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● 08.05.16

● Links 5/8/2016: ROSA Fresh R8, GNU C Library 2.24

Posted in News Roundup at 7:45 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ The best Chromebook you can buy

• If you’re looking for a cheap computer, the first thing you should do is check out just how much you can get with a Chromebook.

• Chromebooks are increasingly looking like the perfect laptops for a whole lot of people. Sure, they don’t have the wide desktop app ecosystem that Mac and Windows laptops have. But ask yourself how many of those apps you actually use each day, and of those, how many you actually need. Could you trade Outlook for outlook.com? Would you be fine in Google Docs instead of Office? (And if not, would your answer change if it meant saving several hundred dollars?)

• Most of our time is spent online, and Chromebooks stick to the basics, offering just enough power to do that. The best of them should let you browse the web without problem and manage to impress you with how nice they are for the price.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ libinput and disable-while-typing

• A common issue with users typing on a laptop is that the user’s palms will inadvertently get in contact with the touchpad at some point, causing the cursor to move and/or click. In the best case it’s annoying, in the worst case you’re now typing your password into the newly focused twitter application. While this provides some general entertainment and thus makes the world a better place for a short while, here at the libinput HQ [1] we strive to keep life as boring as possible and avoid those situations.

=> ↺ AMD’s Marek Prepares Another OpenGL 4.4 Extension For RadeonSI Gallium3D

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Linux 4.7 – Btrfs vs. EXT4 vs. F2FS vs. XFS vs. NTFS Benchmarks

• Continuing on from yesterday’s Linux 4.4 To 4.7 – EXT4 vs. F2FS vs. Btrfs Benchmarks comparison, here is a wider look at mainline file-systems on the Linux 4.7. File-systems tested on the NVMe SSD included Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, XFS, and NTFS.

• Each of the five file-systems were tested on the same NVM Express SSD from the Linux 4.7.0 mainline kernel and using the stock mount options. The NTFS support was powered by FUSE. For a future article will be a look at non-mainlined file-systems, including ZFS On Linux.

Applications

=> ↺ Simple Senet needs a new maintainer

• Years ago, I discovered the board game Senet, possibly the oldest board game we know of, dating back to ancient Egypt. It’s a simple game, something like the modern board game Sorry if you combined it with another board game, Chutes and Ladders.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Microsoft Launches Skype 1.4 for Linux with Support for Bots

=> ↺ Microsoft restructured it for mass surveillance

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Tinkering with OpenLayers and JS – Cajal – a hacked up neuroscience research map

=> ↺ Using the compiler to help you debug segfaults

=> ↺ How To Enable Hardware Acceleration In VLC And Save Battery | Windows, Linux, OS X

Games

=> ↺ HTC, Valve Open Source Vive VR’s Tracking System For Third-Party Hardware: Future Of VR Looks Bright

=> ↺ Valve opens up the HTC Vive’s tracking system to third-party developers

=> ↺ Valve is open-sourcing HTC Vive’s room-scale tracking tech

=> ↺ Valve Now Offering VR Tech for Free to Third Parties

=> ↺ Valve Swings The Doors For Lighthouse Tracked Peripherals Wide Open, Giving The Tech Away

=> ↺ Valve will grant royalty-free licenses to anyone making SteamVR peripherals

=> ↺ Valve opens up HTC Vive’s tracking tech for the good of VR

=> ↺ Valve is opening up its Vive VR trackers to custom hardware

=> ↺ HTC Vive’s tracking tech is now open to all – here’s what it means for you

=> ↺ HTC Wants Outside Peripherals And Accessories For Vive

=> ↺ Valve now licensing SteamVR tracking to third-party hardware companies

=> ↺ Valve is offering free VR tech to third party hardware companies

=> ↺ Valve follows through on plan to make SteamVR tracking tech freely available

=> ↺ Valve Opens Vive’s Tracking Tech to Third-parties for Free, Details Dev Kit for Licensees

=> ↺ Steam VR Tracking Now Available for All 3rd Party Hardware Makers

=> ↺ Steam VR tracking technology now available to third parties

=> ↺ Steam VR tracking for third parties available license free

=> ↺ Valve Begins Process To License Tracking Technology Royalty Free

=> ↺ Valve make SteamVR tracking technology available for developers, without licensing fees

=> ↺ HTC Announces Vive™ Development And Training For Accessories And Peripherals

=> ↺ Valve announces free SteamVR Tracking for 3rd Party hardware makers starting today

=> ↺ Valve is opening up SteamVR tracking to third-parties with royalty-free licensing

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ I’m Going to GUADEC

=> ↺ Mapbox steps in to help GNOME’s Maps application

• On July 11th, GNOME’s Maps application stopped working. Like all mapping applications, it relies on an online service to provide data. The service it had been using – MapQuest – discontinued free access to their data. When the service went dead, there were no longer any maps in Maps.

• Thankfully, it didn’t take long for a replacement to be found. Mapbox, a popular mapping service (they provide data for Pinterest, Github and Foursquare, among others) stepped up and has generously offered to provide mapping data. Better than that, Maps now has an agreement in place with its data provider, putting it on a much more solid footing. The new arrangement with Mapbox might also allow additional features in the future, such as downloading maps data for offline use.

Distributions

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ ROSA Fresh R8 is out!

• Dear friends, we are happy to present our new ROSA Fresh R8 release.

Red Hat Family

Finance

=> ↺ Here Are Research Reports Worth Watching: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT), Estee Lauder Companies Inc (NYSE:EL)

Fedora

=> ↺ Fedora: Fixing fonts

• Someone on twitter commented that I should write an article about how to fix fonts on Fedora. Sadly this is not something I am able to do. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem, just that I don’t have the font specialist eye where they can look at a screen and go “OMG THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG HERE!!!!” in the way that someone who is slightly flat or sharp drives me bonkers. [I on the other hand can happily read a webpage in Comic Sans or Papyrus and wonder why everyone looking over my shouldr is cringing and hissing as I do so.]

=> ↺ Fedora Flock – 2016 – Day 3

=> ↺ PHP version 5.6.25RC1 and 7.0.10RC1

=> ↺ PHPUnit 5.5

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Snapd 2.11 Released With New Commands, Interfaces

• A shiny new version of snapd, the service that powers Canonical’s ‘Snap’ packaging format, is now available.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS released

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Mint KDE Turns Green, ROSA R8 Out, Ubuntu 14.04.5

• Russian ROSA Company recently announced the release of ROSA Fresh R8 with your choice of four desktops. The final point release for Ubuntu 14.04 was announced and Clement Lefebvre said upcoming Mint 18 KDE will no longer sport its distinctive blue icon in favor of the green. In other Mint news, ArsTechnica’s Scott Gilbertson said Linux doesn’t get any better than Mint 18. Jamie Watson reviewed the difference between point and rolling Linux releases and two users share their personal Linux stories.

=> ↺ Monthly News – August 2016

• In July, we’ve received $12,753 thanks to the generous donations of 530 people. I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping us fund Linux Mint. During the attacks we were able to purchase additional servers and pay for services (some of which are now free, credits to Sucuri for sponsoring us) without ever worrying about how much things cost. We’re also able to have a budget which allows us to pay our development team. Although Mint developers are passionate and benevolent people, we send them money so that they can purchase fancy equipment or so they can be more comfortable and have more spare time (which they usually spend on improving Linux Mint anyway). They’ve no idea how much they’ll get, when and why, but they’re one of the core reasons Linux Mint gets better, so the same way you donate to Linux Mint, we love donating to them. On occasions and when something benefits the distribution in a tangible way, we’re also able to donate upstream. In preparation for Linux Mint 18, we sent money to various artists and some upstream developers. In brief, we’re extremely comfortable and free in the way we develop Linux Mint. Whenever we need something, we’re able to buy it. Whenever money can improve a particular aspect of the distribution we’re able to spend it. This frees our hands, it empowers us greatly and it makes our job much easier. I usually just say thank you and emphasize the fact that your help does help us a lot. Behind the curtain there are a lot of people involved at various degrees and doing very different things. Since we started in 2006 we never had to worry about money. We were able to grow our quality and success thanks to your enjoyment and support and we never had to feel small or revise our ambitions. You can see the effects this had on development and the decisions to maintain a new desktop environment, or lately in the decision to switch to XApps. I’m very grateful for this. Many thanks to you.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ 15W Skylake SBCs include Mini-ITX, Nano-ITX, and 3.5-inch

=> ↺ DIY Linux Computer and 6LoWPAN Gateway

• We toss together our own PCB designs, throwing in a microcontroller here or there. Anything more demanding than that, and we reach for a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone (or an old Linksys router). Why don’t we just whip together a PCB for a small Linux computer? Because we don’t know how…but [Jonas] apparently does. And when we asked him why he did it, he replied “because I can!”

Phones

Android

=> ↺ Android Now Has 97% Of India’s Smartphone Market

• Strategy Analytics have released the latest Indian smartphone sales figures and there’s no surprise in that Android continues to dominate the market. This time last year the Android platform was used in 90% of Indian smartphones and twelve months later, this figure has increased to 97%. There are a number of reasons why Android is the platform of choice with Indian smartphone consumers and some of these are associated with the competition: Apple’s market share has halved from 4% last year to 2% this year and the reason for this is because iOS devices are too expensive. In the words of Woody Oh, Strategy Analytics Director, “Apple iOS will need to reduce iPhone pricing to cheaper levels… if it wants to regrow significantly in the future.” Apple’s latest iPhone, the iPhone SE, is a 4.0-inch device that does cost less than previous models, but it still in the upper / mid-range pricing for Android devices.

=> ↺ Android dominates in India with 97% market share

• The latest numbers from Strategy Analytics show Android controlling 97% of the smartphone market share in India. 30.7 million phones were shipped in Q2 2016, of which Android phones accounted for 29.8 million units.

=> ↺ Best budget Android smartphones you can buy [August 2016]

• There are new smartphones hitting the market constantly, but which is the best to pick up when you’re trying to save a buck or two? We’ve seen some great launches this summer and we’re only expecting more over the coming months, but for now, let’s go over the best budget Android smartphones you can go pick up today…

=> ↺ Chrome for Android 52 promises speedier video load times and less battery drain

=> ↺ LG V20 with Android 7.0 Nougat to launch on September 6

=> ↺ LG unveils the first Android Nougat phone on September 6th

=> ↺ Why you should enable Data Saver in Chrome for Android right now

=> ↺ Alto’s Adventure comes to Android TV, but Noodlecake double-dips with a paid Play Store listing

=> ↺ Android Nougat’s ‘flowered’ home button animation will be tied to Google Assistant, and it looks awesome

=> ↺ Android Wear gets new update, includes July security patch

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Creating affordable solutions with open source tools

• Open source is often the heart of many civic technology solutions because using open source leverages the minds of many. Small web solution providers, in particular, often turn to open source as a way to deliver services without having to reinvent the wheel. I recently found out about Digital Deployment, a civic web solution provider in Sacramento, that leverages open source, and so I asked them to share their story with me. I chatted on the phone with Chief Operating Officer Sloane Dell’Orto and Lead Software Engineer Dennis Stevense.

=> ↺ Cogito, Ergo Sumana

• Advice on Starting And Running A New Open Source Project: Recently, a couple of programmers asked me for advice on starting and running a new open source project. So, here are some thoughts, assuming you’re already a programmer, you haven’t led a team before, and you know your new software project is going to be open source.

• I figure there are a few different kinds of best practices in starting and running open source projects.

=> ↺ FCC Settlement Requires TP-Link to Support 3rd-Party Firmware

• In a win for the open source community, router maker TP-Link will be required to allow consumers to install third-party firmware on their wireless routers, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Monday. The announcement comes on the heels of a settlement requiring TP-Link to pay a $200,000 fine for failing to properly limit their devices’ transmission power on the 2.4GHz band to within regulatory requirements. On its face, new rules about open source firmware don’t seem to have much to do with TP-Link’s compliance problems. But the FCC’s new rule helps fix an unintended consequence of a policy the agency made last year, which had led to open source developers being locked out of wireless routers entirely.

Events

=> ↺ Why You Should Speak At & Attend LinuxConf Australia

• Monday 1 February 2016 was the longest day of my life, but I don’t mean that in the canonical, figurative, and usually negative sense of that phrase. I mean it literally and in a positive way. I woke up that morning Amsterdam in the Netherlands — having the previous night taken a evening train from Brussels, Belgium with my friend and colleague Tom Marble. Tom and I had just spent the weekend at FOSDEM 2016, where he and I co-organize the Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom (with our mutual friends and colleagues, Richard Fontana and Karen M. Sandler).

• Tom and I headed over to AMS airport around 07:00 local time, found some breakfast and boarded our flights. Tom was homeward bound, but I was about to do the crazy thing that he’d done in the reverse a few years before: I was speaking at FOSDEM and LinuxConf Australia, back-to-back. In fact, because the airline fares were substantially cheaper this way, I didn’t book a “round the world” flight, but instead two back-to-back round-trip tickets. I boarded the plane at AMS at 09:30 that morning (local time), and landed in my (new-ish) hometown of Portland, OR as afternoon there began. I went home, spent the afternoon with my wife, sister-in-law, and dogs, washed my laundry, and repacked my bag. My flight to LAX departed at 19:36 local time, a little after US/Pacific sunset.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Mozilla Has Axed Firefox Hello, Will Remove It From Installs Next Month

• Firefox Hello becomes Firefox Goodbye, as Mozilla announce they’ve discontinued the WebRTC feature and plan to remove it from the browser starting next month.

SaaS/Back End

=> ↺ Airbnb’s Brenden Matthews on Hadoop

• Apache Hadoop is open source software for handling large data sets using distributed computing. This engaging video by Airbnb engineer Brenden Matthews explains Hadoop in historical context. I found it useful for familiarizing myself with general Hadoop terminology and concepts.

=> ↺ Apache-EMC containers support network block storage

• The EMC container integration for Docker is a joint project of Apache Foundation and EMC code, part of EMC Emerging Technologies Division. It builds on previous EMC container initiatives. The Docker Volume Driver Isolator module exposes native Docker functionality through a command line interface. It is part of the Apache Mesos distribution released in July.

=> ↺ Is there money in open source big data? Hortonworks shares drop after sales miss

• Hortonworks is facing a period of turmoil after it was revealed that president Herb Cunitz would be leaving and shares plummeted on the back of weak financial results.

=> ↺ Shares of Hortonworks crashed over 25% after a huge miss on earnings and an exec departure

=> ↺ Hortonworks Q2 misses, shares fall after hours

=> ↺ Hortonworks Shares Plunge on Weak Results

=> ↺ Hortonworks Reports Financial Results for Second Quarter 2016

=> ↺ Big Data leader Hortonworks’ shares plunge 25 percent on Q2 shortfall

=> ↺ Big Data leader Hortonworks’ shares plunge 25 percent on Q2 sales miss

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ 10 reasons you should use LibreOffice and not Microsoft Word

• The Document Foundation just released version 5.2 of its fully open source office suite LibreOffice. This release brings many new features and UI improvements. When I got the press release, I started updating LibreOffice on my MacBook. But here’s the thing: I’m also a user of Microsoft Word.

• That made me pause and consider why I use LibreOffice when I am forking over $99 a year to Microsoft. The flash of introspection surprised me. I’m an unabashed open source and Linux fan, but I am kind of agnostic when it comes to the tools I use. I use what works for me. So I reached out to my followers on Google+ and Facebook to learn about their reasons for using LibreOffice.

• Here are some of the many reasons why people, myself included, love LibreOffice.

=> ↺ Finding Alternatives to Microsoft Excel

• For example, if you are looking for software to install on your Windows-, OS X- or Linux-based computer so you can work without an internet connection, consider free, open-source suites like LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice. Along with word-processing and presentation applications, both suites include a spreadsheet program called Calc that uses the .ods format — but can open and save files in Microsoft Excel’s native format.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Friday Free Software Directory IRC meetup: August 5th

=> ↺ The GNU C Library version 2.24 is now available

=> ↺ GNU C Library 2.24 Released

• The glibc 2.24 release drops several deprecated functions/types/options, a new NSS action (MERGE) to facilitate large distributed system administrator, and adding nextupl/nextup/nextdownl/nextdown to libm. The GNU C Library 2.24 release also has a number of security changes and bug fixes.

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ Embracing Open Source Software: Advantages and Risks

• Many business and government ­organizations rely on open source software (OSS). One of the most common and widely known ­examples is the Linux operating system. While the use of OSS can provide numerous advantages such as inexpensive and particularly robust software that has been debugged and ­optimized by ­numerous ­programmers, there are also attendant risks. This article explores OSS and its use generally in commercial settings. An ­overview of OSS is provided along with a discussion of its ­popularity with programmers and several associated risks. Additionally, a brief description of ­various OSS licenses is provided. A ­follow-up ­article will provide a strategy for developing a policy to ­manage OSS use.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ European countries awarded for their “star” commitments

• IRM attributes “starred” status to selected commitments included in countries’ National Action Plans (NAP). These commitments “represent exemplary reforms that have potentially transformative impact on citizens in the country of implementation”, OGP said.

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ The largest Wikipedia gathering in South Asia kicks off

• Wiki Conference India 2016 (WCI), the largest gathering of contributors to Wikipedia and its sister projects in South Asia, will be held during August 5-7 this year in Chandigarh, India.

• The first iteration of this event was five years ago in 2011. The event is focused around South Asian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects. Hundreds of participants, including over 100 scholarship holders from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, will participate in this three-day event. A team of volunteers representing several Wikimedia communities across the country and three Wikimedia affiliates—Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians and Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge program—are working together to make this event a success.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ EOMA68: > $60k pledged on crowdsupply.com

• crowdsupply.com has a campaign to fund production of EOMA68 computer cards (and associated peripherals) which recently passed the $60,000 mark.

• If you were at DebConf13 in Switzerland, you may have seen me with some early prototypes that I had been lent to show people.

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ CP/M Creator Gary Kildall’s Memoirs Released as Free Download

• The year before his death in 1994, Gary Kildall—inventor of the early microcomputer operating system CP/M—wrote a draft of a memoir, “Computer Connections: People, Places, and Events in the Evolution of the Personal Computer Industry.” He distributed copies to family and friends, but died before realizing his plans to release it as a book.

• This week, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, with the permission of Kildall’s children, released the first portion of that memoir. You can download it here.

• Wrote Scott and Kristin Kildall in an introductory letter: “In this excerpt, you will read how Gary and Dorothy started from modest means as a young married couple, paved a new path for start-up culture, and embraced their idea of success to become leaders in the industry. Our father embodied a definition of success that we can all learn from: one that puts inventions, ideas, and a love of life before profits as the paramount goal.”

=> ↺ E-mails show how UK physicists were dumped over Brexit

• UK researchers are suffering because of the country’s vote to leave the European Union — and a British physicist has now gone public with one such tale of woe.

• Paul Crowther, who heads the physics and astronomy department at the University of Sheffield, has shared e-mails from late July that explain why researchers in his department were suddenly dropped from an EU collaboration. The European coordinator for the consortium felt that Brexit put UK-based researchers in a “very awkward position” and that their participation would “compromise the project”.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Why the GMO Labeling Bill Obama Just Signed Into Law Is a Sham—and a National Embarrassment

• It is known as the DARK Act—Denying Americans the Right to Know. It was signed by President Obama last Friday in the afterglow of the Democratic National Convention, without fanfare or major media coverage. The bill’s moniker is apt. With a few strokes of his pen Obama scratched out the laws of Vermont, Connecticut and Maine that required the labeling of genetically engineered foods.

• He also nullified the GE seed labeling laws in Vermont and Virginia that allowed farmers to choose what seeds they wanted to buy and plant. And for good measure he preempted Alaska’s law requiring the labeling of any GE fish or fish product, passed to protect the state’s vital fisheries from contamination by recently approved genetically engineered salmon.

=> ↺ Rave On: Music, Ecstasy and the Real Tragedy of Corporate Drugs

• Drug use doesn’t begin at raves, it begins when children as young as three are diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and are placed on Ritalin. As of 2010, according to the National Health Interview Survey, 5.2 million kids between the ages of 3 and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. According to the University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Center, “Ritalin is a stimulant like cocaine” and “may cause changes in the brain over time.” Further, up to “50% of adolescents in drug treatment centers report abusing Ritalin.” Yet a vague evaluation by a doctor or teacher of too much “squirminess” can lead a youngster to spend an adolescence on meds. The none too subtle message? If you have a problem, pop a pill.

=> ↺ The Washington Vaccination Ploy: Puerto Rico and the Zika Quandary

• Should you fear receiving the needle from a stranger? Yes. Should you fear receiving it from a person you know all too well as a historical abuser? Even more so. Empires do it, states do it, and even local agencies do it. Let’s all, as it were, vaccinate for all in this perverted paraphrasing of the Cole Porter song, the assumption that the medical facility cures, and the giver and administrator knows all.

=> ↺ Add Russia’s Olympic Doping Scandal to the Rich History of Cheating in Sports

• Of the 387-member Russian team, more than 100 have already been banned, including 67 from the glamour sport of track and field, according to a recent ruling by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

• Not that cheating is necessarily a communist hallmark. Athletes from capitalist countries do it, too.

• In the most celebrated Olympic scandal, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was disqualified after winning the 100-meter dash at the 1988 Seoul Olympics when he was found to have used the steroid stanozolol.

• The most celebrated Olympian who was never quite caught was the United States’ Carl Lewis, who won nine Olympic gold medals from 1984 to 1996. In 2003, Lewis acknowledged testing positive three times before the 1988 Olympics. He got off with warnings from U.S. officials, although, under the rules, he should have been prevented from competing in Seoul, where he won gold medals in the 100 meters (after Johnson defaulted) and long jump.

• After the scandal, Lewis wasn’t exactly contrite.

• “There were hundreds of people getting off,” Lewis said in 2003. “Everyone was treated the same. … It’s ridiculous. Who cares? I did 18 years of track and field, and I’ve been retired five years, and they’re still talking about me, so I guess I still have it.”

=> ↺ Why Florida’s Medical Marijuana System Is Ripe for Corporate Takeover

• In June 2014, the disgraced former CEO of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) signed Florida’s medical marijuana bill into law. It was a fitting beginning to a regulatory process that has been marred by shadowy fraud in the selection of lucrative vertically integrated licenses in what could become one of the largest medical marijuana markets in the country. The state appears poised to double down upon the fraud, and in keeping with Governor Rick Scott’s legacy of putting healthcare profits before people, some of the new law’s provisions could shield corporate revenues at the expense of fragile patients.

• This is the picture painted by Freedom of Information Act requests, Sunshine Law requests and public reports pointing to perjury and fraud on the part of Alpha Foliage and its partner Surterra Therapeutics, one of only five nurseries granted oligopolic power over Florida’s entire medical cannabis market. The corruption may lead all the way to the governor’s office and it seems some of Florida’s powerful agricultural companies have wielded their influence over existing medical marijuana laws to add dangerous provisions in their financial favor.

=> ↺ EPA protected Monsanto’s corporate profits by hiding the truth about glyphosate and cancer for decades

• Is it really possible that the EPA – which is supposed to stand for Environmental Protection Agency, by the way – actually hid the truth about the toxicity of one of Monsanto’s top-selling herbicides ?

• According to researcher and consultant, Dr. Anthony Samsel, the answer would be an unequivocal yes. Dr. Samsel claims to have gained possession of EPA documents that reveal the cancer-causing effects of glyphosate. In fact, Samsel states that these documents contain information tying glyphosate to cancer beginning in the 1970s.

• Glyphosate is the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide known as Roundup, which is an extremely popular product that is used across the world in the cultivation of GM crops. Dr. Samsel has been researching the effects of glyphosate for many years, though he notes that much of his work has not been taken seriously and often dismissed.

• Along with fellow researcher, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Dr. Samsel has authored several studies on the potentially negative effects of glyphosate use. Though their work was previously unrecognized, many who initially dismissed their research are now beginning to pay more attention.

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Thursday

=> ↺ Risk From Linux Kernel Hidden in Windows 10 Exposed at Black Hat

=> ↺ CrowdStrike

=> ↺ Microsoft-tied

=> ↺ a piece of malware with keyloggers and back doors

=> ↺ Italian-based Android RAT spies on mobiles in Japan and China, say researchers

• Researchers discover an Italian-based Android RAT designed for spying that is targeting mobile devices using their unique identification codes

=> ↺ keysafe

• Have you ever thought about using a gpg key to encrypt something, but didn’t due to worries that you’d eventually lose the secret key? Or maybe you did use a gpg key to encrypt something and lost the key. There are nice tools like paperkey to back up gpg keys, but they require things like printers, and a secure place to store the backups.

• I feel that simple backup and restore of gpg keys (and encryption keys generally) is keeping some users from using gpg. If there was a nice automated solution for that, distributions could come preconfigured to generate encryption keys and use them for backups etc. I know this is a missing peice in the git-annex assistant, which makes it easy to generate a gpg key to encrypt your data, but can’t help you back up the secret key.

• So, I’m thinking about storing secret keys in the cloud. Which seems scary to me, since when I was a Debian Developer, my gpg key could have been used to compromise millions of systems. But this is not about developers, it’s about users, and so trading off some security for some ease of use may be appropriate. Especially since the alternative is no security. I know that some folks back up their gpg keys in the cloud using DropBox.. We can do better.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Colin Powell’s Former Chief of Staff Thinks Hillary Clinton Is Too Eager to Resort to War

• This is a useful conversation that ranges beyond the realm of the lesser-evil cliché, and one that answers these key questions: What exactly is “the playbook,” and why does onetime George W. Bush aide Lawrence Wilkerson say Hillary Clinton comes straight out of it?

• Wilkerson, who served as former Defense Secretary Colin Powell’s chief of staff in the Bush II White House, is the one to whom The Real News Network’s Paul Jay turns, in this TRNN video clip, to gauge Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s approaches to foreign policy issues as well as to potential and actual armed conflicts.

=> ↺ Trident in a time warp: party politics vs defence needs

• As Britain and Europe reeled from Brexit Theresa May rushed through the vote on Trident replacement. Was this strong leadership or our human security being sacrificed to expediency?

=> ↺ “People’s Tribunal” Launched in Haiti to Commemorate 101 Years of U.S. Occupation

• Thursday, July 28, when Hillary Rodham Clinton took to the stage to accept the Democratic nomination to be the first female candidate of a major political party for president, was also the 101st anniversary of the U.S. military occupation of Haiti that lasted nineteen years.

• Hundreds of people took to the streets and filled a gym named after president Stenio Vincent, who negotiated the departure of the U.S. Marines in 1934, to launch the People’s Tribunal on U.S. Occupation/Domination. The march began at Fort National, of historic significance. Equally significant was the rapprochement of various segments of Haiti’s progressive movements, often fragmented along political lines.

=> ↺ Needing an Exit from Afghan Quagmire

• The failure of U.S. policy in Afghanistan has been obvious for years, but neither President Bush nor President Obama wanted the defeat hung on their legacies, so the bloody folly goes on, a test for the next president, says Alon Ben-Meir.

=> ↺ Hiroshima: the Crime That Keeps on Paying, But Beware the Reckoning

• The decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a political not a military decision. The targets were not military, the effects were not military. The attacks were carried out against the wishes of all major military leaders. Admiral William Leahy, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his memoirs that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…” General Eisenhower, General MacArthur, even General Hap Arnold, commander of the Air Force, were opposed. Japan was already devastated by fire bombing, facing mass hunger from the US naval blockade, demoralized by the surrender of its German ally, and fearful of an imminent Russian attack. In reality, the war was over. All top U.S. leaders knew that Japan was defeated and was seeking to surrender.

=> ↺ The Saudi Role in the 9/11 Attacks

• On 27 November 2002 a bipartisan commission was established by Congress to investigate the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. By the time the commission was created, President George W. Bush had characterised the attacks as “acts of war”, adding that “freedom and democracy are under attack”. It was therefore to be expected that anyone who was actually, or even imagined to be, involved in these attacks was going to be labelled as an enemy.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ What we may expect from recent Wikileaks on Turkish politics

• In his latest book, The Uprising, “Bifo” Berardi (2012) borrows some concepts from one of the most important figures in the study of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, in order to describe the prevailing social impasse: instead of engendering a radical transformation or revolutionary upheaval, systemic disruptions in the social field increasingly consolidate and even give a boost to the power of the dominant paradigm, process, or group.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ California to set power regulations on computers

• California, the state where the personal computer business was born and eventually revolutionized society, is about to be home to another change that figures to have a permanent impact on the computer industry.

• By all indications, by the end of this year the California Energy Commission will adopt energy efficiency guidelines for computers, becoming the first state in the nation to do so.

• The agency estimates it will add about $18 to price of a computer but promises it will save customers and businesses much more in energy savings.

=> ↺ To Save Energy Or Not, That Is The Question.

• Unless the state is going to run all IT, this just can’t work. Whatever throttle, limit or setting California requires will either have some means of circumvention or be counter-productive.

=> ↺ Are We Looking at a Mass Extinction Event?

• If you or someone you know needs proof that global climate change is real and is happening before our very eyes, you could go to the “State of the Climate Report” put together by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

=> ↺ Major Amazon dam opposed by tribes fails to get environmental license

• Brazil’s environmental regulator Ibama decided on Thursday to shelve the environmental license request for a hydroelectric dam on the Tapajós river in the Amazon, a project that had been opposed by indigenous tribes and conservation groups.

• Ibama’s licensing office ruled the dam’s backers had not presented information in time to show its social and environmental viability. They halted the 30bn reals (£7.2bn) project. In April, Ibama had suspended the licensing process that began in 2009 after criticism by Brazil’s indigenous affairs department, Funai.

• With installed capacity of about 6.1 gigawatts, the dam proposed by state-run Eletrobras, Brazil’s largest power utility holding, and a group of other electricity companies, would have been one of Brazil’s biggest.

• But it would have flooded 376 sq km (145 sq miles) of Amazon rainforest that is home to some 12,000 Munduruku Indians, according to Greenpeace.

Finance

=> ↺ Trade Deals Like the TPP Put Corporate Polluters Above the Law

• The Obama administration’s historic rejection of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline marked the first time a major fossil fuel project was denied over climate change concerns. The decision capped a contentious years-long fight, and helped spark a broader grassroots movement aimed at keeping fossil fuels in the ground, which scientists have increasingly warned is necessary if we hope to limit global temperatures to manageable levels.

• But TransCanada would not take no for an answer. Soon after the rejection, the company announced it would sue the United States government for $15 billion in lost profits under a tribunal system in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) called Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). This system, which the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership would dramatically expand, allows foreign investors to bypass U.S. courts and challenge American laws in a corporate-friendly arbitration system. The Keystone XL case shows how the ISDS system puts corporate polluters above the law and threatens global action on climate change.

=> ↺ Don’t make crude assumptions about young people’s attitudes to the EU

• It has become a mantra that, as a matter of natural course, younger people are pro-EU and that therefore the future looks bright for the Remain camp. This is not reflected either in the recent history of UK voting or opinion polling, or indeed of current surveys in other EU countries.

• The unmentioned story of the EU referendum is that to win it, the Leave camp had to alienate one surprisingly eurosceptic age group over a very short period. The 18 to 24-year-old voter.

=> ↺ IRS Launches Investigation of Clinton Foundation (Video)

=> ↺ Why has Britain stopped striking? Workers no longer feel empowered to act

• Striking in Britain has now reached an all-time low. Last year saw the fewest workers go on strike since records began in 1893. Is this a cause for celebration, a victory for partnership between capital and labour? The answer is a firm no.

• Although striking is a last resort for workers on account of the lost wages incurred, the fact that only 170,000 days were lost to strikes in 2015 (compared with 29.5m in 1979) indicates just how weak the vast majority of workers feel they are in today’s labour market. It shows workers perceive themselves as ever more powerless to collectively stand up against the increasingly common employment practices of the likes of Sports Direct, Deliveroo and Hermes. Some companies now require employees to shoulder what were previously employer responsibilities (such as national insurance, pensions and sick pay) and be subject to pernicious performance management targets and monitoring.

=> ↺ Mike Pence Loves ALEC and Keeps Pushing Public School Privatization, Despite Lousy Indiana Record With Charters and Vouchers

• Mike Pence is a hardcore right-winger playing the long game, especially when it comes to privatizing public schools.

• It’s not just that the Republican vice-presidential nominee and Indiana governor last weekend told a roomful of deregulation-obsessed executives and lobbyists in Indianapolis, “You are the model for Washington, D.C., after this election. You really are.”

• The nation is “at a fork in the road,” Pence said at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual meeting, referring not only to who would be president for the next four years but who would control the Supreme Court for the “next 40 years.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ The Spoiler Myth: Clinton Has More Problems Than Jill Stein and the Bernie or Busters

• Now that Hillary Clinton has wrapped up the Democratic Presidential nomination with the endorsement of Bernie Sanders, her supporters have transitioned to denigrating progressives who affirm they are “Bernie or Bust” by supporting Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein over Clinton. Senator Sanders has affirmed the importance of continuing the political revolution, and many of his supporters are choosing to do that outside of the Democratic Party.

• Critics against Stein cite Ralph Nader and his running mate, Native American activist Winona LaDuke, as the spoilers of the 2000 election, in which he received over 90,000 votes in Florida, the state Gore lost by just over 500 votes. Had Gore won Florida, he would have won the general election, but those who smear Nader as a spoiler are ignoring other contributing factors to that election. Bill Clinton’s impeachment in December 1998 inspired helped inspire over 300,000registered Democrats in Florida to vote for Bush in the general election. According to Florida exit polls, only a small percentage of Nader supporters would have voted for Gore instead of Bush, with most citing they wouldn’t have voted at all. The Supreme Court ruled, controversially, to halt the recount in Florida. A study conducted by the Progressive Review in 2002 analyzed whether Al Gore’s polling prior to the general election inversely changed with Ralph Nader’s and no correlation was found. Voter turnout in Florida for the general election in 2000 was 70 percent, according to the Florida Division of Elections, a few percentage points lower than each general election Florida since then. Across the country in 2000, more than 100 million eligible voters didn’t cast a ballot.

=> ↺ Did You Know That AARP Is A Paying Member Of ALEC?

• Here is a real shocker. AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) has been a paying member of the notorious right-wing, Koch-tied lobbying organization American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) since at least 2014.

• Yes, that AARP, once known for protecting the interests of senior citizens and fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare. Yes, that ALEC — an organization dedicated to, among so many other things, privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and getting rid of public-employee pensions. AARP apparently joined ALEC even as many corporations were fleeing thanks to exposure of ALEC’s reprehensible actions.

• Just wow.

=> ↺ Smearing Stein: Media as Propaganda

• Jill Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for president, has been the sudden target of attacks from all corners of online media since the official end of Bernie Sanders’ campaign at the Democratic National Convention. Outlets like the Washington Post, New York Magazine and Gizmodo have assaulted Stein by using out-of-context quotes to assail her, wrongly, for being anti-vaccination and anti-WiFi, which is a code for being “anti-science.” This allows us a unique opportunity to confirm the structural role of the media as hypothesized by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in Manufacturing Consent: that the media is a propaganda arm for the elite and powerful, and is used to condition us to accept the bounds of socio-political discourse as set by the ruling class. It also shows us the desperate need we have for an alternative media culture to counteract mainstream discourse.

• The attack on Stein (and not, conveniently, on Gary Johnson), is linked to the need by the elite to de-legitimize A.) critics of neoliberal policies and B.) potential alternatives to the political status-quo. Trump and Clinton have had and will have no discussion about thirty years of neoliberalism and austerity. Sanders gave a voice to those within the Democrats who were willing to question, but since his defeat momentum on the left has shifted to Stein and the Green Party. It is, granted, still early, but the outpouring of support means there is a possibility the left could begin to regroup outside the Democratic Party. Real success for Stein could mean a permanent presence on the national stage for the left, to which a president Clinton or Trump would have to answer and which would be able to build an entirely different ideological discourse in the United States.

• What is the role of the media in this scenario, one that explains the current froth about Stein? Although the public is rarely allowed a glimpse behind the curtain, almost all media in the United States is controlled by just a few large corporations. In the era of mass communication, the media has usurped the role formerly played by the Church as a primary source of information and the bounds of discourse. Private corporations are interested in making a profit, and ensuring the economy continues to produce those profits. Marx once opined that “the ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class,” and in an era of (potential) mass political upheaval, the media plays an active role in silencing dissent to those ideas. Indeed, they are linked to the continued profits generated by the political order. Political candidates and parties that challenge and threaten to upend this are typically subject to vigorous criticism if they threaten to shift the political discourse or take power: witness the barrage of negative stories and editorials on leaders like Hugo Chávez or new political parties like Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain.

=> ↺ Could Hillary Lose?

• Could Hillary lose? If she were running against a Republican whom the Party’s grandees and the capitalists behind them liked, someone like Mitt Romney, the answer would be Yes.

• After eight years of President Drone, the Republican would have a clear advantage. It wouldn’t even matter if that Republican were to pander, say, to the Ted Cruz element in the GOP base, the way that Romney pandered to the Tea Party. The smart money would still be on him.

=> ↺ I Spent the Day with Trump’s Undying Fans in Maine

• Somehow, my press credentialing e-mails from the Trump campaign keep getting blown off the porch of the Intertoobz.

• So, on Thursday, I decided to be just another face in the crowd at an event at the Merrill Auditorium, a lovely old piece of big government memorabilia attached to City Hall here. I applied through the website, and I got my confirmation that I was invited to be a guest at what the website said was going to be a “town hall” with the Republican candidate for President of the United States. Doors would open at 7 a.m. for a 10 a.m. start. No, wait. The doors would open at 11 a.m. for a 2 p.m. start. Hold on. The doors will open at noon for a 3 p.m. start. Technically, you’re not running late if you keep changing the time.

• I assumed that the last e-mail was the final one, so I got to the venue at 9:30 on Thursday morning. There already was a line. People stood in the shadeless plaza, broiling and being heckled from all over the sky by raucous seagulls. (You’d have sworn Tippi Hedren was in line, wearing a God, Guts, and Guns tanktop.) A lot of the people were elderly, and most of them were white and pale. (For the record, I am both.) You’d have thought the campaign would have kicked in a few pallets of Trump Water for the faithful.

=> ↺ For Progressives: a Moment of Grief, Pause and Reorientation

• In this frantic rush for “unity,” the DNC is trying to silence dissent and critical thought about where we are now and how we got here. Even PBS’s Washington Week in Review featured guests this week, who referred to Sanders’ convention delegates as “hecklers” because they dared to show support for their candidate at their party’s convention. The mainstream media’s patronizing tone aims to shame Sanders’ supporters, who it now blames for any division within the Democratic Party, accusing progressives of being “in denial” and “being a baby.”

=> ↺ Beyond Clinton vs. Trump, Green Party Convention Kicks Off

• The Green Party kicked off its national convention in Houston, Texas on Thursday, where presumptive nominee Jill Stein will present a third-party challenge to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

• The convention will run from August 4-7. The proceedings are expected to include keynote speeches from scholar and activist Dr. Cornel West, who endorsed Stein over Clinton after Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, and Philadelphia-based activist YahNé Ndgo. Local Green Party candidates for office will also appear.

• Stein is expected to accept her party’s nomination on August 6.

• On Wednesday, CNN announced it would host a Green Party town hall on August 17—offering the party a rare chance to access the large media platform usually reserved for establishment candidates.

=> ↺ 2016 Is the Best and Worst Year to Be Jill Stein

• On a sweaty Sunday afternoon in late July, John Griffin happened upon Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, in his North Philadelphia neighborhood. Joined by a couple dozen people, Stein was pointing out the economic inequality and environmental degradation in the area, which she referred to as an “open-air prison.” Griffin, 37, who works security and facilities maintenance at a church, had a Bernie Sanders button pinned to his white T-shirt. “I love Bernie,” he told Stein.

• “I love Bernie,” Stein repeated. Then she ticked off areas where she was promising more than Sanders had: guaranteeing a living-wage job to every American who wants one; canceling all student debt; cutting military spending in half. “She’s awesome,” Griffin said afterward. “No one else is in the middle of the ghetto, in the middle of the ’hood, trying to campaign.”

=> ↺ We The People Tossed Out of Trump Rally For Unspeakable Crime aka Holding Up Our Country’s Founding Document

• So this happened Thursday in Portland: The orange cretin was lying and blathering on to a rapt audience of whoever these racist, ill-educated, uncomprehending people are when a group of protesters stood and mutely held up, echoing Khizr Khan, pocket versions of the U.S. Constitution. Because this was a Trump rally, the crowd booed, hissed, hollered “U.S.A.!”, tried to rip one book from its owner and screamed, “Traitor!” as the miscreants, reportedly members of the progressive Maine People’s Alliance, were hauled out. The ACLU loved it; they responded on Twitter with, “Glad to see people are standing up for constitutional principles using their ACLU pocket Constitutions!” And what’s not to love: Great visuals, unprecedented levels of irony if anyone there knew the meaning of the word. We think Constitution-waving should definitely become a thing.

=> ↺ Donald Trump Will Leave a Lasting Stain on the GOP, Even if He Loses

• To Republicans who hope to emerge from the Donald Trump fiasco with any shred of political viability or self-respect, I offer some unsolicited advice: Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.

• I’m speaking to you, House Speaker Paul Ryan. And you, Sen. John McCain. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—along with so many other elected Republicans and party stalwarts. You are not fools. You are well aware that the erstwhile Party of Lincoln has nominated for president a man wholly unfit to hold the office.

• I realize that puts you in a tough spot politically. Breaking with the party’s standard-bearer, chosen by voters in primaries and caucuses, would surely mean short-term pain. For some of you it could be politically fatal. But sticking with Trump, as far as I can see, will almost surely be worse—for you, for the party, and potentially, heaven forbid, for the country you have sworn to serve.

=> ↺ Talking Lawn Sign

• It’s time to make up your mind the primary’s over and so is your sign You were feeling the Bern Now you know it’s her turn- put up a sign for Jill Stein

• Can you forgive the DNC Faking neutrality And putting in the fix For their nominatrix In the name of D-mockracy?

=> ↺ Europe’s “Bought Journalists”

• One day, historians will wonder how it was that the EU, a wealthy and ostensibly unified polity with a population of over 500 million people and an extremely deep and sophisticated history of indigenous intellectual production, came to have its public discourse dominated by the narrow and often quite parochial concerns of the elites of another country (right down to their absurd and largely unconditional devotion to a small and bellicose apartheid state in the Middle East) located halfway around the globe.

=> ↺ Waiting on Putin, The Dream Candidate

• Washington really needs an Arch Enemy, a guy who looks like a Bond villain with nuclear weapons he’ll brandish but never use.

• Putin.

• Americans are already well-prepared by the old Cold War to see Russia as an evil empire, and Putin does look the part. A new Cold War will require America to buy more military hardware, plus discover new places like the Baltic states to garrison. It might even straighten out a NATO confused about its role regarding global terrorism.

• Forget Trump and Clinton; Putin is the political-military-industrial complex dream candidate.

=> ↺ Clinton Camp Courts Hackers in Vegas

• n 2016, can Hillary Clinton be the candidate of the hacker crowd?

• That was the question posed at a fundraiser Wednesday at the annual Black Hat security conference, an affair that brings thousands of hackers and deep-pocketed security firms to the Nevada desert to learn about the latest and greatest in computer exploits.

• Amid a program packed with technical presentations on computer security, the fundraiser represented an unusual addition and has had a polarizing effect on some long-time attendees of the conference, who consider the event for Clinton out of step with the conference’s hacker ethos. A conference that begins, for example, with a presentation on “Memory Forensics Using Virtual Machine Introspection for Cloud Computing” really shouldn’t end with a partisan political event, some Black Hat veterans privately groused Wednesday. And for these old-timers, who reminisce about the conference’s heyday in the late 1990s, when glitzy corporate sponsorships and booths didn’t dominate the event as they do now, a Clinton fundraiser seems the final deathknell for the event’s counterculture status.

=> ↺ Poll: Clinton up 9 points on Trump nationwide

• The Democratic nominee retains her edge over Trump when the race becomes a four-person contest. There Clinton takes 45 percent to Trump’s 34 percent, leaving the GOP’s presidential nominee still trailing her by 9 points. Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson ranks third with 10 percent, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein nabs 5 percent.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Anurag’s masterclass on censorship

• The festival, which will kick-start on August 11 in Melbourne, will see the participation of the filmmaker and other celebrities like Rishi Kapoor, Fawad Khan, Richa Chadha and Radhika Apte. In a statement, Anurag said, “I can put forth my point of view and talk about how censorship is so pointless in the day and age of the Internet. I am really looking forward to interacting with the students.”

=> ↺ Pro-independence candidate to send ‘blank’ election mailouts in protest of censorship

• A pro-independence candidate in the upcoming Legislative Council election has said he will send a “blank” election mailout to voters, after reports that the Electoral Affairs Commission censored other mailings.

• Chan Chak-to of the Kowloon East Community group chose to send out mailings with conspicuous blank spaces and phrases like, “You can ban speeches, you can ban candidacies, but ideas are bulletproof,” and “My political view is [blank].”

• Chan was one of the rare pro-independence candidates who were allowed to run in this election, while most other independence advocates were banned for participating.

• “We believe that, according to reports, the election platforms we have made ready have the ‘sensitive phrases’ listed, and they will not be able to be posted,” he said. “We wanted to give up on sending the mailouts, but after the political screening [of candidates], we wished to present the truth to you.”

=> ↺ British woman held after being seen reading book about Syria on plane

• Free-speech groups have condemned the detention of a British Muslim woman after a cabin-crew member reported her for “suspicious behaviour” while reading a book about Syrian culture on a flight to Turkey.

• Faizah Shaheen, a psychotherapist in Leeds, was detained by police at Doncaster airport on 25 July, on her return from her honeymoon in Turkey. A Thomson Airways cabin-crew member had reported Shaheen on her outbound flight two weeks earlier, as she was reading the title Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline.

• Police officers questioned Shaheen for 15 minutes under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, under which the police can detain individuals without grounds for suspicion of involvement in criminal activities, including terrorism.

• [...]

• Jo Glanville, director of English PEN – which supported the book’s publication with a grant towards translation – said Thomson Airways should be “highly embarrassed about this gross act of misjudgment”.

• “The current culture of anxiety around extremism now means that even our reading material has become grounds for suspicion of terrorist activity,” she said. “The freedom to read any book, no matter the subject, is a fundamental cornerstone of our liberty.” Glanville also called Schedule 7 a “continuing problem” and said it was overdue for reform.

• Zaher Omareen, the co-editor of Syria Speaks, condemned Shaheen’s detention as a “despicable incident”.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Here’s How Your Facebook Feed Is About to Change

• The company has tried to minimize clickbait before, but this time, Facebook says it has gone farther, categorizing phrases often used in clickbait headlines and looking at which websites publish those stories.

=> ↺ Comcast wants to sell your Web history to advertisers

=> ↺ Comcast wants its broadband users to pay for their privacy

=> ↺ Comcast Thinks It’s Totally Chill to Charge For Privacy

=> ↺ Comcast supports higher prices for customers who want Web privacy

=> ↺ Comcast Wants to Charge for Privacy

• Ars Technica , Gizmodo, ZDNet, and a host of others are reporting that Comcast claims that the FCC has no authority to limit or prohibit the internet provider from distributing web histories to advertisers.

=> ↺ This Engineer Started a Tor-Based Internet Provider to Fight Surveillance

• UK lawmakers are currently closing in on their biggest expansion of government surveillance powers since the Snowden revelations—but one network engineer is determined to not let privacy go down without fight.

• The Investigatory Powers bill—championed by former Home Secretary and current UK prime minister Theresa May and sometimes called the “Snooper’s Charter”—would create an expansive new legal regime for government mass surveillance in the UK, effectively legitimizing many of the programs exposed by Snowden. Among other things, it controversially proposes requiring that all internet service providers in the UK keep tabs on their customers’ internet activity, forcing them to retain so-called Internet Connection Records, or ICRs, for 12 months, and hand that data over to the authorities upon request.

• But as the UK’s upper house prepares to vote on final amendments to the bill, engineer Gareth Llewelyn is readying his own technical countermeasures. Earlier this year, Llewelyn started building his own non-profit internet service provider that runs on the Tor anonymity network. His goal: Design a system that will frustrate the new mass-surveillance regime by making it technically impossible to censor content or comply with government requests for subscribers’ internet records.

=> ↺ Labour deputy leader calls on PM to halt plans to wipe old Companies House data

• The Labour party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has called on Theresa May to intervene to stop the UK government agency Companies House from deleting information about firms that have been shut down. Without older records on dissolved companies, it will be much harder to spot when criminals try to set up new businesses to defraud the public, or to combat money laundering.

• Currently, the details of dissolved companies are kept for 20 years. Companies House, which holds key data on nearly 4 million UK businesses, is considering reducing that to six years according to The Guardian, even though the associated extra costs are minimal, as the price of digital storage continues to fall.

• The mass deletion is in response to an increasing number of requests from business people demanding the “right to be forgotten,” according to The Times. “Individuals and their reputation management firms have contacted Companies House claiming that its retention of records revealing an association with struck-off companies is personally damaging and a breach of data protection laws.”

=> ↺ FBI Releases Secret Spy Plane Footage from Freddie Gray Protests

• In response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI has released more than 18 hours of video from surveillance cameras installed on FBI aircraft that flew over Baltimore in the days after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015. The videos, which were released to the ACLU before being posted online by the FBI this week, offer a rare and comprehensive view of the workings of a government surveillance operation. While the release of the footage addresses some questions, it leaves others unanswered.

=> ↺ Security Sense: You’re Not as Interesting to the NSA as You Think You Are

• Now having said that, the feds and the cops are not high up the list in my personal “threat model”. There are other people for whom well-resourced state actors are a serious threat. Political dissidents. Free speech proponents in authoritarian countries. Criminal actors. But for these guys, there’s an easy solution: turn off the biometrics, limit login attempts and use a strong PIN or password. There are many other “opsec” steps beyond this they may take too of course, but the point is that these devices can be configured more securely for those who need it by disabling certain usability features.

=> ↺ U.S. Cloud Firms ‘Out Innovated’ Competitors in Wake of NSA Leak

• Despite dire predictions of revenue losses in the wake of a leaked U.S. spy agency’s electronic surveillance program three years ago, U.S. cloud providers have instead “out innovated” local competitors to keep a firm grip on the European market, a market watcher says.

• U.S. cloud providers were widely expected to be hurt by local business and regulatory efforts to safeguard European data following the 2013 release of documents linking U.S. tech firms to National Security Agency surveillance programs.

=> ↺ Good Ruling In California Protects Anonymity Of Online Critics — Even When The Information Was False

• Over and over again we’ve seen people try to interpret anything someone says about them that they don’t like as defamatory. But just because you don’t like what’s said, that doesn’t make it defamatory — and that can also apply even if the statements actually were false.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ After The Age Of The PC, Welcome To The Age Of The PD — The ‘Personal Drone’

• As that rightly notes, there’s a world of difference between today’s small drones — “consumer” in this context means anything weighing more than 0.5lbs — and traditional aircraft. But in many ways, it’s exactly the same difference between the very first PCs, and the mainframes and minicomputer systems that had existed for decades. In that respect, we can see the 500,000 registered drones as an indication that we are now truly in the age of the PD — the Personal Drone.

• The conference also touched on a key concern raised by Karl Bode last year, who was worried that over-strict regulation of drones might kill off some promising new business models.

=> ↺ Sheriff Raids House to Find Anonymous Blogger Who Called Him Corrupt

• After a watchdog blog repeatedly linked him and other local officials to corruption and fraud, the Sheriff of Terrebone Parish in Louisiana on Tuesday sent six deputies to raid a police officer’s home to seize computers and other electronic devices.

• Sheriff Jerry Larpenter’s deputies submitted affidavits alleging criminal defamation against the anonymous author of the ExposeDAT blog, and obtained search warrants to seize evidence in the officer’s house and from Facebook.

• The officer, Wayne Anderson, works for the police department of Houma, the county seat of Terrebone Parish — and according to New Orleans’ WWL-TV, formerly worked as a Terrebone Sheriff’s deputy.

=> ↺ Stealing the spectacle

• The new Polish xenophobia cannot be explained only by political economy, but also needs to be understood in terms of political aesthetics.

=> ↺ U.S. Human Rights Observers Harshly Interrogated By Israel and Booted For Being Muslim

• Five individuals carrying American passports say they were branded “terrorist” and mistreated by Israeli security, then got no help from their own government.

=> ↺ Six books Muslim (and non-Muslim) women should add to their reading list

• These books on faith and feminism will force you to reevaluate your stereotypes of Muslims.

=> ↺ What’s Emancipation Day to the Caribbean Working Class?

• On 1 August 1838, enslaved Africans in the British Empire won their emancipation from slavery. Emancipation Day is now commemorated throughout the Anglophone Caribbean as a public holiday or national observance. Emancipation was not a gift from Britain or White abolitionists. It came from the accumulated covert and overt acts of resistance by enslaved Africans.

=> ↺ Top 10 Reasons the ACLU Fights for Breastfeeding Rights

• A few weeks ago, a mom named Jessie Maher was breastfeeding her baby in the cafeteria of a Target store in Connecticut when a belligerent man approached and said she was “F*ing disgusting” and “nasty.” Fellow shoppers and Target employees quickly sprang to Maher’s defense, shielding her from the man.

• “You shouldn’t be ashamed of feeding your baby,” one of them said to Maher. “This is a beautiful moment right now. If he doesn’t like it, he can go.”

• Maher posted a video of the incident that quickly went viral, generating more than 8.5 million views and an outpouring of support from fellow nursing mothers.

=> ↺ Does DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge Need A Safety Protocol?

• Today, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the R&D arm of the US military) is holding the finals for its Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC) competition at DEF CON. We think that this initiative by DARPA is very cool, very innovative, and could have been a little dangerous.

• In this post, we’re going to talk about why the CGC is important and interesting (it’s about building automated systems that can break into computers!); about some of the dangers posed by this line of automated security research; and the sorts of safety precautions that may become appropriate as endeavors in this space become more advanced. We think there may be some real policy concerns down the road about systems that can automate the process of exploiting vulnerabilities. But rather than calling for external policy interventions, we think the best people to address these issues are the people doing the research themselves—and we encourage them to come together now to address these questions explicitly.

=> ↺ Door to justice finally opens in El Salvador

=> ↺ complex history there

• As the door finally opens for war criminals to face justice in El Salvador, the law can start serving the country’s poor.

=> ↺ Anarcha-Feminisms

• Every piece in Perspectives offers material for a feminist and anti-racist anarchism that builds solidarity with revolutionaries, activists, and organizers who do not readily identify with the term “anarchist.” There’s plenty in the issue that can expand anarchism’s horizons. Consider Julia Tanenbaum’s U.S. anarcha-feminist history of the 70s decade and Hillary Lazar’s notion of “interlocking oppression”– inspired by Black feminism. Colleen Hackett offers thought-provoking “psy-ence fiction” lessons from teaching in a women’s prison, and Theresa Warburton thinks through different ways we generally relate anarchism to feminism. Laura Hall develops a comprehensive “Indigenist eco-queer anarcha-feminist” vision, and Zoe Dodd and Alexander McLelland offer an imminently practical horizontal Hep C/HIV treatment model cultivated from health crisis work. Romina Akemi and Bree Busk provoke readers with “sexual dissidence” and a multi-sectoral organizing plan, and Kelsey Cham C. develops an account of developing political consciousness (including language’s power) through addiction. Finally, there are some short and informative book reviews tucked in nicely at the issue’s end.

=> ↺ Culture Clash: When Violence Against Women Is Accepted, Lawful And Expected

• Last New Year’s Eve it was reported that 2000 men sexually assaulted 1200 women in Cologne, Germany. Immediately, politicians and pundits jumped to make the connection between the rash of violence against women and the influx of refugees. And each time another incident takes place, the battle between political positions is reignited. One liberal politician in Germany noted that the debate must be centered around “no means no” and not around “whether refugees should be deported” or allowed safe haven in Western countries, and I agree with this completely. This is not a refugee issue. It is a case of incongruent cultural practices. Men from societies that reject women’s rights must reform their attitudes and practices if they wish to exist in Western societies in which women are treated as equals. But more broadly, this sort of antiquated thinking must change.

=> ↺ Malaysian man charged with rape escapes jail after marrying 14-year-old victim

• A Malaysian man charged with raping a 14-year-old girl has avoided prison after he married her in a case that has sparked anger from rights groups and calls for a ban on child marriage and justice for victims of sexual violence.

• Ahmad Syukri Yusuf, 22, was charged with statutory rape of the girl late last year and faced up to 30 years in jail and whipping for the offense, but he later married the teenager under Islamic law, according to prosecutor Ahmad Fariz Abdul Hamid.

• The prosecutor said a court in Kuching, in Malaysia’s eastern state of Sarawak ruled there was no need to proceed with the case after Ahmad Syukri submitted a marriage certificate and the girl withdrew the complaint.

=> ↺ Video: Black lives matter: shutdown

• “1,562 deaths in police custody in my lifetime. 0 convictions”. As Black Lives Matter protesters set up blockades in London, Birmingham and Nottingham, here’s their video explaining why it’s time for a shutdown.

=> ↺ How can we change political discourse?

• The day after the referendum Facebook was full of comments like these, only they were less curious and more angry. This is shameful, they said. Why could so many be so stupid. Some even called for ‘un-friending’ the Leavers. The friendly appeal on my news feed just a week before- ‘could you explain your reasons to me?’- had been replaced by bitterness and recrimination “F**k this. I am ashamed to be British”. It felt as though the country had lost its innocence.

=> ↺ The Voting Rights Act, 2.0

• The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965, helped enfranchise millions of African-Americans over the decades. Speaking before a bipartisan gathering of members of Congress, his Cabinet, civil-rights leaders and the press, Johnson said of African-Americans: “They came in darkness and they came in chains. And today we strike away the last major shackle of those fierce and ancient bonds.”

• The Voting Rights Act was renewed and extended several times during the last half-century. Then, in June 2013, a divided U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5-4, gutted the law. Almost immediately, Southern states began passing restrictive voting laws, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of voters. Three years later, however, this new generation of Jim Crow-style laws is facing federal court challenges, and they are being thrown out or significantly weakened, one by one.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ AT&T, Comcast Fight Utility Pole Reform To Slow Google Fiber’s Arrival In Nashville

• We’ve talked a few times about how incumbent broadband providers often use their ownership of city utility poles (or their “ownership” of entire city councils and state legislatures) to slow Google Fiber’s arrival in new markets. In California and Texas, AT&T has often been accused of using the process of pole attachment approval to intentionally block or slow down the arrival of competitors. AT&T also recently sued the city of Louisville for streamlining utility pole attachment rules intended to dramatically speed up the time it takes to attach new fiber to poles.

Intellectual Monopolies

Trademarks

=> ↺ When its comes to “deadwood”, leave it in the State of South Dakota and out of Trademark Office policy

• Last month, Guest Kat Mike Mireles published a post— “The USPTO Moves to Clear ‘Trademark Deadwood’.” Mike reported on the latest steps intended by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to clean “deadwood” from the trademark registry. For several years, the claim has been expressed (not just in the U.S.) that there are too many unused registered trademarks, with the result that the registry suffers from trademark clutter. Moreover, it is claimed, unless we get control of the deadwood issue, the task of trademark clearance will one day become well-nigh impossible.

Copyrights

=> ↺ MPAA Anti-Piracy Cutbacks Lead to “Bullying” Lawsuit

• The ASA, formerly known as the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, is being sued by its former managing director for discrimination and bullying. A decision by the MPAA to reduce funding to the group led to Mark Day, a former MPA legal counsel, being dismissed while he was on sick leave.

=> ↺ Getty Sued Again Over Abusing Copyright Law, Licensing Images It Has No Rights To

• Getty hasn’t been having a very good past few weeks. After getting sued last week by famed photographer Carol Highsmith, after a Getty subsidiary demanded money for her posting her own photographs (which she had donated to the Library of Congress), it’s being sued again by independent press agency/wire service Zuma. Zuma claims that Getty was offering 47,048 images of its images for licensing, despite not actually having a license to do so.

• The full lawsuit is pretty short on details, so it’s difficult to assess the legitimacy of the lawsuit. In fact, the lack of detail in the filing makes me wonder if there’s a lot more to this story. Most of the filing focuses on highlighting how Getty has rapidly been buying up other photo licensing/stock photo sites, and using that fact to make the assertion (without further evidence) that Getty does not do enough due diligence to make sure the photos it offers for license are properly authorized. It may very well be that Getty screwed up here, but it seems like the complaint should include a few more details. Instead, there’s a lot of innuendo.

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