This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2017/02/12/chromebooks-are-spreading/.

● 02.12.17

● Links 12/2/2017: Microsoft-Connected ‘Study’ on Munich, Chromebooks are Spreading

Posted in News Roundup at 4:31 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Poverty Helps You Keep Technology Safe and Easy

• But wait! There’s more! The Android phones that got famous for burning up everything in sight were top-dollar models my wife says she wouldn’t want even if we could afford them. Safety first, right? Frugality’s up there, too.

• Now let’s talk about how I got started with Linux.

• Guess what? It was because I was poor! The PC I had back in the days of yore ran DOS just fine, but couldn’t touch Windows 98 when it came out. Not only that, but Windows was expensive, and I was poor. Luckily, I had time on my hands, so I rooted around on the Internet (at phone modem speed) and eventually lit upon Red Hat Linux, which took forever to download and had an install procedure so complicated that instead of figuring it out I wrote an article about how Linux might be great for home computer use someday in the future, but not at the moment.

=> ↺ Advice Wanted: The Underlying OS for soylentnews.org

• So, in previous posts, I’ve talked about the fact that SoylentNews currently is powered on Ubuntu 14.04 + a single CentOS 6 box. Right now, the sysops have been somewhat deadlocked on what we should do going forward for our underlying operating system, and I am hoping to get community advice. Right now, the “obvious” choice of what to do is simply do-release-upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04. We’ve done in-place upgrades before without major issue, and I’m relatively certain we could upgrade without breaking the world. However, from my personal experience, 16.04 introduces systemd support into the stack and is not easily removable. Furthermore, at least in my personal experience, working with journalctl and such has caused me considerable headaches which I detailed in a comment awhile ago.

=> ↺ Judge Nixes PS3 Linux Class Action Settlement As Class’s Lawyers Victimize The Class A Second Time

• We’ve made the point for several years now that the way class action lawsuits are handled in America is flawed in fundemental ways. What was supposed to be a method for enabling large groups of the aggrieved to pool resources against much larger and better-funded entities has instead devolved into a procedure that appears almost perfectly designed to enrich unscrupulous lawyers while the class itself gets a laughable percentage any monetary damages.

• We get to see these flaws in practice yet again, this time in an update for the story that simply will not die: the legal action over Sony removing the PS3′s ability to run Linux, which it advertised when the console launched. The class action suit had reached a proposed settlement, only to have the presiding judge nix it, essentially over concerns that the class was being victimized all over again, this time by its own lawyers.

Desktop

=> ↺ Munich’s U-turn, Fedora 27 on Halloween, Back to Linux

• In the story that wouldn’t die, Munich’s Linux reversal in in the news again as the city’s administrative committee recommended moving to a uniform Windows-based deployment throughout city government by 2020. Elsewhere, Fedora 27 is scheduled for release on October 31, 2017 and kde.org got a new look. Former Linux user Paul Cutler has returned to the fold and Blogger Dedoimedo compared Fedora’s Xorg to Wayland.

=> ↺ Linux flagship Munich’s U-turn: Install Windows 10 everywhere by end of 2020

• According to Kirschner, Munich’s IT problems are not so much down to the use of free software as they are the result of poor management and organizational structure, a view backed up by Accenture’s study.

=> ↺ Munich Said To Be Moving Away From Linux/LiMux, Back To Microsoft

=> ↺ The Forces Of Evil Still Try To Shut Down LiMux

• It’s hard to believe but a dozen years after the decision was made to migrate to GNU/Linux for the IT system of Munich, the dark forces are still trying to reverse the decision. Now, there is a plan afoot to make a plan to reverse the decision four years from now. I kid you not. Will these jokers still be in power then? The next federal election is next year… The next election in Munich is 2020…

=> ↺ Investigation of the IT system of Munich by Accenture (10MB PDF, 450 pages, German)

=> ↺ Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

• Politicians at open-source champion Munich will next week vote on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows by 2021.

• The city authority, which made headlines for ditching Windows, will discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client.

=> ↺ Munich city now planning to move ALL their Linux desktops back to Windows

=> ↺ Windows Close to Defeating Linux: Munich Could Give Up on LiMux

=> ↺ Let’s Chat: Windows vs. Linux

=> ↺ City of Munich wants to end open source desktop

=> ↺ Microsoft’s next Windows RT

• Maybe this is a signal that it’s time for Microsoft to retire the “Windows” label. Sure, Microsoft probably does want to shift it’s operating system into the Cloud (whether or not that’s a good thing, I’ll leave that to you) but keeping the “Windows” label will hold them back. Learn from the disaster of “Windows RT” where users quickly discovered that while it looked like Windows and felt like Windows, you couldn’t install “Windows” applications on it. With a new name, Microsoft can shift user expectations.

=> ↺ 10 Top Most Popular Linux Distributions of 2016

• As 2016 gone (nearly 40 days), it is time to review the most popular Linux distributions of the year. In this article we are going to discuss 10 top most popular Linux distributions of 2016 based on Distrowatch hits.

• You may have question, how you are taking? why you are taking? the list from Distrowatch. It’s one of the oldest and best website which provides Linux distribution release information since 2001.

• Not only me and lot’s of Linux enthusiasts very often visit distrowatch website to know the distribution release status. There are lots of Linux distributions are out as of now (nearly 300 distributions) and still counting, every distribution comes with its own unique features and purpose but some of the distributions become very famous and most of the distributions go away even Top 100. It’s purely depends upon the company, how they are taking the distribution to next level by including new things & fixing bugs. In other hand, how users are picking the distribution based on their requirements.

=> ↺ How to install Linux

• Nothing makes me happier than resurrecting an old, slow, useless Windows PC by installing Linux on it.

• The result is a system that will almost always run faster, with almost zero chance of malware infections, and that affords all the computing basics. (Many of the latest computing advances, too.)

• Before you begin, read my tips on choosing a Linux distro, arguably the most challenging part of the equation (if only because there are so many). Once you’ve made that decision, all that’s left is to actually install the operating system.

=> ↺ Chromebooks are Spreading Out in the Educational Market

• In recent months, several prominent analysts have taken aim at media reports that have allegedly miscast how well Chromebooks–portable computers based on Google’s Chrome OS platform–are doing in sales terms. “There has been a ton of misreporting as many lazy reporters and bloggers have characterized this as all sales, which it wasn’t, or even consumer sales, which it most assuredly was not,” Stephen Baker of the NPD Group, has told Computerworld, for example.

• Chromebooks are actually a fast growing part of the portable computer market, though, and Chrome OS has become an entrenched operating system. Particularly in schools, these systems are making a difference, and now Asus and Acer are out with new models focused on the educational market.

=> ↺ Why I’m going back to Linux after five years of using macOS

• I’ve been a supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2004. Their work on privacy, free expression and technology are all things I am passionate about. For the last year or so, I have become more concerned with privacy issues in technology. The rise in big data and how everything is tracking everything we do has given me significant concerns. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to which ecosystems I want to stay in. I’m not going to say I trust any of these technology companies, but I can control (or minimize) my footprint with some of these companies.

=> ↺ GNU/Linux Now Accepted

• I don’t know much about Southern USA, but in Canada I taught in many remote schools in the North and over a decade or so, it became unsurprising to find one or more students in my classes who had experienced desktop GNU/Linux. They may not have known much about it but they weren’t put off by it. It just worked for them. Usually, they had been in a big city school somewhere and brought the knowledge back with them. That familiarity helped ease student populations to accept GNU/Linux.

=> ↺ Hasta la vista, Vista

• Microsoft will stop all support for Windows Vista in two months, ending the problem-plagued operating system’s usefulness when it issues final patches on April 11.

• The OS won’t be missed: According to analytics vendor Net Applications, which estimated user share by counting unique visitors to tens of thousands of websites, Vista ran on less than 1% of all personal computers powered by Windows last month. Still, even that small percentage translated into approximately 14 million PCs when using Microsoft’s claim that 1.5 billion devices run Windows.

Server

=> ↺ Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products – and it’s not just Cisco hit

• Intel’s Atom C2000 processor family has a fault that effectively bricks devices, costing the company a significant amount of money to correct. But the semiconductor giant won’t disclose precisely how many chips are affected nor which products are at risk.

• On its Q4 2016 earnings call earlier this month, chief financial officer Robert Swan said a product issue limited profitability during the quarter, forcing the biz to set aside a pot of cash to deal with the problem.

=> ↺ PSA: Intel Atom C2000 Chips Flaw Bricking Routers/NAS/Firewall devices that are powered by Linux, pfSense and FreeNAS

=> ↺ Bored with ho-hum cloud backups? Use Usenet (yes, Usenet!) instead

• Cloud backups these days are all the rage—for good reason. Rather than dealing with shuffling physical media offsite, you can simply back up the data offsite, where it can be stored in one of many professionally monitored data centers.

• Unfortunately, this kind of service isn’t free, and the cost can be a barrier. However, there is a cost-effective way to store your cloud backups: Usenet. With access to a Usenet news server, you can simply upload your backup there, and it will be stored redundantly in news servers all over the world. Best of all, this approach typically costs considerably less than a cloud backup service.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ “elementary OS Pay-What-You-Want App Store” – Lunduke Hour – Feb 8, 2017

=> ↺ Podcast Season 5 Episode 2

• In this episode: We’ve got a live recording from FOSDEM (thanks Mike!), lots of news, lots of Finds and an awesome Voice of the Masses.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 3.10.105 LTS Is Out with Almost 300 Improvements, Security Fixes

• Linux kernel maintainer Willy Tarreau was proud to announce today the availability of a new maintenance update for the long-term supported Linux 3.10 kernel series, version 3.10.105.

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 4.9.9 Released with Many Updated Drivers, x86 and PowerPC Fixes

• Only five days after releasing Linux kernel 4.9.8, developer Greg Kroah-Hartman today announced the general availability of the ninth maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 4.9 kernel series.

• With 74 files changed (506 insertions and 321 deletions), Linux kernel 4.9.9 is now considered the most advanced and secure stable kernel version there is for a Linux-based operating system. According to the appended shortlog, the biggest part of the patch are updated drivers, this time for things like BCMA, DMA, GPU (AMDGPU, Intel i915, Nouveau), iiO, HID, InfiniBand, PCI, PINCTRL, USB, Vhost, and Virtio.

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 4.4.48 LTS Has Minor NFS, x86 and PowerPC Changes, Updated Drivers

• After informing the Linux community today about the availability of Linux kernel 4.9.9, renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the long-term supported Linux 4.4.48 kernel.

=> ↺ libinput knows about internal and external touchpads

• libinput has a couple of features that ‘automagically’ work on touchpads such as disable-while-typing and the lid switch triggered disabling of touchpads and disabling the touchpad when an external mouse is plugged in [1]. But not all of these features make sense on all touchpads. For example, an Apple Magic Trackpad doesn’t need disable-while-typing because unless you have a creative arrangement of input devices [2], the touchpad won’t be where your palm is likely to hit it. Likewise, a Logitech T650 connected over a unifying receiver shouldn’t get disabled when the laptop lid closes.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Mesa 17.0 Benchmarks With Intel: Noticeably Better Vulkan Performance

• With Mesa 17.0 due to be released any day now, here are fresh benchmarks of Mesa 17.0′s Git code as of Friday compared to Mesa 12.0.6, Mesa 13.0.4, and the current Mesa 17.1-devel Git master code. Not only is the i965 OpenGL driver performance being examined but also the ANV Vulkan driver present since Mesa 12.

=> ↺ Mesa RFC Changes To Help Worms WMD, Tropico 5 & Crookz

• In continuation of this morning’s article about Valve Planning To Carry Mesa GL Thread Feature On SteamOS, Per-Game Features, it looks like the developers working for Valve on the open-source Linux graphics driver stack are looking to do more in the per-game profile space.

=> ↺ Valve Planning To Carry Mesa GL Thread Feature On SteamOS, Per-Game Features

• It’s looking like Valve will begin carrying some out-of-tree patches for their Mesa packages they use on SteamOS.

• The discussion around OpenGL threaded dispatch for Mesa hasn’t ended. There is opposition to landing this code in mainline Mesa if there are Piglit regressions, the potential for game/application crashes, and other issues, even if the feature were to be enabled by default.

=> ↺ AMDGPU Gets More Power-Related Fixes In Linux 4.11

• It feels like the work on power management / clock-gating / PowerPlay is a never-ending mission within the AMDGPU DRM driver — more work has been queued up for the next kernel cycle.

• Last week was the main AMDGPU features for Linux 4.11 being submitted to DRM-Next. In that article you can find out about the various new features that will premiere in the DRM driver with Linux 4.11. There was power management work as part of that earlier pull while coming today were some fixes of material to land for Linux 4.11.

=> ↺ AMDGPU DC/DAL Code Receives Atomic Improvements

• AMDGPU’s DC display code (better known as DAL) received some fresh patches on the public mailing list this week to improve its atomic mode-setting implementation.

• One of the latest projects by AMD developers working on their open-source Linux DRM kernel driver has been for “addressing some of the problems in DC’s atomic implementation.”

=> ↺ Radeon GPU Analyzer Open-Sourced: Analyze OpenGL / Vulkan / OpenCL

• In addition to AMD having open-sourced their UMR debugger a few days back, over in their “GPU Open” team they open-sourced the Radeon GPU Analyzer.

=> ↺ A Student Developer Wants To Write A Software Implementation Of Vulkan For Mesa

• Vulkan is going on one year old and while the hardware driver support has continued to advance, we haven’t yet seen a software implementation of Vulkan for running on a CPU. Of course, not for expecting any performance miracle or the like, but as a vendor-neutral platform for being able to test Vulkan’s behavior, certain fallback scenarios, and other use-cases like Mesa’s LLVMpipe/swrast/Softpipe software rasterizers.

=> ↺ Croteam say Vulkan ‘is the way forward’, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter due in ‘weeks’ with Vulkan

• Continuing my love for Croteam, today it was pointed out on reddit that the Croteam developers have been talking quite a bit more about Vulkan on one of their Steam forums. They also stated that Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter should have the Fusion update with Linux & Vulkan in ‘weeks’ (source).

=> ↺ OpenGL Multi-threading, what it is and what it means

=> ↺ Getting the ‘threaded GL dispatch’ code into Mesa is causing some issues, Valve might use a white-list

=> ↺ Intel Prepares For Mainline GVT-g Graphics Virtualization Support

• Intel’s open-source developers maintaining GVT-g for Linux graphics virtualization support for their hardware are working on migrating their development workflow from this code that’s been out-of-tree since its inception to now being mainline.

• With the imminent Linux 4.10 release, the initial pieces of GVT support are mainline for allowing Xen/KVM guest VMs to access the Intel graphics hardware of the host. All the pieces are coming together but it still might be a few months before everything is usable for production standards and running smoothly and mainline throughout all the interconnected components of the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

=> ↺ Rocket League should now perform better on Mesa with radeonsi

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Server/Workstation Tests: Antergos vs. Clear Linux vs. Fedora vs. Scientific Linux vs. Ubuntu vs. openSUSE

• So for your viewing pleasure this Friday are some fresh results from these different distributions. Unfortunately, while there is much interest these days in Solus by Linux enthusiasts, its installer had issues with the system being used. Additionally, Debian Stretch was running into a kernel bug on this system so the testing couldn’t happen there either.

=> ↺ Nouveau: Mesa 13.0 vs. 17.0 vs. 17.1-devel OpenGL Benchmarks

• Having now published RADV/RadeonSI Mesa 17.0 benchmarks and Intel i965/ANV Mesa 17.0 benchmarks compared to Mesa 13.0 and 17.1-devel, here are now benchmarks of the Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D driver for seeing how this open-source NVIDIA 3D driver performs on the imminent Mesa 17.0 release.

• With Mesa 17.0, OpenGL 4.3 is still exposed by NVC0 even though it implements all the OpenGL 4.5 extensions, it doesn’t yet pass the GL CTS. But at least with Mesa 17.0, NVIDIA Maxwell support goes from OpenGL 4.1 to 4.3. There are also other new features to Mesa 17.0.

=> ↺ Intel Core i3 2100 Sandy Bridge vs. Core i3 7100 Kabylake Performance

• As a reminder, the Core i3 7100 is a dual-core processor with Hyper Threading, has a 3.9GHz base frequency (no Turbo Boost), 3MB Cache, HD Graphics 630 @ 1.1GHz, and a 51 Watt TDP. The Core i3 2100 from the start of 2011 was a dual-core with Hyper Threading too and a 3MB cache but only a 3.1GHz clock frequency and HD Graphics 2000 running @ 1.1GHz. The i3-2100 CPU had a 65 Watt TDP for this 32nm CPU compared to the i3-7100 being on a 14nm process and TDP of just 51 Watts.

Applications

=> ↺ 5 of the Best Calendar Apps for Linux

• Finding a good calendar app for Linux is not as easy as, say, music or text editing software where there are several good options. That’s not to say there are no good options for calendar apps on Linux – you just have to do a bit more digging to find the right app.

• We’ve already done the heavy lifting for you, so here are five calendar applications in no particular order that can help you manage your schedule and give you good value on your Linux desktop.

=> ↺ Released Vivaldi Web Browser Stable 1.7 With Built-in Screenshot & All Tab Mute Options

• Everybody knows about a brand new web browser Vivaldi. Vivaldi is a feature-rich, modern web browser based on Chromium / Blink. Which was developed by Vivaldi Technologies, a company founded by Opera Software co-founder and former CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Tatsuki Tomita.

=> ↺ FFmpeg 3.2.4 “Hypatia” Open-Source Multimedia Framework Available for Download

• Just days after the release of the FFmpeg 3.2.3 maintenance update, the open-source multimedia framework received another point release, versioned 3.2.4, which appears to be a small one patching a handful of issues.

• FFmpeg 3.2.4 is the fourth update to the FFmpeg 3.2 “Hypatia” stable series, and it’s here to address a total of five reported bugs, including the clearing of ref_counts on redundant slices for h264_slice, a heap allocation wrap in both mov_read_uuid and mov_read_hdlr, a logic error pictordec, and setup of codecpar in add_codec().

=> ↺ Calibre 2.79 eBook Manager Adds Interactive Pop-Up for Connected Android Devices

• Calibre developer Kovid Goyal announced today, February 10, 2017, the immediate availability for download of the Calibre 2.79 open-source ebook library management software for all supported platforms.

• Calibre 2.79 is here two weeks after the release of version 2.78, which introduced support for the newest Kobo firmware and many bug fixes. It’s also a small release that only introduces a pop-up message to inform users when an Android device is connected.

=> ↺ If You Remember Using These 5 Linux Apps, You’re Officially Old

• And after thinking about it for a while I figured I’d tap it out into a post because I reckon a few of the names that follow will bring back a memory or two for some of you too.

=> ↺ A Lightweight Screen Recorder for Linux

• Want to record your Ubuntu desktop for a screencast, video tutorial, or bug report? I highly recommend giving Green Recorder a shot. Green Recorder is a minimal yet perfectly functional desktop screen recorder app for Ubuntu.

=> ↺ [New] Green Recorder

=> ↺ The Mach-O Transition: Darling in the Past 5 Years

• Darling has been under development for almost five years now, which invites the questions — what has happened over the past years, are we getting anywhere and when will we get there.

=> ↺ The Inkscape 0.92 release

• On January 4, the Inkscape project released the latest stable version of its open-source vector-graphics editor. Version 0.92 adds a new tool for creating flexible color gradients that can vary with almost arbitrary complexity and it adds new capabilities to many of its existing drawing tools. There are new features to be found in the set of bundled extensions and path effects, as well as important updates to font features and to the application’s ability to tune the XML objects in a scalable vector graphics (SVG) file. There are also some changes to how Inkscape handles some core document properties, however — changes that are mandatory if Inkscape is to fully support the SVG specification, but that might trip up unsuspecting users.

• The 0.92 release was accompanied by a detailed set of release notes on the Inkscape wiki. The project has long required developers who check in new features to document those features in the upcoming release-notes page, an admirable practice that other free-software projects would do well to consider. If anything, the wiki page for a new release can veer toward being overly detailed but, on the other hand, there is never a last-minute scramble to write release notes from memory and risk accidentally leaving out something important.

=> ↺ Komorebi – Awesome Wallpapers Manager for Linux

=> ↺ Screenlets (Desktop Widgets) Fixed For Ubuntu 16.04, Available In PPA

• The Screenlets package was removed from the official Ubuntu 16.04 (and newer) repositories because it no longer worked, however, Hrotkó Gábor fixed various issues that prevented the application and some of its widgets from working, and uploaded a new version to the official Screenlets PPA, for Ubuntu 16.04.

• While the PPA doesn’t officially support it, you can also use it in Ubuntu 16.10.

=> ↺ Top 7 Tools that can automate Linux Admin Task

• Puppet is an open source tool designed to make automation and reporting much easier for system administrators. It is basically a configuration management software that helps in configuring and maintaining your servers and other systems in your network. Generally, Server administrators spend a lot of time doing the same task again and again daily. They always wanted to automate these tasks, so as to get more time to work on other projects or learn new concepts and scripting languages. Tasks can be automated by writing scripts, but in companies with a larger network, scripts don’t come in handy.

=> ↺ Where has my disk space gone? Flame graphs for file systems

• My laptop was recently running low on available disk space, and it was a mystery as to why. I have different tools to explore the file system, including running the “find / -ls” command from a terminal, but they can be time consuming to use. I wanted a big picture view of space by directories, subdirectories, and so on.

=> ↺ [Cacti] Release Notes – 1.0.0

Proprietary

=> ↺ LosslessCut Is An Easy To Use Video Cutter (Cross-Platform)

• According to its GitHub page, LosslessCut doesn’t re-encode or decode the videos, making it very fast and especially useful for large videos.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to stop Ubuntu Xenial from randomly killing your big processes

=> ↺ [Video] Things after you do : Elementary OS 0 4 Loki Post Installation Guide -Tweaks

=> ↺ Linux on XPS 15 9550/9560 with TB16 Dock

=> ↺ [Older] Creating containers by hand

=> ↺ How to configure Nginx for WordPress permalinks

=> ↺ How to upgrade Alpine Linux 3.4 to 3.5.xx

=> ↺ sd_notify() support in nghttp2

=> ↺ Live programming IoT systems with MsgFlo+Flowhub

=> ↺ How to see/get a list of MySQL/MariaDB users accounts

=> ↺ The surprisingly complicated world of disk image sizes

=> ↺ PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function gzinflate()

=> ↺ Using FAI to Customize and Build Your Own Cloud Images

=> ↺ Running gotun inside Jenkins

=> ↺ How to use CoreFreq CPU monitoring software on Linux

=> ↺ Hacking on Pagure CI

=> ↺ How to install bash shell in Alpine Linux

=> ↺ Running OpenShift using Minishift

=> ↺ OpenVAS – Vulnerability Assessment install on Kali Linux

=> ↺ Vim Editor Modes Explained

=> ↺ Install GIMP 2.8.20 In Ubuntu Or Linux Mint Via PPA

=> ↺ Home Recording with Ubuntu Studio Part Three: Connect the Hardware

=> ↺ Hide Files And Folders In Nemo Or Nautilus Without Renaming With This Extension

=> ↺ How to install OTRS (OpenSource Trouble Ticket System) on Ubuntu 16.04

=> ↺ How to Configure Apache as Reverse Proxy (Ubuntu, Cloud Server)

=> ↺ How to perform search operations in Vim

=> ↺ WD My Passport Wireless Linux Hacks

=> ↺ How to configure H.265/HEVC in Linux? – Tutorial

=> ↺ How To Install RawTherapee 5.0 On Ubuntu 16.10, Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivative Systems

=> ↺ How To Install Kernel 4.10 RC 7 on Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Other Ubuntu Derivative Systems

=> ↺ Blocking bad bots with Fail2ban

=> ↺ How to protect your server with badIPs.com and report IPs with Fail2ban on Debian

=> ↺ LibreOffice Math: Square Root Equation Examples

=> ↺ LibreOffice Math: Trigonometry Equation Examples

=> ↺ How To Install Kodi 17 “Krypton” On Ubuntu

=> ↺ Blocking of international spam botnets with a Postfix plugin

=> ↺ CoreFreq – A Powerful CPU Monitoring Tool for Linux Systems

=> ↺ Project #5: Using tmux Properly

=> ↺ How to Check Remote Ports are Reachable Using ‘nc’ Command

=> ↺ [Video] Alpine Linux Raspberry Pi Install

=> ↺ How Unix erases things when you type a backspace while entering text

=> ↺ rtop – An Interactive Tool to Monitor Remote Linux Server Over SSH

=> ↺ How to theme your Linux Desktop

=> ↺ [Older] Live resizing of partition and file system under Linux

=> ↺ Setting up a native Cisco IPsec VPN server at home using a Raspberry Pi 3

=> ↺ How To Write and Use Custom Shell Functions and Libraries

=> ↺ issue #66: Git Filesystem, Security, JVM, Fission, Habitat, TLS 1.3 & more!

=> ↺ Monitoring and Tuning the Linux Networking Stack: Sending Data

=> ↺ Upgrade/Install Latest KDE Plasma 5.x in Kubuntu 16.10/16.04/Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety/16.04 Xenial

=> ↺ How to Configure Network Between Guest VM and Host in Oracle VirtualBox

=> ↺ How to install and use CoreFreq – CPU monitoring tool for linux

=> ↺ Type-driven configuration management with Propellor

=> ↺ Fix network hanging for WiFi card Realtek RTL8723BE on Linux kernel 4.4

=> ↺ How to set the default terminal (or window manager, browser, and much more) in Linux

=> ↺ Tuning Linux servers for scalability

=> ↺ Use tmux for a more powerful terminal

=> ↺ How to Set up Nginx Server Blocks on Ubuntu and CentOS

=> ↺ Online migrations at scale

=> ↺ Best Third-Party Repositories for CentOS

=> ↺ Safeguard and scale containers

=> ↺ Optimizing graphics memory bandwidth with compression and tiling: Notes on DRM format modifiers

=> ↺ How to Make ‘Vim Editor’ as Bash-IDE Using ‘bash-support’ Plugin in Linux

=> ↺ How To Get Your Geolocation From Commandline In Linux

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Wine Staging 2.1 Adds Improvements to the CSMT Patchset, Based on Wine 2.1

• The Wine Staging team announced today, February 9, 2017, the availability of the Wine Staging 2.1, a development release that implements various improvements and addresses numerous issues.

• Coming hot on the heels of Wine 2.1, on which it’s based, the Wine Staging 2.1 release has revamped the CSMT (Command Stream Multithreading) patchset, which is the application’s number one functionality, used for using the available GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and CPU (Central Processing Unit) more efficiently by moving the execution of OpenGL commands to a separate thread, to support Direct3D 10 and 11.

Games

=> ↺ Old School RTS Make a Comeback (on Linux too)

• We had already mentioned that Cossacks would be coming on Linux – it’s been on Windows since last year (2016) and for a long time we had no news about when it would appear on Linux, but it seems now that the date is fixed – it will be released on the 15th of March 2017 both on Mac and Linux.

=> ↺ Civilization VI: Quick Port Report

• So Civ VI should be out now by the time you read this, and we have had a couple of days on the beta before the release. After spending about 4 hours on the game, it’s wayyyyyy too early to have any definitive opinion about how good Civ VI really is (and what the additions of districts, civics tree and envoys actually bring), but we can at least say how good the port looks so far, in single-player mode. First, the first thing you will notice is the first, dark loading screen – at least during the first load. It’s been quite long on my hardware (i5 3.4 Ghz with GTX970, 8GB RAM, 1080p screen), more than a minute – it reminds me a lot of Mankind Divided in that sense. Note that this is not unique to Civ VI, Civ V had a pretty long loading screen as well. But once the game is loaded it’s about it, so it’s not that bad. And subsequent loads were shorter.

=> ↺ Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Live on Linux Now!

=> ↺ Steam now has over 3,000 Linux games available

• It’s official! Steam has hit another milestone for Linux games. We now have over 3,000 Linux games to fill our time with. The exact count for me right now is 3,008!

• I know, quality over quantity, but with quantity we get the possibility for more good games. I have hundreds in my own Steam library and 99% of them are great.

=> ↺ Civilization VI comes to Linux, GDC 2017, and more open gaming news

• In this open gaming roundup, we take a look at the release of Civilization VI for Linux, the upcoming Game Developer Conference, and more open gaming news.

=> ↺ Hitman Comes to Linux February 16th

=> ↺ Agent 47 marks his target: HITMAN coming to Linux on February 16th

=> ↺ Into The Breach, the new strategy game from the makers of FTL will be on Linux

• Into The Breach [Official Site, Steam] has been announced by Subset Games, the creators of the excellent FTL. It will support Linux, but not at day-1.

=> ↺ The Linux release of River City Ransom: Underground will see a delay

• River City Ransom: Underground, the crowdfunded follow-up to the original will see a delay in the Linux version.

=> ↺ Valve set to replace Greenlight with Steam Direct

=> ↺ Day of Infamy, the WWII FPS has a big polishing update, take a look at my video

• Day of Infamy [Steam, Official Site], the WWII FPS from the Insurgency developers has a big update including new maps, updated game-modes, performance improvements and more.

=> ↺ Interview with Aspyr Media about porting Civilization VI to Linux and other interesting questions

• Now that Aspyr Media have ported Civilization VI [Steam] to Linux, it’s time to publish our interview! Grab a coffee and come learn some things.

• I would like to start off by thanking Michael Blair for his time, as I know he’s very busy!

=> ↺ New trailer for Torment: Tides of Numenera introduces us to the story

• I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time and hopefully it’ll live up to being a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment. Everything shown so far is promising and we’ll be having a same-day Linux release too.

=> ↺ Valve have three new VR games in development

• With VR support for Linux/SteamOS likely due this year, with Valve teasing VR on Linux…

=> ↺ Valve Said To Be Developing Three New VR Games

=> ↺ Parkitect alpha 10 released, featuring improved water, ride budgets and much more

=> ↺ A look at Tinertia, a twin-stick rocket-jumping shooter for Linux

• I did have a few multi-monitor issues, where the game kept loads up on the secondary screen and crashes when trying to move the window. Luckily, KDE let’s me move it across to my primary screen while it’s in full-screen mode so that saved the day.

=> ↺ Linux Release Of Civilization VI Comes With A Few Caveats

• Linux gamers got some great news this morning when Civilization VI finally debuted on the Penguin-loving platform. But, as the day progresses, those same gamers are finding out more and more that has made some regret their purchase.

=> ↺ Trying Intel Kabylake Graphics With Civilization VI On Ubuntu Linux

• I was very surprised to find out that I was able to get Intel HD Graphics working with Aspyr Media’s latest Linux game port, Civilization VI. Here are some benchmark results.

• Aspyr Media only lists NVIDIA graphics as officially supported, but I couldn’t resist trying out the latest-generation Intel Kabylake graphics for this game. Yesterday I posted 14-way NVIDIA benchmarks of Civilization 6 on Linux while my RadeonSI results are coming up shortly…

=> ↺ RadeonSI Performance For Civilization VI On Linux With Mesa 17.1 + 4.10 Kernel

• Since yesterday’s release of Civilization VI for Linux, ported by Aspyr Media, we have published a 14-way NVIDIA GPU comparison with this newest high-profile Linux game release. This morning I also shared some Intel Kabylake game figures for Civilization 6 while now the focus is on RadeonSI.

=> ↺ Trying Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D With Civilization 6 On Mesa 17.1

• With Intel Kabylake graphics on Mesa working (albeit very slowly) for Aspyr Media’s latest Linux game port, Civilization VI, and RadeonSI Gallium3D running too albeit at a less than desirable speed, I decided to try running the open-source NVIDIA (Nouveau) driver with this latest AAA Linux game release.

• I tried Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D from Mesa 17.1-devel Git this morning. I was running the Linux 4.10 kernel and had enabled NvBoost=2 mode and re-clocked the graphics card to its 0f performance state. The NVIDIA graphics card for this open-source driver testing was the GeForce GTX 780 Ti Kepler.

=> ↺ 14-Way NVIDIA GPU Comparison With Civilization VI On Linux

• Aspyr Media today released their native Linux port of Civilization VI. Here are benchmarks of fourteen different NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards from Kepler to Pascal for seeing how well this game performs. Benchmarks with (not officially supported) RadeonSI and Intel Mesa graphics will be coming up next.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE Applications 16.12.2 Rolls Out for Plasma Users to Fix over 20 Recorded Bugs

• Today, February 9, 2017, KDE has had the great pleasure of announcing the general availability of the second point release of its KDE Applications 16.12 software suite for KDE Plasma desktops.

=> ↺ Beautiful New Design on kde.org

• While in KDE we pride ourselves on making beautiful software our website has lagged behind modern requirements and trends. Visual Design Group member Ken Vermette has quietly worked away with key stakeholders to create a design and update the content. The new site uses correct HTML5 and is responsive to working on mobiles and tablets. It includes an introduction to our products, community and how you can get involved.

=> ↺ KDE Neon to Support Snap Apps in Plasma Discover

• Ubuntu-based KDE Neon is one the Linux distros we’re most excited for this year — and with good reason. The distro combines the stability of Ubuntu’s latest LTS foundations with the latest (and, if you want it, bleeding edge) KDE applications and Plasma desktop releases.

=> ↺ Adoption of Flatpak vs Snap

• Given these results alone, I’m quite frankly pretty puzzled how the jury could still be out and that’s completely ignoring the centralized nature of Snap. Distributing AppImages via Steam makes more sense than Snap (Steam has the same centralized nature as Snap). Not only does every somewhat mainstream distribution ship Steam in some non-free repo, it would also allow us to distribute applications to Windows and macOS.

=> ↺ The State Of Flatpak vs. Snaps On Various Linux Distributions

• Motivated by KDE Plasma Leaning Towards Focusing On Flatpak Over AppImage/Snaps and this lengthy, contentious forum thread, a KDE contributor has taken a closer look at the Flatpak versus Snaps versions available in different Linux distributions.

• KDE contributor Markus Slopianka sought to clarify the adoption of Flatpak vs. Snap in modern Linux distributions. He looked at the state of Snap and Flatpak in the releases of Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mageia, openSUSE, and Ubuntu.

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5.9.1 – Here is the First Bugfix Release

=> ↺ How to Activate the Global Menu in Kde Plasma 5.9

=> ↺ Kde Plasma 5.9 is Finally Available in Arch Linux

• As an Arch Linux and Kde lover, I’m pleased to let you know that the new Kde Plasma 5.9 is finally available into the stable repository.

=> ↺ A Short KDE Plasma 5.9 Review in February 2017

• The KDE Network Manager settings got a new look. Surprise for VPN users, now you have a beautiful & user-friendly VPN client in KDE built-in.

=> ↺ Concept X for Plasma Mobile

• This week the Plasma team is sprinting and maybe the time to discuss Plasma Mobile’s UI is coming! Andrea Del Sarto and me didn’t join the sprint this year, but we wanted to contribute with our ideas, trying to inspire future works

=> ↺ KDE at FOSDEM and Plasma Sprint 2017 Pics

• We’ve had a busy weekend at FOSDEM in Brussels for the last two days and now I’ve travelled into my fifth country of the trip picking up a few hackers on the way for the KDE Plasma Sprint which is happening all this week in Stuttgart, do drop by if you’re in town.

=> ↺ Made with Krita 2016: The Artbooks Have Arrived!

• Made With Krita 2016 is now available! This morning the printer delivered 250 copies of the first book filled with art created in Krita by great artists from all around the world. We immediately set to work to send out all pre-orders, including the ones that were a kickstarter reward.

=> ↺ Native look and feel

• We know that many Qt users want controls styled with a native look-and-feel. But offering that on platforms with no public styling API, is hard. A classic approach is to take snapshots of the native controls, tweak them, and use them as foreground or background in our own controls. Which is somewhat OK for static appearances. But when animations and transitions are involved, static pixmaps will only take you half the way. And since an OS can change style from one update to the next, taking snapshots runtime is risky. Using pre-grabbed snapshots is also something we don’t do because of legal considerations.

=> ↺ Glowing Qt Charts

• Have you ever had the need to visualize data graphically and add some ‘wow’-effect to it? I’m currently helping out with the development of a demo application, where we have some charts to visualize data received from sensors. Naturally, the designer wants the charts to be visually appealing.

=> ↺ Plasma Sprint: KDE neon Docker Images Now Support Wayland

• The KDE neon Docker Images are the easiest and fastest way to test out KDE software from a different branch than your host system.

• Coming live from the Plasma Sprint sponsored by Affenfels here in Stuttgart, the KDE neon Docker images now support Wayland. This runs on both X and Wayland host systems. Instructions on the wiki page.

=> ↺ Does KDE.org look funny to you?

• Our stalwart KDE homepage, which has been with us for several years, has, after serving us well, finally been retired.

• The new KDE.org homepage, using the new theme “Aether”, is only the first step of a much longer journey to unify the disparate KDE websites. KDE.org and its surrounding network is made of many parts: forums, wikis, feed aggregates, custom solutions, etc; beyond the homepage each of these will need to be updated. It will be a long road, but the modernization is due.

=> ↺ Wallpaper, Wallpapers, Website!

=> ↺ Plasma Vault is evolving

• While the rest of the Plasma team is sprinting in Germany, I’m unfortunately tied down to my chair at home and trying to sprint as well.

=> ↺ Kanboard to Phabricator

• A while ago KDE migrated our todo management from Kanboard to Phabricator to reduce the amount of software our System Administrators have to manage and maintain. In KDE neon we did this move already ahead of time so I happened to have a primitive migration script at hand, ultimately making me the person to auto migrate everyone’s todos.

=> ↺ FOSDEM 2017 & the QtWayland Compositor Framework

• This will be a rather short blog post but since I completely missed to making it before this year’s FOSDEM, just let me give you a short hint to my current talk: This year, for the first time, I submitted a talk to the Embedded & Automotive DevRoom. If you think that this sounds crazy, actually, what we see on modern embedded devices, like in cars or in even bigger machines, this tends gain a similar complexity like the good old Linux desktop environments. In terms of multiple processes, window compositing and UI requirements, a lot of such demands are already on the table…

=> ↺ Kdenlive 16.12.2 released

• The second maintenance release of the 16.12 series is out, part of KDE Applications 16.12.2.

• This release fixes startup crashes with some graphic cards, as well as some fixes to MOVIT (GPU effect processing) and minor stability issues. The Appimage version as well as our PPA’s were updated, check our download section for instructions. An updated Windows version will be released in the next days. This is a relatively small update since all our efforts are currently focused on the timeline refactoring branch which will bring professional grade new features and more stability. Stay tuned for more news!

=> ↺ Dark Adwaita and HighContrast Themes for Qt

• One of our goals for Fedora Workstation is to run Qt applications in GNOME as seamlessly as possible. Their look should be as close to their GTK+ counterparts as possible, you shouldn’t have to set things on two different places just to make the change in both GTK+ and Qt applications.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ halting problem :: Epoxy

• Epoxy is a small library that GTK+, and other projects, use in order to access the OpenGL API in somewhat sane fashion, hiding all the awful bits of craziness that actually need to happen because apparently somebody dosed the water supply at SGI with large quantities of LSD in the mid-‘90s, or something.

• As an added advantage, Epoxy is also portable on different platforms, which is a plus for GTK+.

• Since I’ve started using Meson for my personal (and some work-related) projects as well, I’ve been on the lookout for adding Meson build rules to other free and open source software projects, in order to improve both their build time and portability, and to improve Meson itself.

• As a small, portable project, Epoxy sounded like a good candidate for the port of its build system from autotools to Meson.

=> ↺ Meson Build System Takes 45% Less Time Than Autotools For Epoxy

• GNOME developers continue investing in the Meson Build System and the results continue to be much faster than Autotools and generally other build systems too.

• GNOME developer Emmanuele Bassi shared his latest findings after bringing Meson over to libepoxy, the library for abstracting some of the OpenGL / OpenGL ES differences and setup behavior across windowing systems and other environments.

=> ↺ A new way of writing Gtk+ applications

• I love working with Gtk+ – it is a great GUI toolkit with a good developer experience. But React has totally changed how GUI apps are written.

=> ↺ [Vide] [GNOME 3.24] User Accounts – Feb 10

=> ↺ GNOME MPV is a Sleek GTK+ Frontend for mpv

• I recently blogged about my love affair (of sorts) with mpv, the nimble, open-source media player based on mplayer.

• Stock mpv is, for those used to all-singing and all-dancing video players, a little… austere. GNOME MPV is an attractive GTK+ front-end to mpv.

• If you find mpv too minimal, gnome-mpv is sure to help.

=> ↺ Accelerated compositing in WebKitGTK+ 2.14.4

• WebKitGTK+ 2.14 release was very exciting for us, it finally introduced the threaded compositor to drastically improve the accelerated compositing performance. However, the threaded compositor imposed the accelerated compositing to be always enabled, even for non-accelerated contents. Unfortunately, this caused different kind of problems to several people, and proved that we are not ready to render everything with OpenGL yet.

Distributions

=> ↺ SemiCode OS Might Be Your Next Development Platform

• One thing about Linux is that it’s very coder-friendly. Why? Simple: Nearly any developer can have every tool they need at their fingertips with ease and little to no cost. Tools like gcc, make, Bluefish, Atom, vi, emacs… the list goes on and on and on. Many of these tools are ready to serve, via a quick install from either your package manager or by downloading them, individually, from their respected websites. But what if you wanted all of those tools, at the ready, on a single, programmer-friendly platform? If the thought of having every tool you need to develop, pre-installed on a Linux distribution, appeals to you, there’s a new platform in the works that might fit your needs to perfection. That distribution is SemiCode OS.

Reviews

=> ↺ Zorin OS 12 Review | LinuxAndUbuntu Distro Review Of The Week

• Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distro that seeks to stand out amongst the many Linux distros around. It is touted as “a replacement for Windows and MacOS, designed to make your computer faster, more powerful and secure”. So what’s the deal with Zorin? Is it worth your attention in the sea of distros? Let us take a look at what makes this distro stand apart.

New Releases

=> ↺ Escuelas Linux 5.1 Officially Released with LibreOffice 5.3 and Vivaldi Browser

• The development team behind the Escuelas Linux operating system informed Softpedia today about the immediate availability of the Escuelas Linux 5.1 release, a major milestone that adds numerous improvements and new components.

=> ↺ antiX 17 Linux Operating System Gets New Alpha Build, Now Uses Kernel 4.9.6

• Debian-based antiX 17 Linux has recently entered development, and it today received a new Alpha build, the second in the upcoming series based on the soon-to-be-released Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” operating system.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ Kurdish Group Hacks openSUSE Linux Website

• In this day and age, you never know where you’re going to run across a political statement. For example, if you visited the openSUSE News website on Monday, you would have been treated to an image of the Kurdistan flag, along with a rather potty mouthed anti-ISIS statement.

• Yup. The openSUSE site had been defaced, by a hacker identifying himself as MuhmadEmad and connected with a group called “KurDish HaCk3Rs.” A screenshot of the defaced site is available — thanks to Roy Schestowitz, publisher of Tux Machines and Techrights — but we’ll not show it here due to an F-bomb in the message. The good news is that little harm seems to have been done and the site was quickly returned to normal by way of a recent backup.

=> ↺ openSUSE news website compromised

• One of the websites belonging to the openSUSE project, a SUSE Linux-supported organisation that develops a community Linux distribution, was defaced earlier this week.

• Dr Roy Schestowitz, who runs a website known as Techrights, was the first to publicise the defacement.

• It appears that the site which was defaced was the news.opensuse.org site.

=> ↺ openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2017/06

• This week we managed to get out 7 snapshots – I am going to review the snapshots {0203..0209}.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ UKCloud addresses public sector call for open standards with Red Hat

• Cloud provider turns to Red Hat’s OpenStack Platform to provide organisations with open infrastructure

• UKCloud and red Hat have teamed up to address one of the public sector’s most pressing IT needs – better access to services build on open standards.

=> ↺ Huawei extends cooperation with Red Hat to public, NFV cloud

• Huawei and Red Hat extended their partnership with the addition of public and NFV clouds. Prior to this, the companies entered into collaborations to deliver OpenStack-based products and carrier-grade software-defined networking (SDN) products. The new strategic business and engineering cooperation is designed to enable Huawei customers to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for critical services both on-premises and on Huawei’s public cloud platform. In addition, the expanded collaboration is aimed at providing a new product portfolio for carriers to build NFV clouds.

=> ↺ BlockApps Collaborates with Red Hat to Deliver Hybrid Cloud Solution for Blockchain Applications in the Enterprise

=> ↺ BlockApps Partners with Red Hat To Make Ethereum Apps Easier

=> ↺ NethServer 7 Final released

Finance

=> ↺ 2 Stocks in Focus: Monster Beverage Corporation (NASDAQ:MNST), Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ Trading Covered Calls: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) : Using Covered Calls to Outperform Earnings

=> ↺ Stock Returns: ServiceNow Inc (NYSE:NOW) is Beating Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ The Barbara Oil Co. Has $767,000 Stake in Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

=> ↺ The Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Lifted to “Strong-Buy” at Vetr Inc.

Fedora

=> ↺ Fedora 25: Wayland vs Xorg

• Almost as good as Alien vs Predator only much better. Anyhow, as you probably know, I have recently tested Fedora 25. It was an okay experience. Overall, the distro behaved reasonably well. Not the fastest, but stable enough, usable enough, with some neat improvements here and there. Most importantly, apart from some performance and responsiveness loss, Wayland did not cause my system to melt. But that’s just a beginning.

• Wayland is in its infancy as a consumer technology, or at least that thing that people take for granted when they do desktop stuff. Therefore, I must continue testing. Never surrender. In the past few weeks of actively using Fedora 25, I did come across a few other issues and problems, some less worrying, some quite disturbing, some odd, some meaningless. Let us elaborate.

=> ↺ Fedora 27 Scheduled To Be Released On Halloween

• While Fedora 26 isn’t even being released until June, today the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has approved the initial release schedule for Fedora 27.

• The approved schedule has the F27 branching from Rawhide on 25 July, a possible alpha release on 22 August, the beta release on 26 September, the final freeze on 17 October, and to do the official Fedora 27 release on 31 October. The approved Fedora 27 schedule can be found via this FESCo ticket.

=> ↺ Maintaining a flatpak repository

• So, you’ve built a flatpak, using flatpak-builder, and now you have a directory called repo. How do you go from here to something that your users can install the application from?

=> ↺ Enhanced OpenGL driver support in flatpak

=> ↺ FESCo Will Let GLVND Support Land In Fedora 25

• Besides approving the Fedora 27 release schedule, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) approved GLVND support landing in Fedora 25 as an update.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian-Based Elive 2.8.0 Beta Distro Is Out with Performance Improvements, More

• Four months have passed since the release of Elive 2.7.8 Beta, and the developers of the Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution have announced today the availability of a new Beta version.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Free open smart home platform eases IoT setups

• Canonical, openHAB Foundation and Azul Systems joined forces to launch snap packaging openHAB 2.0, a free open smart home platform that acts as a control hub for home IoT setups. openHAB is easy to install, highly customisable and comes with great performance across a wide range of hardware from PCs to Raspberry Pis.

=> ↺ Free and open code for smart home platform, as a Ubuntu snap

• Canonical, openHAB Foundation and Azul Systems have launched the snap packaging of openHAB 2.0, a completely free open smart home platform that acts as a control hub for home IoT setups, that can be an alternative to Apple Homekit and Samsung SmartThings.

=> ↺ Five New Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities Patched in Ubuntu 16.10 for Raspberry Pi 2

• Canonical announced a few hours ago the availability of a new security update for the Raspberry Pi 2 kernel packages of the Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system, which patches a total of five newly discovered vulnerabilities.http://news.softpedia.com/news/debian-based-elive-2-8-0-beta-distro-is-out-with-performance-improvements-more-512836.shtml

=> ↺ The next Ubuntu phone will be a modular one, like Google’s Project Ara

• Mobile World Congress 2017 is a few weeks away and that means the rumour mill is operating at full tilt.

• Will the LG G6 have a near-bezel-less display? Will Samsung reveal the Galaxy S8? Truthfully we won’t know until the end of February but we have gotten wind of something that will be at MWC 2017 and it has our inner geek squealing with delight.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 17.04 Unity 8 – current state

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Linux-driven dev board harnesses Sitara PRU-ICSS

• MYIR unveiled a new development board for its TI AM437x based “MYC-C437X” module designed to tap the AM437x’s PRU-ICSS real-time chips.

• In late 2015, MYIR launched its MYD-C437X baseboard and MYC-C437x COM based on TI’s single Cortex-A9, 1GHz Sitara PRU-ICSS (Programmable Real-Time Unit and Industrial Communication Subsystem) AM437x SoC. Now, the Chinese manufacturer has spun a MYD-C437X-PRU development board that uses the same Linux-driven MYC-C437x COM. It’s designed for developers who want to exploit the capabilities of the AM437x’s quad-core, 200MHz PRU-ICSS real-time, programmable chips. The MYC-C437x module is again supported with a Linux BSP, now upgraded to a Linux 4.1.18 kernel.

=> ↺ [Older] RecalboxOS – Raspberry Pi Gaming System

• If you are interested in gaming then you should look into the RecalboxOS which runs on the Raspberry Pi. RecalboxOS has numerous console emulators and even provides Kodi which is a media center for playing videos, music, pictures, games and more. This article will cover the installation and configuration of the gaming system and not Kodi.

=> ↺ PiE-Ink is a Raspberry Pi name tag that uses an e ink display

• In today’s maker edition of “why didn’t we think of that before?”, we have a customisable name tag based on a Raspberry Pi hooked up to an e ink display.

• The “PiE-Ink” was created by user “esper2142“, who is quickly identified as Josh King, a systems engineer at Cisco thanks to the included demo video.

Phones

=> ↺ Sailfish OS 2.1.0 now available to early access for Jolla devices

• This is our biggest release in a while after Aurajoki. It marks thousands of bug fixes with fundamental improvements to the operating system and is now available for early access across Jolla devices.

• 2.1.0 is named after Finland’s Iijoki, located in Northern Ostrobothnia, which flows 370 kilometers into the gulf of Bothnia.

• Iijoki brings major architectural changes to Sailfish OS by introducing Qt 5.6 UI framework, BlueZ 5 Bluetooth stack and basic implementations of 64-bit architecture. It also brings improvements to the camera software with faster shutter speeds, initial support for Virtual Private Networks (VPN), option to enlarge UI fonts to different levels and last but not least, a large number of bug and error fixes mostly reported by our community.

=> ↺ 2.1.0/Iijoki

Android

=> ↺ 9 new things you can do with your Android Wear smartwatch

• Google redesigned the interface and added new features that are aimed directly at competing with the Apple Watch, and giving Android fans a more capable wearable.

=> ↺ Working on an Android tablet, 2017 edition

• A big contributor to this has been the plethora of work-oriented tablets and convertibles released since then.

=> ↺ The Future Of Android-x86 Is In Question

=> ↺ became anti-Google

• Android-x86 has been an open-source project for the past 7+ years for providing suitable Intel/AMD hardware support for Google’s Android operating system. Unfortunately, its project leader may be stepping away.

• Chih-Wei Huang who co-founded the Android-x86 open-source project in 2009 may be parting ways with it.

=> ↺ How to hide photos on an Android phone and keep those saucy snaps private

=> ↺ Lenovo Yoga Book a month later: Android at work

=> ↺ Android 7.0 Nougat: Sony is rolling out update to EVEN MORE devices

=> ↺ Nougat is installed on a measly 1.2 per cent of Android devices

=> ↺ You’re not alone in waiting for the Android 7.0 Nougat update

=> ↺ NVIDIA Releases Android 7.0 Update for SHIELD Tablet

=> ↺ Android’s convenient Instant Tethering is now rolling out to Pixel and Nexus devices

=> ↺ Android Instant Tethering connects a tablet to your smarphone’s data connection

=> ↺ The Honor 8 is getting Android Nougat, but what about other US-released Honor phones?

=> ↺ Internet of Things: Google Releases Android Things Developer Preview 2

=> ↺ Android Wear 2.0, Vizio gets caught, and more on this week’s Vergecast

=> ↺ Android Wear 2.0 uses offline AI for its smart replies

=> ↺ US Software Company Reopens Lawsuit Against Google Over Android System

=> ↺ BlackBerry Mercury vs BlackBerry Priv – Release Date, Price, Android Phones COMPARED

=> ↺ Android Circuit: Galaxy S8 Battery Fears, Secrets Of Nokia’s Android Smartphone, New Pixel 2 Leaks

=> ↺ Nvidia Shield Tablet K1 gets Android Nougat, becomes an even better deal

• I wouldn’t blame you for forgetting all about the Nvidia Shield Tablet, especially after Nvidia had to recall practically every single slate when they became a fire hazard two years ago.

• But the tablet’s successor, the Nvidia Shield Tablet K1, could be a fantastic deal at $200/£170/roughly AU$260. Particularly because the inexpensive slate can now be updated to Android 7.0 Nougat, the latest version of Google’s operating system.

=> ↺ Is AI the next Android differentiator? LG teases ‘less artificial more intelligence’ for G6

=> ↺ Android Things Hits Developer Preview 2

=> ↺ IoT-based Android Things Developer Preview 2 released

=> ↺ Sony is rolling Android Nougat out to some Xperia devices

=> ↺ Android privacy assistant seeks to stop unwanted data collection

=> ↺ Best ways to use your Android phone with your PC

=> ↺ The Honor 8 is getting its long-awaited Nougat update

=> ↺ Android 7.0 Nougat rolling out to Honor 8 starting tomorrow

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ How I became a project team leader in open source

• As an idealistic young university undergraduate I hung around with the nerds in the computer science department. I was studying arts and, later, business, but somehow I recognized even then that these were my people. I’m forever grateful to a young man (his name was Michael, as so many people in my story are) who introduced me first to IRC and, gradually, to Linux, Google (the lesser known search engine at the time), HTML, and the wonders of open source. He and I were the first people I knew to use USB storage drives, and oh how we loved explaining what they were to the curious in the campus computer lab.

=> ↺ Sandstorm is returning to its community roots

• Most people know Sandstorm as an open source, community-driven project aiming to enable self-hosting of cloud services and to make it possible for open source web apps to compete with today’s cloud services.

=> ↺ AT&T open sourced the heart of their network

=> ↺ OPNFV Nearing Commercial Deployment

• It also signals a stage where the OPNFV Project’s software platform could be ready for commercial deployment — dates for which the organization is not setting directly. “We’ll defer to the vendors on that,” says Heather Kirksey, OPNFV director. But she expects to start collecting deployment data this year. Queries to a couple of the involved vendors have not yet produced responses, but stay tuned.

=> ↺ ‘Night in the Woods’ Improving Games by Open Sourcing Code

• Game software developer Jon Manning has created a very well-done 60-second promo for his upcoming talk at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco, Feb 27-March 3, 2017 – Making Night-in-the-Woods Better with Open Source.

=> ↺ Lessons from a brief career in open source

• I wasn’t making much headway in the cybersecurity field or in computer forensics. However, I did notice that many postings used words like “Linux” and “open source.” I thought that might be a better path to take. So, I enrolled in several free, online courses to improve my skills and to build my credentials. You can find free courses at Cybrary.it, edX.org, and others. I have since been certified in Linux, Java, HTML, e-marketing, Google Analytics, and even FEMA emergency response.

=> ↺ FOSS February: A month to celebrate open source

• Open source remains a competitive means of distribution—one that delivers exceptional software to new and devoted users. Despite this, open source, its methodologies, practices, code, and the communities behind them, can be overlooked or misunderstood if they are inadequately communicated. As a professional in tech marketing in the open source space, I often find that my conversations begin by highlighting the key takeaways of open source before I can begin to graze the surface of product-specific impact.

• Open source software has come a long way over the past several years, primarily due to the contributions of active open source communities. Still, convincing an enterprise’s influencers, IT leaders, and developers of the merits of open source remains a challenge in certain spaces. While it is important that organizations take an honest, objective look at the total cost of ownership of any solution, open source or commercial, it became clear to me that impressions of open source were not always reflective of the extraordinary work and talent that can be found in the space.

=> ↺ Intel open sources deep learning with BigDL for Apache Spark

=> ↺ Intel, Cloudera open source tech unleashes power of artificial intelligence workloads

• Intel and data management company Cloudera have jointly launched a solution aimed at speeding up the process of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.

=> ↺ Wyatt Emmerich: State should lean on open source software to save money, reduce brain drain

=> ↺ Open source code could save money, spur tech growth

• Mississippi spends $250 million a year on software to run its government. Much of this software is proprietary code with big national companies. We get locked in to the software. Switching becomes impossible. Steep price increases follow. Taxpayers lose.

• Garrett proposes a better way. Working with our university computer departments, the Legislature should create a Center for Collaborative Software Development. A portion of our state IT spending should be set aside to support this. Student teams could design and compete for state software contracts using open source under university supervision. The winners could go on to found successful software companies based in Mississippi.

=> ↺ Inclusive Development gets open source tools from IBM

• IBM is embarking on a new era of open source accessibility by releasing tooling, samples and design patterns to help streamline the development of inclusive web and mobile applications.

• They have recently released two new projects on the developerWorks/open community, AccProbe and Va11yS, to help alleviate accessibility roadblocks during the agile development process, strengthen the user experience by adhering to industry standards, and reduce costs by ensuring accessibility is done right from the beginning.

=> ↺ Business applications: the next hurdle for open source adoption

• Is open source finally overcoming the long-held reservations that still persist among some non-technical executives, and even a sizeable number of business technology professionals?

• According to Matthew Lee, regional manager for Africa at SUSE, the German-based, multinational, open-source software company, the answer is both yes – and no.

• “There is no question that open source has become mainstream in many areas. It has more than proven itself in the infrastructure space after hanging around on the periphery of the enterprise providing non-critical functions such as firewalls and Web servers. Now it is starting to move up the enterprise stack but it still faces a significant challenge when it comes to business applications,” he said.

=> ↺ Circulate on Fridays: Farming from shipping containers and open source

• Get all your circular economy relevant reading and viewing in one place every weekend with Circulate on Fridays. Today, we’re focusing on open source, the potential impact of a new EU circular economy finance platform, and why the future of farming is in shipping containers!

Events

=> ↺ Integrating LibreOffice OnLine into your web app

• I’ve returned from FOSDEM 2017, where I talked about LibreOffice Online that we develop here at Collabora and how to integrate it with your own web service.

=> ↺ [Video] FOSDEM 2017 – Resurrecting dinosaurs, what can possibly go wrong?

=> ↺ GUADEC 2017: Friday 28th July to Wednesday 2nd August in Manchester, UK

• The GUADEC 2017 team is happy to officially announce the dates and location of this year’s conference.

• GUADEC 2017 will run from Friday 28th July to Wednesday 2nd August. The first three days will include talks and social events, as well as the GNOME Foundation’s AGM. This part of the conference will also include a 20th anniversary celebration for the GNOME project.

=> ↺ Open Networking Summit Announces Initial Keynote Speakers from Amadeus, Andreessen Horowitz, AT&T, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Visa and More

=> ↺ The Tizen Partners Summit will be held in Warsaw, Poland, from 23rd to 24th February 2017

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Struggling for Relevance: Is Mozilla Really Killing Off Firefox?

• Mozilla has announced that it is abandoning its efforts to develop a new operating system for smartphones and other connected devices. The decision to shut down the connected devices division will affect about 50 Firefox employees, including Ari Jaaksi, the senior vice president who had headed the initiative.

SaaS/Back End

=> ↺ New Benchmarks Show Big Increases in Spark Graph Processing

• Companies focused on Big Data have remained very focused on Apache Spark, an open source data analytics cluster computing framework originally developed in the AMPLab at UC Berkeley. According to Apache, Spark can run programs up to 100 times faster than Hadoop MapReduce in memory, and ten times faster on disk. When crunching large data sets, those are big performance differences.

• The race is also on to speed up Spark-driven workloads. Now, Diablo Technologies and Inspur Systems have announced the release of benchmark data showcasing the benefits of the Memory1 solution for Apache Spark workloads. By increasing the cluster memory size with Memory1, Diablo and Inspur claim they were able to cut processing times for graph analytics by half or more.

Databases

=> ↺ MariaDB North American Roadshow Supports Accelerating Adoption of Open Source Relational Databases in the Enterprise

=> ↺ Leaders in Data Management and Open Source Innovation to Gather in Boston for Postgres Vision 2017

=> ↺ RethinkDB joins The Linux Foundation

• When the company behind RethinkDB shut down last year, a group of former employees and members of the community formed an interim leadership team and began devising a plan to perpetuate the RethinkDB open-source software project by transitioning it to a community-driven endeavor. Today’s announcement by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) marks the culmination of that effort. The CNCF purchased the rights to the RethinkDB source code and contributed it to The Linux Foundation under the permissive ASLv2 license.

=> ↺ The liberation of RethinkDB

• There was just one small hiccup with RethinkDB, though it felt forgivable at the time: RethinkDB is open source, but licensed under the AGPL. Whatever your own feelings for the AGPL, it is indisputable that its vagueness coupled with its rarity and its total lack of judicial precedent makes risk-averse lawyers very nervous (especially in companies that have substantial intellectual property to protect) — to the point that it’s not uncommon for companies to ban the use of AGPL-licensed software entirely. This makes the AGPL anti-collaborative, and worse, it’s often the point: when companies license software under the AGPL that they also make available commercially (that is, under a license palatable to the enterprise), they are exhibiting the corporate open source anti-pattern of dual-licensing for profit. (Viz.: Oracle’s infamous relicensing of BerkeleyDB as AGPL.)

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ SnapRoute Raises $25M For Open-Source Network Operating System

=> ↺ (VIDEO) IAB Tech Lab Priorities: Open Source Kit For In-App Ads, RTB Standard Revamp

Funding

=> ↺ HackerOne Professional, Free for Open Source Projects

• For some time now I have been working with HackerOne to help them shape and grow their hacker community. It has been a pleasure working with the team: they are doing great work, have fantastic leadership (including my friend, Mårten Mickos), are seeing consistent growth, and recently closed a $40 million round of funding. It is all systems go.

BSD

=> ↺ [Video] The Trouble with FreeBSD

=> ↺ [llvm-dev] [4.0.0 Release] Release Candidate 2 has been tagged

=> ↺ LLVM 4.0 RC2 Steps Up

• The second release candidate to the forthcoming LLVM 4.0 compiler stack and Clang 4.0 C/C++ compiler front-end are now available.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ grep-3.0 released [stable]

=> ↺ grep-2.28 released

• This is to announce grep-2.28, a stable release. Thank you especially to Paul Eggert and Norihiro Tanaka for all of their improvements, both in the grep repository and via gnulib.

=> ↺ The GNU C Library version 2.25 is now available

=> ↺ Meet the GNU Health team at SCALE15x !

=> ↺ Looking for Work after 25 Years of Octave

• TL;DR: Reflecting on the last 25 of Octave, it’s been a great experience. I would love to continue as the Octave BDFL but I also need to find a way to pay the bills.

• It’s hard to believe that almost 25 years have passed since I started the Octave project. It’s been a great experience. I’ve met many interesting and talented people along the way. I’m grateful for everyone[1] who has made Octave the successful project that it is today. There is no way that the project would be as successful as it is without their many contributions.

• As I’ve said many times, I thought the project would last a year or two. I never intended for it to be a career, but now it is hard to imagine doing anything else. There are still many projects I would like to tackle. I want to continue refactoring the interpreter so that it is easier to understand, simpler to work with, and more reliable. I want to improve the performance of the interpreter and make the GUI more useful. I’d love to be able to devote my full attention and energy to these projects for as long as I am able.

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Luxembourg University sponsors open source developers

• “We have been using Debian in our HPC infrastructure since 2007 which has grown to 100 servers and more than 500 computing nodes”, says HPC staff member Hyacinthe Cartiaux. The department is part of the Grid5000 initiative which is also mainly based on Debian.

• “We want to extend the lifespan of the Debian releases to at least 5 years in order to provide a stable and safe environment for our researchers”, system administrator Cartiaux says. In February 2016, the department began sponsoring Freexian, a French company that partners with well-known contributors in the free software community to offer long term support. This includes both individual developers and companies specialised in free and open source.

=> ↺ France updates IT project evaluation tool Mareva

• The IT project management solution was first made available in 2005, by ADAE, the precursor to DINSIC. Support for free and open source software was added sometime after August 2007, when Mareva supported its use in OpenOffice. In 2014, it switched to support LibreOffice, a much more rapidly developing open source office suite.

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ Three new FOSS umbrella organizations in Europe

• Last year, three new umbrella organizations for free and open-source software (and hardware) projects emerged in Europe. Their aim is to cater to the needs of the community by providing a legal entity for projects to join, leaving the projects free to focus on technical and community tasks. These organizations (Public Software CIC, [The Commons Conservancy], and the Center for the Cultivation of Technology) will take on the overhead of actually running a legal entity themselves.

• Among other services, they offer to handle donations, accounting, grants, legal compliance, or even complex governance for the projects that join them. In my opinion (and, seemingly, theirs) such services are useful to these kinds of projects; some of the options that these three organizations bring to the table are quite interesting and inventive.

=> ↺ The Linux Foundation Offers Free Open Source Licensing Course: “Compliance Basics for Developers”

• Open Source has grown from a mere idea to a philosophy that drives some of the most crucial innovations around the world. The concept of reviewing code made by others, introducing your own changes, and then distributing the code back to the community creates a feedback loop that helps individual developers accomplish much more as a community than what they can do alone.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Data

=> ↺ A new open source dataset links human motion and language

• Researchers have created a large, open source database to support the development of robot activities based on natural language input. The new KIT Motion-Language Dataset will help to unify and standardize research linking human motion and natural language, as presented in an article in Big Data, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Big Data website until March 9, 2017.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ AtCore: Printing with threads

• When connect to a 3d printer with your compuer you are really just connecting to a serial device. There are some commads you can send it in the form G# and M# commands . These commands do all kinds of stuff every thing from homing the axises to feeding filment and moving the head around. When you slice your model and generate that gcode file you are making generating basicly a long list of comamnds for the printer to follow. The gcode files are plain text and have to be sent out thru a serial device to the printer. Its not complicated to parse the file you just send a command and wait for the printer to return a message indicated its finished the comamnd and then send the next command. We have had this working for some time using a QEventLoop and a while to keep the loop going until the printer is ready for a new command. This was working wonderfully Untill we realized that we were having some blocking problems when printing. After some discussion tomaz , patrick and I decided the best way to fix this is for us to split the printing to its own thread so it can no longer block other parts by hyjacking the main event loop while printing.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ RSPIRV: Google’s Rust Implementation Of SPIR-V

• Google developers have been working on a number of open-source projects in the Vulkan space and one of their latest is SPIR-V processing with Rust.

• RSPIRV is another project under the Google umbrella on GitHub. RSPIRV is a Rust implementation of SPIR-V module processing functionalities. SPIR-V, of course, being the intermediate representation/language used by Vulkan as well as OpenCL 2.1+ and can also be used in OpenGL.

=> ↺ Optimize PHP with finely tuned IT resources and settings

• More than 90% of PHP-based websites still use PHP version 5. Of those websites, less than one quarter run the latest supported version, PHP 5.6. Despite the release of PHP 7 in December 2015, which has been documented and benchmarked as up to two times faster than PHP 5.6, the adoption rate is only around 3% among websites that use the language. The first step — before optimizing PHP using the following tips — is to upgrade to version 7.

=> ↺ Node for Java Developers

• The biggest audience for my Node.js workshops, courses and books (especially when I’m teaching live) is Java developers. You see, it used to be that Java was the only language professional software developers/engineers had to know. Not anymore. Node.js as well as other languages like Go, Elixir, Python, Clojure, dictate a polyglot environment in which the best tool for the job is picked.

=> ↺ Morocco’s First Open Source ERP Uses Java EE 7!

=> ↺ Hazelcast’s Parallel Streaming Engine Targets Java/Big Data Programmers

• In-memory data grid (IMDG) specialist Hazelcast Inc. yesterday launched a new distributed processing engine for Big Data streams. The open-source, Apache 2-licenced Hazelcast Jet is designed to process data in parallel across nodes, enabling data-intensive applications to operate in near real-time.

=> ↺ On new zlib breaking perl

=> ↺ anytime 0.2.1

Leftovers

=> ↺ Private Eye hits highest circulation in 55-year history ‘which is quite something given that print is meant to be dead’

• Private Eye hit its biggest ever print circulation in the second half of 2016 – up 9 per cent year on year, according to ABC.

• The title has also revealed that the 2016 Christmas issue achieved the biggest sale in the title’s 55-year history, 287,334 copies.

Science

=> ↺ Hijacking bacteria to kill cancer

• Scientists have recruited modified bacteria to help fight cancer, which successfully infiltrated tumors and activated the immune system to kill malignant cells, a new study reports. Tumors size decreased below detectable limits in 11 out of 20 mice that received injections of a strain of bacteria designed to be innocuous, yet able to effectively suppress the growth of cancerous masses. Despite the fact that Salmonella strains have been harnessed to deliver different types of therapeutic agents, these strategies often require multiple injections of microbes, and relapse is common. In search of a better method, Jin Hai Zheng and colleagues used attenuated Salmonella typhimurium bacteria as “Trojan horses,” which infiltrated the low-oxygen environments found within tumors and secreted an immune response-triggering signal – from a protein named FlaB, involved in the locomotion of the marine microbe Vibrio vulnificus — that stimulated the cancer-eliminating activities of protective macrophages. The FlaB-expressing bacteria was proven to be nontoxic, and importantly, didn’t invade non-cancerous tissue in rodents. After three days post-administration, the numbers of bacteria inside tumors were 10,000-fold greater than those found in vital organs. What’s more, the combination of Salmonella and FlaB synergistically shrank tumors, prolonged survival and also prevented metastasis in a mouse model of human colon cancer. While mice receiving non-FlaB producing microorganisms displayed some reductions in cancer burden, their tumor masses tended to regrow. The authors speculate that its good safety profile makes the engineered bacteria a promising potential anticancer strategy.

Security

=> ↺ Newly discovered flaw undermines HTTPS connections for almost 1,000 sites

• Encrypted connections established by at least 949 of the top 1 million websites are leaking potentially sensitive data because of a recently discovered software vulnerability in appliances that stabilize and secure Internet traffic, a security researcher said Thursday.

=> ↺ Introducing Capsule8: Container-Aware, Real-time Threat Protection for Linux

=> ↺ Docker Secures Container Secrets in Datacenter Update

• Docker releases updated versions of its open-source and commercial container platforms, adding new security features to help safeguard privileged access information.

• Docker is advancing its open-source container engine as well as its commercially supported Docker Datacenter platform with enhanced capabilities designed to help safeguard container secrets.

=> ↺ After Linux; Mirai Botnet is Available for Windows

• Antivirus firms Dr.Web’s researchers have identified a new variant of Mirai bot, the infamous IoT malware. This new variant is capable of targeting Windows systems and can take on more ports than its Linux version. Dr.Web researchers have dubbed the new version as Trojan.Mirai.1.

=> ↺ Windows Trojan hacks into embedded devices to install Mirai

=> ↺ ​Google Project Zero: How we cracked Samsung’s DoD- and NSA-certified Knox

• Google’s Project Zero hackers have detailed several high-severity flaws that undermined a core defense in Samsung’s Knox platform that protects Galaxy handsets in the enterprise.

• Since launching Knox in 2013, the platform has been certified for internal use by UK and US government departments, including the US DoD and NSA. Given these certifications, defense-in-depth mechanisms should be rock solid.

=> ↺ Mirai Botnet Spreads With Help From Infected Windows Computers

=> ↺ Lovely. Now someone’s ported IoT-menacing Mirai to Windows boxes

• The Mirai malware that hijacked hundreds of thousands of IoT gadgets, routers and other devices is now capable of infecting Windows systems.

=> ↺ Finding Ticketbleed

• Ticketbleed (CVE-2016-9244) is a software vulnerability in the TLS stack of certain F5 products that allows a remote attacker to extract up to 31 bytes of uninitialized memory at a time, which can contain any kind of random sensitive information, like in Heartbleed.

=> ↺ Cybersecurity firms pilloried by GCHQ technical director over “witchcraft”

• “we are allowing massively incentivised companies to define the public perception of the problem”.

=> ↺ Wire’s independent security review

• Ever since Wire launched end-to-end encryption and open sourced its apps one question has consistently popped up: “Is there an independent security review available?” Well, there is now!

• Kudelski Security and X41 D-Sec published a joint review of Wire’s encrypted messaging protocol implementation. They found it to have “high security, thanks to state-of-the-art cryptographic protocols and algorithms, and software engineering practices mitigating the risk of software bugs.”

=> ↺ Practical Steps for Protecting IoT Devices

• The security of IoT devices is a high priority these days, as attackers can use Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to target them and wreak havoc on a system.

• “Due to the sheer volume of unconnected devices, it can take hours and often days to mitigate such an attack,” says Adam Englander, who is a Senior Engineer of the LaunchKey product at iovation.

=> ↺ IoT Cybersecurity Alliance Will Collaborate on Standards, Education

• A new IoT Cybersecurity Alliance formed by AT&T, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, and Trustonic promises to help solve one of the most critical elements of the Internet of Things (IoT) — security. The group says its goal is to work on IoT security standards as well as raise awareness about the topic.

• There are numerous IoT-related associations working to promote different segments of IoT and streamline the fragmentation that exists in the industry. However, this is the first group to focus solely on security. AT&T, which was an early advocate for IoT, said it has seen a 3,198 percent increase in attackers scanning for vulnerabilities in IoT devices.

=> ↺ Security updates for Friday

=> ↺ Capsule8 Launches Linux-Based Container Security Platform

• Cybersecurity startup Capsule8 this week announced that it has raised US$2.5 million to launch the industry’s first container-aware, real-time threat protection platform designed to protect legacy and next-generation Linux infrastructures from existing and potential attacks.

• CEO John Viega, CTO Dino Dai Zovi and Chief Scientist Brandon Edwards, all veteran hackers, cofounded the firm. They raised seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, as well as individual investors Shandul Shah of Index Ventures and ClearSky’s Jay Leek.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ NYT: Unlike Russian Wars, US Wars ‘Promote Freedom and Democracy’

• A rough look at the actions in question since Putin has been in office reveals this outrage to be, at best, misplaced. One tally by Airwars, a Western nonprofit, puts the total number of Syrian civilians killed by Russia since it entered the war in September 2015 at just over 4,000, or 0.8–0.4 percent of the 500,000 to 1 million civilians who died due to George W. Bush’s unilateral invasion of Iraq in 2003. Add to this the thousands of other civilians killed in other theaters of the “War on Terror” under the Bush and Obama administrations, including Afghanistan, Libya and Syria itself, and the idea of pointing to respect for civilian lives as something that elevates the United States above Russia seems a little absurd.

• But the addition of stifling dissent and allegedly killing journalists takes Russia over the line into Bad Guy territory, the Times suggests—ignoring the US’s own harsh punishment for whistleblowers, infiltration of dissident groups and bombing of foreign journalists. Not to mention the US’s sprawling, unprecedented incarceration system, or its unmatched institutional racism–all human right abuses leveled at home.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Planned Espionage Act could jail journos and whistleblowers as spies

• Proposals for a swingeing new Espionage Act that could jail journalists as spies have been developed in haste by legal officials, The Register has learned.

• The proposed Act is an attempt to ban reporting of future big data leaks.

• The government has received recommendations for a “future-proofed” new Espionage Act that would put leaking and whistleblowing in the same category as spying for foreign powers.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Welcome to the Madhouse: Scientist says Trump could destroy the world

• A WORLD-leading scientist has warned Donald Trump may signal the end of the world — and Australia could be first to face the catastrophic consequences.

• Michael Mann claims Mr Trump’s relationship to “post-truth” politics and “alternative facts” is much more than just embarrassing for the US and has the potential to destroy civilisation.

• Sitting in an office at the University of Sydney Business School ahead of his sold-out talk this week, the Penn State professor says one only has to look at the city’s record January temperatures for proof of how dangerous the President’s attitude is.

=> ↺ Huw Parkinson: Trumpocalypse Now (with Malcolm Turnbull)

• Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is sent deep into the jungle of the United States of America to try and smooth things over with newly elected President Donald Trump and quickly discovers how things get… “confused out there”. Huw Parkinson explores this harrowing tale.

Finance

=> ↺ May’s Brexit Law Faces Lords Challenge After Passing Lower House

• U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May faces a fresh challenge to a law allowing her to trigger Brexit after the opposition Labour Party said it’ll propose eight amendments when the legislation is debated in the House of Lords later this month.

• Labour peers will seek to enshrine in the law a parliamentary vote on May’s final deal with her European counterparts on the terms of the country’s departure from the EU, the party said in an e-mailed statement on Thursday. While the government pledged to grant such a vote during the bill’s passage through the House of Commons, it hasn’t detailed it in the bill. Seven other amendments would cover a range of other matters, from Britain’s membership of Euratom, a nuclear cooperation agreement, to the rights of EU citizens resident in Britain.

=> ↺ Donald Trump calls NSA at 3am to clear doubt on US economy

• The US President called National Security Advisor Mike Flynn at 3am seeking clarity on what a rising or falling currency actually means for the US economy.

=> ↺ Let’s dump CETA once and for all!

• On 15 February, the European Parliament will decide whether to ratify the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA). In choosing to back this agreement, MEPs would allow its partial implementation and would open the door for the next steps of the legislative process, which could lead to its complete and definitive implementation. On the other hand, rejecting it would be a death-blow for the agreement, just as it was for ACTA in July 2012. Beyond the unacceptable procedure of its elaboration, CETA is a grave threat to our liberties and fundamental rights. Therefore, La Quadrature du Net calls upon MEPs to oppose it strongly.

=> ↺ Please Write to Your MEPs About Next Week’s Critical – and Final – CETA Vote

• Next Wednesday, the European Parliament will have its final vote on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA. If you were hoping to influence your UK MP on this, it’s too late: last week, the government sneaked through a vote on CETA without anyone noticing. It passed, of course, but given the absence of real democracy – or an opposition party – in the UK, that’s no surprise.

=> ↺ Labour’s Failure and Institutional Analysis

• Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to oppose Brexit in Parliament is as culpable as Harriet Harman’s failure to oppose welfare cuts. It will haunt Labour just as much. The job of opposition is to oppose. We currently have a more right wing government than I imagined the UK would ever see in my lifetime, and it is riding a tide of racist populism in England and Wales, barked on by a far right media whose ownership and world view is ever more concentrated. This is no time to drop the duty of resistance.

• Corbyn’s view of the EU is ambivalent. Both major English and Welsh parties are led by people who are at least highly sympathetic to Brexit. That is a democratic failure when 47 per cent of the English and Welsh voters supported the EU.

• The problem with the EU as a cause is that it is supported by some extremely unpleasant people. Straw (father and son), Mandelson, Osborne. The EU has nobody given media coverage to speak for it in the UK that is not amongst the most despised members of the political class. And in criticising Corbyn’s failure to oppose Brexit, I find myself echoing Blairites, which is uncomfortable.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Obama’s Lost Army

• The question of why—why the president and his team failed to activate the most powerful political weapon in their arsenal—has long been one of the great mysteries of the Obama era. Now, thanks to previously unpublished emails and memos obtained by the New Republic—some from the John Podesta archive released by WikiLeaks, and others made available by Obama insiders—it’s possible for the first time to see the full contours of why Movement 2.0 failed, and what could have been.

=> ↺ Saudis foot tab at Trump hotel

• A lobbying firm working for Saudi Arabia paid for a room at Donald Trump’s Washington hotel after Inauguration Day, marking the first publicly known payment on behalf of a foreign government to a Trump property since he became president.

• Qorvis MSLGroup, a communications firm that lobbies for the Saudis, has been organizing veterans and other activists to come to Washington to urge Congress to repeal the law letting 9/11 victims’ families sue the kingdom. Between 20 and 40 veterans, with the assistance of the advocacy group NMLB, stayed at the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in December and January.

=> ↺ Lift A Rock – Find Creepy Crawlies

• Where does Trump find these crackpots? He’s invited a guy who has fought against every reasonable attempt by government to preserve the environment for later generations to take over the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). This isn’t about Free Speech, having an opinion, etc. It’s about propagandizing harm to the environment.

• See also Myron Ebell: Paris Agreement ‘a dead end’ where this guy spouts lies about going to renewable energy being a burden on the economy. He even denies China is busy adopting renewable energy. That’s absolute crap. China is the world’s biggest producer of renewable energy and they are intent on taking a serious dent out of fossil fuel usage.

=> ↺ Spread it on Reddit

• On December 23, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was given an unexpected early Christmas present: a conspiracy theory accusing her of deliberately allowing Islamic State terrorists to operate in Europe so that she could unleash an “EU Army” against fellow EU member states.

• The story was a flimsy fake, and failed to penetrate beyond a handful of conspiracy and disinformation sites. It is nonetheless worth studying, as it illustrates the methods which far-right commentators are using to spread disinformation ahead of this year’s German and French elections, especially on Reddit.

=> ↺ Trump vexed by challenges, scale of government

• The new president’s allies say he has been surprised that government can’t be run like his business.

=> ↺ President Trump’s White House Reaching New Lows In Accountability And Transparency

• It’s still very early in the Trump presidency, but so far, things aren’t looking good. Overt and implicit threats to freedom of speech continue to linger in the air. Recent comments suggest Trump will look to roll back the few measures taken over the last few years to curb asset forfeiture abuse. Wording in one of President Trump’s first presidential statements suggests the administration is going to value “law and order” over citizens’ rights. Then there’s the travel ban, which is being contested in federal courts.

• We’re now seeing a rollback of the few transparency and accountability objectives the supposed-Most Transparent President Ever managed to accomplish over eight years of generally making things worse on both fronts.

• This follows Trump’s secrecy during his presidential campaign, where he shrugged off over four decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax returns. He’s made it clear on multiple occasions — while standing in front of a memorial to dead CIA operatives and during his Black History Month speech — that he does not trust the media. But the actions taken during the first few weeks of his presidency suggest he also does not trust the general public.

=> ↺ In a first, Wikipedia has deemed the Daily Mail too “unreliable” to be used as a citation

=> ↺ Wikipedia editors ban Daily Mail as source

=> ↺ Daily Mail branded “fake news” by Wikipedia

=> ↺ Daily Mail Hits Back At Wikipedia After It Bans Tabloid As Source, Calling It Unreliable

=> ↺ Wikipedia’s Daily Mail Ban Is a Welcome Rebuke to Terrible Journalism

=> ↺ Prepare your popcorn: Wikipedia deems the Daily Mail unreliable

=> ↺ Wikipedia bans Daily Mail as ‘unreliable’ source

=> ↺ Can’t Judge Fake News in the Dark

• This isn’t about Trump. It’s about judging the media, whoever and whatever they report on. It is about reading critically when so much out there is just simply inaccurate. Not maybe inaccurate, pure dead solid perfect stupid. So don’t call me a nazi.

• Step One is to note if the story you’re reading/seeing is all or mostly unsourced, or anonymously sourced. Red flag.

=> ↺ On Iran, SPLC’s ‘Extremist’ Is NPR’s ‘Expert’

• Last week, the Trump administration began ratcheting up hostilities with Iran, nominally in response to a ballistic missile test in late January. NPR (2/2/17) dutifully reported Trump’s announcement of new sanctions on Iran, framing the issue as the Trump White House responding to an Iranian “provocation” in regards to Iran’s agreement with the UN, rather than simply executing long-held plans. A follow-up explainer by international correspondent Peter Kenyon (2/3/17) would muddy the waters further and use an incredibly dodgy source to do so.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ The Tor Project’s ooniprobe allows you to participate in the vigil against internet censorship

• Experienced internet explorers will know about The Onion Router Project, and some of you may have even used it at one point (guilty). Regardless of your thoughts on it, Tor has always tried to stand for internet freedom. The organization frowns upon censorship and throttling, which is why it has released ooniprobe to help raise awareness for the issue.

=> ↺ New app helps people track internet censorship

• A new tool wants to make it easy to track internet outages and help people learn how to circumvent them.

• The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), which monitors networks for censorship and surveillance, is launching Ooniprobe, a mobile app to test network connectivity and let you know when a website is censored in your area.

• The app tests over 1,200 websites, including Facebook (FB, Tech30), Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) and WhatsApp. You can decide how long to run the test, but the default is 90 seconds and would test between 10 and 20 websites depending on bandwidth. Links to blocked websites are listed in red, while available sites are green.

=> ↺ Conversation Cafe covers book censorship

• The removal and restriction of certain books is no new phenomenon. Despite a more historical and dystopian portrayal, book censorship is still a current issue.

• To address and inform about this issue, the office for Diversity and Social Justice Education is holding a Conversation Cafe titled “Burn Before Reading: Book Censorship” at noon on Feb. 10 at the Women’s Resource Center. The Conversation Cafe will be hosted by Emily Knox, a specialist on intellectual freedom and censorship.

=> ↺ Artists Faced Sharp Rise in Attacks and Censorship in 2016, Report Says

• The non-profit divides its findings into categories, including “serious violations,” for killings, attacks, abductions, imprisonments, and threats; and “acts of censorship.” In 2016 the organization counted 840 incidents of censorship and 188 serious violations.

• Categorized amongst the serious violations are three killings, two abductions, 16 attacks, 84 imprisonments and detentions, 43 prosecutions, and 40 persecutions and threats.

=> ↺ Don’t become an enemy of free speech, no matter how hateful it is

• The president of the Sacramento State College Republicans demanded that school president Robert Nelsen and ASI President Patrick Dorsey if they did not denounce a riot that broke out at UC Berkeley on Feb. 1 in response to a visit by right-wing blogger Milo Yiannopoulos.

• The demand came shortly after College Republicans President Mason Daniels and several others attempted to obstruct the path of an anti-Trump march on campus. Several anti-Trump demonstrators responded by telling them “your hate speech isn’t protected here.”

=> ↺ Inside South Korea’s Battle With a State-Sponsored Censorship Crisis

• Asia’s entertainment powerhouse is reassessing its young democracy, as top government officials are being arrested for compiling an “artist blacklist” featuring the likes of ‘Oldboy’ director Park Chan-wook.

• Trumbo, the biopic about the Roman Holiday screenwriter who was blacklisted during the 1940s-1950s Red Scare, barely earned $400,000 in South Korea. Nearly a year after its unremarkable release, however, references to the film have been popping up in local op-eds, as South Korea deals with its own McCarthyian reality: Asia’s entertainment powerhouse has been shaken up like never before, as prosecution probes have confirmed the existence of a blacklist.

=> ↺ UK Search Engines Will Sign Up To A ‘Voluntary’ Code On Piracy — Or Face The Consequences

• As Techdirt readers know, the copyright industry has almost no means to tackle infringement, or to demand that pirated materials are removed from Internet sites. At least, that’s the impression you would get as a result of the constant whining you hear from the entertainment companies that they are doomed and terribly neglected by the lawmakers. Indeed, not content with the copyright ratchet that constantly makes copyright laws longer, stronger and broader, the film, music and publishing industries are always pushing for “voluntary” agreements with the Internet industry that don’t require anything so tiresome as actual laws to be passed… or pesky things like “due process.”

=> ↺ History proves censoring free speech is ineffective

• A failure of democracy. Antithesis to American values and the Constitution. These are common phrases you may hear in the aftermath of the Milo Yiannopoulos protests, but neither are entirely true. From the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, to the riots that erupted on Sproul Plaza, there is a long history of ineffective censorship emboldening the opposition.

• In 1798, the Adams administration was faced with an impossible choice: Public sentiment was geared against France for the humiliation of the XYZ Affair. The people wanted war, but Adams knew it was impossible. He allowed for small skirmishes, but it did little to satiate public bloodlust. Thusly, he passed the Alien and Sedition Act which allowed him to detain any critics. Despite this, Adams lost the election of 1800, and Thomas Jefferson repealed the act, returning freedom to the people.

=> ↺ NorCal ACLU Urges San Jose School District to Rehang Controversial Art

• The debate over the removal of controversial art from a San Jose school district office has reached the next level: lawyers.

=> ↺ Censorship versus free speech at a very local level

• Free expression seems to be top of mind in the Bay Area these days. I’ve been thinking about it, too — but not in the context of how one should respond to a decadent disrupter who’s chosen to threaten vulnerable people as part of his personal brand.

=> ↺ Mob censorship can’t be tolerated

• If we really have free speech in this country, as provided by law, then any lawful program should be able to be held on any campus. Whether any of us, including university administration or the news media, agree with the sponsors or their subject matter, should have nothing to do with the right to hold the program.

=> ↺ Editorial: Censorship in the Senate

=> ↺ #ShePersisted: social media erupts after Mitch McConnell silences Elizabeth Warren

=> ↺ #LetLizSpeak: Outcry After Elizabeth Warren Is Silenced for Criticizing Jeff Sessions

=> ↺ The Tor Project’s new smartphone app can help detect and report internet censorship

=> ↺ Tor-developed smartphone app will detect internet censorship and surveillance

=> ↺ Tor Project’s New Mobile App Alerts You To Internet Surveillance And Censorship

=> ↺ Why Did an Internet Censorship App Send My Phone to Hardsextube.com?

=> ↺ Ooniprobe is a silly name for a new way to combat censorship and surveillance

=> ↺ Mapping Countries That Censor the Internet

=> ↺ Revealed: how censorship on campus is getting worse

=> ↺ Spiked: nine out of 10 UK universities ‘restrict free speech’

=> ↺ Freedom of speech decreasing for Christian students

=> ↺ German court upholds censorship of notorious Erdogan insult poem

• A German court upheld its ruling prohibiting comedian Jan Boehmermann from reciting the most explicit passages from his satirical “anti-Erdogan” poem that landed him in the middle of a diplomatic row last year.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Merkel to Testify Before German Parliament Panel Probing NSA

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to testify before a German parliamentary panel investigating U.S. intelligence activities in the country.

• The inquiry was launched a year after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed details of secret U.S. eavesdropping programs in 2013. The panel is investigating alleged eavesdropping in Germany by the U.S. National Security Agency and its relationship with German counterparts.

=> ↺ Ex-CIA analyst: Pentagon has files that ‘completely vindicate’ NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake

• Former CIA analyst Pat Eddington is suing the Department of Defense over a 2010 case in which a former National Security Agency employee was charged with espionage after speaking to a reporter with the Baltimore Sun. Thomas Drake faced charges in 2010 after speaking with the reporter about an intelligence program that he believed was a violation of Americans’ civil liberties.

=> ↺ Former CIA Analyst Sues Defense Department to Vindicate NSA Whistleblowers

• In 2010, Thomas Drake, a former senior employee at the National Security Agency, was charged with espionage for speaking to a reporter from the Baltimore Sun about a bloated, dysfunctional intelligence program he believed would violate Americans’ privacy. The case against him eventually fell apart, and he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor, but his career in the NSA was over.

• Though Drake was largely vindicated, the central question he raised about technology and privacy has never been resolved. Almost seven years have passed now, but Pat Eddington, a former CIA analyst, is still trying to prove that Drake was right.

=> ↺ Court Says Microsoft Can Sue Government Over First Amendment-Violating Gag Orders

=> ↺ Ohio Arsonist Gets Busted By His Own Pacemaker

• When we talk about pacemakers here at Techdirt, the focus is usually on how the devices have paper-mache grade security, allowing anybody to assassinate the cardiac-challenged with relative ease. In fact we’ve reached the point where the FTC had to recently issue its first ever warning against a pacemaker vendor when it announced that hackers could comprmise pacemakers made by St. Jude Medical, sending “commands to the implanted device, which could result in rapid battery depletion and/or administration of inappropriate pacing or shocks.”

• But your pacemaker may just betray you in other ways, too. In Ohio a man was indicted this week on arson and insurance fraud charges after his Pacemaker data contradicted the story he was telling authorities. When the man’s home burned down on September 19, Middletown resident Ross Compton told authorities he quickly packed some belongings in a suitcase and some bags, broke a window with his cane, and quickly fled through the window before carrying his belongings back to the car. The man also acknowledged at the time that he had a pacemaker.

=> ↺ DHS Secretary Says Agency Is Planning On Demanding Foreigners’ Social Media Account Passwords

• Last summer, the DHS started asking visitors to the US to supply their social media handles. It was all on a strictly voluntary basis, of course. But that doesn’t mean some immigrants and visa seekers didn’t do exactly as they were asked, either due to a language barrier or figuring that turning down this request might harm their chances of entering the country.

• Six months later, the DHS made it more official, unofficially. An “optional” section in the DHS’s online visa application process asked for account info for multiple social media platforms, including (strangely) Github and JustPasteIt. Again, officials assured everyone this was optional and the information was to be used to assess the threat levels of incoming foreigners. Again, the DHS probably harvested a fair amount of information despite the optional nature of the request. Like any cop asking if you’d “mind if they look around the car a little bit,” the request carried unspoken threats that things might be a bit more difficult if the request was denied.

=> ↺ Fake Intelligence

• Here’s a recent interview I did for RT UK’s flagship news programme, Going Underground with Afshin Rattansi, about the whole fake news, fake intelligence allegations swirling around President Trump’ administration at the moment…

=> ↺ UK Train Operators Plan To Charge Passengers Using Their Biometrics

• At least Bluetooth signals have the virtue of operating quite quickly, and from a certain distance. It’s hard to see how fingerprints or iris scans will be so slick in practice. As we’ve noted before, there are serious problems with getting fingerprint scans for the general public to work on a large scale, and those difficulties are likely to be exacerbated when people are in a hurry to catch a train.

• Iris scans typically require the subject to stand on a certain spot and to keep still while their eye is checked. As anyone who has been through some airports around the world knows, iris scans often take several attempts to recognize someone, and may fail altogether, which requires a manual check elsewhere. In the context of a busy station, this seems a recipe for disaster.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Secretive anti-subversion police units are no way to combat Britain’s far right

• Of course I wanted to cheer when I heard the news that the government is paying M&C Saatchi to combat hate campaigners, along with an anti-subversion unit targeting violent rightwingers as part of a £60m budget to fight extremism. I wanted to cheer but didn’t. Does this sort of advertising work? Has it been tested?

• I have always thought the government and police have a blind spot when it comes to rightwing ideologues and their followers. However, having spent years as an environmental activist and Green party politician – part of a movement that is still on the receiving end of repressive police tactics – I’ve learned the value of being clear about definitions. As a democrat and advocate of civil rights for all, I don’t want people being locked up for having vile opinions, or any kind of thought crime.

=> ↺ U.S. Court of Appeals Upholds Suspension of Immigration Executive Order

• We are pleased with today’s decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the District Court of Washington’s suspension of the U.S. Executive Order on immigration.

=> ↺ Trump Says There’s ‘No Reason’ To Scale Back Asset Forfeiture; Threatens Career Of Senator Backing Forfeiture Reform

• Here comes some more law and order, courtesy of our new law and order President. President Trump met with a group of sheriffs on Tuesday and offered to start rolling back civil asset forfeiture reforms. Apparently, it’s time to reset the clock on forfeiture, bringing us back to a time when the process wasn’t so heavily-criticized. But Trump’s not offering to curb abuse. He just fails to see why so many people think it’s a bad idea.

=> ↺ Confirmed: TSA’s Behavioral Detection Program Is Useless, Biased, And Based On Junk Science

• Thanks to FOIA requests (and lawsuits), the ACLU has gathered enough documents to provide a comprehensive report [PDF] on the worthlessness of the TSA’s “Behavioral Detection” program. Meant to give the agency a better way of proactively thwarting acts of terrorism, the program instead opts for lazy profiling, dubious readings of behavioral cues, and junk science.

=> ↺ UK Police Spy On Journalists At Small Town Paper, Gather One Million Minutes Worth Of Call Data

• The UK’s top spy agencies have been known to place journalists under surveillance. Leaked Snowden documents showed GCHQ collected emails from news organizations such as the New York Times, BBC, and Washington Post. More accusations of spying were raised by UK journalists, detailing what appeared to be a clear abuse of the country’s anti-terror laws — laws particularly prone to exploitation thanks to generous loopholes and a minimum of oversight.

• It wasn’t just spy agencies doing the spying. In the case of the UK journalists, it was also local law enforcement digging through their emails and phone calls in hopes of identifying sources and leakers. More evidence of police surveillance of journalists has come to light, as reported by the Associated Press. Once again, it’s law enforcement looking to uncover sources and whistleblowers, rather than terrorists or criminals.

=> ↺ Trump Issues Executive Orders To Make A Safe Nation Safe And Protect Cops Who Don’t Need Protection

• More Executive Orders have been issued by Donald Trump. The latest skew heavily in favor of Trump’s recent conversational partners: members of law enforcement.

• Earlier this week in a meeting with several sheriffs, Trump voiced his support for asset forfeiture and made an off-hand comment about ruining the careers of legislators engaged in reform efforts. Great fun was had by all… mostly Trump and perhaps a sheriff or two.

• One order does nothing more than what large bureaucracies do best: institute task forces. Trump’s task force is charged with “crime reduction and public safety.” The DOJ will head this up and ask for cooperation from local law enforcement agencies. The public safety priorities are definitely Trump’s, though.

Intellectual Monopolies

Trademarks

=> ↺ KYLIE trade mark battle spinning around

• The dispute began back in April 2015 when Kylie Jenner (a member of the Kardashian family) attempted to register KYLIE in the USA for advertising and endorsement services.

• Kylie Minogue opposed the application. It is rare for oppositions to be quoted in the press, but the description of Jenner as a “secondary reality television personality” has been repeated in almost every report of the dispute.

Copyrights

=> ↺ The top US copyright plaintiffs since 2015 revealed

• The Central District of California and Southern District of New York are the top districts for US copyright litigation since 2009, a Lex Machina report reveals. In the past year, textile pattern litigation has increased greatly, while file-sharing cases have dropped

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.