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● 03.22.16

● Links 22/3/2016: New Eminent Wine Staging, Red Hat Results Imminent

Posted in News Roundup at 10:52 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Server

=> ↺ GoDaddy Launches OpenStack-Powered Cloud Services

• GoDaddy announced a new OpenStack-powered public cloud service. The new service benefits from the Bitnami partnership for applications.

• GoDaddy, one of the largest domain registrars and shared hosting providers, is jumping into the cloud market with a new OpenStack-powered public cloud service.

=> ↺ As Docker Turns 3, CEO Predicts Unabated Growth

• Not even VMware invaded the data center as quickly as open source container supplier Docker has in its first three years. In an interview with InformationWeek, CEO Ben Golub offers his vision for the future.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 3.4.111 LTS Announced, Introduces Major x86 Improvements

• Earlier today, March 22, 2016, kernel developer Zefan Li had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of a new maintenance release for the stable, long-term supported Linux 3.4 kernel branch.

=> ↺ util-linux v2.28 — what’s new?

• The portability of the util-linux package is not our primary goal, but in many cases port code to the another libc or another operation system (if possible) is a way how to detect code disadvantages, obsolete functions etc. v2.28 is possible to compile on OSX and improved has been also support for kFreeBSD and GNU Hurd (of course you cannot compile Linux specific stuff, but build-system is smart enough to automatically disable utils irrelevant for your OS).

=> ↺ The Features That Landed So Far In The Linux 4.6 Kernel

• We are a little more than half-way through the Linux 4.6 kernel merge window so here’s a quick look at the new changes and features that have made it into the code-base for this next major kernel release.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ OpenGL 4 Shader Image Extensions Land Today In RadeonSI Gallium3D

=> ↺ NVIDIA Publishes Patches For Its Driver To Work With Wayland’s Weston

=> ↺ GTX 900 3D Support, AMDGPU Reset & Other Exciting DRM Highlights

Benchmarks

=> ↺ AMD GPU-PRO Hybrid Linux OpenGL Performance vs. RadeonSI Gallium3D

• While still working on some AMD vs. NVIDIA Vulkan Linux driver benchmarks using AMD’s new hybrid driver with Vulkan support, for your viewing pleasure this morning are some benchmarks comparing the new AMD GPU-PRO driver with its binary OpenGL driver against the pure open-source driver stack with the Ubuntu 16.04 AMDGPU driver and RadeonSI Gallium3D from Mesa 11.2 + LLVM 3.8.

Applications

=> ↺ Term::ANSIColor 4.05

• This Perl (core) module provides a variety of functions and tools for manipulating ANSI color and text style escape sequences.

=> ↺ podlators 4.07

• This is a minor bug fix release of the Perl POD translators for text and man pages. It fixes a warning about use of uninitialized variables when run on a Perl module in the current directory, cleans up a confusing warning during the Perl core build, and fixes a long-standing bug in turning off italic font in =item tags in a C block.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Learn Inkscape Ins and Outs Using Videos

=> ↺ Retrieve latest mirror list using Reflector in Arch Linux

=> ↺ Introduction to Docker Compose Tool for Multi-Container Applications

=> ↺ Attempt to set up RDO Mitaka at any given time (Delorean trunks)

=> ↺ Learn Linux, 101: File and directory management

=> ↺ Learn Linux, 101: Text streams and filters

=> ↺ How to create a heat map

=> ↺ How to create a heat map (Google Spreadsheets)

=> ↺ Getting the libguestfs appliance boot time down to 1.2s

=> ↺ How to upgrade from OpenSUSE Leap to Tumbleweed!

=> ↺ Deploy LAMP and/or LEMP stacks easily using Docker

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Wine Staging 1.9.6 Makes the Vulkan API Accessible to Apps Running in Wine

• Today, March 21, 2016, the Wine Staging team has announced the release and immediate availability for download of Wine Staging 1.9.6, based on the recently released Wine 1.9.6 development snapshot.

=> ↺ Wine-Staging 1.9.6 Adds Initial Support For Vulkan Windows Programs On Linux

• The Wine-Staging 1.9.6 release adds an experimental Vulkan wrapper for running Vulkan Windows binaries on Linux.

=> ↺ CodeWeavers Got Steam Running On Android

• CodeWeavers got their Wine-based CrossOver software running on Android, but before getting too excited, it’s x86 Android.

Games

=> ↺ Remember I mentioned the pirate combat game Tempest could come to Linux? It’s coming soon for sure now

=> ↺ XCOM 2 patched for Linux, and Anarchy’s Children DLC now available

=> ↺ There are more Linux gamers now than ever before

=> ↺ Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey claims Linux gamers declining

• But there is something weird about these figures. For a start it does not include Steam’s own Linux based operating system as being Linux. In 2013, Valve announced there were over 65 million SteamOS users around the world. In February 2015, Valve announced there were over 125 million active SteamOS users worldwide.

• [...]

• According to Gaming on Linux the figures are pants and Linux use amongst gamers is healthy. In fact there should be between 160 – 190 million accounts as of March 2016.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GTK+ 3.20 Toolkit Released Ahead of GNOME 3.20, Updates the HighContrast Theme

• The highly anticipated GNOME 3.20 desktop environment is about to be released in a couple of days, and we can’t help but notice that many of its core components and apps are being updated these days to version 3.20.0.

=> ↺ WebKitGTK+ 2.12

• We did it again, the Igalia WebKit team is pleased to announce a new stable release of WebKitGTK+, with a bunch of bugs fixed, some new API bits and many other improvements. I’m going to talk here about some of the most important changes, but as usual you have more information in the NEWS file.

=> ↺ Experimenting some more with map layers

• One of the new nice features of Maps 3.20 is the ability of loading map layers in GeoJSON, KML, and GPX formats.

=> ↺ GTK+ 3.20 Rolls Out Ahead Of GNOME 3.20

• GTK+ 3.20 was released on Monday as the toolkit empowering the GNOME 3.20 desktop release this week.

• GTK+ 3.20 brings much-improved Wayland support, a lot of CSS canges, support for reading .XCompose files, support for using native file choosers on Windows, a high contrast inverse theme, and a variety of other changes.

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ OpenELEC 7.0 Linux OS Enters Beta, Adds AMDGPU, WeTek Core, and OpenVPN Support

• The developers behind the OpenELEC Linux operating system for embedded device designed to act as a media center, have announced the release of the first Beta build of OpenELEC 7.0.

Arch Family

=> ↺ New Manjaro Linux 15.12 Update Adds Linux Kernel 4.5, KDE Applications 15.12.3

• Today, March 22, 2016, the Manjaro development team proudly announced the general availability of a new stable update for the Manjaro Linux 15.12 (Capella) computer operating system.

• With today’s update, Manjaro Linux 15.12 users will receive the recently released Linux 4.5 kernel, along with the KDE Applications 15.12.3 software suite for the KDE Plasma 5.5.5 desktop environment, and of course, updates to many of the core components and applications.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Why patience was my toughest leadership lesson

• Some people call patience a virtue. To me, it’s the single toughest lesson I had to learn when joining an open organization.

• It dawned on me recently in the middle of a class discussion with a group of MBA students at North Carolina State University. When I visited their classroom a few weeks ago to chat about their assigned reading, The Open Organization, I was overwhelmed (but also overjoyed!) by the number of insightful questions the students posed during my short time with them. But one in particular stuck with me long after I left.

• “What was the hardest thing you had to learn,” one student asked me, “when you started working at Red Hat?”

=> ↺ Promising stocks in today’s market: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ Red Hat Receives a Buy from Drexel Hamilton

=> ↺ The Red Hat Container Development Kit: Installation

Fedora

=> ↺ Work on Fedora for Google Summer of Code 2016

• Google Summer of Code is a yearly program ran by Google that focuses on bringing more students into open source software development. Students work with an open source organization over a three month period during their break from school. Google has a more comprehensive break-down of how the program works on their website. Fedora is happy to announce that for the tenth year, we are participating in Google Summer of Code 2016.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Reproducible builds: week 47 in Stretch cycle

• The following packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: diction, doublecmd, ruby-hiredis, vdr-plugin-epgsearch.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) Final Beta Now in Feature Freeze, Lands March 24

• Just a few moments ago, March 22, 2016, Canonical’s Adam Conrad announced that the upcoming Final Beta build of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating is officially in Feature Freeze.

=> ↺ Canonical Releases Snapcraft 2.5 for Ubuntu Snappy with Support for Kernel Snaps

• Today, March 22, 2016, Canonical’s Sergio Schvezov announced the release of Snapcraft 2.5, the Snappy creator tool used to create and manage snaps for the Snappy Ubuntu Core operating system.

=> ↺ Ubuntu’s Snapcraft 2.5 Works On Packaging Kernels

• Snapcraft, Ubuntu’s build and packaging tool for Snappy packages, has seen a new major release.

• Snapcraft 2.5 comes with a kernel and kbuild plugin as Ubuntu developers work on being able to snap a kernel, the kernel snaps are considered experimental in this version. Snapcraft 2.5 also has support for downloading snaps and other enhancements.

• More details on Snapcraft 2.5 can be found via the release announcement. There is also this new blog post about using the new kbuild and kernel plugins of Snapcraft 2.5.

=> ↺ True believers mind-meld FreeBSD with Ubuntu to burn systemd

• Another shot has been fired in the war between *nix true believers and systemd advocates, with a group of diehards welding the Ubuntu body onto the FreeBSD chassis.

• Their beta, ubuntuBSD, has taken its first breaths at Sourceforge, and the counter tells us more than 2,800 daredevils have already hit the download button. It uses Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) on top of the FreeBSD kernel.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Tizen

=> ↺ Support for Tizen 2.3.1 SDK to end April 1st 2016

• Today, In Tizen developer related news, it has been announced that the Tizen 2.3.1 Software Development Kit (SDK) will no longer be supported after April 1st 2016. When this specific SDK was released it would only support version 2.3 and 2.3.1 of the Tizen Operating System (OS).

Android

=> ↺ What it’s like living with a $20 Android phone

• Android phones aren’t all glitzy flagship devices like the Galaxy S7 edge and the LG G5. In fact, the majority of Android phones out there are dirt-cheap phones made by no-name companies. Gadget YouTuber Austin Evans recently got his hands on a $20 Android phone called the Alcatel Pixi Glitz and he decided to see how it stacked up to other Android phones on the market. While he wouldn’t personally use it as his primary device, he did say that for $20 it’s a “pretty solid” device.

=> ↺ Jaguar jumps on Android Wear app bandwagon

• Jaguar is the latest car manufacturer to jump into the world of wearables with its new Android Wear app, which allows owners to control their air conditioning, check the fuel level and track their cars from their wrists.

• Although Jaguar has been pushing what it can do when it comes to smartphone integration recently, the Android Wear app deals with a set of tasks slightly more mundane than remote off roading.

=> ↺ Casio’s rugged Android Wear watch goes on sale March 25 for $500

=> ↺ Casio’s rugged Android Wear smartwatch goes on sale March 25th for $500

• Casio has announced that its its rugged Android Wear smartwatch, the Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10, will go on sale on the company’s website, the Google Store, and Amazon, from March 25th for $500. The device was first unveiled at CES earlier this year, and unlike many of the new smartwatches we saw then, the Smart Outdoor Watch was commendable for its clear sense of purpose. It’s massive, yes, with its 1.3-inch, 320 x 320 watch face surrounded by a chunky plastic frame, but it’s built to actually be useful when you’re romping about in the great outdoors.

=> ↺ InFocus Bingo 10, cheapest Android Marshmallow smartphone launched at Rs 4,299

• InFocus has announced the launch of the cheapest Android Marshmallow smartphone – Bingo 10 – at Rs 4, 299. The company had recently unveiled Bingo 50, which also came with the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow for Rs 7,499. The InFocus Bingo 10 is exclusively available on Snapdeal.

=> ↺ InFocus launches affordable Android smartphone at Rs 4,299

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Update: Install Android 5.1.1 Lollipop Via Custom ROM

=> ↺ Text Formatting and File Sharing in WhatsApp for Android

=> ↺ Do not touch this one Android setting and most malware will leave you alone, mostly

=> ↺ App Deals: Now You Can Get LEGO And Batman On Your Android

=> ↺ Lenovo K3 Note Starts Receiving Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update in India

=> ↺ Android Marshmallow update for Galaxy S5 begins international rollout

=> ↺ 275 million Android devices vulnerable to new Stagefright threat that can hack a phone in 15 seconds

=> ↺ Millions of Android phones vulnerable to new hacking threat

=> ↺ Millions of Android phones vulnerable to latest hack

=> ↺ Android phones still at risk from the Stagefright bug

=> ↺ Google warns of Android flaw used to gain root access to devices

=> ↺ These are the most important privacy settings in Android

=> ↺ Customize Google Maps on Android With Stickers

=> ↺ FTC Warns Android Developers On Using Silverpush: Should Users In US Worry?

=> ↺ This is Android N’s freeform window mode

• Last week, we wrote about the “freeform window” mode in the Android N Developer Preview. Brief mentions in the developer documents and hints in the code pointed to Android someday displaying apps in resizable floating windows, just like in a desktop OS. Freeform window mode isn’t normally accessible in the current dev preview, but shortly after the post, we were contacted by reader Zhuowei Zhang with instructions on how to make it work.

• We’ll get to the instructions, but first let’s talk about what’s actually here. Freeform window mode is just what we imagined. It’s a dead ringer for Remix OS—multiple Android apps floating around inside windows—and it might be the beginnings of a desktop operating system. It works on Android N phones and tablets, and once the mode is enabled, you’ll see an extra button on thumbnails in the Recent Apps screen. To the left of the “X” button that pops up after a second or two, there will be a square shape—the same ugly placeholder art Google used for the split screen mode in the Android M Developer Preview.

=> ↺ Android Wear 1.4 review: Marshmallow brings more features with less polish

=> ↺ Android 7.0 needs a name

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy S5 Starts Receiving Android Marshmallow Update

=> ↺ iPhone SE & Android tech deal alert

=> ↺ Sketchy report says Galaxy Note 6 is coming in July, with Android ‘N’

=> ↺ Vizio’s new TVs sport Google Cast, HDR and Android tablets

=> ↺ The Windows Phone upgrade model is so broken, even Android makes it look bad

• It seems that Microsoft has, once again, broken promises made to Lumia owners. If you’ve got a Lumia 1020 or Lumia 920 — devices released in July 2013 and November 2012 respectively — then you’re not going to be seeing an upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile despite previously being promised the very same upgrade.

=> ↺ This Sneaky Android Hack Could Screw Up Your Smartphone in Seconds

=> ↺ How to use 1Password for Teams on Android devices

• Users of 1Password are in for a treat. AgileBits, the company behind this outstanding password management tool, has released a major update to the mobile app, and it’s one that everyone should get behind immediately.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ What is Maintainership?

• Why do we have maintainers in free software projects? There are various different explanations you can use, and they affect how you do the job of maintainer, how you treat maintainers, how and whether you recruit and mentor them, and so on.

• So here are three — they aren’t the only ways people think about maintainership, but these are three I have noticed, and I have given them alliterative names to make it easier to think about and remember them.

=> ↺ imagemagick as a resource for the budget-constrained researcher

• In this installment, I’ll cover concatenating multiple image files into a multi-page pdf–a very handy trick the imagemagick utility convert makes possible. But first, a bit of grousing on the subject of academia, budget-constrained researching, and academic publishing.

• Pricing for on-line academic resources tends, not surprisingly, to be linked to budgetary allowances of large academic institutions: what institutions can afford to pay for electronic access to some journal or other, for example, will influence the fee that will be charged to anyone wishing to gain such access. If one is affiliated with such an institution–whether in an ongoing way such as by being a student, staff, or faculty member, or in a more ephemeral way, such as by physically paying a visit to one’s local academic library–one typically need pay nothing at all for such access: the institution pays some annual fee that enables these users to utilize the electronic resource.

=> ↺ Kill extra brand names to make your open source project more powerful

• Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared some thoughts about several of the most common branding issues we see in our work with open source companies at New Kind. I’ve covered how to vet the name you are considering for an open source project and outlined the pros and cons of some of the most popular company, product, and project brand architecture scenarios we see in the open source world.

• Today I want to share one of the most common brand strategy mistakes I see open source project leaders make: the deep (possibly inherently human) need to name everything.

=> ↺ Can we talk about ageism?

• The free and open source community has been having a lot of conversations about diversity, especially gender diversity, over the last few years. Although there is still plenty to do, we’ve made some real strides. After all, the first step is admitting there is a problem.

• Another type of diversity that has gotten much less attention, but that is integral to building sustainable communities is age diversity. If we want free and open source software to truly take over the world, then we want to welcome contributors of all ages. A few months ago, I interviewed some women approaching or over fifty about their experiences in open source, and in this article, I’ll share their perspectives.

Events

=> ↺ FOSSASIA 2016: Singapore

• FOSSASIA is an annual Free and Opensource conference that focuses on showcasing these FOSS technologies and software in Asia. It has talks and workshops that covers a wide range of topics – from hardware hacks, to design, graphics and software.

• This year, the conference is held in my home country, Singapore, at the Science Center. The Science Center is a place where people can see Science happen and learn how it works. It’s a pretty nice place to hold this conference and it is quite relevant as well, because technology is related to Computing Sciences and theories.

• My talk was approved and I was scheduled to talk on the Day 2 of the event. My talk is about Opening Up Yourself. Basically, it’s about Opensource VS Proprietary software and contributing to Opensource. I am also manning the Fedora booth for this year!

=> ↺ OSCON moves to Austin: Will the 18th OSCON be the best one yet?

• Did you know that O’Reilly’s annual Open Source Convention, OSCON, is moving from their regular location of Portland, Oregon, to Austin, Texas (May 16-19)? As an Austin local, I’m ecstatic to have my favorite conference in my favorite city. I’ve always said (and read) that Austin and Portland are similar cities. Both are a little weird, both have that small town charm, and both have an amazing foodie scene. (And now they both have Voodoo Doughnuts!)

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Rust…

• Over the last holidays I plunged and started learning Rust in a practical way. Coming from a C++ background, and having a strong dislike of the whole concept of checking the correctness at runtime, like in, say, JavaScript, Rust is really promising.

CMS

=> ↺ Joomla 3.5 Open-Source CMS Released with PHP 7 Support, Is Now Twice as Fast

• The Joomla project has released version 3.5.0 of their open-source PHP-based CMS, the last version in the 3.x branch, but one of crucial importance, adding many much-needed features, and of course, the obligatory bug fixes.

• First and foremost, Joomla 3.5 is the first Joomla version to fully support PHP 7, the latest major version of the PHP engine.

=> ↺ Joomla 3.5 Released, Promises Faster Websites

• Joomla released a new version of its open source web content management system today that company officials claim will improve user experience for both developers and administrators.

• Joomla version 3.5 contains nearly three dozen new features, they explained.

• Joomla is built on PHP and MySQL. The update will make website’s faster because it offers PHP 7 support, said Joe Sonne, former Open Source Matters, Inc. board member and current member of the capital committee. Open Source Matters is the nonprofit organization that supports the Joomla Project.

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ Microsoft Eases Docker Container Migrations With Cloud Storage Plug-in

=> ↺ Microsoft open sources Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools

• This news comes only weeks after Microsoft told the world it was integrating Visual Studio with open-source Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Microsoft is clearly incorporating its development tools with those of the open-source community.

=> ↺ Techies make a beeline for ‘Open Hack’

=> ↺ Microsoft openwashing for government contracts

=> ↺ MS India inaugurates MS Openness Day

=> ↺ Microsoft to host its open source conference for developers in India

=> ↺ Microsoft hosts open source conference and hackathon for developers

=> ↺ Microsoft Openness Days is an open source conference and hackathon for developers

BSD

=> ↺ FreeBSD 10.3-RC3 Now Available

• Marius Strobl has announced the availability of the third release candidate for FreeBSD 10.3: “The second release candidate build of the 10.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Noteworthy changes since 10.3-RC2: the requirement that for a root-on-ZFS setup, ZFS needs to account for at least 50 percent of the resulting partition table was removed from zfsboot; build configurations of csh(1) and tcsh(1) were changed to activate the SAVESIGVEC option, i. e. saving and restoring of signal handlers before/after executing an external command; FreeBSD SA-16:15 and CVE-2016-1885 have been resolved; the netwait rc(8) script has been changed to require firewall setup to be completed, otherwise a ping(8) to the IP address specified via the netwait_ip option may not succeed; in order to be able to work on upcoming Intel Purley platform system, including Skylake Xeon servers, the x86 kernels now align the XSAVE area to a multiple of 64 bytes

Programming

=> ↺ Why Jenkins is becoming the engine of devops

• Trends like agile development, devops, and continuous integration speak to the modern enterprise’s need to build software hyper-efficiently — and, if necessary, to turn on a dime.

• That latter maneuver is how CloudBees became the company it is today. Once an independent, public cloud PaaS provider for Java coders (rated highly by InfoWorld’s Andrew Oliver in “Which freaking PaaS should I use?”), CloudBees pivoted sharply 18 months ago to relaunch as the leading provider of Jenkins, a highly popular open source tool for managing the software development process.

=> ↺ Apple’s Programming Language Swift 2.2 Released With Linux Support

=> ↺ Apple Releases Swift 2.2 Programming Language with Ubuntu Linux Support

• After announcing the availability of the iOS 9.3, Mac OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan, watchOS 2.2, and tvOS 9.2 operating systems, as well as the Xcode 7.3 IDE, Apple now released version 2.2 of its Swift programming language for OS X and Linux.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Microsoft will rest its jackboot on Windows 7, 8.1′s throat on new Intel CPUs in 2018 – not 2017

• Stand well back: Microsoft has had a bright idea. Rather than royally screwing over people running Windows 7 and 8.1 on new Intel hardware, it’s just going to give them a rough ride instead.

• In January, Microsoft said it would only offer software updates for “security, reliability, and compatibility” fixes for Windows 7 and 8.1 on Intel Skylake processors until July 2017. After that cutoff point, only critical security fixes would be made available – and only if they weren’t a chore for Microsoft to develop and release.

=> ↺ It Is Not Twitter’s Birthday

• Today is just the anniversary of the first tweet, which Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent out on March 21, 2006. But Twitter itself was not released to the public until July 15, 2006. That is its birthday. That is how birthdays work.

Hardware

=> ↺ Andy Grove – 2 September 1936 – 21 March 2016

• Andrew Stephen “Andy” Grove was a Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author. He was a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry.

• Andy was the visionary who changed the face of semiconductor maker Intel. Affectionately called the ‘mastermind’ he left a huge mark on the technology industry. Time Magazine named him man of the year in 1997.

=> ↺ [Old] The True Story of Intel Pioneer Andrew Grove, TIME’s 1997 Man of the Year

• Andrew Grove, the longtime chairperson and chief executive of Intel Corp., died at the age of 79. He is remembered as a pioneer of the digital age, a savior of Intel and a champion of the semiconductor revolution. But before he became a business luminary, Grove survived some of the 20th century’s darkest horrors.

=> ↺ [Old] ANDREW GROVE: A SURVIVOR’S TALE

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ General Mills Will Label GMOs on Products Nationwide

• The company will follow the standards set by Vermont’s labeling law until a national standard is set.

• Vermont started a revolution, and its effects will soon spread across the country. No, we aren’t talking about Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign to be the Democratic presidential nominee but the 2014 law passed by state legislators mandating the voluntary labeling of foods made with genetically engineered ingredients. The new regulations are set to go into effect on July 1, and with a federal political solution proving elusive, one of the biggest food companies in the game now says it will label all its products, nationwide, in accordance with tiny Vermont’s law.

• “We can’t label our products for only one state without significantly driving up costs for our consumers, and we simply won’t do that,” Jeff Harmening, head of U.S. retail operations at General Mills, wrote on the company’s website Friday. “The result: Consumers all over the country will soon begin seeing words legislated by the state of Vermont on the labels of many of their favorite General Mills food products.”

Security

=> ↺ Security advisories for Monday

=> ↺ Cryptostalker, a Tool to Detect Crypto-Ransomware on Linux

• A while back, we stumbled upon an interesting GitHub repo dubbed randumb, which included an example called Cryptostalker, advertised as a tool to detect crypto-ransomware on Linux.

• Cryptostalker and the original project randumb are the work of Sean Williams, a developer from San Francisco. Mr. Williams wanted to create a tool that monitored the filesystem for newly written files, and if the files contained random data, the sign of encrypted content, and they were written at high speed, it would alert the system’s owner.

=> ↺ Google slings critical patch at exploited Linux kernel root hole

• Google has shipped an out-of-band patch for Android shuttering a bug that is under active exploitation to root devices.

• The vulnerability (CVE-2015-1805) affects all Android devices running Linux kernel versions below 3.18.

=> ↺ Everything is fine, nothing to see here!

• Today everyone who is REALLY, I mean REALLY REALLY good at security got there through blood sweat and tears. Nobody taught them what they know, they learned it on their own. Many of us didn’t have training when we were learning these things. Regardless of this though, if training is fantastic, why does it seem there is a constant march toward things getting worse instead of better? That tells me we’re not teaching the right skills to the right people. The skills of yesterday don’t help you today, and especially don’t help tomorrow. By its very definition, training can only cover the topics of yesterday.

=> ↺ Inside the Starburst-sized box that could save the Internet

• Cybercrime is costing us millions. Hacks drain the average American firm of $15.4 million per year, and, in the resulting panic, companies often spend more than $1.9 million to resolve a single attack. It’s time to face facts: Our defenses aren’t strong enough to keep the hackers out.

=> ↺ Utah’s Online Caucus Gives Security Experts Heart Attacks

• On Tuesday, registered Republicans in Utah who want to participate in their state’s caucus will have the option to either head to a polling station and cast a vote in person or log onto a new website and choose their candidate online. To make this happen, the Utah GOP paid more than $80,000 to the London-based company Smartmatic, which manages electronic voting systems and internet voting systems in 25 countries and will run the Utah GOP caucus system.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ Reporting (or Not) the Ties Between US-Armed Syrian Rebels and Al Qaeda’s Affiliate

• A crucial problem in news media coverage of the Syrian civil war has been how to characterize the relationship between the so-called “moderate” opposition forces armed by the CIA, on one hand, and the Al Qaeda franchise Al Nusra Front (and its close ally Ahrar al Sham), on the other. But it is a politically sensitive issue for US policy, which seeks to overthrow Syria’s government without seeming to make common cause with the movement responsible for 9/11, and the system of news production has worked effectively to prevent the news media from reporting it fully and accurately.

• The Obama administration has long portrayed the opposition groups it has been arming with anti-tank weapons as independent of Nusra Front. In reality, the administration has been relying on the close cooperation of these “moderate” groups with Nusra Front to put pressure on the Syrian government. The United States and its allies–especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey–want the civil war to end with the dissolution of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by US rivals like Russia and Iran.

=> ↺ Saudi Arabia Continues Hiring Spree of Lobbyists, Retains Former Washington Post Reporter

• The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is adding more American lobbyists to its payroll by hiring BGR Government Affairs, a company founded by former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour, according to filings disclosed last week.

• The contract provides BGR with $500,000 annually to assist with U.S. media outreach for the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, a government entity. The retainer includes the services of Jeffrey Birnbaum, a former Washington Post reporter who once covered the lobbying industry and now works as a lobbyist, as well as Ed Rogers, a former Reagan administration official who now lobbies and writes a column for the Post called PostPartisan.

=> ↺ Misunderstanding the Terror Threat

• By jumping into wars wherever some group calls itself “Islamic State,” the U.S. government misunderstands the threat and feeds the danger of endless warfare, explains ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

=> ↺ Henry Giroux And “America’s Addiction To Violence”

=> ↺ Our unfounded obsession with safety is costing us our freedom

• As you inch your way through security at the airport, you’ll be relieved of your penknife and terrifying tube of Pepsodent. Your unopened can of Coke will, of course, be thrown in the trash, along with any snow globes, and off go your shoes.

• When at last you’re reshod and passing the duty-free shop, you can buy a well-deserved bottle of Scotch . . . which you can then bring on board, crack against the cabin wall and use as you would a machete.

• So why all the security kabuki from the TSA?

=> ↺ Ronald Suny to lecture on Armenian genocide of 1915

• “What I’m trying to do is explain the emotional environment in Turkey at the time,” says Suny, professor of history and political science in LSA. “What would lead a government to kill hundreds of thousands of their own subjects, who, in their own view, were perfectly loyal?”

• This year, in recognition of his scholarship at Michigan, Suny was named the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History. The Distinguished University Professorship is the highest professorial title granted at U-M.

• Suny will present his lecture, “They Can Live in the Desert, but Nowhere Else: Explaining the Armenian Genocide 100 Years Later,” at 4 p.m. Tuesday at Rackham Amphitheatre. The lecture will tell the story of why, when and how the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire happened.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Climate change, the elephant in the Gulf

• Soaring temperatures threaten to make Gulf States uninhabitable.

=> ↺ The breathtaking human toll of environmental pollution

• Just how bad was laid out by the World Health Organization this week in a bleak new report on environmentally related deaths.

• New analysis of data from 2012 found that a staggering 12.6 million people died that year from living and working in toxic environments.

• That’s almost equivalent to the combined populations of New York City and Los Angeles, and represents nearly a quarter of the 55.6 million deaths recorded that year.

• That’s scary, but it gets worse.

=> ↺ What we’re doing to the Earth has no parallel in 66 million years, scientists say

• If you dig deep enough into the Earth’s climate change archives, you hear about the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. And then you get scared.

• This is a time period, about 56 million years ago, when something mysterious happened — there are many ideas as to what — that suddenly caused concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to spike, far higher than they are right now. The planet proceeded to warm rapidly, at least in geologic terms, and major die-offs of some marine organisms followed due to strong acidification of the oceans.

=> ↺ Helping Indonesia Fight Catastrophic Forest Fires

• Peatlands are created by eons of decomposing vegetation accumulating in wet areas. They store vast quantities of carbon and can be many feet deep. Under natural conditions, peatlands absorb water in the wet season and slowly discharge water in the dry season. Large areas of tropical rainforest grow on these peatlands. This means that they regulate flooding, provide clean water, store carbon and provide habitat for endangered orangutans and other critical wildlife.

• But over the last several decades, millions of acres of peatland have been drained to make them suitable for agricultural use—primarily to grow palm oil, timber, rice and other commodity crops. The draining causes the peat to dry out and decompose, which emits carbon into the atmosphere. More significantly, the drier peat is much more susceptible to fire, and large amounts of greenhouse gases are released when both the peat, and the forests growing on the peat, are burned.

Finance

=> ↺ European Commission Continues to Ignore Parliament on TTIP

• Today, the Commission released two new texts relating to the controversial Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (“Regulatory Cooperation” and “Good Regulatory Practices”), which continue to ignore requests by the European Parliament.

=> ↺ NYT Promotes Study by Private Pension Company That Says Not to Trust Public Pensions

• Reputable newspapers try to avoid the self-serving studies that industry groups put out to try to gain public support for their favored policies. But apparently the New York Times (3/17/16) does not feel bound by such standards. It ran a major news story on a study by Citigroup that was designed to scare people about the state of public pensions and encourage them to trust more of their retirement savings to the financial industry.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Teach for America to cut national staff by 15 percent

=> ↺ Gates’ lobbyists

• Teach for America, the nonprofit known for placing idealistic and inexperienced teachers in some of the nation’s neediest schools, is cutting 15 percent of its national staff in what the organization described as an effort to give more independence to its more than 50 regional offices around the country.

=> ↺ How DFER Leaders Channel Out-of-State Dark Money in California, Colorado, and Beyond

• At first glance, “Democrats for Education Reform” (DFER) may sound like a generic advocacy group, but a closer review of its financial filings and activities shows how it uses local branding to help throw the voice of huge Wall Street players and other corporate interests from out-of-state.

Censorship

=> ↺ Free speech group says theatremakers are censoring plays to avoid Islamic backlash

• Theatres and playwrights are censoring their plays for fear of offending Muslims, a leading free speech campaign group has claimed.

• Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of Index on Censorship, claimed theatre heads are worried that certain plays would cause “violent protests” and elect not to stage them to avoid the risk.

• She pointed to last year’s cancelled National Youth Theatre production, Homegrown, which was set to examine radicalisation in schools but was pulled two weeks before its premiere.

=> ↺ Museums seek help as spectre of censorship looms over Turkey

• As incidents of censorship are on the rise in Turkey, museums and art centres must find increasingly nimble ways to negotiate the changing cultural landscape. A new guide for Turkish cultural venues and artists implicated in censorship cases is due to be published later this year by the research platform Siyah Bant.

• “I can recite a hundred horrific incidents from last year alone. It would be a pity to think of them as arbitrary or unrelated. This zeitgeist makes the culture wars of the 1980s feel look like toddler’s play,” says Vasif Kortun, the director of Salt, one of Istanbul’s leading contemporary art spaces.

=> ↺ Grassroots Journalists Talk Lebanese Media Censorship

• Kareem Chehayeb and Sarah Shmaitilly, the founders of Beirut Syndrome, a grassroots journalism site based in Beirut, Lebanon, discussed the tendency of the Lebanese media to censor their reporting in an effort to maintain the country’s reputation at a panel discussion in Reiss Hall on Wednesday.

• Chehayeb and Shmaitilly said the idea behind their site is to report on Lebanese issues from an alternative perspective, seeking to counteract Lebanese censorship on their website with clear, unbiased content.

Privacy

=> ↺ Edward Snowden and The Wire’s David Simon Talk Surveillance and Its Limits on Twitter

• When the New York Times revealed on Saturday that the Paris attackers used and trashed multiple “burner” phones to hide their plotting from authorities, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and The Wire’s creator David Simon started debating the value of communications surveillance over Twitter.

• The Paris attacks, the subject of intense speculation since last year, have reignited the debate over whether Snowden’s revelations helped the enemy avoid the NSA’s all seeing eye. The Times article also repeats the assertion — with no credible evidence — that those involved in the attack used encryption, which scrambles communications in transit, to help hide their activities from authorities.

• Snowden, the former NSA contractor turned whistleblower, pitted his views on the failures of NSA spying to hunt down terrorists against what Simon, journalist and author, described as the potential advantage of proactive collection to detect burner phones used by less sophisticated criminals.

=> ↺ Are the Authorities Confusing a PRISM Problem with an Encryption Problem?

• CNN has its own version of updated reporting from the Paris attack. It provides a completely predictable detail inexplicably not included in the weekend’s big NYT story: that the one phone with any content on it — as distinct from a pure burner — had Telegram loaded on it.

=> ↺ Good News For Now: Court Postpones Hearing in Apple v. FBI

=> ↺ Speaking in Tech: Did the FBI not ask the NSA to take a crack at breaking iOS?

• Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Greg is out while Sarah and Eddie drive the car talking Uber, Apple and data centre pay. Our special guest is Vaughn Stewart of Pure Storage.

=> ↺ Apple defends crypto fight against government during launch event

=> ↺ The FBI Now Says It May Crack That iPhone Without Apple’s Help

=> ↺ Government Showdown with Apple Delayed

=> ↺ FBI backs down against Apple: Feds may be able to crack killer’s iPhone without iGiant’s help

=> ↺ India Still Trying To Turn Optional Aadhaar Identification Number Into A Mandatory National Identity System

• The fact that an optional national numbering system now seems to be morphing into a way to monitor what people are doing will hardly come as a surprise to Techdirt readers, but this continued slide down the slippery slope is still troubling, as are other aspects of the new legislation. For example, it was introduced as a “Money Bill,” which is normally reserved for matters related to taxation, not privacy. That suggests a desire to push it through without real scrutiny.

=> ↺ GCHQ parking tries patience of neighbours in Cheltenham

• Hundreds of residents have been asked to give their views on and “increase” in cars parked by GCHQ workers in the Fiddler’s Green and Hester’s Way areas of Cheltenham.

• Liberal Democrat councillor Wendy Flynn, a former mayor, said she had delivered 400 letters to residents and has set up an online petition and survey.

=> ↺ Milwaukee PD Hid Stingray Usage From Judges, Defendants And Now Congress Members Want Answers From The FBI

• More evidence of Stingray obfuscation has been uncovered in Milwaukee. What appeared at first to be a bog standard court order for tracking of a suspect using a cell phone provider’s own “network equipment” actually appears to be something else. The ACLU was already involved in this case, arguing that such tracking by cell phone providers only be available with a warrant. But as it dug into the specifics, it became obvious the tracking had not been performed by the cell provider.

=> ↺ No NSA, CIA or Big Brother watching your mails anymore

• Students from Harvard and MIT are working towards ‘building an Internet that protects privacy’, starting with email. So, basically, they have built a super secure mail service that can keep even the NSA out. It’s called the ProtonMail.

=> ↺ Pentagon likely destroyed evidence in NSA whistle-blower case

=> ↺ Probe launched into Pentagon handling of NSA whistleblower evidence

Civil Rights

=> ↺ How Anonymous Hackers Just Fooled Donald Trump And The FBI Big Time

• Remember the recent leak by Anonymous that revealed the personal information of Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump? What’s more, this leak has fooled Donald Trump, the FBI, and the Secret Service as everything ‘leaked’ was already available online. In a new video, Anonymous has outlined this point and thanked everybody for being a part of this experiment.

=> ↺ Social Justice Week

• Contrary to the stereotype of apolitical Millenials, students at Sonoma State University in Northern California have organized a Social Justice Week, addressing issues from US foreign policy to local police-brutality cases. Today’s guests are student organizers or guests taking part in Social Justice Week. Also included is a preview of next week’s program, when the guest will be Medea Benjamin of Code Pink.

=> ↺ Many Accused No Longer Provided Public Defenders in Louisiana

• Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country in general as well as an extraordinary incarceration rate for African Americans, no longer provides public defenders to all its people accused of crimes; within months over half its public defender offices are expected to become insolvent due to lack of state-provided funding.

• This is a conscious decision to not provide Constitutionally-required legal services to the poor.

=> ↺ Bernie Sanders Walks a Tightrope in First Middle East Speech

=> ↺ More US Muslims favor Bernie Sanders than do US Jews

• The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) published a new opinion poll on America’s Muslims and other religious groups this week, which contains some surprises. One important finding is that mosque attendance is associated with strong identification as an American and strong civic participation as well as with opposition to violence toward civilians, whether committed by the state or by non-state actors. That is, people like Donald Trump who equate mosques with radicalism and just plan wrong.

=> ↺ Amy Goodman Tells CNN the Media is “Manufacturing Consent” for Trump While Silencing Sanders

• “Let’s look at Super Tuesday 3, you had major coverage here at CNN, at MSNBC, at Fox — all the networks across all through the night as the polls are closing,” Goodman said. “You see the concession speeches and the great victory speeches, you see Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Kasich, you see Donald Trump. You’re waiting here at CNN, at MSNBC. They said he’s going to hold a news conference… and that’s it. Where was Bernie Sanders? Well, in fact, Bernie Sanders was in Phoenix, Arizona before thousands of people and as the networks were waiting for Donald Trump and waiting and all the pundits are weighing in, they don’t even say that Bernie Sanders is about to speak.”

=> ↺ Meet The Jews Who Protested Trump’s AIPAC Speech

• Markiz explained that the low-key protest was meant to counter Trump’s statements maligning immigrants and his proposal to ban all Muslims form entering the country, saying they intended their actions to model the “opposite to the rhetoric and vitriol that’s happening this year, in particular the language that’s coming out to hate towards Muslims, and Mexicans.” But he insisted that he move wasn’t a rejection of AIPAC itself, but of the rhetoric Trump has introduced into American political discourse.

=> ↺ Women Hate Donald Trump Even More Than Men Hate Hillary Clinton

• If Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the 2016 presidential candidates, gender will be part of the campaign in an unprecedented way. It goes beyond the fact that Clinton would be the first woman nominated by one of the two major parties as its presidential candidate: Polls consistently show that women really, really don’t like Trump, and men — to a lesser but still significant degree — really don’t like Clinton.

=> ↺ A Fearful Ascendency: the Rise of Trump

• Why do the Republicans fear Trump so much? Romney evoked the racism and misogyny of the Trump campaign. Romney even said the word “misogyny”, something of historical proportions for a party that has systematically gone after women’s reproductive health and women’s rights. The “gender gap” in the 2012 presidential election was the largest in U.S. history, with the Democrats winning the women vote by 20 points.

=> ↺ The Texas Border Surge Is Backfiring

• The increase in law enforcement officers in the Rio Grande Valley makes residents feel less safe.

• Last year, the Texas Legislature passed an $800 million omnibus bill that, among other things, flooded the Rio Grande Valley with law enforcement officers. And this week, a Texas Senate subcommittee on border security will hold hearings to determine the necessity of increased collaboration between local law enforcement, state troopers, and federal immigration agents.

=> ↺ Candidates, Is America Exceptional, or Only Great?

• Five Questions That Weren’t Asked During the 2012 Presidential Debates and Are Unlikely to Be Asked in 2016

=> ↺ Castro Demands Obama Drop Blockade, Return ‘Illegally Occupied’ Guantánamo

• During the first family’s historic visit to Cuba on Monday, the Cuban president confronted President Barack Obama about the crippling trade embargo and called on him to “return the territory illegally occupied by Guantánamo Base.”

• At an afternoon press conference in Havana, the two leaders touted the “concrete” achievements made since the countries resumed diplomatic relations in December 2014.

=> ↺ Video Shows Exactly How Donald Trump Incited Assault on Protester

• What those brief glimpses of the latest outburst of violence at a Trump rally failed to show, however, is the role the candidate himself played in the moments before the attack, when he stoked anger at the two protesters as they were marched through the crowd of his supporters.

• Fortunately, that context is available in the form of unedited video of the first 19 minutes of the rally, which was streamed live on Facebook by the local ABC affiliate, KGUN. The video makes it possible to see exactly how Trump reacted to the ejection of three sets of protesters within the first nine minutes of his speech.

=> ↺ Bill Clinton Says Very Bill Clinton Things on Campaign Trail for Hillary

• Where to start? Saying that Hillary is good on getting people to “buy in” to the political process shows either a stunning lack of self-awareness or a stunning lack of caring. The Clinton Foundation looks a lot like a slush fund that facilitated dirty deals with foreign governments while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state in the Obama administration.

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Despite A Decade Of Trying To Kill It, Verizon Insists It Loves Net Neutrality

• You’d be hard pressed to find a company that’s been more involved in trying to kill net neutrality than Verizon. The company successfully sued to overturn the FCC’s original, flimsy 2010 neutrality rules, which most ISPs actually liked because they contained enough loopholes to drive several vehicle convoys through. Responding to Verizon’s legal assault, the FCC responded last year by taking things further, passing new, (supposedly) more legally sound neutrality rules and reclassifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. Verizon sued again, though this time as part of a multi-pronged coalition of ISP lobbying groups claiming the rules violated their free speech rights.

DRM

=> ↺ Scenes From Anti-DRM Protest Outside W3C

• A crowd upset about the possibility of DRM in Web standards gathered to protest outside the World Wide Web Consortium’s Advisory Committee meeting in Cambridge, MA last night. EFF is participating in these W3C meetings as a member, encouraging the group to adopt a non-aggression covenant to protect security researchers, standards implementors and others from the effects of including DRM-related technology in open standards.

• Last night’s protests, shown below, were organized by the Free Software Foundation and included comments from EFF’s International Director Danny O’Brien.

=> ↺ Amazon warns Kindle users: Update by March 22 or else

• Do you own an old Kindle that’s been gathering dust? Get it updated before March 22 or you won’t be able to get online and download your books any more.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Special Report: India Rocked By Report Of Secret Assurance To US Industry On IP

=> ↺ the impact

• That the Indian government has been under pressure from the United States to change its patent regime is no secret among those who follow the public discourse on intellectual property rights. Now, a new controversy about India’s alleged private assurance to the US-India Business Council (USIBC) and other lobby groups that it would not invoke compulsory licensing for commercial purposes seeks to add fuel to fiery speculation about a shift in India’s policy on IPR.

• The controversy pivots on a 5 February 2016 submission by the USIBC to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) annual Special 301 report. The Special 301 Report is prepared every year by the USTR under Section 301 as amended of the (US) Trade Act of 1974. The report aims to identify trade barriers to US companies due to intellectual property laws in other countries

Copyrights

=> ↺ Judges: Geolocation Not Good Enough to Pinpoint Pirates

• Two Californian judges have thrown up a roadblock for Malibu Media, the adult media publisher that files thousands of copyright lawsuits each year. Both judges have refused to grant a subpoena to expose the personal details of alleged pirates, arguing that the geolocation tools that linked the wrongdoers to their district are not sufficient in these cases.

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