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● 08.18.15

● Links 18/8/2015: Linux 4.2 RC7, IBM’s LinuxOne

Posted in News Roundup at 6:29 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ How an open-minded sysadmin got me hooked on Linux

• By the time I met my wife and eventually moved to the US, I had been an ardent Linux user for nearly 10 years. I finally made the switch away from proprietary software, and now I only use Linux as my operating system of choice. Over the course of 21 years, I have gone from an old 486 running Slackware to Fedora on my laptop and Debian on my desktops at home. I am very fortunate that I now make a living writing software on an operating system with which I have so much fun. And, that I work with great people who are equally passionate about open source.

=> ↺ Getting acquainted with Linux: a primer on dipping into the ‘Free’ software world

• So what is Linux all about and where did it come from? Linux is a term broadly used to refer to the collection of operating systems belonging to the GNU/Linux distributions (see box on the history of GNU/Linux.) A distribution is basically an operating system that is based on a variation of the GNU/Linux core.

=> ↺ IncrediBuild 7 brings Windows code compiler accelerator to Linux and Android

• The company has now announced that it is bringing the tech, which can decrease compilation time by a factor of 30 in some cases, to Linux and Android development.

=> ↺ Linux development gets faster in the cloud

• Andorid and Linux developers can take advantage of parallel processing to speed development times using a suite of software tools from a Tel Aviv-based company, IncrediBuild.

• The company claims that development times can be significantly reduced using the tool which runs development processes in a distributed fashion.

• The IncrediBuild software uses a proprietary distributed container technology which allows tasks to be processed in parallel on multiple computers in the cloud.

=> ↺ IncrediBuild Launches Industry’s First Plug & Play Linux and Android Software Development Acceleration Suite

=> ↺ LinuxCon: IncrediBuild for Linux and Android, Linux Foundation’s new collaborative projects, and IBM’s mainframe

=> ↺ The Wages of Online Disrespect

• To some, I am a Linux Guru because I have been using Linux as my only operating system since 2005. To others, I’m the oh-so-adorable-cheek-squeezing newbie who thinks his basic bash skills are a massive achievement. For those who first installed Slackware via a Dagwood sandwich pile of floppies, then I suppose the latter is right. I think we all carry a bit of each within us. But in the end, it doesn’t matter at all — that isn’t even in play. But let me tell you what is in play.

Desktop

=> ↺ Competition Returns For Desktop OS And Business – Chromebook v Wintel

• For the greater certainty, NPD reports that 50% of notebook unit sales this summer were Chromebooks for business.

=> ↺ HP Probook 455 G2 Ubuntu review

• The HP Probook 455 G2 with Ubuntu is very affordable, but even without the expense of Windows it feels a little cheap and lacks polish in various places from the hardware to Ubuntu itself. It’s by no means bad, but unless you specifically need Linux then a good Chromebook would be a better value and better designed Windows alternative – as long as you’re happy to work exclusively in the cloud.

=> ↺ What’s holding Linux back?

• FOR the last couple of years now, the job market for Linux talent has been red hot.

• In March, Dice and the Linux Foundation released their 2015 Linux Jobs Report, which surveyed more than 1,000 hiring managers at corporations, small and medium business, government organizations, and staffing agencies across the globe and more than 3,400 Linux professionals worldwide.

=> ↺ Top Tweaks for the Linux Desktop

• These days installing Linux on your computer is fairly straightforward. Even when it comes to installing your favorite Linux distro onto a PC using UEFI. The tweaking takes place when you’re trying to setup the desktop environment for your daily tasks. This can be everything from creating custom preferences to installing software to make your usage more pleasant. In this article, I’ll share my favorite tweaks for the Linux desktop.

=> ↺ EUROCOM Shark 4 Ultraportable High Performance Laptop now supports Linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Operating System

• Eurocom is now offering the 15.6″ Ultraportable, High Performance Shark 4 laptop with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and USB Key backup as another Operating System choice in addition to Windows choices and Intel Core i7-4720HQ, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, 16 GB memory, 3.5 TB storage and TPM 2.0.

Server

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Launches Open Mainframe Project

• It’s 2015 and you might think of the mainframe as a vestige of an earlier computing era, but these mega machines still play a role inside large institutions running intensive workloads.

• And as though to prove its ongoing utility, The Linux Foundation announced it was launching the Open Mainframe Project today, an open source endeavor devoted to helping companies using mainframe computers.

=> ↺ IBM Teams With Canonical To Put Ubuntu Linux On Mainframes

• You might not think that ‘Linux’ and ‘mainframe’ belong in the same sentence, but IBM has been putting various flavors of Linux on its mainframe computers for 15 years. Today IBM and Canonical announced that the two companies were teaming up to build one running Ubuntu Linux. The new unit is called the LinuxOne.

=> ↺ IBM Introduces Two Open-Source-Only Mainframes in Hardware Push

=> ↺ IBM Launches Linux-Powered Mainframe LinuxOne

=> ↺ Global Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) Launching 2 Mainframe

=> ↺ SUSE Easing Linux on the Mainframe with KVM for IBM z Systems Support

=> ↺ IBM Launches New Linux Mainframes and Open Mainframe Project

=> ↺ IBM unveils Linux-only mainframe system LinuxONE

=> ↺ IBM Unwraps Mainframe With LinuxONE And LinuxONE Emperor Servers

=> ↺ IBM debuts LinuxONE mainframe for all enterprises

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Is Making Mainframes, Open-Source

=> ↺ IBM offers Linux-only mainframes as part of new open systems strategy

=> ↺ IBM And Canonical Team Up To Bring LinuxONE On Mainframe Computers

=> ↺ International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) Launching 2 Mainframe Servers ; Which Scale Up to 8,000 Virtual Machines

=> ↺ Two new IBM open-source-only mainframes introduced

=> ↺ IBM launches two new Linux-only mainframes

=> ↺ IBM pushes Linux only mainframes in open source play

=> ↺ IBM goes big on open source with dedicated Linux mainframes

=> ↺ IBM Unveils Linux-Only Mainframe, Joins Open Mainframe Project

=> ↺ IBM LinuxONE is a Linux-only mainframe

=> ↺ Linux Foundation launches Open Mainframe Project for Companies Using Mainframe Computers

=> ↺ IBM Launches LinuxOne Mainframe for All Enterprises

=> ↺ IBM introduces LinuxONE system: A new Linux-only mainframe server

=> ↺ IBM announces Linux mainframe app development cloud

=> ↺ IBM Partners With Canonical to Build Linux-Only Mainframe

=> ↺ IBM launches LinuxONE, a Linux-only mainframe system

=> ↺ IBM launches Linux-only mainframes for enterprises

=> ↺ IBM Launches Linux-Only Mainframe System

=> ↺ Open Mainframe Project Launched by Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Stock Update: International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) – IBM Unveils Linux-Only Mainframe; Builds On Linux Success

=> ↺ Canonical to Build a Special Ubuntu OS for IBM’s LinuxONE and z Systems

=> ↺ IBM teams up with Ubuntu for beefy new LinuxONE mainframes

=> ↺ Will IBM Stock Be Helped by Hardware Expansion

=> ↺ ‘Linux-Only’ Mainframe Debuts, IBM Doubles Down on Open Source

=> ↺ Linux Foundation, IBM beef up efforts around Linux on mainframes

=> ↺ IBM makes push for Linux customers with Ubuntu mainframes

=> ↺ IBM launches Open Mainframe initiative to breathe new life into big iron

=> ↺ IBM launches Linux-only mainframe

=> ↺ IBM partners with Canonical to bring Ubuntu Linux on mainframes

=> ↺ IBM makes ‘biggest code drop’ as Canonical and Suse tie-up brings better Linux to mainframes

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Brings Together Industry Heavyweights to Advance Linux on the Mainframe

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Brings Together Industry Leaders to Advance Cloud Object Storage Technologies

=> ↺ IBM Unveils Hacker-Resistant Mainframes For The Internet Of Things Era

=> ↺ IBM partners up to make Linux mainframes more mainstream

=> ↺ ​Open Mainframe Project: IBM and friends recommit to mainframe Linux

=> ↺ IBM Unveils Linux-Only Mainframe; Builds On Linux Success

=> ↺ MongoDB Announces Support for IBM z Systems’ Mainframe Solutions

=> ↺ IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system LinuxONE

=> ↺ IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system LinuxONE

=> ↺ CA Technologies Joins Linux Foundation Open Mainframe Project to Advance Innovation on the Mainframe

=> ↺ Huawei, IBM — A World With More Linux, And Why That’s A Good Thing

=> ↺ The Morning Download: IBM Launches Linux System for Mainframes

=> ↺ Open Mainframe Project Pushes Linux’s Limits

=> ↺ ​LinuxONE: IBM’s new Linux mainframes

=> ↺ ​Ubuntu Linux is coming to IBM mainframes

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 4.2-rc7

=> ↺ PLUMgrid Partners With Linux Foundation To Open-Source Its IO Visor Project

• The project will be based on PLUMgrid’s existing IO Visor technology, which the company is donating to the project. The Linux Foundation will offer additional support.

• The trend in compute, storage and networking is toward virtualization, and PLUMgrid argues that I/O and networking subsystems need to keep up, especially when it comes to Internet of Things applications.

=> ↺ Linux 4.1.6

=> ↺ Linux 3.14.51

=> ↺ Linux 3.10.87

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 3.2.71 LTS Brings s390, x86, Btrfs, EXT4, and JBD2 Improvements

• The seventy-one maintenance release to the Linux 3.2 kernel has been announced by its maintainer, Ben Hutchings, this past weekend, a release that brings mostly updated drivers, but also some architecture, networking, and sound improvements.

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Funds NTP’s ‘Father Time’

• The Network Time Protocol will keep Harlan Stenn, its chief maintainer, working for another year. But the 12-month commitment, as well as other funding decisions, raises the question of whether the Linux Foundation is hedging its bets on NTP.

=> ↺ Linux 4.2 release ‘possible’ for next week, if Linus feels good

• The world may be on the threshold of another Linux Kernel release. Or it might not.

• Whether or not Linux 4.2 emerges next week depends on how Linus Torvalds feels next Sunday.

• On Sunday evening, US time, the Linux Lord gave release candidate 7 the thumbs’ up and let it be known he’d quite like it to be the last such release.

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 4.1.6 LTS Out Now with Lots of MIPS Improvements, Many Updated Drivers

• The time has come for you to update the kernel packages of your GNU/Linux distribution if it’s powered by Linux 4.1 LTS, as Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release and immediate availability for download of Linux kernel 4.1.6.

=> ↺ Linus Torvalds Announces Linux Kernel 4.2 RC7, Final Release Might Come Out Next Week

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 4.1.6 LTS Out Now with Lots of MIPS Improvements, Many Updated Drivers

• The time has come for you to update the kernel packages of your GNU/Linux distribution if it’s powered by Linux 4.1 LTS, as Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release and immediate availability for download of Linux kernel 4.1.6.

=> ↺ Kernel 4.1.6 Has Been Released

=> ↺ Kernel 4.2 RC7 Has Been Released

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Qualcomm Publishes Some A3xx Register Documentation

• Are the ARM SoC vendors deciding to become more open? Besides NVIDIA contributing to the open-source Nouveau driver for Tegra K1+ hardware and making improvements in that area, Qualcomm started contributing to the Freedreno / MSM driver project last year, which is the reverse-engineered, community-based driver for Adreno graphics hardware. Qualcomm has now taken a significant step forward and actually released some register documentation!

=> ↺ Freedreno Now Has OpenGL ES 3 Working On Adreno A3xx/4xx

=> ↺ Linux DMA-BUF Support Added To Wayland

• With Wayland 1.9 coming next month and the feature freeze being imminent, the Linux DMA-BUF support for Wayland was pushed out this morning!

• Added to Weston is the currently experimental linux_dmabuf extension for creating DMA-BUF-based wl_buffers in a generic manner. There was the protocol add (likely to be merged into Wayland proper once stabilized), DMA-BUF importing for the gl-renderer to import as an EGLImage, and X11 and DRM compositor support.

=> ↺ AMDGPU, HEVC Support & More Added To Mainline Mesa 11.0

=> ↺ Early Intel Skylake Linux Users May Run Into A Silly Issue

=> ↺ Work Continues On FP64 Support For OpenGL 4.0 On Intel’s Driver

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Trying Out Linux File-Systems With The 4.2 Kernel On A USB Flash Drive

• It’s been a while since last benchmarking any Linux file-systems on a USB 3.0 flash drive to see how the performance compares, given that F2FS and friends are being optimized for flash storage. However, off the Linux 4.2 kernel for kicks I’ve run some benchmarks on a 16GB USB flash drive the EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, and F2FS file-systems.

Applications

=> ↺ VirtualBox 5.0.2 Brings Support for Linux Kernel 4.2

• VirtualBox is a virtualization application that allows users to run and install operating systems inside other OSes. The latest 5.0 branch of the application has been upgraded, and quite a lot of fixes have been implemented.

=> ↺ Haguichi 1.3.0 (Open-Source Hamachi Frontend) Has Been Ported To GTK+3 And Vala

• As you may know, Hamachi is very useful for connecting to or more computers, over the internet, in a LAN network. I use it on Windows to play Age of Empires with friends, for example.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Getting started with firewalld

=> ↺ A one-liner to catch’em all!

=> ↺ How to monitor stock quotes from the command line on Linux

=> ↺ How To Install Kernel 4.1.6 on CentOS 7, Via Repository

=> ↺ CMake Library Tutorial

=> ↺ How to guard your home with Raspberry Pi

=> ↺ Create a DIY Home Security System With A Raspberry Pi And A Few Sensors

Games

=> ↺ The Current Humble Weekly Sale Is A Cracker For Linux

=> ↺ False Alarm About Blizzard Blacklisting Linux Users

• Activision and Blizzard had a “bumpy” relationship with the Linux community and its gamers, and it happened more than once to see Linux players banned from playing emulated versions of the games. A false alarm was raised over the weekend, but it was just that.

=> ↺ Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux

• It’s been a while since I covered the new Unreal Tournament that’s currently in Alpha, so here’s a fresh look at it. The way to launch it has changed since we last covered it too.

=> ↺ Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests

• The developers of Halfway recently celebrated a year of their game being released, and they threw up a nice little graphic showing information about what happened. Included in this are Linux sales statistics, and Linux support requests.

=> ↺ Terraria 1.3.0.8 Released With OS X & Linux Support

=> ↺ Shoot’em Up Gryphon Knight Epic Coming To Linux On August 20th

=> ↺ Absolute Drift Is A Weird Minimalistic 2D Car Drifting Sim For Linux, Two Keys Up For Grabs

=> ↺ Tactical Vehicle Combat Game ‘Brigador’ Enters Early Access This October For Linux

=> ↺ Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth Expansion Rising Tide New Trailer, Still A Day-1 Linux Release

=> ↺ Back In The 70s With The Crookz, A Tactical Theft Game, Demo Available Now

• It is due on Aug, 25, but there’s already a demo available, which was the version I’ve played. So I’m sure we can expect a day 1 release for Linux.

=> ↺ Emu-OS Beta 1 Has Been Released

• As you may remember, Emu-OS is a Linux operating system that emulates gaming consoles, providing the users an intuitive interface, Leafpad as the default text editor, PCmanFM as filemanager and tv monitor settings handled by lxrands.

=> ↺ Valve Drops Suspend Function for SteamOS Due to Poor Support in Linux Graphics Stack

• Valve is making some hard choice for SteamOS, and it looks like they are having some issues with the support for various components. In this case, it’s about the support for suspend, which is not all that good, forcing them to drop it from the operating system.

=> ↺ GOG Now Has Nice and Friendly Linux Installer

• The GOG distribution platform started to release Linux games less than a year ago, but it’s made great progress in the meantime. Now, the developers are working on a new installation for Linux games that should be much easier to use.

=> ↺ Terraria arrives for Mac and Linux platforms

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ Enlightenment. Is There Life After Bodhi?

• The Bodhi website made the announcement about the intended move to Moksha in April of this year so in fact this news isn’t exactly new either.

• Without Bodhi, Enlightenment isn’t really used by many other Linux distributions. Most of the major distributions have Enlightenment available for installation but how many people install a new desktop environment over the one that is installed by default?

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5–No separate wallpaper or widgets for each virtual desktop!

• I’ve been sticking with KDE4, but I decided to install a distro with the new KDE and Plasma 5 on a spare machine. Imagine my shock, when I set-up two virtual desktops under Plasma 5 and I could only have the same wallpaper for both!

• Not only that, but each virtual desktop must display exactly the same widgets.

• The KDE devs have said that enabling this is too difficult, and suggest the “activities” function to mitigate this. That won’t wash, as activities do not provide the same functionality as different wallpapers and separate widgets on each virtual desktop.

=> ↺ Another KDE success story – the Incubator – Part 1

• The incubator couples a sponsor from the KDE community with a plan to move/migrate a project into the systems that KDE provides as a community including mailing lists, websites, code repositories, etc. One of the main responsibilities of the sponsor is to help the project’s members become part of the KDE community itself by guiding in any way required and helping with source code migration, mailing list migration and figuring out the other aspects of how the KDE community works.

=> ↺ My forecast for the next 4 months

• With energy from Akademy still running though my veins but slowly lowering I’m looking at the next FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) events.

=> ↺ Using git the proper way for correct release changelogs

=> ↺ The KDE Plasma 5.4 Release Candidate is ready for testing in Kubuntu Wily

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5.4 Beta on Kubuntu 15.10 Full Review 1080p

=> ↺ Powered By Swiss Cheese – My Plans For Randa

=> ↺ OSM tags in Marble’s map editor

• OpenStreetMap(OSM) tags play an important role in both rendering and searching for placemarks in any OSM based map. This makes editing them inside Marble an absolute must.

=> ↺ Akademy 2015

• The First two days had talks related to various parts of KDE the highlight being the announcement of Plasma Mobile, KDE’s attempt at an open platform for mobile which is capable of running full fledged Qt applications and in the future will run android applications as well.

=> ↺ You can help making KDE technologies even better!

• Modern life has become increasingly dependent on software systems. Many daily used devices rely on Free Software for their basic functionality or additional services. TV sets, ATMs, smartphones, media centers and in-flight entertainment systems are examples of how Free Software has been pushing the boundaries of current technology. This is achieved by using well-proven solutions, developed in a collaborative, open, and trusted way. The Workspaces, Applications, and Frameworks delivered by KDE are representatives of the empowerment Free Software provides to our lifes. Examples are educational applications of the KDE-Edu suite, lots of KDE technology deployments in public centers for digital inclusion and a full open software stack for mobile devices with Plasma Mobile.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME Software 3.18 Will Add Support for Linux Vendor Firmware Service

• The GNOME Project announced recently that a new development version of the GNOME Software universal, all-in-one package manager for GNU/Linux distributions has been made available for download and testing.

=> ↺ GNOME’s Git Client Updated with Gravatar Service Support, Polished UI

=> ↺ Evolution 3.18 Beta Open Source Groupware Client Lands with Multiple Bugfixes

• The Evolution open-source email and calendar client used by default in numerous GNU/Linux distributions and distributed as part of the GNOME desktop environment has been updated recently to version 3.17.90, which is the first Beta towards version 3.18.

=> ↺ GNOME Is Old Enough To Vote

• On Saturday the popular desktop environment GNOME turned eighteen. Always looking for an excuse for chocolate cake and ice cream, this is a birthday I celebrated, even though I’m not a user.

=> ↺ GNOME Turns 18 Years Old Today

=> ↺ Garden to nurture and protect

• In my community talk I challenged the audience to talk about what in GNOME excites you, and where would you like to see GNOME go? By the second question, I’m really talking about where would you like to see the GNOME stack? I talked about IoT, TVs, and others. The world has become a more complex place in how we consume information and it isn’t just the desktop. The desktop is now just one of many ways we do things and is no longer the most convenient and ubiquitous.

=> ↺ File Browsers

• Early on in the Builder development road-map, I discussed how I didn’t want to use a GtkTreeView for a sidebar (or much of a sidebar at all). But everything changes when you need to ship software.

=> ↺ GUADEC 2015, surviving a fire and plane accident, etc.

• So I went to GUADEC, as a community member and one of the directors of the GNOME Foundation.

Distributions

=> ↺ 8 accessible Linux distributions to try

• One of the most common questions I’m asked by a disabled prospective Linux user is, “There are so many different Linux distributions. Which one is for me? Which one is most accessible?”

=> ↺ Best Lightweight Linux Distros

• You might wonder why you should care about lightweight Linux distributions in the era of multicore processors and inexpensive RAM. Basically, there are three points that make lightweight distros important: 1) They can revive old hardware, bringing new life into it; 2) They can power modern, but low-power systems such as Raspberry Pi; and 3) They can run on the most powerful modern hardware, reserving resources for users instead of consuming them themselves.

=> ↺ Which Open Source Linux Distributions Would Presidential Hopefuls Run?

• If people running for president used Linux or another open source operating system, which distribution would it be? That’s a key question that the rest of the press—distracted by issues of questionable relevance such as “policy platforms” and whether it’s appropriate to add an exclamation point to one’s Christian name—has been ignoring. But the ignorance ends here: Read on for this sometime-journalist’s take on presidential elections and Linux distributions.

=> ↺ The 9 Best Linux Distros

• The best Linux distro for you may not be the best Linux distro for another user. Many Linux users are distro-hoppers, regularly moving from distribution to distribution. Some may be looking for the perfect distro, while others are simply curious about the latest Linux developments.

Reviews

=> ↺ Exploring a different direction with VectorLinux 7.1

• Often times, when we look out over the sea of Linux distributions, we see a lot of Debian based projects, dozens of Ubuntu spins and a healthy collection of Fedora derivatives. It seems to me that distributions based on Slackware are sighted less and less these days. Maybe Slackware’s traditional style just does not appeal to new distribution creators or maybe the distribution’s conservative nature has become a liability in today’s environment of fast paced development. Whatever the reason, VectorLinux 7.1 (a Slackware derivative) was launched back in June and I, hungry for a taste of Slackware, happily added it to my list of projects to review.

New Releases

=> ↺ KaOS 2015.8 Features a Superb Implementation of the Latest KDE Plasma

• KaOS is a Linux distribution built from scratch that makes use of a customized KDE desktop environment, and that follows a rolling release model. An upgrade images of the distribution has been released and is now available for download.

=> ↺ Robolinux 8.1 LTS MATE Edition Supports Windows 10 in Stealth VM, Based on Debian 8

• The developers of the Robolinux project have announced the release and immediate availability of the MATE edition of Robolinux, a spin that promises to use less RAM than the Cinnamon edition introduced a while ago.

=> ↺ KaOS 2015.8 Is A Linux System That Uses KDE Plasma 5 As Default

• As you may know, KaOS is an open-source Linux system built from scratch (not based on an existing Linux system) that uses KDE Plasma desktop by default. Also, it is a rolling release system, like Arch Linux, Manjaro or Kali Linux 2.0.

=> ↺ KaOS 2015.08 Linux distribution available now

• Whether or not you are a KDE desktop environment user, you should have an interest in the project. In other words, whether you prefer GNOME, Xfce or something else, KDE’s success is good for the overall Linux community.

=> ↺ Kali Linux 2.0 Has Been Released, Becoming A Rolling Release System

=> ↺ Kali Linux 2.0 Moves to Rolling Releases, Gains More Security Tools

• Kali Linux has emerged in recent years to be among the most popular security-focused Linux distributions. Originally known as Backtrack Linux, Kali Linux was renamed and rebuilt in March 2013 with the new name. While Kali Linux has always had a regular update cycle, with the new 2.0 release that debuted on Aug. 11, that cycle will now accelerate. Kali Linux 2.0 now features what is known as a “rolling release” distribution, meaning it will provide a continuous stream of regular updates rather than requiring users to wait a period of time for a milestone update. The continuous Linux updates are pulled from the upstream Debian testing distribution. Not only is the base Linux system continuously updated, Kali Linux 2.0 now has a new upstream version checking system that will provide users with notifications about new tool updates. While Linux is the operating system, the true power of Kali Linux has always been its expansive list of security tools. Security tools in Kali Linux 2.0 fall under several categories, including information gathering, vulnerability analysis, Web application analysis, database assessment, password attacks, wireless attacks, reverse engineering, exploitation tools, sniffing and spoofing, forensics and reporting tools. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the features of the Kali Linux 2.0 release.

Gentoo Family

=> ↺ Sabayon Linux development in 2015

• In case you didn’t notice, last months some major changes have been made to the Sabayon Linux project. Most are pure technical changes in the project management that the end users will never notice. Here is a short log.

Arch Family

=> ↺ Chakra GNU/Linux Distro Gets LibreOffice 5.0 and a Patched Intel Driver for KDE Plasma 5

• The maintainers of the Chakra GNU/Linux project, an open-source, rolling-release distribution based on the ever popular Arch Linux operating system and built around the KDE desktop environment, announced the availability of a new update.

=> ↺ Manjaro KDE-Next 2015.08 released

• With this release we have focused our efforts, bringing you a preview of our upcoming KDE edition featuring Plasma 5.4.

• Plasma brings many nice touches for our users such as much improved high DPI support, KRunner auto-completion and many new beautiful icons. It also lays the ground for the future with a tech preview of Wayland session available. We’re shipping a few new components such as an Audio Volume Plasma Widget, monitor calibration tool and the User Manager tool comes out beta.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Commit To Purchase Red Hat At $62.50, Earn 5.8% Using Options

=> ↺ Company Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Rally 0.94%

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. Analyst Rating Update

Fedora

=> ↺ Faces of Flock

=> ↺ Faces of Flock II

=> ↺ Fedora NVIDIA Repository Update For CUDA 7, NVIDIA 355 Linux Driver

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian 9.0 “Stretch” Now Based on Linux Kernel 4.1

• The Debian team has decided to upgrade the Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 2 and the project is now using Linux kernel 4.1, an upgrade from the previous 4.0 branch.

=> ↺ Debian GNU/Linux Birthday : A 22 Years of Journey and Still Counting…

• On 16th August 2015, the Debian project has celebrated its 22nd anniversary, making it one of the oldest popular distribution in open source world. Debian project was conceived and founded in the year 1993 by Ian Murdock. By that time Slackware had already made a remarkable presence as one of the earliest Linux Distribution.

=> ↺ Debian & SFC Tout Copyright Aggregation Project as Debian turns 22

• The Debian Project and the Software Freedom Conservancy today announced the creation of the Debian Copyright Aggregation Project. The project protects contributors’ code by enforcing the license as necessary. This announcement comes as contributors descend upon DebConf15 and Debianites worldwide celebrate Debian’s twenty-second birthday. In other Linux news, Sabayon posted on their development this year and Gary Newell wondered if there is life for Enlightenment now they’ve been dumped by Bodhi.

=> ↺ Debian turns 22!

=> ↺ Summary of My DebConf 15 Keynote

=> ↺ Conservancy and Debian announce Copyright Aggregation Project

=> ↺ Debian and Software Freedom Conservancy announce Copyright Aggregation Project

• This past weekend, in his keynote at DebConf (the Debian Project’s annual conference in Heidelberg, Germany), Software Freedom Conservancy’s Distinguished Technologist and President, Bradley M. Kuhn, announced Conservancy’s Debian Copyright Aggregation Project. This new project, formed at the request of Debian developers, gives Debian contributors various new options to ensure the defense of software freedom. Specifically, Debian contributors may chose to either assign their copyrights to Conservancy for permanent stewardship, or sign Conservancy’s license enforcement agreement, which delegates to Conservancy authority to enforce Free Software licenses (such as the GNU General Public License). Several Debian contributors have already signed both forms of agreement.

=> ↺ Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 2 Brings Linux 4.1

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu Touch OTA-6 Enters Feature Freeze

• The development cycle for the upcoming OTA update for Ubuntu Touch is coming to a close and developers are preparing to enter the final freeze stage.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Touch’s Web Browser Gets Find in Page and New Convergence Features

• Canonical’s Bill Filler send it his regular report informing us all about the improvements and new features that have been implemented in the week that just passed for some of Ubuntu Touch’s core apps.

=> ↺ Canonical Releases New Kernel Updates for Ubuntu 15.04, 14.04 LTS, and 12.04 LTS

• On August 18, Canonical announced the immediate availability of new kernel updates for its supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet), Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin).

=> ↺ Canonical Has Fixed Two Swift Vulnerabilities On All The Supported Ubuntu Systems And Derivatives

=> ↺ Intel P-State / CPUFreq CPU Scaling For Linux Gaming On Ubuntu 15.04

=> ↺ Workaround For Poor Ubuntu Phone Performance / Stuttering? “Touch The Screen A Lot”

• Daniel van Vugt of Canonical explained in a new Ubuntu Phone thread, “In testing performance optimisations on various phones, I keep running into an annoying hurdle. Although you can optimise your Mir server/clients in such a way that they’re smoother more often, there’s an additional variable outside of Mir and Unity that gets in the way. That seems to be frequency scaling done by the kernel. Sometimes on desktops too, but I’m mostly concerned about phones here. I find it suspicious that on some devices you can turn stuttering into smoothness just but touching the screen a lot. But the smoothness soon goes away when you’re not touching the screen. In the extreme case, if you’re logged into the phone remotely you will also notice the system can become unusably slow when the screen has turned off. That’s useful for a real phone’s battery life, but it serves to illustrate that the kernel is doing a lot behind the scenes. I’m more concerned about how can we keep phone graphics performing as well as they do during touches, even when we’re not touching them?”

=> ↺ Core i5 6600K “Skylake” Isn’t Running Into Any Troubles On Ubuntu 15.04

=> ↺ Canonical Will Not Rebase Ubuntu Touch To Ubuntu 15.10 Soon

• As you may know, Ubuntu Touch, Canonical’s mobile operating system, is currently based on Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet, only the development branches using Ubuntu Wily for now.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Ubuntu vs Mint: Which one is better?

• Not everyone that moves away from Windows necessarily buys a mac. And if you still like your old computer but don’t want it running a Microsoft operating system anymore, then installing Linux may well be the way ahead.

• There are more versions of Linux out there than you could shake a stick at. Two of the most popular of these are Mint and Ubuntu, and both are good choices for the first time user. However, what are the differences between the two distributions?

=> ↺ Linux Mangaka, Ubuntu for Manga and Anime Fans, Drops elementary OS Style for KDE

• Animesoft International had the great pleasure of informing Softpedia about the release and immediate availability of the final version of their Linux Mangaka Koe distribution, an Ubuntu variant for anime and manga fans.

=> ↺ Linux Mangaka Koe Screenshot Tour

=> ↺ Geary 0.10 Is Now Available By Default On Elementary OS

• As you may know, Geary is an open-source email client, installed by default on Elementary OS, but available via the default repositories on other systems as well.

• Recently, one of the Elementary OS developers has announced that Geary 0.10.0 has been defaulted on Elementary OS 0.3 Freya.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Sub-$500 industrial PC runs Linux on 3rd Gen Celeron

• Acnodes unveiled an under $500 “FES8685″ computer with a dual-core Ivy Bridge CPU, plus SATA, serial, USB, GbE, HDMI, VGA, mini-PCIe, and optional WiFi.

=> ↺ An Arduino-Powered Smartwatch Has Been Created

• The developer used an Arduino Pro Mini devboard, a cellphone battery, an old digital watch to hold the PCB board and a bunch of other small components.

=> ↺ RetroPie 3.0 Helps You Create A Raspberry Pi Powered Gaming Console

Phones

Android

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE With Android 5.1.1 Update – Fixes and Improvements

• In case you are using the Verizon carrier and own a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE device, then you should be happy, because the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop OTA update is already available for download for your device.

=> ↺ Samsung To Revamp Android Update Process To Quickly Tackle Threats

=> ↺ Google drops some hints about the name of Android M

• What’s your money on for the name of Google’s next mobile operating system? It seems like the company enjoys the regular circus of speculation every time there’s a new Android in town, and this year’s release is no different: There’s now an official video suggesting a dozen or so possibilities that fit with the Android naming strategy.

=> ↺ Fastest Ways to Install Android 5.1.1 Lollipop Update To Any Android Phone

=> ↺ Google teases name for new Android M operating system

=> ↺ Google Nexus 4 Android 5.1.1 Lollipop Update: How to Install CyanideL Custom ROM

=> ↺ Nexus 5, Nexus 6, and Nexus 9 With Android 5.2 M Update – Top Improvements and Fixes

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Gets Android 5.1.1 Lollipop Custom Rom via SOKP [How to Install]

=> ↺ Samsung Promises Faster Android Security Updates

=> ↺ Android’s ‘Fallout Shelter’ Suffering From A Game-Crashing, Save-Corrupting Bug

=> ↺ Samsung tips Android Phablets, round watch, Tizen for IoT

• This week, Samsung launched a 5.7-inch Galaxy Note5 and almost identical, stylus-free Galaxy S6 Edge+ phone, hoping to continue its success in the same no-fly zone. The Korean CE giant also formally announced its Samsung Pay mobile payment service and tipped a round-faced, Tizen-based Gear S2 smartwatch. Three weeks ago, amid rumors of a quad-core Samsung Z3 phone running Tizen 3.0, the company tipped a version of Tizen for the Internet of Things (see below).

=> ↺ Android M’s name is Marshmallow, and it’s version 6.0

• Google has revealed what the M in Android M stands for: Marshmallow. The Android 6.0 update, set for release this fall, was first previewed at the company’s I/O conference in late May. But as it’s done before, Google held off on announcing the full name to build anticipation around the software. It’s safe to say the company went with the obvious choice. Sorry, M&M’s fans. And if you’ve ever wondered how those Android statues on Google’s campus are made, this video offers a behind-the-scenes peek.

=> ↺ Five free Android encryption tools for the paranoid user

• Do your hats tend to fall into the tinfoil range? Are you afraid there is always somebody watching you? If so, rest assured that the Android ecosystem offers plenty of apps to soothe your paranoia. But which apps are the must-haves? Here are five apps you should immediately install and put to work. They’ll bring you peace in the knowledge that your mobile data is far more secure than those around you.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Ransomware goes OPEN SOURCE in the name of education

• Turkish security bod Utku Sen has published what appears to be the first open source ransomware that anyone can download and spread.

• The “Hidden Tear” ransomware, available to GitHub, is a functional version of the malware the world has come to hate; it uses AES encryption to lock down files and can display a scare warning or ransom message to get users to pay up.

=> ↺ Chinese, Russian, tech giants join global open source efforts

• Alibaba and Yandex joining these open source efforts confounds their home nations’ occasionally-expressed intentions to build technology ecosystems less dependent on US companies. Both China and Russia have cited post-Snowden security concerns as the reason they’re keen to rely on indigenous technologies. With their tech giants now participating in global efforts alongside US entities, technological isolation looks rather harder to achieve.

=> ↺ Keen IO open-sources its Data Explorer tool for making quick queries

• Keen IO, a startup with a cloud-based data analytics tool, is announcing today that it’s releasing one of its tools for customers, the Data Explorer, under an open-source license.

Events

=> ↺ LinuxCon: Zipcar’s Robin Chase believes open-source collaboration can solve the world’s biggest problems

• Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase is worried about climate change. If countries don’t strictly follow climate-friendly initiatives, we could see the average temperature rise 7 degrees Celsius by 2060. And today’s solutions may not be enough.

=> ↺ Linuxcon: Open Source Peer Collaboration Could Save the Planet

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Mozilla tests a true stealth mode for Firefox

• Mozilla wants to make private browsing truly private.

• The company is testing enhancements to private browsing in Firefox designed to block website elements that could be used by third parties to track browsing behavior across sites. Most major browsers, Firefox included, have a “Do Not Track” option, though many companies do not honor it.

=> ↺ Mozilla defaults Tracking Protection for Firefox developer builds, but only for private browsing

• Pre-beta versions of Firefox will block domains known to track users by default when a private browser window is opened.

=> ↺ Rust in 2016

• This week marks three months since Rust 1.0 was released. As we’re starting to hit our post-1.0 stride, we’d like to talk about what 1.0 meant in hindsight, and where we see Rust going in the next year.

=> ↺ Rust Language Focusing On Infrastructure Improvements, Features & More

=> ↺ Firefox Security Exploit Targets Linux Users and Web Developers

• Through the years, Firefox has enjoyed a reputation as one of the most secure Web browsers on any platform, and it’s the default browser for many Linux distros. However, a security exploit appeared this week that has shown users they can’t afford to be complacent about security. Mozilla has rushed to patch the flaw, and a new release has closed the hole (39.0.3). But, plenty of users still haven’t updated their browsers.

=> ↺ Mozilla Experiments with True Private Browsing

• Mozilla has a long history of experimenting with new features in pre-beta and developer versions of the Firefox browser, and one of the current experiments could shake up notions about private browsing. The company is experimenting with an approach to private browsing where Firefox could block any and all website elements used by third parties to track browsing behavior. Effectively, the new approach would defy the many organizations that don’t honor “Do Not Track” features in browsers.

SaaS/Big Data

=> ↺ LinkedIn Open Sources Highly Useful Hadoop Tools

• LinkedIn has already adopted Gradle as itsprimary build system. “With Gradle, developers can easily extend the build system by defining their own plugins,” the company claims. “We developed the Hadoop Plugin to help our Hadoop application developers more effectively build, test and deploy Hadoop applications. The Plugin includes the Hadoop DSL, a domain-specific language for specifying jobs and workflows for Hadoop workflow managers like Azkaban and Apache Oozie.”

Databases

=> ↺ Open Source First Starting to Converge with Cloud First

• Of course, PostgeSQL is only one instance where open source and the cloud are starting to converge. The same argument could also be applied to everything from Node.js to Docker containers. The point is that as the critical mass of open source software in the cloud continues to build, it’s only a matter of time before that same software starts showing up on premise in much greater numbers than it already has.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ First LibreOffice 5.0 Maintenance Release on Its Way to Fix Middle-Click Paste on X11

• After releasing the huge LibreOffice 5.0 update, The Document Foundation announced that the hard team of developers behind the most powerful open-source office suite in the world is hard at work on the first maintenance release of LibreOffice 5.0.0.

=> ↺ An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team

• So I realize that the Apache Foundation took a lot of pride in and has invested a lot of effort trying to create an Apache Licensed Office suite based on the old OpenOffice codebase, but I hope that now that it is clear that this effort has failed that you would be willing to re-direct people who go to the openoffice.org website to the LibreOffice website instead. Letting users believe that OpenOffice is still alive and evolving is only damaging the general reputation of open source Office software among non-technical users and thus I truly believe that it would be in everyones interest to help the remaining OpenOffice users over to LibreOffice.

CMS

=> ↺ SalesAgility updates open source SuiteCRM and announces 80 language packs

• SalesAgility, the leading provider of cloud-based open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, today announced several significant enhancements to its world-leading free and open source SuiteCRM.

BSD

=> ↺ FreeBSD 10.2 Lands with GNOME 3.14.2 and KDE 4.14.3

• FreeBSD, an operating system for x86, ARM, IA-64, PowerPC, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures, has been upgraded to version 10.2, which brings this development cycle to an end.

=> ↺ The OpenBSD Foundation Announces New Silver Donor: Yandex

• The OpenBSD Foundation’s 2015 fundraising campaign is picking up steam. The OpenBSD Foundation’s 2015 fundraising campaign is picking up steam.

=> ↺ FreeBSD 10.2 Released, Linux Compatibility Based Off CentOS 6

=> ↺ c2k15: beck@ on LibreSSL security, midlayer work

• For your reading pleasure, here is the c2k15 report from Bob Beck

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Glibc 2.22 Now Officially Released

Project Releases

=> ↺ Kodi 15 “Isengard” Gets Its First Update with New FFmpeg and Dozens of Bugfixes

• The Kodi development team announced a few minutes ago, August 16, that the first maintenance release of the Kodi 15.0 “Isengard” open-source media center software is now available for download for all supported platforms.

=> ↺ Kodi 15.1 “Isengard” Stable Has Been Released, Bringing Mostly Fixes

• As you may know, Kodi (previously named XBMC) is a famous open source media hub and home theater PC, being translated in more than 30 languages. Also, its features can be highly extended via third party plugins and extensions and has support for PVR (personal video recorder).

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ London.gov.uk beta site demonstrates growing “Open Source mentality” among public sector organisations

• The beta version of London.gov.uk, the website serving the Mayor of London and the Greater London Assembly (GLA), signals a “growing Open Source mentality” within government organisations, according to the site’s developers.

=> ↺ 5 reasons why local government needs open source

• Technology is only one part of the delivery jigsaw puzzle, but it has a big role to play in helping to create modern local government. Open source in particular has a lot to offer. As a technology it’s always skirted around the periphery, but I’ve got a feeling that is about to change.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ The Focal Camera: An Open Source Modular Camera

• Over the past year, Dutch artist Mathijs van Oosterhoudt has been developing a new camera system. No, it’s not a high-tech digital system that’s intended to go up against the major camera companies. Instead, it’s an open-modular camera system that’s intended to teach people how to build complex cameras. Its name is The Focal Camera.

Programming

=> ↺ Perl Weekly

• Yesterday was CPAN day: the 20th(!) anniversary of the day CPAN appeared online. A few articles of this week’s edition celebrate the event, and promote the kind of interaction that keeps it alive.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Former Executive Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Bribe Panamanian Officials

• A former regional director of SAP International Inc. pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by participating in a scheme to bribe Panamanian officials to secure the award of government technology contracts for SAP.

• Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag of the Northern District of California, Special Agent in Charge George L. Piro of the FBI’s Miami Division and Acting Special Agent in Charge Thomas McMahon of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) made the announcement.

=> ↺ Author shows off the real Jamaica through Bob Marley shooting

• Marlon James is the first Jamaican-born novelist nominated for the Man Booker prize. A Brief History of Seven Killings uses the true story of an attempt on the life of Bob Marley to explore the turbulent politics of Jamaica in the 1970s.

Science

=> ↺ US dominates list of best universities for academic excellence

• The US has continued to dominate higher education rankings after China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University released its annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Billionaire Bill Gates runs afoul of Georgia’s Vidalia onion police

=> ↺ Bill Gates blunders in onion patch

• The business acumen of software magnate Bill Gates, which made him the world’s richest person, may not apply to onions.

=> ↺ Even Bill Gates can’t sell a bogus Vidalia in Georgia

Security

=> ↺ Parrot drones easily taken down or hijacked, researchers demonstrate

• Open telnet port, open Wi-Fi, root access, open season.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ Jeb’s New Iraq Stance: My Brother’s ‘Mission Was Accomplished’

• In the early months of his candidacy, Jeb Bush fumbled whenever he faced extremely predictable questions about his brother’s foreign policy. When asked about Iraq again at last week’s debate, he said that, knowing what we know now, “it was a mistake,” then inelegantly pivoted from praising veterans to blaming Obama for the current situation in the Middle East. This week Bush debuted a new stance: Whatever mistakes President George W. Bush made along the way, the Iraq War ultimately turned out for the best (at least until President Obama and Hillary Clinton messed it all up).

=> ↺ AP EXCLUSIVE: Top secret Clinton emails include drone talk

=> ↺ New Generation of Cuban-Americans Want Embargo Lifted – Former CIA Officer

• Former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriacou claims that a new generation of Cuban Americans is willing to lift the trade embargo on Cuba and end the half-century-long boycott of the island nation.

=> ↺ ‘We Wanted to Cut Off Che Guevara’s Head’ – Ex-CIA Agent

• He said that he told the General he could not do it because, being the country’s military chief of staff, Candia just wouldn’t be able to present a severed human head as material proof.

=> ↺ Point Person: Our Q&A with Michael Hayden

• Twenty-nine scientists with nuclear specialties signed a letter this month supporting the accord. Are they to be completely dismissed?

=> ↺ The Iran Gambit II

• Gambit I was the start of false accusations by the then Bush Administration in 2007 that Iran was preparing a nuclear weapon, when in fact Iran had no such ambitions at all, but a plan to open an Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB) in Teheran, an international hydrocarbon exchange, where all countries, hydrocarbon producers or not, could trade this (still) principal energy source in euros, as an alternative to the US dollar. This would have devastated the dollar as a hegemonic fiat currency – still used on false trust as the main world reserve currency.

=> ↺ Neocons to Americans: Trust Us Again

• Marching in lockstep with Israeli hardliners, American neocons are aiming their heavy media artillery at the Iran nuclear deal as a necessary first step toward another “regime change” war in the Mideast – and they are furious when anyone mentions the Iraq War disaster and the deceptions that surrounded it, writes Robert Parry.

• America’s neocons insist that their only mistake was falling for some false intelligence about Iraq’s WMD and that they shouldn’t be stripped of their powerful positions of influence for just one little boo-boo. That’s the point of view taken by Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt as he whines about the unfairness of applying “a single-interest litmus test,” i.e., the Iraq War debacle, to judge him and his fellow war boosters.

• After noting that many other important people were on the same pro-war bandwagon with him, Hiatt criticizes President Barack Obama for citing the Iraq War as an argument not to listen to many of the same neocons who now are trying to sabotage the Iran nuclear agreement. Hiatt thinks it’s the height of unfairness for Obama or anyone else to suggest that people who want to kill the Iran deal — and thus keep alive the option to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran — “are lusting for another war.”

=> ↺ Iran carpet industry set for revival after deal

=> ↺ Iran Gives UN Information About Past Nuclear Activities

• But Iran and the United Nations agency agreed last month to wrap up the investigation by December, when the IAEA plans to issue a final assessment on the allegations.

• On the sidelines of the deal between Iran and the world powers in the Austrian capital of Vienna on July 14, Tehran and the UN nuclear watchdog signed an agreement to resolve outstanding issue about PMD of its past nuclear activities.

=> ↺ Guest commentary: Should get own house in order before bullying others

• Our unelected military ruler, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, tried to stem the backlash, asking Thais to stop blaming the U.S. government for awarding Thailand a low ranking in its annual report.

• But as an American columnist living in Thailand, I have the same question many Thais have, namely: Shouldn’t the U.S. get its own moral house in order before policing the rest of the world?

=> ↺ Havana Sells US Diplomatic Ties as Victory

=> ↺ US Raises Flag in Cuba After 54 Years (Video)

• The United States and Cuba are taking the next step in restoring diplomatic relations with each other as Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Havana Friday to attend a ceremony marking the reopening of the U.S. Embassy there. This comes after former Cuban President Fidel Castro wrote in a newspaper column that the U.S. owes the island country “millions of dollars” as reparations for its decades-long embargo.

=> ↺ The US-Cuba thaw

• Secretary of State John Kerry had the honor of reopening the US embassy in Cuba 54 years after it was closed. But it was the pair of presidents, Barack Obama and Raul Castro, who made it happen, and each in his own way.

=> ↺ Cold War thaw: Re-establishing diplomatic ties with Cuba was the right move

• In the 54 years since the United States ended diplomatic ties with Cuba, we’ve learned a lot about our Caribbean adversaries.

=> ↺ The Crisis In Ukraine: War Or Rumors Of War?

• The early reports of the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the communist threat now appear at best, to have been greatly exaggerated, or at worst, an intentional deception. Although the intelligence service of the Soviet Era, the KGB, was renamed the Federal Security Service (FSB), it facilitated the rise of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, proving the security service is still very much in power within the “new” Russia.

=> ↺ Neocons Falsify Iraq War ‘Lessons’

• Having escaped accountability for the Iraq War disaster, U.S. neocons are urging the use of more military force in the Mideast, in line with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s demand to block the Iran nuclear deal. From their important perches of power, these war hawks also twist the history of their catastrophic misjudgments, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

=> ↺ Analysts concerned over possible civilian casualties from US airstrikes from Turkey

• Speaking to Sunday’s Zaman, Professor Celalettin Yavuz, an expert on foreign policy and security, mentioned the likelihood that US armed drones known as Predators, which have been deployed to İncirlik Air Base, will mistakenly kill civilians in Syria and Iraq as the US-led collation steps up operations against ISIL.

=> ↺ Washington Threatens Ecuadorian Democracy

• Rule by powerful monied interests is longstanding US policy.

=> ↺ Montagnards: Green Beret’s secret weapon during Vietnam War

• Smokey Stover Theater, onboard the retired USS Yorktown in Charleston Harbor, filled up quickly last night with aging veterans, their spouses, and civilians curious to know more about secret weapons, specifically those employed by U.S. Special Forces Soldiers. That “secret weapon” for the Vietnam-era Green Berets was the indigenous mountain people of Southeast Asia; the Montagnards.

=> ↺ AP Interview: Jordan says Syria militants try to sneak in

• Militants have tried to sneak into Jordan from Syria by blending in with Syrian refugees, and attempts to smuggle weapons and drugs into Jordan have increased, the commander of Jordan’s Border Guard said in an interview Sunday.

Transparency Reporting

=> ↺ F.B.I. Tracking Path of Classified Email From State Dept. to Hillary Clinton

• F.B.I. agents investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server are seeking to determine who at the State Department passed highly classified information from secure networks to Mrs. Clinton’s personal account, according to law enforcement and diplomatic officials and others briefed on the investigation.

=> ↺ Is this the ‘smoking gun’ that brings Hillary down?

=> ↺ Sources: ‘Top secrets’ unalarming

• Neither of the two emails sent to Hillary Rodham Clinton now labeled by intelligence agencies as “top secret” contained information that would jump out to experts as particularly sensitive, according to several government officials.

=> ↺ Hillary Clinton private emails are deemed top secret, highlighting her mishandling of information

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Drones should be used to kill baby seagulls, council suggests

• Drones should be used to spray seagull nests with chemicals so eggs can’t hatch, a council has suggested.

=> ↺ Town councillor suggests using drones to kill baby seagulls in their nests

• The pesky birds have hit the headlines in The Herald and across the country this summer due to their tendency to prey on unsuspecting tourists’ lunch, among other reasons.

• And Graham Roberts of Copeland Borough Council in the Lake District has suggested using flying machines to spray nests with chemicals to stop eggs hatching.

=> ↺ Using chemical drones to combat gulls nuisance ‘illegal’

Finance

=> ↺ Why A Democrat Is Now Blocking An Obama Nominee

• Sen. Sherrod Brown has a new tactic in the fight to access secretive trade deal documents.

=> ↺ Count finds 40 percent increase in Marin homeless population

• A one-day count of Marin County’s homeless population in January found 1,309 homeless people ­— a 40 percent increase from the 933 homeless reported in 2013.

=> ↺ Show Me a Hero: Fear and Loathing in Yonkers

• Show Me a Hero concentrates on the most volatile five years of the clash between Yonkers and U.S. District Court Judge Leonard B. Sand. In 1987, the judge, weary of the city’s stalling in the face of his order to build 200 units of public housing on its predominantly white and middle-class west side, ordered the Yonkers City Council to get the project under way or face escalating fines that would quickly reach $1 million a day and bankrupt the city within three weeks. Making it clear that the case had gone beyond politics or policy wonkery, the judge also fined any council member who voted against the housing.

=> ↺ Why is Bitcoin forking?

• So this is it. Here we are. The community is divided and Bitcoin is forking: both the software and, perhaps, the block chain too. The two sides of the split are Bitcoin Core and a slight variant of the same program, called Bitcoin XT. As of August 15th, there is now a full release available.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ Jeremy Corbyn and the SNP

• I was impressed by Jeremy’s talk and by the energy in the room. Jeremy was at his strongest when referring to the need for basic human decency and respect in our treatment of those in need for aid from the state, including the homeless and refugees. His basic human empathy and compassion really shone through. He was contemptuous of austerity, marketisation and the neoliberal consensus. His denunciation of Iraq and of Trident galvanised the room. He can talk with a genuine moral authority. He is certainly not a great orator, but sincere and fluent.

=> ↺ Kezia Dugdale Got Just 5,217 Votes

• The Labour Party is being remarkably coy about releasing the actual result of its Scottish accounting unit leadership election, giving only a percentage. The entirely complacent unionist media is complicit in what amounts to a deception.

=> ↺ Fox Nation Promotes Absurd Conspiracy Theory That EPA “Foul[ed] Up” Animas River “On Purpose”

• On August 12, FoxNation.com republished portions of a post by The Gateway Pundit headlined, “Letter to Editor PREDICTED COLORADO EPA SPILL One Week Before Catastrophe So EPA Could Secure Control of Area.” Fox Nation highlighted the portion of the Gateway Pundit post in which author Jim Hoft wrote: “The letter detailed verbatim, how EPA officials would foul up the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money. If the Gold King mine was declared a superfund site it would essentially kill future development for the mining industry in the area. The Obama EPA is vehemently opposed to mining and development.”

=> ↺ Investigative Journalist Slams The Big Media Tycoons’ Public Mind Control

• This has been obvious since Operation Mockingbird, a CIA-based initiative to manage the media came into operation. Most people feel that almost everything we see in the media is just “brainwashing”. A lot of blatant lies are splashing over the TV screen, especially on issues related to “health, food, war (“terrorism”), poverty and more”.

=> ↺ ‘Hitler was an Anglo-American stooge’: the tall tales in a Moscow bookshop

• Adolf Hitler was installed in power in Germany as part of an Anglo-American plot, the CIA is planning a full-scale land invasion of Russia from Ukrainian territory within the next five years, and the world has become so dominated by women that they have evolved to be capable of reproducing without the need for male sperm.

=> ↺ ABC’s Martha Raddatz Debunks Ben Carson’s Claim That Planned Parenthood Targets Black Communities For Abortion

• ABC’s Martha Raddatz debunked GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson’s claim that Planned Parenthood engages in racist population control by targeting black communities.

Censorship

=> ↺ Scott DeSmit: Willingly surrendering our freedom

• Put away the tinfoil hats.

• The government spies on us and we can do nothing about it.

• They know. Everything.

• This may be a revelation to most people because it was not reported by most major media outlets, but the government now has access to almost everything we do.

• They know what we ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• Going to a movie? They know which one and at what time.

• The government has photographs of almost every person in America and photographs of your children, too.

• Your cat? Yes, they have photographs of your pets.

Privacy

=> ↺ Facebook rescinds internship from student who exposed app privacy flaws

• A Harvard University student says he lost his internship at Facebook after he launched a browser application from his dorm room that exploited privacy flaws on the company’s mobile messenger.

=> ↺ Harvard student lost Facebook internship after highlighting privacy fl

• Rising senior Aran Khanna lost an internship with Facebook — a site that was created out of a Harvard dorm room — for, ironically, an app that he created out of his Harvard dorm room.

• Shortly after the 21-year-old accepted an internship offer from Facebook this spring, Khanna created a Chrome extension (called Marauders Map) that used available location data from Facebook Messenger to clearly map out where users were when they sent a message.

=> ↺ Don’t add mobile number on your Facebook profile

• If you put your phone number on your Facebook profile, anybody can then find your details and location by just typing the number in Facebook search bar despite your privacy settings — and your details could be misused by cyber criminals.

=> ↺ Wanna harvest a stranger’s Facebook data? Get a mobile number and off you go

• Hackers and other miscreants are able to access names, telephone numbers, images and location data in bulk from Facebook, using only a cellphone number.

• The loophole was revealed by software engineer Reza Moaiandin.

• Moaiandin, technical director at UK-based tech firm Salt.agency, exploited a little-known privacy setting in a feature called “Who can find me?” that is set to “Everyone/public” by default even in cases where a user has decided not to expose their mobile number via their public profile.

=> ↺ Facebook labelled ‘shameful’ and ‘arrogant’ for isolating users with disabilities

=> ↺ Facebook accused of isolating users with disabilities

=> ↺ Hairdresser’s Facebook hell after secret film shot during argument with stranger went viral

• More than 58,000 people have now viewed the 49-second clip which was uploaded onto the social-networking site on Wednesday afternoon and has since been shared more than 1,000 times.

=> ↺ AT&T’s ‘extraordinary, decades-long’ relationship with NSA – report

• The telecoms giant AT&T has had an “extraordinary, decades-long” relationship with the National Security Agency, it was reported on Saturday.

=> ↺ AT&T ‘helped NSA to spy on internet traffic’: Telecommunications powerhouse reportedly helped intelligence agency tap phone lines of clients

=> ↺ Leaked NSA documents show AT&T helped spy agency: report

=> ↺ Leaked NSA documents show AT&T had a ‘highly collaborative’ relationship with spy agency

=> ↺ AT&T a closer partner of NSA than previously known, Snowden docs show

=> ↺ New Documents and Reports Confirm AT&T and NSA’s Longstanding Surveillance Partnership

• Reports today in the New York Times and ProPublica confirm what EFF’s Jewel v. NSA lawsuit has claimed since 2008—that the NSA and AT&T have collaborated to build a domestic surveillance infrastructure, resulting in unconstitutional seizure and search of of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of Americans’ Internet communications.

• “These documents not only further confirm our claims in Jewel, but convincingly demolish the government’s core response—that EFF cannot prove that AT&T’s facilities were used in the mass surveillance,” said EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn. ”It’s long past time that the NSA and AT&T came clean with the American people. It’s also time that the public U.S. courts decide whether these modern general searches are consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.”

=> ↺ AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale

=> ↺ AT&T had close relationship with NSA, report says

=> ↺ AT&T Helped N.S.A. Spy on an Array of Internet Traffic

=> ↺ AT&T and NSA’s tight relationship revealed in new Snowden documents

=> ↺ NSA Spying Relies on AT&T’s ‘Extreme Willingness to Help’

=> ↺ AT&T helped the NSA spy on the UN’s internet traffic

• It’s no secret that telecoms have cooperated with the US’ surveillance efforts, but at least one was unusually eager to help out. Thanks to Edward Snowden leaks, both the New York Times and ProPublica have discovered that AT&T not only agreed to aid the National Security Agency’s spying campaigns for decades, but has shown an “extreme willingness” to participate. It was the first to start forwarding internet metadata (like email participants) to the NSA in 2003, and was quick to offer call metadata in 2011. Moreover, AT&T helped the NSA snoop on the all of the internet traffic at the United Nations’ New York City headquarters — Snowden’s leaks had previously revealed that the UN monitoring was taking place, but not the carrier involved.

=> ↺ This font lets you see if you’re on the NSA’s radar

• Whether by email or Skype conversation, the mass surveillance programmes revealed have placed privacy rights at the forefront of the digital age, questioning how much of what we say online is confidential.

=> ↺ How the government can spy on you, and what you can do about it

• Both Apple and Google track your phone’s movements with location-based services.

=> ↺ NSA Whistleblower Snowden has no plans to leave Russia

• Former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden has no current plans to leave Russia, Snowden’s lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said Saturday.

=> ↺ Suiting Up

• When former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson reactivated his law license, it appears he reactivated his activism. Long a civil-liberties defender, he’s decided to call out the feds after reports surfaced in 2013 that the NSA and FBI allegedly conducted illegal surveillance operations on Salt Lake-area residents before and during the 2002 Winter Games.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ Why Did the FBI Spy on James Baldwin?

• James Baldwin’s FBI file contains 1,884 pages of documents, collected from 1960 until the early 1970s. During that era of illegal surveillance of American writers, the FBI accumulated 276 pages on Richard Wright, 110 pages on Truman Capote, and just nine pages on Henry Miller. Baldwin’s file was closer in size to activists and radicals of the day — for example, it’s nearly half as thick as Malcolm X’s.

=> ↺ The FBI Agent Who Hunted N.W.A

• In the late ’80s, the bureau targeted the hip-hop group for their incendiary anthem ‘Fuck tha Police,’ and transformed the rappers into First Amendment crusaders.

=> ↺ [Old] Texas Bill to take on NDAA Indefinite Detention Passes House Committee, 4-2

• A Texas bill that would make indefinite detention, as purportedly authorized by the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a criminal act – passed through a state House committee last week.

=> ↺ [Old] Anonymous Launches #Gitmo2Chicago to Shut Down NDAA Style Secret Detention Center By Chicago Police

• Various activist groups and concerned citizens are coming together to oppose the Chicago Police’s secret torture detention center also known as Homan Square.

=> ↺ Bush torture comments worry human rights groups over possible resurgence

• Activists lament political culture ‘where tolerating torture is the norm’ and fear potential of Republican successor to Barack Obama overturning his torture ban

=> ↺ Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush leaves door open for use of torture by government

• The former Florida governor on Thursday said that in general, he believes torture is inappropriate, and that he was glad his brother, former President George W Bush, largely ended the CIA’s use of the techniques before he left office. The CIA used water boarding, slapping, nudity, sleep deprivation, humiliation and other methods to coerce Al-Qaeda detainees, methods the military would be prohibited from using on prisoners of war. “I don’t want to make a definitive, blanket kind of statement,” Bush told an audience of Iowa Republicans, when asked whether he would keep in place or repeal President Barack Obama’s executive order banning so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA.

=> ↺ CIA Mistakenly Releases Apology Letter It Wrote to Senate For Illegally Spying On It

• The documents of the US government that were expected to remain out of reach in the coming years have been got hold of by Jason Leopold of FOIA staffers. The CIA would have definitely thought that one of the documents would remain its little secret for the coming years.

=> ↺ Where psychologists went wrong

• Too late for Omar Khadr and thousands of other political prisoners tortured at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other CIA “black hole” sites where some APA psychologists may still be “interrogating” with CIA psychologists and psychiatrists.

=> ↺ Righting Governance Gone Rogue in the American Psychological Association: The Torture Scandal

• By a nearly unanimous vote and standing ovation, the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Council of Representatives voted August 7th, 2015, at their annual convention to adopt a new policy barring psychologists from participating in national security interrogations and torture, including non-coercive interrogations now conducted by the Obama administration. The resolution states “psychologists shall not conduct, supervise or be in the presence of, or otherwise assist any national security interrogations for any military or intelligence entities.” The resolution places the APA on the side of international law by “barring psychologists from working at Guantánamo, CIA black sites, and other settings deemed illegal under the Geneva Conventions or the U.N. Convention Against Torture, unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.”1

=> ↺ Psychologists contrite on ‘torture’ collusion

• Aside from the personal vindication, Reisner said, the resolution would help repair the APA’s badly damaged image.

• “The public is legitimately wary of the American Psychological Association as the representative of professional psychology,” he said. “And if it is the representative of professional psychology, the public will be wary of professional psychology.”

=> ↺ Pre-crime: DHS admits that it puts people on the no-fly list based on “predictive assessment”

• A DoJ filing in an ACLU lawsuit in Oregon admits that you can be put on a no-fly list based on “predictive assessments about potential threats,” as opposed to threatening or dangerous things you’ve actually said or done.

• It’s the first case in which a court is being asked to “review the basis for the government’s predictive model for blacklisting people who have never even been charged, let alone convicted, of a violent crime.”

• The Obama administration is trying to prevent further disclosures about the program’s basis for denying Americans the right to travel based on secret evidence and an opaque process. FBI counter-terrorism assistant director Michael Steinbach defended the no-fly list’s dependence on security through obscurity: “If the Government were required to provide full notice of its reasons for placing an individual on the No Fly List and to turn over all evidence (both incriminating and exculpatory) supporting the No Fly determination, the No Fly redress process would place highly sensitive national security information directly in the hands of terrorist organizations and other adversaries.”

=> ↺ New York Times uses rape allegations to promote a wider war in the Middle East

• The New York Times led its Friday edition with a lengthy front-page article headlined “Enslaving Young Girls, the Islamic State Builds a Vast System of Rape.” The article, spread out over more than two pages, provides a lurid account of women and girls belonging to the Yazidi religious minority being systematically captured and sold as sex slaves by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters.

• The author, Rukmini Callimachi, cites various US academics and think tanks to argue that ISIS has devised a religious justification for rape and “developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery.” The prominence of the article, its sensationalist tone and presentation, and its timing—appearing in the midst of a US escalation of its military interventions and proxy wars in Iraq and Syria—make clear that the publication of the piece is calculated to inflame public opinion and build support for a wider war.

=> ↺ Kayla Mueller, American hostage, was raped repeatedly by ISIS leader, U.S. says

• American hostage Kayla Mueller was repeatedly forced to have sex with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria group, U.S. intelligence officials told her family in June.

=> ↺ America’s despicable, hypocritical persecution of Chelsea Manning

• Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army private who was imprisoned for giving thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, was recently threatened with torture for supposedly violating the conditions of her detention.

=> ↺ Benghazi Case Focuses Attention on US Interrogation Strategy

• The case, still in its early stages, is focusing attention on an interrogation strategy that the Obama administration has used in just a few recent terrorism investigations and prosecutions. Abu Khattala’s lawyers already have signaled a challenge to the process, setting the stage for a rare court clash over a tactic that has riled civil liberties groups but is seen by the government as a vital and appropriate tool in prosecuting suspected terrorists captured overseas.

=> ↺ Decriminalising human suffering

• Rachel Moran is a victim of the sex slave industry, who went on to become a co-founder of the Space International Anti-Sex Trade Group. She made the following comments in her tweet about the 11th Aug 2015 decision by the AI:

• “Amnesty’s decision is ‘breathtakingly disgraceful’. When I first heard this proposal, I got very emotional, I have been through a lot and I am not a woman who usually gets emotional. But this is an insult, from the most publicly recognised human rights body in the world, who is saying everything that happened to me was completely normal, above board and ought to be legal.”

• Hundreds of anti-sex slave organisations around the globe have condemned this move by the Amnesty International UK.

=> ↺ Russian Muslims Face Challenges of Demography and Migration

• …Russian Muslims have constantly been at the centre of public attention and the mass media.

=> ↺ Torture, show trials common in neocolonial Libya

• A video released last week showing the beating and torture of Saadi Gadhafi is not an anomaly in contemporary Libya where the Pentagon and NATO waged a war of regime change in 2011.

=> ↺ The myth of presidential wisdom in foreign affairs

• President George W. Bush stupidly invaded Iraq to the benefit of our arch-enemy Iran and to avenge his family embarrassment at the hands of a gloating Saddam Hussein. He continued fighting a post-9/11 purposeless war in Afghanistan hoping to summon a democracy into being from an antedeluvian political culture.

=> ↺ Judith Miller and those Weapons of Mass Destruction

• Her critics said she was grandstanding, playing the journalism martyr to recapture the luster lost during her reporting of the Iraqi war. But she retorted she was standing on journalistic principles, that her sources at first refused to waive a confidentiality agreement, forcing her to go to jail, then relented, allowing her to go free and testify.

=> ↺ US government investigated journalists 14 times during 2014

• A Justice Department report says the US government questioned, arrested or subpoenaed journalists 14 times during 2014, including the high-profile subpoena issued to New York Times reporter James Risen.

• Former US attorney general Eric Holder said in February 2014 that the department would release information on how law enforcement officials use its tool to investigate the news media.

• The four-page annual report released on Friday includes 14 incidents, including the subpoena issued to Risen, who refused to divulge his CIA source for a chapter of his book about the Iran nuclear program. The informant, Jeffrey Sterling, was convicted on nine counts in January.

=> ↺ California legislators to eye police push for use of drones

• California law enforcement agencies are looking to fly drones as an affordable and efficient way to monitor crime scenes, pursue suspects and search for lost hikers.

=> ↺ Yemen In Meltdown: Domestic And Regional Competitions And Destruction Of Nationhood – Analysis

• The national ideal in North Yemen got corroded through the 1980s because of two main reasons. First, there was the natural attrition pertaining to the first generation of leaders and the accompanying reluctance of younger educated Yemenis to return to their country to replace them. The American authority on Yemen, Asher Orkaby, has noted that in 2014 at least 30,000 educated Yemenis were working abroad. This was mainly due to the second contributory factor: the 33-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, first, from 1978 over North Yemen, and then from 1990 over united Yemen, after a short military campaign in which the communist forces were defeated.

=> ↺ Florida inmate serving life sentence killed in cell

• A Florida prison inmate serving a life sentence for his role in a 2011 Jacksonville murder was killed in his cell.

• The Florida Department of Corrections said 35-year-old Craig Eugene Roback died on Thursday after an altercation with his cellmate at the Columbia County Correctional Institution.

=> ↺ Emigration and war: Capitalist media suppress the obvious

• The reports about tens of thousands of desperate refugees scrambling out of the Middle East and North Africa, trying to reach some place in Europe, are excruciatingly painful. The number who have drowned along the way or died of thirst or hunger is unknown. Others survive these perilous journeys on overloaded boats only to be captured and either interned or turned back at the borders. Photographs show them to be thin, often to the point of emaciation, with few possessions other than the threadbare clothes on their backs.

• Most migrants are men searching for work. But there are women, too, and even children and infants. For every person whose story may be told, thousands remain unrecognized and anonymous. They are only statistics in one of the world’s most perilous mass migrations.

=> ↺ 2016 Candidates Must Talk Extrajudicial Drone Strikes

• As President Obama looks to legacy building during his remaining time in office, he’s leaving behind a troubling institution for the next commander in chief to inherit: A program permitting the extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens abroad. Though President Bush and his administration were responsible for establishing these practices, the Obama White House has, in some respects, expanded some of them. As the 2016 election season heats up, it is worth looking at where the possible presidents-to-be stand on the issue.

• Despite the fact that targeted killings, whether by unmanned aerial drone or cruise missile, are not a new element of the U.S. military, a new, concerning threshold was crossed in 2011. In an unprecedented move, President Obama authorized a lethal drone strike which successfully targeted Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born citizen. It is unclear if Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen also killed in the strike, was meant to be hit as well. However, the decision to target Anwar al-Awlaki for death has drawn heat from human rights critics, as has the death of his U.S.-born, 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, with good reason.

=> ↺ Letter from America: Our Messy, messy world!

• Religious extremism is on the rise all over the globe. And it is as much an Islamic problem, as it is a Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh problem. Not a single religious tradition is impervious from its deadly embrace.

• All these religious extremist groups are abusing their religion to create a world of fitnah and fasad. I have chosen these two Arabic words because of the loaded meanings that each carry. The first word in Arabic means trials/tribulations/persecutions/misguidance and the second word: anarchy/confusion/corruption/mischief.

=> ↺ Amazon: Devastating expose accuses internet retailer of oppressive and callous attitude to staff

• Working four days in a row without sleep; a woman with breast cancer being put on “performance-improvement plans” together with another who had just had a stillborn child; staff routinely bursting into tears; continual monitoring; workers encouraged to turn on each other to keep their jobs.

• Life at Amazon sounds bleak, according to a devastating, 5,900-word expose by The New York Times.

• The global internet retailer founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, which paid just £11.9m in tax in Britain last year despite UK sales of £5.3bn, has previously been accused of treating warehouse staff in the UK “like cattle” as they are driven to work harder.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ TPP’s Copyright Term Extension Isn’t Made for Artists—It’s Made By and For Big Content Companies

• The following comment was written by Canadian filmmaker, Andrew Hunter, sent to party leaders asking them to come out against the 20-year copyright term extension in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and stand for fair and balanced innovation policy. He emailed this comment as part of our TPP’s Copyright Trap campaign.

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