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● 02.16.16

● Links 16/2/2016: FOSS Search Engine of Wikipedia, Street Fighter V on GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 6:03 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Year of Linux Depends on How You Define Linux

• It didn’t happen slowly. On the contrary, it was a thunderbolt…a deep, thrumming, resounding sense of being right, of being at the right place at the right time. A sense of finding something that you knew without doubt would be important in your life. There wasn’t any need to “think it through” or “evaluate the situation.” The moment I realized the power under my fingertips, even my self-identity changed. With that moment growing like a supernova inside of me, I fully took on that new identity. As that blazing power exploded from within me, I knew who I was. I was now a firebrand. It was six years ago this month that I knew who I was.

=> ↺ LXer Suffering From Scattered Outages

• If you’ve been trying to get on LXer and having no luck, it’s not just you. Today the site is unreachable for at least much of the U.S.

• The popular Linux and FOSS website LXer seems to be unreachable in many parts of the U.S. today. In the areas affected, users trying to reach the site are taken to a Network Solutions holding page instead.

• We first became aware of the problem at about 7 a.m. EST when an attempt to access the site took us to a Network Solutions landing page. We had visited the site several times in the previous hour without difficulty. At about 8 a.m., access to the site returned briefly, but by 9 a.m. the site was again unreachable. We haven’t been able to access the site since.

Desktop

=> ↺ If you’re a developer and not using Linux, I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but Linux ain’t one.

• It was sometime in late 2014 during my internship where I finally made the decision to switch to doing all my personal development projects on a Linux distro. I had been using a Ubuntu virtual machine while working as an intern and after a couple of weeks of using it properly and not like the way I was taught at University I began understanding why exactly so many people prefer Unix based systems over Windows for development.

=> ↺ Full Migration from Windows to Linux – Report #2 Software

• But I’ve made a move and started using Kdenlive on Linux Mint 17.3 to edit videos of my sister and I playing video games (not original sure, but we have fun doing it). The first thing I tried was to simply load in the recorded video plus audio from the mic and dive face first into editing it and attempting to do all the same things I do with my editing style with Premiere. This includes just simple stuff as fading from and to black, audio dips in keyframe moments (when coughing) splicing the video when cuts are needed and fading into other video (example on a video here) and laying video over other video in a lower corner. Simple things sure but I found all of these things and more within Kdenlive, even a few things I wish Premiere had but I guess that isn’t a problem any more! As for diving in face first you’ll just waste time, find someone who has put up a tutorial (I found this guy who goes into some nice detail but do look at several videos). Even if you know how non-linear video editing works in practice the software is an entirely different tool even if it’s doing the same thing.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ The Linux Foundation’s big plan to speed up storage, networking

• Kagiso Interactive shares: The Fast Data Project aims for a fast, open source data plane for networking and storage

• The Linux Foundation continues to think big. It became a hub for containers by spearheading the Open Container Project and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and it has pushed to make APIs self-standardizing. Now, it’s kicked off yet another industry-wide open source initiative: the Fast Data Project (Fd.io).

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Launches FD.io Open Source IO Services Framework

• The Linux Foundation announced Fido (FD.io), which is an open source product aimed at providing an IO services framework for network and storage software. It’s initial software is now available as is a validation testing lab.

=> ↺ Here’s Why The Linux Foundation Is Working With Obama Administration

• In the recently announced Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP), White House is going to collaborate with the Linux foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII)…

=> ↺ Hyperledger Project Moves Forward Open Source Blockchain Digital Technology

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ NVIDIA Releases Initial Signed Firmware Images For GTX 900 Series Open-Source Support

=> ↺ RadeonSI Gallium3D Is Competing Remarkably Well For Valve’s Dota 2 On Linux

• When running Valve’s Dota 2 game on Linux and using the Linux 4.5 kernel and Mesa 11.2, the performance of the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver with Radeon and AMDGPU DRM drivers is performing remarkably well compared to the proprietary AMD Linux graphics driver.

=> ↺ Libdrm 2.4.67 Has Many Changes For AMDGPU, Freedreno, Kabylake

=> ↺ virglrenderer project gets mailing-list and hosting

=> ↺ The VirGL Virtual OpenGL Renderer Is Growing Up

=> ↺ GeForce GTX 900 open-source firmware images and support code released

• Nvidia has released the signed firmware images and support code which will enable the GeForce GTX 900 “Maxwell” series to run under its open-source driver.

• An Nvidia spokesman said that it has taken a long time for this to happen and he was sorry it took so long.

=> ↺ Nouveau Developers Already Got 3D Games Running On Maxwell GPUs

• Less than 24 hours after NVIDIA finally posted the signed firmware images for the GTX 900 “Maxwell” GPUs, Nouveau developers have succeeded in already getting 3D games running on their open-source driver stack.

• Ben Skeggs, the Nouveau DRM maintainer at Red Hat, has already been successful in getting the moderately-demanding Xonotic first person shooter game running on a GM200 GPU. He also got GLAMOR working for providing 2D acceleration over OpenGL. The Piglit OpenGL regression tests for Mesa are also beginning to run on the modified Nouveau DRM driver and patches that have yet to be mainlined for Mesa’s Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D driver.

=> ↺ Libinput 1.2 Steps Closer To Reality

• Peter Hutterer announced the release today of libinput 1.1.902 as the latest development snapshot of this input handling library becoming very common to Wayland / Mir / X11 systems.

Benchmarks

=> ↺ LLVM Clang 3.8 Compiler Performance Benchmarks

• With LLVM 3.8 scheduled to be released this week, here are benchmarks of the LLVM Clang 3.8 compiler code compared to Clang 3.7 and Clang 3.6 for a variety of C/C++ performance benchmarks.

Applications

=> ↺ RSS Puppy: a lightweight, open source RSS reader

• At the BuzzFeed Open Lab, we’ve been thinking a lot about automated journalism. In particular, we’d like to build open source tools that can be used by newsrooms big and small to empower journalists instead of replace them. As a first small step in this direction, we’ve built a tool for monitoring RSS feeds in bulk that we’re using internally to make the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s EDGAR system more accessible.

=> ↺ FFmpeg 3.0 Released, Supports VP9 VA-API Acceleration

• FFmpeg 3.0 is now available for your open-source multimedia needs.

• There are many changes to FFmpeg 3.0 and among them are:

• • Common Encryption (CENC) MP4 encoding and decoding support.

=> ↺ Piracy Box Sellers Are Hurting Kodi, Community Help Is Needed

• Kodi is an amazing multimedia hub, but it seems that the project is being used in some nefarious way. Developers intend to enforce the trademark in order to protect the good name of the project.

=> ↺ Nuvola Player 3.0.1 Music Cloud Player Is Out

• Nuvola Player, a web interface for cloud music services that runs in its own window and provides integration with a Linux desktop, has been upgraded to version 3.0.1.

=> ↺ FFmpeg 3.0 Is a Massive Release with DXVA2-Accelerated VP9 Decoding, New Filters

• The FFmpeg developers have revealed earlier today, February 15, 2016, the massive FFmpeg 3.0 release of the popular and powerful open-source multimedia framework for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows operating systems.

• While there’s still no official announcement on the project’s website, we have managed to get our hands on the internal changelog (available in the source archive), so we can now tell you what’s new in FFmpeg 3.0.

=> ↺ retask 1.0 is out

• Retask is a super simple Task Queue written in Python. It uses Redis in the backend, and works with both Python2, and Python3. The last official release was 0.4 back in 2013. The code base is very stable and we only received few queries about adding new features.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Opera: We Will Continue to Respect User Privacy After Possible Chinese Buyout

• The recent news of the Opera buyout by a Chinese consortium has left many users wondering what’s going to happen next. The company reached out to explain to users that nothing will change with the Norwegian Internet browser and services.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Debugging golang programs

=> ↺ How to install Joomla 3 on Ubuntu 14.04

=> ↺ Looking forward to GCC6 – Many new warnings

=> ↺ GCC6 Is Bringing More Helpful Warnings For Developers

=> ↺ Create your own VPN server

=> ↺ Weblate supports Python 3

=> ↺ How to create an iSCSI Target in Centos7

=> ↺ What’s Difference Between Grep, Egrep and Fgrep in Linux?

=> ↺ How to change default boot kernel permanently or temporarily on CentOS

=> ↺ Installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 14.04 – 15.10

=> ↺ Automount NFS share in Linux using autofs

=> ↺ Keyboard input methods and i18n on elementary OS

Games

=> ↺ Street Fighter V is coming to Linux and SteamOS this Spring

=> ↺ Street Fighter 5 coming to Linux and SteamOS in spring

=> ↺ Street Fighter V gets a surprise release on SteamOS and Linux

=> ↺ Street Fighter V Coming to SteamOS and Linux This Spring

=> ↺ Street Fighter V Gets a Linux/Steam OS Version in Spring 2016

=> ↺ Now available on Steam for PC, Mac & Linux

• Discover how far you can get at Super Helmets on Fire DX Ultra Edition Plus Alpha and try to save the world with your bare hands.

=> ↺ Nvidia releases 361.91 driver and improves Linux support

• Street Fighter V is coming out tomorrow, and Nvidia is making sure that gamers can hadouken each other with maximum graphical fidelity. The company has just released its WHQL-certified 361.91 drivers, which offer some tweaks for Capcom’s fighting game and a bevy of SLI profile updates for other titles.

• Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, XCOM 2, the trial version of Need for Speed, Rainbow Six: Siege, The Division, the Bless MMORPG, and Elite: Dangerous 64-bit all get SLI profiles with this update. GeForce owners can download the 361.91 drivers through GeForce Experience or directly from Nvidia’s servers. Click here for the Windows 10 driver, or here for the Windows 8.1, 8, or 7 version. Nvidia’s release notes for this release can be read in full here.

=> ↺ GeForce 361.91 WHQL Video Card Drivers Released For Street Fighter V

=> ↺ Nvidia’s Geforce 361.91 WHQL Driver Now Available

=> ↺ Nvidia Releases Game Ready 361.91 Driver for Street Fighter V, Hitman Beta

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ GSoC 2016 Project Survey, help me make Dolphin a better File Manager!

• I am a first year computer science undergraduate from BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus. I am looking forward to working for KDE for the GSoC.

=> ↺ Interview with Wes Nunes

• What I love about Krita? Just everything. Tools, brushes, it does not weigh on my computer, it was extremely easy to learn how to work on and it is a well-organized program. Not to mention that it has a beautiful interface. What else could I want in software?

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME Software Now Supports Upgrading Linux OSes from One Release to Another

• The GNOME Project is currently in the process of releasing the first Beta milestone of the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment, so they’re upgrading most of the core components to the Beta 1 status.

• GNOME Software is one of the most important components of the GNOME desktop environment, and it has been updated earlier to version 3.20 Beta 1 (technical version number is 3.19.90). Thus, Softpedia is now the first website to reveal the new features implemented in the upcoming release, which, of course, will be distributed along with GNOME 3.20 on March 23, 2016.

=> ↺ Epiphany Web Browser to Allow Users to Open XZ Tarballs in GNOME 3.20

Distributions

=> ↺ distribution specific details

• To state the obvious: my personal preference is to run Debian GNU/Linux. My current workplace is a CentOS shop and usually I’m the first to claim that it doesn’t matter at all, and distribution specific implementation details are irrelevant for what we do (running a JVM).

Reviews

=> ↺ More distro tests on Lenovo G50

• How are we doing here? Well, okay. Not stellar, but not bad either. New technology will always take time getting adopted and implemented properly. For instance, UEFI is no longer an issue. But I am more worried about in-between-release inconsistency in the quality of drivers for the network and power management rather than the fact something works or not. Things that suddenly break are far more serious.

• Provided they work in the first place. Of the three major distro families, Red Hat is out of the picture. Ubuntu suffers from Wireless hiccups. Well, all of them really, to be honest. Bluetooth remains unreliable. And there are some other issues and problems. I won’t be comparing to Windows, because it really makes no sense. In fact, early on, Windows 10 had some major difficulties with the hardware, too.

• All in all, if you are keen on using Linux, statistically, your initial boot luck stands at about 75%, the probability of failing when it comes to networking is about 0.3, and if you need strong smartphone or Bluetooth support, you will be disappointed. Ubuntu clearly leads overall, which is kind of expected, haters be hating. Anyhow, this is where we stand, end of 2015 early 2016, a laptop that is less than one year old. If you are looking for the latest and greatest, hardware and Linux wise, the initial ride could be a little rough and tough. But definitely quite doable and fun. Provided you choose Ubuntu. Hard facts, 30+ distros tested. Hint: This is not the end of it. Far from it. We’ll get some more funky distros under our belt, or my name isn’t Sam. Maybe even Fedora. Who knows. Hint. See you around, fellas.

=> ↺ XStream Desktop 153

• Launching XStream’s system installer brings up a series of text screens. Each screen displays a group of fields or menus we a can navigate with the page up/down keys and the function keys. The installer begins by asking us on which hard disk we want to install XStream. We are then given the option of using the entire disk or installing XStream on a specific partition. Once we have selected a free partition, we are asked to provide a hostname for our computer. We are then given the option of automatically setting up networking using DHCP or we can set up our network card by manually providing network settings. We then select our time zone from a list and confirm the system clock has the correct time. The following screen gets us to create a password for the root account and set up a new user account for ourselves. The installer copies its files to our hard drive and then gives us the option to either view the installation log or quit. Taking the latter option returns us to the menu where we can run the installer, access a command line shell or reboot.

New Releases

=> ↺ Emmabuntüs Linux Debian Edition Announced, Dedicated to the Memory of Ian Murdock

• Patrick Emmabuntus informs Softpedia today about the immediate availability for download of the first Beta release of his future Emmabuntüs Debian Edition Linux operating system.

• Dedicated to the memory of Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian Project, and based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 8.3 operating system, Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 8 Beta is built around the lightweight Xfce desktop environment and includes all the latest software packages for educational use.

=> ↺ Black Lab Linux 7.0.3 GNOME Edition Officially Released with LibreOffice 5.1

• Softpedia has been informed today, February 16, by Roberto J. Dohnert, CEO of Black Lab Software, about the immediate availability for download of the Black Lab Linux 7.0.3 GNOME Edition computer operating system.

=> ↺ Linux Top 3: Clonezilla, Raspbian and LPS

• Raspbian is often considered to be the default distro for the Raspberry Pi (though of course the Pi has no true default as it’s just hardware..). Raspbian is based on Debian, optimized for the ARM chipset and small memory of the Raspberry Pi. The Raspbian 2016-02-03 milestone update is the latest release and according to Rapsbian developer Simon Long, “For most people, this is primarily updates and bug fixes to the existing Jessie image .”

• [...]

• The Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) distribution is intended to be used as a live CD to help users remain private. While the idea of a privacy focused distro is not unique (think Tails), LPS is developed by the U.S. Department of Defense.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ Playing on OpenMandriva LX 2014.2

• I reinstalled OpenMandriva LX 2014.2 today. Last time I did, I had some problems updating: many packages were not found but, even so, I proceeded with the upgrading.

• The OS was working perfectly except for the performance of games on Steam.

• Today, I followed what I learned yesterday and, when I hit the first problem, I stopped the update and deleted all the repos. Then, I retrieved them again (they were marked as phosphorous 2014.0, which I believe was the previous version), but the update went on smoothly and I got the most recent packages, like Firefox 44.

=> ↺ Is PCLinuxOS Is the Best Rolling Release Distro?

• I realize the title of this article has already set some of you into a state of confusion. How dare I suggest that anything besides Arch could be the “best” rolling release distro, right?

• Well I’d counter with this: Arch is indeed awesome, it has dizzying fast performance and documentation that is second to none…however it’s modeled around the “Arch Way.” Meaning, if you want to learn more about Linux and its underpinnings, Arch is for you.

• On the other hand if you simply want an operating system that you install once and it’s ready for you right out of the box, then perhaps Arch isn’t for you. This is where I believe PCLinuxOS comes in.

=> ↺ LibreOffice 5.0.5, Distro Wars, PCLOS’s the Best

• LibreOffice 5.0.5 was released today for conservative users and larger organizations bring code clean-up as well as bug and security fixes. Elsewhere, Andrew Powell said no one distribution is any better than another – it’s all Linux. Matt Hartley declared PCLinuxOS the best rolling release distribution and Bruce Byfield said maybe free software is too good.

Slackware Family

=> ↺ Security update for Chromium 48

• Google released an update for Chrome/Chromium – their version 48 of the browser is now at “48.0.2564.109“. The chromium sources are still not available six days after the announcement, even though the official Chrome binary distributions were available right from the start. I think that this is inexcusable for a big company like Google, but this is not the first time that their autobots falter and no one cares enough to fix the release process. Notwithstanding some complaints by fellow application packagers.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ NethServer 7 alpha2 released

• After a few months of hard work I’m proud to announce that NethServer 7 alpha2 has been released and is publicly available.

• Alpha2 is a big step forward on the path of innovation, now we can finally take full advantage of the power of Centos 7. At long last, many modules have been updated to last release available and some small features that were requested often have been added.

• We’re thrilled to share it with you and hear your feedback. We’ve got a lot of news to share with you, so let’s jump right into it.

=> ↺ NethServer 7 Linux Server OS Enters Development, Finally Based on CentOS 7

• Alessio Fattorini today, February 15, 2016, informs Softpedia about the availability for download and testing of the second Alpha builds of the upcoming NethServer 7 Linux-based, server-oriented operating system.

• Finally based on the stable and reliable CentOS 7 series of operating systems, NethServer 7 Alpha 2 comes today with over 100 rebuilt packages, as well as some of the latest server-oriented software, including, but not limited to, ownCloud 8.2, Roundcube Webmail 1.1.4, and Snort 2.9.8, which includes OpenAppID support.

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Stock Rating Lowered by TheStreet

• Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) was downgraded by research analysts at TheStreet from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report released on Thursday, MarketBeat.Com reports.

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Pops 3.45% for February 15

• One of the S&P 500’s big winners for Monday February 15 was Red Hat Inc. (RHT) as the company’s stock climbed 3.45% to $64.11 on volume of 1.8 million shares.

=> ↺ Red Hat Certifies Rackspace to manage Their OpenStack deployments

• This development will invigorate Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (RHEL OSP), to a certified option that enables customer organizations to automate the testing and deployment of in-house applications using a variety of languages. The distinction of RHEL OSP comes from the services that Red hat provides. In the recent move, the entire software deployment program was reinforced by Red Hat, around Docker containers and Google’s Kubernetes orchestration system in order to make their services more efficient.

=> ↺ Theater group finds success by acting like an open organization

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

• Shares of Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) have been given an average rating of “Buy” by the thirty-six research firms that are presently covering the stock, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation, eight have issued a hold recommendation and twenty-five have issued a buy recommendation on the company. The average 12-month price objective among analysts that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $89.33.

Fedora

=> ↺ Contribute! Get your wallpaper into Fedora 24

• The development of Fedora continues, nearly each 6 months a new release. With a new release of Fedora just on the horizon, it also means it’s time to start submitting and voting on new supplemental wallpapers for Fedora 24.

=> ↺ Pungi 4: the new generation of the Fedora compose tools, and what it means for QA

• Currently we have three distinct types of Fedora composes. Probably everyone knows about ‘nightly composes’ and TCs/RCs. You may not know about the post-release nightly Cloud composes. (I’m not counting the live respins, which are demi-semi-official and not produced by releng).

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian 6.0 about to take flying leap off long term support cliff

• 2016 is a leap year so we’re all blessed with an extra day to use. And the folks behind Debian Linux are using it to end support for the sixth version of the distro.

• The outfit’s announcement reminds users that Debian 6.0 debuted back on February 6th, 2011. That little piece of history means the project’s Long Term Support goal “ to extend the lifetime of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years” can and will be invoked.

Derivatives

=> ↺ Debian-Based Elive 2.6.14 Linux Distro Is a Special Valentine’s Day Beta Release

• While Valentine’s Day is passed us now, it looks like some are a little bit late to the party, as the developers of the Debian-based Elive Linux distribution announced today, February 15, 2016, the release of yet another Beta build.

=> ↺ Debian/TeX Live 2015.20160215-1

• About one month has passed and here is the usual updated of TeX Live packages for Debian. While I am not really calling for testers at the moment, building of preliminary packages for TeX Live 2016 has begone. The binaries are already uploaded to experimental, and arch=all packages for experimental will follow soon.

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu Touch Devs Work on OTA-10 and OTA-9.1 Updates, Ubuntu Tablet Enablement

• Łukasz Zemczak of Canonical has sent in his daily email report today, February 15, 2016, informing us all about the latest work done in the Ubuntu Touch world in preparation for the upcoming OTA updates and devices.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Phone To Gain Biometric Security Features

• Canonical has partnered with ConsenSYS and BlockApps to provide “web wallet and biometric identity tools on Ubuntu devices” using Ethereum, the decentralized public blockchain protocol.

• As part of the collaboration BlockApps’ Nimbus uPort Biometric Digital Identity tool have been ported to run on Ubuntu phones and tablets.

=> ↺ Ubuntu’s Convergence and What it Means for Linux

• A device that essentially merges two operating systems while running both effectively without any fail has for long been a sorted technology – it existed however, in a somewhat mediocre fashion that is well, very unimpressive but still appealed to those that fancied it – to the extent necessary.

=> ↺ Meizu New Ubuntu Phone To Launch on February 22

• For quite some time now, the phone manufacturer has been building up suspense about its latest offering. The device is said to be the upgrade of its previous device, the MX4. A teaser regarding its latest device is posted on Weibo and with has the date Feb. 22; confirming the launch will happen at the MWC 2016 event in Barcelona, reports Phones Review.

=> ↺ Meizu PRO 5 Mini Leaks And Gets Compared To Meizu PRO 5

=> ↺ Rumor: Meizu MX6 To Sport A 4,000mAh Battery & Cost $276

=> ↺ Ubuntu Leadership Team Is Now Apart Of Ubuntu Community Team

• I few weeks ago, I tried to reboot the Ubuntu Leadership team but quickly found out that there is no one or anyone in the mood to do it. I have decided to merge the Leadership Team’s efforts with the Ubuntu Community Team because of the reason above and also for the reason that Ubuntu Community is an organic community with no hard lines. The Ubuntu Leadership team’s Lauchpad page, wiki pages, and mailing-list will stay but I stated that, “Ubuntu Leadership Team has merged with Ubuntu Community Team in order to keep resources focused on leadership”.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ $25 Odroid-C0 SBC runs Linux or Android on optional battery

• Hardkernel’s Odroid-C0 is a stripped-down, IoT focused version of the $35 Odroid C1+ hacker SBC, with a quad-core Cortex-A5 SoC and a battery circuit.

• The Odroid-C0 fills the same lightweight niche in the community-backed Odroid SBC product line that was briefly filled by the Odroid-W, according to a blog announcement from Hardkernel’s Odroid project. The Odroid-W was quickly discontinued after being released in Aug. 2014, due to lack of availability of the Broadcom BCM2835 chip, which was already dedicated to the best-selling Raspberry Pi. Like the Odroid-W, the Odroid-C0 is designed to run on a Li-Polymer battery, but this model moves to a much faster, quad-core, Cortex-A5 Amlogic S805 and sells for five dollars cheaper than the Odroid-W at $25.

=> ↺ Chromium OS for Raspberry Pi 2 to Get New Release with Performance Improvements

• Softpedia has just been informed today, February 16, 2016, by the guys over at Chromium OS for Raspberry Pi 2 that they are planning an awesome new release this coming Friday, especially for those of you who stick to the project.

Phones

Android

=> ↺ HTC One M9 Android 6.0 Update: 3 Things to Know

=> ↺ Four Antivirus Apps Provide Perfect Android Protection

• The German independent lab AV-TEST periodically evaluates the most popular antivirus programs across a wide variety of platforms, and its Android tests for January are in. The results are promising for Baidu, Bitdefender, Sophos and Norton, which all earned perfect scores. Fans of other suites need not worry, though; each of the 27 programs tested earned a recommendation.

=> ↺ Kotlin, the ‘pragmatic’ language for Android and JVM, has reached its 1.0 release

• Jetbrains, the team behind the popular Java IDE IntelliJ, have released Kotlin 1.0, its homegrown programming language for JVM and Java.

=> ↺ 6 Top Android Games Worth Playing in 2016 So Far

• With the frequent releases of many applications here and there, you cannot certainly miss new and exciting games for Android.

• There are games that are published in tandem with user desires to relieve you from the day-to-day work stress and also to keep boredom at bay. The year is still fresh and there are more games expected. Current available games for Android are simply exciting and will keep you glued to your phone’s screen playing them.

=> ↺ Android 6.0, 6.0.1 Marshmallow Update Status For Moto X Pure, Moto G, Moto X Style, Droid Turbo 2, Droid Maxx 2, Moto 360

=> ↺ The latest Android ad calls the iPhone a one-note piano

• Google’s latest Android ad aired tonight at the Grammy’s, and it was only fitting that it use music to play up Google’s drive for originality. Here, we watch a pianist play on a normal piano. Each key sounds different. But what if, the ad asks, each key sounded the same?

=> ↺ New Android Commercial Uses ‘Not The Same’ Musical Analogy, Leads To Confusing Tweets

=> ↺ Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow pushed to Galaxy S6 edge and edge+ in South Korea, here are the new features

=> ↺ Android: How to turn off SMS notifications for specific contacts in Google Messenger

=> ↺ Spotlight: Flud is one of the best Android torrent clients out there

=> ↺ Malware targets all Android phones — except those in Russia

=> ↺ This Android Trojan steals banking creds and wipes your phone

=> ↺ SMS Android malware roots and hijacks your device – unless you are Russian

=> ↺ 6 Tips to Cut Down on Mobile Data Consumption on Android

=> ↺ New App Turns Android Smartphones Into Earthquake Detectors

=> ↺ Samsung’s best smartphone finally gets Google’s best Android OS

=> ↺ Samsung begins rolling out Android 6.0 Marshmallow to Galaxy devices ahead of Galaxy S7 launch

=> ↺ Android Marshmallow update for Huawei Honor 7 being released ‘within the next 2 weeks’

=> ↺ Best new icon packs for Android (February 2016) #2

=> ↺ Automated Linux Apache MySQL PHP or Nginx PHP-FPM MYSQL installation and configuration

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Wikipedia starts work on Google-like search engine worth $2.5mn

=> ↺ Wikipedia starts working on Google-like search engine project worth $2.5 million

=> ↺ Knowledge Engine: Wikimedia Foundation takes aim at Google with $3.5m search project

=> ↺ Wikimedia Works On Search Improvements, Says It’s Not Competing with Google [Updated]

=> ↺ The Secret Search Engine Tearing Wikipedia Apart

=> ↺ Wikimedia Reveals Work On Knowledge Graph Search Engine

=> ↺ Wikipedia May Be Building A New Search Engine To Challenge Google

=> ↺ Wikipedia is building an open-source search engine – but it’s pretty confusing

• There have been rumblings in the Wikimedia community since last year that a better search engine is on the way and it looks like that’s true – but not everyone’s happy.

=> ↺ IBM Launches Quarks Open Source Development Tool To Build Efficient IoT Apps

=> ↺ Is free software too good?

• The average free software (free hardware still being too new for trends to be obvious) has always had the same obsessive-compulsive drive to perfection that was so common in the 19th Century. Just as Charles Darwin was obsessed with establishing the case for evolution beyond any doubt, or Richard Francis Burton sought to write the definitive book on swords, so the developers of Krita or the GNOME Shell have always done their best to be be as thorough and complete as they could.

• The same perfectionism also explains why so many pieces of free software include plugins or extensions — needs vary, and change with time, and free software users and developers are unwilling to wait until new features are fully incorporated into the code. Perfectionism, you might say, has made free software what it is, and, personally, it is one of the traits I admire most in its developers as they satisfy their own sense of fitness to make sure that their code is the best it can be. It is free software’s freedom of economic constraints such as the cheapness of plastic compared to hard wood, allows developers to concentrate on excellence.

=> ↺ 5 free and open music-making tools

=> ↺ A 100-year-old organization’s journey from mainframe to open source to DevOps

• A first step out of this impasse was to look at virtual servers as a way of saying, “How can we get more bang for our buck?” Our server room represented a lot of very pricey real estate, but it only seemed to keep growing. We asked ourselves, why did additional growth have to mean a new electrical circuit and adding new cooling? Within about three years we were 90 percent virtualized, and we got very comfortable with running virtual machines.

Events

=> ↺ WiTNY 2016: Event Report

• January has been a rather busy month. The Women in Technology New York (WiTNY) conference was my first big conference of the new year. It is also one that falls squarely in line with one of CommOps’ big priorities for this year to increase the involvement of women and underrepresented groups within our project.

=> ↺ HFOSS: Double bugfix

• This article is a further addition to the series of blog posts for my Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development course at RIT. For this week’s homework, we are tasked with finding an open source project, looking at known bugs or finding new ones, and submitting a bugfix. I focused on two projects to begin with: møte and FOSSProfiles.

=> ↺ Secret Lab: It’s OK to abandon your project

• Hackathons have become a fashionable way to generate a lot of code. (Code that, in many cases, nobody ever looks at again.) Companies like to run them as an inexpensive method of R&D (research and design). Entire consultancies are built around running them for this purpose.

=> ↺ Attending technical conferences: What’s the big deal?

• Law and technology are becoming increasingly entwined, and many technical folks don’t or can’t make time in their regular schedules to stay on top of the issues. Conferences are a great place to learn about upcoming legislation, important court cases, and the organizations that are keeping an eye on the developments that affect both the FOSS community and the broader tech industry.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Firefox: Mockups show Activity Stream, New Tab Page and Share updates

• Three new mockups for the Firefox web browser reveal how the browser’s New Tab Page, Share functionality and Activity Stream (browsing history and bookmarks) could look like in the future.

SaaS/Big Data

=> ↺ Storage awoken by a status quo rocker

• openATTIC will be made available as the management front end for future releases of SUSE Enterprise Storage.

=> ↺ Continued government adoption, StoryBoard task tracking, and more OpenStack news

=> ↺ Timeseries storage and data compression

• The first major version of the scalable timeserie database I work on, Gnocchi was a released a few months ago. In this first iteration, it took a rather naive approach to data storage. We had little ideas about if and how our distributed back-ends were going to be heavily used, so we stuck to the code of the first proof-of-concept written a couple of years ago.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ LibreOffice 5.0 Gets Its Fifth Point Release, Ready for Large-Scale Deployment

• After having the pleasure to inform the world about the release of the massive LibreOffice 5.1 office suite last week, The Document Foundation non-profit organization today, February 15, 2016, announced the general availability of LibreOffice 5.0.5.

=> ↺ LibreOffice 5.0.5 “still” released

• The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.0.5, the fifth release of the LibreOffice 5.0 family. Following the announcement of LibreOffice 5.1, LibreOffice 5.0.5 becomes the “still” version (a stable version that has undergone more testing over a longer time), and can be used for the deployment in large organizations.

Education

=> ↺ UNICEF Innovation Fund invests in open source startups

• UNICEF is inviting technology startups to improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children to apply for funding from its recently launched Innovation Fund.

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ Forget Groceries at Walmart – You can Now Get Open Source Cloud Infrastructure

=> ↺ Growing Adoption of Open-Source GIS Software Driving the Global GIS Market Through 2020, Says Technavio

=> ↺ Ethereum Alternative Lisk Announces ICO With ShapeShift – New Open Source Dapp & Sidechain Platform

BSD

=> ↺ FreeBSD 10.3 Beta 2 Brings UEFI Fixes & More

• One week after the first FreeBSD 10.3 beta, FreeBSD 10.3 Beta 2 is now available with more fixes.

• Over the past week were some fixes/improvements around FreeBSD’s UEFI support, “The UEFI ZFS loader has been updated to support the latest ZFS Boot Environment (BE) loader menu features” and “The UEFI boot loader received several improvements: /boot/config and /boot.config files now are adhered to, multi device boot support works and command line argument parsing has been added.”

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Free software groups protest France school software deal

• A group of three French associations free software advocacy groups wants to cancel software licence agreement signed between the French Ministry of Education and Microsoft France.

=> ↺ Award for Ireland building regulations software

• Ireland’s Building Control Management System has won the 2016 eGov ‘Open Source Award’. The document work-flow solution was developed in 2014 for the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA), and is now used by all 31 local authorities in the country.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ Hacking the farm with low-cost, open source tool designs

• After starting his own farm in Missouri, Marcin Jakubowski quickly discovered it’s an expensive business. The tools he needed to start and maintain a sustainable farm didn’t exist, so he set out to design them himself.

• Marcin published a collection of his open source designs, called the Global Village Construction Set, to the Open Source Ecology wiki. Soon, just as in open source software, others from around the world began to collaborate with him in designing these new machines.

• According to the wiki, “Global Village Construction Set is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that enables fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.”

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ To All Academics: Let’s Boycott Commercial Publishers!

• In his new article “Putting the ‘Public’ Back into ‘Publication’”, Mike Valente uncovers the outrageous profit-making model of commercial publishers of academic journals. Publishing houses like Elsevier and Springer generate enormous profits without actually contributing anything to knowledge production. They neither produce content nor pay the ones who do. They do not even review papers, but instead delegate this task to voluntary academic editors and reviewers. Yet, publishers continue to charge $30 or more per paper download and $4,000 to $20,000 for annual journal subscriptions. Thanks to online distribution and reduced printing costs, publishers can turn 40% of their revenues into profit. Commercial publishing has not only hindered public access to academic knowledge, but has created high costs for university libraries and justified high student fees. So, why does nobody care to change this profit-making model, and what would it take to change it?

Programming

=> ↺ GitHub responds to frustrated users

=> ↺ Change is coming to GitHub as site apologies for ignoring open source community

• GitHub has apologised to its users after complaints were made claiming that it was ignoring community concerns.

• In January over 1,100 maintainers of GitHub projects put their names to an open letter which expressed their frustrations about being ignored by the software hub.

• The letter said that they felt there was inadequate support, saying: “We’ve gone through the only support channel that you have given us either to receive an empty response or even no response at all. We have no visibility into what has happened with our requests, or whether GitHub is working on them.”

=> ↺ GitHub to devs: ‘We ignored you but we never stopped caring’

=> ↺ GitHub apologizes for ignoring community concerns

=> ↺ Programming Languages Could Soon Replace Foreign Languages In American Schools

• A former Yahoo executive turned Florida lawmaker is proposing a law which allows students to exchange computer science courses with the two required foreign language classes. However, the proposal has become to take a controversial turn putting the with legislators and advocates in defensive mode.

=> ↺ Which Are The Trendiest Programming Languages Of 2016?

• JavaScript, the language of the web, continues to impress people and inspire them to create new things. About 67 percent people found JavaScritpt interesting.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ FAO Symposium On Agricultural Biotech Raises Lobbying Concerns

• At issue, according to a joint press release (Via Campesina, Grain, and ETC Group), is the agenda, which they find unbalanced as it includes speakers from industry such as, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, CropLife International, and CEVA among others, which they say are promoting GMOs, while they found only one speaker openly critical of GMOs.

=> ↺ Jeremy Hunt launches doctor morale inquiry – here’s a sneak preview of its findings…

• Before a politician can ride off into the multimillion pound corporate sunset, he or she has to be ruthless – but also astute enough to convince the public that mangling public services is NOT about corporate capture.

• As the Junior Doctors stood up to protect patients and expose the government’s latest NHS misadventures, one could almost see the beads of sweat flow on Jeremy Hunt’s brow.

=> ↺ Chair Of WIPO Committee On Genetic Resources Issues Draft Plan For The Week

• The World Intellectual Property Organization committee working on policy solutions to protect genetic resources and traditional knowledge from misuse and misappropriation resumed its work today after a year hiatus. The newly elected chair, from Australia, issued an indicative methodology and programme for the week.

=> ↺ 7-Day NHS

• This drive for changing the way the NHS operates has been frequently used by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt as the reason why a change to junior doctor and consultant contracts is needed. But what does it actually mean? John Ware explores what a seven-day NHS would look like, what evidence there is that it’s needed, and, crucially, whether we can afford it.

=> ↺ Seven-day NHS may not cut death rates, say Hunt’s own officials

• Jeremy Hunt’s key argument in his demands for a seven-day service in NHS hospitals has been called into question by his own department, in a leaked report which says it is not able to prove that fuller staffing would lower the numbers of weekend-admitted patients dying.

• The report also admits it will be “challenging” to meet the government’s promise to recruit 5,000 more GPs by 2020, a Conservative pledge during the election campaign, and that 11,000 new staff will be needed to run a seven-day service in hospitals.

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Monday

=> ↺ Russian cyberspy group uses simple yet effective Linux Trojan

• A cyberespionage group of Russian origin known as Pawn Storm is infecting Linux systems with a simple but effective Trojan program that doesn’t require highly privileged access.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ GOP Frontrunner: ‘Bush Lied, People Died’

• Pardon me while I sit back and enjoy the panic of the Republican – and media – elites as the GOP frontrunner takes up that old left-wing antiwar slogan: “Bush lied – people died!” That’s the essence of what Donald Trump said at Saturday’s South Carolina GOP presidential debate when moderator John Dickerson – who smirked his way through the entire debate – asked Trump if he still thought George W. Bush should be impeached as he supposedly said in a long ago interview…

=> ↺ [Russian media] Time for Washington to Admit ‘Russia Is Right on Syria’

• Moscow warned the US about the consequences of interfering in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and happened to be right. In the Syrian conflict, Russia also turned out more clear-sighted. Washington has to admit that both countries will benefit from cooperation and start supporting Moscow’s strategy in Syria, a US analyst wrote.

=> ↺ Assad Explains Why He is Not Ruling Out Turkish, Saudi Invasion of Syria

• Syrian president Bashar al-Assad spoke to AFP news agency in an exclusive interview on the developments in Syria and the region.

=> ↺ Pro-War GOP Boos Donald Trump

• His bigoted comments about Mexicans and Muslims aside, billionaire Donald Trump actually makes some common sense when he talks about working with Russia, Iran and other powers to bring the Mideast wars to an end, rather than pushing for endless “regime change,” Sam Husseini notes.

=> ↺ Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath

• This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton’s role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.

=> ↺ Just Say No to Draft Registration for Women – and Men

• Testifying before the US Senate’s Armed Services Committee in early February, Generals Mark A. Milley (the US Army’s chief of staff) and Robert B. Neller (commandant of the US Marine Corps) endorsed extending mandatory Selective Service registration to women. Because, you know, equality.

• I have a better idea. It’s time to end draft registration for everyone. Because, you know, freedom.

• The US hasn’t involuntarily inducted men into military service since 1973, but reinstated mandatory registration in 1980. Ever since, the shadow of legal slavery has loomed over the lives of American males aged 18 through 26.

=> ↺ Obama Proposes Removing Human Rights Conditions on Aid to Egypt

• The budget proposal released by the Obama administration Tuesday seeks to roll back restrictions Congress has placed on foreign aid to Egypt’s military regime and the sale of crowd control weapons to “emerging democracies.”

• Under current law, 15 percent of aid to Egypt is subject to being withheld based on human rights conditions — although even that can be waived if it is deemed to be in the national security interest of the United States, as it was last year.

=> ↺ Are British values really Islamic values?

• The critic and commentator Ziauddin Sardar has been addressing such issues since the 1980s. He has been an outspoken proponent of the view that it is the English who must compromise to make room for others. For him, Muslims can live compatibly in Britain because what is good and civilised in British values is indebted to Islam. I concentrate on his comments in the introduction to his recent book, Muslims in Britain, which he co-authored with Waqar Ahmad.

=> ↺ Four Hospitals Bombed In One Day In Syria, Including Doctors Without Borders Facility

• Airstrikes hit a hospital in northern Syria Monday, leaving seven dead and at least eight missing, according to Doctors Without Borders, which manages the hospital located in Maarat al-Noaman.

• No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. According to the New York Times, both Russian and Syrian planes operate in the area where it took place.

• A second hospital in Maarat al-Noaman was also hit by airstrikes on Monday, killing three and wounding six. And in Azaz, located in the northwestern province of Aleppo, two more hospitals and a school building housing displaced people were also hit by airstrikes on Monday. Those attacks killed 15 people, and wounded up to 40 others.

=> ↺ Trump is Right About Iraq, and That Should Stick to Clinton

• Last night, he screamed an anti-war stance to the boos of Bush’s and Rubio’s and Kasich’s one percent donors. It’s only half of what needed to be said, but it was a measure of reality that’s desperately needed.

=> ↺ Erdogan uses ISIS to suppress Kurds, West stays silent – Turkish MP

• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been using ISIS to advance his Middle East policy and suppress the Kurds, and Ankara’s elite maintains vibrant economic ties with the terror group and harbors its militants, a Turkish MP has told Russian media.

=> ↺ Turkey Uses the Islamic State as Strategic Resource

• Ankara, Feb 15 (Prensa Latina) Turkish deputy Selma Irmak said today that the president of his country, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, used the terrorist group Islamic State against the Kurds in Syria and as a resource for strategic purposes in the Middle East. The People’s Democratic Party legislator told media that the Turkish president has a great Ottoman Empire in his head and uses the IS as a tool for such purposes.

• Irmak also said that Erdogan cannot send the Turkish army directly into Syrian territory and that is why he uses the IS as a weapon against the Kurds on the grounds that the Kurdish advance threatens national security because it strengthens the pro-independence purposes of Turkish Kurdistan.

=> ↺ Erdogan’s Cruel Calculus: Killing Kurds at Home and in Syria Means Votes

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has attacked Kurds in neighboring Syria in order to win popular support at home and because he was wary about the gains they had been making against anti-government groups, according to Selma Irmak, a Turkish parliament deputy from the Democratic Party of Peoples (DPN).

=> ↺ Erdogan’s Domestic War for a Presidential System in Turkey

• The current war against the Kurds and oppositional voices is being waged to push an autocratic presidential system.

• The surprising electoral success of the pro-Kurdish HDP in last year’s June 7 elections denied the ruling AKP a majority for the first time since 2002 – a majority the AKP needs in order to make President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dream of regime change come true. Early elections were set for Nov. 1, 2015. In the lead up, the Turkish state stepped up repressions against the HDP and its supporters, violently imposed military curfews in predominantly Kurdish cities, while ending the peace process with the PKK had ended.

=> ↺ Over 500, Including Children, Killed in Turkey’s Kurdistan Since Sept 2015

• Over 500 people, including 50 children and 120 women, have been killed in armed clashes between the Kurds and the Turkish military over the past six months, Selma Irmak, a co-chair of the Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Congress (DTK) and a lawmaker from the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), said.

=> ↺ The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people

• In 2014, the former director of both the CIA and NSA proclaimed that “we kill people based on metadata.” Now, a new examination of previously published Snowden documents suggests that many of those people may have been innocent.

• Last year, The Intercept published documents detailing the NSA’s SKYNET programme. According to the documents, SKYNET engages in mass surveillance of Pakistan’s mobile phone network, and then uses a machine learning algorithm on the cellular network metadata of 55 million people to try and rate each person’s likelihood of being a terrorist.

• Patrick Ball—a data scientist and the executive director at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group—who has previously given expert testimony before war crimes tribunals, described the NSA’s methods as “ridiculously optimistic” and “completely bullshit.” A flaw in how the NSA trains SKYNET’s machine learning algorithm to analyse cellular metadata, Ball told Ars, makes the results scientifically unsound.

=> ↺ Trump Booed For Saying Bush ‘Lied’ About WMD In Iraq

=> ↺ Obama’s Most Momentous Decision

• President Obama must decide if he will let the Syrian civil war come to an end with Russian-backed President Assad still in power or if he will escalate by supporting a Turkish-Saudi invasion, which could push the world to the brink of nuclear war, writes Joe Lauria.

=> ↺ Indonesia’s Jihadi Extremist Group Is Rebounding, Experts and Members Say

• Since last month, when supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) launched an attack with guns and bombs at a bustling Jakarta intersection, attention has returned to the jihadist threat in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country. JI was for many years the face of extremism in the nation, responsible for a series of bombings in the early 2000s that killed hundreds and prompted a crackdown that successfully jailed many of the group’s leaders.

=> ↺ REVEALED: Mark Zuckerberg now has 16 bodyguards working at his $7million Palo Alto home after ‘death threats’ from unstable users

• When Mark Zuckerberg got his first bodyguard in 2011, it made headlines. But those days must seem quaint to the Facebook founder, who is now reported to have no less than 16 people protecting him at his $7million home in Palo Alto, California.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Fossil fuels are now a bad bet, investors told

• Investors in fossil fuels are being warned that they may risk losing their money, because the markets for coal and liquefied natural gas are disappearing.

• In both cases it is competition from renewables, principally wind and solar power, that is being blamed for the threat. The cost of electricity from renewables continues to fall in Europe and Asia as the numbers of wind and solar installations grow in both continents, cutting demand for imported gas and coal.

• Two separate reports on coal and gas were published at the same time as a round of annual financial reports from oil companies showed that this third fossil fuel could be in serious trouble too.

• Despite massive cutbacks on exploration and development, companies like Shell and BP still need a price of US$60 a barrel by the end of this year if they are to break even on many of their current projects – almost double the current market price.

=> ↺ Water Scarcity Crisis Even Worse than Previously Thought

• When the World Economic Forum, a Swiss non-profit dedicated to “improving the state of the world,” released its annual Global Risks Report last year it cited “water crises” as the number one global risk in terms of impact. This is significant because for the past 8 years, the number one global risk in terms of impact had been financial in nature (either asset price collapse, fiscal crises, or major systemic financial failure), but 2015 was the first year that saw a climate related issue top the list of risks.

=> ↺ Don’t drink the water: Flint is just the latest in a long line of disposable communities. It’s time to act

• To explain why fossil fuels are both a health issue and a justice issue, let’s start with coal. Whole communities have been destroyed in Appalachia, where they literally blow up mountaintops to extract hard-to-reach coal. The process, called mountaintop removal, poisons area streams, causing high rates of cancer and birth defects among the people who live nearby.

• [...]

• There are many, many more examples of water being poisoned as a result of fossil fuels, whether in the production, transportation or disposal of the waste. There have been devastating oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and the Kalamazoo River. There’s water so polluted it’s flammable in Pennsylvania, where natural gas is extracted through hydraulic fracturing, a process that injects chemical-laden water deep into the earth. Afterward the toxic brew has to be disposed of somewhere. A new study of fracking waste water wells in south Texas shows that they are most likely to be in communities of color, most frequently Hispanic.

=> ↺ Impact of forest fires on Papua on climate change agenda

• Avenues for recourse against so-called climate crimes by Indonesia are limited, a speaker at a climate change conference at New Zealand’s Victoria University says.

Finance

=> ↺ Decentralized Media: Devon Read on Alexandria

• Ever feel bogged down by ads when trying to access media? Ever get upset that content has been censored by governments or businesses? Ever wish people had more power in regards to how content is monetized? These problems may be solved with this new decentralized media project.

=> ↺ UK inflation rises to 0.3% in January

• UK inflation edged up to a 12 month high in January, as a fall in petrol prices eased.

• Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, rose by 0.3%. It was helped by smaller falls in food and fuel prices than a year ago.

• Annual inflation has been below the Bank of England’s 2% target for two years, and last year it was zero.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ The Latest 60 Minutes Propaganda: We Need a Crypto Back Door because ISIS Is “Coming Here” with WMD

• It has been clear for several years now that 60 Minutes has become a propaganda vehicle for the intelligence community (post, post, post). So it was unsurprising that John Brennan was given an opportunity to fearmonger last night without pesky people like Ron Wyden around pointing out that CIA itself poses a threat, even according to the terms laid out by the Intelligence Community.

• I find the timing and content of John Brennan’s appearance of note.

=> ↺ Bernie Sanders’ Phantom Movement

• Bernie Sanders, who has attracted numerous young, white, college-educated supporters in his bid for the presidency, says he is creating a movement and promises a political revolution. This rhetoric is an updated version of the “change” promised by the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama and by Jesse Jackson’s earlier National Rainbow Coalition. Such Democratic electoral campaigns, at best, raise political consciousness. But they do not become movements or engender revolutions. They exist as long as election campaigns endure and then they vanish. Sanders’ campaign will be no different.

• No movement or political revolution will ever be built within the confines of the Democratic Party. And the repeated failure of the American left to grasp the duplicitous game being played by the political elites has effectively neutered it as a political force. History, after all, should count for something.

=> ↺ Playing the Victim Card, Hillary Clinton Betrays Women

• Meanwhile, the popular trivialization of Sanders’ supporters as “Bernie bros” and “Bernie-splainers” perpetuates Steinem’s misrepresentation of Sanders’ supporters as “boys” followed by brainless female groupies. Both Albright and Steinem accuse young women of treachery and abandonment for having their own political opinions, encouraging them to reverse their position out of a sense of shame and guilt.

=> ↺ Trump and Sanders Offer Illusions of Solutions

• Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the antithesis of the conventional politician. They are not programmed, their lines are not focus-group tested, and they take positions far outside the mainstream. But the victory speeches they gave in New Hampshire Tuesday night showed they have mastered the oldest political trick of all: promising things they can’t deliver.

Censorship

=> ↺ Russian Purge: Putin Doesn’t Need to Censor Books. Publishers Do It for Him.

• Really, he insists. Danishevsky has an I’m-on-top-of-the-world demeanor that is rapidly going out of style in Moscow. He wears a hipster beard and a most daring combination of stripes in his shirts and jackets, and he schedules his meetings at an ostentatiously overpriced central Moscow cafe frequented by celebrities of the vaguely oppositional ilk. At 25, he may be forgiven for being a little slow to realize that the era of fabulous flaunting is ending: The oil boom in Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the only life he has known. This makes him all the more remarkable — at his age, he is editor of his own imprint at one of the country’s publishing conglomerates, and he takes more literary and political risks than all of his mainstream colleagues combined. He says that this is because no one tells him what to do.

=> ↺ Legislator calls for movie censorship

• Movies should be reviewed for discriminatory and offensive comments toward Aborigines before being approved for release, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩) said yesterday, following controversy over the new film David Loman 2 (大尾鱸鰻2).

• “If there is any discriminatory wording, it should be revised or deleted before the film is allowed to be released,” said Chen, who is a Puyuma community representative for Plains Aborigines.

=> ↺ A letter to our readers: On censorship

• From military censorship to the government deciding who is and isn’t a journalist, Israeli authorities use various tools to interfere with the press. An important disclosure to our readers.

=> ↺ Portugal: Waves of layoffs hollow out press

• If there was any room left for doubt, the closing months of 2015 were enough to prove that Portuguese journalism is facing a serious challenge from which it probably won’t emerge the same. From October to December 2015, four media groups announced that they preparing to lay off workers, including journalists.

• These recent cuts are a continuation of the long-term trend: between 2007 and 2014, more than 1,200 journalists — about 20 per cent of the total number of media professionals — have lost their jobs in Portugal, according to a study by Observatório da Comunicação.

=> ↺ The tech industry’s greater responsibility

• Today, Internet censorship is becoming a growing concern among dozens of developing countries. In the mid-1990s, China began blocking foreign websites and saw successful results, proving to other authoritarian countries wishing to control their constituents that these types of regulations are well worth the effort. Since then, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Azerbaijan, Syria and others have followed China’s footsteps and began implementing regulations censoring Internet activity.

• This means that the people living within these countries are unable to access information from the outside world. Thus, they are fed filtered information that praises their leadership and government, and because they are not exposed to varying and contrary opinions, are susceptible to believing and accepting their government’s authoritarian policies. In western countries we often take our first amendment right for granted. We are allowed to say, write, and scream whatever we’d like about our government without the risk of being jailed or beaten. We’re allowed, even encouraged, to question policies and think differently. If only this were the case worldwide.

=> ↺ Censorship has no place among college administration

• At the start of the Fall 2015 semester, freshmen arrived at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland hoping to receive a top-notch education. As a part of their orientation, students were given a survey in an effort to help them discover more about themselves. This survey would later become the center of huge controversy involving the university’s president, faculty terminations and censorship.

• When the university’s president Simon Newman came into office in December 2014, he promised to “start the university on a more aggressive growth trajectory,” according to the Baltimore Sun. In light of recent events, this statement is probably truer than intended—or at least the aggressive bit.

=> ↺ Standing Against Henrico County’s Censorship of Multicultural Education

• The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and the National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES) express grave concerns about the recent decision of the Board of Education in Henrico County, Virginia to censor educational material pertaining to racial inequality. The actions of the Board represent a troubling trend in public education that undermines the goals of promoting a healthy democratic society.

=> ↺ Racial inequality cartoon banned after parents complain, Washington Post reports

=> ↺ Online movement against film censorship

• The indiscriminate cuts introduced by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in the recent Hollywood superhero film Deadpool have prompted an online movement against film censorship inspired by and modelled on the SaveTheInternet.in coalition’s recent successful campaign for Net neutrality.

• Not long ago, after the latest Bond film was badly “mutilated” by the censors, ‘Sanskari James Bond’ had became a buzzword online. When the Deadpool censoring news broke, it prompted a discussion on the online forum Reddit on the cruel butchering of the film. One of the participants in that discussion, Sharath C.George, who describes himself as a regular corporate guy working in social media analytics in Bangalore, happened to see a web page on which the CBFC revamp committee, headed by filmmaker Shyam Benegal, was soliciting public opinion and comments on censorship.

=> ↺ Pro-Israel Fraternity Scandal Erupts at U of Chicago, Where Authorities Have Long Ignored Its Culture of Racism

• Exposed by an anonymous whistleblower and published by Buzzfeed, the emails were sent on a listserv of the AEPi fraternity between 2011 and 2015. The communications contained racist rants trashing Martin Luther King Jr., referred to an abandoned lot as “Palestine,” and maligned a Muslim student activist as a “terrorist.”

=> ↺ Turkish Journalists Make a Stand Against Erdogan’s Censorship

• A group of journalists from Istanbul are confronting the propaganda of the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan by forcing their way to the unofficial Kurdish capital of Turkey, Diyarbakir, in an attempt to tell the truth about what’s happening on the battlefield.

=> ↺ Google Really Messes Up: From “Muslims Support Terrorism” To “Islam Does Not Support Terrorism”

• After the Google search suggestion issue of ‘Muslims Support Terrorism’ was first raised by Hind Makki, it looks like Google has seriously worked on its search algorithm. Now, the search engine recommends ‘Islam does not support Terrorism’ after that incident.

=> ↺ Why Is Facebook Taking Down Marijuana Dispensary Pages?

• The social network is going after what it claims are violations of its “Community Standards”

Privacy

=> ↺ New Survey Suggests U.S. Encryption Ban Would Just Send Market Overseas

• If the U.S. government tries to strong-arm American companies into ending the sale of products or applications with unbreakable encryption, the technology won’t disappear, a group of researchers conclude in a new report. It would still be widely available elsewhere.

• Some U.S. law enforcement officials argue that unbreakable encryption is interfering with legal surveillance of suspected criminals and terrorists. And some members of Congress are pushing for a nationwide requirement that encryption allow for law-enforcement access.

=> ↺ The real colonialism of Silicon Valley

• When the Indian government decided to say “thanks but no thanks” to Facebook’s Free Basics service, some folks associated with the company seemed upset by the very, well, freedom of such a decision.

• Free Basics, aka Internet.org, is Facebook’s attempt to give free Internet to people in developing countries, with the slight catch that Facebook decides which parts of that Internet they can have.

• How dare a government tell its people what they can or can’t have? That’s Facebook’s job.

• Indeed, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen was so upset that he called the decision “morally wrong.”

=> ↺ Why Internet Advertising Needs to Be Regulated

• Back in the late 1980s, cigarette smoking was permitted in supermarkets where I live, but there was a move afoot — a ballot issue I believe — to put an end to that. At the time I was doing a four hour daily stint at the local newstalk radio station, and the proposed ban was, of course, a major topic of on-air conversation with our listeners. Pretty much, most of our audience was against the ban, as we have a sizable and vocal minority — maybe a majority — of folks here in North Carolina who think they should be able to do whatever they like, whenever they like, without much regulation. There was something of a consensus among our listeners that smoking or no should be up to the store owners.

• [...]

• We’re all tired of being followed around as we travel on the web. Advertisers know this, and some might even agree with us. Even if they do, however, there’s not much they can do about it. If a large ad network were to act on some better instinct and quit placing tracking cookies for the targeting of ads, their earnings would tank and they’d lose their shirts because they’d no longer be offering what the industry thinks it needs. Ad buyers would abandon them, and those who stay would demand greatly reduced rates for what is perceived as a less effective product.

=> ↺ Access to Connection Data: French Council of State Flees EU Debate

• The French Council of State has released an eagerly awaited decision (fr) on the validity of administrative access to connection data. La Quadrature du Net, French Data Network and the FDN Federation have been calling into question the Military Programmation Law (LPM) and its application decree that enables the administration to access connection data without requiring any judicial control. By refusing to repeal the decree and to transmit the question to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling, the Council of State avoids any judicial debate and isolates French vis-à-vis EU case law.

=> ↺ Self Hosting – The good and the bad.

• When it comes to website hosting, the need for a stable site is crucial so picking the right hosting company to go for is something you need to think long and hard about. In my case I’ve been very lucky and when funds dictate, i’ll go with UK based company Memset. When funds are an issue I’ll self host. This for me is a good and bad thing, here let me explain.

• I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked in the web hosting industry for a while, so being able to setup my own server and webhosting system, is a godsend, but it also has it’s own problems.

=> ↺ GCHQ phone and computer hacking is legal and fine

• Privacy International, which was behind the challenge, is understandably disappointed at the ruling that surveillance is A-OK, and will challenge it again.

• “The IPT today held that GCHQ hacking of computers, mobile devices and networks is lawful, wherever it occurs around the world. We are disappointed that the IPT has not upheld our complaint and we will challenge its findings,” said Scarlet Kim, legal officer at Privacy International, in a statement.

• “Our complaint is the first UK legal challenge to state-sponsored hacking, an exceptionally intrusive form of surveillance. We contended that GCHQ hacking operations were incompatible with democratic principles and human rights standards.

• “We further argued that GCHQ, which until these proceedings was hacking in secret, had no clear authority under UK law to deploy these capabilities.”

• Privacy International has plenty to challenge, and will invoke European human rights as it pushes this forward through other, hopefully, more receptive, courts.

=> ↺ NSA: National Security, Art

• “Artists work within political realities, no matter what the content or focus of the work,” says artist Laura Poitras, whose exhibition, “Astro Noise,” opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art on February 5. “Art is alive. It’s vital.”

• Poitras made headlines with her 2014 documentary, Citizenfour, which details her trip to Hong Kong to speak to NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. “Astro Noise” explores many of the issues in Poitras’s films: surveillance, the American response to 9/11, the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, and the drone wars. She denies that her work takes a “stance” and is hesitant to claim that her work is any more political than other artists’. When “Astro Noise” opened, the Whitney was hosting a Frank Stella retrospective on its fifth floor, filled with large abstract works. Certainly, Stella lived within a political reality, but it’s hard to tell from what’s mounted on the walls. For Poitras to deny that she’s working in a particularly political mode seems querulous and evasive. Some works are certainly more politically and socially engaged than others. To deny that just seems silly.

=> ↺ GCHQ information security arm CESG awards six firms Certified Cyber Security Consultancy status

• CESG, the Information Security arm of GCHQ, has announced the first group of firms to be certified under its new Certified Cyber Security Consultancy scheme.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ What has happened to the West and its men? The hypnotic dance of death

• In my correspondence regarding the events in Cologne, an editor of a Russian newspaper asked me a natural, but discouraging question; “Where were the German men?”, he inquired of me, perplexed.

• Indeed, for us who grew up in Soviet Russia, it would be inconceivable that some drunk young people could publicly mock and harass girls on New Year’s Eve in the very center of Moscow or Saint Petersburg. If they dared to do this, they wouldn’t survive until the morning, they would become “martyrs” and would have their way with 72 virgins in a completely different realm.

=> ↺ ‘Preserving the Balance’ by Maintaining a Conservative Supreme Court

• On CNN‘s State of the Union today (2/14/16), Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward laid out the “potential minefield” posed by a liberal Supreme Court appointment to “everyone, including Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House.”

=> ↺ Elizabeth Warren Rips Into Republicans For Pledging To Block Supreme Court Process

=> ↺ Supreme Court Contention: It Didn’t Start With Bork

• It’s true that there was an era when the Senate almost always gave near-complete deference to presidents’ judgment in naming Supreme Court justices; from William McKinley through John F. Kennedy, almost all nominees were confirmed, generally by voice vote. When there was a recorded vote, margins of confirmation were typically wide, as with FDR’s William Douglas (confirmed 62–4) or Eisenhower’s John Harlan (71–11). The only nominee to be rejected during this seven-decade era was Herbert Hoover’s choice of Judge John Parker in 1930, whom the NAACP lobbied against because of his opposition to African-American suffrage. (Parker was also seen as anti-labor.)

=> ↺ How America Was Lost

• Once upon a time, the death of a Supreme Court justice wouldn’t have brought America to the edge of constitutional crisis. But that was a different country, with a very different Republican Party. In today’s America, with today’s G.O.P., the passing of Antonin Scalia has opened the doors to chaos.

• In principle, losing a justice should cause at most a mild disturbance in the national scene. After all, the court is supposed to be above politics. So when a vacancy appears, the president should simply nominate, and the Senate approve, someone highly qualified and respected by all.

=> ↺ El Nino Scalia

• Antonin Scalia is dead. Say what you will, there is no rejoicing from me. Was Nino a malefactor in Supreme Court jurisprudence over the decades since his confirmation on September 26, 1986? Yes, and an irascible one as well. Once Bork got Borked, Scalia was the whipping post for all liberals, on the continuity of the spectrum. Did he earn that status? Yes, and maybe then some.

=> ↺ Ted Cruz’s Definition of Torture Is So Extreme, His Father’s Torture Might Not Even Qualify

• Ted Cruz, who has long been an outspoken opponent of torture, reversed himself during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate when he endorsed an extreme and discredited definition of torture: that anything that inflicts less pain than losing an organ doesn’t count.

• That definition, which Cruz said was “generally recognized,” is anything but. It comes from a 2003 Justice Department memo that the department later rescinded, acknowledging that it was full of slipshod legal arguments, clouded by ideology, and written under pressure from CIA officials who had already begun to torture terror suspects.

=> ↺ British Bill of Rights: Today at the Ministry of Justice

• There is speculation that the long-awaited proposals for a British Bill of Rights will be published this week.

=> ↺ Israel boycott ban: Shunning Israeli goods to become criminal offence for public bodies and student unions

• Local councils, public bodies and even some university student unions are to be banned by law from boycotting “unethical” companies, as part of a controversial crackdown being announced by the Government.

• Under the plan all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

• Any public bodies that continue to pursue boycotts will face “severe penalties”, ministers said.

=> ↺ After Seven Long Years, the Question Remains: Who Killed Rafael Solis in a Texas Jail?

• In 2009, Rafael Solis, a 38-year-old father of two, was taken into custody in Webb County, Texas, for falling behind on child support payments. Within days, he died in jail in Laredo after suffering extensive physical injuries, and the Webb County coroner ruled the death a homicide. After seven years with no prosecutions, Solis’ mother is crying out for justice.

• Maria Escamilla says she learned of her son’s death after the Webb County jail phoned and asked her to go to a gas station. It was there that two deputies gave her the news. They would say only that “[h]e was just lying on the [jail] floor,” according to Escamilla.

=> ↺ The Islamic extremists taking over UK prisons: Muslims make up just one in 20 Britons – but one in SEVEN inmates. As Levi Bellfield embraces Islam, we reveal how fanatics recruit behind bars in ‘jihadi jails’

• Friday morning in Wakefield Prison and Yusuf Rahim joins 60 other Muslim prisoners as they head to the jail’s gym to say their prayers. If nothing else, it is a chance to get out of his cell and take a break from the normal routine.

• The same goes for the halal food the 47-year-old is served every mealtime — Rahim is particularly partial to the spicy vegetable curry — an improvement on the normal prison fare.

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ The surprising truth about Facebook’s Internet.org

• You may have heard that Internet.org is a nonprofit organization launched by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and dedicated to bringing Internet access to people who can’t access it, or can’t afford it.

• But this isn’t true — not any of it.

• The realities of Internet.org came into question last week when India banned it from the country. If the Internet is good, and Internet.org simply exists to get people on it, why was it banned?

• Let’s start with a basic question.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ UN Panel On Access To Medicines Extends Deadline For Contributions

• The panel is calling for contributions from “all related stakeholders in, but not limited to, government, the private sector, research institutions, non-profit organizations, academic institutions, legal experts and patient groups that address the policy incoherence between international human rights law, trade rules and public health objectives.”

Trademarks

=> ↺ Serbia Eyes Trademark Opposition System, Appoints New Patent Office Head

Copyrights

=> ↺ Openclipart: a library of public domain images

• In the past five years, I’ve contributed more than 300 clip art graphics to Openclipart.org. There were some works I liked more than others, of course, but I believe sticking with it is important.

• All of the clip art on the site is public domain, so there are no rights reserved. And, you can use the images however you want—even for commercial purposes—with no need to acknowledge the original creator (though I always appreciate it when someone does that for me).

• Openclipart’s site encourages remixing with features like commenting, collections, and links to derivative works and original material. It’s exciting to see another person latch on to an idea from one of my clips and make it their own.

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