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● 08.28.16

● Links 28/8/2016: Q4OS 1.6, ConnochaetOS 14.2

Posted in News Roundup at 6:24 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Server

=> ↺ Big Blue Aims For The Sky With Power9

• Intel has the kind of control in the datacenter that only one vendor in the history of data processing has ever enjoyed. That other company is, of course, IBM, and Big Blue wants to take back some of the real estate it lost in the datacenters of the world in the past twenty years.

• The Power9 chip, unveiled at the Hot Chips conference this week, is the best chance the company has had to make some share gains against X86 processors since the Power4 chip came out a decade and a half ago and set IBM on the path to dominance in the RISC/Unix market.

• IBM laid out a roadmap out past 2020 for its Power family of processors back at the OpenPower Summit in early April, demonstrating its commitment the CPU market with chips that are offer a brawny alternative to CPUs and accelerators compared to the Xeon and Xeon Phi alternatives from Intel and the relatively less brawny chips from ARM server chip makers such as Applied Micro and Cavium and the expected products from AMD, Broadcom, and Qualcomm. We pondered IBM’s prospects in the datacenter in the wake of some details coming out about next year’s Power9 processors, which IBM said at the time would come in two flavors, one aimed at scale-out machines with one or two sockets and another aimed at scale up machines with NUMA architectures and lots of sockets and shared memory.

=> ↺ ARM Announces ARM v8-A with Scalable Vector Extensions: Aiming for HPC and Data Center

• Today ARM is announcing an update to their line of architecture license products. With the goal of moving ARM more into the server, the data center, and high-performance computing, the new license add-on tackles a fundamental data center and HPC issue: vector compute. ARM v8-A with Scalable Vector Extensions won’t be part of any ARM microarchitecture license today, but for the semiconductor companies that build their own cores with the instruction set, this could see ARM move up into the HPC markets. Fujitsu is the first public licensee on board, with plans to include ARM v8-A cores with SVE in the Post-K RIKEN supercomputer in 2020.

=> ↺ The Sad State of Docker

• I have always been a big fan of Docker. This is very visible if you regularly read this blog. However, I am very disappointed lately how Docker handled the 1.12 release. I like to think of version 1.12 as a great proof of concept that should not have received the amount of attention that it already received. Let’s dive deep into what I found wrong.

• First, I do not think a company should market and promote exciting new features that have not been tested well. Every time Docker makes an announcement, the news spreads like a virus to blogs and news sites all over the globe. Tech blogs will basically copy and paste the exact same procedure that Docker discussed into a new blog post as if they were creating original content. This cycle repeats over and over again and becomes annoying because I am seeing the same story a million times. What I hate most about these recent redundant articles is that the features do not work as well as what is written about them.

=> ↺ Containers debunked: DevOps, security and why containers will not replace virtual machines

• The tech industry is full of exciting trends that promise to change the face of the industry and business as we know it, but one that is gaining a huge amount of focus is containers.

• However, problems lie with the technology and threaten to root itself deep in the mythology about it, namely the misconceptions over what the technology is, what can be done with it, and the idea that they replace virtual machines.

• Lars Herrmann, GM, Integrated Solutions at Red Hat spoke to CBR about five common misconceptions, but first the benefits.

• Herrmann, said: “Containerisation can be an amazingly efficient way to do DevOps, so it’s a very practical way to get into a DevOps methodology and process inside an organisation, which is highly required in a lot of organisations because of the benefits in agility to be able to release software faster, better, and deliver more value.”

=> ↺ Rackspace Going Private after $4.3 Billion Buyout

• The company released Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat in February. Using the Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, the product helped extend Rackspace’s OpenStack-as-a-service product slate.

=> ↺ SoylentNews’ Folding@Home Team is Now in the Top 500 in the World

• It has only been six short months since SoylentNews’ Folding@Home team was founded, and we’ve made a major milestone: our team is now one of the top 500 teams in the world! We’ve already surpassed some heavy hitters like /. and several universities, including MIT. (But now is not the time to rest on our laurels. A certain Redmond-based software producer currently occupies #442.)

• In case you aren’t familiar with folding@home, it’s a distributed computing project that simulates protein folding in an attempt to better understand diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s and thereby help to find a cure. To that end, SoylentNews’ team has completed nearly 16,000 work units.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Learning More About Explicit Fencing & Android’s Sync Framework

• With the sync validation framework leaving the staging area in Linux 4.9 and other work going on around the Android sync framework and explicit fencing, this functionality is becoming a reality that ultimately benefits the Linux desktop.

• Collabora developer Gustavo Padovan presented at this week’s LinuxCon 2016 conference about explicit fencing support in the mainline kernel with a “new era of graphics.”

=> ↺ Happy 25th Birthday to Linux – From SUSE & Friends

=> ↺ Happy Birthday Linux from Red Hat!

=> ↺ Happy Birthday Linux from Pakistan in Urdu

=> ↺ #Linux25

• Thank you Linus Torvalds + The University of Helsinki for bringing us the Linux or if you prefer to call it GNU/Linux.

=> ↺ Tales In Tech History: Linux Celebrates 25th Birthday

=> ↺ Timeline Of The Most Important Events In 25 Years Of Linux

=> ↺ Who is Linus Torvalds? Know about him in 2 minutes!

=> ↺ Linux täyttää 25 vuotta – suomalaiskeksinnöstä tuli maailman suosituin käyttöjärjestelmä

=> ↺ LinuxCon: Cloud Native Computing Foundation Expands

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Direct3D 11 vs. OpenGL vs. Vulkan Radeon Benchmarks On Windows & Linux

=> ↺ See How Your Linux System Compares To A $300 Broadwell-EP CPU That Lacks Turbo Boost

Applications

=> ↺ fakecloud

=> ↺ A new version of pristine-tar

=> ↺ Getting RSS feeds for news websites that don’t provide them

• On the technical side, this seems to be one of the most stable pieces of software I ever wrote. It never crashed or otherwise failed since I started running it, and fortunately I also didn’t have to update the HTML parsing code yet because of website changes.

• It’s written in Haskell, using the Scotty web framework, Cereal serialization library for storing the history of the past articles, http-conduit for fetching the websites, and html-conduit for parsing the HTML. Overall a very pleasant experience, thanks to the language being very convenient to write and preventing most silly mistakes at compile-time, and the high quality of the libraries.

=> ↺ Emma A LightWeight Database Management Tool For Linux

• Today who does not interact with databases and if you’re a programmer then the database management is your daily task. For database management, there is a very popular tool called, MySQL Workbench. It’s a tool that ships with tonnes of functionalities. But not all of us as beginner programmers use all Workbench features. So here we also have a very lightweight database manager in Linux, Emma.

=> ↺ Kodi v17 “Krypton” Beta 1

=> ↺ Top 10 Time Tracking Software for Linux

• Just a few days ago we were presenting software for one of the most popular mainstream Linux distribution – Ubuntu. Now let’s cover the progenitor of all free and open-source software. Its operating system was released on October 5, 1991. The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, was only 22 years old at that time!

• Linux is not very popular on the desktop computers (at least among regular users, software engineers, for example, prefer to work on it), but it is the leading operating system on servers, mainframe computers, and virtually all fastest supercomputers. It is also worth mentioning that without Linux there won’t be no Android as we know it now, no network routers, video game consoles, and smartwatches. We really owe a lot to Mr. Linus.

• According to Wikipedia, the development of Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open-source software collaboration. Its source code may be used, modified and distributed—commercially or non-commercially—by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses. Thanks to it we can use some great software like the already mentioned Ubuntu, but also Fedora, Gentoo Linux, Debian and more.

=> ↺ MPTCP v0.91 Release

• The MPTCP v0.91 release is based on the Linux Kernel Longterm Support release v4.1.x.

=> ↺ Quick Updates: Guake 0.8.7, WebTorrent Desktop 0.12.0, TLP 0.9

• Guake is a drop-down terminal emulator for GNOME (GTK2). The application is inspired from consoles in computer games, such as Quake, in which the console slides from the top of the screen when a key is pressed. In the same way, Guake can be invoked and hidden using a single key (though Guake can also automatically hide when it loses focus).

=> ↺ Switch Between Multiple Lists Of Apps Pinned To Unity Launcher With Launcher List Indicator

=> ↺ MATE Dock Applet Gets Unity-Like Progress Bar And Badge Support

• MATE Dock Applet is a MATE Panel applet that displays running application windows as icons. The applet features options to pin applications to the dock, supports multiple workspaces, and can be added to any MATE Panel, regardless of size and orientation.

=> ↺ AppImage – One app framework to distro them all

• Linux is highly portable. Fact. On the other hand, Linux software is the least portable technology in the world. Try running Firefox designed for Debian on Fedora. In fact, try running Firefox designed for one version of Fedora on another Fedora, perhaps a slightly older version. Godspeed, Captain Jack Sparrow.

• The fanatical rigor with which the Linux backward compatibility is maintained in the enterprise flavors, SUSE and Red Hat, is inversely proportional to all other incompatibilities that exist in the Linux space. This ain’t no news. I have most artfully elaborated on this problem in my illustrated Linux guide. But now, there’s a thing that promises to solve all these problems forever. AppImage.

=> ↺ SDDM 0.14.0

=> ↺ SDDM Display Manager Adds HiDPI Support, New Options

=> ↺ rfoaas 1.1.0

Proprietary

=> ↺ Substance Designer 5.5 Is Here

• This version takes texture creation into the big leagues with MDL material authoring – opening up a whole new world of materials – plus Linux support, fbx camera import and support for VCA. This is a free upgrade for license holders and Substance Live subscribers, or you can get a free 30-day trial version.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to set up quick and easy file sharing with Samba

=> ↺ How to install and configure graphics drivers in Linux

=> ↺ Using ANTLR From the Parse Tree to the Abstract Syntax Tree

=> ↺ How to check if an email address really exists

=> ↺ How to Setup and Manage Log Rotation Using Logrotate in Linux

=> ↺ How to Install WordPress 4.6 On Ubuntu 16.04 Using LAMP Stack

=> ↺ SSH and complex configs

=> ↺ How to Install Seafile on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)

=> ↺ How to Setup WordPress with LAMP + Postfix as Send-Only Mail Notifications on VPS Server

=> ↺ Understanding Different Classifications of Shell Commands and Their Usage in Linux

=> ↺ More map file conversions: ESRI Shapefiles and GeoJSON

=> ↺ How to install and setup DRBD on CentOS

=> ↺ How to Run MySQL/MariaDB Queries Directly from the Linux Command Line

=> ↺ LibreOffice Command Line: Convert Multiple Files DOCX to ODT

=> ↺ LibreOffice Command Line: Convert Multiple Files PPT to ODP

=> ↺ LibreOffice Command Line: Convert Multiple Files XLS to ODS

=> ↺ The How part (5) – Removing redundant nodes from OSM files

=> ↺ The How part (6) – Concatenating OSM way chunks

=> ↺ Write Your Own CPU Meter in Bash

=> ↺ How to Setup GlusterFS Storage on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

=> ↺ Ebook: Introducing the Awk Getting Started Guide for Beginners

=> ↺ How to Remove “Unity” and Install Cinnamon and Mate Desktop in Ubuntu

=> ↺ Boost dependencies and bcp

=> ↺ An Introduction to Enlightenment Gadget Orientation

=> ↺ How-to Install and Use Lynis on Ubuntu 14.04

=> ↺ cron Error: bad username; while reading /etc/cron.d file on Linux

=> ↺ How to Install PostgreSQL and phpPgAdmin on CentOS 7

=> ↺ More utilities via moreutils

=> ↺ Provisioning Vagrant boxes using Ansible

=> ↺ Installing Coreboot On An X230 Laptop

=> ↺ Replicating SAN on openSUSE with VAAI

=> ↺ Can you kill it? Ubuntu Server startup processes

=> ↺ Working with Iptables

=> ↺ How to install KVM on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Headless Server

=> ↺ nosync – turn off sync and O_DIRECT with LD_PRELOAD

=> ↺ Learning Linux with Tilde Clubs

=> ↺ Setting up Multiple Monitors in a KVM QEMU VM

=> ↺ Ubuntu 16.04 Create a cron.log File To Log crontab Logs

Games

=> ↺ Atom Zombie Smasher is being updated, Linux version to finally come to Steam

• Atom Zombie Smasher came to Linux a long time ago, but the Linux version never did make it to Steam. It is now being updated by Ethan Lee and the Linux version will be put onto Steam.

=> ↺ The Curious Expedition to release in full on September 2nd with Linux support

• The Curious Expedition is a roguelike expedition simulation set in the late 19th century, it is soon to leave Early Access and has full Linux support.

• It has been on Linux since the early days, so it’s one title that has supported us for quite a while. I have never tried it, but the reviews seem pretty good!

=> ↺ Speculation: It’s looking like Rocket League may finally arrive on Linux in September

• Rocket League is way overdue, we all know that, but honestly I am fully expecting it to arrive with the patch due in September named the ‘Rumble Update’. This update will come with a bunch of stuff including a new game mode.

• I’m speculating of course, so don’t take this as solid confirmation of anything. The evidence is starting to come together though and I will be extremely surprised if Linux isn’t released with the Rumble update next month.

• Every time Rocket League is updated on SteamDB, the Linux depot is now also updated and this has been true for about two weeks now. This is the single most activity the Linux side of RL has ever seen being pushed into branches on Steam.

=> ↺ Fossil Echo, a story-driven, short and great looking platformer is still coming to Linux

• I really love the visuals in Fossil Echo! Sadly it wasn’t a day-1 release, but the developers have stated that they’re working hard on it.

=> ↺ Travel a dying world in The Final Station, Linux version confirmed

• I love indie games, as they tend to do gameplay larger studios won’t touch. The Final Station is another such brilliant idea I really want to play.

=> ↺ Razer drivers: reinventing Linux gaming

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ Lessons learned from using xmonad for a year

• Last year I switched to xmonad in the strive for a configurable yet minimalist environment. So far I am pretty satisfied with it. I’ve never experienced any crashes or slowdowns related to it, works easily for most of the tasks, and supports multi monitor setup. It is highly configurable and well documented, so it’s easy and fun to customize the whole environment to suit your unique workflows.

• In fact, it’s so minimal by default, that my first task was to figure out how I would use my system and configure it configure accordingly.

• I think it’s great to stop sometimes and rethink our tools and processes, explore different means to solve day-to-day problems and identify what could be improved. I like tinkering and seeking new stuff in my free time anyway, so starting with a minimalistic environment was very inspiring, because it forced me to rethink even some of the basic aspects of my workflows.

KDE/Akademy

=> ↺ KBibTeX 0.6.1-rc1 (0.6.0.95)

• After some time of activity on KBibTeX’s master branch, I finally returned to the stable branches to push forwards some releases.

=> ↺ Minuet 0.2: massive refactoring and Android version available

• It’s been a while since my last blog post about Minuet but that doesn’t mean we aren’t moving it forward. Actually a lot of work has been done lately, mostly related to architecture improvements, UX revamping, refactoring, code convergence, and its availability on Android devices. Minuet is a quite recent KDE project (it’s been developed since November, 2015) and I’m really delighted with what we achieved so far, given we are a small team made up of only two developers (including a GSoC student) and a designer.

=> ↺ Mobile IMG – 20160825-142223

=> ↺ QtCon and Randa Meetings 2017 date selection

=> ↺ LabPlot: Theme Manager – GSoC’16 Final Evaluations

=> ↺ Akademy: Let’s talk about music player and documentation

=> ↺ Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 8-Akademy2016)

=> ↺ Panels on shared screen edges

=> ↺ Pepper & Carrot comic goes animated!

=> ↺ 2016 Krita Sprint: Day 1

=> ↺ Krita 3.0.1 Beta Builds

=> ↺ What’s new in KDevelop 5.0?

=> ↺ KDevelop, Muon, Plasma 5.7.4

=> ↺ Cantor gets support of Julia language

=> ↺ Going to Akademy

=> ↺ Winding up GSoC.

=> ↺ Applications 16.08.0 and Frameworks 5.25.0 available in Chakra

• The latest updates for KDE’s Applications and Frameworks series are now available to all Chakra users, together with other package updates.

=> ↺ Marble: GSoC 2016 wrap-up

• Today is the deadline for submitting the final evaluations for Google Summer of Code 2016, that gives me the opportunity to write a wrap-up post about my project this summer.

=> ↺ facelift

=> ↺ KaOS Linux – One Of The Best KDE Distros

• KaOS Linux remains one of the most aesthetically pleasing Linux distros around sporting the beautiful KDE desktop environment. A visit to the KaOS Linux homepage clearly informs on the focus the developers that have taken with this distro. They describe it as a lean KDE distribution built from scratch and focus on Qt and KDE. The developers pride themselves on the fact that all their efforts are focused on one DE (KDE), one toolkit (Qt) and the one architecture (x86_64).

=> ↺ KDE Connect 1.0 Released, Lets You Reply to SMS From The Linux Desktop

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Quick Highlight

• Martin Blanchard put together a new “quick highlight” plugin for Builder this last week. It was a great example of how to submit a new feature, so I just wanted to highlight it here. Post to bugzilla, attach a patch, and we will review quickly and help with any additional integration that might be necessary.

=> ↺ Flowgraphs in GTK+

• At GUADEC 2016 in Karlsruhe, Germany, Daniel “grindhold” Brendle presented his work developing a new library and widget set that will allow GTK+ applications to implement flowgraphs in a standard manner. The widget set would enable applications to provide interactive widgets for linking filters and other block-oriented components—a type of interface many applications currently need to reinvent on their own.

• Flowgraphs, Brendle explained, are a general-purpose diagramming technique that many people will recognize from textbooks and other printed matter. They show how objects, information, and signals flow through some sort of process. Biology textbooks use them to illustrate circulation in the body, technical manuals use them to show how a manufacturing process runs, and so on. In software, he said, they are most familiar as the node-and-pipe diagrams that illustrate signal processing or data filtering.

=> ↺ The GNOME Newcomers initiative

• At GUADEC 2016 in Karlsruhe, Germany, Bastien Ilsø and Carlos Soriano reported on the revamped Newcomers section of the GNOME web site. The section is intended to draw in new users and developers and help them find their way around the project as well as to help them get the necessary development environment set up to begin contributing code.

=> ↺ The Begining

• The friendship/relationship with the awesome community of GNOME begins.

• What followed after 2 commits into the main branch, one application submission, and the result was the start of the most amazing few months. These months have been a humbling experience, the biggest learning experience, and the most productive time.

=> ↺ GTK+ Tester Window?

• For an internal application, I’ve created a Gtk.Window derived tester class, added some widgets to show current test, status, number of fails and a Gtk.Grid to attach custom widgets. This class expose some API to set a widget to test, autoclose and some signals you can use to run some tests.

=> ↺ GUADEC 2016

• A lot of great things happened – as always GUADEC with it’s perfect size got me to speak to a hell lot of new and interesting people. Thank you all for being there – it was a pleasure.

Distributions

=> ↺ 5 Strange Linux Distributions That Are Useful In Their Own Way

• Some of the weirder things you can find on the internet can be Linux distributions. Linux varies from tiny, 11mb terminals to eye candy leaking, feature packed desktop environments. It ranges from heavy metal ‘buntu to super secure, containerized linux.

• Because Linux is open source and free, anyone can edit it to their hearts content. Below are some of the more interesting edits, in descending order of usefulness to strangeness.

New Releases

=> ↺ Q4OS 1.6, Orion

• The significant Q4OS 1.6 ‘Orion’ release receives the most recent Trinity R14.0.3 stable version. Trinity R14.0.3 is the third maintenance release of the R14 series, it is intended to promptly bring bug fixes to users, while preserving overall stability. The complete list and release notes you will find on the Trinity desktop environment website.

• New Q4OS 1.6 release includes set of new features and fixes. The default desktop look has been slightly changed, Q4OS ‘Bourbon’ start menu and taskbar has been polished a bit and has got a few enhancements, for example the icons size varies proportionally to the system panel. Native Desktop profiler tool has got new, optimized ‘software to install’ list.

Screenshots/Screencasts

=> ↺ ConnochaetOS 14.2 Screenshot Tour

Slackware Family

=> ↺ ConnochaetOS 14.2 Officially Released Based on Slackware 14.2 and Salix Linux

• Henry Jensen from ConnochaetOS was happy and proud to announce the official release and general availability of the ConnochaetOS 14.2 GNU/Linux-libre operating system.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ How to Install Ubuntu on a MacBook Pro

=> ↺ Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 Beta 1 Download Now Available in ISO And Torrent Files

=> ↺ Lubuntu 16.10 Beta 1 Can Now Be Downloaded With Latest LXDE Desktop

=> ↺ Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Beta 1 Released As Part Of Yakkety Yak Launch

=> ↺ Ubuntu Linux 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) Beta 1 now available for download

=> ↺ Ubuntu 16.10 Unity 8 / Mir – Current State

=> ↺ This App Integrates Spotify Web With Your Ubuntu Desktop

• As we reported on earlier in the year, the official Spotify for Linux app is no longer under active development. Sure, it still receives minor updates now and then, but only in the bits of the code it shares with the (related) Windows and macOS apps. No Linux-specific improvements or features are currently planned.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Bytemark sponsor Ubuntu MATE

• A couple of weeks ago the Bytemark Managing Director, Matthew Bloch, contacted the Ubuntu MATE team to offer free hosting for the project. As of August 18th 2016 all the Ubuntu MATE infrastucture is hosted on Bytemark Cloud Servers.

=> ↺ Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Beta 1

• We are underwhelmed to announce, quite possibly, our most uninteresting beta release E-V-E-R! This beta release is all about the plumbing that transitions Ubuntu MATE to GTK 3.20. It really isn’t very interesting from an end-users perspective.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ EOMA68 modular laptop/desktop raises more than $150 thousand through crowdfunding, here’s what’s next

• The EOMA68 project is an effort to design a system of modular computing devices that use interchangeable PC cards. The processor, memory, storage, and operating system are all on a card that you can pop out of a laptop or desktop and replace with a different card.

• Theoretically any type of processor and operating system can run from an EOMA68 card, but the project is also designed to support free and open source software, which restricts some of the hardware that can be used… so the when founder Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton took to Crowd Supply to raise money to begin production of the first PC cards and laptop and desktop shells, the focus is on first-gen cards with low-power Allwinner A20 processors, 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage.

=> ↺ Seeed Studio’s ReSpeaker Speaks All the Voice Recognition Languages

• Seeed Studio recently launched its third Kickstarter campaign: ReSpeaker, an open hardware voice interface. After their previous Kickstarted IoT hardware, such as the RePhone, mostly focused on connectivity, the electronics manufacturer from Shenzhen now tackles another highly contested area of IoT: Voice recognition.

=> ↺ Open-source Piton CPU can scale into million-core system

=> ↺ Open Source SNES to USB Converter Lets You Emulate Legally

• [Andrew Milkovich] was inspired build his own Super Nintendo cartridge reader based on a device we covered an eternity (in internet years) ago. The device mounts a real cartridge as a USB mass storage device, allowing you to play your games using an emulator directly from the cart.

Phones

Tizen

=> ↺ Luxury Watches – Gear S2 3D Watchface Giveaway to 100 Tizen Experts Readers

Android

=> ↺ Android Nougat: 7 of the best features in Google’s new operating system

• Google has started to roll-out the latest iteration of its open source Android mobile operating system, Nougat.

• The new software is now available on Google Nexus devices, with smartphones from other manufacturers to follow. Android 7.0 Nougat beta testers will be the first to get the operating system update.

• Android Nougat, codenamed N, was previewed back in March.

• The finished release boasts a number of new features, including the ability to run two apps side-by-side, better battery life and improved encryption for personal data.

=> ↺ Kicking off The Maru OS Project!

• I’m happy to announce that Maru has been fully open-sourced under The Maru OS Project!

• There are many reasons that led me to open-source Maru, but a particularly important one is expanding Maru’s device support with the help of the community.

=> ↺ Samsung plans refurbished smartphone program: source

• Samsung Electronics Co Ltd plans to launch a program to sell refurbished used versions of its premium smartphones as early as next year, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

=> ↺ Samsung Mulling Refurbished Galaxy Phone Sales

• In a move that may make Samsung’s flagship Galaxy handsets more affordable to some buyers – and help the company cope with a plateauing smartphone market — the South Korean device maker is reportedly readying a refurbished premium phone program.

• According to a report in Reuters, the company plans to resell phones that are returned by users at the end of their one-year replacement programs. After being inspected and refurbished, the devices will be resold at significant discounts.

• In the U.S., Apple sells certified refurbished iPhones in the secondary market via resellers (the company also sells other refurbished items like Macs and iPads directly). As noted in the report, iPhones fetch roughly 69 percent of their original value after a year on the market, compared to 51 percent for Samsung Galaxy smartphones.

=> ↺ 5 Samsung TouchWiz features that should be in stock Android

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy Folder 2 promotional images surface; Android powered clamshell soon to be official?

=> ↺ Slow updates are hurting Android as an app platform, and Google Play

=> ↺ Android 7.0 Nougat wants to make it easier to switch from iOS

=> ↺ Android 7.0 Nougat, Polar M600, and Samsung Galaxy Note 7 (MobileTechRoundup show #379)

=> ↺ Here’s How You Can Get Android 7.0 Nougat On Your Nexus Device Right Now

=> ↺ Try this! 6 new Android 7.0 Nougat features to use now

• You’ve finally stepped up to Android 7.0 Nougat. Yay for shiny new toys (well … OSes)! But with all these new features and options and goodies, where should you start?

=> ↺ 4 Reasons to Install Android 7.0 Nougat & 2 Reasons Not To

=> ↺ AT&T pushes Marshmallow update for Galaxy S5 and S5 Active

=> ↺ Here are four hidden Android N features and how to enable them [Video]

=> ↺ Auralux: Constellations brings new twists to simple strategy, plus Android TV compatibility with local multiplayer

=> ↺ Maserati adds Android Auto to three models, but details are scarce

=> ↺ Android and chill

=> ↺ Android 7.0 Nougat’s setup process allows for importing data from iOS devices

=> ↺ How to: Update Nexus devices to Android 7.0 Nougat manually using OTA downloads

=> ↺ 12 biggest Android smartphone launches of August

• Planning to buy a new smartphone? How about checking out some new launches?

• The month of August saw smartphone manufacturers launching some great devices in the market, including three flagship devices.

• So for those of you who are in the market for a new smartphone, here are 12 of the biggest launches (so far) to make things easier.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ #MyOpenHA Part 1 -Philosophy

• Home Automation. The holy hipster and geek grail. I have played with it. I have tried. I have failed. But today I am proud to have a solution I can truly endorse. So join me on this journey. This series will explain my solution, in excruciating detail. In the hope that I can learn from you while I am explaining. This series will be filled over time with more and more articles. But now, let’s talk about philosophy. The Why. Soon you will see the What and How. One promise, or the TL;DR: It is all 100% Open Source.

• Well, almost. I have integrated some quite non-open things but always in an Open Source Way.

Events

=> ↺ On speaking at community conferences

• Many people reading this have already suffered me talking to them about Prometheus. In personal conversation, or in the talks I gave at DebConf15 in Heidelberg, the Debian SunCamp in Lloret de Mar, BRMlab in Prague, and even at a talk on a different topic at the RABS in Cluj-Napoca.

=> ↺ TPM Microconference Accepted into LPC 2016

• Although trusted platform modules (TPMs) have been the subject of some controversy over the years, it is quite likely that they have important roles to play in preventing firmware-based attacks, protecting user keys, and so on. However, some work is required to enable TPMs to successfully play these roles, including getting TPM support into bootloaders, securely distributing known-good hashes, and providing robust and repeatable handling of upgrades.

• In short, given the ever-more-hostile environments that our systems must operate in, it seems quite likely that much help will be needed, including from TPMs. For more details, see the TPM Microconference wiki page.

=> ↺ More translations added to the SFD countdown

• Software Freedom Day is celebrated all around the world and as usual our community helps us to provide marketing materials in their specific languages. While the wiki is rather simple to translate, the Countdown remains a bit more complicated and time consuming to localize. One needs to edit the SVG file and generate roughly a 100 pictures, then upload them to the wiki.

• Still this doesn’t scare the SFD teams around the world and we are happy to announce three more languages are ready to be used: French, Chinese and German!

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Disable the new Firefox 48 location bar – Tutorial

• Here we are. Seven minutes later, our life is bearable again, but not perfect. Thank you Mozilla, thank you very much. This is exactly what I needed to enrich my life. After all, we all know, cosmetic changes are good, because that’s what plants crave. Stop with these idiotic tweaks please. No one cares. It won’t make the browser better. It won’t change the market share. It will not attract idiots, as idiots are happy. It will only alienate diehard users who keep on using your browser because they have no alternative. From a loved favorite to the least of evils choice. That’s what Firefox has become.

SaaS/Back End

=> ↺ What’s Happening in OpenStack-Ansible (WHOA) – August 2016

• My goal with these posts is to inform more people about what we’re doing in the OpenStack-Ansible community and bring on more contributors to the project.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ PowerShell on Linux? No, Thank You [comic]

BSD

=> ↺ The Importance of BSD

• The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) is a Unix operating system developed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) of the University of California, Berkeley.

=> ↺ Second FreeBSD 11.0 Release Candidate Restores Support for ‘nat global’ in IPFW

• Glen Barber from the FreeBSD project announced the availability of the second RC (Release Candidate) development build of the upcoming FreeBSD 11.0 operating system.

=> ↺ LLVM Might Get An AAP Back-End (Altruistic Processor)

• There’s an active proposal to incorporate a back-end into LLVM for AAP, a processor ISA for deeply-embedded Harvard architectures.

• AAP is designed for FPGA usage and there is an open-source soft-core with commercial deployments also being available. AAP is short for the Altruistic Processor and is described in technical detail here. AAP is said to be an original design but inspired by the OpenRISC / RISC-V projects.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Unifont 9.0.02 Released

• Unifont 9.0.02 is released. The package and related files can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unifont/unifont-9.0.02/

=> ↺ GCC 7 To Continue Improving Debug Messages, More Helpful Assembly Output

• Early on LLVM’s Clang compiler offered much better debugging / error messages than GCC but in the past few years the GNU Compiler Collection developers have been working on generating more helpful messages too.

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ The Last LinuxCon, MariaDB Goes Open Core & More…

• Linus Torvalds being interviewed by VMware’s Dirk Hohndel on the last day of the last LinuxCon North America. Next year’s event in Los Angeles will be renamed Open Source Summit.

=> ↺ GPL compliance suit against VMware dismissed

• In a setback to the Christoph Hellwig’s efforts to enforce the GPL on code that he wrote in the Linux kernel, his suit against VMware in Germany has been dismissed on procedural grounds. The court ruled that he had not provided enough specificity about the code he was claiming had been used by the company. The merits of the GPL and whether the two main parts of VMware’s product constitute a derived work of the kernel were not even considered. There may be another chance for the court to do so, however, as Hellwig will appeal the dismissal.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ UK-French Data Taskforce publishes joint report

• “Invest in and share experiences building core data registers, learning from the French National Address Database experience”; “develop initiatives to bring basic data literacy into primary and secondary education”; and “commission research into algorithmic transparency and accountability” are among the recommendations listed in a report published in July by the joint French-UK Data Taskforce.

=> ↺ Tuscany: how to promote the economy of sharing and collaboration

• In June, the region of Tuscany (Italy), in collaboration with Open Toscana and ANCI Toscana, launched a project, the goal of which is to “build a regional policy on the economy of sharing and collaboration”.

Open Data

=> ↺ MS Tries But Just Doesn’t Get FLOSS

• This is what drove me to GNU/Linux so many years ago.

=> ↺ Microsoft’s maps lost Melbourne because it used bad Wikipedia data

• Microsoft has laid part of the blame for Bing Maps’ mis-location of the Australian city of Melbourne by a whole hemisphere on Wikipedia.

• Yes, Wikipedia, “the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit.”

• Microsoft made its admission after your correspondent took to Twitter on Monday to do what we in publishing call “pimping”the story of Melbourne’s mis-placement.

• Ricky Brundritt, a senior program manager at Bing Maps, noticed that pimping and responded as follows.

=> ↺ Northern Ireland promotes Open Data in education

• The Northern Ireland Department of Finance has supported a challenge that encourages the re-use of public Open Data in education. Called the OpenDataNI Challenge – Using Open Data for Education” (ODNI4EDU), this project, officially launched on June 14, intends to award two applications or educational tools and resources that make use of at least one dataset published on the portal OpendataNI.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Try this handy tool to convert a Web site into a native app with Electron

=> ↺ Introducing CloudiumOS

• It is a complete multi platform operating system that allows you to manage your documents, access your media files and collaborate with other people on the go. CloudiumOS can work side-by-side with another operating system (either via a VM, a Desktop app or Mobile App) or as a standalone installation.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ EpiPen Maker’s Stock Value Plunges Nearly $3 Billion as Investors Panic

• Mylan Pharmaceuticals—the company that makes the EpiPen rescue device—has watched its stock value plummet over the last five days as panicky investors jump ship.

• According to U.S. Uncut, outrage over Mylan’s decision to jack up the price of the EpiPen has spooked shareholders, whose departures have reduced the value of Mylan stock by 12.4 percent. On August 19, Mylan stocks went from $49.20 per share to $43.11 on August 24, a net loss of nearly $3 billion for the company.

=> ↺ Big Pharma Increased Price of Life-Saving EpiPen by Over 450 Percent

• Martin Shkreli became one of the most notorious people in the United States for hiking the price of a rarely used life-saving drug by 4,000 percent in September 2015. And nearly a year later, dozens of reports are now coming out about how Mylan Pharmaceuticals hiked the price of the very common life-saving EpiPen by over 450 percent since Mylan bought EpiPen in 2007.

=> ↺ As the UN finally admits role in Haiti cholera outbreak – here is how victims must be compensated

• The United Nations has, at long last, accepted some responsibility that it played a part in a cholera epidemic that broke out in Haiti in 2010 and has since killed at least 9,200 people and infected nearly a million people.

• This is the first time that the UN has acknowledged that it bears a duty towards the victims. It is a significant step forward in the quest for accountability and justice.

• Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is frequently devastated by disasters – both natural and man-made. Yet cholera was not one of its problems before 2010. Then a group of UN peacekeepers was sent to help after an earthquake.

• The UN did not screen its peacekeepers for cholera, nor did it build adequate toilet facilities in its peacekeeping camps. As a result, wastewater carrying cholera flowed directly into a tributary that feeds Haiti’s main river. Given that vast numbers of the population rely on the Artibonite river for washing, cooking, cleaning and drinking, cholera quickly spread around many parts of the country. The disease is now endemic within the country. People continue to die at an alarming rate by this preventable and treatable disease.

=> ↺ The UN undermined both public health and human rights in Haiti

• Despite the clear risks, in the long run, the UN would have clearly benefited from transparent investigations into the outbreak, and could have risk-managed any negative outcomes. Its shortsighted obfuscation and failure to accept responsibility was disastrous from a public health perspective. It likely undermined efforts to control the cholera outbreak and led to more deaths of impoverished Haitians, already suffering in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake. It also violated key human rights principles promoted by the organization, such as the right of Haitians to the highest attainable standard of health.

• Ultimately, this approach damaged the UN’s credibility, and sent an unfortunate message to other governments, multilateral organizations, as well as transnational entities (multilateral corporations) about how to behave in the face of tragic public health mistakes.

• [...]

• UN officials counter that the organization has been instrumental in efforts to remedy their mistake, leading the fight against cholera through public health messages and treatment. Should these efforts be integrated into any calculation of the harm caused by the UN? The amount demanded in a recent US court system filing—USD 40 billion—is five times the UN’s yearly peacekeeping budget. How would any payout affect ongoing efforts by the UN to address governance, development, and health challenges in Haiti and elsewhere? Does such a ruling have unforeseen negative consequences? Would it spur organizations working in challenging and dangerous environments, such as post-earthquake Haiti, to be more responsible or possibly deter such work?

=> ↺ Obamacare’s Faltering for One Simple Reason: Profit

• There have been dozens if not hundreds of news articles about Aetna leaving the Affordable Health Care Act’s online marketplaces in eleven states, and whether this signals serious problems for Obamacare down the road.

• But none of them have truly explained that what’s happening with Aetna is the consequence of a flaw built into Obamacare from the start: It permits insurance companies to make a profit on the basic healthcare package Americans are now legally required to purchase.

• This makes Obamacare fundamentally different from essentially all systems of universal healthcare on earth. (There is one tiny exception, the Netherlands, but of the four insurance companies that cover 90 percent of Dutch citizens, just one is for profit.)

Security

=> ↺ OpenSSL 1.1.0 Series Release Notes

=> ↺ Linux.PNScan Malware Brute-Forces Linux-Based Routers

=> ↺ St. Jude stock shorted on heart device hacking fears; shares drop

• The stock of pacemaker manufacturer St. Jude Medical Inc (STJ.N) fell sharply on Thursday after short-selling firm Muddy Waters said it had placed a bet that the shares would fall, claiming its implanted heart devices were vulnerable to cyber attacks.

• St. Jude, which agreed in April to sell itself for $25 billion to Abbott Laboratories (ABT.N), said the allegations were false. St Jude shares closed down 4.96 percent, the biggest one-day fall in 7 months and at a 7.4 percent discount to Abbott’s takeover offer.

• Muddy Waters head Carson Block said the firm’s position was motivated by research from a cyber security firm, MedSec Holdings Inc, which has a financial arrangement with Muddy Waters. MedSec asserted that St. Jude’s heart devices were vulnerable to cyber attack and were a risk to patients.

=> ↺ BlackArch Linux ISO now comes with over 1,500 hacking tools

• On a move to counter distros like Kali Linux and BackBox, BlackArch has got a new ISO image that includes more than 1,500 hacking tools. The update also brings several security and software tweaks to deliver an enhanced platform for various penetration testing and security assessment activities.

• The new BlackArch Linux ISO includes an all new Linux installer and more than 100 new penetration testing and hacking tools. There is also Linux 4.7.1 to fix the bugs and compatibility issues of the previous kernel. Additionally, the BlackArch team has updated all its in-house tools and system packages as well as updated menu entries for the Openbox, Fluxbox and Awesome windows managers.

=> ↺ Opera User? Your Stored Passwords May Have Been Stolen

• Barely a week passes without another well-known web company suffering a data breach or hack of some kind. This week it is Opera’s turn. Opera Software, the company behind the web-browser and recently sold to a Chinese consortium for $600 million, reported a ‘server breach incident’ on its blog this weekend.

=> ↺ When it comes to protecting personal data, security gurus make their own rules

• Marcin Kleczynski, CEO of a company devoted to protecting people from hackers, has safeguarded his Twitter account with a 14-character password and by turning on two-factor authentication, an extra precaution in case that password is cracked.

• But Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and chief technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, doesn’t bother running an anti-virus program on his computer.

• And Bruce Schneier? The prominent cryptography expert and chief technology officer of IBM-owned security company Resilient Systems, won’t even risk talking about what he does to secure his devices and data.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Erdogan at a crossroad: dictatorship or democracy

• An interview with A.H. Banisadr, Iran’s former president, about the aftermath of the coup in Turkey.

=> ↺ The Dumbed-Down New York Times

• In a column mocking the political ignorance of the “dumbed-down” American people and lamenting the death of “objective fact,” New York Times columnist Timothy Egan shows why so many Americans have lost faith in the supposedly just-the-facts-ma’am mainstream media.

• Egan states as flat fact, “If more than 16 percent of Americans could locate Ukraine on a map, it would have been a Really Big Deal when Trump said that Russia was not going to invade it — two years after they had, in fact, invaded it.”

=> ↺ Where are the Child Victims of the West?

• The Facebook page contains a post cheering on al-Nusra, the US-designated terrorist group, referring to them as ‘rebels’, not ‘terrorists’ and also calling the Syrian government a ‘regime’, the standard terminology of the corporate media when referring to Assad’s administration. Such phrasing destroys the Aleppo Media Centre as a neutral, credible source.

=> ↺ Is Syria Ceasefire Achievable? US-Russia Talks Bring No Solution

• Meanwhile, U.S.-allied Kurdish forces say they are now being bombed by U.S.-backed Turkish forces, Reuters reported Saturday, which Common Dreams noted was Turkey’s goal from the start of its military incursion into Syria earlier this week.

=> ↺ Clintonites Prepare for War on Syria

• Neocons and Clintonites have launched a major campaign with the goal of direct US military intervention and aggression against Syria, potentially leading to war with Iran and Russia. An early indication emerged as soon as it was clear the Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Party nominee. Following the California primary, the NY Times reported on State Department diplomats issuing an internal memo “urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al Assad.”

=> ↺ Venezuela’s Maduro Accuses US of “Imperialist Attack” Against Latin American Leftists

• Venezuela’s leftist president Nicolas Maduro told a crowd of supporters Saturday that the turmoil of recent months in progressive Latin American countries are the result of “an imperialist attack on all,” teleSUR reports.

=> ↺ Venezuela’s Maduro Says Dilma Coup, Killing of Bolivia Minister ‘Imperialist Attack’ Against All

• President Maduro said the recent events in Bolivia and Brazil are part of a new plan to destabilize progressive governments in the region.

• Following the murder of the Bolivian vice minister by miners and as the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff reaches its final stage, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro warned Saturday of “imperialist” attacks on the region’s left and compared the situation to a new Plan Condor.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Standing Rock Sioux Chairman: Dakota Access Pipeline “Is Threatening the Lives of My Tribe”

• In North Dakota, indigenous activists are continuing to protest the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which they say would threaten to contaminate the Missouri River. More than a thousand indigenous activists from dozens of different tribes across the country have traveled to the Sacred Stone Spirit Camp, which was launched on April 1 by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The protests have so far shut down construction along parts of the pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has also sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over its approval of the pipeline. For more, we’re joined by Dave Archambault, chairperson of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He’s in Washington, D.C., where there is a hearing in the tribe’s lawsuit on Wednesday.

=> ↺ Singapore chokes on smoke from Indonesia’s slash-and-burn fires

• A swathe of south-east Asia is blanketed in a smoky haze as smoke from forest fires in Indonesia drifts across the Malacca Strait to neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore’s air quality has deteriorated to very unhealthy levels, peaking at a reading of 215 on the National Environment Agency’s Pollutant Standards Index. Levels above 100 are defined as unhealthy and above 200 very unhealthy.

=> ↺ Just 90 companies are to blame for most climate change, this ‘carbon accountant’ says

• Last month, geographer Richard Heede received a subpoena from Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Smith, a climate change doubter, became concerned when the attorneys general of several states launched investigations into whether ExxonMobil had committed fraud by sowing doubts about climate change even as its own scientists knew it was taking place. The congressman suspected a conspiracy between the attorneys general and environmental advocates, and he wanted to see all the communications among them. Predictably, his targets included advocacy organizations such as Greenpeace, 350.org, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. They also included Heede, who works on his own aboard a rented houseboat on San Francisco Bay in California.

=> ↺ What Baton Rouge Can Learn from New Orleans About Bringing Flood Victims Home

• In the wake of the nation’s worst natural disaster since Superstorm Sandy, flood recovery efforts are now underway in Baton Rouge: Electricity is operating in certain neighborhoods, damaged floors and walls are being removed from homes, and homeowners are beginning to deal with emergency assistance and insurance—or a lack thereof.

• Soon, another aftereffect of the storm will sweep Baton Rouge communities: climate refugees—people who are displaced by climate change or natural disasters—will begin the daunting task of rebuilding their lives.

=> ↺ Nature Is Not Benign, It’s Responsive

• There’s a reason why Indigenous peoples everywhere have led on dealing intelligently with climate change: not because they’re wiser or nobler but because they haven’t experienced a rupture with the non-human world to the same degree as most of us. They remain aware of the ways we’re part of the natural realm, and how dangerous and menacing it can be if, like any relationship, that one is left unattended or gets misshapen by a power imbalance. If you live oblivious to something you’re intimately part of, the odds don’t favor you, ultimately.

• Now when I look out the kitchen window and see the squirrel (not “a” squirrel anymore: he’s become an individual, with motives and capacities), I don’t think of him as “scampering” (too cute and generic); more like lurking, working and perhaps pondering a revisit. You could say we’ve entered a relationship, with mutual regard.

=> ↺ We Can Have a Healthy Climate With Zero Warming in Our Lifetimes

• We can have a healthy climate — a climate with zero warming — in our lifetimes. The message for the last 20 years has been that we have to reduce emissions drastically to prevent dangerous climate change of more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F). This strategy would have likely worked when it was first suggested, but we have delayed far too long since then. Now, even stringent emissions reductions allow our warming to at least double and likely triple before finally beginning to cool.

• We must begin to reduce the load of already-emitted, long-lived carbon dioxide (CO2) climate pollution in the sky, regardless of costs. The good news is that, not only will costs be very similar to many things we do in our society today whose costs are taken for granted, but by disconnecting emissions reductions strategies from the removal of already-emitted climate pollution in our sky, we vastly simplify the myriad strategies that have been developed to avoid dangerous climate change.

=> ↺ 10th Temperature Record-Breaking Month in a Row

• October. November. December. January. February. March. April. May. June. And now July.

=> ↺ Indonesian police arrest hundreds in connection to burning land

• Singapore’s National Environment Agency said on Friday it expected air quality to remain poor into the weekend as Indonesian disaster management officials cautioned that wildfires in Sumatra and Kalimantan could persist through September.

• On Thursday Indonesia’s newly appointed police chief Tito Karnavian said police had prepared cases against 454 individuals in connection with burning land. “The arrests of individuals has increased compared with last year,” he said in Jakarta. “Just in Riau [province] 85 people have been arrested.”

• The head of the police’s criminal investigation division, Ari Dono Sukmanto, said he expected the number of arrests to rise in the coming months. Indonesian environment minster Siti Nurbaya called on police to “investigate thoroughly” for any links to companies and local government officials.

=> ↺ Raging Amazon forest fires threaten uncontacted indigenous tribe

• In April 2012, Survival International launched a global campaign to save the Awá, an uncontacted indigenous people that has been called “Earth’s most threatened tribe.” Two years later, the campaign claimed victory when the Brazilian government sent troops to remove illegal cattle ranchers and loggers from Awá land.

• But now the Awá are facing yet another existential threat in the form of forest fires. According to Survival International, fires are “raging” in Awá territory on the edge of the Brazilian Amazon and “threatening to wipe out uncontacted members of the Awá tribe.”

• Small groups of Guajajara Indians, the Awá’s neighbors in the Amazon, reportedly battled the blaze for days without the assistance of government agents until Brazil’s Environment Ministry launched a fire-fighting operation two weeks ago.

• According to Survival International, nearly 50 percent of the forest cover in the territory was destroyed by forest fires started by loggers in late 2015, and the Environment Ministry has warned that the situation is “even worse this year.”

Finance

=> ↺ The Hidden Homeless Population

• Most children in the United States spend their school days dreaming of their next birthday party or worrying whether they’re popular enough. Not America’s homeless youth.

• Students like Jamie Talley, who first became homeless at age 2, are thinking about how the weather will affect their sleep and how to silence their growling stomachs during a test.

• “I was pushed out of the world and left to survive on my own,” Talley said in a scholarship essay quoted by the Washington Post. “I had given up on the possibilities for me to become somebody.”

• Fortunately, Talley had a teacher who helped her get Medicaid and pushed her to focus on her education.

• But most homeless students don’t feel supported at school. They feel that their schools simply don’t have the funding, time, staff, community awareness, or resources to help, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. This feeling of invisibility continues to disconnect citizens with consistent housing from those without.

• There are more than 1.3 million homeless students in the U.S., according to a new report by Civic Enterprises and Hart Research Associates. Seventy-eight percent of homeless youth surveyed in the study have experienced homelessness more than once in their lives.

• Why are so many of us disconnected from this crisis?

• Many homeless students say they’re uncomfortable talking with their schools about their housing situation and the challenges that impact their ability to learn. Additionally, 94 percent of those surveyed stay with different people on an inconsistent basis, adding to the ambiguity that makes recognizing homelessness more difficult.

=> ↺ She’ll keep America not so great for workers

• The Trump plan would, of course, be a disaster for working people–and another windfall for the rich, with its proposals for eliminating the estate tax and opening up new tax loopholes for the wealthy.

• But Clinton’s own economic plan isn’t very new, much less positive for working people. It reads a lot like the policies of the Bill Clinton administration–and while Hillary denounces the failed Republican policies recycled by Trump, the truth is Clintonomics repurposed many of the GOP proposals that came before it.

• Providing targeted tax breaks to corporations, cutting “red tape” and doing away with regulations on business were all hallmarks of the Clinton-era policies that successfully made a break from the Democrats’ past image of the party of social welfare spending.

=> ↺ Education Reformers’ Core Beliefs Are Objectionable

• America’s corporate education reform movement has been a marketing success. Reformers have popularized slogans that promote a radically new public school system; one where tenure and bargaining rights are abolished or severely degraded; where CEOs and administrators, who may have backgrounds in business, politics or public relations rather than education, make hiring and firing decisions; and where data-based accountability — necessarily driven by test scores — perpetually imperils schools, tenure- and union-less teachers, as well as students who must conform to onerous protocols and codes of conduct under charter school contracts. Reformers’ slogans such as “demography isn’t destiny” and “poverty is no excuse” have been ingrained in the minds of all who follow education issues — and have apparently been successful in advancing their agenda. But ironically, while reformers’ slogans are well known, their core ideas around such reformer bedrocks as Teach For America, charter schools, and educational expertise are so objectionably elitist that they are unutterable.

=> ↺ Postal Contract Narrows the Gap between Tiers

• They didn’t end three-tier in a single blow. But in a new contract covering 200,000 members, the American Postal Workers Union made serious headway and fended off most concessionary demands, including the Postal Service’s effort to create yet another tier.

• The union entered bargaining with little obvious leverage. It was up against a management that’s been openly collaborating with postal unions’ Congressional foes to push a frenzy of cuts—slashing delivery standards, shutting down mail plants, privatizing work, and selling off post offices to real estate sharks.

• Postal workers can’t legally strike. If the union and management don’t reach a deal, an arbitrator writes the contract—which is what finally happened. Arbitrator Stephen Goldberg announced the results July 8.

• He stopped short of eliminating the three-tier system, as the union had proposed. But the new contract shrinks the number of bottom-tier workers and improves their situation, while defending the traditional raises and no-layoff protection for the two upper tiers.

=> ↺ Close My Tax Loophole

• My fellow venture capitalists and private equity investors are paying close attention to the heated election-year rhetoric about the future of “carried interest,” which is the performance fee we charge to manage other people’s money. Carried interest is the fund manager’s share of the earnings from a profitable investment, normally paid on top of a much smaller management fee.

• It’s also a subject of increasing political disfavor. Over the past year, every major presidential candidate — from Jeb Bush and Donald J. Trump to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — has called for an end to a tax loophole that exists for carried interest. Mrs. Clinton has vowed that if Congress does not close the loophole, as president she would ask the Treasury Department to use its regulatory authority to do so.

• Ultimately, the controversy has to do with tax fairness, or the lack thereof. Instead of being taxed as wages or commissions earned, carried interest is currently taxed as if it were a personal investment, or capital gains. This gives us a significant tax advantage since the capital gains tax rate is about 50 percent lower than the top rate on ordinary income.

• When I started my first fund, Alan Patricof Associates, in 1970, I vividly remember my accountant telling me about my first sale of an investment: “We’re going to treat this as capital gain, but sooner or later, it will be characterized as ordinary income.”

=> ↺ Last BHS stores to close for final time after 88 years

• The last BHS stores are set to close their doors for the final time, ending an 88-year presence on the High Street.

• The closure of the final 22 shops dotted around the UK comes after the retailer was placed into administration in March but failed to find a buyer.

• Previous owners Dominic Chappell and Sir Philip Green have been criticised for mismanaging the chain and failing to protect the company pension scheme.

• Administrators have already made 141 store closures over recent weeks.

=> ↺ Dimon is Forever

• Since neither poor earnings by the bank nor a need to find the money with which to pay Mr. Dimon his $27.5 million annual compensation explains why the interest rate on credit card cash advances has increased, there has to be some other explanation and, in fact, there is. Morgan Chase raised the interest rate on those credit cards because it could.

=> ↺ ‘People In Poverty Do Work’: What Paul Ryan Misunderstands About Poverty

• Twenty years later, it’s clear that welfare reform has left more families with fewer resources. There has been a 75% drop in the number of Americans receiving cash assistance since 1996, and a sharp rise in the number of households with children with incomes of less than $2 per day. There are 3 million American children who now live on no money for at least three months out of the year.

• [...]

• Ryan claims he is focused on moving people into full-time work—the surest way to get people out of poverty, he says. And it’s true—full-time jobs that pay well and provide benefits are indeed the best path to get out of poverty.

• But that’s not what Ryan is promoting, and his solution—like welfare reform before it—would not have helped me. (Nor would his votes—at least 10 times—against raising the minimum wage.)

=> ↺ Obama’s Campaign for TPP Could Drag Down the Democrats

• How much is President Obama willing to harm the Democratic Party in order to win approval for the deeply unpopular Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “trade” agreement? We may soon find out.

• On Tuesday, Politico broke the story that the White House will be “making an all-out push to win passage of the deal in the lame duck session of Congress, organizing 30 events over the congressional recess.” The effort will be designed to put pressure not only on Democratic members of Congress, but also on swing Republican votes, by lobbying important business interests in their districts.

=> ↺ TTIP Has ‘De Facto Failed,’ Says German Economic Minister

• Germany’s Vice Chancellor and Economic Minister said that the controversial Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has “de facto failed,” admitting that negotiations between the U.S. and E.U. have completely stalled.

• “Negotiations with the U.S. have de facto failed, because of course as Europeans we couldn’t allow ourselves to submit to American demands,” Sigmar Gabriel told the German news station ZDF in an interview that will air at 7pm German time Sunday, according to Der Spiegel.

• “Everything has stalled,” Gabriel said.

=> ↺ Germany’s economy minister: U.S.-EU free trade talks have failed

• Germany’s Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Sunday that talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a free trade deal being negotiated by the United States and the European Union, had essentially failed.

• “The negotiations with the USA have de facto failed because we Europeans did not want to subject ourselves to American demands,” he said, according to a written transcript from German broadcaster ZDF of an interview due to be broadcast on Sunday.

=> ↺ “TTIP Has Failed” – Global Justice Now Response

• “The fact that TTIP has failed is testament to the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets to protest against it, the three million people who signed a petition calling for it to be scrapped, and the huge coalition of civil society groups, trade unions and activists who came together to stop it. TTIP would have resulted in a massive corporate power grab, and sovereign democracies across the EU would have been deeply compromised.

=> ↺ Common Core’s New New Math Has the Same Problem as the Old New Math

• Bad ideas are like unlucky pennies – they keep coming back again.

• Take the New Math. Or maybe I should say the New New Math.

• Common Core State Standards suggests we teach children a new way to do arithmetic. We should focus on multiple ways to reach an answer with an emphasis on understanding the concept behind the problem rather than just manipulating numbers.

• It sounds fine in theory – until you think about it for five minutes.

• When learning a new skill, it’s best to master a single, simple approach before being exposed to other more complex methods. Otherwise, you run the risk of confusion, frustration and ultimately not learning how to solve the problem.

• Take directions.

• If you’re lost and you ask for directions, you don’t want someone to tell you five ways to reach your destination. You want one, relatively simple way to get there – preferably with the least amount of turns and the highest number of landmarks.

• Maybe later if you’re going to be traveling to this place frequently, you may want to learn alternate routes. But the first time, you’re more concerned about finding the destination (i.e. getting the answer) than understanding how the landscape would appear on a map.

• This is the problem with Common Core math. It doesn’t merely ALLOW students to pursue alternate methods of solving problems. It REQUIRES them to know all the ways the problem can be solved and to be able to explain each method. Otherwise, it presumes to evaluate the student’s understanding as insufficient.

=> ↺ A Do-Over for Our Unequal Economy?

• Families in the upper reaches of the American economy, by contrast, have done just swell. Families in the top 10 percent, the Congressional Budget Office calculates, have seen their net worths increase an average 153 percent.

=> ↺ Greek Debt and the New Financial Imperialism

• This week marks the first anniversary of the 2015 Greek debt crisis, the third in that country’s recent history since 2010. Last Aug. 20-21, 2015, the ‘Troika’—i.e., the pan-European institutions of the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB), plus the IMF-imposed a third debt deal on Greece. Greece was given US$98 billion in loans from the Troika. A previous 2012 Troika imposed debt deal had added nearly US$200 billion to an initial 2010 debt deal of US$140 billion.

• That’s approximately US$440 billion in Troika loans over a five year period, 2010-2015. The question is: who is benefitting from the US$440 billion? It’s not Greece. If not the Greek economy and its people, then who? And have we seen the last of Greek debt crises?

• One might think that US$440 billion in loans would have helped Greece recover from the global recession of 2008-09, the second European recession of 2011-13 that followed, and the Europe-wide chronic, stagnant economic growth ever since. But no, the US$440 billion in debt the Troika piled on Greece has actually impoverished Greece even further, condemning it to eight years of economic depression with no end in sight.

• To pay for the US$440 billion, in three successive debt agreements the Troika has required Greece to cut government spending on social services, eliminate hundreds of thousands of government jobs, lower wages for public and private sector workers, reduce the minimum wage, cut and eliminate pensions, raise the cost of workers’ health care contributions, and pay higher sales and local property taxes. As part of austerity, the Troika has also required Greece to sell off its government owned utilities, ports, and transport systems at ‘firesale’ (i.e. below) market prices.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Jill Stein in Colorado: The Photos You Need to See

• On Saturday, Jill spoke at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church. A large number of people showed up to hear her.

=> ↺ Clinton Foundation Official Requests State Lunch Invitation, Special Seating for Foundation Allies, Emails Show

• A series of newly released State Department emails obtained by ABC News offers fresh insight on direct contact between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s inner circle while she was Secretary of State.

• The emails -– released as part of a public records lawsuit by conservative group Citizens United and shared exclusively with ABC — reveal what the group claims is new evidence Foundation allies received special treatment. [Read the emails here.]

• In one December 2010 email chain with Clinton’s closest aide Huma Abedin, then-top Clinton Foundation official Doug Band offers names for a State Department lunch with Chinese President Hu Jintao scheduled for January 2011.

=> ↺ Green Party Candidates: Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka

• Born in Chicago and raised in Highland Park, Illinois, Dr. Jill Stein is a physician and longtime political and environmental activist with the GPUS. According to her campaign website, Stein “graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1973, and from Harvard Medical School in 1979.” She unsuccessfully ran for governor of Massachusetts as the nominee of the Green-Rainbow Party, the Massachusetts affiliate of the national Green Party. Stein also ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives in 2004, and for Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth in 2006, and was the Green Party nominee for U.S. president in 2012.

• Despite her loss in the 2012 presidential election, coming in fourth place with 469,628 votes (0.36 percent of the national vote), Stein holds the record for the most votes won by a female presidential candidate in a general election. However, Hil­lary Clinton, unless forced out of the race, is likely to break this record in November.

• Endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement, Stein selected and the Greens nominated radical Black Nationalist and human rights activist Ajamu Baraka as the Green Party vice-presidential nominee.

• Also born in Chicago, Baraka served as the founding executive director of the US Human Rights Network, a self-described “national network of organizations and individuals working to strengthen a human rights movement and culture within the United States,” from 2004 to 2011.

=> ↺ How Sanders Shaped the National Discourse on Class: A Media Analysis

• Now that Bernie Sanders’ campaign is officially over, many of his supporters are adrift. The same week the Sanders’ campaign officially ended, the systematic efforts of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to sabotage his campaign became a matter of public record, thanks to WikiLeaks. The media largely ignored this scandal and proceeded to fawn over various politicians at the Democratic National Convention, as if they were deities. And Bob Woodward appeared on the August 14 Fox News Sunday, smugly joking that Sanders will now “write his memoirs about the revolution that didn’t quite happen.”

• But Sanders supporters should not get disillusioned. It may seem easy to forget, but the primary goal of the Sanders’ campaign was not the presidency, but a “political revolution.” Winning an election was a goal, to be sure, but “revolution” was the goal. The distinction matters. Consider the dictionary definition of revolution: “a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system.” Electing Sanders wouldn’t have been a revolutionary act by itself; the bulk of the work, no matter who won, was always going to take place after Election Day.

=> ↺ Number of registered lobbyists plunges as spending declines yet again

• The lobbying industry may start arguing for its own bailout bill, given the relentless decline in reported spending for its services.

• The first quarter of 2016 was sluggish, the second similarly so. And with it came a pronounced dive in the number of active registered lobbyists.

• With 325 fewer lobbyists registered in the second quarter of 2016 than in the first, this marks the biggest single-quarter drop in four years and puts the number of registered lobbyists at the lowest point OpenSecrets has ever recorded. Since 1998, the total number of lobbyists has never dipped below 10,000, but that figure has been falling ever since it peaked at nearly 15,000 in 2007 and this quarter’s decrease puts it at just more than 9,700.

=> ↺ Open up debates to Johnson, Stein

• With two less than optimum candidates for president filling the Democratic and Republican slots, two other candidates have generated heightened interest.

• But not enough, apparently, to convince the Commission on Presidential Debates to open the door and let them in.

• And a legal challenge to the format determined by the commission was rejected earlier this month by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer.

• The lawsuit had been brought by Libertarian party presidential nominee Gary Johnson and Green party nominee Jill Stein, among others. It alleged that the threshold set by the debate commission was designed to prevent any but the major-party nominees from participating in the debate. And that is clearly the case.

• This threshold is set at 15 percent support from an average of public polls, a much more exacting standard than the 5 percent threshold set by Congress to qualify for public campaign funds.

=> ↺ Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein campaigns in Colorado

• Voters not in tune with everything politics may not even know what the Green Party is. That’s the party Dr. Jill Stein represents. It’s the party that is based on principles like social justice and protecting the environment.

• The trouble for Stein? She’s not well-known. She represents the party that hardly gets any airtime, the party that does not spend millions on ad campaigns, the party hidden behind the big two candidates from the two big parties.

• But there is a market for Stein, one with plenty of devout supporters.

• New numbers show more and more Colorado voters are registering Green and Libertarian. Right now there are more than 11,000 registered Green Party voters and 35,000 registered Libertarian voters.

• That’s not enough to win a presidency, but that is not stopping Dr. Stein from hitting the campaign trail.

• She joined her supporters at a Colorado Springs park Saturday afternoon.

=> ↺ Let a Third Candidate Join the Clinton-Trump Debates

• A month from now, the Commission on Presidential Debates will let us know which candidates get a golden ticket to that national forum.

• Will America get to hear from anyone besides Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two most distrusted and reviled candidates in modern political history?

• [...]

• The Commission on Presidential Debates, an organization set up and originally co-chaired by the then-chairman of Republican National Committee and his Democratic counterpart, has served as the debates’ gatekeeper since 1988.

• CPD describes its mission as ensuring that the debates “provide the best possible information to viewers.” But its real mission is to make the debate stage a “safe space” for major-party candidates. It does so by rigging the rules to protect them from unflattering camera angles, the microaggressions of uncooperative moderators and—most hurtful of all—the terror of third-party competition.

=> ↺ Hillary Clinton hasn’t held a news conference since December — but NPR has proven why it’s not media blackout

• One of the circulating scandals surrounding Hillary Clinton is that she hasn’t held a news conference in 265 days (and counting!), leading to allegations that she has something to hide or is trying to “run-out the clock.”

• The Clinton camp denies this, and has begun to claim that she has given more than 300 interviews this year alone. To prove it, they provided NPR with a list of interviews through the end of July. NPR “made minor corrections after conferring with the campaign, and analyzed the results,” finding some interesting things.

• Clinton by far gave the most interviews to television (both national and local) and local radio. Those three account for 81% of the interviews she’s given this year. Despite her affinity for television, she rarely appears on Sunday shows, usually considered a staple of a politician’s press diet. (Trump, for reference, has appeared on twice as many Sunday shows as she has this year — 43 to 22.)

• Most of her interviews only last for between three and eight minutes — short enough that the reporters don’t have the time to ask follow-up questions or really press her on the issues. In nearly a fifth of the interviews she gave, they weren’t with what NPR considers a journalist or reporter. One radio host gave her an astrological reading.

=> ↺ Trump and the Transformation of Politics

• Illiberal politicians are not very interested in civil liberties. They will manipulate the rule of law to “get things done.” They tend to appeal to religious or national identity rather than political ideology. They also generally favor greater state intervention in the economy.

• In short, they defy the usual political categories.

• If Donald Trump weren’t so personally unpopular and so tactically inept, he might be able to join the ranks of these successful illiberal leaders. Still, he has gotten as far as he has – seizing the nomination of a major political party – by articulating the same anger and resentment as the others.

=> ↺ Rich Upper East Siders Are Spending Millions to Mess With Elections in Brooklyn and the Bronx

• A new super-PAC is spending millions of dollars to oust four labor-backed black and Latino state Democrats from the Bronx, Brooklyn, and nearby Suffolk County. But most of the $3.17 million campaign, which has already begun to flood the Bronx with mailers, has not been financed by local organizations or concerned constituents.

• Of New Yorkers for Independent Action’s sixteen donors, all have addresses listed outside Brooklyn, Bronx, and Suffolk County, according to the New York State Board of Elections. All those registered in New York list addresses on the Upper East Side and in midtown. And all of the super-PAC’s donors appear to be white.

• The group’s main issue has been advocating for an education tax credit, which would give tax rebates to donors and companies for donations to private and parochial schools and has long been opposed by most state Democrats.

=> ↺ LISTEN: Maine’s Governor Unleashes Obscenities On Lawmaker Who Criticized Him

• The vulgar voicemail left Thursday was first reported by the Portland Press-Herald. The newspaper also reports that in an interview, LePage said he wished it were 1825 so that he could challenge Gattine to a duel — and that if he did, he wouldn’t shoot in the air like Alexander Hamilton.

• “I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt,” LePage told the Press-Herald.

• LePage has since apologized for his language, and said his comments about shooting Gattine were metaphorical. Democratic leaders in Maine, meanwhile, have said the governor is not “mentally or emotionally fit to hold office.”

• The hostile remarks follow — and are directly linked to — a series of widely-criticized remarks the Republican governor made on race.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Pahlaj Nihalani is in favour of controlled censorship

• Pahlaj Nihalani has become quite inured to criticism these days, and in his 20-month tenure as the chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), he has found the going tough since the online leak of censor copies of ‘Udta Punjab’ and ‘Great Grand Masti’ recently. In fact, Nihalani makes no secret of the fact that the CBFC has become a punching bag as everyone has got it into their head that all the ills that plague Bollywood have something to do with the CBFC.

=> ↺ Piers Morgan takes dig at Indian Twitter users, tweets about who Sachin Tendulkar follows

=> ↺ Twitterati teach Piers Morgan a lesson for poking fun at Indian Olympians

=> ↺ Piers Morgan TWEETS AGAIN: UK journalist takes credit for PM Modi setting up task force for next three Olympics

=> ↺ Piers Morgan and Indian athletes at Rio

=> ↺ Piers Morgan tweets Shekhar Gupta’s blog about India’s easy embrace to mediocrity and we kind of agree with both

• Days ago, British journalist and Television personality Piers Morgan was trending on twitter worldwide after he literally broke the internet. Morgan’s tweet questioning the over-zealous celebration by Indians for only two Olympic medals, agitated the Indian twitter and soon enough everyone was thrashing and slamming Morgan for it.

=> ↺ The Anti-Semitism Smear Against Canadian Greens

• So, establishment pro-Israel organizations are increasingly shrill in smearing the growing Palestinian solidarity movement. While supporters of Palestinian rights generally ignore these smears or reply that it’s not anti-Semitic to stand up for Palestinian rights, defensive strategies aren’t sufficient. The anti-Semitic label is too potent to not confront directly.

• [...]

• Of course, considering the historical oppression originally defined by the term, most progressive minded folk would be discomforted by the idea of mocking and re-appropriating “anti-Semitism”. But, isn’t this inevitable when “leading Jewish organizations” publicly denounce “anti-Semitism” in inverse relation to discernible anti-Jewish animus? When Jews fleeing Hitler’s atrocities were blocked from entering Canada, notes A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada, the dominant Jewish organizations mostly shied away from publicly criticizing Ottawa’s prejudice. Similarly, some Jewish representatives negotiated with McGill over the cap it placed on Jews in some university programs in the 1920s, 30s and 40s.

• While some Jewish activists at the time pushed for a more forceful response to this quantifiable anti-Semitism, the “leading” community representatives didn’t want to rock the boat. Their aim was largely to join the power structure.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ NSA Whistleblowers: NSA Hack Was Likely An Inside Job

• The mainstream press is accusing Russia of being behind the release of information on NSA hacking tools.

• Washington’s Blog asked the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history, William Binney – the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”) – what he thinks of such claims.

=> ↺ Tampa man at center of web spying case that could impact the workplace

• A federal appeals court has ruled that a Tampa man can sue Awareness Technologies, a Connecticut firm that makes an electronic monitoring program.

• While the ruling by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals involved the use of the monitoring program in a divorce case, it could impact what happens in the workplace, an attorney involved in the case told the Wall Street Journal.

• Employees agree to be monitored as part of their jobs, but the people they communicate with do not provide the same agreements. That could lead to more exposure for companies that provide employee monitoring services, attorney Mark Pickrell, interim head of Vanderbilt Law School’s appellate litigation clinic, told the Journal.

=> ↺ Man Sues Surveillance Company for Spying on His Conversations With Married Woman

• Javier Luis, of Tampa, Florida, met a woman named Catherine Zang in a chat room on metaphysics in 2009. Zang’s husband, Joseph Zang, somehow became aware of the personal relationship and installed a program called WebWatcher, created by a company called Awareness Technologies, on the family computer to monitor her. WebWatcher made recordings of all the online interactions between Luis and Catherine Zang, which Joseph Zang was then able to review after they were routed to Awareness Technologies’ servers in California. Though Javier Luis and Catherine Zang never actually met in person, Zang’s husband allegedly was able to use the compiled communications to his advantage in their divorce proceedings.

=> ↺ Proposed ‘social media ID, please’ law draws outrage

• A plan by the U.S. government to require some foreign travelers to provide their social media IDs on key travel documents is drawing outrage.

• People who responded to the government’s request for comment about the proposal spared little in their criticisms. They call it “ludicrous,” an “all-around bad idea,” “blatant overreach,” “desperate, paranoid heavy-handedness,” “preposterous,” “appalling,” and “un-American.”

• But the feds are most serious about it.

• The plan affects people traveling from “visa waiver” countries to the U.S., where a visa is not required. This includes most of Europe, Singapore, Chile, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand — 38 countries in total.

• Travelers will be asked to provide their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, and whatever other social ID you can imagine to U.S. authorities. It’s technically an “optional” request, but since it’s the government asking, critics believe travelers will fear consequences if they ignore it. Business and pleasure travelers are affected, too.

=> ↺ All the Ways Your Wi-Fi Router Can Spy on You

• City dwellers spend nearly every moment of every day awash in Wi-Fi signals. Homes, streets, businesses, and office buildings are constantly blasting wireless signals every which way for the benefit of nearby phones, tablets, laptops, wearables, and other connected paraphernalia.

• When those devices connect to a router, they send requests for information—a weather forecast, the latest sports scores, a news article—and, in turn, receive that data, all over the air. As it communicates with the devices, the router is also gathering information about how its signals are traveling through the air, and whether they’re being disrupted by obstacles or interference. With that data, the router can make small adjustments to communicate more reliably with the devices it’s connected to.

• But it can also be used to monitor humans—and in surprisingly detailed ways.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Nothing to See Here: The Counter-Revolution Against Black Lives Matter

• There is a phenomenon in this country that we need to examine and it’s just not in New York,” NYPD Commissioner William Bratton told reporters in May, after addressing a national conference of police chiefs at the Times Square Marriott Marquis. “This has become very serious. I would almost describe it as an epidemic.”

• Bratton, who announced his retirement on August 3— much to the delight of Black Lives Matter demonstrators who set up an encampment at City Hall calling for his resignation one day previously — was not speaking of zika or ebola. He was talking about civilians filming police, a viral occurrence in recent years.

• Bratton went on to equate recording law enforcement with intimidation and attempts to free individuals in police custody. “The community has to make up their mind if they want law enforcement or if they want mob rule,” Bratton said.

=> ↺ As the Private Immigrant Detention Business Persists, Families Fight Back

• Moussa came to the United States nine years ago seeking asylum. He lost his asylum case, but while appealing the decision, he fell in love with Victoria. The two were married and have three beautiful children together. Moussa also adopted Victoria’s two children from a prior relationship. When Victoria filed for a family petition on his behalf in April 2015, they thought their immigration struggles were finally over. Sadly, they had just begun.

=> ↺ Slavery in modern Britain? Too true but today, it’s on farms and kitchens

• One victim said she came to England from south-east Asia to work as a servant in the home of a wealthy family. “I was forced to work 14 hours a day, even on building sites,” she said. “I felt like a chained dog. Even now, I feel like I am in chains. I still have nightmares that my boss is chasing me.”

• The woman is now in a safe house and is applying for asylum in the United Kingdom. Officials say 21st century slavery takes these basic forms: domestic servitude, sex trafficking, forced labour, forced marriage and child labour.

• The Salvation Army said that 44 per cent of those it helped had been exploited sexually, 42 per cent were used on farms and building sites, and 13 per cent were household slaves.

=> ↺ Hate Crime in Tulsa: Khalid Jabara’s Family Speaks Out After His Murder by Racist White Neighbor

• In Oklahoma, funeral services were held Friday for Khalid Jabara, a Lebanese-American man police say was shot dead by his next-door neighbor in a possible hate crime. Police say Stanley Majors will be charged with first-degree murder. Majors has harassed the Jabara family for years. The August 12 killing came less than a year after Majors was arrested and jailed for hitting Jabara’s mother with his car while she was jogging. At the time, the mother, Haifa Jabara, already had a restraining order against Majors, after he had threatened and harassed her. But eight months later, Majors was released on $60,000 bond even though Tulsa County prosecutors called him “a substantial risk to the public.” For more, we speak with Khalid’s brother and sister, Rami Jabara and Victoria Jabara Williams.

=> ↺ Socializing the Corrupt: Cheating, Education and Law Enforcement in Pennsylvania

• Collaborations between higher education institutions and law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania have multiplied in the past two decades. Although many of these collaborations purportedly aim to improve law enforcement by educating current and future generations of police officers, they have unfortunately produced ethically questionable and socially deleterious consequences, such as lowering academic integrity standards, encouraging systemic cheating and artificially inflating graduation rates. As a result, higher education institution executives and law enforcement leaders in Pennsylvania have managed to create an educational system for socializing successive generations of corrupt police.

• The expression socialization of the corrupt is Charles Bahn’s. In the 1975 article “The Psychology of Police Corruption,” he compares police corruption to academic cheating. In a study of students’ attitudes towards cheating and their actual cheating behavior, there was no correlation. Students who disapproved of cheating still cheated; others who approved of cheating chose to abstain. Bahn concludes that, “while verbal morality is learned, it is not necessarily true that the related behaviors are also learned.” The implication of this study for police training is that being taught the importance of an institution’s core values (e.g., honesty, integrity, fidelity) and expressing one’s commitment to these values do not curtail unethical behavior. Socializing the corrupt means filling students’ heads with empty slogans and moral platitudes, hoping that they will do what is right in any particular situation.

=> ↺ No Way to Call Home: Incarcerated Deaf People Are Locked in a Prison Inside a Prison

• Silent Voices is truly silent. The group’s three members are doing what looks like a dance in the front of a classroom at a state prison near the banks of the Mississippi River, just south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, performing their version of the song “I Believe” by R. Kelly. Instead of singing, the performers are interpreting R. Kelly’s lyrics into American Sign Language, or ASL, the sign language most commonly used in the United States. ASL is an animated language. Gestures, facial expressions and even foot-stomping the floor to a beat allow ASL speakers to add context, detail and music to their conversations. The three men in Silent Voices are stunning in this way. The performance is part ASL, part gospel choreography and it’s contagiously uplifting — in stark contrast with the backdrop of armed guards and barbed wire. The classroom erupts into applause.

=> ↺ Corporate Conquistadors Rape Indigenous Lands and Bodies

• Canada’s National Inquiry into Murdered and Disappeared Indigenous Women ought to investigate the role of the extractive industry.

• Recently, KWG Resources Incorporated, a Canadian mining company, posted a video online using women dressed in bikinis to promote the mining of chromite on Indigenous lands in northern Ontario, known as the Ring of Fire. KWG President Frank Smeenk defended his company’s actions saying “sex sells.” Perhaps this was the most honest statement of those in the industry.

=> ↺ A Shocking Story of How a Chicago Cop Killed a Teen — Then Locked Up His Best Friend for the Murder

• In 2012, 19-year-old Tevin Louis and his best friend Marquise Sampson allegedly robbed a restaurant. After reportedly making off with about $1,200, the two ran in different directions. Sampson crossed paths with an officer, who gave chase and ultimately opened fire, killing the teenager. Louis arrived at the scene where his friend was shot, and attempted to cross the police line. He was arrested for disorderly conduct. But in a shocking turn, Louis was eventually charged with first-degree murder in the death of his best friend, even though it was the officer who killed Sampson. Louis was found guilty. He is now serving a 32-year sentence for armed robbery and a 20-year sentence for murder. Louis is one of 10 people with similar cases exposed in the Chicago Reader’s new article headlined “Charged with Murder, But They Didn’t Kill Anyone—Police Did.” For more, we speak with the article’s authors: Alison Flowers, a journalist with the Chicago-based Invisible Institute, and Sarah Macaraeg, an independent journalist and fellow with the International Center for Journalists.

• [...]

• AMY GOODMAN: And, Alison Flowers, are police using this murder—this felony murder rule to protect their own misconduct?

• ALISON FLOWERS: That is what we heard from experts about this, that it’s really a red flag for misconduct when you see civilians or co-arrestee suspects being charged with a killing that they didn’t commit, but that police did. It’s often a red flag for misconduct. And, you know, here in Chicago, we have a problem with that, as we see nationwide, of course, but we know that 97 percent of Chicago police misconduct complaints go undisciplined. And so, there really is a problem of immunity, where police officers face little discipline, and it’s pretty easy for them to shift blame.

=> ↺ Why Colin Kaepernick Didn’t Stand for the National Anthem

• Explaining the gesture, Kaepernick said that he had decided to remain seated as a statement against racial oppression.

• “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he told NFL Media in an interview published on Saturday.

=> ↺ Yes, Innocent People Confess To Crimes They Haven’t Committed

• A cop friend of mine told me not to talk to the police even if you aren’t even a suspect. She warned that, in court, they can take one tiny thing you said — take it totally out of context — and use to to yank you into a prison sentence. Like how you “hate that girl.” The sort of hyperbole many of us use without ever wanting to kill someone. Or it could be something more innocuous. Suddenly, you are a suspect. And in court, they only present the things that make you sound guilty.

• Via @PINACNews, Cops coerce a 13-year-old kid into confessing to a murder he did not commit, sending him to prison for three years. A question from the video — did he really understand Miranda rights? I think it’s probably often unlikely that young teens do understand the rights and the ramifications of talking.

=> ↺ Now we need a reunited kingdom, open to Europe and the world

• Despite being drawn from different political parties, all of us campaigned proudly and passionately for Britain to remain in the European Union. The result was not the one we wanted, but of course we respect the democratically expressed verdict of the British people.

=> ↺ New pro-European campaign organisation: Stronger In relaunched as Open Britain

• Open Britain will help tackle the many unanswered questions about our future relationship with the EU, whether over funding, trade, immigration, security, the environment or workers’ rights. We will also, we hope, play a part in the now necessary debate about how we make our economy fairer – arguably the most pressing issue after June 23rd.

=> ↺ How storytelling can help address police violence

• On the same evening that three police officers were killed and three more were wounded in Baton Rouge in July, media outlets around the country reported that police officers and members of a local Black Lives Matter group met for a peaceful cookout in Wichita, Kansas. A nation fatigued by police violence was quick to pick up on the story, and social media posts about the gathering were soon trending, signaling peoples’ overwhelming desire to affirm that “all is well.”

• Except that all is not well. As an Oakland member of Black Lives Matter stated the following week when asked to respond to the offer of a cookout with police, “I eat pigs, I don’t eat with them.” Many people are obviously dissatisfied with such piecemeal displays of collaboration, and are seeking something much more substantial.

• So what’s gone wrong? After all, police departments all around the country have been working to implement Department of Justice recommendations intended to reduce incidents of violence. Why have these recommendations, which focus on policing policies and practices, failed to result in meaningful reform?

• As the nation struggles to find a path forward, storytelling, one of the oldest human traditions, could help pave the way. In 2013, I began my own process of leveraging this ancient human tradition to begin building a restorative bridge in my community. I attempted to get law enforcement officers and members of the non-law enforcement community to publicly tell stories about their true, personal stories about police violence.

=> ↺ The ‘Burkini Battle’: France’s capitulation to extremism

• Approximately two years ago in Turkey, there was an odd case in which AKP-allied Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc made a statement declaring that it was indecent for women to laugh in public or, presumably, in mixed company.

• Naturally, this statement was effectively a call to arms. Women took to social media in droves, posting pictures of themselves smiling accompanied by the hashtags #direnkahkaha (resist laughing) and #direnkadin (resist woman). Many similar stories have come out of the Middle East since the rise of social media, in which online activists and citizens protest their government’s encroachments upon their self-representation and lifestyle.

• Recently, another such viral campaign came in the form of Masih Alinejad’s “My Stealthy Freedom Project.” A fascinating challenge to both Iran’s state-enforced gender binary and state-enforced veiling/modesty codes of dress, this campaign as well as the #resistlaughing campaign and many others like it have been hailed in international media as shining examples of women and their male allies fighting against a repressive and reactionary theocratic state, and received well-deserved popularity and accolades for their bravery.

• Last week, another story of reactionary state control over women’s bodies rose for its moment of international attention, yet this time the tone of coverage by international media outlets was generally one of uncomfortable ambivalence. Beginning with the cancellation of a planned party at a waterpark and expanding to include legislation by several towns in France and an ongoing protest, the ‘burkini’ (a swimming costume allowing for most of the body to remain covered while in the water) has become a central topic in France’s ongoing crisis over its relationship to its Muslim citizens.

=> ↺ The burkini as a mirror

• Last week, the mayor of Oye-Plage in France was so disturbed by seeing a woman in a burkini on the beach that he is planning to ban such a garb from the beaches of his own town. This reminded me of some of my own experiences in the past that may just be relevant to the current debates over the burkini in Cannes, Marseille and other beaches in France.

• About fourteen years ago I was in Jordan with my not-yet-adolescent daughter. We were in a goldsmith’s shop in Amman looking at jewelry. The shop was very small, almost a cubicle. At one point six to eight women entered. They were totally covered by burkas; only their eyes were partially visible through a bit of lacework. This was the first time I had found myself in such a situation, in a very small space, surrounded by a group of women of whom I could see nothing. I was more than a bit uncomfortable. We bought a pair of earrings and left the shop.

• Some two years later I was in Esalen, California for a conference. Among those attending was an old friend of mine, a very observant Jewish man who lives in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. We were both quite taken with the open-air hot tubs, which famously look out over the Pacific Ocean.

• We quickly learned, however, that the etiquette of Esalen demanded that one enter the hot tubs naked, men and women together. We felt rather uncomfortable with this arrangement and contrived to go one morning at about 3:00 am, certain that nobody would be there. We took off our clothes, ran the water in the tubs, and were enjoying ourselves immensely when we were suddenly joined by—a naked woman.

=> ↺ Photo of the Week: A Burkini in Marseille

• A woman steps into the sea. Water displaced by her feet flies lightly into the air. Nearby, children wade and play. No one appears uncomfortable, yet the image is a trigger in France, where descendants of people who once displayed the words “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” in their public squares wish to exclude from those ideals certain peaceful others, many of whom were forced from their homelands by oppressors and events beyond their control.

• Bans on “burkinis” this month in more than a dozen French cities and towns—a move supported by many high-profile public figures—reminds us that the capacity for cultural intolerance or its more aggressive elder sibling, cultural bigotry, is a nagging constant in human affairs.

=> ↺ Truthdigger of the Week: Ethiopian Silver Medalist and Protester Feyisa Lilesa

• A member of the Oromo tribe of Ethiopia, Lilesa made headlines on the final day of the Rio Olympics when he raised his crossed arms in a gesture of solidarity with the Oromo people as he reached the finish line of the men’s marathon. He repeated the pose later during an Olympic ceremony. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 400 people have been killed and tens of thousands arrested since Nov. 2015, when the Ethiopian government began to forcibly displace Oromo and other people during an effort to develop land around the capital, Addis Ababa.

=> ↺ Airline pilots arrested on alcohol charge at Glasgow Airport

• Two airline pilots were arrested on suspicion of being under the influence of alcohol as they prepared to fly from Glasgow Airport to New York.

• The United Airlines pilots, aged 35 and 45, were detained by police ahead of the 09:00 flight on Saturday.

=> ↺ Pilots arrested in UK over alcohol concern

• Two pilots were arrested on suspicion of being under the influence of alcohol as they prepared to fly a transatlantic passenger jet from Scotland to the US.

• Concerns were reportedly raised over the pilots before the 9am United Airlines UA162 flight to Newark, New Jersey, was due to depart from Glasgow Airport on Saturday.

=> ↺ Police brutality against Blacks: ‘Changes in the air thanks to videotape & social media’

• Black Americans have had problems with police brutality in each generation. The difference now is the introduction of technologies that allow victims to pursue justice in a court of law, said Roland Martin, host and Managing Editor of TV One’s ‘News One Now’.

• Fifty one years ago, it was legal for African-Americans to be treated as second-class citizens in the United States of America. During the Jim Crow era African-Americans were prohibited from attending the same schools as the Whites, using the same restrooms, same restaurants and from drinking out of the same water fountains as white Americans. Now in 2016, segregation is no longer legal. But since the Jim Crow era ended it seems practices have been put into place to ensure African-Americans aren’t given a fair chance to succeed in the US.

• RT America correspondent Ashlee Banks focuses on issues related to the black community in the United States and discusses them with experts.

=> ↺ Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem Is a Celebration of Slavery

• Before a preseason game on Friday, San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. When he explained why, he only spoke about the present: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. … There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

• Twitter then went predictably nuts, with at least one 49er fan burning Kaepernick’s jersey.

• Almost no one seems to be aware that even if the U.S. were a perfect country today it would be bizarre to expect African American players to stand for the Star Spangled Banner. Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African Americans.

=> ↺ Slavery: memory and afterlives

• Tomorrow, 23 August 2016, is International Slavery Remembrance Day; yesterday, the UK’s first ever memorial service to the victims of the transatlantic slave trade/African holocaust was held in Trafalgar Square. But what exactly should or can we remember, and why, and what should we ‘do’ with these memories? The forthcoming series of articles will reflect on these questions as they relate to the memory of slavery and the different conversations that can be had about its past and present. But they do not, and cannot, provide the answer to these questions, for there is no simple or single answer.

=> ↺ The living legacy of Emmett Till’s casket

• A casket is an unusual item to display in a museum. Most people visit museums not to dwell on death but to learn about what people did while alive. But there are times when a person’s death itself leaves an impact on history. Such is the case of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old from Chicago who was tortured and murdered by white supremacists in Mississippi on Aug. 28, 1955.

• Many Americans do not remember Till as a carefree, smiling teen but as a brutally disfigured civil rights martyr. Once a person has seen Till’s disfigured face inside his casket, it is impossible to forget.

• That’s why the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will open in Washington, D.C., next month, will feature Till’s casket among its exhibits. The display will give visitors to the museum the opportunity to hear an audio recording of Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, tell her son’s story and why she decided to shake up the civil rights movement by holding an open casket viewing and showing the world just how brutally Blacks were treated in America.

• A year before Till was killed while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, the U.S. Supreme Court in its Brown v. Board of Education decision overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, holding that its doctrine of “separate but equal” was in fact unconstitutional.

=> ↺ Abu Zubaydah: Torture’s ‘Poster Child’

• Last week, Abu Zubaydah, who has been imprisoned at Guantanamo for 14 years without being charged with a crime, appeared for the first time before the U.S. military Periodic Review Board, which determines whether Guantanamo detainees will continue to be held as “enemy combatants.”

• Zubaydah argued he should be released because he has “no desire or intent to harm the United States or any other country.” During his hearing, Zubaydah also said he had been tortured by the CIA, an allegation confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report. The U.S. government maintains he is an enemy combatant.

=> ↺ Readers Think. Thinkers Read. – by Ralph Nader

• Here are my recommended books to read for the late summer holidays.

=> ↺ Journalist ‘Worried’ Next President May Order Assassination of WikiLeaks Founder

• ​As Jake Sullivan points out in his chilling opinion piece titled “Why I’m Worried America’s Next President Will Kill Assange,” the sentiment expressed by Beckel far from being an exaggerated response of anger has recently become part of the mainstream political discourse in the United States.

• The author points to a new narrative, budding primarily from the Hillary campaign but expressed by think tanks and defense analysts throughout the country that “Russia Weaponized WikiLeaks to Disrupt the US Election” and various derivative forms of the conspiracy theory that Julian Assange is an anti-Hillary agent of Putin.

• Assange for himself explained that he would gladly post damaging material on Donald Trump, but with the caveat that “we would have a hard time publishing something worse than what comes out of his mouth every second day.”

• [...]

• “Trump has indicated his treatment of an extradited Assange or Snowden would be severely harsh,” explained Sullivan. “Snowden, in particular, would be assassinated if Trump had his way. I can only shiver imagining how a President Trump would react to a major leak from the inner chambers of his new political empire.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Non-U.S. Universities with .edu Domain Names: They’re More Common Than You Might Think

• We were curious to see how many 2nd-level dot edu domains (including grandfathered edus) actually map to non-US IP address space. This may be of some practical importance since often people forget that users coming from legacy dot edu domains may not be from the United States.

• Now obviously, a non-US university could elect to host their domain in US address space, or a US university could choose to host their domain in non-US address space, but for the most part we’d expect to see US universities in US IP address space, and international universities in non-US address space.

• So can we identify dot edu domains that are hosted outside the US? It turns out that yes, yes we can.

=> ↺ ‘MegaMIMO 2.0’ wireless routers work together to triple bandwidth and double range

• Some enterprising researchers have found a way to make those routers work together, though. Dina Katabi and her team at MIT”s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory call it MegaMIMO 2.0, and they claim some pretty serious improvements: three times better data transfer speeds and doubled range.

• “In today’s wireless world, you can’t solve spectrum crunch by throwing more transmitters at the problem, because they will all still be interfering with one another,” said MIT grad student and lead author Ezzeldin Hamed. “The answer is to have all those access points work with each other simultaneously to efficiently use the available spectrum.”

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Library of Congress Might Become a Piracy Hub, RIAA Warns

• The U.S. Copyright Office is considering expanding the mandatory deposit requirement for publishers, so that record labels would also have to submit their online-only music to the Library of Congress. The Library would then allow the public to access the music. The RIAA, however, warns that this plan introduces some serious piracy concerns.

=> ↺ Commissioner Oettinger is about to turn EU copyright reform into another ACTA

• Instead, Commissioner Oettinger has let the publishing, film and music industries hijack the reform in an attempt to protect old business models from progress – at a tragic cost to freedom of creativity and expression on the internet, startups’ right to innovate and the cause of a Europe without digital borders.

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