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● 01.23.16

● Links 23/1/2016: New Kali Linux, Google Teams with Red Hat

Posted in News Roundup at 12:38 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Sink or swim is one way to learn Linux

• Since using Linux and learning more about it everyday, I’ve gone on to help others with technical support, including some large web hosting providers. And, at every job I’ve held, I ask if I can run Linux on whatever hardware they give me. It seems the consensus has been that if I can support it, then that’s one less person for the IT department to worry about. Not to mention, my current employer was excited to hear I know basic web server administration. He is happy to see reports generated and mailed out each night thanks to cronjob and a formatted list of information thanks to a bash script that does simple number crunching. No need for complicated spreadsheets.

Desktop

=> ↺ The cost of ditching Windows XP? More than $12,000 per person

• Sticking with Windows XP can be expensive but it seems leaving the 14-year-old OS can cost even more, as one German city is finding out.

• Ditching Windows XP and 2000 will cost Munich City Council more than $12,000 for every employee still using the outdated operating systems.

• Windows XP and 2000 are used by fewer than 1,500 of the more than 16,000 staff at the council, which relies on the aged Microsoft systems to run 41 applications.

• However, still using Windows XP and 2000 creates difficulties for Munich, as neither OS is updated to fix bugs that could be exploited by hackers and the council has to take special measures to secure them.

=> ↺ Google Asks Chromixium OS Devs to Cease Use of the Name, Cub Linux Is Born

• It has been a while since we last heard something from the Chromixium Linux project, an operating system based on Ubuntu Linux and designed from the ground up to look like Google’s Chrome OS.

Server

=> ↺ Containers: 3 big myths

• You’ll see the likes of Mesosphere, or Docker Swarm, say, ‘we can deploy ten thousand containers in like thirty seconds’ – and similar claims. Well, that’s a really synthetic test: these kinds of numbers are 100% hype. In the real world such a capacity is pretty much useless. No one cares about deploying ten thousands little apps that do literally nothing, that just go ‘hello world.’

• The tricky bit with containers is actually linking them together. When you start with static hosts, or even VMs, they don’t change very often, so you don’t realise how much interconnection there is between your different applications. When you destroy and recreate your applications in their entirety via containers, you discover that you actually have to recreate all that plumbing on the fly and automate that and make it more agile. That can catch you by surprise if you don’t know about it ahead of time.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Certified Engineer: Francisco Tsao

• In 1998, I got bored by the MS-DOS/Windows world. I was studying Civil Engineering, but in the neighborhood of my school was the Faculty of Computer Science, and I had some friends there. I began hearing about GNU/Linux from them. I bought a new computer and spent a weekend installing Debian 2.0 and, after a week, I had a graphical interface running on the box. The same year, I joined GPUL the Coruña Linux Users Group, where I learned a lot about tech and Free Software philosophy. Richard Stallman’s “The Right To Read” changed my life definitely. I’m very proud of my LUG (one that is still very much alive). In fact, this year we hosted the Akademy!

=> ↺ USB Suspend Changes Coming For The Linux 4.5 Kernel

• A second feature pull has been submitted of ACPI and power management material for the Linux 4.5 kernel merge window.

• Landing last week was already the big ACPI+PM pull request for Linux 4.5 while submitted yesterday was some extra feature material for this kernel cycle with the merge window not closing until Sunday.

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Update

• First, The Linux Foundation Board structure has not changed. The same individuals remain as directors, and the same ratio of corporate to community directors continues as well. What we did do was to act on a long-discussed perception that the value we provide to individual supporters could be improved, for the first time in a decade. And that the process for recruiting community directors should be changed to be in line with other leading organizations in our community and industry.

• As such, the Board voted to keep Larry Augustin and Bdale Garbee as individual At-Large Directors in recognition of their longstanding service to the community and individual commitment to helping advance The Linux Foundation. And the kernel developers continue to appoint a director as well. We welcome and value the continuing participation of Grant Likely in that capacity. Over time, the LF Board may also choose to add additional individuals from the growing communities we now serve.

=> ↺ LF’s Zemlin: Nothing’s Changed Quit Complaining

• In response to yesterday’s revelation that Section 3.3(a) of the Linux Foundation’s governing by-laws was changed to removed individual involvement, Jim Zemlin this evening released a response. In his post Zemlin said that nothing has changed and folks should stop being so nasty on social media about it. In other news, Sam Varghese took Red Hat to task over its continued involvement with the spy and mass surveillance unit National Security Agency.

=> ↺ Why did Linux Foundation cut independent board seats?

• One of the most powerful organizations in the open-source world faces questions over why it quietly did away with two seats on its board designated for non-corporate members.

• As of Jan. 15, the Linux Foundation’s bylaws were changed to remove a provision that allowed for the election of two board members by the group’s individual affiliates. The entirety of the board’s membership is now selected by the Linux Foundation’s corporate members.

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Issues Statement Concerning Community Directors

• A few days ago it was pointed out that The Linux Foundation updated their by-laws and no longer allows individual members to elect directors. That news obviously caused a fair bit of controversy in the online community for several reasons.

• Jim Zemlin, the Executive Director of The Linux Foundation, has now issued a brief statement concerning this controversy.

=> ↺ Open Source Blockchain Technology Moves from Theory to Practice

• As we’ve reported, if you ask some people, they’ll tell you that the concept of the Blockchain is as dramatic as the creation of the Internet. Recently, I covered the news that a group of top technology and finance companies including IBM, Wells Fargo and the London Stock Exchange Group, are partnering and working with The Linux Foundation to advance blockchain technology, which is central to how many businesses process transactions.

• The Linux Foundation announced that the project will develop an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and developers wil be invited to focus on building industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions. This has major implications for financial institutions and even the PayPals and Apple Pays of the world, but it could also lead to a wave of new startups, healthcare transformation, and more. Now, banks and other financial institutions are completing real world tests of blockchain technology.

=> ↺ Major Banks Complete ‘Modest’ Blockchain Test

=> ↺ PulseAudio 8.0 Officially Released

• PulseAudio, a sound server capable of running on pretty much all operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, Solari, and even Windows, has just received a big update and is now ready for download.

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 3.2.76 LTS Has MIPS, x86 and IPv6 Improvements, Updated Drivers

• Linux kernel developer and maintainer Ben Hutchings announced a few minutes ago, January 23, 2015, the immediate availability for download of the seventy-sixth maintenance release of the long-term supported Linux 3.2 kernel.

=> ↺ Linux Foundation chief spins to justify keeping community out

• Linux Foundation chief executive Jim Zemlin has made a disappointing response to the reports about changes in the by-laws of the Foundation designed to prevent community representation.

• Confronted by facts that show clearly that the Foundation has made changes to block out the community, Zemlin (seen above) has tried to spin and talked about irrelevant aspects of the debate around the issue.

• iTWire could not have made it more plain when pointing out the changes in the by-laws; they were marked in bold. Zemlin ignored everything and instead created a few straw men and then addressed them.

• His statement began with a straw man: “The same individuals remain as directors, and the same ratio of corporate to community directors continues as well.”

• Nobody has said anything about a change of directors, but the latter part of Zemlin’s statement is just plain wrong. How can the ratio be the same when the community was earlier allowed to have two directors and now cannot have any?

=> ↺ ​Linux Foundation leadership controversy erupts

• Linux is no stranger to controversy. Top developers, such as Sarah Sharpe, have either left the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), home of the Linux development community or, like Matthew Garrett, left to follow their own programming path. And Linus Torvalds has never been afraid to tell programmers who didn’t measure up in his opinion exactly what he thought about their code.

• [...]

• I hope Sandler, who is a strong, brilliant open-source leader, not only is allowed to run for office, but wins a place on the board. I also hope the Foundation restores the right for individuals to vote and run for office on the board. This is not asking for much, and it would restore faith that the Foundation still has room left for the little people and not just the big companies.

=> ↺ PulseAudio 8.0 Brings Systemd Journal Logging, OS X / NetBSD Improvements

• PulseAudio 8.0 has been released as the latest version of this open-source sound server.

• PulseAudio 8.0 brings automatic routing changes, OS X and NetBSD support improvements, systemd journal logging for clients, new LFE balance programming interface, moore flexible configuration file handling, and various other bug fixes and improvements.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Is Wayland ready yet?

• Wayland is the same. The protocol is stable and has been for a while. But not every compositor and/or toolkit/application speak Wayland yet, so it may not be sufficient for your use-case. So rather than asking “Is Wayland ready yet”, you should be asking: “Can I run GNOME/KDE/Enlightenment/etc. under Wayland?” That is the right question to ask, and the answer is generally “It depends what you expect to work flawlessly.” This also means “people working on Wayland” is often better stated as “people working on Wayland support in ….”.

=> ↺ A Wayland status update

• It has been our goal for a while to get to a point where the Wayland port can be declared complete and ready to be enabled by default. We’ve come a long way since we started the porting effort in September 2013. In fact, we feel that we’re close enough that we can aim for Wayland by default in Fedora 24.

• But the last mile is always the longest, and there’s still a few steps to take before we’re there. With this weeks releases of Wayland 1.9.91 and the GNOME 3.19.4 releases, we’ve taken a couple of the steps.

=> ↺ Qualcomm Adreno 430 Now Supported By Freedreno Gallium3D

• The Qualcomm Adreno 430 is now supported by the Freedreno Gallium3D driver.

• After all of the other Qualcomm Adreno A4xx work was done in the Freedreno Gallium3D driver, it just ended up being adding “430″ to a switch statement to make the 3D support work, per this commit.

=> ↺ Hutterer: Is Wayland Ready Yet?

• Linux input expert Peter Hutterer at Red Hat has followed up with another blog post since his X.Org project vs. X.Org Foundation post from a few days ago. Today he looks at the question of “is Wayland ready yet?”

=> ↺ AMD Stoney APUs Bring ETC2 Open-Source Driver Support

• AMD’s upcoming “Stoney” APUs has support for ETC2 texture compression.

• A commit today enables ETC2 hardware support for Stoney. The commit by Marek reads, “radeonsi: add ETC2 support for Stoney. Tested and working.”

=> ↺ Remote Wayland Preview, GNOME 3.20 / Fedora 24 Is Shaping Up Well For Wayland

• Matthias Clasen has written a status update concerning the state of GNOME 3.20 on Wayland.

• Clasen shares that there’s been a lot of work on fixing of dialogs/menus/other-popups for Wayland scrolling, kinetic scrolling now works on Wayland with GTK+, and drag-and-drop under Wayland is comparable to what’s offered by X11. Those are items previously already covered on Phoronix and present in GNOME 3.19.4.

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Early 2016 Look: OpenCL & CUDA Comparison On 13 NVIDIA GPUs

• With having out most of my NVIDIA graphics cards earlier this week due to running the 27-way OpenGL and performance-per-Watt comparison on NVIDIA graphics cards going back a decade, I took the opportunity to also run a smaller, fresh OpenCL/CUDA GPU compute comparison on various recent NVIDIA GPUs.

=> ↺ Linux 3.5 Through Linux 4.4 Kernel Benchmarks: A 19-Way Kernel Showdown Shows Some Regressions

• What better way to spend a cold Friday morning than looking at some kernel benchmarks, so up for your viewing pleasure today are benchmarks of every kernel major release going from the Linux 3.5 kernel up through the latest Linux 4.4 stable kernel release. All the tests were done on the same system and there are actually some interesting performance changes to note with these Linux kernel tests going back to the summer of 2012.

• The system I used this week for carrying out this Linux 3.5 to Linux 4.4 kernel comparison was the Xeon E5-2687W v3 Haswell processor (10 cores plus Hyper Threading), MSI X99S SLI PLUS motherboard, 16GB of DDR4 memory, a PNY CS121 120GB solid-state drive, and AMD FirePro V7900 (Cayman) graphics card. All of the hardware was maintained the same throughout testing and each kernel was tested with its defaults as obtained from the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA archive; so you can fetch from there if you are curious about any of the Kconfig and other defaults.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ [Short Tip] verify YAML in Shell via Python one-liner

=> ↺ Green LAMP: Save energy and the environment by optimizing your website

=> ↺ Linux: 20 Iptables Examples For New SysAdmins

=> ↺ How to block an IP address with ufw on Ubuntu Linux server

=> ↺ Resize disks in a Centos 7 Install

=> ↺ Fred Blaise: Know your event size in Graylog2

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Wine 1.9.2 Lands with GStreamer 1.0 and Shader Model 4 Support

• Wine (Wine is not an emulator) 1.9.2 has been released and it comes with some pretty major new features, including Gstreamer 1.0 support and more Shader Model 4 instructions.

=> ↺ Wine 1.9.2 Released: Finally Presents GStreamer 1.0 Support

=> ↺ Wine Announcement

• The Wine development release 1.9.2 is now available.

Games

=> ↺ Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies to Arrive on Linux Soon

• Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies is a standalone multiplayer game developed Relic Entertainment and published by Sega, and it’s being released for Linux and Mac OS X.

=> ↺ Company of Heroes™ 2 – The Western Front Armies deploying across Mac and Linux January 21st

• Feral Interactive announced today that The Western Front Armies, the first major expansion pack for the World War II real-time strategy game Company of Heroes 2, will be released for Mac and Linux via Steam on January 21st, with the Mac App Store version to follow shortly afterwards. Developed by Relic Entertainment and published by SEGA for Windows PC, The Western Front Armies adds incredible scope and depth to Company of Heroes 2’s critically-praised multiplayer experience.

=> ↺ CoH2 The Western Front Armies Is Arriving For Linux Next Week

• Feral Interactive announced that next week Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies will be released for Linux and OS X.

• Company of Heroes 2 was ported by Feral to Linux last August. Now The Western Front Armies expansion will be released next week on 28 January. The game was originally released for Windows back during the summer of 2014.

=> ↺ Feral Interactive are teasing a new Linux port on their radar

• Feral Interactive are crazy busy right now, and it seems they have yet another Linux game port up their sleeves.

• You can see the new teaser on their radar, copied below. It’s in the Very Soon section, so hopefully it won’t be long before we find out!

=> ↺ The Bug Butcher released for Linux & SteamOS, here’s some thoughts for you

• The Bug Butcher isn’t the usual sort of game I am into, but something about the artwork and idea behind the game hooked me in. I took a look, and here’s my findings.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Plasma Mobile’s Vision

• In the meantime, I’d like to talk a bit about another foundation on which Plasma Mobile is built: Its vision. As I’ve already laid out in my blog post about creating a vision for the KDE PIM Framework, a vision is very important to align the work in a project towards a common goal, and to inspire those contributing it. Inspired by the talk Andrew Lake and I had just given at Akademy about product/ project visions, it did not take much convincing to get the Plasma Mobile team to start working on a vision.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME 3.19.4 Milestone Brings the GNOME 3.20 Desktop Environment Closer to Reality

• Just a few minutes ago, January 22, 2016, Javier Jardón of GNOME Project had the great pleasure of announcing the release and general availability of the fourth milestone towards the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment.

=> ↺ GNOME Maps 3.19.4 Is Out with OpenStreetMap Improvements, Keyboard Navigation Overlay

=> ↺ GNOME 3.19.4 released

• Hi!,

• GNOME 3.19.4 is out. This is a development snapshot, so use it with caution.

• To compile GNOME 3.19.4, you can use the jhbuild [1] modulesets [2] (which use the exact tarball versions from the official release).

• You can also test the latest code using the vm images [3] that are produced by our continuous integration infrastructure, build.gnome.org.

=> ↺ Evolution Email and Groupware Client Fixes Last Remaining Bugs Before GNOME 3.20

• As part of today’s GNOME 3.19.4 desktop environment, a development build towards the upcoming GNOME 3.20 release, we’ve spotted an update to the Evolution email, calendar and groupware client.

=> ↺ GNOME Shell Adds Style Week Numbers in Calendar, Mutter Support Screen Rotation

=> ↺ GNOME’s Gedit App to Be Known as “Text Editor” Among GNU/Linux Distributions

• The GNOME developers have just released the fourth milestone towards the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment, as we reported the other day, which means that many of the core components and apps have received improvements and new features.

=> ↺ GNOME 3.19.4 Released For A Fresh Look At The Work For GNOME 3.20

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ GParted Live 0.25.0-1 Is Based on Debian Sid, Linux Kernel 4.3.3, and GParted 0.25.0

• After only two days from the release of the GParted 0.25.0 open-source and free partition editor software, Curtis Gedak informs users about the immediate availability for download of GParted Live 0.25.0-1.

=> ↺ Kwort Linux 4.3.1 Officially Released with Security Patches, Bootloader Improvements

• David Cortarello of the Kwort project was proud to announce on January 21, 2016, that the first maintenance release of the Kwort Linux 4.3 operating system is now available for download.

=> ↺ Kali Linux Gets a Rolling Edition with Continuously Updated Penetration Testing Tools

• Offensive Security has announced on January 21, 2016, that their popular penetration testing operating system, Kali Linux, is getting a rolling release edition, at the request of numerous users.

=> ↺ Hands-on with Kali Linux Rolling

• Kali Linux, long known as a premier security/pen-test distribution, announces a new release which is also UEFI compatible. Here are my experiences installing it.

=> ↺ Kali Linux, Rolling Edition Released – 2016.1

• Today marks an important milestone for us with the first public release of our Kali Linux rolling distribution. Kali switched to a rolling release model back when we hit version 2.0 (codename “sana”), however the rolling release was only available via an upgrade from 2.0 to kali-rolling for a select brave group. After 5 months of testing our rolling distribution (and its supporting infrastructure), we’re confident in its reliability – giving our users the best of all worlds – the stability of Debian, together with the latest versions of the many outstanding penetration testing tools created and shared by the information security community.

Ballnux/SUSE

=> ↺ SUSE Survey Finds There Just Aren’t Enough OpenStack Skills to Go Around

• There is brand new evidence that a lack of workers with OpenStack skills may be holding the cloud platform back, especially at enterprises. SUSE LLC’s survey on OpenStack adoption trends reports that over eighty percent of enterprises are either planning to, or have already, implemented OpenStack as a cloud computing solution within their organizations. That means the need and desire is there. However, more than half of all organizations that have tried to deploy OpenStack say they’ve failed to do so due to a lack of skills.

• Here is more on the findings, and our latest review of quick ways to pick up OpenStack skills.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ If Red Hat is an open organisation, then so is the NSA

• How about telling us why Red Hat is continuing to do business with the National Security Agency — you know, that little outfit that carries out mass surveillance of all Americans and a goodly proportion of the rest of the world — when the agency is using Red Hat enterprise Linux for doing those very tasks?

• Or does Red Hat support mass surveillance which, incidentally, has been shown time and again to have absolutely no value when it comes to detecting potential terrorists or their plans?

• Open organisation, you say? Then how about living up to your claims in the real world?

• [...]

• If Red Hat is such an open organisation, why do you send an employee to your rival SUSE’s yearly conference in order to play the role of industrial spy? I met the bloke who came to Orlando in 2014. Spying? Is that why you appear to support the NSA’s spying?

=> ↺ Docker, Red Hat and Google Deliver Container News

• With the new year in full swing, Docker, Inc., the organization behind the container platform, announced that it has acquired Unikernel Systems, a UK-based company focused on unikernel development. Built by creators of the Xen Project, Unikernel has a strong pedigree.

=> ↺ Google deepens partnership with Red Hat, will support OpenShift Dedicated

• Google and Red Hat today announced that they’re working together to bring the OpenShift Dedicated application deployment platform to the Google public cloud.

• This collaboration between the two companies will be happening “in the coming months,” according to a statement. Storage and analytics services from the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will natively work with OpenShift Dedicated, the statement reads.

=> ↺ Google now offering Red Hat’s OpenShift containers

=> ↺ Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated coming to Google Cloud

=> ↺ Google Partners With Red Hat to Host OpenShift PaaS on GCP IaaS

=> ↺ Google teams with Red Hat to bring containers to the cloud

=> ↺ Google’s new managed containers are brought to you by Red Hat

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Receives Average Recommendation of “Buy” from Brokerages

=> ↺ Top Stocks of the day: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. Price Target Update

• The mean short term price target for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) has been established at $89.12 per share. The higher price target estimate is at $97 and the lower price target estimate is expected at $75 according to 17 Analyst. The stock price is expected to vary based on the estimate which is suggested by the standard deviation value of $6.46

Fedora

=> ↺ Are you a Fedora Women? Then Let us Know!

• It’s no secret that female presence has always been there, but most of the times we don’t know due a lack of info. Several years ago a Wiki page started where the idea was to have a list of those Women who can provide advice and help to those new young contributors starting on our community.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Mark Shuttleworth’s Opening Keynote at UbuCon Summit 2016

• The first UbuCon Summit event is taking place these days, between January 21 and 22, at the SCALE 14x Southern California Linux Expo conference in Pasadena, California, United States of America (USA), hosted at Pasadena Convention Center.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 Is Now Hunted by a Strange Bug That Might Be Fixed in OTA-9.5

• We’ve been informed earlier by Łukasz Zemczak of Canonical about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch developers in preparation for the upcoming OTA-9 software update, due for release on January 27, 2016.

=> ↺ BQ is about to drop an Ubuntu tablet that doubles as a PC

• After partnering with Meizu and Canonical last year to make Ubuntu-powered phones a reality, Spanish hardware company BQ has revealed that it’s working on the world’s first Ubuntu tablet PC and that it’s preparing to show off the device at next month’s Mobile World Congress (MWC).

=> ↺ uNav GPS navigator for Ubuntu Touch Receives Several Improvements

• uNav, a turn-by-turn GPS navigator and map viewer for Ubuntu Touch, has been upgraded once more, and a number of features have been improved.

• uNav is one of the most downloaded applications on the Ubuntu phones, but that’s not all that surprising, given the fact that it’s also the only one of its kind. The developer of uNav has put in a lot of effort into building this application, and it’s really impressive what he has managed to do with it, especially since it’s not ported from another platform or based on another project.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 Might Be Delayed with One Day Due to a Unity 8 Security Bug

• Łukasz Zemczak sent today he’s regular daily report to inform us all about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch developers in preparation for the upcoming OTA-9 software update.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Birdie Will Be the Best Linux Twitter App for elementary OS

• Today, January 23, 2016, the developers of the Birdie project have announced that their application will continue to be developed only for the elementary OS Linux distribution.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Chromium OS for Raspberry Pi 2 Gets an 8% Overall Performance Increase

• Dylan Callahan has the great pleasure of informing us today, January 22, 2016, about the immediate availability of the third build of his Chromium OS operating system for the Raspberry Pi 2 single-board computer (SBC).

=> ↺ Development kit runs Linux on Renesas Cortex-A15 SoC

• iWave has announced an industrial temperature Qseven module that runs Linux on the dual-core, Cortex-A15 Renesas RZ/G1-M SoC, along with a development kit.

• Bangalore, India based iWave Systems is typically associated here with SODIMM-style computer-on-modules based on Freescale SoCs, such as the iW-RainboW-G18M-SODIMM i.MX6UL. For its new “RZ/G1M Qseven Module,” iWave is branching out with a Qseven form factor COM built around the recently announced Renesas RZ/G series of ARM SoCs. Specifically, the RZ/G1M Qseven Module runs Linux on the dual-core, 1.5GHz RZ/G1M, which uses Cortex-A15 architecture, as opposed to the dual-core Cortex-A7 based RZ/G1-E.

=> ↺ Mini PC invasion: These radically tiny computers fit in the palm of your hand

• Computers have been shrinking for years, and the revolution has only accelerated in recent times. As chipmakers focus on creating processors that sip power without sacrificing performance, thermal concerns have largely been alleviated in modern CPUs. Because of that, today’s pint-sized PCs offer enough performance to play HD video and satisfy Office jockeys, the opposite of the janky, compromised experience of yesteryear’s microcomputers.

Phones

Android

=> ↺ Android Marshmallow: release date, name and features

• As the most widespread mobile operating system in the world, Android is under a considerable amount of pressure to impress with each new iteration.

• Thankfully, recent years have seen its creator, Google, build on its strengths, developing Android into a sleek and intuitive OS, and the forthcoming Android Marshmallow update looks set to continue the trend.

=> ↺ 5 ways to customize your Android home screen

=> ↺ Verizon LG G3 Getting Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update: Apparently Miracles Do Happen

=> ↺ Never mind encryption, 1 in 3 Android devices don’t even use lock screen PINs

=> ↺ Research Says 1 in 3 Android Users do not Secure their Device

=> ↺ Kickstarter Launches Official Android App—Hopefully Future Updates Aren’t Stretch Goals

=> ↺ How to type emoji on Android: How to do smilies/smileys on Twitter for Android

=> ↺ Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update For Sony Xperia Z5, Z4, Z3, Z2, M5, M4, C5, C4

=> ↺ Android-powered Acer Jade Primo apparently in the works

=> ↺ Rumor: Acer Developing Android Variant Of The Jade Primo

• While Android certainly commands the most marketshare for smartphone OS platforms, other mobile OS solutions like Windows are still gaining users, hence why various OEMs are still manufacturing handsets that run the software. Such is the case with Acer, who not only makes laptops and desktop computers, but also the largest amount of Chrome OS devices and quite a few handsets and tablets that run on Android, as well as a new handset called the Jade Primo that’s to run on the new Windows 10 mobile platform. The Jade Primo has yet to launch following the original announcement for the phone at IFA 2015, and already there are rumors spinning that Acer may be developing an Android variant of the phone.

=> ↺ Google’s Android Generates $31 Billion Revenue, Oracle Says

=> ↺ Google’s Android secrets revealed in court

=> ↺ Google’s total Android revenue since 2008 is $31 billion, says Oracle

=> ↺ Android has reportedly generated $31 billion in revenue for Google

=> ↺ Oracle just revealed how much money Google makes from Android

=> ↺ Google just upgraded its weather reports on Android

=> ↺ The Weather On Android Just Got A Whole Lot Better

=> ↺ Samsung sued over ‘lackadaisical’ Android security updates

=> ↺ LG V10 Android 6.0 Update Release Confirmed

=> ↺ Feature Request: Why Android Wear needs Force Touch-like features

=> ↺ Eos Positioning announces RTK NTRIP app for Android

=> ↺ Nyko Unveils Cygnus Gaming Controller For Android Devices

• When it comes to gaming on mobile devices, there are just some games that don’t really play as well with a touchscreen. For example fighting games, FPS games, or even racing games; those are games that tend to play much better with physical controls as sometimes touchscreen controls are too sensitive to be any good.

• However it isn’t always practical to walk around with a controller on you, but if you are looking for a compatible controller for your mobile gaming needs, you might be interested in Nyko’s latest product, the Cygnus. This is a controller designed for Android devices in mind and comes in a pretty familiar design.

=> ↺ Android Headliner: Will Android On PC Finally Become Mainstream?

• Although Android was never traditionally meant to be a PC computing platform, over the years the mobile OS has transformed in many ways that have led to the creation of Android versions which can now be used on the PC. For those who spend much of their day getting things done on Android, it’s a nice alternative to being tethered to a mobile device. Products like the recently released Remix OS 2.0 for PC (which is still in beta status) are giving people an option to use Android in a whole new way, with features and functions that aren’t available on most Android devices such as multi-window, start menus, and taskbars, alongside the control of the OS through mouse and keyboard instead of touch, making things feel like a PC but with all the favorite Android apps and features that are available on tablets and smartphones.

=> ↺ Google Updates: Remix OS gets told off, and see virtual royalty with Cardboard

=> ↺ Remix OS is now GPL and Apache compliant, Jide responds promptly

=> ↺ Jide Releases Enough Source Code For GPL Compliance

=> ↺ Jide releases some of the Remix OS source code, attempts GPL compliance

=> ↺ Google issues fix for zero-day kernel flaw, says effect on Android is greatly exaggerated

=> ↺ Google Challenges Number of Android Devices Affected by Linux Flaw

=> ↺ Google denies recently-discovered Linux flaw is a serious Android security issue

=> ↺ Google Is Investigating The New Linux Kernel Exploit, But Does Not Believe Many Android Devices Are Vulnerable

=> ↺ Google Investigating Linux Exploit Believed To Affect 66% Of All Android Devices

=> ↺ Linux Kernel Flaw Was Over Exaggerated As It Pertains To Android

=> ↺ Google Responds To Recent Linux Security Issue

=> ↺ Linux kernel vulnerability has unknown risk, but Google has fix

=> ↺ Google creates fix for zero-day kernel flaw, says effect on Android is exaggerated

=> ↺ Google denies Linux flaw is a serious Android security issue

=> ↺ ​Google confirms new Linux hole not a big deal for Android

=> ↺ Google creates fix for zero-day kernel flaw, says effect on Android is greatly exaggerated

=> ↺ Top four Android tips for better mobile security

=> ↺ 5 things every Android user should know

• We just had a great chat about some great apps you can pick up for Android, so why stop there? Here are five tips that every Android users should know.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Opinion: Open source for all mankind

• Thankfully there’s a better way. Whether in reference to technology or a political ideology, open source is about self-determination. It’s about individuals developing products and projects, taking responsibility and being open to criticism and change. It fosters a healthy, meritocratic ecosystem of shared, mutually improving ideas. Crucially, the open-source attitude manifests a level of respect and equality between developer and user, government and citizen.

=> ↺ Verizon Joins ONOS Open-Source SDN Project

• Verizon is the latest major service provider to join the ONOS open-source network virtualization initiative, joining other carriers like AT&T, NTT Communications, China Unicom and SK Telecom in the effort.

• Verizon officials said Jan. 21 that they joined the ONOS (Open Network Operating System) in hopes of accelerating the development of open-source software-defined networking (SDN) and network-functions virtualization (NFV) offerings that their company and other carriers can use.

=> ↺ How getting started in open source can help your career

• When contributing to open source projects and communities, one of the many benefits is that you can improve your tech skills. In this article, hear from three contributors on how their open source helped them get a job or improved their career.

=> ↺ Verizon Joins the ONOS Project Partnership

=> ↺ Verizon Looks to ONOS for Faster Transformation

=> ↺ NFV/SDN Reality Check: ONOS project updates open source SDN progress – Episode 44

=> ↺ Verizon Becomes Newest Telecom to Join ONOS Open Source SDN Project

=> ↺ Verizon Joins ONOS SDN Partnership

=> ↺ ONOS Delivers Astounding Adoption and Momentum among its Community of Service Providers and Innovators

=> ↺ Verizon joins ONOS project partnership

=> ↺ Verizon hooks up with ONOS project, joining AT&T, SK Telecom

=> ↺ Verizon signs up for ONOS Project

=> ↺ Verizon joins AT&T, others at ONOS project in boost to open source SDN

=> ↺ Verizon Joins ONOS

=> ↺ Telecom Providers Worldwide Are Flocking to NFV Plus OpenStack

• As this year began, we spotted a lot of action from telecom players and the open source community surrounding Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technology. Red Hat and NEC Corporation said that they formed a partnership to develop NFV features in he OpenStack cloud computing platform, with the goal of delivering carrier-grade solutions based on Red Hat’s OpenStack build.

• Telecom companies have traditionally had a lot of proprietary tools in the middle and at the basis of their technology stacks. NFV is an effort to combat that, and to help the parallel trends of virtualization and cloud computing stay as open as possible. Now, The OpenStack Foundation has released a comprehensive report on the adoption and business cases driving NFV deployment among the world’s leading telecom providers. Titled “OpenStack Foundation Report: Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack,” the report paints a bright future for NFV with close ties to the OpenStack cloud platform.

=> ↺ Google Open Sources Dataflow Analytics Code through Apache Incubator

• Google is open-sourcing more code by contributing Cloud Dataflow to the Apache Software Foundation. The move, a first for Google, opens new cloud-based data analytics options and integration opportunities for big data companies.

• Cloud Dataflow is a platform for processing large amounts of data in the cloud. It features an open source, Java-based SDK, which makes it easy to integrate with other cloud-centric analytics and Big Data tools.

=> ↺ ONOS project updates open source SDN progress on 1-year anniversary

=> ↺ Plerd: A Dropbox-friendly Markdown blog platform

• Jason McIntosh had a problem: He’d gotten out of the habit of writing long-form blog posts. A decade before, he’d been a regular on LiveJournal, but that platform is getting a little long in the tooth, and he wanted something that was more in line with his current writing habits. As a fan of Markdown, he wanted something where he could just drop Markdown files in a spot, and the blog would be built from those.

Events

=> ↺ 11 steps to running an online community meeting

• Open organizations explicitly invite participation from external communities, because these organizations know their products and programs are world class only if they include a variety of perspectives at all phases of development. Liaising with and assisting those communities is critical. And community calls are my favorite method for interacting with stakeholders both inside and outside an organization. In this article, I’ll share best practices for community calls and talk a little about how they can spur growth.

=> ↺ SCALE 14X Thursday: New Morning in Pasadena

• A SCALE staple is PostgreSQL Days, which have taken place for years at the Southern California event. This year it’s a two-day, two-track event of sessions designed for a general audience of web developers, sysadmins, DBAs and open source users. As usual, talks will have significant technical content. For those of you keeping score at home, PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system, with more than 30 years of active development and a proven architecture that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, data integrity, and correctness.

• The cherry atop the SCALE 14X sundae on Thursday, as you might expect, comes in the evening when FOSS raconteur Bryan Lunduke brings his humorous “Linux Sucks” presentation, this time accompanied by a live broadcast and a book, to SCALE. Give him an hour, he says, and he’ll prove it.

=> ↺ IoT Summit: An Opportunity to Learn What Open Source Can Offer IoT

• The Eclipse IoT community has grown significantly over the last 1-2 years. There are now 20+ Eclipse IoT projects building open source technology for IoT solutions. We are well on our way to providing the key building blocks developers need to build IoT solutions.

=> ↺ Drupal Higher-Ed Summit

• We are pleased to announce that we are bringing the First Drupal Higher-Ed Summit to Mumbai this 18th Feb 2016. The event focuses on the Drupal and Open Source in Education.

=> ↺ Meet Guix at FOSDEM!

• One week to FOSDEM! This year, there will be no less than six Guix-related talks. This and the fact that we are addressing different communities is exciting.

=> ↺ SCaLE 14x, day 1: Shuttleworth delivers the grand vision for Ubuntu

• Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) 14x in kicked off yesterday, January 21. The highlight of the was a keynote by Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth at UbuCon Summit, a co-hosted event at SCaLE 14x.

• Some technical issues with the projector at the beginning of Shuttleworth’s presentation led him to quip that Ubuntu is “moving so fast that we have warped the colors on the screen.”

=> ↺ SCALE 14X: Making the Mark and Getting Ready for Doctorow

• One of the drawbacks of having to work a show like SCALE is that I don’t get to go to enough sessions while I’m here. As the traffic cop at the intersection of old and new media, it’s my job to marshal the publicity team’s forces into taking the information happening at the show and then processing it for the wider public consumption.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Firefox OS

• Firefox OS has demonstrated that it’s a very flexible platform. It has the potential to run on a wide range of devices, such as TVs and IoT gadgets. As long as Mozilla can find some persuasive use cases for manufacturers, it has a good chance of making an impact in these emerging fields.

=> ↺ Announcing Rust 1.6

• Hello 2016! We’re happy to announce the first Rust release of the year, 1.6. Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.

• As always, you can install Rust 1.6 from the appropriate page on our website, and check out the detailed release notes for 1.6 on GitHub. About 1100 patches were landed in this release.

=> ↺ Rust Lang 1.6 Stabilizes Libraries

• The Mozilla-backed crew working on the Rust programming language announced the release today of Rust v1.6 as their first new version of 2016.

=> ↺ Former Mozilla CEO reveals Brave, a browser that speeds up the Web by blocking all ads

• Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla and for an 11-day stint, its CEO, yesterday announced a new browser called “Brave,” that blocks outside online ads and ad tracking.

• Brave, which was at version 0.7—denoting its under-construction and fit-for-developers-and-other-strong-hearts-only status—is for Windows and OS X on the desktop, iOS and Android on mobile. The browser does not have a final code launch date or one for a public preview. Users may sign up for notification when betas become available.

• In a post to the browser’s website, Eich, Brave’s CEO and president, touted the new browser’s model, which rests on blocking ads and all other tracking techniques used by websites to pinpoint their visitors and show them online advertisements.

=> ↺ WebGL Can Be Moved Off The Main Thread With Latest Firefox

• With Firefox 44 and newer it will be possible to move the WebGL rendering work off the main processing thread.

• With Firefox 44 when setting the gfx.offscreencanvas.enabled option, it’s possible to move the WebGL rendering work off the main thread and to allow for the alternative thread(s) to change what is displayed to the user. “This API is the first that allows a thread other than the main thread to change what is displayed to the user. This allows rendering to progress no matter what is going on in the main thread…Developers will now be able to render to the screen without blocking on the main thread, thanks to the new OffscreenCanvas API. There’s still more work to do with getting requestAnimationFrame on Workers. I was able to port existing WebGL code to run in a worker in a few minutes. For comparison, see animation.html vs. animation-worker.html and worker.js.”

SaaS/Big Data

=> ↺ Why open source is the ‘new normal’ for big data

• As a provider of integration technologies for that platform, Talend has placed a significant bet of its own on Hadoop, Spark, and open source in general, so Tuchen’s enthusiasm isn’t exactly surprising. Talend offers products focused on big data, cloud and application integration, among others, and all are based on open-source software.

• Still, Talend’s bet seems to be paying off. The company will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, and it claims big-name customers like GE, Citi, Lufthansa, Orange and Virgin Mobile. It’s also in the middle of a major expansion. At the end of 2015, it was selling its products in five countries; by end of this year, it will be selling in 15, Tuchen said. Making that happen will mean hiring about 200 new people, he said, bringing the company’s total head count to about 750.

Databases

=> ↺ Open source database player MariaDB appoints Michael Howard as CEO

• MariaDB is kicking of the year with a new CEO and millions in investment.

• The open-source relational database company appointed Michael Howard to the CEO position, following the departure of Patrik Sallner who is now the CEO of OpusCapita.

=> ↺ Intel among backers of MariaDB as new CEO and new funding arrives

• The company, which specialises in “relational database solutions”, has bagged the investment from, among others, Intel Capital and California Technology Ventures. Concurrently, the firm has appointed Michael Howard as CEO and Monty Wildenius as CTO.

=> ↺ MariaDB hires new CEO with code daddy Monty in as CTO

=> ↺ MariaDB raises $9 mln

=> ↺ MariaDB Raises $9 Million and Appoints Michael Howard New CEO and Monty Widenius as CTO

=> ↺ MariaDB Gets £6.35m Funding, Appoints New CEO, CTO

=> ↺ MariaDB Raises $9 Million as Founder Monty Widenius Comes On Board as CTO

=> ↺ MariaDB raises $9 million and hires two key executives

=> ↺ DB Fanatics ! MariaDB Just Raised $9 Million More, Bringing Total Funding Close To $40 Million

=> ↺ MariaDB gets another $9 million

=> ↺ New MariaDB CEO seeks to raise profile among businesses after $9m Intel funding

=> ↺ Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) Eagerly Investing in MariaDB Corporation- International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)

=> ↺ MariaDB Corp raises $9m new funding, adds Monty Widenius as CTO

=> ↺ Intel Invests in Oracle Database Technology Offshoot MariaDB

=> ↺ MariaDB Raises New Money, Gets New CEO

• MariaDB Corporation, the lead commercial sponsor behind the open source MariaDB database, started 2016 off with a bang, appointing new CEO Michael Howard and CTO Monty Widenius and announcing $9 million in equity financing from Intel Capital and California Technology Ventures.

=> ↺ MariaDB Raises $9M More, Michael Howard Named New CEO, Monty Widenius CTO

• Some more big news for the world of open source. MariaDB Corporation — the startup formerly known as SkySQL and building for-profit solutions on the SQL fork managed by the MariaDB foundation — has raised another $9 million in funding and announced a new CEO, Michael Howard, a veteran executive from the enterprise world. The funding brings the total raised by MariaDB to just over $40 million, and this round comes from previous investors Intel Capital and California Technology Ventures.

• And on top of this, the company is announcing another key executive appointment: Michael “Monty” Widenius, the man who originally created MySQL and MariaDB, is now joining the startup as CTO. As part of the move, he will stay on as founder and open source advocate at the MariaDB Foundation.

=> ↺ 8 Reasons to Consider Open-Source Databases for Your Business

• Over the past decade, the database market has undergone a transformation that affects both the IT and the finance departments. In fact, as data becomes increasingly vital to business success, some of the most enduring collaborations in many organizations are being formed between finance (which must keep data management on budget) and IT (which must manage the data effectively). These teams are increasingly working together to streamline IT operations and make IT more efficient, freeing up financial resources that can be applied to other areas of the business. In particular, the cost of infrastructure, especially of databases, has been seen as a capital expenditure that may be better spent elsewhere within the organization. Historically, expensive commercial databases have dominated the data management landscape, but this adoption of open-source database systems is growing rapidly. This eWEEK slide show explains why your company’s should consider open-source databases, if it hasn’t already done so.

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ And So It Begins! Microsoft Asks Node.js to Allow ChakraCore (Edge) Alongside Google’s V8 Engine

• Microsoft has submitted an official “pull request” (term used on GitHub for merging two pieces of code) to the Node.js project, through which it’s asking the project’s maintainers to enable support for ChakraCore, the JavaScript engine packed inside Microsoft’s Edge browser.

=> ↺ EMC reinvigorated: Automation, open-source and versatile integration

• As the calendar rolls on into 2016, the buzz around the Dell-EMC merger has slightly diminished, but EMC’s activity behind the media relations has in no way cut its workload. With its presence in dozens of countries continuing to grow and a wide array of IT development opening up new avenues for it each day, the merger seems to have EMC’s activity reinvigorated.

=> ↺ Bloomberg releases API and online tools to boost open source FIGI

• Bloomberg is adding new features to increase the accessibility of its FIGI open source financial instrument identification system. The new online tools are intended to make it easier for instrument issuers to request identifiers and for exchanges, data providers, custodians and others to map other third-party identifiers to FIGI.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Emacs 25.1 Will Have X Widgets Support

Licensing

=> ↺ No single license to success

• OSI (Open Source Initiative) has tracked many licenses and approved some as well, maintaining a list of the nine most widely used and popular. Each license has its unique requirements and benefits from the reciprocity of GPL (GNU General Public License) to the permissive MIT. Each has its strong proponents and opponents. Some feel that without GPL’s compulsion human greed will end open source as we know it. Others feel that freedom is the key to success and such compulsion hinders creative use.

• The reality is that the strength of open source is in its diversity, including a diversity of licenses. No single license has been nor will be the pivotal point to open source success. License diversity is very evident from the data gathered by the Black Duck Knowledgebase. A quick view of the top 20 licenses used in open source projects today shows an even spread.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ The Idealist: Aaron Swartz And The Rise Of Free Culture On The Internet

• Two weeks ago, our book of choice was a collection of Aaron Swartz’s writings. And this week, it’s a new book by Justin Peters not only about Swartz, but also about the rise of free culture online, putting Swartz’s ideas and actions into context, called The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet. I have to admit that I had no idea this book had even come out until I heard a wonderful interview with Peters over on On the Media (and, for what it’s worth, in a separate podcast, OTM’s Brooke Gladstone said that the interview was so good that they struggled to figure out how to edit it down — so I wonder if they’ll release an even longer version as a “podcast extra.”)

Leftovers

=> ↺ How this blogger became one of the most influential voices in tech policy

• In May 2003, the legal website The Smoking Gun posted a short item titled “Barbra Sues Over Aerial Photos.” Kenneth Adelman, an environmentalist who takes aerial photographs of California’s coastline for the benefit of scientists and researchers, had inadvertently captured an image of singer and actress Barbra Streisand’s home. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleged that by posting the image to his website, Adelman had provided a “road map into her residence” and “clearly [identified] those routes that could be used to enter her property.” On page 9 of the lawsuit it states that “there is no telling how many people have downloaded the photograph of [Streisand’s] property and residence on their computer.”

• In the coming weeks it would emerge that, up until the lawsuit was filed, the image of Streisand’s house had only been accessed six times, two of which were by her lawyers. And because of the engendered press from the lawsuit, it was then visited more than 420,000 times in just the first month after it was filed. Not only did Streisand later lose the lawsuit, but it had produced the very result her lawyers had set out to avoid: drawing attention to her property.

=> ↺ Call Of Duty Again Sued Over Another Historical Figure… Who Is A Good Guy In The Game

• You may recall that Activision’s Call of Duty games have already been the subject of a lawsuit by a historical figure. Previously, notorious figure Manuel Noriega brought a publicity rights case against the game company in the United States, claiming that the game depicted him without his permission. Pretty much everyone agreed that Activision was on solid First Amendment grounds in depicting a historical figure, including Rudy Giuliani, who galloped in to represent Activision and quickly got the case summarily dismissed.

=> ↺ Happy Bier-thday: German beer purity law celebrates 500yrs

• Raise a stein to Germany’s famous beer purity law known as “das Reinheitsgebot” as it celebrates its 500th birthday this year.

• What started out as an order in the duchy of Munich became Bavaria’s law of the land on April 23, 1516, after reunification.

• In 1871 Bavaria insisted on national acceptance before unification with Germany, ending the market for beer from Northern Germany which contained spices and cherries.

=> ↺ How new money has ruined Sesame Street

• Over on Showtime, a new show called Billions just got going in which Damian Lewis plays hedge-fund manager Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, with Paul Giamatti as the US attorney eyeing Axelrod for insider trading. The obvious characterisation would have been to make Axelrod a villain, the embodiment of the world’s intolerance for financiers. Instead, he is a sympathetic version of an Alan Sugar type, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks made good. Perhaps his psychopathy will emerge, but for now the show has pulled off a very tough feat and made one root for the billionaire.

=> ↺ How I ended up paying $150 for a single 60GB download from Amazon Glacier

• In late 2012, I decided that it was time for my last remaining music CDs to go. Between MacBook Airs and the just-introduced MacBook Pro with Retina Display, ours had suddenly become a CD-player-free household.

Science

=> ↺ BLOG: Embracing foreign investment in homegrown high-tech may help Japan build an IP value creation culture

• We learned yesterday that Taiwan’s Foxconn (otherwise known as Hon Hai) has offered to pay as much as $5.3 billion to take over Japan’s struggling Sharp, potentially trumping a possible rescue package being put together by public-private technology-focused investment fund Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ). This is the latest in a series of actual and rumoured attempts made by Foxconn to gain a foothold in the ailing Japanese company – underlining just how valuable Sharp’s IP assets and other intangibles are considered to be, not just to for the wellbeing of Japanese industry, but for foreign players too.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ All Kids in Nebraska Need Is Love

• Instead of focusing on the source of the behavior — oftentimes traumatic experiences — the common response in the United States is to throw young people in locked facilities and refuse them the one thing that truly has the capacity to make a change: human relationships. This is currently standard practice in the state of Nebraska, as the ACLU of Nebraska has documented in “Growing Up Locked Down: Juvenile Solitary Confinement in Nebraska.” The report shows that kids in juvenile justice facilities are being held with minimal human contact and limited access to exercise or fresh air for up to 90 days straight.

=> ↺ EPA orders Michigan to take ‘immediate action’ on Flint water crisis

=> ↺ 5 Huge Scandals Happening Right Now (We’ve Been Ignoring)

=> ↺ Depraved Indifference Toward Flint

=> ↺ How to ignore a mass poisoning in America: The Flint water crisis outrage gets even worse

=> ↺ As Water Problems Grew, Officials Belittled Complaints From Flint

=> ↺ Invisible-Hand-of-the-Free-Market Man in Flint

=> ↺ Chris Savage on Flint Water Poisoning

• This week on CounterSpin: Now everyone is very upset at the state-made disaster that is the poisoning of Flint, Michigan’s water supply. Some children in the largely poor, largely black community have seen lead levels in their blood triple since the decision to take city tap water from the Flint River, but how that decision came to be made is fodder for more than the brief moment of sunlight corporate media generally afford.

Security

=> ↺ Thursday’s security advisories

=> ↺ Bridging the Linux security perception gap

• With the discovery of a zero-day vulnerability in the Linux operating system kernel that could impact all devices including two-thirds of all Android phones, and yet more trouble in the form of Linux.Ekoms.1 malware that captures screenshots every 30 seconds, maybe it’s time to ask just how secure is Linux?

=> ↺ Cyberattacks Against Ukraine Power Grid Continue, Experts Warn Against Blaming Russia

=> ↺ Ukraine: Power firms hit by new wave of cyberattacks

=> ↺ Malware based on open-source backdoor targeting Ukraine power industries

=> ↺ Three ways to build an open source security toolkit

• Enterprises should have a diverse set of open source security tools in their arsenal. Here are three factors that can help guide them in building the right security toolkit.

=> ↺ Linux malware: Second screen-grabbing Trojan surfaces in space of a week

• Researchers have found Linux malware that appears to target a particular brand of Bitcoin ATM but works “just fine” on Ubuntu.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ They Tell Us Nothing But Lies — Paul Craig Roberts

• Litvinenko’s brother and father say that they “are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government.” Maksim Litvinenko dismisses the British report as a smear on Putin.

=> ↺ Petraeus: ‘It’s Time to Unleash America’s Airpower in Afghanistan’

• To begin, Petraeus’ statement that airpower in 2001 “ousted the Taliban,” a statement made without apparent irony, would be hilarious if it was not utterly tragic. Petraeus seems to have missed a few meetings, at which he would have learned that since those victories in 2001 the Taliban has been doing just fine, thanks. The U.S. has remained inside the Afghan quagmire for more than 14 more years, and currently has no end game planned for the war. Air power, with or without “a motivated and competent ground force” (as if such a thing can ever exist in Afghanistan, we’ve been training and equipping there for 14 years), never is enough. There are examples to draw from going back into WWI.

=> ↺ Afghanistan Bans Toy Guns to Curb Culture of Violence

• This one’s so funny that it must be some kind of U.S.-led initiative; I can’t believe the Afghans have this kind of a sense of humor.

• But whatever the origin, Afghanistan banned the sale of imitation Kalashnikovs and other toy guns after they caused injuries to more than 100 people during the last Eid celebrations. Children toting toy guns that fire rubber or plastic pellets are a common sight in the country during Eid al-Fitr, with sales surging every year amid festivities marking the end of Ramadan.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ CMD Submits Evidence of ExxonMobil Funding ALEC’s Climate Change Denial to California Attorney General

• The Center for Media and Democracy, a national watchdog group exposing corporate influence on democracy, has submitted evidence to California Attorney General Kamala Harris showing how ExxonMobil has promoted climate change denial through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). CMD believes this information is relevant to her office’s investigation into whether ExxonMobil deceived its shareholders and the public about the impact that burning fossil fuels has on climate change.

• “ExxonMobil has bankrolled ALEC for decades and has a seat on ALEC’s corporate board, as ALEC has plied legislators with disinformation and denial about climate change and pushed legislation and resolutions to block crucial federal and state efforts to address the climate crisis,” said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice under both Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Janet Reno.

=> ↺ Haze crisis cost Indonesia almost 2% of GDP, World Bank says

• A Forest fires in Indonesia last year cost the country at least $16 billion in economic losses, equivalent to 1.9 percent of its gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

=> ↺ Indonesia’s Fires Blamed For Potent Greenhouse Gases

• Indonesian fires that are expected to flare up again in the coming months may affect temperatures far away from the nation’s watery borders.

• Carbon dioxide and methane from the fires is already known to be accelerating global warming, and new research is linking high levels of another potent greenhouse gas with forest and peat fires in Indonesia and elsewhere.

=> ↺ Land-clearing fires cost Indonesia lives and $16 billion last year—and they’re starting again

• This week Indonesian president Joko Widodo warned that forest fires are once again starting to appear in the country, and called upon citizens to avoid a repeat of last year’s haze crisis, described by some as a “crime against humanity.” During that months-long disaster, large areas of Southeast Asia were smothered in toxic smoke, forcing school closures, flight cancellations, and respiratory problems (even deaths in some cases). The haze was caused by fires sparked to cheaply clear land for agricultural uses, especially palm oil.

Finance

=> ↺ Canada may “scrub” CETA rule allowing corporations to sue governments but we’ll keep it in the TPP?

• Remind us why this is supposed to be a good idea?

• The Government of Canada appears to be tiptoeing away from a controversial provision in a new trade deal with the European Union at the same time as they’re plowing ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes a similarly controversial provision.

• According to CBC News, Canada and the EU are quietly discussing how to “scrub” a clause from CETA (the “Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement” between Canada and the EU) that would allow multinational corporations to sue governments for passing laws that get in the way of their business interests.

=> ↺ Dangerous Regulatory Duet

• How transatlantic regulatory cooperation under TTIP will allow bureaucrats and big business to attack the public interest

=> ↺ Graft allegations hit ally of Japan PM

• A Japanese minister who was the country’s top negotiator for a huge trans-Pacific trade deal was accused of corruption on Thursday, piling pressure on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of parliamentary elections this year.

• Weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun claimed that Economy and Fiscal Policy Minister Akira Amari, who also serves as Japan’s chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and his staff accepted a 12 million yen ($102,000) “bribe” from a construction firm.

• The allegations against a key ally of the prime minister come ahead of upper house elections in July and as the government looks to ratify the TPP, a massive multi-nation deal of which Japan has been a key player.

=> ↺ 10 textbook firms rewarded 4,000 officials

• Ten textbook publishing companies showed a total of about 4,000 teachers and other officials textbooks under screening, and gave cash or book vouchers — or both — to each of them after fiscal 2009, with the cash worth ¥3,000 to ¥50,000, according to a survey by the education ministry, details of which were announced Friday.

=> ↺ Google to pay UK £130m in back taxes

=> ↺ Google agrees £130m UK tax deal with HMRC

• Google has agreed to pay £130m in back taxes after an “open audit” of its accounts by the UK tax authorities.

• The company had been accused of “not paying its fair share” of tax, and criticised for complex tax structures.

• Senior figures at the technology company have said that they want to draw a line under the issue.

=> ↺ Poverty may alter the wiring of kids’ brains

• Growing up poor is known to leave lasting impressions, from squashing IQ potential to increasing risks of depression. Now, as part of an effort to connect the dots between those outcomes and identify the developmental differences behind them, researchers have found that poverty actually seems to change the way the brain wires up.

• Compared to kids in higher socioeconomic brackets, impoverished little ones were more likely to have altered functional connections between parts of the brain. Specifically, the changes affected the connections from areas involved in memory and stress responses to those linked to emotional control. The finding, appearing in The American Journal of Psychiatry, suggests that poor kids may have trouble regulating their own emotional responses, which may help explain poverty’s well-established link to depression and other negative mood disorders.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ US experts gird Finnish officials for information war

• Behind closed doors, about 100 Finnish state officials have this week been undergoing training in American-style management of public information. The most concrete advice they’ve received from US lecturers? Avoid repeating false claims.

Censorship

=> ↺ Students hit back at fancy-dress ‘censorship’

• Hundreds of university students have protested against a fancy-dress crackdown banning them from dressing up as characters including gangsters and even the American singer Chris Brown.

=> ↺ EUSA bans students from dressing as Pocahontas and Caitlyn Jenner in strict costume policy

• The students’ union at one of Scotland’s most prestigious universities has banned students from dressing as Pocahontas and Caitlyn Jenner in a strict costume policy, provoking debate in the same week it was revealed to be one of the UK’s most “ban-happy” institutions when it comes to free speech.

• The Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) at the University of Edinburgh also put the policy into place for after reported cases of blackface saw students darkening their skin – a move the EUSA says “has a racist history and is unacceptable” – during nights out.

=> ↺ Moroccans shut down their phones to protest Internet censorship

• Morocco has witnessed an unprecedented event as citizens of all ages decided to shut down their phones last weekend, in an unparalleled wave of discontent after a decision by the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (well known under its French acronym ANRT) aimed at blocking all software that use Voice over IP (VoIP) technology in the kingdom.

=> ↺ Google Ideas Boss’s Really Bad Idea: Kick ISIS Off The Open Web

• Over the last few weeks, there’s been increasing focus on what “else” Silicon Valley can do in the fight against ISIS. Backdooring encryption is a dumb idea that won’t work and will make everyone less safe. So, a second idea keeps getting floated: what if we just stopped letting ISIS use the internet. Hell, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump supported the idea recently. And then you have some wacky law professors suggesting the same thing.

=> ↺ Japan’s education ministry exposes mass violations of textbook censorship rules

• Japan’s education ministry said Friday that more than half of the nation’s publishers of school textbooks had broken strict censorship regulations, with thousands of teachers potentially being paid illicitly to provide input to the books.

=> ↺ Japan’s education ministry exposes mass violations of textbook censorship rules

=> ↺ Censorship on the campus… from the daft to the disturbing

• Readers may remember the Belfast Telegraph reporting last year how Queen’s University had managed to get itself into a bit of a twist over free speech.

• Due to “security concerns” the university cancelled a conference organised to discuss the fallout from the jihadist attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office in Paris that claimed the lives of 12 people.

• Of course, one of the biggest pieces of fallout from a massacre at a magazine is the issue of free speech itself. The irony of the ban was not lost on campaigners and participants.

=> ↺ Karan Johar opens up about fighting censorship with every film

• Yet another name added on to the ‘Bollywood A-listers fighting intolerance list’ is ace film maker Karan Johar.

=> ↺ Karan Johar calls himself ‘an FIR king’

• Karan Johar spoke his mind at the Jaipur Literature Festival when he called “freedom of expression and democracy the two biggest jokes in India,” and jokingly referred to himself as ‘an FIR king’.

=> ↺ Imtiaz Ali Says India Can’t Be Clerical About Censorship

=> ↺ Censorship in India needs to be holistic rather than clerical: Imtiaz Ali

• Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali believes censorship in India needs to be holistic and should also consider restrictions on other mediums of communication via which viewers can access the censored content.

• Responding to a poser from a young audience member — on whether India’s censorship policy takes away the audience’s liberty to choose the movie they want to watch — at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet on Friday, the Tamasha maker batted for a holistic point of view rather than just adhering to strict points.

• “I feel the censorship of movies should also look at the censorship of various other mediums of communication that the audience is used to.

=> ↺ Imtiaz Ali: Censorship in India needs to be holistic

=> ↺ Bennett: Education Reform Will Get Rid of Current Cultural Censorship in Israel

• Education minister was responding to Haaretz report on Thursday that the ministry was planning a ‘blacklist’ of unacceptable plays and performances.

=> ↺ Ex-Soviet Moldova mired in political crisis as protests heat up

=> ↺ Moldovans march again and call for government to resign

=> ↺ Moldovan Protests Continue

=> ↺ Protesters in Moldova’s capital Chisinau to elect national salvation committee on Sunday

=> ↺ Moldova: 3000 protest, call for early elections

=> ↺ Moldova Elections Protests Enter Third Day After New Government Secretly Sworn In

=> ↺ Public protests escalate in Moldova

=> ↺ Moldovan protesters keep up pressure for early elections, reforms

=> ↺ Moldovan protest leaders given air time on TV

=> ↺ Thousands protest against media censorship outside Chisinau public TV building

=> ↺ Moldovan opposition pickets outside Constitutional Court, TV channel building

=> ↺ TASS: Moldovan authorities start negotiations with demonstrators after Wednesday protests

=> ↺ West hails Moldova’s new PM to prevent pro-Russian forces gain upper hand

=> ↺ Moldovan authorities start negotiations with demonstrators after Wednesday protests

=> ↺ Here’s How Netflix Inc. Can Take On Censors Around the World

• Starting with Indonesia and Kenya, the streaming-video provider is running into censorship on a level it has never seen before.

Privacy

=> ↺ Legislator Thinks Warrantless Cell Phone Searches The Best Way To Combat Distracted Driving

• The Supreme Court’s Riley decision made it clear: law enforcement cannot search cell phones without a warrant. Seems pretty straightforward. Cell phones aren’t mere “containers” — they contain a great deal of information that has historically been afforded a reasonable expectation of privacy. Get a warrant.

=> ↺ California Legislator Says Encryption ‘Threatens Our Freedoms’ Calls For Ban On Encrypted Cell Phones

• If all goes according to these legislators’ plans, Flyover Country will have something the coasts don’t: encrypted cell phones. Because there’s always room for one more bad idea, California assemblyman Jim Cooper is following up New York assemblyman Matthew Titone’s call for a ban on encrypted phones with one of his own.

=> ↺ Direct Democracy: Successful Petition Gives Swiss Citizens Chance To Vote Against New Surveillance Law

• A common lament these days is that people have no real political power. Yes, elections take place, but after that, politicians just seem to do what they want, with little concern for what the public really thinks about the laws that they push through, as many stories here on Techdirt indicate. In particular, there is generally no mechanism to cancel a new law except by waiting for the next elections, and voting for a party that might repeal it. Often that’s not an option, which means the public has no way to stop harmful legislation from going into effect.

=> ↺ NSA’s First Post-USA Freedom Act Report Shows It Can Still Turn Transparency Into Opacity

• The NSA has released its first post-USA Freedom Act “Transparency Report,” highlighting the changes made to its bulk records collection as a result of the legislation. The NSA is now limited to approaching service providers for records using RAS (Reasonable Articulable Suspicion)-approved selectors, rather than simply gathering everything and sorting through it at its convenience.

=> ↺ NSA director: ‘Encryption is foundational to the future’

=> ↺ Declassified documents reveal scope of Defense Department’s cyber strategy

=> ↺ The NSA has a brilliant stance on encryption

=> ↺ NSA Director Defends Encryption

=> ↺ Rogers: Partnerships Key To Managing Cyberspace

=> ↺ NSA Director Finally Admits Encryption Is Needed to Protect Public’s Privacy

=> ↺ NSA chief: anti-encryption arguments ‘waste of time’ as new reports note ‘chill’ effect

=> ↺ Even the Director of the NSA Supports Strong Encryption

=> ↺ Shops can track you via your smartphone, privacy watchdog warns

• The UK’s data protection watchdog has warned that retailers can track every move of their customers using their phones and target them using facial recognition software.

• The technology, which has been available for the last couple of years in some form, is capable of tracking a smartphone using the unique identifier that it broadcasts via Wi-Fi. It is the same as that used by beacons which track smartphones using the unique Bluetooth identifiers every smartphone puts out when the wireless communications service is switched on.

• Simon Rice, the group manager for technology with the Information Commissioner’s Office (Ico) said: “This technology, which is starting to be rolled out in shops, allows retailers to use the customer journey to build up a picture as to how people typically use the store. It uses the MAC address of a smartphone which can, in many cases, be linked to a specific individual.

=> ↺ Norway’s largest bank calls for total end to cash

• Norway’s largest bank, DNB, has said that cash has fallen out of favour with everyday Norwegians and is instead primarily used on the black market and in laundering schemes.

• “Today, there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation and [central bank] Norges Bank can only account for 40 percent of its use. That means that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control. We believe that is due to under-the-table money and laundering,” bank executive Trond Bentestuen told VG.

=> ↺ Secret SSH backdoor in Fortinet hardware found in more products

• The undocumented account with a hard-coded password came to light last week when attack code exploiting the backdoor was posted online. In response, Fortinet officials said it affected only older versions of Fortinet’s FortiOS software. The company went on to say the undocumented method for logging into servers using the secure shell (SSH) protocol was a “remote management” feature that had been removed in July 2014.

=> ↺ GCHQ-developed crypto tools have built-in backdoors to allow snooping

=> ↺ British Government Has Already Created a Data Encryption Protocol Complete with a Backdoor

=> ↺ UK’s GCHQ spy agency pushes VOIP crypto protocol that ‘facilitates mass surveillance,’ says researcher

=> ↺ GCHQ spies quashed this phone encryption because it was too good against snoopers

=> ↺ GCHQ VoIP software can be used to eavesdrop

=> ↺ GCHQ Developed Encryption Software ‘Has Backdoor’

=> ↺ GCHQ shot down encryption standard because it was too good

=> ↺ Latest Tech News: GCHQ-developed phone security ‘open to surveillance’

=> ↺ Censorship Transparency Comes to the Web

• Understanding the scale of censorship taking place on the internet is a persistent challenge for internet rights and civil liberties groups. The global nature of the internet means that internet and content service providers are routinely subject to requests by legal authorities to block access to certain content.

• Unfortunately, there has been no easy way for a service provider to comply with a blocking order while also notifying users that censorship has taken place. As a result, users are often left unable to determine precisely why content is inaccessible; with many mistaking censorship for merely a technical issue. Consequently, users will be less likely to pursue legal recourse or otherwise try to hold their governments to account for their censorious activity.

• Last month, the IETF approved a new HTTP status code that could help solve this problem. The code, which gives websites and ISPs a standardised way to notify users that content cannot be served due to a legal order, is an enormous step forward for understanding the scale of censorship on the web.

=> ↺ ​Spy agency GCHQ offer students £250 a week for “summer job”

=> ↺ GCHQ offers students summer job with a difference

=> ↺ Blog: NSA’s Adm. Michael Rogers Taps Industry for Social Media Counterterrorism Ideas

• The U.S. also intends to collaborate with its foreign allies to address global cybersecurity challenges, while the Defense Department works to establish a “cyber hygiene” culture as well as promote user responsibility in cyberspace, Rogers told forum audience.

=> ↺ Ding-Dong — Your Easily Hacked ‘Smart’ Doorbell Just Gave Up Your WiFi Credentials

• Have we mentioned lately that when it comes to the so-called “internet of things,” security is an afterthought? Whether it’s your automobile, your refrigerator or your tea kettle, so-called “smart” internet of things devices are consistently and alarmingly showing that they’re anything but. If these devices aren’t busy giving intruders access to your networks and passwords, they’re often making life more difficult than so-called dumb devices. Last week, for example, the popular Nest smart thermostat simply stopped working after a software update, resulting in thousands of customers being unable to heat their homes.

=> ↺ ISIS Now Has Its Own Encrypted Messaging App; Doubt They’ll Abide By Politicians’ Demands For Backdoors

• As law enforcement and politicians still keep pushing American companies to backdoor encryption, making the technology less secure and more dangerous for everyone, no one has explained how this will actually help in stopping terrorists from communicating secretly. Back in December, the Open Technology Institute released a paper that detailed how so many encrypted messaging systems were either open source or not controlled by US companies. It even took a WSJ report on the messaging apps that ISIS apparently was “recommending” to people and noted how most of them are not controllable by US laws…

=> ↺ Rogers: Cyber doesn’t need its own military branch

=> ↺ Rogers: Cyber Command capabilities at ‘tipping point’

=> ↺ Countries starting to use non-state middlemen for cyber ops

=> ↺ NSA Chief Says U.S. at ‘Tipping Point’ on Cyberweapons

=> ↺ Encryption Debate A ‘Waste Of Time,’ NSA Director Says Amid Security vs. Surveillance Battle

=> ↺ NSA Chief Stakes Out Pro-Encryption Position, in Contrast to FBI

=> ↺ Arguing Against Data Encryption ‘Waste of Time’ – US Cyber Command

=> ↺ NSA chief: Encryption is here to stay

=> ↺ Does the NSA’s pro-encryption stance mean it’s already broken common protocols?

=> ↺ NSA Chief Mike Rogers: Encryption Is ‘Foundational to the Future’

=> ↺ The NSA Can Spy on You With or Without Encryption

• The leaders controlling the US surveillance apparatus can’t agree on encryption. FBI Director Comey has hysterically characterized it as a safe haven for evil-doers. A high-ranking Department of Justice official insisted that encryption could cause a child to die. Meanwhile, the National Security Agency’s leaders are extremely chill about encryption—which is terrifying.

=> ↺ The NSA really hated this Will Smith movie

• “Unfortunately, the truth isn’t always as riveting as fiction,” one email says, “and creative license may mean that ‘the NSA,’ as portrayed in a given production, bears little resemblance to the place where we all work.” Though released more than a decade before the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden came to light, the movie cast the NSA as the villain, taking a critical eye to its spying powers and opposing its expansion.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ Leaked Savile report: Paedophile ‘could be lurking undiscovered in the BBC’

• A PAEDOPHILE could still be lurking undiscovered at the BBC according to a leaked report which also claims the whistle blowing culture at the BBC is now “worse” than in sick Jimmy Savile’s time.

=> ↺ Another Lawmaker Is Trying To Create A Photography-Free Zone For Police Officers

• A former cop is trying to legislate some First Amendment-violating protection for his blue-clad brothers. Everyone’s carrying a camera these days and Arizona Senator John Kavanaugh wants them to be as far away as possible from police officers performing their public duties. Ken White (aka Popehat) summarizes the proposed legislation for FaultLines.

=> ↺ Body Cam Footage Leads To Federal Indictment Of Abusive Las Vegas Cop

• Body cameras are working as intended. Of course, this is a very limited sampling and the fact that anything happened at all to the abusive cop was reliant on him being either too stupid or too arrogant to shut his body-worn camera off.

=> ↺ How The UK’s Counter-Terrorism And Security Act Has Made Law Enforcement Into The Literal Grammar Police

• We’ve already talked a couple of times about the intersection with the UK’s disastrous Counter-Terrorism and Security Act and its intersection with the country’s educational system. As part of its effort to weed out terrorists, the UK tasked teachers with keeping a watchful eye on their students to try to identify those that would be radicalized in the future, a concept that sounds like something out of Airstrip One rather than England. Shortly thereafter it was discovered that a software package that teachers had been given to help with this was exploitable in the typically laughable ways. But the tech isn’t the only shortfall here. As one would expect when you take a group of people whose profession has in absolutely no way prepared them to act as counter-terrorism psychologists and ask them to be just that, it turns out that the human intelligence portion of this insane equation is off by several integers as well.

=> ↺ After FBI briefly ran Tor-hidden child-porn site, investigations went global

• In 2015, the FBI seized a Tor-hidden child-porn website known as Playpen and allowed it to run for 13 days so that the FBI could deploy malware in order to identify and prosecute the website’s users. That malware, known in FBI-speak as a “network investigative technique,” was authorized by a federal court in Virginia in February 2015.

• In a new revelation, Vice Motherboard has now determined that this operation had much wider berth. The FBI’s Playpen operation was effectively transformed into a global one, reaching Turkey, Colombia, and Greece, among others.

=> ↺ FBI “took over world’s biggest child porn website”

• The FBI took over the world biggest child pornography website in a sting operation intended to catch viewers of sexual images of children sometimes “barely old enough for kindergarten”, it has been revealed.

=> ↺ FBI ran website sharing thousands of child porn images

• For nearly two weeks last year, the FBI operated what it described as one of the Internet’s largest child pornography websites, allowing users to download thousands of illicit images and videos from a government site in the Washington suburbs.

• The operation — whose details remain largely secret — was at least the third time in recent years that FBI agents took control of a child pornography site but left it online in an attempt to catch users who officials said would otherwise remain hidden behind an encrypted and anonymous computer network. In each case, the FBI infected the sites with software that punctured that security, allowing agents to identify hundreds of users.

=> ↺ FBI May Have Hacked Innocent TorMail Users

• Back in 2013, the FBI seized TorMail, one of the most popular dark web email services, and shortly after started to rifle through the server’s contents.

• At the time, researchers suspected the agency had also deployed a network investigative technique (NIT)—the FBI’s term for a hacking tool—to infect users of the site. Now, confirmation of that hacking campaign has come about buried in a Washington Post report on the FBI’s recent NIT usage.

• Even more questions have now been raised, however. In particular, it’s unclear whether the hacking was carried out on a much larger scale than the FBI is letting on, possibly sweeping up innocent users of the privacy-focused email service.

=> ↺ Administration Says Child Porn Provides A ‘Model’ For Hunting Terrorists Online

• The administration is trying to draft tech companies into the War on Terror. Encryption — despite being given an unofficial “hands-off” by President Obama — is still being debated, with FBI Director James Comey and a few law enforcement officials leading the charge up the hill they apparently want to die on.

• One of the aspects discussed was how to deter online communications involving terrorists. Trying to deputize tech companies is a non-starter, considering the potential for collateral damage. But that’s not stopping the administration from trying to do exactly that, and it’s willing to deploy the most terrible participant in its parade of horrors.

=> ↺ Australia’s day for secrets, flags and cowards

• On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.

• For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to call “New Australians” often choose 26 January, “Australia Day”, to be sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.

=> ↺ UK Police Deny Misspelling Led To Investigation, Say It Was Other Schoolwork Instead

• We had just relayed a story via the BBC about an elementary school kid in the UK earning a visit to his home from the authorities after writing in an English assignment that he lived in a “terrorist house”, when he reportedly was trying to say he lived in a “terraced house.” The crux of this story was that the UK’s Anti-Terrorism law, which requires that school teachers act as surveillance agents for the state in an attempt to weed out future-radicalized will-be-terrorists is a policy built for unintended chaos, given that teachers are neither trained nor properly equipped to fulfill this role. The resulting visit to the boy’s home by the authorities from a misspelled word was billed as an example of this overreach by government.

=> ↺ Royal pair’s ‘scandalous’ Saudi Arabia plans slammed

• But controversy surrounding Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and recent political developments in the country, which applies a strict interpretation of Islamic law, has caused a number of participants to reconsider their involvement, according to the TV2 report.

• Spokesperson Nikolaj Villumsen of the left-wing Enhedslisten party was harshly critical of the proposed official visit.

• “I think it is completely scandalous, if it’s true that the royal family and industry representatives are on their way to Saudi Arabia,” Villumsen told TV2.

• “[Saudi Arabia] is a brutal dictatorship where supporters of democracy are whipped, dissidents are beheaded and princes throw millions at Isis and other extremists. This is not a country that should be receiving official visits from Denmark,” he continued.

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Platform Loyalty

• The concept of “Neutrality of the platforms”, or “Loyalty of the platforms”, emerged among editors and web hosts that suffer or question the commanding position of major players of the Web, particularly in the USA and in other English speaking countries.

• These notions of “loyalty” and “neutrality” of the platforms may have been used to divert MPs from the debate on Net Neutrality.

• Platform loyalty should be envisaged in an environment where questions of the user’s control of its digital terminals (computer, tablet, mobile phone, other connected objects such as the ones referred to when talking about the “quantified self”, etc.), monopoly positions of some companies, problematics of tax system and revenue sharing are more and more intricate.

=> ↺ BT should be forced to sell Openreach service, report says

• BT should be forced to sell the country’s leading broadband provider because of poor performance, a report backed by 121 cross-party MPs has said.

• The report, commissioned by ex-Tory chairman Grant Shapps, said BT’s Openreach service had only partially extended superfast broadband despite £1.7bn of government money.

• It should be sold off to increase competition, the report added. BT should be forced to sell the country’s leading broadband provider because of poor performance, a report backed by 121 cross-party MPs has said.

• The report, commissioned by ex-Tory chairman Grant Shapps, said BT’s Openreach service had only partially extended superfast broadband despite £1.7bn of government money.

• It should be sold off to increase competition, the report added.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Pirate Party politics

• Each Pirate Party, whether in the UK or Sweden, operates independently rather than as one organisation and has seen varying degrees of success. Iceland’s Pirate Party is now the largest political party in the country, with high hopes for the 2017 general election. In the UK the Pirate Party is looking to increase its supporters and active members over the next year as well as contesting a number of seats in the May 2016 local elections.

=> ↺ WIPO Conference on IP and Development Provisional Programme Is Out

Copyrights

=> ↺ They put a Pirate Party MEP in charge of EU copyright reform: you won’t believe awesomesauce that followed

• Julia Reda, the sharp-as-a-tack Member of the European Parliament for the German Pirate Party, has just tendered her draft report on copyright reform in the EU. It is full of amazingly sensible suggestions.

• Among them: harmonizing EU exceptions to copyright (what would be called “fair use” in the USA), so that things that are permitted in one EU state are permitted in the others. This is very important because as it stands, a work that is legal in one EU country can be a copyright infringement next door, meaning that by crossing a border, you commit an offense, and meaning that artists who make transformative uses in one EU member state can be held liable for punishing fines next door.

• Another good ‘un: shortening the term of copyright to the term set out in the Berne Convention (life of the creator plus 50 years), ending the trend of extending EU copyright every time the Beatles and Elvis near the public domain.

=> ↺ EFF Warns Against Broad “Stay Down” Anti-Piracy Filters

• Copyright holders want websites to implement strict filters to guarantee that content stays down after a DMCA notice is received. The EFF warns against these demands, arguing that they will lead to a “filter everything” approach. According to the EFF this will result in more abuse and mistakes from often automated takedown bots.

=> ↺ UK Gov Opens Consultation on Netflix-Style Geo-Blocking

• The UK government has launched a public consultation on the EU’s proposals to ban Netflix-style geo-blocking. The government says it wants its citizens to be able to access legally purchased content wherever they travel in the European Union and is now seeking input from copyright owners, ISPs and consumers.

=> ↺ Piracy Can Boost Digital Music Sales, Research Shows

• A new academic paper published by the Economics Department of Queen’s University examines the link between BitTorrent downloads and music album sales. The study shows that depending on the circumstances, piracy can hurt sales or give it a boost through free promotion.

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