top 10 Linux Holiday Gifts for 2014 (Slideshow)

• In 2012, the Top 10 Linux Gift Guide set the upper limit at $500, and last year it dropped to $400. This year, the cut-off dips to $350, reflecting the ongoing price reductions in consumer electronics, as well as my not entirely successful attempt to live up to Mr. Money Moustache’s guidelines for living on the cheap. (Click the Gallery link below to see a slide show and descriptions of the Top 10 Linux gifts.)

=> ↺ How the Linux Foundation’s CII Is Securing the Internet

• The Heartbleed flaw that was first publicly disclosed in April of this year, was in some respects a black eye on the open-source community. Heartbleed is a flaw in the open-source OpenSSL cryptographic library that had wide ranging impact across the infrastructure of the Internet. In the aftermath of Heartbleed, a new effort emerged called the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) to help fund developers wanting to improve security across critical open-source infrastructure technologies.

=> ↺ Four ways Linux is headed for no-downtime kernel patching

• Nobody loves a reboot, especially not if it involves a late-breaking patch for a kernel-level issue that has to be applied stat.

• To that end, three projects are in the works to provide a mechanism for upgrading the kernel in a running Linux instance without having to reboot anything.

=> ↺ Unikernels and Immutable Infrastructure

• I believe Docker is 2 steps forward for the world of DevOps and that the principles it promotes are forward-thinking and largely on-target for the future of a more secure, performant, and easy-to-manage cloud future. However, an alternative approach leveraging unikernels and immutable servers will result in smaller, easier to manage, more secure containers that will be simpler to adopt by existing enterprises.

Applications

=> ↺ 100 Open Source Replacements for Expensive Applications

• Certain types of software have long had a reputation for being very expensive. As cloud computing has become more popular, many popular software packages have switched to a monthly subscription model rather than charging users a one-time fee. While these subscriptions often look inexpensive on a monthly basis, the fees can really add up over time.

=> ↺ YouTube Command Line Player And Downloader mps-youtube 0.2.0 Released With Support For Downloading YouTube Playlists, More

• mps-youtube is a command line tool that can be used to search, play and download YouTube videos, which supports both local and YouTube playlists.

=> ↺ Video Transcoder HandBrake 0.10.0 Released With Support For New Encoders

• HandBrake, a free, open source video transcoder for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, has been updated to version 0.10.0, getting support for new encoders, like H.265 and VP8, along other interesting changes.

=> ↺ The Awesome Program You Never Should Use

• I’ve been hesitating for a couple months about whether to mention sshpass. Conceptually, it’s a horrible, horrible program. It basically allows you to enter an SSH user name and password on the command line, so you can create a connection without any interaction. A far better way to accomplish that is with public/private keypairs. But it’s still something I find useful from time to time, and I’d rather mention it with all the warnings in the world than to pretend it doesn’t exist.

=> ↺ netships: You’ll need a friend for this one

=> ↺ matanza: What’s the opposite of ‘pretty from far, far from pretty’?

=> ↺ Native Linux Twitter App ‘Corebird’ Impresses With Latest Release

• Corebird is one of the few remaining desktop Twitter apps still in active development for Linux, making its latest release all the more special.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to install LAMP stack on Ubuntu server

=> ↺ How To Install Kernel 3.14.25 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pinguy OS And Other Ubuntu Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How To Install Kernel 3.18 RC6 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivatives

=> ↺ How To Install Kernel 3.17.4 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivatives

=> ↺ How To Install HandBrake 0.10 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How VMs access metadata via qrouter-namespace in Juno

=> ↺ How to install Ubuntu on a Chromebook

=> ↺ How to play audio on another Fedora system

=> ↺ How VMs access metadata via qrouter-namespace in Juno

=> ↺ How to install Docker on CentOS 7

=> ↺ 15 ‘pwd’ (Print Working Directory) Command Examples in Linux

=> ↺ Samba server installation on OpenSuse 13.2

=> ↺ How to use inotify-tools to trigger scripts on filesystem events

=> ↺ Using Nginx with Odoo version 8 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit Server

=> ↺ How To Install LightTable 0.7.2 On The Most Popular Linux Systems

=> ↺ How to manage your personal expenses from the command line

=> ↺ Trust an IP address with firewalld’s rich rules

=> ↺ How To Install RVM (Ruby Version Manager) In Ubuntu Via PPA

=> ↺ How to install ProFTPD on CentOS 7.0

=> ↺ Building a Desktop Wikipedia Checker

=> ↺ Using Nginx with Odoo version 8 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit Server

=> ↺ Samba server installation on OpenSuse 13.2

=> ↺ How to install Cacti (Monitoring tool) on ubuntu 14.10 server

=> ↺ Setting Up RAID 10 or 1+0 (Nested) in Linux – Part 6

=> ↺ How to Easily Install Ubuntu on Chromebook with Crouton

=> ↺ Scripting made fun: Creating a melody of simplicity

=> ↺ How To Enable Emoji On Ubuntu In One Easy Step

=> ↺ How to install ProFTPD on CentOS 7.0

Games

=> ↺ War Thunder Free Steam MMO Now with Linux Client

• War Thunder, a free, popular MMO based on World War II, has received a Linux client, so you can now install and play War Thunder for free on Steam.

=> ↺ An Update On The Stonehearth Linux Port

• The city builder Stonehearth which reached their Linux stretch goal back in the Kickstarter campaign is closing in on the ports both to Mac and Linux, which will evidently happen at the same time.

=> ↺ empire: The self-proclaimed pinnacle of strategy games

=> ↺ nibbles: Considerably less taxing, mentally

=> ↺ Shroud Of The Avatar: Forsaken Virtues RPG Released On Steam For Linux

• Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues aims to be a rather massive RPG. I say it aims to be as it’s currently in early access, and it has a long way to go, but it looks great already.

• It’s a bit pricey, so sadly we don’t have a key to give you any initial thoughts yet, but from what we have seen it already looks like a lot of fun.

=> ↺ ’6180 the moon’ supports Linux & Japanese language

=> ↺ Toast Time, A Retro Throwback With An Apparent British Sense Of Humour

• The game has been out for a while, but only recent has it been ported to Linux.

=> ↺ 2D Arcade Game Toast Time Arrives on Steam for Linux

• Toast Time, a minimalist 2D arcade game developed and published on Steam by Force Of Habit, has been released on the Linux platform as well.

=> ↺ Space Simulator Kinetic Void Is Now 20% Off on Steam for Linux

• Kinetic Void, a sandbox space simulator developed for multiple platforms by Badland Studio, is now available on Steam with a 20% discount.

=> ↺ Kinetic Void, A Space Sandbox Game Exits Early Access

• Kinetic Void is a 3D space adventure with a focus on customization and exploration. It has been on Linux for quite some time, but in the last few days that have polished it enough to exit early access.

=> ↺ Natural Selection 2 Community Developers Need OpenGL Help

• Natural Selection 2 development was handed to the community a while ago, but some Linux bugs with OpenGL are making the game on Linux crash happy.

=> ↺ Vendetta Online Space MMO to Get a Next-Generation Graphics Engine

• Vendetta Online is a space MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) developed and published by Guild Software Inc. A new version of the game has just been released and it packs quite a few improvements.

=> ↺ ’6180 the moon’ supports Linux & Japanese language

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ In memory of Razor-qt

• The most parts of LXQt are actually built on top of razor-qt, a lightweight Qt-based DE with the same philosophy as LXDE. We reorganized the source code of razor-qt and removed unused pieces. Then we ported several LXDE components to Qt and also developed some new ones. Hence it’s more the merge of developers than the merge of the actual source code. That’s why they have slightly different feature sets. Without the work of razor-qt project, we can’t have LXQt now. Its developers deserved the credit. Since the story is too long for the tiny “About” dialog, I wrote the blog post here to thank their contributions.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ SoK : UPnP Support in PMC progress report

• Well, it’s been a great experience working on an awesome project Plasma Media Center. Till now I have learnt a lot

• As PMC is being ported to Plasma 5, it would be worthless merging it in qt4 based branch of PMC. So, I am making standalone app based on Qt5 and would merge it later on once it gets ported completely.

=> ↺ Cutelyst 0.5.0

• A bit more than one year after the initial commit, Cutelyst makes it’s 5th release.

• It’s now powering 3 commercial applications, the last one recently got into production and is the most complex of them, making heavy use of Grantlee and Cutelyst capabilities.

=> ↺ Qt on Android Episode 5

• In this article we’ve learned the basics of the JNI, in the next article(s) we’re going to learn how to use this knowledge to correctly extend Qt on Android apps. We’ll talk more about Qt on Android apps architecture, how to extend the Java part of your application and we’ll take a real life example to show how to correctly do safe calls from Qt thread to Android UI thread and vice-versa.

=> ↺ There’s New In-Fighting Over The Future Of Compiz

• Unless you’re a user of Ubuntu with Unity 7, you probably haven’t heard much about Compiz in quite some time. However, some developers are looking to further revive its development but not everyone is in agreement.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Cinnamon 2.4.4 Arrives with Various Refinements

• Cinnamon, a Linux desktop environment developed by the same team that is also building Linux Mint, has been updated yet again, although this time it’s a rather small progression.

=> ↺ GTK+ INSPECTOR UPDATE

• GTK+ Inspector is a debugging tool that is built directly into GTK+ and is available in every GTK+ application by using of the shortcuts Ctrl-Shift-d or Ctrl-Shift-i.

Distributions

=> ↺ New Linux OS That Respects Google’s Material Design Is in the Works

• Google’s new Material Design approach proved to be a real success and now Linux developers are looking to make a new distribution that is capable of adhering to those guidelines, which is actually something new in the ecosystem.

Reviews

=> ↺ We have a winner! Fresh Linux Mint 17.1 – hands down the best

• Linux Mint 17.1 is the first example of what the Mint project team can do when they’re focused on their own system rather than on making the latest Ubuntu work with Mint.

• That’s because Mint 17.1 sticks with the Ubuntu released earlier this year – the first time this desktop Linux has not gone with the more recent Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Mint’s the Best, Less Malware, and Debian vs Ubuntu

• The Register’s Scott Gilbertson today said that Linux Mint 17.1 was the best distribution “hands down.” Elsewhere, Bruce Byfield compares and contrasts Debian and Ubuntu to see which is right for you and Lucian Constantin reports on a new vulnerability found in less programs. There were several reviews in the feeds and Katherine Noyes tallies FOSS Thanksgivings. Linux.com has Linux gift ideas and Serdar Yegulalp summarizes rebootless kernel patching.

=> ↺ Observing Scientific Linux 7.0

• Scientific Linux is an operating system sponsored by Fermilab and built using the source code from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The distribution is lightly customized, making it similar to RHEL in most respects, but with different artwork. The current release of Scientific is available for the 64-bit x86 CPU architecture only. There are several editions to choose from, including a regular installation DVD (3.9 GB), an “Everything” double-sided installation DVD (6.2 GB), a net-install minimal CD (394 MB), a live CD (690 MB), a GNOME-flavoured live DVD (1.1 GB) and a KDE-flavoured live DVD (1.2 GB). I opted to download the live KDE disc.

=> ↺ Netrunner Rolling 2014.04 – This time, we need the goats

• Netrunner Rolling distro release is a very interesting concepts, on many level. It’s a KDE desktop, based on Arch and Manjaro, the latter also being partially based on Arch itself, plus it comes with a rolling update model. A far cry from the typical asterisk-buntu philosophy that pervades most of the market.

• In the canonical notation, Netrunner Rolling is actually an Arch-Arch-Manjaro distro, and this actually sounds like Ice Ice Baby, only geekier. Arch, Arch, Manjaro. Tam dam dam da da dam dam. Sort of. Anyhow, we have a new edition out there. 2014.09. So let’s see if it’s any good. The previous one surprised, immensely.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Mate 14.10 Review: For GNOME 2 lovers and offers awesome performance

• I am not sure if Ubuntu Mate 14.10 is an official release from Canonical yet. It is still to be listed in distrowatch. But, never-the-less I came across this distro as a reference from a couple of readers from my blog. I used the distro for a week and I am writing down my experience with the distro. It has the same specifics as Ubuntu 14.10 – the desktop environment is different here: Mate 1.8.1, with it’s typical GNOME 2 looks.

New Releases

=> ↺ Pear OS Linux Concept Revived as Pearl Linux 1.0 – Screenshot Tour

• Pear OS Linux was a very successful Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that wanted to provide an experience similar to Mac OS X. That operating system is gone now, but Pearl Linux wants to replace it. Pear OS Linux managed to have quite an impact on the community, despite the fact that it was offering an almost identical experience to the Mac OS X desktop.

Screenshots

=> ↺ Chromixium Alpha 7a

=> ↺ siduction 14.1.0 KDE Screenshot Tour

Arch Family

=> ↺ Manjaro Xfce 0.8.11 RC2 Is a Beautiful Experience like No Other – Gallery

• Manjaro Xfce 0.8.11 RC2, a Linux distribution based on well-tested snapshots of the Arch Linux repositories and 100% compatible with Arch, has been released and users can now test the new version and see what’s new for themselves.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Call for Proposals Now Open for Red Hat Summit 2015

=> ↺ Red Hat, Chilean government hold talks on open source initiative

• The head of Chilean regulator Pedro Huichalaf agreed to pass information regarding the benefits of open source software to the ministerial committee for digital development

=> ↺ Red Hat spiffs up FeedHenry with better collaboration tools

• The new FeedHenry 3 promises to let distributed teams — both those inside a company and outside contractors — work together simultaneously on client apps, cloud apps and services. And it has applied role-based access for developers that applies from the beginning of app design and throughout the coding and testing and deployment process. Authorized admins can look into all projects and stages. And, more granular access controls let the project manager lock down aspects of the app to a select individual developer or developers.

=> ↺ Not just token: Red Hat’s Women in Open Source Awards

• DeLisa Alexander would like to make one thing clear about Red Hat’s Women in Open Source Awards (WIOSA): They’re not just a token gesture towards diversity. Instead, she describes them as one step in a larger, more varied strategy to increase women’s participation in open source.

• “It’s one key,” says Alexander, executive vice-president and chief people officer at Red Hat. “But it’s an important part of the puzzle to help tech and open source attract more talent.” According to Alexander, the idea was first generated several years ago, but the company “waited until we had a larger sense of the puzzle.”

Fedora

=> ↺ Upgrading to Fedora 21

• Upgrade from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21 via ‘fedup‘ was fast on my SSD disk, and there were no blockers after the reboot – minimal downtime!

=> ↺ Paratype PT Serif and PT Mono fonts are now available in Fedora

• Paratype has a set of nice Latin/pan-Cyrillic typefaces including sans-serif, serif and monospace fonts. The sans-serif typeface, PT Sans, released in 2010 has been part of Fedora for a long time and it is the default font for Cyrillic/Russian. It is a nice font for display in desktop, documents and web.

=> ↺ Fedora 21 weekend upgrading

• So, at least for me, Fedora 21 upgrades were as easy as they have always been.

=> ↺ Fedora 21 review

• It’s been a while since my last upgrade and there has also been a gap to the latest Fedora 21 release, so now seemed like a good time. I upgraded my laptop by installing over the existing root partition but leaving the /home partition in place to maintain all my settings and files. I wasn’t able to even attempt this in the Fedora 16 installer, but it was easy enough in the Fedora 21 installer and it worked surprisingly well. Downtime was only 20 minutes or so for the installation, though a couple of hours was needed to investigate various new settings etc.

=> ↺ Tuesday’s security updates

Debian Family

=> ↺ I GIve Up On Systemd

• After many hours of reading/fiddling/reconfiguring I’ve given up on Systemd.

=> ↺ Some Debris In The Systemd Debate

• GNU/Linux shipped on more than 5% of PCs in the last year. Whole governments are preferring GNU/Linux or adopting it or introducing it to students on national scales. That kind of movement is still growing, in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and USA.

=> ↺ Debian vs Ubuntu: Which is Best for You?

• Debian and Ubuntu are the most influential Linux distributions ever. Of the 285 active distributions listed on Distrowatch, 132 are derived from Debian, including Ubuntu, and another 67 are derived directly from Ubuntu — just under 70%. Yet the experience of using them differs in just about every aspect. Consequently, choosing between them is no easy matter.

• Asked to explain the difference between the two distributions, most users would describe Debian as an expert’s distribution, and Ubuntu as a beginner’s. These characterizations are partly true, but exaggerated. Debian’s reputation rests on its state over a decade ago, and today allows as much hands-on control as each user chooses.

• Similarly, Ubuntu is really its design team’s conception of easy. Should your work habits not be compatible with that concept, you may disagree strongly that it is easy to use.

Derivatives

=> ↺ Release notes for siduction 2014.1

• We are very happy to present to you the final release of siduction 2014.1 – Indian Summer. siduction is a distribution based on Debian’s unstable branch and we try to release a few new snapshots over the course of each year. For 2014 it will be just this final release. We did a lot of stabilizing work in the past year, besides working on further integrating systemd and working on dev releases. We know it is not ideal to have an install medium that is older than six months, so please accept our apologies for that, we will try to release more often.

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu Governance Reboot: Five Proposals

• A little while back I wrote a blog post that seemed to inspire some people and ruffle the feathers of some others. It was designed as a conversation-starter for how we can re-energize leadership in Ubuntu.

• When I kicked off the blog post, Elizabeth quite rightly gave me a bit of a kick in the spuds about not providing a place to have a discussion, so I amended the blog post to a link to this thread where I encourage your feedback and participation.

• Rather unsurprisingly, there was some good feedback, before much of it started wandering off the point a little bit.

=> ↺ FFmpeg Will Be Added (Again) To The Default Repositories Of Ubuntu, Starting With Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet

• Hello Linunx Geeksters. Starting with Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu has stopped shipping with the FFmpeg libraries and used Libav for handling multimedia content, but the developers have announced that FFmpeg will be available by default again, starting with Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet.

=> ↺ Imp ARM-based Ubuntu Mini PC Unveiled for $150

• A new Ubuntu Mini PC has been unveiled this week in the form of the Imp, a small form factor desktop PC, that is equipped with an ARM-based processor supported by 2GB of RAM and comes complete with open source software.

=> ↺ Meizu and Canonical Reach Agreement to Release Ubuntu-Powered Meizu Handsets

• Meizu is on a roll lately. The company has announced their newest flagship handset, Meizu MX4 Pro only two and a half months after they released the original MX4. This upgrade wasn’t actually needed, but Meizu saw an opportunity and decided to take it, they released a beastly handset and made it available at a rather affordable price point, which is a great thing. This handset improves upon MX4 in many aspects, bigger and higher-res screen is here, as well as more RAM, a more powerful processor and even a fingerprint scanner below the display. Meizu won’t stop there, rumors have been pointing towards further Meizu launches before the end of the years. According to reports, this Chinese manufacturer will launch 2 additional devices before the end of 2014.

=> ↺ Ubuntu powered Meizu MX4 to hit market early 2015

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Weaved Hauls Your Raspberry Pi Projects Online

• Playing with Raspberry Pi is a lot of fun, but what happens when you want to get some real work done? While it’s not difficult to make a RaspPi board do cool stuff, getting it to communicate with the wider world is a bit of a challenge. That’s why Ryo Koyama, Mike Johnson, and Doug Olekin made Weaved.

=> ↺ Is the ASRock Q1900DC-ITX Intel Motherboard a Good ARM SBC Alternative?

• In the recent series on ARM single board computers I have covered the BeagleBone Black, MaRS, TI’s OMAP5432 Board, the Radxa, a few of the ODroid ARM machines, and many more. On the Intel desktop side I’ve covered the NUC and MinnowBoard. I’ve learned that outright performance is faster on the Intel NUC than any ARM machine reviewed so far — the tradeoff, of course, is cost. This time around we’ll see whether the ASRock Q1900DC-ITX motherboard retains the high performance characteristic of an Intel board but also dips down to the low cost and lower power draw of the ARM world.

=> ↺ Tizen India Portathon Challenge 2014

Phones

Tizen

=> ↺ JVC KENWOOD Corporation, Linaro and OpenSynergy Join the AGL – Automotive Grade Linux

• The Linux Foundation has announced that the JVC KENWOOD Corporation, Linaro and OpenSynergy are joining the Linux Foundation to collaborate on Automotive Grade Linux (AGL). This brings the total amount of companies working on AGL to forty six.

=> ↺ Tizen based Samsung TV SDK 1.0 has been released

• The Tizen based Samsung TV SDK 1.0 has been released today. This follows the beta that was previously released at the start of July.

=> ↺ [Wallpapers] Samsung Gear 2 / Gear 2 Neo and Galaxy Backgrounds Vol 30

=> ↺ Professional Samsung NX1 Tizen Smartcamera hits the US

• The Tizen based Samsung NX1 Smartcamera is the company’s answer to DSLR Professional shooting in a Mirror-Less Compact Systems Camera (CSC). The NX1 is capable of shooting 4K video and a staggering autofocus time of only 0.055sec. Originally the NX1 was supposed to hit the US last month, but that clearly didn’t happen.

=> ↺ WiFi only version of the Tizen Gear S available in Japan

• The Samsung Gear S has a new dimension to it now, a newer model that wasn’t expected. We have seen the slow and steady global release of the 3G SIM enabled Smartwatch, but now it is also being sold in Japan by KDDI’s au brand, which is one of the three large carriers in the country, as a WiFi only model for ¥38,880 ($330).

Android

=> ↺ Android drone tracks you by computer vision

• Kickstarter is showing an $899, Android-based “Mind4″ follow-me drone that tracks you entirely by computer vision, and interprets full-body gestures.

=> ↺ Android game console runs on quad-core Cortex-A17

• Ugoos announced a “micro game console” spin-off of its Android-based quad-core Cortex-A17 UT3 media player, and released an Ubuntu 14.10 build for the UT3.

=> ↺ Five Android 5.0 Lollipop annoyances Google should fix immediately

• In Android 4.4 and earlier, the menu you got when holding the power menu had a few options including toggling airplane mode, ringer modes, and of course, turning the device off. Some manufacturers even added reboot commands and additional settings. In Android 5.0 Google has gone backward and this menu now only includes “Power Off.”

=> ↺ Android 5.0 Lollipop embraces the enterprise

• Finally, Google has included EMM/MDM APIs to allow a standard approach to the management and security of Android mobile devices. No longer will EMM vendors like MobileIron have to make different versions for the devices of different OEMs. (Of course they will need to continue to do so for as long as they support pre-Lollipop Android devices.)

• Google has also moved to harden the base operating system, strengthen data security by default, improve the security update process and authentication and much more. There are thousands of new APIs, many of which help enterprises.

• Of course there are Lollipop features, such as Material Design, which is intended to make user interfaces more consistent, and Battery Saver, which benefit enterprises as much as anyone, but they are not enterprise-specific.

=> ↺ You Can Get Android Lollipop’s Best Feature on Older Android Phones

=> ↺ Get Android 5.0′s trusted places feature on any Android phone

• Locking your phone with a password or PIN code is a necessity when you’re out and about, but when you’re in the safety of your own home or office, it can be a real pain to unlock the thing every time you look at it. As noted by my colleague Vlad, Android 5.0 Lollipop has a super useful feature to address this: you can set your home or office as a “trusted place” and Android will automatically disable your lock screen when you are there, reactivating it when you leave.

=> ↺ Android Auto is great, but automakers are holding it back

• At the LA Auto Show this week, I spent time with a recent pre-release build of Android Auto using a Nexus 5 connected to a 2015 Hyundai Sonata. It’s mostly the same as the version we were shown at Google I/O in June, apart from some minor refinements. For instance, the green, circular “a” logo that appears on the phone when it’s jacked into the car now reads “Android Auto,” and voice-based searches no longer cause a full-screen “listening” window to pop up — you just get a little pulsing “g” in the corner. The underlying concept, though, is unchanged: it’s Material Design-infused Android for your dashboard, boiled down to the basics with copious use of speech output and voice recognition so that driver distraction is kept to a bare minimum. You’re also locked out of using your actual phone when Android Auto is in use, another stab at limiting distraction by keeping eyes off screens and on the road.

=> ↺ Fire OS 4.1.1 rolls out: Solid update (hands on)

• I should emphasize how much faster the system feels overall. There are no lags, no delays, and even third-party apps that haven’t been optimized run fast and smoothly.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

=> ↺ [Older] Jolla enters tablet market with instant crowdfunded hit

=> ↺ Jolla’s open-source tablet might actually stay the course

• The Jolla Tablet, an open-source device that promises privacy, ease of use and comparable hardware to late-model Android tablets and iPads, has demolished its funding goals on IndieGoGo in just the first few days of its campaign.

• The project page shows a little over $1.2 million raised as of noon on Monday – well over triple Jolla’s initial goal of $380,000.

=> ↺ Jolla Tablet Runs Android Apps, Gathers Crowdfunds

• A Finnish mobile technology startup company with an open source operating system called Sailfish OS has gathered more than $1.1 million in crowdsourced funding in an Indiegogo campaign.

=> ↺ Jolla Sailfish 2.0 Tablet: ‘Open-Source iPad’ Crowdfunded Within Hours

• Finnish designer and mobile device developer Jolla is using crowdfunding site Indiegogo to develop its Jolla Tablet, the world’s “first people powered tablet,” which will run Sailfish OS 2.0. The campaign launched on Wednesday and reached its goal of $380,000 within hours. The project had raised more than $740,000 as of mid-afternoon.

=> ↺ Jolla’s Open Source iPad Alternative Raises More Than $1M In Two Days’ Crowdfunding

• Late last week Finnish mobile startup Jolla launched a crowdfunding campaign for a tablet running its open source Sailfish OS, smashing past its initial funding goal of $380,000 in a couple of hours. It has since pushed past the $1 million mark, with around $1.18M now pledged from more than 7,370 backers of the Indiegogo campaign.

• Speaking in an interview with TechCrunch prior to the campaign kicking off Jolla co-founder Marc Dillon was bullish. “I think we’re going to sell out,” he said. “I believe that we will quickly see the small initial targets, we will put up some stretch goals. I think that we’re going to sell a lot of tablets.”

=> ↺ Intel decides to keep tablet subsidies, say sources

• Intel has reportedly decided to continue subsidizing its mobile device processor platform after a series of evaluations recently and will even expand the product coverage from 10-inch and below devices to 12-inch and below ones, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

=> ↺ wIntel Decides to Keep Tablet Subsidies

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Thoughts of Thanksgiving for All That Is FOSS

• Well Thanksgiving week is upon us here in the land of stars and stripes, and in anticipation of all the social events soon to besiege us, more than a few Linux bloggers have been practicing keeping their favorite barstools warm down at the blogosphere’s Punchy Penguin Saloon.

• How chilly would those stools get if we were all flitting here and there from this party to that? It would be truly unkind. Much better to stay put and keep to ourselves in a comfortable place where inane small talk is frowned upon.

=> ↺ How Google Inbox shares 70% of its code across Android, iOS, and the Web

• Launching a new app in the mobile age is hard. If you want to reach a wide audience, you usually have to make your client three times at minimum: once for Android, once for iOS, and once more for the Web. Building an app on three different platforms means three times the work, with three times as many bugs to squish. To make matters more complicated, these clients all use different programming languages: Objective-C and/or Swift for iOS, Java for Android, and JavaScript/CSS/HTML5 for the Web.

=> ↺ 6 tips for adopting open source

• Open source code drives collaborative innovation from a larger pool of developers at a lower cost, which is why federal agencies are adopting the “open source first” model. In fact Sonny Hashmi, CIO of the General Services Administration, recently announced that implementing open source software is among his top priorities this year.

=> ↺ Network Functions Virtualization Tries Its Hand at Open Source

• To save money, accelerate time to market and provide flexibility, many businesses are deciding to embrace network functions virtualization (NFV), the process in which server-based network operations—like intrusion detection, firewalls, Domain Name Service (DNS) and others—are virtualized.

=> ↺ The Netflix cloud team loves OSS — and would love to stop building it

• Netflix is in known in some (albeit geeky) circles as much for its advanced Amazon Web Services architecture and open source software as for its streaming video service. But some members of cloud team would love the company to stop building its own tools and start using commercially available services from AWS.

=> ↺ Netflix Open Sources Sophisticated Messaging Tool

• Open cloud computing platforms are on all kinds of radars these days, including leading open source platforms such as OpenStack, but if you ask many folks which companies have top-notch expertise in the open cloud, you won’t often hear Netflix mentioned. The company actually has an admirable history of open sourcing many of its most useful cloud tools and accompanying security tools–and it is a sophisticated user of cloud services.

=> ↺ PayrollHero to release code publicly to help build open source culture in Singapore

• In line with this, PayrollHero is marking their official launch in Singapore with a gift for the local Ruby community – going open source with their Singapore Payroll Gems. The startup has a history of giving back to its local community in the Philippines. They’re now bringing that practice to the island-state – starting with their CPF calculator. Not surprisingly, this was suggested by their engineers, according to co-founder Stephen Jagger.

=> ↺ How AAP is shaping an open source newsroom system

• Australian Associated Press (AAP) is collaborating with open source software developer Sourcefabric to test and build a newsroom management system better suited to the digital age.

• One of Superdesk’s main aims is to remove repetitive technical tasks such as tagging stories and multimedia elements from a journalist’s workload.

=> ↺ 7 great open source monitoring tools

• Network and system monitoring is a broad category. There are solutions that monitor for the proper operation of servers, network gear, and applications, and there are solutions that track the performance of those systems and devices, providing trends and analysis.

=> ↺ Cisco hands over security analytics framework to open source development

• Cisco is opening up development of the OpenSOC framework by making the tool open source.

=> ↺ Cisco Releases Security Analytics Framework to Open Source

=> ↺ Google embraces open source with free Android game

• Google has embraced open source in an effort to highlight multiplayer-gaming on Android TV. How? Well, the search giant has released a free open source game called “Pie Noon,” which is available now in the Google Play Store.

=> ↺ Google releases free open source game to highlight Android TV multiplayer gaming

=> ↺ Google Releases Open Source Tool for Testing Web App Security Scanners

=> ↺ ZTE Joins Open-Source NFV Effort

• The Chinese tech company is the latest member of the OPNFV project, which wants to build an open-source reference architecture for NFV deployments.

=> ↺ Open source beats proprietary software in control and continuity

=> ↺ IT Pros Warm Up to Open Source Collaboration Software

• Respondents in a Ponemon Institute study released this week are generally positive about commercial open source applications, especially because of the assurance of continuity. However, despite those benefits, companies are slow to adopt, Ponemon found.

=> ↺ Surveys Show Continuing Interest in the Cloud, Confidence in Open Source

=> ↺ Survey: 70 percent of IT pros prefer open source to proprietary software

• An overwhelming majority of IT professionals favor open source software over proprietary alternatives, according to a new study from the Ponemon Institute conducted on behalf of Zimbra Inc., the enterprise collaboration provider. That mirrors a similar pattern among enterprise developers, over 80 percent of whom share that sentiment according to an earlier Forrester Research report.

=> ↺ Survey: Control, not cost savings, drives IT’s love for open source

• The Ponemon Institute polled nearly 1,400 IT professionals in the U.S. and in 18 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa about their perceptions of open source software versus proprietary programs. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. respondents (74 percent) said open source applications allow for better control and continuity with an organization’s overall IT practices.

=> ↺ IT Pros Prefer Open Source for Continuity, Control

=> ↺ Most IT pros prefer open source to proprietary software

=> ↺ IT teams are choosing open source – but not just for the cost savings

• IT decision makers are increasingly turning to open source over proprietary software because they believe it offers them better business continuity and control

=> ↺ NSA partners with Apache to release open-source data traffic program

• In partnership with the Apache Software Foundation, the NSA announced on Tuesday it is releasing the source code for Niagarafiles (Nifi). The spy agency said Nifi “automates data flows among multiple computer networks, even when data formats and protocols differ.”

=> ↺ Why open source runs the world

• GNU/Linux as an operating system and open source as a movement have become phenomenal driving forces in the technology world. Without it the internet wouldn’t exist as the free and open resource we enjoy today.

=> ↺ EOFS and OpenSFS Obtain Lustre Assets from Seagate

• This news follows Seagate’s recent announcement to make its Ethernet Drive interface specification and T-Card development adapter available to the Open Compute Project in January of this year.

Events

=> ↺ CloudStack Collaboration Conference Europe 2014 #ccceu

• You might have heard of OpenStack as an industry consortium/community in the cloud computing marketplace – but then there is CloudStack.

=> ↺ ArrayFire Accelerated Compute Library Open-Sourced

• The ArrayFire GPU compute library that allows for simplified GPU computing via targeting its own optimized library and API for GPGPU kernel generation than writing your own CUDA/OpenCL kernels, has been open-sourced.

Web Browsers

Chrome

=> ↺ Google’s Chrome to pull plug on plugins next September

• Google is moving ahead with its plan to end support for Netscape plugins in its Chrome browser – and has set next September as the date for when they will stop working altogether.

=> ↺ The Final Countdown for NPAPI

• Last September we announced our plan to remove NPAPI support from Chrome, a change that will improve Chrome’s security, speed, and stability as well as reduce complexity in the code base. Since our last update, NPAPI usage has continued its decline. Given this usage data, we will continue with our deprecation plan.

=> ↺ Fair Warning: Chrome Team Starts Final Countdown for NPAPI Extensions

• As we’ve reported several times, Google is introducing big changes in its Chrome browser, especially when it comes to how the browser handles extensions. If you’ve regularly used either or both of the most popular open source Internet browsers–Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox–then you’re probably familiar with the performance and security problems that some extensions for them can cause.

SaaS/Big Data

=> ↺ A look back and a look ahead for OpenStack

=> ↺ Wang & Prokharchyk are top 2 CloudStack ‘committers’

• It’s tough to cover the thorny subject of women in technology without saying the wrong thing.

=> ↺ ShapeBlue: why enterprise-grade CloudStack wins

=> ↺ What’s Holding ownCloud Back?

• In the recent article about the ownCloud event program, I pointed out that while ownCloud has 2.5 million users, it is a drop in the ocean looking at the number of Internet users (a little over 4 billion today).

=> ↺ Google Offers “Containers as a Service” To Define Kubernetes Place in the Cloud Economy

• At the Defrag conference yesterday, Google’s Brendan Burns used Containers as a Service (CaaS) as a term for container platforms. In his view, CaaS environments such as Google Kubernetes and Google Container Engine sit between the IaaS and PaaS environments. It’s a new term but he provides a pretty clear argument for why it is applicable.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ And now for some good news… How open source triumphed over Microsoft Office in Italy

• Microsoft Office may have a global monopoly, but one Italian region rejected it flat out. But, why?

• In the stunningly beautiful Italian region of Umbria, you’ll feel more at home running open source software, rather than the clunky and expensive Microsoft Office suite.

CMS

=> ↺ Four-year-old comment security bug affects 86 percent of WordPress sites

• A Finnish IT company has uncovered a bug in WordPress 3 sites that could be used to launch a wide variety of malicious script-based attacks on site visitors’ browsers. Based on current WordPress usage statistics, the vulnerability could affect up to 86 percent of existing WordPress-powered sites.

Business

=> ↺ Facebook’s Open Source Virtual Machine HHVM Stabilized

• Open source virtual machine project HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine) has made a breakthrough. Facebook and WP Engine, which provides a WordPress-based content management platform, have enabled HHVM and PHP to run side by side, making HHVM more feasible for production. While the news will be of interest to developers, HHVM’s maturity is something the industry at large should take into account.

Funding

=> ↺ It Ain’t Easy Making Money in Open Source: Thoughts on the Hortonworks S-1

• While Hadoop and big data are unarguably huge trends driving the industry and while the future of Hadoop looks very bright indeed, on reading the Hortonworks S-1, the reader is drawn to the inexorable conclusion that it’s hard to make money in open source, or more crassly, it’s hard to make money when you give the shit away.

BSD

=> ↺ PC-BSD 10.1 review

• The last PC-BSD release I reviewed was the 9.1 edition, and that was back in December 2012 (see PC-BSD 9.1 preview). That’s almost two years ago, But that’s because I’ve been very disappointed with subsequent releases after that, so I never bothered to write another review, though I was each testing each release privately.

=> ↺ A Go Front-End Could Soon Be Landing In LLVM

• The “llgo” Go front-end to LLVM could soon be accepted as a new sub-project. This Go front-end is written in the Go language itself.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Purism hopes to crowdfund a high-end, open source laptop

• Want a laptop that runs free and open source software, and only open source software? The folks behind the Purism Librem 15 want to build one… and sell it to you.

=> ↺ Librem 15 High End Open Source Laptop Launches On Crowd Supply (video)

• Anyone in the market for an open source laptop might be interested in giving the new Librem 15 more investigation over on the Crowd Supply crowd funding website with pledges starting from $1,449.

=> ↺ Librem 15 wants to be a free, open source laptop that doesn’t suck

• Supporters of software freedom and open source have plenty of choices when it comes to apps. When it comes to hardware? Not so much. The Librem 15 laptop is hoping to change that.

=> ↺ Problems with Emacs 24.4

• This is, essentially, a call for help, as I don’t really know which program is at a fault here.

• Given that Emacs’s upstream converted their repository from bzr to git, all the commits in mirror repositories became “invalid” in relation to the official repository.

• What does this mean in practical terms, in my case? Well, bear with me while I try to report my steps.

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ NGA’s belief in open source, crowdsourcing heating up

• The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is in many ways taking a leap of faith that many in the intelligence community wouldn’t dare to endeavor.

• NGA is taking advantage of open source and crowdsourcing through the GitHub platform to help it develop apps across 16 different topics ranging from an anti-piracy to a request for information generator for geospatial analysts. GitHub is an open source platform that provides registered users the opportunity to suggest changes to software in a collaborative process.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ DIY Virtual Reality Open Source System Launches On Kickstarter (video)

• If you would like to enjoy a little virtual reality interactivity this holiday season and already own a smartphone, you might be interested in a new VR system that is launched over on the Kickstarter crowdfunding website called DIYVR.

=> ↺ SnapJet Open-Source Portable Instant Film Printer (video)

• If you are looking for a way to physically print your smartphone photos whilst out and about you might be interested in a new open source instant film printer called the SnapJet.

=> ↺ Open Food Network connects you with local, sustainable food

• Open Food Network is a food hub, a connector between small farmers and places to sell their local, sustainable food. Find them on GitHub.

=> ↺ Open food developers have an ancient message for you

• Growstuff is an open source project to build a crop database from growers’ knowledge, crowdsourcing information about who plants what food, when and where they plant it, and how they harvest it. Find it on GitHub.

=> ↺ 4 tips from growing a community grocery store

Programming

=> ↺ Meteor Provides Open Source Framework for App Development

• One of the primary reasons that the backlog for developing applications is rising is that there are a lot of manual steps involved in building a JavaScript application. To streamline that process, Meteor developed an open source application development platform written in JavaScript that has already been uniquely installed roughly 200,000 times.

=> ↺ PageTech Announces Aggressive Pricing on New Linux Version of PCLTool SDK

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ HTML5 vs native: Harry Coder and the mudblood mobile app princes

• HTML5 has offered salvation from the tyranny of apps for years, yet most mobile developers resolutely refuse to embrace the web. Despite HTML’s familiarity and promise of cross-device compatibility, native’s superior tooling and performance have convinced a generation of developers to go all in on native.

=> ↺ Samsung, LG Forge IoT Standard Alliance to Lead Global Market

• The competition between IT companies at home and abroad for Internet of Things (IoT) standards to dominate the global market is swinging into high gear. In this environment, Samsung and LG Electronics have agreed to unify IoT standards. The deal is expected to become a bridgehead for local companies to set IoT standards.

=> ↺ ODFAutoTests gearing up towards the 10th ODF Plugfest in London

• In two weeks time, users and developers of OpenDocument Format software will meet up for a two day ODF plugfest in London. In preparation of the plugfest, I have spent last weekend, refreshing ODFAutoTests. ODFAutoTests is a tool for creating test documents for ODF software and running these documents through the different implementations. If you want to help out with improving OpenDocument Format, please come to the plugfest, or participate online. Writing tests with ODFAutoTests is a great way to help make the 10th ODF Plugfest a success.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Study: US attracting fewer educated, highly skilled migrants

• But a new study of the worldwide migration of professionals to the U.S. shows a sharp drop-off in its proportional share of those workers – raising the question of whether the nation will remain competitive in attracting top talent in an increasingly globalized economy.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Monsanto Sues Maui for Direct Democracy, Launches New PR Campaign

• Residents of Maui County, Hawai’i voted on November 4 to ban the growing of genetically modified (GMO) crops on the islands of Maui, Lanai, and Molokai until scientific studies are conducted on their safety and benefits. Monsanto and Dow Chemical’s unit Mycogen Seeds have sued the county in federal court to stop the law passed by the people.

• In Vermont, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA, of which Monsanto and Dow were recently listed as members) has sued the state over its law requiring GMO labels. And Monsanto has a history of suing to prevent consumer labeling regarding its products. The company sued a number of dairies in the 1990s and 2000s for labeling milk free from recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), which Monsanto developed and marketed as Posilac® (sold to Eli Lilly in 2008), the only commercially approved form. Vermont itself is no stranger to such suits. The International Dairy Foods Association sued Vermont for passing a law requiring labeling of milk containing rBGH (Monsanto wrote an amicus brief in support of the plaintiff, and GMA was a plaintiff-appellant) — and it won in federal court.

Security

=> ↺ Tuesday’s security updates

=> ↺ 183 Million Accounts Compromised In Q3 2014

• Large scale attacks against financial firms, retail companies, and consumers’ personal identities and online accounts are dominant trends

=> ↺ 2014: Year of open source miracles

• We open with the recent unpleasantness at the Drupal project. The SQL injection vulnerability, while serious, isn’t unusual. It’s actually the most common vulnerability in the world. What made the exploit newsworthy was the very short amount of time between disclosure and widespread exploitation: “if timely patches weren’t applied, then the Drupal security team outlined a lengthy process required to restore a website to health.” Basically, you had seven hours to fix it before evil robots descended on your servers.

• This isn’t an open source problem, it’s a software management problem.

=> ↺ Security advisories for Monday

=> ↺ Sony Pictures computer system hacked in online attack

• Sony Pictures Entertainment has been targeted by computer hackers in an attack which reports say forced it shut down its systems on Monday.

=> ↺ Encrypt Everything: How to encrypt the disk to protect the data

• Recently, at BrowserStack.com, some of our services got compromised. We use Amazon Web Services extensively. The person (or group) who attacked us mounted one of our backups and managed to steal some of the data. We could have prevented this simply by ensuring that we use encrypted disks which would have made this attack useless. Learning from our mistakes, we have recently started encrypting everything and I am going to show you how to do that. One point worth noting here is that Amazon AWS does provide encryption support for the EBS volumes but that is transparent and would not help in case of the account getting compromised. I am going to use dm-crypt which is supported by Linux kernel so the steps are quite generic and would work on any kind of disk, on any kind of environment, including Amazon AWS, Google Compute Engine, physical disks in your datacenter.

=> ↺ How secure is Docker? If you’re not running version 1.3.2, NOT VERY

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ Hackers Leak US Document Scans With Plans to Supply Weapons to Kiev

• Despite earlier claims that US had no intention of supplying Ukraine with weapons, a recent leak of government documents has revealed plans to supply weapons to Kiev. The leak was published online by Ukrainian hackers group CyberBerkut.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ NBC’s Energy Debate: Oil Exec Vs. Oil Industry Adviser

• Well, that’s certainly a broad debate: a guy who advises energy companies (that’s Yergin’s day job) and a former Shell CEO? On the question of oversight, both agreed there was plenty of it. Yergin explained that “the oil and gas industry is pretty highly regulated,” while Hofmeister declared that “the industry wants regulation.”

Finance

=> ↺ Black Friday Strike, Greens Join Labor to Take on Walmart

• With Black Friday now days away, Walmart workers and their allies are gearing up for what they predict will be the largest strike in the retailer’s history.

• Among the tens of thousands of people and hundreds of organizations that have vowed to support Walmart’s low-wage workers are a growing number of voices from the climate justice movement, calling for broad resistance to the corporation’s violations of workers’ rights and the environment.

Privacy

=> ↺ ‘Snoopers’ Charter IS DEAD’, Lib Dems claim as party waves through IP address-matching

• IP address-matching powers for police and spooks are to be pushed through Parliament with the blessing of the junior member of the UK’s Coalition government, after the Liberal Democrats claimed today that the Snoopers’ Charter was “dead”.

=> ↺ iPhone ban during Russian military service claim false – Defense Ministry

• The Russian Defense Ministry says it doesn’t ban iPhones during mandatory military service. Izvestia newspaper reported that the devices are not allowed in the army over concerns its closed operating system might contain spying backdoors.

=> ↺ Researchers Uncover Government Spy Tool Used to Hack Telecoms and Belgian Cryptographer

• It was the spring of 2011 when the European Commission discovered it had been hacked. The intrusion into the EU’s legislative body was sophisticated and widespread and used a zero-day exploit to get in. Once the attackers established a stronghold on the network, they were in for the long haul. They scouted the network architecture for additional victims and covered their tracks well. Eventually, they infected numerous systems belonging to the European Commission and the European Council before being discovered.

=> ↺ EFF Spearheads Safer Web Initiative

• Let’s Encrypt is an ambitious plan to convert the Internet to HTTPS, a protocol that uses encryption to secure websites. Internet-wide encryption is necessary, because otherwise “all of our browsing is vulnerable to account hijacking, surveillance by companies and governments, hackers on the network, content modification, malware injection and targeted censorship,” said the EFF’s Peter Eckersley.

=> ↺ Lollipop’s Encryption Takes a Hefty Toll

• The new full-disk encryption feature that’s enabled by default in Android 5.0 Lollipop comes at a hefty price in terms of performance, according to a recent benchmark report.

• In fact, when full-disk encryption is enabled, random read performance drops by 62.9 percent, while random write performance falls by 50.5 percent, AnandTech reported late last week. Sequential read performance, meanwhile, drops by a whopping 80.7 percent.

=> ↺ Facebook info sharing created Zoosk.com dating profile for married woman

• Online privacy advocates say current legislation fails to protect Canadians’ privacy online

=> ↺ Thanks To Namecheap For Sponsoring Techdirt’s Switch To SSL

• As some of you know, Techdirt recently completed the process of protecting all Techdirt traffic with full SSL encryption — something we believe every internet company should do. Part of this process involved seeking a sponsor to help us offset the money and time spent getting everything switched over, and today we’re happy to announce that Namecheap has stepped up to that role.

=> ↺ Click Here to See If You’re Under Surveillance

• The free, downloadable software, called Detekt, searches computers for the presence of malicious programs that have been built to evade detection. The spyware ranges from government-grade products used by intelligence and police agencies to hacker staples known as RATs—remote administration tools. Detekt, which was developed by security researcher Claudio Guarnieri, is being released in a partnership with advocacy groups Amnesty International, Digitale Gesellschaft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Privacy International.

=> ↺ WhatsApp rolls out end-to-end encryption using TextSecure code

• The most recent update to WhatsApp’s Android app includes a surprising feature: strong end-to-end encryption, enabled by default. It’s the strongest security any major texting app has offered, even compared with similar tools from giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple. WhatsApp partnered with Open Whisper Systems for the launch, using open source code to build in the new features. It’s unclear when the features will come to iOS, but just reaching WhatsApp’s Android users represents a huge step forward for everyday encryption use.

=> ↺ EFF: Let’s Encrypt

=> ↺ Blanket data retention does not come in “good” and “bad” forms

• Yesterday’s announcement that mobile phone providers will be obliged to keep records of their customers IP addresses (and port numbers) came as no surprise. But what we need to remember is that all data retention should be subject to the same principles, conveniently outlined by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ New high school course: ‘How to deal with cops’

• The principal of East Side Community HS invited the New York Civil Liberties Union to give a two-day training session last week on interacting with police.

• The 450 kids were coached on staying calm during NYPD encounters and given a “What To Do If You’re Stopped By The Police” pamphlet.

• NYCLU representatives told kids to be polite and to keep their hands out of their pockets. But they also told students they don’t have to show ID or consent to searches, that it’s best to remain silent, and how to file a complaint against an officer.

=> ↺ Woman claims officer offered to fix ticket for sex

• A city parking enforcement officer has been arrested and suspended without pay after police said he offered to “fix” a parking ticket in exchange for sexual favors.

• Mario Carpenito Jr., 61, of Thornwood, was arrested Friday after an investigation. He’s charged with third-degree receiving a bribery, a felony, and official misconduct, a misdemeanor.

=> ↺ Craig Murray, Criminal

• I was witness to an extraordinary example of the use of “anti-terrorist” laws to deny democracy. The whole of Parliament Square, College Green and Canning Green were closed off with high Harris fencing, as were other spaces nearby. These were protected by a huge police presence. I counted 37 police vans. All this to counter eighty “Occupy Democracy” protestors wishing to highlight the alienation of the political class from the rest of us. That MPs feel the need to make Westminster look like the Somme 1917, to defend themselves against a few ordinary people, is proof that the concept of “democracy” is now alien to the Westminster system.

=> ↺ CBS Finds Ferguson ‘Pipe Bombs’

• But the more dramatic bombing angle seemed to vanish; the CBS story changed from “explosives” to “firearms.” Reports can resonate, especially when they are repeated by other outlets; on NBC’s Today show (11/22/14), viewers heard this: “Now there’s word that two men arrested with weapons charges are also suspected of trying to bring pipe bombs, possibly, here to Ferguson.”

• Media have been known to stoke panic about violent and disorderly protests. Ahead of the 2004 protests at the Republican National Convention in New York City, media hyped the threat of protester violence.

=> ↺ No charges for officer in Ferguson shooting

• A Missouri grand jury has decided not to charge police officer Darren Wilson in the racially charged shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

• Robert McCulloch, the St. Louis County prosecutor, announced Monday night that the jury had found no probable cause to file a cause of indictment against Wilson.

• The jury had considered five charges against Wilson, ranging up to first-degree murder.

• McCulloch said that the grand jury met for 25 sessions over the course of three months, and that their deliberations took two days.

=> ↺ ABC and Darren Wilson’s ‘Serious Injury’

• Will ABC tell viewers that it spread an unfounded rumor that there was photographic evidence that Darren Wilson was seriously hurt? Or do they consider the photo above as confirmation of what they reported?

=> ↺ NRA’s Ted Nugent Goes On Racially Charged Ferguson Rant Targeting “Black Klansmen”

• National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent reacted to the decision of a Missouri grand jury to not indict police officer Darren Wilson by attacking “black klansmen” and claiming “millions” of African-Americans “slaughter” each other “every day.”

=> ↺ City Of Baltimore To Create Publicly-Accessible Police Brutality Lawsuit Database

• There’s not much information symmetry when it comes to the public and their public servants. The public is routinely required to turn over all sorts of personal information, but their governments are rarely willing to return the favor. In particular, police departments tend to be very tight-lipped when it comes to details of officer misconduct or abuse. Most departments are more than willing to provide in-depth crime stats detailing wrongdoing by citizens, but when asked to turn the magnifying glass on themselves, the details provided are, at best, questionable.

=> ↺ May hem

• Now Theresa May is going to make doubly sure no student ever hears anything interesting or inspirational…

=> ↺ ISC report into Lee Rigby’s murder is misleading

• Reacting to today’s ISC report, the Open Rights Group said that their report into Lee Rigby’s murder is misleading. Executive Director Jim Killock said:

• “When the intelligence services are gathering data about every one of us but failing to act on intelligence about individuals, they need to get back to basics, and look at the way they conduct targeted investigations.

• “The committee should not use the appalling murder of Fusilier Rigby as an excuse to justify the further surveillance and monitoring of the entire UK population. To pass the blame to internet companies is to use Fusilier Rigby’s murder to make cheap political points.

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Misleading Rasmussen Poll Helps Prop Up Bogus Net Neutrality Partisan Divide

• While a number of polls and surveys were busy deconstructing the myth of the partisan neutrality feud last week, Rasmussen Reports was busy trying to perpetuate it. The firm recently issued a new poll that breathlessly proclaimed that 61% of the public opposed net neutrality rules…

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ The sharks move in; lobbyists pushing forward on TPP agreements

• The latest leaked draft of the TPP reveals that the countries involved in the negotiations are coming closer to acceptance of a whole host of problematic agreements.

• On October 16th, WikiLeaks released an updated draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Strategic Partnership Agreement chapter on copyright, patent and other proprietary interests. A previous draft had been released last year. If you aren’t familiar with TPP, it is a multinational trade-agreement that is being developed through a series of secret negotiations that when enacted will have a vast effect on civil liberties, including the ability of users all around the world to enjoy software freedom.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Small Open Source Nonprofit Defeats Groupon in Trademark Fight

• In May, Groupon created a tablet to help merchants process and serve Groupon customers. They called it Gnome. The hitch? GNOME was already trademarked as a worldwide, open source computer operating system. The GNOME foundation and its thousands of supporters mobilized to protect its name. Thanks to crowdfunding and social media, Groupon backed down and will develop a new name.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Google Refuses MPAA Request to Blacklist ‘Pirate Site’ Homepages

• The MPAA recently asked Google to remove the homepages of dozens of sites that offer links to pirated content. Google, however, refused to take down most of the URLs, likely because the takedown notices are seen as too broad.

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