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● 03.15.15

● Links 15/3/2015: Linux Lite 2.4, OpenELEC 5.0.6

Posted in News Roundup at 10:29 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Xtra-PC Helps Non-Technical People Install Linux on an Old PC

• If you still have an old PC, you’re in luck. A new Linux distribution based on Lubuntu will give any old PC a new lease on life, designed for non-technical users and optimized for popular web sites.

=> ↺ 7 Warning Signs That You’re Meant to Switch to Linux

• You might be a Linux user and not even know it yet. It happened to me: I was a Windows user for years, but was doing all kinds of things that should have taught me I’m a Linux user at heart. Only when I switched did all these things make sense to me.

Server

=> ↺ SanDisk Announces Contributions To Ceph

=> ↺ SanDisk on-board for open source Ceph storage platform

=> ↺ SanDisk announces open source commitment with Ceph contributions

• SANDISK HAS ANNOUNCED a series of open source projects for the Ceph platform based around its flash products.

=> ↺ SanDisk Announces Innovations and Contributions to the Open Source Community

=> ↺ SanDisk announces innovations and contributions to the open-source community

=> ↺ Docker Acquires Kitematic for Desktop Container Deployment Technology

• Kitematic, an Open-Source project that received funding from the government of Canada, could help to push Docker technology on to more systems.

=> ↺ Docker Acquiring Container SDN Specialist SocketPlane

• Docker is buying SDN vendor SocketPlane. Financial terms of the deal—considered a talent and technology acquisition—have not been disclosed.

=> ↺ Docker Acquires SocketPlane to Boost Container Networking

=> ↺ Docker Advances With Trio of Orchestration Tools

• Two months after first announcing Machine, Swarm and Compose, Docker rolls out the three orchestration tools.

=> ↺ Docker Debuts New Orchestration Tools for App Containers

=> ↺ Docker Launches New Orchestration Tools

=> ↺ With RancherOS, Cloud.com Founders Deliver Docker-Focused Innovation

=> ↺ Cloud.com Founders Start New Thing–You Guess It, It’s Docker-Related. The War Escalates

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ The Open Source Initiative

• This week we are joined by Simon Phipps and Patrick Masson to talk about the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a global non-profit that supports and promotes the open source movement. Among other things, the OSI maintains the Open Source Definition, and a list of licenses that comply with that definition.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ The 2015 Linux Jobs Report Shows the Open Cloud Driving New Hires

• The 2015 Linux Jobs Report comes from The Linux Foundation, in conjunction with Dice, and includes data from hiring managers (1,010) and Linux professionals (3,446).

=> ↺ Companies Are Hiring Linux Talents, Says The Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Kansas Linux Fest 2015 Talks Announced March 21st-22nd, 2015

• Over 200 attendees are set to meet at the 1st annual Kansas Linux Fest for a weekend-long program of training, talks and workshops from the 21st to 22nd of March at the Lawrence Public Library in Lawrence, Kansas. The conferences is free and open to all people, being run by the non profit Free/Libre Open Source and Open Knowledge Association of Kansas and the Lawrence Linux User group. There is also no need to pay or preregister for the conference, but tickets are available and seating preferences will be given to those who have registered. Donations are accepted via online ticket sales, or at the door.

=> ↺ LMAX Exchange joins the Linux Foundation to champion open source

• LMAX Exchange, the world leading FCA regulated MTF for global FX trading and the UK’s fastest growing technology firm, today announced it has become a member of the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organisation dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development.

=> ↺ Linux 4.0-rc3

=> ↺ Exploiting the DRAM rowhammer bug to gain kernel privileges

=> ↺ Vendors continue to break things

• Getting on for seven years ago, I wrote an article on why the Linux kernel responds “False” to _OSI(“Linux”). This week I discovered that vendors were making use of another behavioural difference between Linux and Windows to change the behaviour of their firmware and breaking things in the process.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Nvidia Actually Listens To Its Customers, Will Again Let Them Use The Expensive Hardware They Own As They See Fit

• Graphics card powerhouse Nvidia hasn’t been having very much fun lately. First, the company took an Internet wide beating from gamers after selling a 4 GB graphics card (the GTX 970) that wasn’t really a 4 GB graphics card, resulting in the $300+ purchase choking on high-end resolutions (or when using, say, Oculus Rift). After months of complaints and a false advertising suit, the company finally took to its official blog to acknowledge that the company “failed to communicate” its graphics card’s limitations to the marketing department and “externally to reviewers at launch.” Yeah, whoops a daisy.

=> ↺ OpenGL 4.0 Turns Five Years Old, Mesa Still Doesn’t Fully Support It

• Time sure seems to fly by: OpenGL 4.0 turned five years old today. The sad part is that Mesa still doesn’t fully implement the GL 4.0 specification.

Applications

=> ↺ Best VOIP Clients for Linux (That Aren’t Skype)

• There are occasions when I require a Voice Over IP (VOIP) session. The single most pressing demand is podcast interviews ─ of which I do a lot. When I need to record an interview, the path of least resistance is recording a VOIP call. That, of course, requires a VOIP client. For the longest time, the only VOIP client of note was Skype. Even though Skype was purchased by Microsoft, it still remains one of the most user-friendly VOIP clients available. And considering Skype’s user-base, it is often considered the de facto standard software for the task.

=> ↺ groove-dl: Jumping the shark

• I was tempted to skip over groove-dl because my list of stream ripper tools is starting to devolve into a tool-per-service array, and when things become discrete and overly precise, I start to fall toward the same rules that say, “no esoteric codec playback tools.”

=> ↺ mined: Long overdue

• Supposedly, mined’s real claim to fame is support for multicode characters or alphabets beyond the stale 26 letters that comprise Western language. If you need access to those glyphs, mined might be something to look into.

=> ↺ leo: Laid-back online learning

=> ↺ Calibre 2.21 Lets Users Open and Convert eBooks in External Apps

• Kovid Goyal had the pleasure of announcing earlier today, March 13, the immediate availability for download of a new maintenance release of the powerful and acclaimed Calibre eBook manager and converter utility for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

=> ↺ darktable 1.6.3 Supports RAW Images from More Canon and Panasonic Cameras

• darktable, one of the best open-source applications for editing RAW files under a Linux kernel-based operating system has been updated recently with a great number of changes, several bug fixes, RAW support for more cameras, white balance presets from several Panasonic cameras, as well as new standard/enhanced matrix and noise profiles. darktable 1.6.3 is available for download right now from Softpedia.

=> ↺ 4 Linux Music Players That Deserve Your Attention Now

• Finding a good music player for Linux is not an easy task. A few big name projects, like Amarok and Songbird, have come and gone throughout the years, but none of them have been stable enough to match the staying power of iTunes, Winamp, or any of the other music players available to non-Linux users.

=> ↺ Why I’m switching from GIMP to Krita

• I consider myself neither a technophile nor a technophobe. Yet every once or twice a year, I discover a piece of software so well-designed and useful that I spend whatever spare time I have learning it as thoroughly as possible. For the past couple of months, that software has been has been the paint program Krita. Now, with the 2.9 release coming out today, suddenly I have another long list of new tools to learn — and I couldn’t be happier about having new features to learn.

=> ↺ Kdenlive Multi-Track Video Editor Is Now Part of KDE Applications 15.04

• Kdenlive is powerful multi-track video editor, which supports DV, AVCHD and HDV editing. The developer has announced that the Kdenlive will be a part of the KDE Applications family, starting with the 15.04 branch.

=> ↺ GCompris Is a Great Linux Teaching Tool for Small Kids

• GCompris, an educational software suite providing fun activities for kids aged 2 to 10, has been upgraded to version 15.02 and is now available for download.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Delete file when you have more than 100g for deleting

=> ↺ How to Test Your Internet Speed Bidirectionally from Command Line Using ‘Speedtest-CLI’ Tool

=> ↺ Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.1 Released – A Quick Review and Installation Instructions

=> ↺ Automate Your Infrastructure with Ansible

=> ↺ How To Install Fotoxx 15.02.1 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Debian Jessie And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How To Install Tor Browser Bundle 4.0.4 On Linux Systems

=> ↺ How To Install Tor Browser 4.0.4 On Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How To Install DiffImg 2.2.0 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How To Install MintUpdate 4.8.1 On Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How to Use the OpenStack SDK for Go

=> ↺ How to install Selenium on Linux and automate your web tests

=> ↺ How to Install LAMP (Apache 2.4, MySQL 5.6, and PHP 5.4) on CentOS/RHEL 7

=> ↺ Using netstat to audit your network connections

=> ↺ Getting the Most Out of Audacity on Linux

=> ↺ How to access Gmail from the command line on Linux with Alpine

=> ↺ Install VTEDDY on an Ubuntu 14.04 VPS

=> ↺ Install Python from source on Linux VPS

=> ↺ Starting with Vagrant on Ubuntu 14.10 – A Beginner’s Guide

=> ↺ Plasmoid Tutorial 2 – Getting Data

=> ↺ RHCSA Series: How to Perform File and Directory Management – Part 2

=> ↺ Manage Your Photos with KPhotoAlbum

=> ↺ Ways To Secure Your Ubuntu 14.04 Server Running LAMP

=> ↺ Setup Your Own “Speedtest Mini Server” to Test Internet Bandwidth Speed

=> ↺ How To Install Flash, Steam And MP3 Codecs In Fedora Linux

=> ↺ How To Install OwnCloud 8 on CentOS 7

=> ↺ ownCloud ETags and FileIDs

• Often questions come up about the meaning of FileIDs and ETags. Both values are metadata that the ownCloud Server stores for each of the files and directories in the server database. These values are fundamentally important for the integrity of data in the overall system.

Games

=> ↺ Special Edition: Open gaming at Game Developers Conference

• …many AAA game titles were confirmed to come to Linux/SteamOS in this year.

=> ↺ Steam hits 1,000 Linux games days after Valve’s big Steam Machine reveal

• Steam’s love affair with Linux continues, and the infatuation is paying off in spades for Linux gamers.

=> ↺ Future Valve Games & SteamOS Will Use Vulkan Next-Gen OpenGL API

• Valve confirms that its next games, not to mention the SteamOS operating system will use the Vulkan API, the next-generation OpenGL iteration made by the Khronos consortium of companies, which includes not only Valve but also Nvidia, AMD, and much more.

=> ↺ Dead Island, X Series and Broken Sword 5 Up to 75% Off on Steam

• Three Linux games benefit from consistent discounts on Steam during this weekend. Dead Island, a horror first-person action game taking place on a tropical island crawling with zombies, is available for 4,99€, with a 75% discount. The offer ends Monday, March 26. Dead Island has single-player and multi-player modes.

=> ↺ 0 A.D. Alpha 18 Released with New Game Mode, Tech Tree, Formations

• 0 A.D., a beautiful, 3D real time strategy game developed by Wildfire Games, has reached Alpha 18 this Friday, getting features such as a new game mode, in-game technology tree, while the support for formations has been re-implemented (after it was dropped in A17). Alpha 18, codenamed Rhododactylos, comes with some new features, so let’s see what’s new in this release.

=> ↺ Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number Released on Linux, Doesn’t Work Well for Some Users

• Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital have just released the awesome Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number game on Steam for Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems, but it appears that many users have some issues with keyboard and mouse, as it would appear that the game grabs both peripherals but does nothing with them. Some say that it’s an issue regarding the mouse being recognized as a joystick.

=> ↺ Lots Of Big Games Confirmed For SteamOS, Torchlight II Now Out, Payday 2, Mordor And More Coming Too

• Valve has announced a Steam sale simply titled ”STEAMOS SALE” with interesting games that are already available and games that they claim are heading over to the platform. The list seems to include some quite big titles too!

=> ↺ Has Valve helped Linux gaming?

• Valve’s decision to create its own Linux distribution called SteamOS electrified the world of Linux gaming. But after more than a year how have Valve’s efforts really helped Linux gaming? Ars Technica took a look at where Linux gaming stands in light of Valve and SteamOS.

=> ↺ Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty Released On GOG & Steam, We Take A Look At The Linux Port

• Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty is a revamp of one of the platformers I used to love, so how is it on Linux?

=> ↺ X Rebirth Linux Alpha Now Available

• Not to be confused with the X (X11/X.Org) Server, Egosoft’s X Rebirth is now publicly available in alpha form for Linux gamers.

=> ↺ hack-of-life: Conway would be proud

=> ↺ scrap: Go forth, and scavenge aggressively

=> ↺ anagram and multi: Are you game?

=> ↺ encircled: Wow, just wow. …

=> ↺ beasts: Crush, crumble or be chomped

=> ↺ trek73: The best part is the site that hosts it

• On the other hand, that does suggest I can approach it from a fairly neutral angle, and given my long-standing infuriation with games like Star Fleet Battles or my long-standing infatuation with games like the Star Trek arcade game, I think I am familiar enough with the genre to make an honest appraisal.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ Cinnamon 2.6 Will Bring Systemd Support And Panel Support For Multiple Monitors, Among Others

• While Cinnamon 2.4 was released with a lot of important changes, Cinnamon 2.6 bring even more exciting changes. Among others, it will have full systemd support, panel support for multiple monitors will be added, support for client-side-decorated windows will be implemented and the users will be able to switch and add search provides easily.

=> ↺ Krita 2.9.0: the Kickstarter Release

• The culmination of over eight months of work, Krita 2.9 is the biggest Krita release until now! It’s so big, we can’t just do the release announcement in only one page, we’ve had to split it up into separate pages! Last year, 2014, was a huge year for Krita. We published Krita on Steam, we showed off Krita at SIGGRAPH, we got Krita reviewed in ImagineFX, gaining the Artist’s choice accolade — and we got our first Kickstarter campaign more than funded, too! This meant that more work has gone into Krita than ever before.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE and The Semantic Desktop

• The largest part of this move away from Nepomuk, was the creation of Baloo. This project was often sold under the misnomer of being KDE’s new Semantic Search engine. I often feel that the description, while containing a ton of buzz words, really does stray away from what it really meant to be Semantic.

=> ↺ Konqi – male or female?

• Konqi is female, male and nothing at all. Just take a look at the ensemble above and you’ll see that there are a lot of different Konqis, different colors and some might be male, some female and some something else. So there’s no specific need for an additional female version of Konqi as we’ve already female Konqis. But there is always need for new Konqis…

=> ↺ How to write a kick-ass proposal for Google Summer of Code

• KDE has been accepted as a mentoring organization again this year, and I’ve already been contacted by several students looking to do a Google Summer of Code project with KDE. Prospective Summer of Code students usually have lots of enthusiasm, and they often write great proposals with little or no help, but sometimes these proposals might not be structured well or lack key information.

=> ↺ KDE Telepathy joins KDE Applications release bundle as fully ported to Plasma 5

• In the past couple months I’ve been busy porting KDE Telepathy project over to Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5. I’m happy to announce that the ports have been completed and after about a month of testing, KDE Telepathy was moved to join the KDE Application releases with the nearest release being the 15.04 one. This should ensure more regular releases with new version every 4 months.

=> ↺ digiKam Software Collection 4.8.0 released…

=> ↺ Introducing the KDE AI Library

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME Control Center 3.14.3 Brings Support for NetworkManager 1.0

• A new stable release of the GNOME Control Center application of the GNOME 3.14 desktop environment has been released recently with support for NetworkManager 1.0 network connections manager utility used in many open-source desktop environments, including GNOME.

Distributions

=> ↺ Best Distros for Switchers and Repairs

=> ↺ The Best Linux Distros for First Time Switchers from Windows and Mac

• Linux doesn’t have a single look and feel, as there are several operating systems based on Linux; these are called distributions (distro). The jury is out on which is the best Linux distro, but that’s just a technical comparison. The best distro for you is what matters, and when you are switching, that is usually the distro most akin to which OS you are coming from.

Reviews

=> ↺ Netrunner 15 Review: Looks fantastic as usual but lags a bit in performance

• On 16th February 2015, Clemens Toennies has announced the release of Netrunner 15, a desktop Linux distribution based on Kubuntu 14.10 and featuring the new KDE Plasma 5.2.0 desktop: “We are proud to announce the official release of Netrunner 15 ‘Prometheus’. Netrunner 15 is revised from the ground up – as the first distribution, it officially ships the new KDE Plasma Desktop 5.2. Therefore, an upgrade from previous Netrunner series with KDE 4.x is neither officially available nor really recommended. This release is 64-bit only. What’s new? This release features the brand new KDE Plasma Desktop 5.2, packed together with the freshly released KDE Frameworks 5.7 and Qt 5.4. It takes a great deal of Oxygen and a little of Breeze and mixes them into a blend of tradition and modern. All previous settings and add-ons have been carefully restored to work in this new environment. With Netrunner 15 we took the chance to ship a finely revised set of applications.”

New Releases

=> ↺ Linux Lite 2.4 Beta Brings Support for Microsoft’s exFAT File System

• Jerry Bezencon, the creator of the Linux Lite computer operating system has announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the Beta release of the upcoming Linux Lite 2.4 distribution. While the stable version of Linux Lite is 2.2, the 2.4 Beta release brings all sorts of new features, updated applications, bug fixes, and performance improvements.

=> ↺ [Older] OpenELEC 5.0.5 Embedded Linux Distro Now Ready for Download

=> ↺ OpenELEC 5.0.6 Now Uses Linux Kernel 3.18.9 LTS For Raspberry Pi 2

• The sixth maintenance release of the OpenELEC 5.0 operating system for the Raspberry Pi computer board has been released today, March 14, brings a number of updated components, as well as various improvements over the previous release, OpenELEC 5.0.5.

=> ↺ OpenELEC 5.0.6 released

• OpenELEC-5.0 is the next stable release, which is a feature release and the successor of OpenELEC-4.2.

=> ↺ Manjaro XFCE 0.9.0-pre4 edition released

• After two weeks of development we are proud to present to you another preview of our next stable release, Manjaro 0.9.0. This time we ship XFCE 4.12 tweaked and patched to have the best XFCE experience possible!

=> ↺ Puppy Linux-Based Quirky Distribution Reaches Version 7.0, Dubbed April – Gallery

• Barry Kauler, the famous Puppy Linux creator, was proud to announce a few hours ago, February 26, the immediate availability for download of his Quirky 7.0 GNU/Linux operating system, dubbed April. This version comes as a major upgrade for the previous release, Quirky 6.2, and includes a number of new and attractive features, such as gorgeous desktop powered by JWM (Joe’s Window Manager), as well as some of the latest Linux technologies.

=> ↺ Ozon OS Hydrogen Beta Available For Download

• The latest Ozon OS “Hydrogen” beta is based on Fedora 21 and it uses GNOME Shell (3.14.x), customized with various extensions. And of course, since Numix Project and Nitrux S.A. are known for their beautiful design work, Ozon OS ships with gorgeous GTK, GNOME Shell and icon themes, which you can see in the screenshots throughout this post.

Screenshots

=> ↺ LXLE 14.04.2 Beta Screenshot Tour

Arch Family

=> ↺ Manjaro XFCE 0.9.0-pre4 edition released

• After two weeks of development we are proud to present to you another preview of our next stable release, Manjaro 0.9.0. This time we ship XFCE 4.12 tweaked and patched to have the best XFCE experience possible!

=> ↺ Manjaro Linux KDE 0.9.0 Pre4 Now Uses KDE Plasma 5.2.1 and KDE Applications 14.12.3

• The Manjaro development team, through Philip Müller, had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download and testing of Manjaro KDE 0.9.0 Pre4 computer operating system based on the Linux kernel 3.19, KDE Plasma 5.2.1, as well as the latest KDE Applications 14.12.3. This release migrates to an all-new and complete hardware-accelerated graphics stack based on OpenGL(ES).

Ballnux/SUSE

=> ↺ SUSE rolls out SUSE Enterprise Storage for open source Ceph storage

Slackware Family

=> ↺ Chromium 41

• I prepared packages for you (Slackware 14.1 and -current) for the latest Chromium browser and its optional Widevine plugin. In the Chrome Releases blog you can read the announcement for Chrome/Chromium 41 to the Stable Channel (full version is 41.0.2272.76).

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat Promises Security and Reliability through Docker Partner Network

=> ↺ Red Hat Diversifies Product Portfolio with RHEL 7.1 Release

• Red Hat has introduced enhanced containerization features and better integration with Microsoft Windows services, among other features, with the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1.

=> ↺ Red Hat Releases Enterprise 7.1 and Atomic Host 7

=> ↺ Red Hat Gives Docker Containers its Full Blessing

• As we covered, Red Hat has announced the releases of Red Hat Releases Enterprise 7 Atomic Host and Red Hat Releases Enterprise 7.1 update. In addition, it is evident that Red Hat is responding to the enormous popularity of Docker and container technology. The company’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host removes all utilities residing in the stock distribution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that are not required for running Docker containers. The move effectively gives Red Hat an operating system/container offering to bring to enterprises.

=> ↺ Red Hat Forms OpenShift Commons to Drive Open Source PaaS Innovation

Fedora

=> ↺ The Tremendous Features Of Fedora 22

• With Fedora 22 having entered its alpha freeze this week along with the software string freeze and change checkpoint deadline, here’s a recap of some of the towering features of this six-month update to Fedora 21 and the second release under the Fedora.Next strategy.

=> ↺ Fedora 22 Alpha MATE/Compiz Screenshot Tour

• The MATE/Compiz Spin of the Fedora Linux distribution has also been updated along with the announcement of the Fedora 22 Alpha operating system, as reported on Softpedia a few days ago.

=> ↺ GSoC, Alpha news (KDE, Xfce, other spins), Coprs

• Fedora is a big project, and it’s hard to keep up with everything. This series highlights interesting happenings in five different areas every week. It isn’t comprehensive news coverage — just quick summaries with links to each.

=> ↺ Previewing The F22 Alpha Release: Fedora 22 Is In Great Shape

Debian Family

Derivatives

=> ↺ Tails 1.3 Out Now, Introduces the Electrum Bitcoin Wallet

• Tails, the Amnesic Incognito Live CD distribution of GNU/Linux based on Debian and used by Edward Snowden, has reached version 1.3 on February 24, 2015. This release introduces new applications, updates core components, and fixes annoying bugs from previous releases of the product.

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Nemo With Unity Patches Available For Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet

=> ↺ Ubuntu 15.04 Beta 1 Officially Released, Ubuntu MATE Officially Official

• Ubuntu 15.04 Beta 1 was announced today with “a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing.” Ubuntu and a couple of its derivatives were included in a list of distributions recommended for new users yesterday. The Ubuntu MATE project announced they’ve been accepted as an official member of the Ubuntu family with their Beta 1 and Serdar Yegulalp reviews LibreOffice 4.4 at InfoWorld.com today.

=> ↺ Vivid Vervet Beta 1 Released

=> ↺ Test Driving the Ubuntu Meizu MX4

=> ↺ Popular German Website ‘Spiegel Online’ Reviews Ubuntu Phone

• The popular German news website Spiegel Online has published a hands-on review of the Bq Ubuntu Phone, which is due to ship to successful Flash Sale buyers later this month.

=> ↺ Hands-on with the first Ubuntu phone: Say hello to the bq Aquaris 4.5 Ubuntu Edition

=> ↺ The New Wallpapers of Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet)

• Tom Kijas posted a few minutes ago on Launchpad what appears to be the new wallpapers of the forthcoming Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) Linux operating system, due for release on April 23, 2015. They can be downloaded as a zip package here.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Developments and GNOME Sightings

=> ↺ Juniper and Canonical Deepen Partnership Focused on OpenStack, Telcos

• Back in 2013, Juniper Networks announced Contrail, a network overlay platform for software-defined networking for enterprises and cloud service providers. The company also announced that the Contrail source code would be open. Now, Juniper Networks and Canonical have expanded their existing partnership and they will oversee co-development of a carrier-grade, OpenStack software solution as part of Contrail Cloud.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 15.04 Will Attempt To Better Update CPU Microcodes

• Dimitri John Ledkov of Intel has added support to the Ubuntu-Drivers-Common framework for having CPU family detection and being able to install the appropriate CPU microcode update packages depending on the reported processor family. It’s basically just making sure the right CPU microcode packages are installed rather than having them not installed or having all of them in place.

=> ↺ Hands-on with an Ubuntu phone at MWC

• Is there room for another mobile operating system?

=> ↺ Ubuntu Phones, Convergence, Snappy Ubuntu Core to Be Showcased at MWC 2015

=> ↺ Canonical’s New Ubuntu Touch RTM Image Runs Quite Well On The Good Old LG Nexus 4

• The Ubuntu Touch operating system is developed on two branches, the development branch which receives the new features fast and the RTM version, which is focused on stability and usability.

=> ↺ Meizu M1 Note confirmed to go international after Ubuntu Touch-powered variant

• Chinese smartphone brand Meizu, often looked at as the next Xiaomi in terms of outdoing major brands, had recently announced the open-source Canonical Ubuntu-powered MI Note. It now looks set to take this handset outside China and make it international.

=> ↺ ICO Regression Fixed by Canonical for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

• Canonical has just fixed a regression caused by an ICU update that was supposed to fix a number of vulnerabilities, for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. A new update has been issued and the problem has been corrected.

=> ↺ The Ubuntu phones are an audacious attempt to take on Android

=> ↺ Ubuntu Wireless Mouse Review – Canonical Should Not Put the Ubuntu Name on It

• The Ubuntu Wireless Mouse is a new device sold through the official Canonical store. It’s a bizarre-looking mouse and we’ll take it for a spin to see if it’s really something that people might want or if it’s just a nightmare.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Ported to Raspberry Pi 2

• The Ubuntu MATE community has been very active and supportive of the project, so much so that someone has just released a version of the Ubuntu MATE distro for Raspberry Pi 2.

=> ↺ Nitrux OS Is a Linux Distro Running on the NXQ Mini PC, Looks Amazing – Screenshot Tour

• Nitrux has presented the Nitrux OS, a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that will power the NXQ mini ARM PC. It’s using a KDE desktop and it’s not like anything you might have seen before.

=> ↺ Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 1 Arrives with Xfce 4.12 Packages, Gorgeous Theme and Wallpaper – Gallery

• As we’ve reported earlier, Canonical is preparing to announce the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta release for its Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Kubuntu, as well as Ubuntu MATE, which became an official release this week.

=> ↺ Kubuntu 15.04 Is Turning Out Quite Nice: A Good Way To Try Out The Latest KDE Experience

• With the Kubuntu 15.04 release due out in April it’s using the Plasma 5 desktop by default. This morning I tried out the latest daily ISO snapshot of Kubuntu 15.04 to see how this bleeding-edge KDE Linux desktop experience is panning out. Simply put, Kubuntu and the latest KDE experience is doing quite well.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Performance Testing the New $35 Raspberry Pi 2

• The Raspberry Pi has wide community support, and a fully compatible but much faster Pi 2 with more RAM is a great thing to see. At the lower end of the price range shipping costs can account for a significant part of the total purchase price. I was able to find local distributors of the Pi 2, some of which offer free shipping.

=> ↺ 7 Android and Linux Smartwatches to Take on the Apple Watch

=> ↺ Top 10 Linux and Android Products from Mobile World Congress

• This week’s Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona focused primarily on phones and tablets, but also featured major new processors, game consoles, smartwatches, and more. Our slideshow of the top 10 products running Linux or the Linux-based Android isn’t called the “Best of MWC” since the proof is in the use, and also in the pricing. Many of these products have yet to be priced, and most have yet to ship. Yet, they’re all significant in one way or another, and should influence other products that appear through 2016.

=> ↺ Top 10 Linux and Android Products from MWC 2015

=> ↺ Hybrid Freescale and Xilinx SoCs Embed Microcontrollers, Run Linux

• Embedded World, which was held this week in Nuremberg, Germany, lacks the glamor and headlines of next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Yet, along with showing off the usual circuit boards, the show coincided with the debut of two interesting new system-on-chips that combine Linux-friendly ARM Cortex-A cores with microcontroller units (MCUs).

=> ↺ Pi Day special: 7 Raspberry Pi pieces

• Once a year, like clockwork, March 14 rolls around and people around the globe celebrate Pi Day. Unlike many other holidays, Pi Day doesn’t have specific rules for how to celebrate. In the past, I’ve joined friends for a 3.14(ish) mile Pi Day run, visited a science museum (which included a pi exhibit) with my daughter, and simply indulged in a slice of Key Lime pie.

Phones

Tizen

=> ↺ Building a Tizen Device From Scratch session with Leon Anavi

• Tizen is a Linux based Operating System that is standards based such as W3C Web standard. The Operating System is suitable for Smartphones, tablets, vehicles and wearable and also the Internet of things (IoT).

Android

=> ↺ Google confirms Android Pay: a mobile payments layer ‘anybody can build on’

• Google has announced that it’s working on a new mobile payments framework named Android Pay. Speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google exec Sundar Pichai confirmed that this would not be a new product for users, but an “API layer” that allows other companies to support secure payments on Android in both physical stores and via apps.

=> ↺ Google Talks Up Android Pay, Effectively a Payments API Layer

• The key difference between Android Pay and other payments offerings is that Google is not building out a product, but rather an API layer that merchants and companies can leverage to support secure payments from Android devices and apps.

=> ↺ Android 5.1 Hides A Little Secret – Google VPN

• Android 5.1 Lollipop has a little secret: it hides Google’s Virtual Private Network (VPN) in its folds.

=> ↺ Android 5.1: “ignore wireless networks without internet feature” fails

=> ↺ ​Google reportedly building Android for virtual reality hardware

• Google is reportedly working on a new version of Android, turning the mobile OS into a platform for virtual reality.

• According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has a small team of engineers working on a version of Android for virtual reality apps to run on.

=> ↺ Android 5.1 Lollipop Is Making Its Way Into The Android Open Source Project

• Google officially announced the coming of Android 5.1 Lollipop earlier this afternoon, followed by a statement in the same blog post that they would be pushing it out to devices today. T-Mobile confirmed soon after that they would be pushing out Android 5.1 Lollipop to the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and Nexus 7 2013 models on their network beginning today as well. While the updates may begin today(even though there is not much day time left)Google had yet to start pushing the Android 5.1 Lollipop source code up to AOSP, which is where developers can go to grab all the necessary files and use the code to work with and create awesome custom ROM experiences based off of the latest Android version of software, as well as use the code to make any changes or updates to their apps.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Build your own Siri: An open-source digital assistant

=> ↺ Build Your Own Open-Source Digital Assistant

=> ↺ Researchers just built a free, open-source version of Siri

• Major tech companies like Apple and Microsoft have been able to provide millions of people with personal digital assistants on mobile devices, allowing people to do things like set alarms or get answers to questions simply by speaking. Now, other companies can implement their own versions, using new open-source software called Sirius — an allusion, of course, to Apple’s Siri.

=> ↺ Open Source: A Cross-Industry Hero

• Open source code is no longer exclusively used by eager web developers in the tech industry. In fact, global industries that serve the healthcare, education, and government markets are now experiencing the benefits of open source code as well. Once they become familiar with the specifics of open source software license management, non-technology businesses are easily able to improve industry specific practices in new, innovative ways.

=> ↺ HP Takes Reseller Role for New Line of Open Source Networking Equipment

• In a move that starkly reflects not only the changing market landscape for networking equipment but also HP’s willingness to adapt to new realities, the vendor will collaborate with Taiwan-based Accton Technology to develop and manufacture open networking switches and Cumulus Networks will provide the Linux-based networking operating system to drive the hardware.

=> ↺ Storify Founders Leave For Open Source, Baby

• They’re passing the reins to several original Storify members, who will keep the service running. Herman’s plan is to focus on raising his newborn son, while Damman will build out his open-source whisteblowing tool Tipbox.

=> ↺ OPNFV Summit to Showcase Open Source Networking Functions Virtualization

• OPNFV, the open source collaboration for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), is extending its reach with the launch of a new conference, the OPNFV Summit, which project leaders hope will bring together networking companies, service providers and open source developers.

=> ↺ OPNFV schedules first event in push to foster an open source NFV platform

• The network virtualization revolution is set to gain a new event as the Open Platform Network Function Virtualization Project announced plans to host its first OPNFV Summit Nov. 11-12.

=> ↺ Renault-Nissan goes open source with GENIVI for infotainment

• Automotive industry group, the GENIVI Alliance, announced that Renault and Nissan will launch a new joint program to deliver a In-vehicle Infotainment IVI system based on software GENIVI software for low-to-mid and high-class Renault and Nissan vehicles globally and will be supplied by Robert Bosch GmbH.

=> ↺ Midokura Pushes Open Source SDN Forward

• Midokura is out this week with its Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM) 1.8 SDN release, which is based on the open-source MidoNet 2015.01 milestone.

=> ↺ Bringing Telcos Into Open Source Culture

• I recently attended the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. There was a kick-off panel on the opening day and then a couple of days of working group style presentations around OPNFV. The work comes under the sponsorship of the Linux Foundation and hopes to establish a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform that industry peers will build together to advance the evolution of Network Function Virtualization. (You can also read the ETSI definition of NFV). There’s a really good description of the intended work and architecture on the OPNFV site.

=> ↺ Engineers Bring A New Open-Source Siri To Life

=> ↺ Huawei looks to open source to build SDN ecosystem

• Collaboration with ONOS and ONF is aimed at accelerating the commercialisation of the SDN ecosystem.

=> ↺ An Open Source Drone Camera You Can Modify With Apps

• The company, called Percepto, is currently raising funds on Indiegogo. Percepto will offer a camera that can be mounted to your existing drone. You can then download apps to your mobile phone that can interact with the camera in different ways.

=> ↺ Why open source works

• Trying to explain why open source works, you can of course point to the Cathedral and the Bazaar by Erik. But the kernel development process shows it happening ‘in real time’, every day, and that’s a major reason why I so enjoy reading the weekly LWN.

=> ↺ Create a Self-Destructing Website With This Open Source Code

• Former head of product at Flickr and Bitly, Matt Rothenberg recently caused an internet hubbub with his Unindexed project. The communal website continuously searched for itself on Google for 22 days, at which point, upon finding itself, spontaneously combusted.

=> ↺ 1010data Intros Integration with Open Source R

• Company says its R1010 package gives data scientists a collection of statistical functions and a massively parallel Big Data discovery platform.

=> ↺ Pinterest Shoots ‘Pinball’ Into Open Source

• Pinterest announced yesterday that it’s making the workflow management software it developed to manage big data pipelines, called Pinball, available as open source. Now anybody can use the same technology that Pinterest uses to manage the flow of work on Hadoop and other cluster resources.

=> ↺ 4 reasons CIOs should give open source a second look

• Seeking out open source solutions is second nature for Red Hat IT. It’s in our DNA, and it’s what we believe in. And while our passion for open source is shared with many IT leaders, I still encounter CIOs who cite concerns about security, intellectual property, talent, and existing vendor relationships as reasons they aren’t comfortable with open source solutions. Here’s what I say when I hear IT leaders identify these as barriers:

=> ↺ Jenkins CI Open Source Project Passes 100,000 Active Users Worldwide

• The Jenkins CI community, which is made up of practitioners using open source Jenkins, has announced the Jenkins CI open source project has passed the 100,000 active user mark worldwide becoming one of the largest install bases of any open source continuous integration and continuous delivery platform.

=> ↺ Visio.M Automotive Service Bus goes open source

• Up to 80 different systems putter around in many cars. The complexity has come to a limit. Within the “Visio.M” research project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research with a total of 7.1 million euro, scientists at the Technische Universität München have developed a two-tier IT system that reduces this complexity drastically. Now the researchers put their ‘Automotive Service Bus’ under an open-source license.

Events

=> ↺ Keen on meeting up with us in Copenhagen?

• The Varnish Software series 2015 is off to a great start and next stop is wonderful Copenhagen. To respond to last year’s popularity of the series in Scandinavia we decided Copenhagen would be one of the first cities we’d visit.

=> ↺ Open Source Promotion Event at Toc H

• The main events include an Opensource Olympiad (coding contest + open source quiz), Hardware Project competition and App Idea contest. Three workshops on – Mozilla Webmaker, Python and How to be a Maker (Arduino/Raspberry Pi based Development) will also be organised.

=> ↺ Kernel Developers Summarize Linux Storage Filesystem and Memory Management Summit

• A group of three Linux kernel developers kicked off the Linux Foundation Vault storage conference on Wednesday morning by hashing out proposed changes to the kernel and the stack from the Linux Storage Filesystem and Memory Management Summit (FS&MM), which took place earlier in the week.

Web Browsers

=> ↺ Tor Browser: An Ultimate Web Browser for Anonymous Web Browsing in Linux

• Most of us give a considerable time of ours to Internet. The primary Application we require to perform our internet activity is a browser, a web browser to be more perfect. Over Internet most of our’s activity is logged to Server/Client machine which includes IP address, Geographical Location, search/activity trends and a whole lots of Information which can potentially be very harmful, if used intentionally the other way.

=> ↺ Tor Browser Has Been Updated to Version 4.0.4, Based on Mozilla Firefox ESR 31.5.0

Chrome

=> ↺ Chrome 42 Beta: Push Notifications, Promoting Add to Home Screen and ES6 Classes

• The newest Chrome Beta channel release includes support for ES6 Classes and several new features that allow developers to create more immersive web applications. Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to Chrome for Android, Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Thunderbird E-Mail Client Adoption Rises Despite Being Almost Dumped by Mozilla

• Mozilla changed the development priority for Thunderbird a few years ago and said back then that it was no longer investing resources into an e-mail client, which they said would no longer be relevant. Now it looks that Thunderbird adoption is on the rise despite Mozilla’s predictions.

=> ↺ Mozilla Firefox 36 Officially Arrives with Synced Pinned Tiles and HTTP/2 Support

=> ↺ Firefox 36.0.1 Finally Available in Ubuntu Repos After Small Delay

=> ↺ Mozilla Pushes Hot Fix to Remove Superfish Cert From Firefox

=> ↺ Making a customized Firefox search plug-in

=> ↺ Unity 5 Ships and Brings One Click WebGL Export to Legions of Game Developers

• Mozilla’s goal of high quality plugin-free gaming on the Web is taking a giant leap forward today with the release of Unity 5. This new version of the world’s most popular game development tool includes a preview of their amazing WebGL exporter. Unity 5 developers are one click away from publishing their games to the Web in a whole new way, by taking advantage of WebGL and asm.js. The result is native-like performance in desktop browsers without the need for plugins.

=> ↺ Bringing Native Games to the Web is About to get a Whole Lot Easier

=> ↺ Mozilla releases open-source memory-scanning technology (for servers, not brains)

SaaS/Big Data

=> ↺ What eBay’s latest open-source project means for Hadoop

• The last few months have seen eBay Inc. move from the sidelines of the open-source analytics ecosystem into the heart of the action with the introduction of two projects that push the envelope on large-scale data science. The pivot mirrors a broader shift in the ecosystem that the most recent of the additions accelerates.

=> ↺ Mirantis & Google on Kubernetes & OpenStack

• Mirantis is a firm that calls itself a “pure-play” OpenStack company.

=> ↺ ownCloud Offers Support Subscriptions for its Open Source Community Edition

• With the rise of cloud computing, ownCloud has been getting a lot of attention for its flexibility, and because interest in private clouds is on the rise. There is a huge community of contributors surrounding the open source version of ownCloud, and ownCloud Inc. continues to serve enterprise users.

=> ↺ HP Refreshes Helion with Eucalyptus and an OpenStack Update

• It was all the way back in 2008 when OStatic broke the story about a cloud computing project at U.C. Santa Barbara called Eucalyptus, and recently we visited with Rich Wolski, the original UCSB Professor behind the cloud platform, for an interview. Fast-forward to today, and Eucalyptus Systems is under the wing of mighty Hewlett-Packard.

=> ↺ Getting started with big data doesn’t have to be expensive

• Analytics and big data are top strategic priorities for many CIOs, and rightfully so. Most organizations are sitting on a goldmine of data, but they have not begun to mine it to uncover the real transformative value. Unfortunately, many IT leaders remain on the sidelines because they think investing in analytics would be too costly.

=> ↺ Elasticsearch Changes Its Name, Enjoys An Amazing Open Source Ride And Hopes To Avoid Mistakes

• Elasticsearch is an open source search and analytics engine created by Shay Banon back in 2010. The solution uses a common interface and can be used to provide scalable search and is itself based on the Apache Lucene project which is a free open source information retrieval software library. Since starting the open source initiative, Banon’s Elasticsearch company has gone on to raise almost $105 million. Perhaps more importantly than the money they’ve raised however is the traction the project has seen – Elasticsearch sees some 700,000-800,000 downloads per months and has been downloaded 20 million times since the inception of the project.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ Trillian Mobile: RoboVM zaps Java apps to iOS & Android

• Trillian (yes, obviously a Hitch Hiker’s reference) Mobile’s RoboVM was created in 2010 as an open source project to turn our planet’s 10 million Java developers into business and consumer mobile app developers for both iOS and Android devices — quite a claim & challenge.

=> ↺ Why to try LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice free office suites

• LibreOffice also has a more robust development community behind it and a more aggressive release cycle. OpenOffice tends to follow a more steady and conservative path. Although this could mean that LibreOffice is more prone to bugs in their releases, the product is also more likely to provide innovative features. Even so, they’re both very stable products that offer many benefits, and each one is well worth a test drive.

=> ↺ LibreOffice 4.4.1 Update Released

=> ↺ LibreOffice 4.4.1 “Fresh” is available for download

=> ↺ LibreOffice Calc : Tables You Can Count On

Education

=> ↺ Purdue expands use of open-source software, cuts costs

• Purdue, in its perpetual quest to cut corners and save money, is working to expand its use of open-source software, potentially saving students upward of $1 million.

• The software, developed by Michigan State University in 1992, is called the Learning Online Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach, or more commonly known, LON-CAPA.

Healthcare

=> ↺ Open-Source EHR Technology Loses Out on DHMSM EHR Contract

• The competition for the Department of Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization (DHMSM) is entering its next phase and open-source EHR technology is no longer in contention, according to multiple reports.

=> ↺ Sorry VistA, DoD’s health record won’t be open source

• The Defense Department’s next electronic health record will not be based on the open source architecture that supports the Veterans Affairs Department’s EHR.

=> ↺ Health Data Consortium head spotlights startups making use of open health data

• The executive director of the Health Data Consortium highlighted some of the companies he thinks are overcoming some of the barriers to making health data more widely available and useful for clinicians and patients. It was part of a keynote Chris Boone gave at the MidAmerica Healthcare Venture Forum in Chicago this week.

Business

=> ↺ Q&A: raw engineering on how open source ‘changed the world’

• Kurt: The concept of open source software has changed the world. Our platform wouldn’t exist in its current form without open source software. Every day, different components of our products run on Nginx, Node.js, Docker, MongoDB and many other open source technologies. Open source is very important to what we do.

Funding

=> ↺ Google Shrinks List of GSoC Open Source Organizations

• The list of mentoring organisations for Google Summer of Code 2015 has some surprising omissions. The Linux Foundation and Mozilla are among those missing from the list of just 137 open source organisations.

=> ↺ Open-Source Database Firm MariaDB Raises $3.4M from Russia’s Runa Capital

• Open-source database company MariaDB, has raised $3.4 million from Russia’s Runa Capital. In October 2013, the firm had secured $20 million in Series B round. Till date, including this round, the company has received a total capital of $31.9 million.

=> ↺ An Open Source Investment Realizes Sizable Results

• An open source project is getting significant investment from a major American corporation.

• Believe it or not Walmart, the mega retailer, has spent more than $2 million on the Hapi project, which is a “rich framework for building applications and services” that “enables developers to focus on writing reusable application logic instead of spending time building infrastructure” according to its website.

BSD

=> ↺ OpenBSD Foundation 2014/2015 News & Fundraising

• 2014 was the most successful year to date for the OpenBSD Foundation.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ [ANN] GNU Artanis-0.0.3 released [alpha]

=> ↺ GNU Toolchain Update, March 2015

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Open Source: More eyes, fewer vulnerabilities, greater security

• Future posts will dive deep into open source and its relationship to autonomous devices, but first, let’s take a few paragraphs to level-set why open source might be an ideal option. First, full disclosure: I’m an advocate of open source software, so I’ve seen proof that a community of shared ideas and projects that can be modified, improved, and distributed freely can be a better way to develop technology. Being able to see the code, learn from it, ask questions, and offer improvements is the open source way.

• While it might seem counterintuitive, open does not mean less secure. In fact, the opposite is often true. Because the development process is collaborative, bugs, flaws, and vulnerabilities can be found sooner, and more often, and fixed more quickly. By granting access to the code, more people can work to solve issues. It’s been said about open source that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” More eyes and greater transparency can lead to fewer vulnerabilities and greater security.

• As with any system, it’s important to only use well-maintained projects and to patch regularly to safe-guard against vulnerabilities. We’re all aware that hazards may linger in even the best of code. The fact is, in any system, open or closed, vulnerabilities exist and may actually be exploited by those with knowledge of their existence. It just seems logical that, with open source transparency, it’s likely to be more difficult to exploit something while everyone is watching.

Licensing

=> ↺ Open Source Licensing and Community Intent

• Christoph Hellwig, supported by Software Freedom Conservancy (Conservancy), has initiated a lawsuit in Germany against VMware for alleged violations of the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, an OSI approved license. If you aren’t following the case yet, it’s worth starting with the statements published by Conservancy, the Free Software Foundation, and VMware.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ After Open Source, Open Access, Open Data And The Rest, Here Comes The Open Jihad

=> ↺ The Open Jihad

=> ↺ The Open-Source Spies of World War II – War is Boring

• The open-source intelligence analysts of World War II had a huge advantage unavailable to their predecessors in previous wars thanks to the changing media landscape of the 1930s and ’40s.

=> ↺ Open source Mini-Farm Grow Box allows gardeners to grow greens in the home

• Food Rising has created a couple of videos to walk makers through the home build process and the print files needed to produce the necessary 3D-printable parts using a t-glase filament-compatible printer are freely available for download at Food Rising’s website, though pre-build systems are also being offered for sale. The non-profit is also raising funds to donate systems to 250 schools across the United States.

=> ↺ Open-source scientific research comes to Brazil

• Open-access research into drug discovery has arrived in South America, with a ground-breaking collaboration between leading scientists in North America, Europe and Brazil to provide completely free and open research results to the world.

=> ↺ Open-source health apps

• In the past, this has been expensive to do. Anyone wishing to create apps for the task would have had to hire a costly team of coders. But that has now changed. This week Apple—in an announcement a little more sotto voce than that of its watch—introduced the world to a suite of software called the ResearchKit, which will make it possible to create scientific apps that work with its mobile devices more easily and cheaply. The ResearchKit is “open source”, meaning anyone who wants to will be able to use it to design data-collecting apps that take advantage of the features of those devices. Because it is open source, people will be able to customise and share code, which will encourage innovation.

=> ↺ Should Open Source Intelligence Be Used For Policy Making?

• Last summer, we wrote about the rise of open journalism, whereby people take publicly-available information, typically on social networks, to extract important details that other, more official sources either overlook or try to hide. Since then, one of the pioneers of that approach, Eliot Higgins, has used crowdfunding to set up a site called “Bellingcat”, dedicated to applying these techniques. Principal themes there include the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), and the civil war in Syria.

=> ↺ Open Source Control Tower for Drones, by 3D Robotics

=> ↺ Opening firmware source code (vhdl)

• Hope this will help for enthusiasts and developers to deeply understand hardware part of DVB card.

=> ↺ Open Source Drug Discovery and Universal Medicine

• How often have you taken a prescription drug during the last year to treat an illness? Did you pause to ponder what you would do if you had not had access to the drug? Or did you perhaps consider how long it took the drug to be developed, and how long it will be possible to use it for? In the case of antibiotics, there is a real fear that many well-known drugs will cease to be effective against bacterial infections as the bacteria adapt ‘around’ the drug. What about if you are in a developing country, in a remote area, or on the way to Mars — how would you get that new drug? Also, what about the promise of personal medicine? Soon we are going to know more and more about our individual medical needs, driven by personal data arising from personal genomics as well as the promise of cheap sensors that record our motion, behavior, vital signs, bio-chemical markers and so on.

=> ↺ Open-Source Robotic Arm Now Within Reach

• For anyone looking for a capable robotic arm for automation of an industrial process, education, or just a giant helping hand for a really big soldering project, most options available can easily break the bank. [Mads Hobye] and the rest of the folks at FabLab RUC have tackled this problem, and have come up with a very capable, inexpensive, and open-source industrial arm robot that can easily be made by anyone.

=> ↺ 3 ways to increase transparency in your IT group

• If you’re looking to increase openness and transparency in your IT organization, chart a deliberate course. That’s particularly important if you join a company where IT is a four-letter word and hasn’t been set up to deliver. I knew I had my work cut out for me when I arrived at the American Cancer Society and our president said to me, “Half your job is going to be rehabbing the image of IT, and the other 100 percent is going to be delivering a world-class IT organization.”

=> ↺ Internet of Anything: An Open-Source Smart Home You Control

• Smart homes could make our lives easier. But they could also end up being a real pain. Devices from competing companies might not want to talk to each other. Your gadgets might collect personal data and sell it to advertisers without you knowing about it it. The company you bought your hardware or software could close down, rending the product you shelled out big bucks for practically useless. Your whole house could become a botnet.

Open Data

=> ↺ Open Data Platform Looms Large on the Hadoop Scene

• While it’s not on everybody’s radar just yet, the Open Data Platform, recently announced by Pivotal, is shaping up to be, well, pivotal in the Hadoop and Big Data market. Meanwhile, here have been a lot of rumblings about how Pivotal itself is radically shifting its Hadoop strategy.

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Rutgers-Camden students pushing for free, open source textbooks

• Rutgers-Camden senior Moira Cahill tapes a note to a poster board, recording the amount one of her fellow students spent on textbooks this semester. Cahill is a member of the campus chapter of NJPIRG, which was advocating an open source alternative for textbooks in the school’s student center, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015. (Staff photo by Jason Laday | South Jersey Times)

=> ↺ MassPIRG report urges expanded use of open-source textbooks

• Four years into a campus initiative aimed at reducing textbook costs by making course material available for free online, University of Massachusetts students and staff are pushing for more faculty to use this option.

=> ↺ UMass students, librarians want more faculty to use open source textbooks to save students money

• About 65 percent of college students don’t buy textbooks because of cost, said Matt Magalhaes, the affordable textbook campaign coordinator for MassPirg at the University of Massachusetts.

• Textbooks can cost students $1,200 a year.

=> ↺ Code for India launches free, open source educational portal

• Yes, we can Google every question, search every bit of information by the click of a button. But if you are looking for a structured learning experience from experts and certified instructors, for instance, to learning the basics of engineering or simply a complete awareness course on Ebola, you now have a one-stop destination.

Open Hardware

=> ↺ Why use open hardware in the classroom?

• Over the past few years we’ve seen an explosion of “open” models, which emerged as a result of several different factors. The general motivation behind this movement includes the ability for the free sharing of resources and tools in an effort to promote economic efficiency by improving access to a much wider group of stakeholders.

=> ↺ HP Does Open Hardware with New Cloudline Servers

• It was only summer of last year when HP began making a lot of noise about its commitment to cloud computing overall, and the OpenStack platform in particular. Now, the company is moving its cloud strategy into high gear. It announced the HP Helion brand in 2014, and pledged to commit $1 billion over the next two years on products and services surrounding OpenStack, under Helion’s branded umbrella.

=> ↺ The Project Ara of Tablets Has Arrived, It’s Called the Click ARM One

• You probably heard of Google’s Project Ara endeavor, which aims to allow users to build modular smartphones, based on their own preferences and needs.

=> ↺ PiBook — A Wirelessly Powered/Charged Open Source 3D Printed Computer – Powered by Raspberry Pi 2

• Recently, we did a story on an engineer who had 3D printed a wirelessly powered Tesla desk lamp. Created by David Choi, it was able to be powered without any wires connecting it to the source. It was quite the clever creation, and Choi received a lot of positive feedback on his design.

Programming

=> ↺ Get More Out of GitHub

=> ↺ Google Code is closing down because developers aren’t using it

• Programmers prefer GitHub and Bitbucket

=> ↺ Google Pulls The Plug On Google Code, Its Open Source Hosting Service

=> ↺ Google to close Google Code open source project hosting

=> ↺ HHVM Continues Beating PHP At Its Own Game

• Given this week’s release of HHVM 3.6 I decided to run some new performance comparison tests of PHP vs. HHVM.

Leftovers

=> ↺ How to turn your old phone into a basic PC for cheap

• Your old smartphone has a greater destiny than your junk drawer. Believe it or not, you can turn it into, say, a mini-PC or media streamer. Assuming it packs both USB On The Go support (OTG) and a Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) compatible port, there’s a ton of additional functionality lurking under that its hood. Heck, you can even use a smartphone with a broken screen for this.

=> ↺ Open Letter to Mr. Cook (Apple Computers)

• As long as you stick to closed source software, DRM, restrictive licences and patent laws to maximise your profits, you heavily contribute to inequality and powerlessness around the globe.

Science

=> ↺ ESC Boston 2015 Sneak Peek — Open Source Electromagnetic Trackers

=> ↺ Now You Can Use Stephen Hawking’s Tech to Speak With Facial Expressions

• Last night, Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar for his portrayal of famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. The critically acclaimed film, which has also been controversial among viewers with disabilities, traces Hawking’s journey from a cocky PhD student at Cambridge to the celebrity scientist and unofficial face of ALS that we know today.

Security

=> ↺ OpenSSL Set For Major Security Audit

• A team of security consultants is set to undertake a major independent audit of OpenSSL as part of a multi-million dollar initiative by the Linux Foundation to improve the security and stability of core open source projects.

=> ↺ Critical remote code execution flaw patched in Samba

=> ↺ On Security in OpenDaylight

• It’s now been a bit more than two months since OpenDaylight dealt with the the “netdump” vulnerability reported in August. The good news then was that we fixed the vulnerability and we were able to fix it and ship a new release of ODL with the fix in four days once we knew about the vulnerability. I want to echo Dave Meyer’s comments in saying just how impressive that is and how well the OpenDaylight community comes together when something needs to be done. The list is much longer than this, but in particular, Robert Varga and David Jorm were absolutely critical in pushing things through quickly and efficiently.

=> ↺ Glitch in Dropbox SDK for Android Links Apps to Attacker’s Cloud Storage

• A vulnerability found in Dropbox SDK for Android can be exploited by an attacker to cause apps using the software development kit for Dropbox synchronization to upload the data to an unauthorized account.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ C.I.A. Cash Ended Up in Coffers of Al Qaeda

• In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.

=> ↺ CIA Money Landed in Al Qaeda’s Hands: Report

• About $1 million of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s money, given to a secret Afghan government fund in 2010, ended up in al Qaeda’s possession after it was used to pay part of a ransom for a diplomat kidnapped by the terror group, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

=> ↺ ‘Didn’t know they watch Fox in Russia’: Defiant ‘kill Russians’ US ex-general insists he told ‘truth’

• Seemingly unfazed by the outrage his comments on Fox Business Channel have caused, the former US general who thinks the only solution to the Ukraine conflict is to “start killing Russians” has defended his stance, again speaking to Fox.

=> ↺ Venezuela, the Latest ‘National Security Threat’

• And how exactly is poor Venezuela, a nation of 29 million, with a small military upon which it spends just 1% of GDP, one of the lowest rates in the world (the US spends 4.5% of GDP on its own bloated military), a threat to the US?

• Well, according to the new executive order, some of Venezuela’s leading officials have “criminalized political dissent” and are corrupt. That’s about it. There’s nothing in there about Venezuela threatening military action against the US, or promoting terrorism, or threatening Americans.

=> ↺ South America Rejects US Aggressions on Venezuela

• Venezuela received strong backing from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) Saturday afternoon, at an emergency summit addressing the recent aggressions from US President Barack Obama.

=> ↺ Long before drones, the US tried to automate warfare during the Vietnam War

• Fleets of assorted aircraft were deployed to circle day and night and relay radio signals from the sensors back to Nakhon Phanom, a military base on the west bank of the Mekong River in northeast Thailand that was so secret it officially did not exist.

• The base hosted a whole variety of unacknowledged “black” activities, but at its heart, behind additional layers of razor wire and guard posts, sat an enormous air-conditioned building, the largest in Southeast Asia, that was home to Task Force Alpha, the “brain” of the automated battlefield.

=> ↺ Nevada Protesters Say American Drones Are Killing Innocents

• A protest is underway near Creech Air Force Base northwest of Las Vegas. It’s centered on allegations that the United States Air Force is operating an anti-terrorism drone program that is killing innocent civilians.

=> ↺ Why robots will be granted a license to kill, in Japan and everywhere else

• A while back I attended a robot expo in Tokyo. It was actually kind of depressing.

• Robots are supposed to be sexy, but much of the technology on display was for old people — you know, intelligent dolls that sense when a dementia patient is trying to get out of bed, engaging them in simple conversation long enough for a human helper to arrive — that sort of thing. Even the cool stuff like powered exoskeletons was being marketed as a way to help young people lift invalid octogenarians into the tub.

=> ↺ Drone attack in Yemen kills suspected al Qaeda militants: sources

=> ↺ Why Are Drone Pilots Quitting In Huge Numbers?

• The U.S. drone war across much of the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa is in crisis and not because civilians are dying or the target list for that war or the right to wage it just about anywhere on the planet are in question in Washington. Something far more basic is at stake: drone pilots are quitting in record numbers.

=> ↺ Endangered ‘Nintendo Warriors’: America’s Drone War Could Be In MAJOR Trouble

• New reports indicate that America’s reliance on drone warfare in the Middle East could be in jeopardy, but not for legal reasons.

• It’s not politics or ethical investigations that are the latest threat, but the simple fact that drone operators are calling it quits in record numbers. Plagued by the trauma of civilian deaths and a heavy workload, drone operators are quitting faster than they can be replaced, and the Air Force is at a loss on what to do, TomDispatch reports.

• Currently, about 1,000 drone pilots work in the program, but the Air Force would ideally like to have 1,700. This goal has proven difficult to accomplish, though, since for every 180 pilots that graduate from training annually, 240 quit.

=> ↺ Drone pilot trauma should be studied

=> ↺ A chilling new post-traumatic stress disorder: Why drone pilots are quitting in record numbers

• A raft of data suggest our remote-controlled war games are taking a steep psychological toll on their players

=> ↺ Drone war pilots desert in droves

• THE US drone war across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa is in crisis — and not because civilians are dying, or the target list for that war or the right to wage it are in question in Washington. Something basic is at stake: drone pilots are quitting in record numbers.

=> ↺ Republicans are crossing a dangerous new line: sabotaging US foreign policy

• Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans in Congress have deployed a strategy that has worked remarkably well for them: oppose, obstruct, and sabotage the Obama administration at every turn.

• “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, then the Senate minority leader, said in 2010.

=> ↺ US to send Ukraine small drones and armoured Humvees

• White House concerned that Russian-backed separatists are violating cease-fire agreements in eastern Ukraine and keeping out international monitors

=> ↺ CIA Drone Campaign Demonstrates Need For Greater Intelligence Oversight, Accountability

• A year ago SISMEC pointed out that, although most of the victims of U.S. drone strikes have ostensibly been “militants,” the White House definition of “militant” is extremely vague (generally, any fighting-aged male). Moreover, the purpose of the program isn’t to target any and all possible combatants, but instead to eliminate high-value targets from international terror organizations who pose a substantial threat to the U.S. homeland. So the best measure of the “hit-rate” of the drone program wouldn’t be to compare the number of civilian casualties v. militants, but instead to ask how many of the total dead were the sort of high-value enemies the program is supposed to be targeting. If we approach the question from this angle, the hit-rate of the drone campaign is abysmal, despite the fact that most of its victims have been “militants.”

=> ↺ US Accused of Disastrous Drone Raid Which Left 44 Philippine Commandos Dead

• A United States drone was flying overhead as the Philippine military conducted a raid against alleged Islamic militants in an operation that ended with 44 police commandos dead in a field, according to reports.

=> ↺ American Drone Operators Are Quitting in Record Numbers

• An internal Air Force memo reveals that the US military’s drone wars are in major trouble.

=> ↺ The al Qaeda Files: Bin Laden Documents Reveal a Struggling Organization

=> ↺ Documents Seized at Bin Laden Killing Reveal al-Qaida Strategy

• Totaling more than 150 documents, the cache of correspondence is only the second batch of bin Laden letters released by the government. Offered up in evidence by U.S. attorneys in the Brooklyn trial of Abid Naseer, a Pakistani alleged to have been involved in al-Qaida bombing attacks in Manchester, England, in 2008 and ’09, the letters provide an insight into what life was like for bin Laden as he hid out while U.S. forces were trying to locate and kill him.

=> ↺ 34 Arrested while Protesting Drone Killing at Creech AFB

• A five-day anti-drone protest at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada, last week culminated in a massive blockade on Friday of the two gates leading into the base, repeatedly blocking traffic for an extended time during the early morning commute. Over 150 activists from at least 18 states participated. Thirty-four were arrested and charged with trespassing or blocking the roadway into Creech AFB, the most critical U.S. armed drone base in the country.

=> ↺ Dozens Arrested in Protest to End Drone Warfare and Protect Soldiers’ Mental Health

=> ↺ While drones did not introduce targeted assassinations, 9/11 and new technologies have pushed the boundaries of the tactic’s acceptability.

• State-led assassinations are not a novelty in international affairs; they have been with us from medieval to modern times. What is significantly different today however is the systematic basis in which assassination is delivered from above the clouds via Predator drones. As a method targeted killing was supposed to be left on a dusty shelf, and revisited only during dire security crises when other means of changing the course of events have been fully exhausted. Instead, compiling kill-lists and striking specific individuals has evolved into a routine monthly event – a trademark US policy praised by the political elites and accepted by the American people.

=> ↺ Drone Theory: Provocative investigation on military drones

• The Americans turned an instrument of surveillance into a weapon, and they have become a hallmark of Barack Obama’s presidency. Yet the talk of “precision” is deeply problematic

=> ↺ Why domestic drones stir more debate than ones used in warfighting abroad

• John Kaag, coauthor of ‘Drone Warfare,’ says a ‘disturbing mix of provincialism and exceptionalism’ is the reason why Americans are more concerned about domestic drone usage than military drones used in targeted killing abroad.

=> ↺ RAAF wants $300m for attack drones

• The Australian government will spend $300 million to purchase several unmanned ‘Reaper’ drones from the US if the Defence Force case for the unmanned vehicles is accepted.

=> ↺ Death from above: Australia gets in on the drone strike game

• Australia has decided to follow the United States down the path of armed drones, capable of killing people across the world at the touch of a button.

=> ↺ Remember, Kill Chain

• Drone operators are not in immediate contact with the real world, literally, thanks to the phenomenon known as latency…

=> ↺ From soldier to peace activist: Russell Brown’s story

• By 1967, Brown was out of the Marines. Two years later, he joined Vietnam Veterans against the War. Brown said that, years later, his partner Cat recognized that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

• In 2002, the United States was preparing to go to war against Afghanistan, which caused Brown to feel anxiety. “I was very stressed out. I was working the graveyard shift in the post office. One night, I was seeing double. I tried to go outside but never made it.” Brown had suffered a stroke. After being taken to the Buffalo Veterans Administration Medical Center, Brown learned that he had a congenital hole in his heart. In addition, his blood pressure was very high. After recovering from his stroke, Brown worked at lowering his blood pressure by walking three miles quickly every day, he explained.

• One of the reasons that Brown chose to protest against UAVs is that “drone pilots get post- traumatic stress disorder. They hunt and kill people by day and then, in the evening, they go home to their families,” Brown said.

• Brown talked about the plans for the 107th Airlift Wing of the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station’s mission to change from C-130 planes to MQ-9 Reaper UAVs.

=> ↺ A Blueprint for Ending War

• The goal of this document is to gather into one place, in the briefest form possible, everything one needs to know to work toward an end to war by replacing it with an Alternative Global Security System in contrast to the failed system of national security.

=> ↺ Drone warfare: life on the new frontline

=> ↺ Firms see drone sales in Gulf surging after U.S. eases export policy

• U.S. drone makers are expecting a surge in sales of military and civilian drones to Gulf states after the State Department eased export rules last week, industry executives said on Tuesday.

• U.S. aerospace and arms companies have been pressing the U.S. government for years to ease restrictions on foreign sales of unmanned aerial vehicles – UAVs or drones – arguing that other countries such as Israel are overtaking them.

=> ↺ Killing Rights

• I began by asking when is it ever right to kill, and I answered that this is a question we would put to the state in which we have granted God-like powers. Yet, if the state, which is little more than men and women like ourselves after all, is granted the power’s of divinity how can mere mortals be trusted to wield the lightning?

=> ↺ Loving America Means Letting It Go to War

• This deeply false dichotomy between supporting terrorists or agreeing with any and all US foreign policy was one that the Bush administration leaned on in tough times. Nearly 14 years after 9/11, and 12 years since the war in Iraq started, the hamfistedness of the propaganda already feels a little anachronistic. But that’s only because so many people now agree that the war was bad. We’ve had mushy liberal pundits from Jonathan Chait to Ezra Klein offering their decade-later self-flagellation. And we’ve marveled that otherwise smart people like the late Christopher Hitchens, or unrepentant comic book villains such as former Vice President Dick Cheney continued to defend the war long after it had gone out of fashion.

=> ↺ Gary Olson: Is it worthwhile to send U.S. troops to fight Islamic State?

• First, why have elements within Saudi Arabia’s ruling elite provided financial backing to ISIS?

• Alastair Crooke, a British expert on political Islam, believes part of the answer is that ISIS ideology is virtually identical to the worldview embraced by many Saudis. In 1741, the Ibn Saud clan joined forces with Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of an especially fanatical version of Islam. Together, they brutally gained control over most of the Arabian Peninsula and judged all non-Wahhabist Muslims as apostates. In 1932, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia declared itself a nation with Wahhabist Islam as the state religion. Today, Saudi sources spend more than $100 billion promoting the Wahhabist brand within the Islamic world.

=> ↺ Why Obama’s Hopes of Decapitating the Islamic State Won’t Work

• Nevertheless, the mystique of “high value targeting,” especially when inflicted by supposedly unerring precision weapons or super-elite Special Forces commandos, isn’t going to go away any time soon. The public loves it of course, which comes as no surprise given our steady diet of Hollywood promotion in movies like Zero Dark 30, Lone Survivor, American Sniper. But so do our leaders, and they ought to know better. Decades of experience indicate that striking at enemy leadership in expectation of significant beneficial effect invariably leads not only to disappointment, but also to unexpectedly unpleasant consequences.

=> ↺ The Islamic State’s Atrocities—and Ours

• Drone attacks are no less violent or disturbing than the murder of Damiens. But they’ve been placed in a different context that makes them palatable to a majority of Americans (though not to most of the world). They’re not public spectacles. They are the natural extension of an omnipresent surveillance system. And they’re embedded in the rule of law (or so their supporters claim).

=> ↺ Kuwait reopens Yemen embassy in Aden, instead of Sanaa

• The three Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE shut their embassies in Sanaa earlier this month

=> ↺ Amid Gains in Tikrit, Iraqi Forces Accused of War Crimes

• Iraqi officials say they are close to victory in an Iranian-backed offensive to reclaim the city of Tikrit from the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Iraqi forces and Shiite militias have reclaimed swaths of the city without the aid of U.S. airstrikes. The gains come as ABC News reports Iraqi military units trained and armed by the United States are under investigation by the Iraqi government for war crimes. Videos and photos on social media appear to show militia members and soldiers from elite units massacring and torturing civilians and displaying severed heads.

=> ↺ Afghan War Is Over, but U.S. Drone Strikes Continue

• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), a U.K.-based nonprofit, has been documenting U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan since the beginning of this year. On Tuesday, the group reported five confirmed airstrikes that have killed between 35 and 44 people in 2015.

=> ↺ Drone attack case: Are thousands of Pakistani children being martyred insects, says IHC

• Islamabad High Court (IHC) has summoned IG Police Islamabad Tahir Alam today due to non registration of murder case against CIA chief and legal counsel under court’s orders in respect of two persons killed in drone attack in Mir Ali at South Waziristan in 2010.

• Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui has remarked “ thousands of Pakistani children are being martyred and no one sheds tears. Are they insects that no one is there to raise voice in their support.

• He further remarked “ if murder case of two persons killed in drone strike is not registered under court’s orders then contempt of court proceedings will be initiated against the IG Police Islamabad. The court job is to protect life and property of citizens.

• Mir Ali drone attack case came up for hearing in IHC Tuesday Advocate Mirza Shahzad Akbar and Zahoor Elahi appeared on behalf of the petitioner in the court.

=> ↺ Drone attacks case adjourned indefinitely

• The government through its report filed in the court has taken the plea that the matter of registration of murder case of two persons against the former chief station CIA and legal counsel, involves legal complications as it can affect Pakistan ties with foreign countries.

=> ↺ Secret CIA payments to Afghan officials used to free diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda, funded group’s weapons stockpile: report

• Al Qaeda stockpiled weapons using covert CIA cash funneled to the murderous terrorist group by Afghan officials as part of a $5 million ransom for a hostage diplomat.

=> ↺ US Hides Civilian Casualties From Drone Strikes in Mid East- Anti-War Group

• Co-founder of CODEPINK anti-war organization Medea Benjamin said that the US government had been hiding the civilian casualties caused by the drone strikes in the Middle East, Somalia and Afghanistan.

=> ↺ CIA Director Describes How the U.S. Outsources Terror Interrogations

• In rare remarks about a sensitive issue, the director of the CIA confirmed today that the U.S. government works with foreign intelligence agencies to capture and jointly interrogate suspected terrorists.

=> ↺ ‘New York Times’: CIA paid ransom to al-Qaeda

=> ↺ CIA money from secret fund ended up in hands of al-Qaida – report

=> ↺ US CIA chief says social media ’greatly amplifies’ terror threat

• SoCIAl media and other technology are making it increasingly difficult to combat militants who are using such modern resources to share information and conduct operations, the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency said on Friday.

=> ↺ CIA chief: Social media hampers fight against ‘terror’

• Social media and other technology are making it increasingly difficult to combat “extremists” who are using such modern resources to share information and conduct operations, the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has said.

=> ↺ The CIA and America’s Presidents

• The CIA now is so firmly entrenched and so immensely well financed – much of it off the books, including everything from secret budget items to peddling drugs and weapons – that it is all but impossible for a president to oppose it the way Kennedy did. Obama, who has proved himself a fairly weak character from the start, certainly has given the CIA anything it wants. The dirty business of ISIS in Syria and Iraq is one project. The coup in Ukraine is another. The pushing of NATO’s face right against Russia’s borders is still another. Several attempted coups in Venezuela are still more. And the creation of a drone air force for extrajudicial killing in half a dozen countries is yet another. They don’t resemble projects we would expect from a smiley-faced, intelligent man who sometimes wore sandals and refused to wear a flag pin on his lapel during his first election campaign.

=> ↺ Russian Ex-Cop Gets 15 Years for Treason in CIA Spy Rock Case

=> ↺ EXCLUSIVE: New American-Russian spy crisis as Kremlin jails policeman for 15 years for ‘spying for CIA’ by handing over nuclear secrets in return for 37,000 euros concealed in fake rock

• This is the first picture of a Russian policeman jailed for 15 years for handing over Kremlin secrets to the CIA.

• Roman Ushakov, 33, from Krasnoyarsk, was found guilty of high treason for allegedly receiving 37,000 euros from his American handlers – hidden in a ‘fake rock’.

• The police major confessed to flying to Britain and other foreign countries to meet US agents after making contact with them via a CIA website.

=> ↺ CIA Whistleblower Facing 100 Years In Prison

• President Barack Obama has repeatedly promised to protect whistleblowers from prosecution and punishment, even though he has used the Espionage Act more than all previous administrations.

=> ↺ Ecuador Alerts Public to CIA Actions Across the Continent

• The Foreign Ministry is backing a new book outlining CIA actions in Ecuador to raise public awareness of interventions committed by the organization.

=> ↺ Ecuador Government Publishes Book about CIA Intervention in its Country

• The government of Ecuador wants its citizens to know all about the dirty tricks that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engaged in during the 1960s in their country. To this end, the Ecuador Foreign Ministry has published and distributed copies of the book The CIA Case Against Latin America (pdf), written by Philip Agee, Jaime Galarza Zavala and Francisco Herrera Arauz.

• Agee is a former CIA officer who exposed the spy agency’s clandestine operations in Latin America from 1960 to 1968 in his own book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1975.

=> ↺ CIA Papers Suggest Murder of Ecuador’s Former President

• Newly revealed documents show that the Ecuadorean military was part of Operation Condor.

• After reviewing declassified CIA documents, the Ecuador’s Attorney General Galo Chiriboga revealed Wednesday that former Ecuadorean President Jaime Roldos could have been murdered, a theory that has surrounded the 34-year old case.

• President Roldos was the first democratically elected president after Ecuador’s last military dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1979.

• Chiriboga made his claim after reviewing several CIA documents that show the Ecuadorean army participated in the Operation Condor, during the 1970s and 1980s.

=> ↺ CIA sought to mislead IAEA on Iran’s nuclear program

• Newly declassified CIA documents show that the United States tried to mislead the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about Iran’s nuclear energy program through the provision of doctored evidence.

=> ↺ CIA’s Nuke Sting May Prompt New UN Review for Iran Nuclear Program

• Evidence emerging from a CIA leak case could change the outcome of United Nations’ assessments of Iran’s nuclear program, Bloomberg reported Friday.

=> ↺ U.S. Syria strategy falters with collapse of rebel group

• The Hazzm movement was once central to a covert CIA operation to arm Syrian rebels, but the group’s collapse last week underlines the failure of efforts to unify Arab and Western support for mainstream insurgents fighting the Syrian military.

=> ↺ Putin: Nuclear Weapons Were Readied During Ukraine Crisis

• In recorded comments made for a documentary of the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin revealed that he had been readying Russia’s nuclear arms during the height of the Ukraine crisis.

Transparency Reporting

=> ↺ Julian Assange appeals to Sweden’s supreme court over arrest warrant

• Julian Assange is taking his appeal to Sweden’s highest court in a final attempt to persuade a Swedish judge that the arrest warrant against him should be lifted.

=> ↺ Swedish Court May Have Led to End of Assange Impasse

• Police monitoring of the Ecuadorean embassy in London all these years has cost “millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money,” Pilger noted.

• While many have speculated whether the recent developments in Sweden would break the stalemate, Ratner said that Washington would play more of a role in his client’s fate.

• “Sweden is not Julian Assange’s problem,” he said. “His problem is the United States.”

=> ↺ Will Matt DeHart be the next victim of the war on leaks?

• The case of Matt DeHart, a former U.S. drone pilot turned hacktivist, is as strange as it is disturbing. The 29-year-old was recently denied asylum in Canada, having fled there with his family after — he claims — he was drugged and tortured by agents of the FBI, who accused him of espionage and child pornography.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Reclamation Announces Initial Water Supply Allocation for Central Valley Project

• Unfortunately, many agricultural water contractors may face a second year of receiving no water from the project – an unprecedented situation. In addition, reduced amounts of water are expected to be available from the CVP for urban uses, although Reclamation anticipates having adequate supplies to provide for unmet health and safety needs for these water users.

=> ↺ Climate Change Denier on Fossil Fuel Payroll

• Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), received significant funding from energy companies while publishing studies that suggested solar activity, rather than human-generated greenhouse gasses, was causing dramatic shifts in global climate. Soon, whose work is frequently cited by conservative politicians to support their skepticism of the human role in climate change, accepted more than $1.2 million from fossil-fuel companies over the past decade, according to documents obtained by environmental group Greenpeace under the Freedom of Information Act. During that same period, Soon failed to disclose any the financial conflicts of interests to publishers of his scientific studies, violating journals’ ethical guidelines in several cases, The New York Times reported.

=> ↺ Network TV Continues Giving Climate Change Cold Shoulder

• FAIR examined ABC, CBS and NBC transcripts from January 25 (as the Northeast’s first blizzard approached) through March 4, looking at all mentions of cold, snow and ice. Over the same time period, we studied coverage of heat, warmth and drought across the West and Pacific Northwest.

Finance

=> ↺ The Case to Reinstate the Bank of Canada

• For over three years the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER), an organization of Canadian citizens, has battled in court to return Canada’s Central Bank. The Bank of Canada’s initial purpose according to its charter was making interest free loans to municipal, provincial, and federal governments for “human capital” expenditures (education, health, other social services) and /or infrastructure expenditures. Yet for the past four decades it has acted as an interest-gathering agent for private global banking firms.

=> ↺ WaPo Lets Slip Why Dollar Is Over-Valued

• Regular readers of my blog Beat the Press know that the over-valuation of the dollar is one of my pet themes. There are two big issues with the over-valuation.

• The first is macroeconomic: An over-valued dollar makes US goods and services less competitive internationally. If the dollar is over-valued by 20 percent against other currencies, then it has the same impact as if we were to impose a 20 percent tariff on all our exports and give a 20 percent subsidy on imported goods. Needless to say, this leads to a much larger trade deficit than would be the case if the currency were not over-valued.

=> ↺ Robert Samuelson’s ‘Golden Age’ Mythology

• Finally, the story of the “Big Scare” doesn’t quite fit the data either. Saving as a share of disposable income is now lower than at any point except the peaks of the stock and housing bubbles. By the measure of how much consumers are spending, they do not appear scared. Similarly, the investment share of GDP is back to its level of 2005-06, a period in which firms were not obviously scared.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ The Foreigners Obama Needs to Love to Prove He Loves America

• Apparently, in the domestic sphere, shunning people of color who have “grievances” is the sum total of what it means to “love America.”

Censorship

=> ↺ Reddit imposes ban on non-consensual sexual content

• If you want to post naked pictures or videos of people on Reddit without their consent, you only have a couple of weeks to do so. As of March, the site is imposing a ban on content of an explicit nature that the subject has not given permission to be posted.

=> ↺ No sex on Blogger please, we’re Google

• Blogger users risk having their blogs removed from public listings if they feature graphic nudity or explicit content. Starting on March 23, any Blogger blog found to contain offending pictures or videos will be converted into a private blog that can only be seen by the owner and those, erm, explicitly invited to see it.

=> ↺ ‘I am Charlie’ exhibit forced to close in Helsinki

• In all three cases, the building owners had asked to have the show closed because of safety worries – particularly following last week’s attacks in Copenhagen.

• On Tuesday the organisers are meeting to decide where to go from here.

• The director of Library 10 told the paper that the building’s owners and police are studying the security issues surrounding the show, and that it may still be possible for it to re-open at the library.

• The exhibit includes work by 10 leading Finnish cartoonists, including well-known names such as Pertti Jarla and Milla Paloniemi.

Privacy

=> ↺ GPG And Me

• Eventually I realized that when I receive a GPG encrypted email, it simply means that the email was written by someone who would voluntarily use GPG. I don’t mean someone who cares about privacy, because I think we all care about privacy. There just seems to be something particular about people who try GPG and conclude that it’s a realistic path to introducing private communication in their lives for casual correspondence with strangers.

=> ↺ Powerful “stingrays” used to go after 911 hangup, ATM burglary

• Newly released records show that Florida law enforcement agencies have been using stingrays thousands of times since at least 2007 to investigate crimes as small as a 911 hangup. They also seemingly obliquely refer to stingrays in police reports as “electronic surveillance measures,” or even as a “confidential informant.”

=> ↺ Belarus just banned Tor and other censorship circumvention tools

=> ↺ Dear Software Vendors: Please Stop Trying to Intercept Your Customers’ Encrypted Traffic

• So what can we learn from this Lenovo/Superfish/Komodia/PrivDog debacle? For users, we’ve learned that you can’t trust the software that comes preinstalled on your computers—which means reinstalling a fresh OS will now have to be standard operating procedure whenever someone buys a new computer.

=> ↺ It’s official: NSA spying is hurting the US tech economy

• China is no longer using high-profile US technology brands for state purchases, amid ongoing revelations about mass surveillance and hacking by the US government.

• A new report confirmed key brands, including Cisco, Apple, Intel, and McAfee — among others — have been dropped from the Chinese government’s list of authorized brands, a Reuters report said Wednesday.

=> ↺ China puts tech bill that concerns West on hold – U.S. official

• China has put a hold on a draft counter-terrorism law that would require technology firms to hand over sensitive information to government officials, a senior U.S. official said in a good sign for Western businesses who saw the rule as a major impediment to working in the world’s second largest economy.

=> ↺ How To Install Tor Browser 4.0.4 In Linux To Surf Anonymously

=> ↺ Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You

• ​It’s 2015—when we feel sick, fear disease, or have questions about our health, we turn first to the internet. According to the Pew Internet Project, 72 percent of US internet users look up health-related information online. But an astonishing number of the pages we visit to learn about private health concerns—confidentially, we assume—are tracking our queries, sending the sensitive data to third party corporations, even shipping the information directly to the same brokers who monitor our credit scores. It’s happening for profit, for an “improved user experience,” and because developers have flocked to “free” plugins and tools provided by data-vacuuming companies.

=> ↺ The NSA Director Pretends He Doesn’t Understand How Encryption Works

• ​So far, we know that the ​Justice Department, the ​FBI, and President Obama have said that law enforcement should be allowed to break into consumers’ encrypted data with a warrant. Now, we can add the NSA to the list.

=> ↺ Lawmaker Who Said Snowden Committed Treason, Now On The Other Side Of Metadata Surveillance

• In short, the metadata brought Schock down. Of course, as we’ve been describing, anyone who says that we shouldn’t be concerned about the NSA’s surveillance of metadata, or brushes it away as “just metadata,” doesn’t understand how powerful metadata can be. As former NSA/CIA boss Michael Hayden has said, the government kills people based on metadata.

=> ↺ Pakistanis face a deadline: Surrender fingerprints or give up cellphone

• Cellphones didn’t just arrive in Pakistan. But someone could be fooled into thinking otherwise, considering the tens of millions of Pakistanis pouring into mobile phone stores these days.

=> ↺ LinkedIn settles class action password hack case with £810,000 payout

• ADDRESS BOOK CONTACTS LIST EMAILER LinkedIn has settled a class action lawsuit that came its way after 6.5 million users’ passwords were stolen in a hacking incident.

=> ↺ Snowden: Spy Agencies ‘Screwed All of Us’ in Hacking Crypto Keys

• NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden didn’t mince words during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session on Monday when he said the NSA and the British spy agency GCHQ had “screwed all of us” when it hacked into the Dutch firm Gemalto to steal cryptographic keys used in billions of mobile SIM cards worldwide.

=> ↺ Kaspersky claims to have found NSA’s ‘space station malware’

• Kaspersky malware probers have uncovered a new ‘operating system’-like platform that was developed and used by the National Security Agency (NSA) in its Equation spying arsenal.

• The EquationDrug or Equestre platform is used to deploy 116 modules to target computers that can siphon data and spy on victims.

=> ↺ New smoking gun further ties NSA to omnipotent “Equation Group” hackers

• Researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab have uncovered more evidence tying the US National Security Agency to a nearly omnipotent group of hackers who operated undetected for at least 14 years.

=> ↺ ‘Equation Group’ hackers tied to NSA after new Kaspersky Labs report surfaces

=> ↺ Code name found in Equation group malware suggests link to NSA

=> ↺ U.S. NSA sued by Wikimedia, rights groups over mass surveillance

=> ↺ Wikipedia parent sues to stop NSA’s massive surveillance effort

=> ↺ Wikipedia to file lawsuit against NSA and US Department of Justice

• Wikipedia will take legal action against the National Security Agency and the US Department of Justice challenging the government’s mass surveillance programme.

=> ↺ Trevor Paglen review: turning the NSA’s data combing into high-concept art

=> ↺ Morning Links: NSA Art Edition

=> ↺ These are the silly URLs the NSA uses for cyber espionage

• Kaspersky’s researchers also published a list of URLs that the malware uses to “phone home” and pass information back to agents. Now, the NSA could use random, gibberish domains, but those look suspicious. So, instead, the agency registered and ran second-rate domains like newjunk4u.com and nickleplatedads.com. (Aside: Is that nickel plate dads or nickel-plated ads?)

=> ↺ Ex-NSA chief rules out Germany ever being admitted to Five Eyes spy club

• A former NSA and CIA director says only members of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance have the privileged status of America’s most intimate friends. Other nations are doomed to remain out of that club indefinitely, he told a Washington-based think tank.

=> ↺ New Zealand Used NSA System to Target Officials, Anti-Corruption Campaigner

• New Zealand’s eavesdropping agency used an Internet mass surveillance system to target government officials and an anti-corruption campaigner on a neighboring Pacific island, according to a top-secret document.

=> ↺ Revealed: The names NZ targeted using NSA’s XKeyscore system

• New Zealand spies programmed an internet mass surveillance system to intercept messages about senior public servants and a leading anti-corruption campaigner in the Solomon Islands, a top-secret document reveals.

=> ↺ US Senate committee advances cybersecurity bill in secret session

• The Senate intelligence committee advanced a priority bill for the National Security Agency on Thursday afternoon, approving long-stalled cybersecurity legislation that civil libertarians consider the latest pathway for surveillance abuse.

=> ↺ Snowden Docs: New Zealand Collects ‘Full-Take’ Data for NSA, ‘Five Eyes’

• New Zealand intelligence is spying on its neighbors throughout the Asia-Pacific region, intercepting mass data and sharing it with the National Security Agency in the United States, according to documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

=> ↺ New Zealand spying on Pacific allies for ‘Five Eyes’ and NSA, Snowden files show

• New Zealand is spying indiscriminately on its allies in the Pacific region and sharing the information with the US and the other “Five Eyes” alliance states, according to documents from the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

=> ↺ How to view all Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA documents

• While the Snowden files have previously been made available via Greenwald’s personal website and the American Civil Liberties Union, now a University of Toronto graduate, George Raine, has created the Snowden Surveillance Archive to allow you to search all the documents released so far.

=> ↺ Snowden Archive online: NSA and GCHQ spying revelations catalogued in searchable database

• A team of Canadian journalists and political researchers have teamed up to create the world’s first fully indexed and searchable online database of Edward Snowden’s NSA surveillance revelations.

=> ↺ Snowden’s NSA Leaks Catalogued In First Searchable Database Of The Surveillance Documents

• A group of Canadian researchers and journalists have built the world’s first fully-indexed and searchable online database of Edward Snowden’s leaked National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance documents. The team behind the Snowden Surveillance Archive hopes the database will help the public use Snowden’s revelations to become more aware of how governments are spying on citizens.

=> ↺ From opposition to retreat: Tom Mulcair and Bill C-51

• At the end of last week it looked like Tom Mulcair and the NDP caucus were going to rise to the occasion on one of the great threats to Canadian civil liberties and Canada’s activist community in many years, Bill C-51.

=> ↺ Yahoo executive challenges NSA over encryption demands

• A Yahoo executive has publicly challenged the National Security Agency (NSA) over encryption “backdoors”.

=> ↺ Yahoo executive and NSA chief clash over online data privacy

• Alex Stamos, chief information security officer at Yahoo, said that if technology companies were obliged to provide “backdoor” access to their systems for the US government, they would face heavy pressure to do the same in China and Russia.

=> ↺ Snowden, NSA spying, hard drive malware … what we need is a UN privacy watchdog!

• EFF writes a very angry letter asking United Nations to write a very angry letter to the US

=> ↺ CIA, NSA and MI5: why our intelligence agencies aren’t so smart

• In the past year, American and British intelligence agencies have made headlines for some of the world’s most high-stakes and far-reaching security missteps and ethical violations: from the NSA’s surveillance scandal to the CIA torture report to MI5’s botched handling of “Jihadi John”. You would have to be living under a rock to have missed these stories, and even if you were, these agencies could no doubt track you down – and monitor your texts! LOL!

=> ↺ The documentary on Snowden

• In the summer of 2013, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden met with two journalists in a hotel room in Hong Kong. What he told them – that the NSA was spying on all of us – changed the way citizens in democracies viewed their governments. The documentary on Snowden, “Citizenfour,” just won an Oscar and has been re-released in theaters.

=> ↺ Congress Girds For Patriot Act Fight Over NSA Spying

• The visit was more than just a courtesy call. With the legal authority for the NSA’s phone data dragnet set to expire June 1, Rogers needs his enemies. Reformers are girding for a fight with congressional leaders, and the looming deadline to reauthorize several Patriot Act provisions gives the former group unprecedented leverage.

=> ↺ Interactive Hello Barbie might work for the NSA …

• Just when you might have thought that the NSA couldn’t have another way to spy on us along comes Hello Barbie, a version of Mattel’s iconic toy that adds audio capture and response to the doll. The way the doll will work is when your child presses the button on a Hello Barbie doll, whatever they next say will be recorded and transmitted over WiFi to the Internet to be processed by Mattel’s partner, ToyTalk, and a relevant response generated and sent back (Internet lag not withstanding).

=> ↺ Phone surveillance critics see chance to end NSA program

• Critics of the National Security Agency’s collection of millions of Americans’ phone records see a strong chance to rein in the mass surveillance program by June.

=> ↺ Technology should be used to create social mobility – not to spy on citizens

• Why spy? That’s the several-million pound question, in the wake of the Snowden revelations. Why would the US continue to wiretap its entire population, given that the only “terrorism” they caught with it was a single attempt to send a small amount of money to Al Shabab?

=> ↺ Obama wants China to stop copying the NSA’s surveillance plans

• President Obama has criticized a Chinese plan to force US tech companies to install backdoors into their products for sale in the country. Without stopping for a moment to consider the phrase about glass houses and stones, he told Reuters that China would have to change its stance if it wanted to do business with the US.

=> ↺ Building backdoors into encryption isn’t only bad for China, Mr President

• Want to know why forcing tech companies to build backdoors into encryption is a terrible idea? Look no further than President Obama’s stark criticism of China’s plan to do exactly that on Tuesday. If only he would tell the FBI and NSA the same thing.

=> ↺ Can the NSA be checked?

• It’s been nearly two years since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents to the media revealing the existence of a massive government spying program that scoops up data on millions of Americans’ private phone and Internet communications without their knowledge or consent.

=> ↺ International effort to wrangle t’internet from NSA fizzles out in chaos

• The launch of the ICANN-Brazil-led internet power grab dubbed NetMundial has been cancelled for a second time, raising questions over its continued existence.

=> ↺ Why NSA should disclose all Hillary Clinton’s emails

• In this day and age of domestic surveillance, it’s seems odd that any public official should be given the opportunity to house private email servers in their home. Although Hillary Clinton did not break any specific laws, and both Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell also used private emails at times, there are unique circumstances with ‘Emailgate’ that warrant a unique resolution to the scandal.

=> ↺ NSA inquiry chief suffers phone tampering

• Patrick Sensburg, chairman of the Bundestag (German parliament) inquiry into spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA), asked security experts to examine his phone after suspecting he might have been hacked – only for it to be tampered with in the post.

=> ↺ Head of German inquiry into claims NSA spied on Angela Merkel fears his own mobile phone has been hacked

=> ↺ Conservative Audience Laughs as Former NSA Chief Refers to Himself as an ‘Unrelenting Libertarian’

=> ↺ Ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden booed and heckled during CPAC debate after calling himself an ‘unrelenting libertarian’

• Former National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden was heckled at the Conservative Political Action Conference after he called himself an ‘unrelenting libertarian’.

=> ↺ Documents Shine Light on Shadowy New Zealand Surveillance Base

• New Zealand’s prime minister John Key insisted that the revelations were wrong, but then refused to explain why, telling a press conference he had “no intention of telling you about how we do things.” Meanwhile, former GCSB chief Sir Bruce Ferguson admitted that “mass collection” of data was indeed being undertaken in the Pacific, and said it was “mission impossible” to eliminate New Zealanders’ communications from the data being swept up.

=> ↺ NSA authorization to collect bulk phone data extended to June 1

=> ↺ NSA Spying Continues With Another Rubber Stamp

=> ↺ 2016 presidential race: Neither Conservatives nor Republicans will stop NSA surveillance

• NSA mass surveillance practices could continue to be around for a long time, no matter who is elected in the 2016 US presidential elections, as both the Conservative party and the Republicans still want it around, according to Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept.

=> ↺ After Brit spies ‘snoop’ on families’ lawyers, UK govt admits: We flouted human rights laws

• The British government has admitted that its practice of spying on confidential communications between lawyers and their clients was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

=> ↺ Sen. Ron Wyden Says That There Are More Secret Electronic Surveillance Programs That Have Not Been Publicly Disclosed

• Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat and one of the sharpest critics of the Obama administration’s domestic surveillance programs, isn’t satisfied with the changes to those programs and he wants to know why President Obama hasn’t just stopped the NSA bulk-data collection.

• In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Wyden bluntly warned that even after the NSA scandal that started with Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the Obama administration has continued programs to monitor the activities of American citizens in ways that the public is unaware of and that could be giving government officials intimate details of citizens’ lives.

=> ↺ Bad for Business: After NSA Hack China Stops Buying Major US Tech Brands

=> ↺ It’s official: NSA spying is hurting the US tech economy

• China is backing away from US tech brands for state purchases as NSA revelations continue to make headlines in newspapers all around the world.

=> ↺ China has dropped several major US tech brands for government purchases in wake of NSA spying

=> ↺ Some NSA Friends in Congress Admit They Don’t Use Email

• Leading national security hawks Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., likely agree. The duo admit they don’t use email.

• “I don’t email at all,” McCain told the National Journal last week. “I have other people and I tell them to email because I am just always worried I might say something. I am not the most calm and reserved person you know.”

• Graham, on the other hand, appears never to have caught up with the Internet revolution. “You can have every email I’ve ever sent. I’ve never sent one,” Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program Sunday.

=> ↺ What the intelligence committee report means for your data

• The committee also judged that the UK’s laws authorising surveillance are outdated and should be reformed in the next parliament.

• In the course of their 149-page report, the committee came to a variety of conclusions about what is and isn’t surveillance, what is intrusive, and what agencies should look at. We’ve examined four of them below, and set out what it means for your emails, calls records – and browser history.

=> ↺ CIA spies can add BitLocker hack to the list

• Besides Apple, Microsoft was also a target, and a story published on The Intercept suggests that CIA specialists might be able to break into BitLocker, the Microsoft software which encrypts hard drives.

=> ↺ Guess Who Wasn’t Invited to the CIA’s Hacker Jamboree?

• Apple, that’s who. Or Microsoft, or any of the other vendors whose products US government contractors have successfully exploited according to a recent report in the Intercept. While we’re not surprised that the Intelligence Community is actively attempting to develop new spycraft tools and capabilities—that’s their job—we expect them to follow the administration’s rules of engagement. Those rules require an evaluation under what’s known as the “Vulnerabilities Equities Process.” In the White House’s own words, the process should usually result in disclosing software vulnerabilities to vendors, because “in the majority of cases, responsibly disclosing a newly discovered vulnerability is clearly in the national interest.”

=> ↺ CIA Aided Program to Spy on U.S. Cellphones

• The Central Intelligence Agency played a crucial role in helping the Justice Department develop technology that scans data from thousands of U.S. cellphones at a time, part of a secret high-tech alliance between the spy agency and domestic law enforcement, according to people familiar with the work.

=> ↺ The CIA is giving its surveillance tech to US law enforcement

• The Justice Department’s newest electronic dragnet–plane-mounted “dirtboxes” that can slurp thousands of cellular phone ID’s from the air — was originally developed by the CIA to hunt terrorists in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reports. Now however, it’s being used domestically to track American citizens. That’s not good.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ Fort Lauderdale police officer caught on camera slapping homeless man

• A homeless man is speaking up after an officer responded violently to his request to use a restroom Sunday.

• A witness caught the incident on a cellphone camera. In the footage, the man, Bruce Laclair, is seen walking near a Downtown Fort Lauderdale bus station. An off-duty Fort Lauderdale Police officer, Victor Ramirez, trails Laclair while putting on rubber gloves. “I’m not [expletive] around with you. Don’t [expletive] touch me,” Ramirez is heard yelling while pointing at Laclair.

=> ↺ Study After Study Shows The DHS Has An Intense Morale Problem That Can Apparently Only Be Solved By Study After Study

• The DHS is in the (relatively) newly-minted business of securing the homeland against all comers — mostly terrorists of the foreign and domestic varieties. Whether it’s done out of paranoia or just the overwhelming need to look busy every time the national budget nears a vote, the DHS has gone overboard in its assessments of potential threats. The shorter of the two lists it has compiled by this point would be titled “Not Terrorists.” Over the years, the DHS has conjectured that terrorists are hiding in food trucks, using hotel side entrances, exercising their First Amendment rights, possibly years away from graduating high school… etc.

=> ↺ Prison Phone Companies Have Found Yet Another Way to Squeeze Families for Cash

• On a chilly Sunday evening in December, a smattering of parents and small children trickled into a graffiti-covered concrete building on the grounds of the DC Jail. It was the last day to visit with prisoners before Christmas Eve, and some of the visitors were wearing Santa hats or bearing presents. The only thing missing was inmates. Three years ago, Washington, DC, eliminated in-person visitation for the roughly 1,800 residents of its jails and installed 54 video-conferencing screens in this building across the parking lot from the detention facility. The screens were installed, at no expense to taxpayers, by a Virginia-based company called Global Tel*Link (GTL), which had scored a lucrative contract for the facility’s phone service.

=> ↺ The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’

• The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

=> ↺ The Guardian Details The Horrors Of Chicago Police’s ‘CIA-Style Black Site’

• The practices undertaken at the Homan facility are alleged to include detaining people without documenting their arrest, beatings, keeping detainees shackled for hours at a time, refusing attorneys for detainees access to the facility, and detaining people while refusing them legal counsel for up to a full day. These practices, by the way, weren’t reserved for the mature, but were happily visited upon minors, because when you’re going to go evil there is no point in half-assing it. Do these types of practices sound familiar to you? Would it help if the detainees were in orange jumpsuits and had the tan of a Cuban sun upon their skin? You get the point.

=> ↺ Battlefield: Hardline – is it a problem to play war as a cop?

• A helicopter swoops over a palatial mansion as armed gunmen burst in, jamming cartridges into their shotguns, preparing for an epic firefight. Pretty soon bullets are tearing up the interior as bodies crash through glass walls, and grenades pass the camera in slow-motion arcs. Quickly, the action cuts to a high-speed car chase, with vehicles plummeting along LA’s iconic storm drains. The shooting never stops.

=> ↺ The Rise and Fall of RedBook, the Site That Sex Workers Couldn’t Live Without

• Until last summer, pretty much anyone buying or selling sex in the San Francisco Bay Area used myRedBook.com. For more than a decade, the site commonly referred to as RedBook served as a vast catalog of carnal services, a mashup of Craigslist, Yelp, and Usenet where sex workers and hundreds of thousands of their customers could connect, converse, and make arrangements for commercial sex. RedBook tapped into the persistent, age-old, bottomless appetite for prostitution and made it safer and more civilized. The site was efficient, well stocked, and probably too successful for its own good.

=> ↺ Voting Rights Shall Not Overcome NYT Reporting Like This

• Actually, if we shall not overcome partisan rancor, it will be because of reporting like this, which duplicates and does not investigate the claims made about voting reform. Will voter ID and restrictions on early voting “help prevent voter fraud,” or is such fraud “nearly nonexistent”? The Times can’t say, but can only say what others say, as if there were no objective reality that the paper could report on directly.

=> ↺ ‘Freedom in jeopardy’: Thousands rally across Canada against new anti-terror law

• Thousands of demonstrators have united across Canada to take action against proposed anti-terrorism legislation known as Bill C-51, which would expand the powers of police and the nation’s spy agency, especially when it comes to detaining terror suspects.

=> ↺ JUSTICE FOR SALE – PART 4: Corruption and Abuse, the Remnants of Greed

• This is the fourth article (PART1, PART2, PART3) in a five-part series examining the US legal system. The series collectively argues that corporate media and political rhetoric have made Americans acquiescent toward corruption in the US legal system. This piece uses Coalinga State Hospital in California to illuminate the corruption that is taking place inside the justice system’s institutions.

=> ↺ Senate Torture Report: An Exception In CIA Oversight

• In February 2009, the Senate intelligence committee gathered in a soundproof room to learn the stomach-churning details of the brutal interrogations the CIA conducted with its first important al-Qaida prisoners.

• Committee aides distributed a report based on a review of messages to CIA headquarters from two of the agency’s secret overseas jails. Included was a 25-page chart with a minute-by-minute description of 17 days during which the first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, was kept awake, slammed into walls, shackled in stress positions, stuffed for hours into a small box and waterboarded to the point of unconsciousness.

=> ↺ Drone Theory by Grégoire Chamayou, review: ‘highly readable’

• The dream of flight, even from its earliest days, was shadowed by the desire for power. Before the First World War, in 1911, the Italians were dropping bombs out of early wooden aircraft on north African villages. In the Twenties, the British sought to control ungovernable desert dwellers in their Middle East territories by hurling explosives from biplanes. Today’s objections to drones – crewless aircraft piloted via computers, and used to fire missiles – are to do with the fact that they swerve any liberal sense of justice. Their technology may be astounding, but the fear and outrage they evoke is more than 100 years old.

=> ↺ Bush White House’s Repeated Torture Denials Led CIA Torturers to Seek Repeated Reassurances

• The Bush administration was so adamant in its public statements against torture that CIA officials repeatedly sought reassurances that the White House officials who had given them permission to torture in the first place hadn’t changed their minds.

• In a July 29, 2003, White House meeting that included Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet went so far as to ask the White House “to cease stating that US Government practices were ‘humane.’” He was assured they would.

=> ↺ CIA spy ‘fired for falling in love with undercover colleague 21 years his junior’ sues agency for $25 million

=> ↺ Spy: CIA Kept Me From My Soulmate

• On January 5, 2010, the chief of the CIA’s secretive paramilitary operations division accused one of the agency’s elite undercover operatives of financial shenanigans and getting too friendly with a female colleague.

=> ↺ Chelsea Manning: Prosecute the CIA’s torturers

• Newly minted Guardian columnist Chelsea Manning, the Army whistleblower currently serving a 35-year sentence for divulging classified military documents to WikiLeaks, argues in a new column that the officers behind the Central Intelligence Agency’s post-9/11 torture and detention program must be held criminally accountable, contending that U.S. intelligence personnel were complicit in a torture regime that was “unethical and morally wrong,” as well as “very illegal.”

=> ↺ John Brennan and Restructuring the CIA

=> ↺ The CIA’s torturers and the leaders who approved their actions must face the law

• Successful intelligence gathering through interrogation and other forms of human interaction by conventional means can be – and more often than not are – very successful. But, even though interrogation by less conventional methods might get glorified in popular culture – in television dramas like Law and Order: Criminal Intent, 24 and The Closer and movies like Zero Dark Thirty – torture and the mistreatment of detainees in the custody of intelligence personnel is, was and shall continue to be unethical and morally wrong. Under US law, torture and mistreatment of detainees is also very illegal.

=> ↺ Paying for torture

• The CIA tortured suspected terrorists on Polish soil.

=> ↺ ‘No parliament support’: Lithuania drops CIA prison inquiry

• The Lithuanian legislature decided against a new inquiry into a secret US torture facility in the country, despite a damning US Senate report released three months ago which indicated its existence.

=> ↺ Lithuania says will not renew CIA prison parliamentary enquiry

• Lithuania’s parliament will not hold another parliamentary inquiry into alleged CIA prisons in the Baltic country after the U.S. Senate published a report on torture, the speaker of the parliament said on Friday.

=> ↺ Lithuanian Parliament Refuses to Pursue Investigations into CIA Black Sites

• The Lithuanian Seimas will not renew a parliamentary inquiry into alleged CIA prisons, despite evidence in a US Senate Report suggesting that the Baltic nation kept a secret prison.

=> ↺ CIA attempted to contact Hamas despite official US ban, spy cables reveal

• The CIA tried to gain access to Hamas through backchannels despite a US government ban on contact with the Palestinian Islamist movement, the spy cables show.

=> ↺ ‘Spy Cables’ Reveal the CIA ‘Desperate’ to Contact Hamas

• The leaked cables show that Obama threatened the Palestinian president because the PLO was seeking to upgrade its U.N. status.

=> ↺ CIA asked South Africa for help contacting Hamas: leaked files

• According to the Al-Jazeera report, a Central Intelligence Agency agent was “desperate” to make contact with Hamas in 2012, according to intelligence files leaked to Al-Jazeera.

• Al-Jazeera reported that the US listed Hamas as a terrorist organisation and had no contact with the group officially.

=> ↺ Film About Psychologists Behind CIA’s Torture Techniques In Works At HBO

• The December release of the U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s so-called “torture report” shocked the nation with the gruesome accounts of extreme interrogation tactics employed by the CIA in the war on terror.

=> ↺ CIA scandal that got lost amid our obsession with Monica Lewinsky: Kill the Messenger is reminiscent of All The President’s Men, writes BRIAN VINER

• A powerful political thriller in many ways reminiscent of All The President’s Men, Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 film about the Watergate conspiracy, Kill The Messenger tells the true story of a dogged investigative reporter for an unfashionable Californian newspaper, who uncovered what he called a ‘dark alliance’ between the CIA, Nicaraguan rebels and cocaine traffickers.

=> ↺ US Government Classifies Term “America’s Battle Lab’ in War on Terror” in Pentagon Report

• The Department of Defense, after consultation with the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency, has released via Mandatory Declassification Request an early Pentagon study of intelligence operations at Guantanamo (along with accompanying slide presentation). It is very heavily redacted, with whole pages blanked out.

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ What is net neutrality and what does it mean for me?

=> ↺ The end of an open, free Internet?

=> ↺ FCC net neutrality vote: Why there’s a flurry of eleventh-hour lobbying (+video)

=> ↺ FCC’s Net Neutrality Vote Set for Thursday Morning

=> ↺ What You Need To Know About Tomorrow’s Votes On Net Neutrality And Municipal Broadband

=> ↺ Hillary Backs Strongest Net Neutrality Rules

=> ↺ Net neutrality activists score landmark victory in fight to govern the internet

=> ↺ Wireless Usage Caps (And Creative Abuses Of Them) Are The New Global Net Neutrality Battlefield

• After having their wrists slapped for more ham-fisted neutrality abuses like throttling and blocking, ISPs have been increasingly clever when it comes to ways to abuse their stranglehold over the uncompetitive broadband last mile. On the fixed-line broadband front the major net neutrality battlefield is currently interconnection, with ISPs accused of allowing their peering points to tier 1 operators and content companies to deteriorate in order to glean new direct interconnection payments. This effectively has shifted one major portion of the neutrality debate from the user’s connection to the edge of the network.

=> ↺ FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai Is Leading An Incoherent, Facts-Optional Last Minute War On Net Neutrality…For The American People

• Over the last few months we’ve discussed how FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has been waging a one man war on net neutrality and Title II using what can only be described as an increasingly aggressive barrage of total nonsense. Back in January Pai tried to claim that Netflix was a horrible neutrality hypocrite because the company uses relatively ordinary content delivery networks. Earlier this month Pai one-upped himself by trying to claim that meaningful neutrality consumer protections would encourage countries like Iran and North Korea to censor the Internet.

• [...]

• That said, as a former Verizon lawyer, Pai doesn’t really give a damn about transparency. Phone and cable companies absolutely adore the lack of transparency that allows them craft abysmal anti-consumer regulations on the state and federal level every day. Similarly, were Pai’s party in office pushing an agenda he liked (like oh, letting Verizon do effectively whatever it likes, no matter how anti-competitive) you can be fairly sure his love of transparency would be notably absent from the conversation. Still, Pai’s attempting a futile Hail Mary attempt to delay this week’s vote because he just loves transparency so much it hurts.

=> ↺ A Major Victory for the Open Web

• We just accomplished something very important together. Today, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted for strong net neutrality protections.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ The White House Doesn’t Want You to Know the TPP’s Looming Effects on U.S. Copyright Laws

• As the White House doubles down on its attempt to pass legislation to fast track secret trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, their oft-repeated refrain about these deals’ digital copyright enforcement provisions is that these policies would not alter U.S. law.

=> ↺ Congress’s Copyright Review Should Strengthen Fair Use—Or At Least Do No Harm

• The Internet is celebrating Fair Use Week, and it’s a great time to look at what Congress might do this year to help or hurt the fair use rights of artists, innovators, and citizens. After nearly two years of U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearings and vigorous conversations within government, industry, and the public, it seems like we might see some real proposals. But other than a few insiders, nobody knows for sure whether major changes to copyright law are coming this year, and what they might be.

=> ↺ Trade Agreements Should Protect An Open Internet, Not Kill It

• For a few years now, we’ve been writing about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, and how we’re quite concerned by many aspects of it. In particular, we’re quite concerned about the intellectual property provisions — which leaks have shown are tremendously problematic — as well as the corporate sovereignty provisions, which negotiators like to call “investor state dispute settlement” (ISDS) because it sounds so boring. Of course, the biggest concern of all is that these deals are negotiated in total secrecy, with the various negotiators refusing to reveal the agreed upon text until it’s a done deal and the public is unable to comment on it or suggest changes and fixes.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Apparently The Best Way To Decrease Movie Piracy Is To Get Rid Of The Oscars

• As you may have heard, last night was the Oscars — Hollywood’s favorite back-patting celebration. However, as a recent study found, films that were nominated for Oscars saw the number of unauthorized downloads and streams surge, as people wanted to make sure they had seen these celebrated films. Films like American Sniper and Selma saw a massive increase in unauthorized downloads after being nominated. The company that did this study, Irdeto, argues that these unauthorized downloads represent a major loss for the films’ producers — but it seems like there’s another explanation: the MPAA really ought to be targeting the Oscars for encouraging infringement.

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