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● 04.09.16
● Links 10/4/2016: MATE 1.14, LibreOffice 5.1.2
Posted in News Roundup at 2:32 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux
=> ↺ Download Linux Voice issue 17
- Issue 17 of Linux Voice is nine months old, so we’re releasing it under the Creative Commons BY-SA license. You can share and modify all content from the magazine (apart from adverts), providing you credit Linux Voice as the original source and retain the same license.
Desktop
=> ↺ Linux will eventually be desktop king
- Linux inventor Linus Torvalds has told the world that he has not given up on replacing Windows on the desktop with his glorious creation.
- Linux, which is now 25 years old, has done well on the network and on mobiles, but has not ever become a serious threat to Windows. For many years some bright spark declares that this year will be the year of Linux on the desk-top but it never arrived. Lately such calls have been fewer, ironically as more PC’s use Linux for gaming.
=> ↺ Linus has not given up on desktops
- The colourful Linux creator Linus Torvalds has not given up on replacing Windows on the desktop with his sort of stuff.
- Speaking from his bed at the Embedded Linux Conference, Torvalds said that Linux had not been a failure on the desktop.
- “The desktop hasn’t really taken over the world like Linux has in many other areas, but just looking at my own use, my desktop looks so much better than I ever could have imagined,” he told the throngs.
=> ↺ Wearing ’em Down
- In 1995, GNU/Linux was in the fight but was forced to the flanks by exclusive dealing and a war of FUD. In 2016, ARM is designing whole CPUs and systems and manufacturers are designing motherboards perfectly capable of running desktops and mobile thingies and IoTs while Intel fights a rearguard action, trying to stem the tide of applications that don’t involve Wintel or even Intel.
Server
=> ↺ OpenStack Mitaka released
=> ↺ OpenStack Mitaka Aimed at Simplifying Cloud Operations
- The goal with Mitaka is to help enable easier integration and management of all the projects in the OpenStack Big Tent model.
=> ↺ Volkswagen Picks Mirantis’ OpenStack for its Next-Gen Cloud
=> ↺ OpenStack ‘Mitaka’ materialises
- The next version of OpenStack, Mitaka, has materialised.
- The OpenStack-Announce list went into overdrive on Thursday to deliver news of .0 versions of projects galore.
- This time around the OpenStack’s made ease of use and scalability its watchwords.
Kernel Space
=> ↺ Back @linaro.org
- On 30th April 2010 I got email titled “Welcome to Linaro” and became software engineer at Linaro. Time shown that it was done in a way which helped to start project but was not liked by member companies. The plan was to leave in October 2012 but due to someone’s decision I stayed until May 2013.
=> ↺ Overview of Last Branch Records (LBRs) on Intel CPUs
=> ↺ The State Of The Linux Kernel’s SCHED_DEADLINE CPU Scheduler
=> ↺ ELC 2016: Porting Linux To A New CPU Architecture
=> ↺ Linus Torvalds On Stage at TED2016
=> ↺ Linus Torvalds Speaks Openly about Work and Code at TED2016 [Video]
- Torvalds went on to discuss his belief that “code either works or it doesn’t.” He should know. The current Linux kernel is one of the largest collaborative projects ever attempted, with more than 20 million lines of code and more than 12,000 contributors so far. Additionally, an average of 185 changes are accepted into the kernel every day — nearly 1,300 per week — and Torvalds ultimately has the final say on what code is accepted.
Graphics Stack
=> ↺ Vulkan 1.0.9 Specification Released
- It seems the weekly Vulkan specification updates will be continuing for some amount of time.
- Vulkan 1.0.9 has been christened as the latest point release to Vulkan 1.0. Similar to the earlier Vulkan 1.0.x releases, v1.0.9 isn’t amount adding to the API or breaking it, but rather just about clarifying the documentation with making mostly mundane text corrections.
=> ↺ NVIDIA Releases New Vulkan Linux Driver With Better Multi-Threaded Scaling
- While NVIDIA mainlined their Vulkan driver support in the NVIDIA 364 driver series, they issued another Vulkan-focused driver update yesterday for Linux and Windows for developers and enthusiasts wanting to try out the latest support for this high-performance graphics API.
- The NVIDIA 364.16 driver is this special Vulkan driver release and is available for download from developer.nvidia.com rather than the usual channels.
=> ↺ Munich Presentation: From OpenGL To Vulkan
Benchmarks
=> ↺ Some Early Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Vulkan Tests With NVIDIA Graphics
- For this early comparison were the recent results I did of OpenGL and Vulkan on Ubuntu using The Talos Principle. Those tests were two weeks ago with the NVIDIA 364.12 driver on Ubuntu 16.04 with the Linux 4.4 kernel. The system used for this old and new testing was the same Intel Xeon E3-1280 v5 Skylake box with MSI C236A Workstation motherboard, 16GB of DDR4-2133MHz memory, and 120GB Samsung 850 SSD. With today’s Windows 10 Pro x64 tests, the NVIDIA 364.72 driver was at play.
- With regard to the Vulkan performance between Windwos 10 and Ubuntu 16.04, while both were using the NVIDIA 364 series driver, the Linux results on all three graphics cards were noticeably faster! Quite interesting considering that usually the NVIDIA graphics performance is close to each other under Windows and Linux, at least from past OpenGL comparisons. But again, this was just some very initial testing done today.
=> ↺ Early Radeon Vulkan Windows vs. AMDGPU PRO Linux Benchmarks
- On Friday I posted Some Early Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Vulkan Tests With NVIDIA Graphics while today the tables have turned to show The Talos Principle on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 Linux under AMD Radeon graphics.
- The same system was used as the tests on Friday (Intel Xeon E3-1280 v5 Skylake box with MSI C236A Workstation motherboard, 16GB of DDR4-2133MHz memory, and 120GB Samsung 850 SSD). Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.4.1 was in use on the Windows side while the inaugural AMD GPU-PRO stack with Vulkan support was at play on Ubuntu 16.04 x86_64.
Applications
=> ↺ Cockpit does Kubernetes Data Volumes
- You can now set up Kubernetes persistent volume claims through the Cockpit cluster admin interface. These volumes are used to store persistent container data and possibly share them between containers. Each container pod declares the volumes it needs, and when deploying such an application admins configure the locations to store the data in those volumes.
=> ↺ RcppArmadillo 0.6.700.3.0
=> ↺ Atom Editor: Your Next Go-To Text Editor
- The text editor is a tool Linux users have either a casual or a very deep relation with. If you’re one of those users that only opens up the text editor on the rare occasion that a configuration file must be tweaked, then you’re probably good with the likes of Nano. Developers, on the other hand, need something much more powerful. On the Linux platform, you can easily turn to Vi or Emacs, but some developers prefer to have a GUI at their fingertips.
=> ↺ Plex Media Server 0.9.16.4 Improves Support for the Samsung Smart TV DLNA Client
- Plex, Inc. announced the release of a new maintenance build for its popular, cross-platform Plex Media Server software, version 0.9.16.4, adding a bunch of fixes and improvements to various areas.
Proprietary
=> ↺ Vivaldi 1.1 Web Browser in the Works, First Snapshot Build Adds New Tab Options
- We’ve just been informed by Vivaldi’s Ruarí Ødegaard about the availability for testing of the first snapshot build towards the Vivaldi 1.1, the web browser’s upcoming point release.
=> ↺ Vivaldi Jon: Mobile – yes. Feeds and an ad blocker… probably not
- Hats off to any woman or man who is fighting the dumbing down of software.
- Twenty years ago our pocket computers were as sophisticated as any desktop, only more reliable.
- Now they’re vastly more powerful, always connected, but the apps are sub-Fisher Price. No, scrub that: today’s apps would insult a toddler.
Instructionals/Technical
=> ↺ How to check available version of a package in Ubuntu repositories
=> ↺ How to Use ‘cat’ and ‘tac’ Commands with Examples in Linux
=> ↺ Docker Part 4: building and publishing custom docker images
=> ↺ MALLOC_PERTURB_
=> ↺ Install RabbitMQ server in CentOS 7
=> ↺ Recycling old ideas ..
=> ↺ Clicks, pops, and troubleshooting recordings on Linux
=> ↺ How to install SOGo on Ubuntu 14.04 VPS
=> ↺ Bitcoin Generic Address Format Proposal
=> ↺ Export a multi-page pdf with GIMP
=> ↺ Linux Shell Scripting part-1: Starting with Linux Shell Scripting
Games
=> ↺ Updates for Intel’s Vulkan Driver, Hand of Fate 2, and Parkitect, and more gaming news
- Hello, open gamers! In this week’s edition, we take a look at Intel’s Vulkan Driver progress, the announcement of Hand of Fate 2 for Linux, and Parkitect heading to Steam Early Access.
=> ↺ Gibbous – A Cthulhu Adventure a comedy point ‘n click on Kickstarter, has Linux demo
- The developers behind Gibbous – A Cthulhu Adventure sent word in that their comedy point ‘n click game is now on Kickstarter. It has a Linux demo right now, so it’s good to see a project that is able to deliver on Linux even this early on.
=> ↺ Bullshot, a very retro-inspired game is probably the stupidest thing I’ve played for a while
=> ↺ Gorgeous and Fun Firewatch Game Released on GOG for Linux, Mac, and Windows
- Campo Santo’s debut video game Firewatch was launched exactly two months ago, February 9, 2016, on Steam for Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows, as well as Sony’s PlayStation 4 gaming console.
- The game was received very well by the gaming community, with reviews of 9.3 from IGN and with approximately 11,000 very positive user reviews on Valve’s Steam gaming distribution platform.
- For those of you who missed its February launch on Steam and PS4, Firewatch is a first-person adventure video game full of mystery and beauty, set in the Wyoming wilderness.
=> ↺ The Kindred is a nice start to a blocky town building sim now on Linux
- I’ve been waiting for The Kindred to be updated to a point where it’s properly playable, and now that it is I was sent keys to this interesting looking town building sim to check out.
- It’s styled in a “blocky” way much like Minecraft, but the gameplay is very different. This is not a single-person controlled creative/survival game. You’re tasked with building up a village for your people, so you will need to get planning.
=> ↺ The Wild Eight, survive after a plane crash now on Kickstarter, Linux aimed for day-1
- I don’t normally cover Kickstarters, but The Wild Eight not only looks like a decent survival game, the game is planned for Linux day-1 too.
=> ↺ Trench Run from the developers of Soldat & King Arthur’s Gold is now out on Steam for Linux
- Trench Run is another 2D action game from Transhuman Design and it looks like a blast to play. Make friends, and then blow them to bits.
Desktop Environments/WMs
=> ↺ MATE 1.14 released
=> ↺ MATE 1.14 Desktop Environment Launches for GNU/Linux with Numerous Improvements
- The development team behind the MATE open-source desktop environment has just announced today, April 8, 2016, the release and immediate availability of the MATE 1.14 desktop environment.
=> ↺ MATE 1.14 Desktop Release Is Incoming
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
=> ↺ That Time of the Cycle
- With Plasma 5.6 long out the door, it’s time for the traditional changing of the wallpapers! Or at least, showing what the next wallpaper will be.
- With Plasma 5.7 we won’t be venturing too far from where we are in 5.6. As I mentioned in a previous post about wallpapers we have been paying attention to the feedback, trying to find something that hit the right balance. The 5.6 the wallpaper seemed to hit that mark, so you’ll see fewer dramatic swings in the wallpaper direction; we’re goanna stick with what works for a while.
GNOME Desktop/GTK
=> ↺ GUADEC 2017 call for bids
- The GNOME Foundation would like to invite bids for hosting GUADEC 2017.
- GUADEC is the biggest gathering of GNOME users and developers, which takes place in Europe every year, and you could make it happend next year!
Distributions
=> ↺ Calamares 2.2.1 Distribution-Independent Installer Released for GNU/Linux OSes
- Last week we told you everything there was to know about the major Calamares 2.2 release, an open-source project whose main design goal is to become the best distribution-independent installer out there.
New Releases
=> ↺ Q4OS 1.4.9, Orion
- We introduce ‘Bourbon’ start menu, the brand new default start menu in Q4OS. The two panel ‘Bourbon’ menu is highly efficient and customizable and features a search line, favorites, history and more options.
- Q4OS 1.4.9 ‘Orion’ is based on the most recent Debian 8.4 ‘Jessie’ stable version released a few days ago. System packages have been updated and important security patches have been applied. A significant update for the native Q4OS uninstaller fixes the unintentional removal of the ‘locales’ package. Numerous under the hood improvements is provided as usual.
PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family
=> ↺ The April 2016 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine
- The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the April 2016 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
Red Hat Family
=> ↺ Red Hat: Opportunity up for grab in DevOps training
- Channel partners may have disregarded opportunities in subscription training services in the past, but according to Ken Goetz, VP of worldwide training services at Red Hat, up to 70 percent of sales of its Learning-as-a-Service training subscription offering comes through channel partners, and the opportunity is only growing when it comes to DevOps.
Finance
=> ↺ Compagnie Odier Sca buys $14.4 Million stake in Red Hat Inc (RHT)
=> ↺ Share Performance & Target Review Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)
=> ↺ Q&A: Red Hat’s Jim Whitehurst Maps The Road To $5 Billion
=> ↺ Rating Update For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)’s
=> ↺ New Analyst Ratings On Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)
=> ↺ Stock Watch: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)
=> ↺ Red Hat Incorporated (NYSE:RHT) Sellers Covered 10.55% of Their Shorts
Fedora
=> ↺ Fedora and Mozilla Activity Days in Prishtina, Kosovo
- As part of Open Labs Hackerspace, I was invited to Prishtina, Kosovo by fellow hacktivist Ardian Haxha. I was asked to facilitate various sessions about Fedora and Mozilla. Furthermore, I was happy to design the artwork for the event too. This greatly aligned with my work at Mozilla Community Design and the Fedora Design Team. Ardian is a hard-working community member of FLOSSK. He was heavily involved in the organization of the past SFK conferences in the same city of Prishtina. He recently rediscovered the pleasure of working with the Fedora and Mozilla communities again, so he decided to organize the Fedora and Mozilla Activity Days in Prishtina on the 26th to 27th of March.
=> ↺ Stickers on sale at UnixStickers!
- You might have seen our recent article on Fedora stickers from UnixStickers. The company makes high quality stickers that promote a variety of projects and communities, at reasonable prices. Fedora is proud to partner with UnixStickers. This way you can use our distinctive logo to personalize your favorite hardware, cases, guitars, pets, whatever. (Hey, we don’t judge.)
=> ↺ Fedora Engineering team opening, April 2016.
- My day job, as you probably know, is at Red Hat, where I manage the Fedora Engineering team. Our team provides engineering and design services for the Fedora Project, a collaborative community project which is the upstream source for a number of influential products. Not the least of these is Red Hat Enterprise Linux, of course.
=> ↺ Fedora 24 Internationalization Test Day on 2016-04-12!
- Hi folks! Yep, it’s that time again: Test Day time! Next Tuesday (hey yeah, I’m posting the note in good time for a change) will be Fedora 24 Internationalization Test Day. What’s ‘internationalization’? Well, it’s stuff like input methods and locale-specific packaging, so one big topic this time will be the changes to glibc locale packaging in Fedora 24. But don’t worry, there will be folks from the Fedora i18n team on hand to help with testing, so please just come along and help out! Whoever you are, you can easily do some testing.
Debian Family
=> ↺ One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?
- Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found. I use ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so. But I might be wrong.
- According to the popcon results for spl-linux, there are 1019 Debian installations, or 0.53% of the population, with the package installed. As far as I know the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS installation on Linux in Debian. In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian the ZFS feature is already available, and there the popcon results for zfsutils show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of the population. So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.
=> ↺ No more “Hash Sum Mismatch” errors
- The Debian repository format was designed a long time ago. The oldest versions of it were produced with the help of tools such as dpkg-scanpackages and consumed by dselect access methods such as dpkg-ftp. The access methods just fetched a Packages file (perhaps compressed) and used it as an index of which packages were available; each package had an MD5 checksum to defend against transport errors, but being from a more innocent age there was no repository signing or other protection against man-in-the-middle attacks.
=> ↺ My free software activities, march 2016
- This is my 4th month working on Debian LTS, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian. I spent half of the month away on a vacation so little work was done, especially since I tried to tackle rather large uploads like NSS and Xen. I also worked on the frontdesk shift last week.
Derivatives
Canonical/Ubuntu
=> ↺ Infographic: Ubuntu Linux Is Everywhere
- To celebrate the forthcoming Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, due for release later this month, on April 21, Canonical took the time to put together a very nice infographic, showing the world how popular Ubuntu is.
- The infographic, which you can see attached at the end of the article, is, in fact, based on a recent blog post by Canonical’s Dustin Kirkland, a member of the Ubuntu Product and Strategy team led by Mark Shuttleworth, entitled “How many people in the world use Ubuntu? More than anyone actually knows!”
=> ↺ Meet the brand new Ubuntu Software Center in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
- Finally! Ubuntu Software Center (USC) has always been one of the most bloated of all default Ubuntu apps, I couldn’t even remember the last time I used USC for installing something in my desktop. But it looks like Canonical has heard us after all. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS comes with a thoroughly reworked Ubuntu Software Center.
=> ↺ Mesa 11.2 Officially Landing In Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
- If you are running a development snapshot of Ubuntu 16.04 “Xenial Xerus” and haven’t upgraded in a few days, Mesa 11.2.0 is coming down the pipeline.
- Mesa 11.2 was granted a feature freeze exception a while ago and Mesa 11.2 packages have been queuing up in the Ubuntu X staging PPA for a while, but now Mesa 11.2.0 is finally ready for Ubuntu 16.04.0 LTS.
=> ↺ Ubuntu Touch OTA-10 Officially Released for OnePlus One, Nexus 4, and Nexus 7
- We have confirmation from UBports’ Marius Gripsgård and Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak that the Ubuntu Touch OTA-10 update has been officially released for OnePlus One, Nexus 4, and Nexus 7 devices.
=> ↺ BQ delays shipping its Aquaris M10 Ubuntu tablets by a week
- If you pre-ordered a Ubuntu tablet, you’re going to be waiting just a little bit longer.
- BQ, makers of the upcoming Ubuntu-powered BQ Aquaris M10, silently pushed back their delivery date from the second week of April (next week) to the second half of April (two to three weeks from now). No statement was sent to customers, OMG Ubuntu is reporting: the wording was simply silently edited on the website.
=> ↺ ubuntuBSD Is Looking to Become an Official Ubuntu Flavor
- ubuntuBSD maintainer and lead developer Jon Boden is now looking for a way for his operating system to contribute to the Ubuntu community and, eventually, become an official Ubuntu flavor.
=> ↺ Ubuntu Phone Users Might Get a Security Hotfix Soon, Please Update Immediately
- Now that Canonical is seeding the Ubuntu Touch OTA-10 update to all supported Ubuntu Phone devices, and most of the users already updated their smartphones, it looks like some issues started appearing.
=> ↺ Ubuntu MATE 16.04 Redefines Linux For Desktops
- Ubuntu MATE 16.04 is the first Long-Term Support release for an upstart project that is quietly revolutionizing the Linux desktop experience by combining proven technology with cutting-edge innovation. It promises to provide both new and experienced Linux users with a dynamic, yet solid desktop operating system that will keep pace with the ever-changing trends in open source computing. I have been using it since it went into Beta. I first installed it in a virtual machine but realized quickly that I wanted this on hardware and I have adopted it as my main Linux distribution for all of my machines. Yes, it’s that good, and in this article, we’re going to take an in-depth look at Ubuntu MATE and find out why it may just be the best thing to happen to Ubuntu since Ubuntu was introduced in 2004.
=> ↺ Ubuntu Touch OTA-10: Security Hotfix On Its Way, Update ASAP
- Canonical has started rolling out the Ubuntu Touch OTA-10 update to all the supported devices and most of the users have already got the update on their phones. Marius Nestor of Softpedia has reported that many users have started complaining regarding some issues which have started surfacing in the new update.
=> ↺ Want the world’s first Ubuntu tablet? You’ll need to wait another week
- If you pre-ordered a Ubuntu tablet, you’re going to be waiting just a little bit longer.
Devices/Embedded
=> ↺ Intel and Wind River acquire automotive tech firms
- Intel acquired Yogitech, which makes safety tools for autonomous car chips, and its Wind River unit bought Arynga, which offers Linux-based OTA for cars.
- Italian semiconductor tools firm Yogitech is puny compared to FPGA chip vendor Altera, which Intel Corp. acquired last year for $16.7 billion. Yet the two acquisitions have one thing in common. Both will be used in Intel’s future chips and reference designs aimed at Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and fully autonomous cars. The same goes for this week’s acquisition by Intel software subsidiary Wind River of Azynga, which makes Linux-based, GENIVI-compliant CarSync software for enabling OTA updates in automotive computers (see farther below).
Phones
Android
=> ↺ Android Beta program to expand beyond your Nexus
=> ↺ Android device updates: Google releases April security patch, Sprint Galaxy S5 gets Marshmallow
=> ↺ Sony officially updates Xperia Z2, Z3, and Z3 Compact to Android Marshmallow
=> ↺ Android N release date, features, updates: Android N developer preview to make it to non-Nexus devices soon?
=> ↺ Build better apps faster with Google’s new Android Studio 2.0
=> ↺ WhatsApp 2.16.20 Download Available for Android Devices
=> ↺ Top 10 Best Android Smartphones Buyers Guide: April 2016
- It’s been a busy Spring for the world of smartphones, and we still have a ways to go yet. While Apple is up to their classic tricks of making the old new again, others have released genuinely forward-thinking devices. The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are off to a great start and LG’s G5 finally hit shelves in all of its modular glory. A surprise contender has arrived in the form of Huawei’s P9 and its excellent Leica-powered dual camera setup, and Android N has Nexus fans excited for the future of Android. HTC has an announcement next week as well, which should stir things up further and bring the Taiwanese name back to this Top 10 where they belong.
=> ↺ BlackBerry Will Launch 2 Mid-Range Android Smartphones This Year: CEO
- BlackBerry, after launching its high-end Android smartphone Priv, is said to be focusing on the mid-range segment this year. The company CEO John Chen in an interview said the Canadian smartphone maker will be launching two new mid-range Android smartphones this year, but did not reveal the exact time-frame of launch.
=> ↺ How Remix’s Android will eat the world
- What Android needed was productivity features, and that’s been the goal of the Remix system. Jide incorporated in 2014 and made an interesting bet. All three founders are Chinese American, but they chose to found the company in the innovation hotbed of China, close to the engineers and supply chains they needed.
- “China is where the talent pool is,” says Ko.
- There was a specific reason, too. Jide wanted to extend Android from ARM to x86, and developed a close relationship with Android-x86 project founder Chih-Wei Huang, an open-source veteran based in Taiwan.
=> ↺ Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 review: The best Android experience $150 can buy
- With the Redmi Note 3, Xiaomi has once again proved it knows how to make a budget phone better than anyone else. It offers exemplary build quality, solid performance, a great feature set and one of the best Android OS forks out there, for a very reasonable $150.
- You’d be hard-pressed to find a better deal at this price range. Typically, sub-$200 phones are either poorly designed or scrimp on useful features like fast charging, and almost always come with a crappy camera.
=> ↺ BlackBerry will launch two mid-range Android devices later this year
- After lackluster PRIV sales last quarter and a subsequent price cut, BlackBerry will be launching two mid-range devices later this year. Speaking to The National, CEO John Chen said their first device running Android “was too high-end a product” even for the enterprise market.
=> ↺ 4 Tricks to Make Your Android Phone Faster
- No one wants a slow phone, but many of us have to settle for one as the hardware grows older, storage space runs out, and the number of bugs add up. The good news is that you don’t have to accept a slow Android smartphone. Here are four quick tips for increasing your old phone’s performance.
=> ↺ Eat This Much Brings Automatic Meal Planning to Android
=> ↺ Android N preview may be released for non-Nexus devices
=> ↺ Reddit launches official apps for Android and iPhone
=> ↺ Google launches Android Studio 2.0 with Instant Run, faster Android emulator, and Cloud Test Lab
=> ↺ Google makes building apps easier with Android Studio 2.0
=> ↺ ‘Abzorb’ Gets Daily Challenge Mode and Android Release
=> ↺ Browser-based Kingdom Hearts Unchained X arrives on Android
=> ↺ Android upgrade report card: Grading the manufacturers on Marshmallow
=> ↺ Google Might Rollout Android N Preview To Non-Nexus Handsets
=> ↺ Kingdom Hearts: Unchained X now available on Android in North America
=> ↺ BlueStacks Now Offers Twitch Streaming for Android Games
=> ↺ Improved Notifications for Android, Ancestry, and Other Great Apps to Check Out This Week
=> ↺ Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow OTA Update Rolls Out To Galaxy S5, S5 Sport; OnePlus One In Final Testing
=> ↺ Business Insider’s Android app upgraded with search
=> ↺ Android Auto Website Expands List Of 2016-2018 Kia Car Models, Plus Software Updates For 2014 And 2015 Models
=> ↺ Android Gains Ground, Holds Off iOS Growth in Chinese Market
- For the first time since 2014 iOS market share in China did not grow during the three months ending in February 2016, leaving room for Android devices to take back some ground.
- According to new data released by Kantar Worldpanel, Android managed to increase its market share by 3.4 percentage points year over year to 76.4 percent in China. Nearly all of those gains came at the expense of Apple’s iOS market share in the country, which slipped from 25.4 percent in February 2015 to 22.2 percent in February 2016.
=> ↺ Closer look at the Alcatel Xess 17 inch Android… thing
- The Alcatel Xess is an Android tablet with a big screen. Or maybe it’s an all-in-one computer with a reasonably small screen and Android software.
- Any way you look at it, the Xess is a device with a 17.3 inch full HD display, a 9,600 mAh battery, and a built-in kickstand and handle. It weighs more than 5 pounds, so you probably aren’t going to want to hold it on your lap the way you would a smaller tablet. But you can easily move it from room to room and use it to watch videos, play games, update your calendar or shopping list and more.
Free Software/Open Source
=> ↺ Open source geeks in a world of silos
- Bryan Lunduke is well known in free software circles. He’s a writer of books and Network World articles. He co-founded the Linux Action Show and is a co-host of the Bad Voltage podcast. In between hobbies, he has a day job doing marketing for SUSE and serving on the openSUSE board. Perhaps his longest-lasting contribution, though, is the Linux distro building simulator game Linux Tycoon.
- At LinuxFest Northwest, Bryan will be debating James Mason on the subject of Open source geeks in a world of silos. We asked him some questions and turned him loose.
=> ↺ Qubole releases SQL optimizer as open source
- Big data-as-a-service provider Qubole Inc. has open-sourced its Quark cost-based SQL optimizer that simplifies and optimize access to data across multiple hosts.
- Quark essentially chooses between popular big data open source query systems such as Hive, RedShift and Presto/Impala to select that which will deliver the best query results. “All of these query engines are good at some things and bad at others,” said Ashish Thusoo, co-founder and CEO of the 90-employee Qubole. “Subsuming that intelligence allows the machine to decide what engine is best used for that query.”
=> ↺ Building Bonobo, the Guardian’s open source API key management tool
- We built the application using the Play Framework and Scala – the programming language that the Guardian widely uses for backend development. This required a lot of patience as the community for these technologies is still quite small and the documentation can be rather limited. However, having very talented Scala developers in our team allowed us to make mistakes and guided us in the right direction. They made a big difference.
=> ↺ Signal desktop app with end-to-end encryption now open to all
=> ↺ Signal, the open-source encrypted messaging app, is now available for desktop
=> ↺ Open-source software provides new opportunities
- Crashes happen. Open-source software can remedy that. It’s known for higher security and fewer code errors. The numbers speak for themselves: Linux, a major developer of open-source software has an average of 0.17 bugs per 1000 lines. Proprietary software has an average of 20 to 30 bugs per 1000 lines.
Events
=> ↺ ELC 2016
- I got home from ELC on Wednesday night. I’m not doing embedded work on a day to day basis as much anymore but I gave a talk on Ion which was my primary reason for attending. IoT was unsurprisingly a big theme of the conference. I was amused to hear other people referring to IoT as “embedded Linux plus the cloud” which is what my mental model has always been. I didn’t go to many (any?) of the sessions about various IoT solutions mostly because there are too many to choose from. I’m not in a position right now where I’m directing IoT strategy and if that ever were to change my information would be out of date anyway. The useful sessions were mostly covering specific aspects of IoT or general Linux.
=> ↺ FOSDEM 2016 notes
- While being on the committee for the FOSDEM MySQL & friends devroom, I didn’t speak at that devroom (instead I spoke at the distributions devroom). But when I had time to pop in, I did take some notes on sessions that were interesting to me, so here are the notes. I really did enjoy Yoshinori Matsunobu’s session (out of the devroom) on RocksDB and MyRocks and I highly recommend you to watch the video as the notes can’t be very complete without the great explanation available in the slide deck. Anyway there are videos from the MySQL and friends devroom.
Web Browsers
Mozilla
=> ↺ Introducing Mozilla’s Web Literacy Map, Our New Blueprint for Teaching People About the Web
- Within the next decade, the number of individuals with access to the Internet will rise to five billion. These billions of new users, many from emerging markets, have the potential to experience unprecedented personal, civic and economic opportunity online — but only if they have the necessary skills to meaningfully wield the Internet.
- To this end, Mozilla is dedicated to empowering people with the knowledge they need to read, write and participate online. We define this knowledge as “web literacy” — a collection of core skills and competencies like search engine know-how, design basics, online privacy fundamentals, and a working understanding of sharing, open source licensing and remixing.
Databases
=> ↺ Guest Post: NoSQL vs SQL – Battle or Brave New World?
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
=> ↺ LibreOffice 5.1.2, Ubuntu Numbers, OS is Dead
- The Document Foundation today announced the release of LibreOffice 5.1.2, the second update in the 5.1 Fresh branch. Nearly 90 bugs were squashed this cycle dealing heavily with rendering and placement issues. In other news, Red Hat touts a new client and Canonical is still trying to convince folks of their hundreds of millions of users. Matt Asay said today that the OS is dead thanks to the cloud and that “developers are becoming babies.”
=> ↺ LibreOffice 5.1.2 available for download
- Berlin, April 7, 2016 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.1.2, the second minor release of the LibreOffice 5.1 family.
=> ↺ LibreOffice Receives Better OpenGL Rendering Support
Education
=> ↺ Teaching teachers to teach open source
- This seems obvious, but the ability to learn independently is very important to successful student participation in HFOSS projects. Students have to be able to learn in a variety of manners from a range of different sources, and they need to take ownership of their learning in order to flourish in an open source community.
- Communication, teamwork and the ability to problem solve are also critical skills. While understanding technologies such as version control is emphasized by most open source communities, students who don’t understand how to navigate a professional environment by communicating clearly or who can’t work on a team won’t even get to the point of using those technologies. These process skills can sometimes be more difficult to teach than teaching a student Java.
BSD
=> ↺ FreeBSD/PC-BSD 10.3 vs. Linux Benchmarks
- With FreeBSD 10.3 having been released followed by the desktop-oriented PC-BSD 10.3 release that’s running rather nicely, I decided to run some open-source performance benchmarks atop PC-BSD 10.3 x64 compared to various Linux distributions.
- Originally I also aimed to run some PC-BSD vs. Linux gaming tests using the updated Linux binary compatibility layer in FreeBSD 10.3′s kernel, but sadly, that didn’t pan out. As noted in the aforelinked article, I’ve been running into a variety of issues that made my usual test candidates not run on PC-BSD 10.3 with either the x86 or x86_64 Linux binaries. If you want to see my old tests, there is FreeBSD: A Faster Platform For Linux Gaming Than Linux? from a few years ago.
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
=> ↺ Friday Free Software Directory IRC meetup: April 8th
=> ↺ When Free Software Depends On Non-Free
- When a program is free software (free as in freedom), that means it gives users the four freedoms (gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) so that they control what the program does. In most cases, that is sufficient for the program’s distribution to be ethical; but not always. There are additional problems that can arise in specific circumstances. This article describes a subtle problem, where upgrading the free program requires using a nonfree program.
Public Services/Government
=> ↺ GSA’s 18F Assembles Open Source Code Repositories on GitHub
- The General Services Administration‘s 18F organization has assembled repositories that contain open source code on its GitHub account in an effort to help federal government employees reuse the code for their work and personal use.
- Britta Gustafson, content designer at 18F, wrote in a blog post published Wednesday that the code repositories include client projects, guides, prototypes and open source tools 18F plans to adapt.
=> ↺ 18F surfaces code for 35 useful projects
- Although the General Services Administration’s 18F digital services shop publicly shares code from its projects as a matter or course, finding useful code among the hundreds of entries in the 18F GitHub repository can be time consuming.
=> ↺ Talend latest firm to back open source training network in France
- Talend, a specialist in Big Data integration software, has joined Acquia, Open Wide, OW2 and Red Hat as a Founding Partner of France’s national Open Source School, an institution dedicated to higher education training and continuing education for open source solutions (OSS).
=> ↺ Make your voice heard: take part in an open public consultation on Interoperability in Europe
- As of this week, through this public consultation, administrations, businesses and private organisations, research centres, academic institutions, standardisation organisations and others can all have their say in setting up an interoperability framework and strategy in Europe.
Openness/Sharing/Collaboration
=> ↺ OpenTraffic for Manila, US agencies to release 20% code as open source, and more news
=> ↺ FABrics: Open Source Furniture
- FABrics are open source chairs designed to be manufactured locally by the user. The chairs consist of CNC routed plywood and laser-cut leather. They are assembled together using 3D printed connectors.
- The aim of this project was to create a collection of lounge furniture that can be made anywhere in the world using universal materials and technologies. These digital processing technologies can be found in local facilities and in Fab Labs or Maker Spaces around the world. The manufacturing process is designed to be simple and straightforward in order to accommodate a large variety of users.
Open Access/Content
=> ↺ A letter to Carlos Moedas on open science
- “I’m offering to come to Brussels and demonstrate on my (or your) laptop the value of text and data mining for open science,” says Peter Murray-Rust of Cambridge University, as he presses the EU to go further on copyright reform
Open Hardware/Modding
=> ↺ Happy Hardware Freedom Day!
- Today is the new selected date for Hardware Freedom Day. We did a community survey a few months back and that was by far the most popular time. While our website is back up the wiki and registration are still down though. Considering the status we’re hoping to get things back up and encourage people who missed the date to celebrate a HFD on their schedule. Following up our mail list you may know there are events in Barcelona and India or can simply ping us there.
=> ↺ An Open Source Two Stroke Diesel
- With a welder and a bunch of scrap, you can build just about anything that moves. Want a dune buggy? That’s just some tube and a pipe bender. Need a water pump? You might need a grinder. A small tractor? Just find some big knobby tires in a junkyard. Of course, the one thing left out of all these builds is a small motor, preferably one that can run on everything from kerosene to used cooking oil. This is the problem [Shane] is tackling for his entry to the 2016 Hackaday Prize. It’s an Open Source Two-Stroke Diesel Engine that’s easy for anyone to build and has minimal moving parts.
Programming/Development
=> ↺ Which Is The Most Complex Programming Language?
- Very often we talk about the most popular and most loved programming languages, but we skip the discussion dealing with the most complex programming languages. Here’s an infographic that outlines the complexities in JavaScript and other modern programming languages.
=> ↺ Face it: Developers are becoming babies
- Way back in the dawn of the open source era, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) uncovered an interesting fact: Open-source developers weren’t anarchists and didn’t sport purple mohawks (usually). Typically, developers in the open source community were comfortably middle-aged (30 years old, on average), generally bringing 11 years of experience to their craft.
=> ↺ Software ‘developer fatigue’, it’s now a thing
- JNBridge’s core message is as follows: it’s not Java OR Microsoft .NET, it’s Java AND .NET — working on this premise, JNBridge has become a supplier of Java/.NET interoperability tools for software developers.
Leftovers
=> ↺ ‘Taxi Driver’ Oral History: De Niro, Scorsese, Foster, Schrader Spill All on 40th Anniversary
=> ↺ Yahoo’s once-great website eyed by Google, Verizon
=> ↺ Verizon to plan Yahoo bid, Google weighs offer
=> ↺ Verizon, Google said to be planning bids for Yahoo
- Verizon Communications Inc. plans to make a first-round bid for Yahoo Inc.’s Web business next week, and is willing to acquire the company’s Yahoo Japan Corp. stake to help sweeten the offer, according to people familiar with the matter.
=> ↺ Mashable mixes it up, lays off staff as it shifts focus
- Hot on the heels of snagging $15 million in funding from Turner/Time Warner, Mashable Inc. decided to put a number of its employees on the chopping block.
- The tech and lifestyle site now wants to be an online video and TV production company. As part of that reorganization, New York-based Mashable is laying off a number of staffers. It is also deemphasizing its world news and politics coverage, preferring to focus more on technology, science, social media, entertainment and lifestyle.
=> ↺ The executive deficit of the European Union
- The oft-repeated mantra of ‘more coordination’ won’t provide a real solution to Europe’s political crises unless the EU’s dual executive architecture is first rationalized and democratized.
Health/Nutrition
=> ↺ 20 million people in Bangladesh are drinking water laced with arsenic, Human Rights Watch survey finds
- Each year, 43,000 Bangladeshis die as a result of drinking arsenic-contaminated water, a figure which has not significantly altered since steps were taken to clean up Bangladesh’s water supply at the turn of the century.
- Corruption and international neglect are to blame for the fact 20 million people in Bangladesh are still drinking water laced with arsenic, more than a decade after the extent of the problem was made clear, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
=> ↺ VA bosses in 7 states falsified vets’ wait times for care
- Supervisors instructed employees to falsify patient wait times at Veterans Affairs’ medical facilities in at least seven states, according to a USA TODAY analysis of more than 70 investigation reports released in recent weeks.
- Overall, those reports — released after multiple inquiries and a Freedom of Information Act request — reveal for the first time specifics of widespread scheduling manipulation.
- Employees at 40 VA medical facilities in 19 states and Puerto Rico regularly “zeroed out” veteran wait times, the analysis shows. In some cases, investigators found manipulation had been going on for as long as a decade. In others, it had been just a few years.
- In many cases, facility leaders told investigators they clamped down the scheduling improprieties after the Phoenix scandal, but in others, investigators found they had continued unabated.The manipulation masked growing demand as new waves of veterans returned from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as Vietnam veterans aged and needed more health care.
Security
=> ↺ ‘BillGates’: Linux botnet is launching DDoS attacks on online gaming services
- IRONY ALERT: Bill Gates-themed software wants to get on as many computers as possible and not budge.
- Not Windows, of course, but a botnet called BillGates. The malware has been around since 2014 but now seems to be leaping forwards (not over a chair) and making a nuisance of itself, according to Akamai.
=> ↺ Mumblehard spam-spewing botnet floored
- Security researchers have teamed up with authorities in Ukraine to take down a spam-spewing Linux-infesting botnet.
- Security firm ESET teamed up with CyS-CERT and the Cyber Police of Ukraine to take down the Mumblehard botnet.
=> ↺ Authorities Shut Down Botnet of 4,000 Linux Servers Used to Send Spam
- The six-year-old Mumblehard botnet is no more, ESET reports, explaining that a joint effort with CyS Centrum LLC and the Cyber Police of Ukraine has finally allowed them to sinkhole the botnet’s main C&C (command and control server).
=> ↺ Mumblehard Linux Spamming Botnet Finally Taken Offline
- Thousands of servers running Linux and BSD had been affected by one of world’s most damaging botnets
=> ↺ Academics claim Google Android two-factor authentication is breakable
- Computer security researchers warn security shortcomings in Android/Playstore undermine the security offered by all SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA).
=> ↺ Google adds Cloud Test Lab integration to new Android Studio 2.0
- Google has updated its key Android development tool, Android Studio, to version 2.0 and added cloud test integration, a GPU debugger, and faster emulation and resource allocation.
- Mountain view touts the instant run feature as just about the most important new feature in the upgrade, as it analyses Android app code as it runs and determines ways it can be deployed faster, without requiring app re-installation.
=> ↺ Heartbleed Remains a Risk 2 Years After It Was Reported
- A vulnerability publicly disclosed in the open-source OpenSSL project two years ago continues to have an impact today. On April 7, 2014, CVE-2014-0160, better known as Heartbleed, was publicly disclosed by the OpenSSL project, affecting millions of users and devices around the world. Today, two years to the day it was first reported, the vulnerability remains a risk, and the trend of branded vulnerabilities it created continues to have an impact.
=> ↺ Friday’s security advisories
=> ↺ Thursday’s security updates
=> ↺ Nation-wide radio station hack airs hours of vulgar “furry sex” ramblings
- Some Tuesday morning listeners of KIFT, a Top 40 radio station located in Breckenridge, Colorado, were treated to a radically different programming menu than they were used to. Instead of the normal fare from Taylor Swift, The Chainsmokers, or other pop stars, a hack by an unknown party caused one of the station’s signals to broadcast a sexually explicit podcast related to the erotic attraction to furry characters. The unauthorized broadcast lasted for about 90 minutes.
- KIFT wasn’t the only station to be hit by the hack. On the same day, Livingston, Texas-based country music station KXAX also broadcast raunchy furry-themed audio. And according to an article posted Wednesday by radio industry news site RadioInsight.com, the unauthorized broadcasts from a hobbyist group called FurCast were also forced on an unnamed station in Denver and an unidentified national syndicator.
=> ↺ Maryland hospital: Ransomware success wasn’t IT department’s fault
- MedStar refused to respond to Ars Technica’s inquiries about the attack. In the statement released to media, MedStar’s spokesperson said, “As we have said before, based on the advice of IT, cybersecurity and law enforcement experts, MedStar will not be elaborating further on additional aspects of this malware event. This is not only for the protection and security of MedStar Health, its patients and associates, but is also for the benefit of other healthcare organizations and companies.” The spokesperson claimed the hospital had “no evidence of any compromise of patient or associate data… furthermore, we are pleased that we brought our systems back up in what can only be viewed as a very rapid recovery led by dedicated MedStar and external IT expert partners.”
=> ↺ Its a good thing SELinux blocks access to the docker socket.
- I have seen lots of SELinux bugs being reported where users are running a container that volume mounts the docker.sock into a container. The container then uses a docker client to do something with docker. While I appreciate that a lot of these containers probbaly need this access, I am not sure people realize that this is equivalent to giving the container full root outside of the contaienr on the host system. I just execute the following command and I have full root access on the host.
=> ↺ New Malware Headlines, Fedora Stickers, New RMS Article
- A new Linux botnet named BillGates is making headlines today. The Russian-based Asian designed malware seems to be focusing on gaming sites. Elsewhere, Richard Stallman posted a new article today explaining the problem when free software requires non-free to function and Matt Hartley explained the difference between GNOME, Unity, and MATE. Then, for some fun, the new Plasma 5.7 wallpaper was revealed, a new Linux poll beckons, and Fedora announced a partnership with UnixStickers.com.
=> ↺ A perfect storm of broken business and busted FLOSS backdoors everything, so who needs the NSA?
- In 2014, Poul-Henning Kamp, a prolific and respected contributor to many core free/open projects gave the closing keynote at the Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Belgium, and he did something incredibly clever: he presented a status report on a fictional NSA project (ORCHESTRA) whose mission was to make it cheaper to spy on the Internet without breaking any laws or getting any warrants.
=> ↺ Researchers help shut down spam botnet that enslaved 4,000 Linux machines
=> ↺ Mumblehard Linux botnet eliminated as a threat: ESET
- Security researchers at ESET reported that the spam-dispensing Mumblehard Linux botnet is no longer active due to the combined efforts of ESET, the Cyber Police of Ukraine and CyS Centrum.
=> ↺ OSVDB Shuts Down, Firefox Add-ons Unsafe & More…
- Speaking of vulnerabilities: We lost an open source security asset this week. On Tuesday we received word that OSVDB, or the Open Sourced Vulnerability Database project, an organization that’s cataloged computer security flaws since 2002, is closing up shop. The news came by way of an OSVDB blog that said, “We are not looking for anyone to offer assistance at this point, and it [the database] will not be resurrected in its previous form.” As for why the database is being shut down, the post went on to somewhat cryptically explain, “The industry simply did not want to contribute and support such an effort.” A good analysis of the details by Jon Gold was published Thursday on Network World.
=> ↺ Do You Think Linux Is More Secure Than Other OS?
- There’s an old school of thought that says that Linux is more secure than other operating systems. This topic has been hotly debated over the years. What’s your opinion? Do you think Linux is more secure than other OS?
=> ↺ Adobe Issues Emergency Update to Flash After Ransomware Attacks
=> ↺ FBI: $2.3 Billion Lost to CEO Email Scams
- The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week warned about a “dramatic” increase in so-called “CEO fraud,” e-mail scams in which the attacker spoofs a message from the boss and tricks someone at the organization into wiring funds to the fraudsters. The FBI estimates these scams have cost organizations more than $2.3 billion in losses over the past three years.
Defence/Aggression
=> ↺ Pulling the Trigger: An Interview With the ‘Eye in the Sky’ Filmmaker Gavin Hood
- I had the opportunity recently to see Gavin Hood’s new film, “Eye in the Sky,” at a screening hosted by Reprieve. The film weaves together the lives of ordinary people in Nairobi living in the shadow of a largely secret drone war, the high-level deliberations between British and American officials concerning a fictional drone operation, and the individual moral responsibility of a U.S. drone operator sitting safely in Nevada who must ultimately decide whether or not he will pull the trigger. Although some of the technology shown in the film is more advanced than what we know to be available today, the questions it explores are starkly contemporary: What are the costs of conducting a secret war with ambiguous boundaries and goals? Who gets to decide when civilians are to be put in danger? What is the lived experience of those people who live below the buzz of drones, and the pilots half a world away who are charged with pulling the trigger?
=> ↺ The Revolt Against NATO
- This has the foreign policy Establishment in a panic, with legions of “experts” rising up to denounce Trump’s heresy as misguided, absurd, and – of course! – “isolationist.” Yet the politicians can’t afford to be so dismissive: after all, they have to listen to their constituents, at least to some extent. And it’s quite telling what Sen. Corker – who has warned the “Never Trump” crowd to back off – had to say to Stoltenberg:
Transparency/Investigative Reporting
=> ↺ 77% of Freedom of Information Act Requests Not Fully Answered
- On his election, President Obama promised greater governmental transparency to the American people. In practice, the Obama administration has set a record for failures to find and produce government documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Signed into law by President Johnson in 1966, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) encourages and enforces government disclosures to the people with only nine specific exemptions. As Ted Bridis and Jack Gillum reported for the Associated Press’s Big Story, in response to the public’s FOIA requests, 129,825 times (or more than one in every six cases), government searchers said they came up empty-handed last year. Bridis and Gillum write, “People who asked for records under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, also a record.” The 77% figure represents a twelve percent increase, compared with the first full year after President Obama’s election.
Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature
=> ↺ Bruce Stanley on Coal-Industry Crime
- When Massey Energy, the biggest coal company in Appalachia, polluted the groundwater of the community Massey CEO Don Blankenship lived in, he had employees run a private water line direct to his mansion, while fighting off the lawsuit from his poisoned neighbors. That’s just the kind of guy he is, and it’s decades of that behavior, as much as the 2010 explosion that killed 29 people at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine, that led to Blankenship’s sentencing this week to a year in prison on a charge of conspiracy to violate mine safety standards.
=> ↺ Australia Is Letting the Great Barrier Reef Die Over a Lot of Coal
- If there was one thing Australia could’ve done to save the Great Barrier Reef, it would’ve been to block the development of the country’s largest coal mine, which its state government approved with resounding confidence this week.
- The Great Barrier Reef, true to its name, is the most expansive reef ecosystem in the world. It’s the largest living organism on the entire planet, and is so big we can actually see it from outer space. Remember the Seven Natural Wonders of the World? It’s one of those, too.
- But its vast size will not keep it from dying—which it is—at an astounding rate, thanks to humans.
Finance
=> ↺ EU trade secrets law under fire in wake of Panama papers
- In the light of the Panama papers scandal, a soon-to-be adopted EU law on trade secrets has come under renewed scrutiny over fears it will hamstring journalists and whistleblowers.
- New EU rules to protect trade secrets could prevent leaks like the Panama papers from coming to light in future, member of European Parliament (MEPs) and activists fear.
- According to MEPs and activists, a draft EU directive on the “protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets)” focuses on protecting companies over private individuals and freedom of expression.
=> ↺ Labour says PM ‘losing trust’ over offshore fund row
- Labour has said David Cameron’s admission that he owned shares in an offshore fund set up by his late father has undermined public trust in him.
- On Thursday, the PM said he sold the shares before he entered Number 10 in 2010 and had paid all UK taxes due on profits from the £30,000 sale.
- He said the firm, Blairmore Holdings, had not been set up to avoid tax.
- But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the PM had “misled the public” and “lost the trust of the British people”.
=> ↺ In recent test, blockchain brings transparency to notorious credit default swaps
- On Thursday, Wall Street’s bookkeeper announced that it had successfully tested blockchain technology to manage single-name credit default swaps (CDS) among four big banks: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Credit Suisse, and JP Morgan.
=> ↺ ‘Please do not feed the animals’: Oklahoma GOP Compares Food Stamp Recipients to Park Animals
- In America, we have a very crude understanding of social welfare programs. For most Americans, anything the government gives to its people (i.e., us) to keep us healthy, fed and educated, is a “handout” to lazy people who don’t deserve it.
- Helping each other, using our tax money for us, as does most of the civilized world, is somehow wrong. In America, we’d prefer you starve to death, quietly if possible, as the rest of us are binge watching Netflix whilst eating Doritos.
=> ↺ Predatory Tactics by For-Profit Colleges Affecting Students Nationwide
- In March 2016, Annie Waldman, writing for ProPublica, reported how Corinthian College used disingenuous recruiting tactics to mislead impoverished, prospective students to sign up for programs they offered, with the intention to make a profit. Legal documents have been filed against the school for misconduct and there are several suits pending. The college allegedly coerced students who were homeless and/or had low self-esteem to enroll. They encouraged students to take out federal student loans, despite their financial position.
=> ↺ Downing Street Protest Attracts Attention Of Anarchist Group Class War
- The Metropolitan Police say that appropriate plans are in place ahead of a protest outside Downing Street due to take place on Saturday.
- Facebook events for the Panama-themed demonstration show over two thousand people as attending, including the singer Lily Allen, inspired by the Panama Papers revelations.
- Abi Wilkinson, one of the event’s organisers, said: “We’re hoping to have a fun, tropical party vibe and to get ordinary people out rather than committed activist types.”
=> ↺ What time is the David Cameron tax havens protest and where does it start?
- Thousands are expected to take to the streets of London on Saturday to demand David Cameron resign as Prime Minister.
- It follows the Prime Minister’s admission that he trousered thousands of pounds in profits from an offshore firm owned by his father.
- He and his wife finally admitted to having owned 5,000 shares in Blairmore Holdings, a firm set up Dave’s stockbroker dad Ian Cameron.
- The fund was set up in Panama to avoid paying UK corporation and capital gains tax.
- The protest gained a boost in interest last night, after fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden retweeted it to his 1.9m followers, urging Brits to rise up against Mr Cameron’s leadership.
=> ↺ Edward Snowden: ‘Demand Cameron’s resignation over tax dodging’
- Cameron came clean about his tax affairs on Thursday evening, admitting that between 1997 and 2010 he and his wife, Samantha Cameron, owned shares in his father’s Blairmore Investment Trust – a multimillion-pound offshore trust fund.
=> ↺ Cameron odds-on to step down
- BOOKIES rushed to cut David Cameron’s odds to step down to 11/2 yesterday after the PM admitted he had profited from his father’s offshore dealings.
- Paddy Power labelled the dramatic shortening of its original 20/1 odds “the equivalent of a first fence faller” in the Grand National.
- A spokesman for the betting agency said: “Forget Many Clouds in the Grand National tomorrow, this is the real one-horse race right now.”
=> ↺ Timeline of David Cameron’s scathing attacks on those who evade tax
- After four days of dodging questions about his tax affairs, David Cameron finally cracked and admitted he did profit from his dad’s offshore investment fund.
- The embarrassed PM revealed he and his wife Samantha held £30,000 of shares in Bahamas-based Blairmore Holdings, one of the firms named in the explosive Panama Papers .
- Mr Cameron is facing calls to quit over his bombshell confession, which after intense pressure from the Mirror.
- He had arrogantly brushed off his tax affairs as a private matter then insisted he had not benefited from any offshore funds, before finally coming clean in a TV interview.
=> ↺ The Conservatives may live to regret this shameless generational discrimination
- How broke is the Government? It depends who’s asking. If you’re unemployed, then things are impossibly tough: far more cuts are needed from the welfare budget because there is no alternative. If you’re at school, then things are not quite so bad. The school budget is being “protected,” which is a nice way of saying “frozen”. But if you’re a pensioner, then David Cameron has some great news for you. Thanks to the “difficult decisions” his government has taken, he can now afford the largest increase to the state pension in 15 years. The new, enlarged cheque will be in the post this week.
=> ↺ Why Cameron went public over Blairmore shares
- When a politician is under pressure, facing questions about their family and their finances, their natural instinct is to protect their privacy and say as little as possible.
=> ↺ ‘Resign Cameron’ protests: Thousands to gather at Downing Street to ask Prime Minister to step down
- Thousands of protersters are expected to move on Downing Street to call for tough action on tax avoidance – or David Cameron’s resignation.
- Following the revelations about his tax affairs in the Panama papers, demonstrators are asking Mr Cameron to either “close tax loopholes or resign”. The protests are being organised around the hashtags “Resign Cameron” and “Close tax loopholes”, and have gained support from high-profile figures including Edward Snowden and Lily Allen.
=> ↺ UK ministers humiliated after Cayman and BVI leaders repeatedly ignore requests for meetings
- The governments of two notorious tax havens have repeatedly ignored UK ministers’ requests to meet about cracking down on corporate tax avoidance of the kind detailed on the so-called Panama Papers, The Independent can reveal.
- Official letters obtained using freedom of information rules show humiliated ministers “disappointed” at being stood-up after “numerous attempts” to meet with the premiers of the British Virgin Island and Cayman Islands.
- Campaigners reacted to the letters by berating the Government’s “meek” and “softly-softly” approach towards the havens, while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused the Government of “pussyfooting” around the issue.
=> ↺ David Cameron protest: Live updates as thousands call for PM’s resignation after Panama Papers scandal
=> ↺ Law to make all company ownership transparent in UK dependencies & territories
- As the Panama Papers prove the British Virgin Islands is one of the world’s capitals of tax avoidance, evasion and money laundering. The territory has 600,000 companies registered there with a population of around 30 thousand.
=> ↺ David Cameron: I could have handled tax row better
- Prime Minister David Cameron has said he could have handled the row over his financial affairs “better”, admitting it had “not been a great week”.
- Addressing the Tories’ spring forum, he said he was to blame for the handling of revelations about his holding in his late father’s offshore fund.
- Days after questions were first raised, the PM admitted this week he had owned and later sold units in the fund.
=> ↺ VIDEO: ‘Thousands’ descend on Downing Street for ‘Resign Cameron’ protest
=> ↺ Crowds march in London to demand Cameron resignation following Panama Papers leak (IMAGES)
- A massive protest has gathered in front of PM David Cameron’s residence at Downing Street 10, calling for his resignation. The rally follows the so-called Panama Papers leak, which among others exposed the offshore dealings of Cameron’s late father.
- “Cameron must go!” and “Tories out!” read the placards held by the demonstrators, RUPTLY’s live feed showed. A huge paper pig was erected by the protesters, with Cameron’s image pinned to its face.
=> ↺ Thousands gather outside Downing Street calling on David Cameron to resign
- Thousands of people were expected to march through London this morning calling on David Cameron to close tax loopholes or resign.
- We went along to the protest in Whitehall – watch our live feed here and see if you can spot the Hawaiian shirts, pig pinatas and shouts of ‘We hate you Cameron, we do!’
- Our reporters have been talking to people both for and against David Cameron to see why some feel so strongly that he needs to go.
=> ↺ Hold a General Election in 2016
- The General Public were purposefully misguided before the 2015 election.The lies David Cameron told before the election have now been widely acknowledged as such, and it is only reasonable that the public should be allowed to vote with full knowledge about his true agenda in 2016.
=> ↺ David Cameron: blame me for mishandling Panama Papers revelations
- Addressing the Conservative party spring forum, the prime minister admitted it had “not been a great week”, to laughter from the gathered supporters.
- Cameron said he would publish details of his tax return “later on” as he attempts to assuage calls for further transparency about his financial dealings.
- “I know I should have handled this better,” he said. “I could have handled this better. I know there are lessons to learn and I will learn them. And don’t blame No 10 Downing Street, or nameless advisers, blame me. And I will learn the lessons.”
=> ↺ “Resign Cameron” Protest Targets Conservative Spring Forum As PM Tells Party To Blame Him For Tax Fallout
- Thousands of protesters in London called on prime minister David Cameron to resign on Saturday, after he admitted owning shares in his father’s offshore fund that avoided paying corporation tax in Britain.
=> ↺ Defence Secretary blames journalists for not asking Cameron the right questions
- Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, has provided the most bizarre defence yet of David Cameron and Downing Street taking five attempts before admitting the Prime Minister had benefited from the offshore fund created by his father, impying it was journalists’ fault for failing to ask the right questions.
=> ↺ Downing Street protesters call for Cameron to resign
=> ↺ David Cameron did not declare his earnings from the offshore fund either
- It would be reasonable to say that benefitting from an offshore trust may influence Cameron’s view on whether such trusts should be tightly regulated or not.
=> ↺ Pyramid vs. obelisk
- Doctors and attorneys have employer-independent credibility, being vouched-for by their professional associations…
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
=> ↺ CIA’s Work With Filmmakers Puts All Media Workers at Risk
- The CIA’s history of producing or helping to produce films goes back decades. The Agency, for example, secretly bought the rights to Animal Farm after Orwell’s death in 1950 and produce an animated adaptation centered on demonizing the Soviet Union rather than capturing Orwell’s broader critiques of power.
- And as the CIA got involved in film production, Hollywood players have likewise taken part in covert operations. For years, legendary film producer Arnon Milchan (Pretty Woman, Fight Club, back-to-back Oscar winner for Best Picture in 2014 and 2015) worked for Israeli intelligence to deal arms and obtain technologies Israel needed to make nuclear weapons. “At the peak of his activities,” according to the Guardian, he was “operating 30 companies in 17 countries and brokering deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” an arrangement that, Milchan told the BBC (11/26/13), involved Sydney Pollack—director of Sabrina, Tootsie and, ironically enough, Three Days of the Condor.
Censorship/Free Speech
=> ↺ Reddit Steps Up Anti-Harassment Measures With New Blocking Tool
- Since 2005, Reddit has been a veritable wonderland for the most extreme forms of free speech on the Internet.
- On this general interest message board, all it takes to make — or break — someone else’s day on Reddit is a fleeting thought, a made-up screen name and a few quick keystrokes.
- But with the site’s pseudonymity have come other byproducts. Some of Reddit’s biggest detractors claim the web discussion forum is a breeding ground for trolls, a hub that helps them organize and spread like a virus across the rest of the Internet.
=> ↺ Even talk of censorship backfires
- “If you censor me, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”
- OK, that’s not the actual line from Star Wars. But it does describe an increasingly common effect, in which efforts to shut down people’s messages result in those messages getting a lot more attention than they would have. Last week featured three particularly noticeable examples.
=> ↺ Banned in Baltimore: film censorship in the Free State
- Banning a political picture was rare. Maryland’s morality militia was mostly concerned with suggestive scenes, titillating images and illicit passion. Drinking, gambling and glorified criminal action were also red-flagged and blue-penciled.
- By the 1940s, one colorful censor, Helen Tingley, felt that the real trouble with motion pictures wasn’t immorality. In her words, “It was stupidity.” Viewing eight films a day, she became jaded by bottom of the bill B-movies. After watching Shirley Temple in a late-career stinker, Tingley remarked, “We can reject pictures that are sacrilegious, obscene, indecent, immoral. … Too bad we can’t bar this little gem for inhumanity to the audience.”
=> ↺ More People Recognizing Copyright’s ‘Free Speech Problem’
- For many years now, we’ve written about the fact that copyright law and the First Amendment are actually in quite a lot of conflict. After all, copyright is regularly used to stifle speech, and the First Amendment isn’t supposed to allow for the barring of speech. Over the years, legal experts have been increasingly starting to realize this. A few years back, we wrote about a paper wondering why copyright law doesn’t require a showing of harm, as should be required under the First Amendment. We’ve also pointed out that the more that you explore the fact that copyright and the First Amendment seem to be in conflict, the more you recognize how screwed up copyright law has been. I’m even aware of two whole books that both focus on this problem: Neil Netanel’s Copyright’s Paradox and David Lange & H. Jefferson Powell’s No Law (as in “Congress shall make no law…”).
=> ↺ Stop the Copyright Creep: New Restrictions are Not the Answer to the Challenges of Digital Publishing
- Publishers are seeking to expand the copyright restrictions they can impose on news platforms, in the latest example of a phenomenon known as “copyright creep.” That kind of creep happens when lawmakers lose sight of the central purpose of copyright: to ultimately grow the cultural commons by ensuring that authors and their heirs can collect compensation for specific uses of their works. In line with that purpose, copyright is not a fundamental right so much as a bundle of restrictions we allow creators to impose for limited times, subject to numerous exceptions such as fair use which are intended to ensure that those restrictions don’t impede new expression and innovation. Copyright creep undermines that a delicate balance.
=> ↺ Reddit updates inbox filter to block trolling and hate speech
- NEWS, OPINION AND INFORMATION FARM Reddit has announced a newly-polished version of its user inbox filtering feature that should protect members from the nasty talk of their peers.
- Reddit presumably needs this kind of thing, and has already worked hard to strip out revenge and hate talk.
- “Reddit is a place where virtually anyone can voice, ask about or change their views on a wide range of topics, share personal, intimate feelings, or post cat pictures,” said a post from Reddit admin.
=> ↺ May the Best Idea Win
- There’s no shortage of criticism of what’s been described as the student censorship movement, which has included banning (or at least student demands to ban) controversial speakers, discussions and art from colleges and universities. The latest critique, Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan) comes from Britain, which has seen its own set of parallel events on its campuses. But author Joanna Williams, a senior lecturer of higher education at the University of Kent and education editor at Spiked, rebukes students in Britain and the U.S. (and their professors, from whom she says they’ve learned bad habits) in equal measure.
=> ↺ US says China internet censorship a burden for businesses
=> ↺ US Says China’s Internet Filters Act Like Trade Barriers
=> ↺ US cites Chinese Internet filters as trade barrier
=> ↺ Chinese internet filter ‘barrier to international trade’
=> ↺ U.S.: China’s Web filters a trade wall
=> ↺ Chinese censorship goes into overdrive over Panama Papers scandal
=> ↺ Chinese internet filter ‘barrier to international trade’
=> ↺ China internet censorship a burden for businesses: US
=> ↺ U.S. cites Chinese web filters as trade barrier
=> ↺ US Says China Internet Censorship a Burden for Businesses
=> ↺ The Conflict Between a Corporation’s Global Standards and National Law
=> ↺ US cites Chinese Internet filters as trade barrier
=> ↺ Father of ‘Great Firewall of China’ Blocked By His Own Creation During Presentation
=> ↺ Mounting Criticism on Both Sides of the Great Firewall
- A Shanghai-based marketing executive at an international trading company who does part-time translation work, Ms. Wang says the government’s existing practice of blocking many foreign websites already makes her work tougher.
=> ↺ China’s Great Firewall inventor forced to use VPN live on stage to dodge his own creation
=> ↺ Father of Great Firewall Forced to Publicly Bypass it
=> ↺ Architect of China’s Great Firewall a closet VPN fan but new crackdown looms
Privacy/Surveillance
=> ↺ EU-US Privacy Shield may not pass muster, according to leaked extract
- Leaked extracts from an imminent assessment of the EU-US Privacy Shield replacement for Safe Harbour suggests that a key group of EU data protection authorities will not support it in its present form.
- It is expected that the Article 29 Working Party will say that it is “not yet in a position to confirm that the current draft adequacy decision does, indeed, ensure a level of protection [in the US] that is essentially equivalent to that in the EU.” Any transatlantic data transfer scheme that does not provide an “essentially equivalent” level of protection is unlikely to withstand a legal challenge in the EU courts.
=> ↺ How a Cashless Society Could Embolden Big Brother
- In 2014, Cass Sunstein—one-time “regulatory czar” for the Obama administration—wrote an op-ed advocating for a cashless society, on the grounds that it would reduce street crime. His reasoning? A new study had found an apparent causal relationship between the implementation of the Electronic Benefit Transfer system for welfare benefits, and a drop in crime.
=> ↺ The Burr-Feinstein Proposal Is Simply Anti-Security
- Sens. Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein recently released a draft bill forcing nearly all U.S. companies to decrypt any encrypted data they may handle. Specifically, it would place a new, sweepingly broad duty on device manufacturers, software developers, ISPs, online services and others to decrypt encrypted data or offer “such technical assistance as is necessary” if ordered to do so by any court anywhere in the country.
- The draft reflects an ignorance of everyday computer security practices that safeguard your devices and information from criminals. As currently written, the draft likely even outlaws forward secrecy, an innovative security feature that many major tech providers, including WhatsApp, have implemented to limit the damage to user privacy in the event encryption keys are compromised.
=> ↺ The California Bill to Undermine Smartphone Encryption Actually Got Worse
- State lawmakers recently introduced some misguided changes to California’s Assembly Bill 1681, which would require that manufacturers and operating system providers be able to decrypt smartphones sold in the state. On first glance, the amendment to A.B. 1681 might seem to address some of EFF’s previous criticisms, but the new version actually makes an already bad bill even worse. EFF has signed on to a new letter in opposition to the bill, and you can still join our action calling on lawmakers to vote against it.
=> ↺ Bill That Would Ban End-to-End Encryption Savaged by Critics
- A LONG-ANTICIPATED DRAFT of anti-encryption legislation written by the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee circulated late Thursday night and left may critics apoplectic.
=> ↺ HTTPS Everywhere: Encryption for All WordPress.com Sites
=> ↺ WordPress Upgrades All Websites To HTTPS Encryption For Free
- WordPress.com is enabling HTTPS encryption for all of its websites. This change is an automatic one and the website owners don’t have to do anything to enable HTTPS redirect on their websites. This new step will benefit millions of websites on the web and help to make it a more secure place.
=> ↺ “The Internet of Broken Things”
- Third, resist the temptation for gee-whiz devices. Do you really need a refrigerator that can talk to the Internet? Do you really need a “smart” thermostat that can fail due to a software bug and leave you freezing, with no way to fix it? Prefer simple, autonomous devices over complex, networked gadgets.
=> ↺ Maryland Court Says Cops Need Warrants To Deploy Stingray Devices
- The Baltimore Police Department’s warrantless deployment of Stingray devices has come to an end. It may have gotten away with more than 4,300 times so far, but the Maryland Special Appeals Court has declared these devices operate as searches under the Fourth Amendment.
- The 74-page opinion — which belatedly follows its two-page order from nearly a month ago, indicating which side it had taken in this dispute — dives into every issue implicated by the warrantless use of Stingray devices and examines them alongside a long list of Fourth Amendment-related Supreme Court decisions and the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court’s precedent-setting US v. Graham opinion on cell site location info.
=> ↺ New Reports On Terror Attacks Underline Why Crypto Isn’t A Serious Problem: It’s Hard To Use And Easy To Get Wrong
- The picture that emerges from these two reports is of a large, well-established network of terrorists located across several European countries. Many of them were known in multiple ways to the authorities, which repeatedly failed to bring all this crucial information together, probably because there was too much, not too little, to sift through. What is conspicuous by its absence is any suggestion that the would-be attackers escaped arrest by using encrypted communications. Both stories do, however, reveal that ISIS-trained terrorists have used encryption tools, but in a non-standard way.
- @thegrugq has written a good piece on Medium analyzing the system. It seems the discontinued encryption program TrueCrypt was provided by ISIS on a USB drive. The program was used to place one or more messages inside an encrypted volume, which was then uploaded to an inconspicuous online site. By employing a shared password to encrypt the volume, more than one person could read the messages in a relatively secure and anonymous way. The system creates a kind of digital dead letter drop that can’t be addressed simply by mandating crypto backdoors.
=> ↺ Coalition opposes allowing NSA to share surveillance data
- “Considering the extent and scope of the information collected under EO 12333, the policy changes under consideration could allow agencies like the FBI to circumvent constitutional protections and will pose new threats to the privacy and civil liberties of ordinary Americans,” the letter stated.
=> ↺ Juniper Completes Removal of Dual_EC
- Juniper Networks hopes to remove any clouds of uncertainty that its networking gear might still have a backdoor that could allow the NSA or hackers to snoop on traffic running through its hardware.
- On Thursday, Juniper completed an update to the way its ScreenOS software handles encryption. Juniper said it has integrated the company’s widely used random number generator component into the ScreenOS software, abandoning older controversial methods.
=> ↺ Are Pins, Posts, Tweets and Likes Appropriate for Use in Selecting Jurors?
- When you hear the name of someone you can’t place or don’t know much about, what do you do? Chances are, you “Google” them. Well that is what attorneys are doing to learn more about prospective jurors too! But they are not stopping there. They are looking at a number of social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to learn about the profiles, likes, dislikes, friends, hobbies, biases, religion, and preferences of individuals in the jury pool. This practice has raised a number of issues related to ethics, privacy, and responsibility. To date, courts have taken positions ranging from banning these searches to practically requiring them.
=> ↺ Illinois Law Requiring Sex Offenders To Report All Internet Activity Violates Free Speech Rights
- With the goal of keeping tabs on sex offenders, the state of Illinois has veered way off course. Its offender registration statute requires individuals to report every nook and cranny of their online activities to law enforcement—or face jail time. Every Internet site they visit, every online retailer account they create, and every news story comment they post must be reported to police.
=> ↺ Richard Burr’s Encryption (AKA Cuckoo) Bill, Working Thread
- A version of Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein’s ill-considered encryption bill has been released here. They’re calling it the “Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016,” but I think I’ll refer to it as the Cuckoo bill. This will be a working thread.
- (2) Note the bill starts by suggesting economic prosperity relies on breaking encryption. There are many reasons that’s not true, most obviously that it will put US products at a disadvantage in other countries.
- (2) Note this only applies to “providers of communications services and products (including software).” Does it apply to financial companies? Because they’re encrypting data between themselves that should be accessible to law enforcement. Does it apply to car companies? IoT companies?
- (2) Note they mention “judicial order” and “court order” here. It’s clear (and becomes clearer later) that this includes orders that aren’t warrants, so FISA orders. Which suggests they’re having a problem with encryption under FISA too.
- (3) The Cuckoo Bill builds in compensation. That’s one way companies could fight this: to make sure it would take a lot to render data intelligible.
- (4) I suspect this license language would expand to do scary things with other “licensing” products.
- (4) Note that they’ve expanded the definition of metadata to include “switching, processing, and transmitting” data. I bet that has already been done in secret somewhere.
- (5) The language on destination and switching suggests they’re trying to include location data in metadata.
=> ↺ Burr And Feinstein Release Their Anti-Encryption Bill… And It’s More Ridiculous Than Expected
- They’ve been threatening this for months now, but Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein have finally released a “discussion draft” of their legislation to require backdoors in any encryption… and it’s even more ridiculous than originally expected. Yesterday, we noted that the White House had decided to neither endorse nor oppose the bill, raising at least some questions about whether or not it would actually be released. Previously, Feinstein had said she was waiting for the White House’s approval — but apparently she and Burr decided that a lack of opposition was enough.
- The basics of the bill are exactly what you’d expect. It says that any “device manufacturer, software manufacturer, electronic communication service, remote computing service, provider of wire or electronic or any person who provides a product or method to facilitate communication or the processing or storage of data” must respond to legal orders demanding access to said information. First off, this actually covers a hell of a lot more than was originally expected. By my reading, anyone providing PGP email is breaking the law — because it’s not just about device encryption, but encryption of communications in transit as well. I wonder how they expect to put that genie back in the bottle.
=> ↺ Former NSA Chief Urges U.S.-Silicon Valley Deal on Encryption
=> ↺ Former NSA Chief Urges U.S.-Tech Deal on Encryption
=> ↺ Liberty advocates warn of NSA’s massive new threat to privacy
- In a letter to Defense Intelligence Agency head James Clapper, the groups said the NSA is making policy changes that “would fatally weaken existing restrictions on access to the phone calls, emails, and other data the NSA collects.”
=> ↺ Here’s the latest travesty of secrecy from the NSA
- Now, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the National Security Agency is withholding its own ethical and legal guidelines, calling them “top secret.” This is ridiculous.
=> ↺ GCHQ is having problems meeting Osborne’s 2020 recruitment target
- Blighty’s surveillance and security agency GCHQ is facing significant challenges in meeting the government’s targets for recruitment over the next four years.
- Last year the chancellor promised that 1,900 new recruits would be hired by the intelligence agencies by 2020 – with the lion’s share expected to head to GCHQ in Cheltenham, as total “cyber spending” rises to £3.2bn (by Osborne’s maths).
- However, independent sources close to GCHQ have complained to The Register that the agency would struggle to land the best candidates, with one Cheltenham staffer telling us that they simply didn’t know where the new talent was going to come from.
Civil Rights/Policing
=> ↺ Leveraging Shame And The Presumption Of Guilt To Destroy Lives And Punish Consenting Adults
- The criminal justice system theoretically operates on a presumption of innocence. An arrest booking is hardly an indicator of guilt, but try telling that to millions of people who believe being accused is no different than being found guilty by a jury. Everyone knows this presumption of guilt exists, despite it being wholly contrary to the basis of our justice system.
- Cops know this best. A high-profile bust is as good as a guilty verdict. So it’s no surprise that they’ve increasingly turned to the greatest shaming mechanism known to man: the internet.
=> ↺ NYPD Raises Middle Finger To Public, Oversight In Inspector General’s Year-End Roundup
- The NYPD’s Office of the Inspector General has just released its year-end report summarizing its 2015 oversight work. We covered its use of force report late last year — a report which found the NYPD completely uninterested in policing itself. The report noted the NYPD has “historically… failed to discipline officers who use force without justification.”
- This report points to the OIG’s investigation of chokehold use by NYPD officers — the tactic that ended Eric Garner’s life during his arrest. As is the case with most other excessive uses of force, this tactic — which has been forbidden by department policy — tended to be greeted with shrugs from PD supervisors and a middle finger raised to the general public.
=> ↺ Chokehold Audit Paints Grim Portrait of NYPD
- In a report prompted by the death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner, city investigators found the New York City Police Department failed to put officers on trial for using chokeholds in 10 substantiated cases.
=> ↺ Stand Your Ground, Unless You’re a Battered Woman
- When victims defend themselves, they put themselves at risk of becoming doubly victimized—first by their abusers, then by the criminal justice system.
=> ↺ When Hatred Is Just Around the Corner
- Escaping civil war in Lebanon, my family landed in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1986. Like many immigrants, my parents still speak of Lebanon with the same familiarity they did in the weeks after my aunt opened her doors to her brother, his wife, and their four kids — including me, their clever but slightly odd four-year-old.
- I had one friend, a cousin, and spoke only a few words of English (the necessities: food-related words, “no,” and “dude”). During this time, my social butterfly of a mother tried to convince me through broken English, “You don’t need friends; you have family.” I wasn’t helping my cause. I often wore a cheap red pleather jacket and pants suit with frayed fingerless gloves painted with glitter and told everyone I was Michael Jackson from the Thriller music video.
=> ↺ Sharia Villages: Bosnia’s Islamic State Problem
- Radical Islamists have found a new refuge in Bosnia. They recruit fighters, promote jihad and preach a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam — just across the border from the European Union.
=> ↺ Bangladeshi student blogger known for secular views hacked to death
- Three motorcycle-riding assailants hacked and shot a student activist to death as he was walking with a friend in Bangladesh’s capital, police said Thursday.
- The killing on Wednesday night follows a string of similar attacks last year, when at least five secular bloggers and publishers were killed, allegedly by radical Islamists.
- Police suspect 28-year-old Nazimuddin Samad was targeted for his outspoken atheism in the Muslim-majority country and for supporting a 2013 movement to demand capital punishment for war crimes involving the country’s independence war against Pakistan in 1971, according to Dhaka Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Nurul Amin.
=> ↺ The Body-Worn Camera As State’s Witness: How Cops Control Recordings
- Abusive conduct by police officers — up to and including killing someone for, say, holding a plastic bucket — has always flown under the “your word against ours” radar. But now everyone has a camera, even the cops.
- The push for body-worn cameras is still a good idea, but it has many, many flaws. It won’t save the nation from police misconduct but it will put a dent in it. Back when the NYPD was ordered to begin a body camera pilot program, then-Mayor Bloomberg said the devices would become nothing more than another way to play “gotcha” with good cops.
- Officers are actors and directors in their own scenes. Even when performances are captured by bystanders and their cell phones, there’s still plenty of “drama.” Multiple cops swarm the same suspect, blocking the body from view. Officers shout “Stop resisting!” even when subjects are prone with hands behind their back and under the weight of four or five cops. This allows officers to deliver extra amounts of force, instantly justified by the repeated shouts about resistance.
- This scenario has played out again. Footage captured by police body cameras appears to show a tough, physical struggle to subdue a suspect. Shouts of “stop resisting” continue throughout the recording. The up-close-and-personal body cam footage gives every appearance that officers are wrestling with a highly-combative suspect. But footage captured by another camera shows an entirely different scenario.
=> ↺ Wrongly-convicted Virginia inmate released from prison
- A man has been released from a Virginia prison after serving more than three decades for crimes authorities now say he didn’t commit.
- Keith Allen Harward walked out of the Nottoway Correctional Center on Friday after the Virginia Supreme Court agreed that DNA evidence proves he’s innocent of the 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his wife in Newport News.
- Harward was a sailor on the USS Carl Vinson, which was stationed close to the victims’ home. The prosecution in Harward’s case leaned heavily on the testimony of two experts, who said Harward’s teeth matched bite marks on the woman’s leg.
Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
=> ↺ The FCC Is Pushing A ‘Nutrition Label’ For Broadband Connections
- A report last year by the GAO (pdf) found that most consumers have no real idea what kind of a broadband connection they’re buying. The report argued that caps, interconnection squabbles, throttling, and other line limitations make it virtually impossible for many consumers (especially the more Luddite-inclined among us) to understand what they’re buying, or compare it with competing services. As a result, the FCC this week proposed a new “nutrition label” (pdf) for broadband that would include not only connection speed — but any network management, latency, usage caps, overage fees, or other conditions impacting the line.
=> ↺ Tennessee Man Builds His Own Gigabit Network Thanks To State’s Protectionist Broadband Law
- We’ve noted how Tennessee is one of twenty states that has passed state laws, quite literally written by companies like AT&T, prohibiting towns and cities from wiring themselves with broadband — even if nobody else will. When the FCC announced it would be taking aim at these protectionist broadband laws last year, Tennessee politicians threw a hissy fit, suing the FCC for “violating states rights.” That incumbent ISPs are being allowed to write awful state law that’s hampering a generation of business development in the state? Not apparently much of a concern.
DRM
=> ↺ 80% of people have no idea about the Netflix price hike that’s coming next month
- Netflix is going to raise prices on around 17 million of its standard accounts next month, and most people have no idea.
- In May of 2014, Netflix raised the price of its standard streaming plan, for new subscribers, to $9.99 per month. Existing subscribers, however, were grandfathered into the plan at $7.99 per month for the two-stream, “HD” quality plan.
Intellectual Monopolies
Trademarks
=> ↺ ‘Corn Thins’ trade mark found to be descriptive
- The Cancellation Division also found that the evidence submitted, showing that ‘Thins’ had been used descriptively on many other products, was not relevant because they either post-dated registration or were undated. The Division asserted that evidence regarding descriptive use of the word in the food sector had to be prior to the date of registration. They found that the arguments asserting distinctiveness under Article 7(1)(b) were also based on the arguments asserting descriptiveness and thus failed for the same reasons.
=> ↺ Trademark For ‘Square Donuts’ At Heart Of Trademark Dispute Despite It Being Entirely Descriptive
- One of the rules that is supposed to keep trademark law from creating language-lock insanity is the prescription against trademarking purely descriptive terms. That’s why you get a trademark on Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but not on “soda.” It’s why “computer” is not a valid trademark term. Were this not the case, companies could simply lock up the language of their marketplaces, restricting terms not to the benefit of the consumer, but purely as a monopolizing strategy.
=> ↺ English Brewer And French Wine Group In Trademark Dispute Over ‘Champ’
- The Comite Champagne, or CIVC, has never bothered to pretend it is anything other than a jealous protector of the word “champagne.” The trade group and its winery members have made quite a name for themselves ensuring that nobody else anywhere could possibly market a product that in any way suggests it is champagne. This is supposedly done to ensure the reputation of wine from the Champagne region of France remains as sparkling as the product, but predictably devolves into the kind of protectionist racket too often seen in trademark cases.
Copyrights
=> ↺ The FCC’s Plan To Unlock Your Set-Top Box Is About Competition, Not Copyright
- This isn’t about control over copying, but c of TV watching, from the studio to your eyeballs, and over search and discovery as well as viewing. Open competition could bring many more options, like new TV interfaces that present recommendations from various critics and tastemakers, or from your friends. New video devices could take you straight to those shows and movies in one step, no matter which of your pay-TV or Internet video services they appear on. This could be a boon for niche and non-mainstream programs of all kinds.
=> ↺ The Ultimate In CwF: How Lovers Of Stardew Valley Fought Piracy By Buying The Game For Pirates
- Our advocating for the Connecting with Fans and giving them a Reason to Buy equation (CwF+RtB) being a solution to piracy has become something of a mantra for us here at Techdirt. And we’ve seen an absolute ton of success stories of people implementing some version of it. But, really, if you want a recent story of a creator going about this in a way that appears to hit every single note just about perfectly, you need only look toward the latest PC gaming hit: Stardew Valley.
=> ↺ Linking to Pirated Content Is Not Copyright Infringement, Says EU Court Adviser
- Linking to pirated content that is already available to the public can not be seen as copyright infringement under the European Copyright Directive. This is the advice Advocate General Melchior Wathelet has sent to the EU Court of Justice, in what may turn out to be a landmark case.
=> ↺ UK Govt Issues Advice on Dealing With Copyright Trolls
- The UK government has just published advice for people receiving cash demands from so-called copyright trolls. The Intellectual Property Office says that bill payers who are not necessarily infringers are receiving these letters and it is for the copyright holder to prove who committed the alleged offenses.
=> ↺ EU Consults On “Neighbouring Rights” For Publishers And “Panorama” Copyright Exceptions
- The European Commission is considering giving publishers the same “neighbouring” rights currently available to broadcasters and producers of someone else’s copyrighted content, it said in a 23 March consultation document. The inquiry is part of the EC’s digital single market initiative to boost Europe’s digital economy.
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