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● 07.04.16

● Links 4/7/2016: VectorLinux 7.2 Beta, Linux 4.7 RC 6

Posted in News Roundup at 2:34 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Linux Australia backflips on Appelbaum stance

• Linux Australia has done a backflip on its stance over privacy advocate Jacob Appelbaum who was recently thrown out of several software groupings following numerous accusations of sexual harassment.

Desktop

=> ↺ Want to bring that old netbook back to life? Hands-on with Manjaro LXQt and LXLE

• Either of these would be a good choice for the N150. If I were making the choice it would be Manjaro LXQt, because I like (and trust) Manjaro, it is smaller overall, it has made a lot of the same choices I would make in packages, and it just feels a bit snappier overall on the N150. But other people might very well prefer LXLE because it is based on Ubuntu and they prefer the package selection. It’s all good.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linus Torvalds Announces Linux Kernel 4.7 RC6, Things Are Getting Bigger

• Today, July 4, 2016, Linus Torvalds has had the pleasure of announcing the availability of the sixth Release Candidate (RC) version of the upcoming Linux 4.7 kernel, now ready for public testing.

=> ↺ Linux 4.7-rc6

• I’d love to tell you that things are calming down, and we’re shrinking, but that would be a lie.

=> ↺ Linux 4.7-rc6 Released, Bigger Than The Earlier RCs

• Linus noted in the release announcement about 4.7-rc6, “I’d love to tell you that things are calming down, and we’re shrinking, but that would be a lie. It’s not like this is a huge rc, but it’s definitely bigger than the previous rc’s were. I don’t think that’s necessarily a big problem, it seems to be mostly timing – we’ve just happened to get merges from most subsystems (eg networking from Davem, and all of the usual device driver subsystems from Greg, not to mention the GPU updates and all the random other subsystem maintainers). But networking (both drivers and core) is the most noticeable part.”

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 4.7 RC6 Announced By Linus Torvalds

• As reported by Marius Nestor from Softpedia, things got a little bigger this time and hopefully won’t be repeated next week for the final Release Candidate build.

=> ↺ Bcachefs Still Being Developed As A Next-Gen Linux File-System

• Announced last year was Bcachefs as a new Linux file-system derived from Bcache that aims for speed while having ZFS/Btrfs-like features. Since doing some early Bcachefs benchmarks last August, we hadn’t heard much (anything?) from the project since.

• It turns out Bcachefs is still being developed and its primary author, Kent Overstreet, continues to believe it can compete with the likes of Btrfs and ZFS as a next-generation Linux file-system.

Applications

=> ↺ Announcing git-cinnabar 0.4.0 beta 1

• Git-cinnabar is a git remote helper to interact with mercurial repositories. It allows to clone, pull and push from/to mercurial remote repositories, using git.

=> ↺ The Widely-Used Cairo Library Has Problems Passing Its Own Tests

• The Cairo graphics library that’s relied upon by GTK+, Gecko/Firefox, WebKit, Poppler, and many other pieces of Linux software is having problems passing its own build tests.

• Phoronix reader “Darxus” who previously wrote about reasons for losing motivation in Wayland, shared some details this week about Cairo’s inability to pass its own build tests.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Confirming all use of an SSH agent

=> ↺ Unravelling Code Injection in Binaries

=> ↺ How to Install Bower on Ubuntu

=> ↺ Git, cherry-pick and push

=> ↺ Accessing your remote desktop on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud

Games

=> ↺ SteamOS 2.84 Beta Promises to Fix “Black Screen” Issues with Nvidia GPUs

• Today, July 3, 2016, Valve’s engineers have pushed a new build of the SteamOS 2.0 gaming operating system to the brewmaster_beta channel, patching a few issues reported by users since SteamOS 2.83 Beta.

• SteamOS 2.84 Beta is here only five days from the release of SteamOS 2.83 Beta, which was based on the latest stable Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” repositories and introduced the AMD Radeon AMD GPU-PRO RC2 and the latest long-lived Nvidia 367.27 graphics drivers with support for the Vulkan API.

=> ↺ Get ready to be scared again as Layers of Fear: Inheritance DLC has been announced

• It will be available with Linux support on August 2nd.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Kubuntu 16.04 LTS Users Receive the Latest KDE Plasma 5.6.5 Desktop, Update Now

• The Kubuntu developers announced the general availability of the latest KDE Plasma 5.6.5 desktop environment, along wit KDE Frameworks 5.23.0 in the Backports PPA repositories for Kubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) users.

Distributions

=> ↺ Needed: A Linux Three in One Distro

• So far, that’s worked out well. Because of the work of the Linux developers and the GNU team, I now use a free and open desktop system that in most ways surpasses anything the proprietary folks offer. This has benefited the enterprise too, with data centers across the world filled with Linux serverss, not solely because Linux is free to use, but because in most cases it gets the job done better and cheaper than proprietary server operating systems.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ Future of Li-f-e: Linux for Education distribution

• We have come a long way since the first Li-f-e live media based on openSUSE was created, the current release is based on openSUSE Leap 42.1. Deployments by Indonesia’s education system is a shining example of openSUSE Education project’s accomplishment.

• The openSUSE project has stopped producing live medias for Leap and also live-installer is dropped from live medias created for the Tumbleweed distribution. As Li-f-e is primarily a live distribution we would not be able to create any more medias without live-installer. So unless this situation changes we may not have Li-f-e based on Leap 42.2.

=> ↺ openSUSE Conference 2016

• After the official part of oSC16 ended, we had a promising disussion about the (technical) future of the openSUSE wiki. If everything works out as planned, we’ll get some shiny new hardware hosted in Provo that is only used for openSUSE – and the most important thing is that we’ll have SSH access to it and can do whatever is needed without having to wait for the Provo admins.

Slackware Family

=> ↺ Slackware-Based VectorLinux 7.2 Beta Ships Free of systemd with Linux 4.4.14 LTS

• Today, July 3, 2016, the developers of the Slackware-based Vectorlinux GNU/Linux operating system have announced the release of the Beta build of the upcoming VectorLinux 7.2 release.

=> ↺ Slackware Linux 14.2 Released — World’s Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution

• World’s oldest Linux distribution Slackware 14.2 is finally available for download. This release brings along multiple changes on the fronts of stability and security. The update also brings the latest development tools, window managers, updated programs and desktop environments.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Testing The Red Hat/Rackspace Private Cloud

• For Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by Red Hat, we collaborate closely with Red Hat; we test the upstream OpenStack code as well as the open-sourced projects we leverage for our deployment, such as Ceph and Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director. This is done in a variety of ways, like sharing test cases upstream with the community via Tempest, creating and tracking bugs, and creating bug fixes upstream.

=> ↺ Red Hat and Eurotech partner for managing IoT edge devices

• The partnership focuses in particular on the rollout of a new, open source Eclipse Foundation project that will address requirements ranging from connectivity and configuration to application lifecycle. The co-sponsored project, Eclipse Kapua, integrates with the existing Eclipse Kura project to provide IoT developers and end users with an open platform that boosts community-driven development and helps them keep away from expensive, proprietary lock-in.

=> ↺ Red Hat, Codenvy and Microsoft team up for greater language integration

Finance

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

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

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Rating Reiterated by Pacific Crest

Fedora

=> ↺ Javier Igea: How do you Fedora?

• Javier Igea has been using Linux since he bought the first release of Red Hat from a book store. While he was working on his PhD in New York City, his adviser recommended that he switch from Windows to Linux. The reason for this was he was going to be doing serious numerical computations. When asked about his childhood heroes, he joked about being a little bit old. “Tarzan. Do people know about him?” He continued, “I guess I am a little old, I was born in the late 50’s.” Igea’s two favorite movies are Saving Private Ryan and Welcome to the Sticks. Javier also likes fishing for striped bass, which he describes as a strange event.

=> ↺ Network Security Toolkit (NST) Linux OS Released Based on Fedora 24, Linux 4.6

• Today, July 4, 2016, Ronald Henderson has announced the release of a new version of the Fedora-based Network Security Toolkit (NST) Linux distribution for network security analysis and monitoring.

=> ↺ Four More Changes Proposed For Fedora 25

• There are more change proposals were sent out this morning on the Fedora developer list with plans for these features in Fedora 25.

=> ↺ Fedora 24 Release Party in Sao Paulo

• Every time a new Fedora release is available, the community organizes events around the world to celebrate. Those events are necessary because they help meeting other users, contributors and, of course, it’s an opportunity to talk about Fedora.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Reproducible builds: week 61 in Stretch cycle

=> ↺ My work for Debian in June

• At least a little much more time lst month for helping to improve the operating system we’re working on.

=> ↺ Debian On Chromebooks

• Debian wiki has a section named “Debian On” where users can describe how to install Debian on any hardware. And there are several pages about Chromebooks.

=> ↺ twenty years of free software — part 7 git-annex

• My first Haskell program, and the only software I’ve written that was inspired by living in a particular place, git-annex has received the lion’s share of my time for five years.

• It was written just to solve my own problem, but in a general way, that turned out to be useful in lots of other situations. So over the first half a year or so, it started attracting some early adopters who made some very helpful suggestions.

• Then I did the git-annex assistant kickstarter, and started blogging about each day I worked on it. Four years of funding and seven hundred and twenty one posts later, the git-annex devblog is still going. So, I won’t talk about technical details in this post, they’ve all been covered.

=> ↺ Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” Installer Moves to Linux 4.6, Adds MIPS64el Support

• Today, July 4, 2016, Cyril Brulebois from the Debian Project has announced the release of the seventh Alpha build of the installer for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” operating system.

=> ↺ Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 7 Released

• The seventh alpha release of the Debian Installer for Stretch is now available.

=> ↺ Debian Stretch Successor To Be Codenamed Bullseye

• Taking place this week in Cape Town, South Africa is DebConf 16. One of the interesting bits of information out of that event is the codename for Stretch’s successor.

• Debian “Stretch” is the codename for Debian 9 and should be officially released in 2017. Now from DebConf 16 the codename to Stretch’s successor has been revealed: Bullseye.

Derivatives

=> ↺ Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 “Erik” Gets New Test Build, Adds Linux Kernel 4.4.14 LTS

• Approximately two months after the release of the first Test build for the upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 “Erik” operating system series, the project’s development team announced today the availability of the second Test build.

=> ↺ A simple menu system for blind Linux users

• The Knoppix distribution goes back in time, to the era of text menus, to provide an interface for computer users who are blind.

• [...]

• The Knoppix Linux distribution has existed since November 2000. It quickly grew in popularity because it was one of the first live operating systems available; you could boot from a CD and use Linux without actually installing it. The disc itself could be your operating system, as long as you saved your data to a hard drive or to a network share. At the time this was a groundbreaking idea, and it still is, given the lack of any such paradigm for non-open source operating systems (even an OS that has since developed a live-like environment for maintenance doesn’t intend for you to use that boot disc as your OS).

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ IBM’s SoftLayer cloud gets certified Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS images

• IBM’s SoftLayer cloud division is now offering certified images of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux server platform, providing customers with access to optimised images for running on SoftLayer’s bare metal and virtual servers.

• Canonical’s Ubuntu is the most widely deployed Linux distribution for running web servers, and the most commonly used platform for organisations building and operating clouds based on the OpenStack framework.

=> ↺ Snappy Moves in the Main Arch Linux Repo, snapd 2.0.10 Released to Fedora COPR

• Today, July 4, 2016, Canonical’s Zygmunt Krynicki has had the pleasure of announcing that the Snappy implementation for Ubuntu Linux has been updated to snapd 2.0.10.

• snapd 2.0.10 comes two weeks after the release of the 2.0.9 version, which introduced full Snap confinement on the elementary OS 0.4 “Loki” operating system, among several other goodies. However, the most interesting part of today’s announcement for snapd 2.0.10 is that it also landed for Fedora 24 users in the COPR repository.

=> ↺ Ubuntu backs calls to wind down 32-bit Linux support

• ANOTHER KEY voice in the Linux world has added to calls for 32-bit builds of the OS to be scrapped to allow more developer time for the 64-bit editions.

=> ↺ Linux developers aim to phase out 32-bit system support

• Key Linux developers such as Canonical are looking to phase out support for 32-bit processors, citing their increasing rarity and that the effort required to maintain 32-bit code would be better spent on new applications.

=> ↺ Meizu MX6 Ubuntu Edition Spotted In Promo Pictures

=> ↺ Meizu releases a Ubuntu version of the MX6

• Meizu has made it a habit to release Ubuntu versions of its higher-end phones, with the MX4 and the Pro 5 being among them. Now another model gets kitted with Linux and it’s the MX6.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Linux Mint 18 (Sarah) Released. See what’s New?

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ RaspEX OS for Raspberry Pi 3 Updated with OpenCPN 4.4.0, Based on Ubuntu 16.04

• After reporting that his RaspEX operating system for Raspberry Pi devices woks out of the box with the official Raspberry Pi Touch Display 7-inch monitor, Arne Exton now informs us about the availability of a new RaspEX build.

=> ↺ CompuLab Comes Out With New Rugged, Fanless Linux-Friendly PC

• The folks at CompuLab have announced their latest Linux-friendly PC, the fitlet-RM. The Fitlet-RM is described as “the smallest PC for extreme conditions” and is fanless.

• The Fitlet-RM is the successor to the previously-reviewed Fitlet we tested last year. The Fitlet-RM is said to improve heat dissipation by 40% through a redesign of the all-metal housing. The new design is also said to be more rugged, and support a wider temperature range.

=> ↺ Top 10 Raspberry Pi add-on boards

• Did you know you can adorn your Raspberry Pi with HATs? Of course we’re not talking about hats like people put on their heads, but rather HATs: “hardware attached on top”. These are add-on circuit boards and accessories that add functionality to your Raspberry Pi.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi Zero Becomes Mighty Miniature Minecraft Machine

• In a clever bit of miniaturization, [JediJeremy] has nearly completed a gyro-mouse controller for a Raspberry Pi Zero! Ultimately this will be a wearable Linux-watch but along the way he had some fun with the interface.

Phones

Android

=> ↺ BlackBerry will release three more Android-powered smartphones

=> ↺ 6 Things I Want From BlackBerry’s Trio of Android Phones

=> ↺ How to back up your Android

=> ↺ How to download Android 7.0 Nougat today

=> ↺ Millions of Android devices could be at risk of cyber attacks: Hacker reveals how easy it is to get around a phone’s encryption

=> ↺ Only Nexus And Samsung Android Smartphones Are Safe To Use, Security Firm Says

=> ↺ Android Auto explored: Taking Google on the road

=> ↺ Android Nougat Update Schedule & Release Date: When Will Your Android Phone Get It?

=> ↺ 8 Android Nougat features worth chewing over

• Google has announced the name of its next mobile OS as Android Nougat. Here are the 8 most exciting features you can expect from the latest version.

=> ↺ Weekend poll: what do you think of the Android ‘Nougat’ codename?

=> ↺ BlackBerry To Release Three More Android Smartphones

=> ↺ Android’s Full Disk Encryption Compromised, Affects Millions of Devices

=> ↺ HTC One M9, 10 and One A9 Gets Android 7.0 Nougat Latest Update

=> ↺ Asus ZenFone Selfie, ZenFone Zoom Receiving Android Marshmallow Update

=> ↺ Google Android Nougat: HTC 10, HTC One A9, HTC One M9 will get update

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Why PayPal bets on open-source

• The old way was to spend a lot of money on limited software and hardware. The new way, as PayPal’s Bill Scott, VP of next gen commerce found, is to scale out with lots of low-cost hardware and software. Open-source enables this, and to marvelously good effect.

• Scott, a firm believer in lean engineering, stands by the fact that it’s the secret sauce that fosters innovation and efficacy.

• Lean engineering, simply put, is becoming a part of the experimentation and learning cycle. The idea is to have rapid iteration and get feedback from customers quickly.

=> ↺ Distributed, Open Source Chat with Vector and Matrix

• When it comes to chat, you have many choices. Facebook Messenger, Google Talk, Whatsapp, Kik, and Slack are all viable options. However, all of these choices are proprietary, and require you to use servers that you can’t run yourself. They’re highly centralized, closed source tools.

• In the open source world, IRC has been the go to solution for chat for many years, and for good reason. Anyone can run a server, there’s many clients, and it’s built on open standards. But IRC comes from a pre-mobile world, and relies on clients to maintain persistent connections to the server. It’s not the best experience on a phone.

=> ↺ The Growth of the Linux and Open Source Channel since 1989

• The Linux kernel was born twenty-five years ago this summer. Since that time a thriving partner ecosystem has arisen around open source platforms built on Linux, GNU and other free and open source software products. Here’s a look at milestones in the evolution of the Linux channel and partner ecosystem.

=> ↺ Living, in Limbo

• “Is he getting better, or is he dying?” asked my nephew of me. How to explain? The hospital sent me home three months ago with boxes of pain killers, oxygen, a medical bed, and home care. Palliative care: aim for quality of life, not return to normal. And yet here I am, not on oxygen, not taking the pain killers, and seeing medical staff only when it’s time for my biweekly chemotherapy.

• I’m clearly not dying yet. And still, slowly losing weight and muscle. A simple walk leaves me tired and needing to sit. I wake up, make an early morning cup of chicory/coffee, drink it, then lie down again, hit by the simple effort of standing up.

• We did a CAT scan a few weeks ago. Inconclusive. Things don’t seem worse. Yet the numerous little blobs of cancer are still there in my lungs, patient. Another scan in a month, and we’ll have a better idea.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ New Malware for Windows targets firefox users.

• Below is an image of the new malware attempting to get Windows users of Firefox to install a drive-by malware labeled by Windows Defender as Trojan:Kovtar.

=> ↺ Mozilla releases Servo nightly build of web rending engine for Linux and Mac

SaaS/Back End

=> ↺ Use Apache Spark? This tool can help you tap machine learning

=> ↺ Sparkling Water 2.0 enables machine learning with Apache Spark

=> ↺ H2O.ai uncorks Sparkling Water 2.0

=> ↺ An eight minute upgrade, motivating documentation contributions, and more OpenStack news

CMS

=> ↺ Arastta: Community Driven & Open Source eCommerce

• Arastta eCommerce is an open source project which is driven by its community. For a relatively new startup project Arastta has a great community sharing ideas, translating into different world languages, reporting issues and bugs, contributing the source code and helping to plan the future of the project.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ BMW teams with Intel and Mobileye for open-source autonomous tech

=> ↺ Setup .NET Core on Ubuntu

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ NITDA trains 3,700 corps members on open source software development

• National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has begun training for 3,700 corps members on open source software development programme aimed at developing and empowering fresh graduate with Information Technology skills.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ Peerplays creates open-source profit sharing module

• Blockchain-based online gaming and wagering platform Peerplays, has created an open-source fee sharing module that will enable direct profit distribution to token holders by any Graphene-based blockchain platform.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Wevolver Open Source 3D Printable Robots And More (video)

• …if you are interested in creating your own 3D printed robots using a little Arduino programming, open source coding or making in general. You might be interested in some new 3D printed open source robot projects which have been published to the Revolver website for all skill levels.

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ Neuroscientists say multitasking literally drains the energy reserves of your brain

• Does your morning routine consist of checking emails, browsing Facebook, downing coffee, heading to the train while Googling one last idea, checking notifications, more coffee, and going through your work email? The very myriad of activities crammed into your morning, and the constant switching between them, is likely making you very tired.

Security

=> ↺ Apache, Debian crews patch library with DoS vuln

• A file upload library used in Apache Tomcat and various Linux distributions needs patching to plug a denial-of-service vulnerability.

• Discovered by the TERASOLUNA Framework Development Team, the bug in libcommons-fileupload-java, which sits under Apache Commons FileUpload, has the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures designation CVE-2016-3092.

• Apache explains the bug here: “It occurred when the length of the multipart boundary was just below the size of the buffer (4096 bytes) used to read the uploaded file. This caused the file upload process to take several orders of magnitude longer than if the boundary length was the typical tens of bytes.”

=> ↺ More than 100 DDoS botnets built from Linux malware for embedded devices

• Default and hard-coded credentials have led to the compromise of thousands of Internet-of-Things devices

=> ↺ Lizard Squad hacked thousands of cameras to attack websites

=> ↺ The week in security: Ransomware mutating, IoT devices exploited for botnets

=> ↺ IoT Devices Are Being Hacked By Lizard Squad To Execute DDoS Attacks

=> ↺ Lizard Squad uses CCTVs to launch DDoS attacks against websites

=> ↺ Lizard Squad DDoS Attacks Escalate: From Video Game Networks To Online Banks, Government Websites

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Dhaka Isil terrorists were drawn from well-educated Bangladeshi elite

• Terrorists who murdered 22 people in Dhaka this weekend were wealthy, well-educated young Bangladeshis whom police had previously tried to arrest, it emerged on Sunday.

=> ↺ Bangladesh police release names of restaurant attackers

• Security officials searched on Sunday for evidence and the possible masterminds of the weekend hostage-taking in an upscale restaurant in Bangladesh’s capital. The government has denied a claim by ISIS that it carried out the attack that left 28 dead, including six attackers two police officers and 20 of the hostages.

=> ↺ No second chances: Gruesome photos show five ‘meth dealers’ gunned down by police during a shootout in the Philippines’ increasingly violent war on drugs

• President Rodrigo Duterte – dubbed ‘Duterte Harry’ – has vowed to wipe out drug trafficking in the Philippines and the number of dealers killed since he came to power has risen 200 per cent.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Vast Peat Fires Threaten Health and Boost Global Warming

• As forest fires devastated Fort McMurray, Alberta, last month, a different sort of fire may have started beneath the ground. Peat, a carbon-rich soil created from partially decomposed, waterlogged vegetation accumulated over several millennia and the stuff that fueled Indonesia’s megafires last fall, also appears in the boreal forests that span Canada, Alaska and Siberia. With the intense heat from the Fort McMurray fires, “there’s a good chance the soil in the area could have been ignited,” says Adam Watts, a fire ecologist at Desert Research Institute in Nevada.

Finance

=> ↺ Britain faces new risks in Europe interconnector plans

• British plans for more power links with Europe to avert a looming electricity shortfall could be hindered if the country no longer has a say in European Union regulation of networks and power trading.

• Britain faces an energy supply crunch by the early 2020s as coal power stations close and its oil and gas production declines.

• To help it plans new interconnectors with France, Denmark, Belgium and Norway to provide up to 14 gigawatts of additional capacity.

=> ↺ Exclusive: New National Newspaper Launched For British People “Dismayed By Brexit”

• A new national newspaper is being launched in Britain, which will aim to “give voice to those dismayed by Brexit”.

• The New European will be published by Archant on 8 July, and will cost £2. The publisher describes it as a “pop-up” paper, which took just nine days to get into newsagents after being conceived. It will initially run for just four issues, with any further print runs to be decided by reader interest.

• In a statement Archant said: “Every issue will be a collector’s item. After the Issue 4, every week’s sale will be a referendum on the next.”

=> ↺ Parliament, Article 50, and the Leave Paradox

• Those who campaigned Leave so as to uphold Parliamentary Sovereignty are now unhappy at prospect of Parliament being sovereign about whether to Leave.

=> ↺ Britain has replaced America as the political laughingstock of the world

• It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment in the last eight days at which Britain’s politics became officially more absurd than America’s. Last week’s Brexit vote, shocking as it was, was just the starting gun. Since then both the Labour and the Conservative party leaderships have collapsed. The “Leave” campaign has swiftly backtracked (paywall) on its promises. Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, after enduring a stunning no-confidence vote, appeared to compare Israel with the Islamic State. The Conservatives’ Boris Johnson, the cheerleader of Leave and presumed next prime minister, bowed out after being stabbed in the back by his own sidekick, Michael Gove. And a leaked letter from Gove’s wife exposed the Tory party’s leading figures as little more than the puppets of media barons.

=> ↺ Secret bankers be warned: “Panama Papers” were the first shots of a “Helvetian War.”

• Let’s step back and deal with this the way that I am paid to do, with scenario and metaphor. Almost a decade before I wrote The Transparent Society, my novel EARTH (1989) foresaw a traumatic event occurring around the year 2025. The “Helvetian War” would start to unfold when a dozen newly-democratic but poor nations grow tired of asking politely for the return of trillions of dollars that were looted from them by former, kleptocratic leaders. The war scenario may be fictional, but the cassus belli is all-too real.

• “Global Financial Integrity recently found that developing economies lost $7.8 trillion in cash from 2004 to 2013 because of maneuvers like those allegedly perfected by Mossack. Illicit outflows are increasing at a rate of 6.5% a year, twice the rate of global GDP growth,” says Time Magazine journalist Rana Foroohar, adding that this drain might prove a contributing factor to the slowing economies of many developing countries, which could set off a global recession.

=> ↺ WATCH: Bill Maher rubs California’s success in the face of Republicans

• “Real Time” host Bill Maher, during his “New Rules” segment Friday, peacocked California’s thriving economy after the state raised taxes on its wealthiest citizens.

• “If Republicans are going to keep calling states ‘laboratories of democracy,’ they have to start looking at the results from the lab,” Maher said, noting that after California raised taxes on the wealthy, the state now sits sixth on the list of world’s largest economies. “Whereas states like Kansas and Louisiana that went back to the old trickle-down theory of ‘cut taxes on the rich and they’ll always do the right thing,’ are financial catastrophes.”

• Maher explained that, after former-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger left office, California elected Democrats up and down the ballot, “so we can really study what happens when liberal policies are tried unimpeded. And the only thing I have to say to Republicans about that is: scoreboard, bitches.”

=> ↺ Brexit: UKIP leader Nigel Farage resigns

• After running divisive campaign to leave the EU, Farage quits, while Britain faces economic and political challenges.

=> ↺ Credit Suisse CEO blames Brexit on low UK education spending

• Britain is paying the price for a high level of inequality and a chronic lack of investment in education which have prompted a disillusioned population to vote to leave the European Union, Credit Suisse Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam said on Sunday.

• Britain voted in a referendum on June 23 to quit the EU, a decision that has roiled financial markets and rattled businesses.

=> ↺ The three steps that mean Brexit may never happen

• The established order in any society can sometimes be wrong-footed, but they are usually not wrong-footed for long. Genuine revolutionaries know this, and they act quickly to take full advantage of any temporary advantage. Soon, however, the established order will regroup and refocus, with renewed determination.

• The generally pro-EU political class in the United Kingdom has certainly had a fright. They were not expecting to lose the EU referendum. British political leaders were so confident of victory they even casually said that the people’s decision would be implemented “straight away”. And now there is a crisis, but only for a while.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Trump Supporters Flooded Me With Anti-Semitic Taunts & Death Threats Yesterday

• I wasn’t ignorant. I knew the atrocities of the past, knew Jews were still targets of many, but I never experienced it. I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta. There were three to five Jewish kids in all of my public school classes, so not only did I never experience Anti-Semitism, but I also never experienced the unsettling feeling of being “the other.”

=> ↺ Brexit poll: ‘most Brits want General Election to be called this year’

• A majority of Britons want a General Election this year, according to an exclusive new poll.

• It also suggested if there was a second referendum now Remain would win comfortably.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Censors: Getting irrelevant?

• The fundamental clash lies in the argument whether censorship itself should make way for true certification.

=> ↺ Kalevi Kull: Censorship & Royal Society Evo Event

• Biosemiotics pioneer Kalevi Kull has sent the following letter to me in response to one of the organizers of the upcoming Royal Society public meeting on paradigm shift attempting to censor my coverage of the event.

=> ↺ All news stories must be verified, China’s internet censor decrees as it tightens grip on online media

• China’s powerful internet censorship body has further tightened its grip on online news reports by warning all news or social network websites against publishing news without proper verification, state media reports.

• China’s powerful internet tsar steps aside as another of Xi Jinping’s close allies to take over

• The instruction, issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China, came only a few days after Xu Lin, formerly the deputy head of the organisation, replaced his boss, Lu Wei, as the top gatekeeper of Chinese internet affairs.

=> ↺ China Bans Online Media From Publishing Unverified Reports

=> ↺ China says to crackdown on fake news from social media

=> ↺ China To Crack Down On Fake News From Social Media Amid Rumor-Mongering

=> ↺ China bans online media from publishing unverified content

=> ↺ China cyberspace regulator bans fake news

=> ↺ China to restrict digital media from publishing news found on social platforms

=> ↺ ‘Hearsay is forbidden:’ China aims to crackdown on fake news

=> ↺ China Media Regulators Limit Online News

=> ↺ China Says to Crackdown on Fake News From Social Media

=> ↺ China bans using social media content as “news”

=> ↺ China cracks down on news provided by social media

=> ↺ World NewsChina clamps down on online ‘false news’

=> ↺ Chinese authorities crack down on news websites sourcing stories from social media

=> ↺ China Crack Down on News Websites; Bans Them From Publishing Unverified Reports

=> ↺ China bans online media from publishing unverified content

=> ↺ China’s cyberspace regulator cracks down on false news on social media

=> ↺ Chinese internet censor bans unverified news

=> ↺ China bans online media from publishing ‘unverified’ contents

=> ↺ China bans the use of social media as a news source

=> ↺ China restricts online news sites from sourcing stories on social media

=> ↺ China says it will crack down on fake news from social media

=> ↺ China cracks down on ‘faking news’ sourced from social media

=> ↺ Lu Wei to Give Up Post as China’s Internet Czar, Deputy as Likely Successor

=> ↺ Australian Censors Overreach when classfiying video games

=> ↺ On Censorship, Press Freedom, and the SABC

• To fire journalists for covering a protest because there’s a rule that says they can’t cover protests is ridiculous. To fire people for complaining about these policies is also ridiculous. I’m really angry at the SABC and at the same time have so much respect for the journalists working there who are speaking out against these practices.

=> ↺ Europol’s online censorship unit is haphazard and unaccountable says NGO

• Europol’s Internet Referral Unit (IRU) celebrated its first birthday at the weekend, but civil liberties organisations are worried that it goes too far in its efforts to keep the Web free from extremist propaganda.

• The IRU has been up and running since July 2015 as part of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) in the Hague. The unit is charged with monitoring the Internet for extremist propaganda and referring “relevant online content towards concerned Internet service providers” in particular social media. Much was made of how the IRU could “contact social network service provider Facebook directly to ask it to delete a Web page run by ISIS or request details of other pages that might be run by the same user.”

=> ↺ Facebook and Israel clash over censorship issues

=> ↺ Israel calls Facebook a ‘monster’ for not helping to curb violence

=> ↺ Facebook defends content removal policies after Israel calls it ‘a monster’

=> ↺ Facebook hits back at Israeli complaints about sabotaging police work

=> ↺ Israel angered by Facebook hatred rules

=> ↺ Israeli daily reports fake Zuckerberg quote as fact

=> ↺ Zuckerberg’s ‘reply’ to minister: a hoax

=> ↺ Israeli Minister Calls Facebook a “Monster”

=> ↺ Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has terror victim’s ‘blood on his hands’, Israeli minister says

=> ↺ Facebook defends itself against Israel’s terror support claims

=> ↺ Facebook rejects Israeli disapproval of a lack of cooperation in censoring abusive content

=> ↺ Israeli minister slams “monster” Facebook for failure to remove violence-inciting content

=> ↺ Israeli Minister Says Facebook a ‘Monster’, Hindering Security

=> ↺ Facebook Upholds Position on Content Standards After Israeli Condemnation

=> ↺ Facebook responds to Israeli censure on alleged incitement

=> ↺ Facebook defends position on content standards after Israeli censure

=> ↺ Facebook refutes Israeli minister’s allegations; reiterates hate speech intolerance

=> ↺ Israeli ministers vow to combat incitement to terrorism on Facebook

=> ↺ Facebook ‘Sabotages Work Of Israeli Police’

=> ↺ People Are Being Killed, and an Israeli Minister Blames Facebook

=> ↺ Israeli Minister: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Has ‘Blood on His Hands’ Over Teenager’s Murder

=> ↺ Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan accuses Mark Zuckerberg of having ‘blood on his hands’ over online hate

=> ↺ Facebook is a ‘monster’ that obstructs terror investigations, says Israel’s Interior Minister

=> ↺ Israeli government: Facebook is a ‘monster’ that’s aiding terrorists

=> ↺ Israel: Facebook Has Turned Into A Monster

=> ↺ Facebook dismisses Israeli government ‘incitement’ claims

=> ↺ Analysis: What does the future of terrorists on Twitter, Facebook look like?

=> ↺ Israel accuses Facebook of complicity in West Bank violence

=> ↺ Facebook defends itself against Israeli accusations of incitement

=> ↺ Facebook rejects Israeli minister’s allegations

=> ↺ Former SABC bosses join call to end censorship at the SABC

=> ↺ Full letter from former SABC heavyweights on censorship

=> ↺ Court battle looming over SABC censorship

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ I Spy: GCHQ reaches out to Mumsnet generation in new recruitment drive

=> ↺ Last chance to have your say on new EU spam and cookie law

• There are just 24 hours left to respond to a public consultation on the EU’s so-called Cookie Law. The European Commission plans an overhaul of the more correctly named ePrivacy Directive before the end of the year to bring it into line with the new General Data Protection Regulation.

• The use of cookies in the UK is governed by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), based on the ePrivacy Directive, which require organisations to provide clear information about how cookies are used on their website and allow people to opt in or opt out from having non-essential cookies placed on their device.

=> ↺ What media companies don’t want you to know about ad blockers

• New York Times CEO Mark Thompson caused a minor stir a couple weeks ago when he gave a speech at an advertising conference declaring that “No one who refuses to contribute to the creation of high quality journalism has the right to consume it.” He went on to say that while the Times is “not there yet,” the company may soon prevent users with ad blockers from accessing its site.

• But newspaper executives like Thompson often focus exclusively on the drawbacks of ad blockers, leaving a big part of the story untold. Thompson did not say one word in his keynote address about the significant security benefits of ad blockers, which is ironic, because his paper was one of several news organizations that served its users ransomware—a particularly vicious form of malware that encrypts the contents of your computer and forces you to pay the perpetrators a ransom in bitcoin to unlock it—through its ad networks just a few months ago. Several major news sites—including the Times, the BBC, and AOL—had their ad networks hijacked by criminal hackers who attempted to install ransomware on readers’ computers.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ NYT’s James Risen & Abby Martin on Fighting Censorship, Endless War

• Few journalists know the cruelty of government censorship as well as James Risen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, targeted for several major stories implicating criminality by the US war machine and its national security state.

• Having just ended a seven-year legal battle, where he bravely faced jail time to protect his inside sources, Risen joins Abby Martin on The Empire Files to talk about his case and the stories he wrote that were such a threat.

=> ↺ Kenyan police are routinely executing citizens and the public is finally saying stop

• The bodies of three Kenyan men— a human rights lawyer, his client, and their driver— were found in a river northeast of Nairobi last week, beaten, bound, and mutilated. Witnesses said one of the men had his eyes gouged out and another had an ear cut off.

• The lawyer who was killed, Willie Kimani, worked with the US-based International Justice Mission. He and his client, Josephat Mwendwa, and driver Joseph Muiruriwho had been missing for over a week after attending a June 23 court hearing in Machakos County, near where their bodies were found. Mwendwa had filed a complaint against the police for shooting him without cause in April.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Why Wi-Fi Stinks—and How to Fix It

• Ask consumers in the developed world about their household Wi-Fi connection and they’ll likely tell you that lately it seems to be getting worse, not better. Some might even say, “It stinks!” Even the residents of the White House have Wi-Fi problems. In an interview with the BBC just before Super Bowl 50, First Lady Michelle Obama complained, “It can be a little sketchy. The girls are just irritated by it.”

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ The Beijing IP court gave foreign IP plaintiffs a perfect 65-0 win rate in 2015, reports one of its judges

• In terms of sheer numbers, patents don’t play the biggest role; according to the 2015 numbers cited by the judge, almost 75% of the first-instance cases reviewed by the court dealt with trademarks, while a similar majority of second-instance cases were about copyright. Moreover, the vast majority of cases by number (90%) are administrative matters, including appeals from the Chinese Trademark Office’s Trademark Review and Adjucation Board (TRAB) and the State IP Office’s Patent Re-examination Board (PRB). But it was a patent-heavy cross-section of disputes that Judge Gang singled out with considerable enthusiasm:

=> ↺ New Book: Ways To Address CBD, Nagoya Protocol Hurdles For Public Research

• The book proposes a “novel contractual framework for ‘Facilitating Transnational Exchanges of Genetic Resources within a Redesigned Microbial Research Infrastructure,’” and in particular the use of a standardized material transfer agreement “embodying a ‘take and pay rule’ that would enable unfettered public research uses of microbial materials having no known or likely commercial applications at the time of deposit in participating culture collections.”

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