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● 04.08.17

● Links 8/4/2017: Qt 5.9 Beta, Neptune 4.5.4, Open Build Service 2.8, Deepin 15.4 RC2

Posted in News Roundup at 10:49 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ All FreeDesktop.org Projects Now Appear To Have A Contributor Covenant

• X.Org, GStreamer, Wayland, LibreOffice, Mesa, VA-API, Harfbuzz, and SPICE are among the many projects hosted by FreeDesktop.org that now appear to be on a contributor covenant / code of conduct.

• The Contributor Covenant for those unfamiliar with it is trying to promote a code of conduct for open-source projects that is trying to promote diversity and equality of contributors to libre software projects. From the covenant’s website, “Part of this problem [of "free, libre, and open source projects suffer from a startling lack of diversity, with dramatically low representation by women, people of color, and other marginalized populations"] lies with the very structure of some projects: the use of insensitive language, thoughtless use of pronouns, assumptions of gender, and even sexualized or culturally insensitive names.”

=> ↺ Dell introduces two Ubuntu Linux laptops that are the most powerful in the world right now

• Ubuntu Linux-powered machines that feature impressive hardware are few and far between but Dell has introduced two of the most powerful portable notebook workstations running a completely different operating system. The exciting part is that both of these machines are available to purchase on Dell’s online website right now, but let us walk you through the specifications first to see which machine is the right one for you.

Server

=> ↺ Old Vista Laptop Into A Linux ZFS File Server

• You might be surprised at how much potential for usefulness still remains in older equipment.

• My wife’s old laptop originally booted with Windows Vista, which (apart from being a generally substandard OS – Microsoft employees ran into so many problems with it, they reportedly didn’t even use it internally*) is no longer supported*(2). Mainstream support for Vista ended back in 2012, and as of April 11 2017, Vista will be officially dead

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ AMDGPU Has More Code Prepped For Linux 4.12

• AMD already sent in their major feature pull request to DRM-Next of new AMDGPU/Radeon DRM material slated for Linux 4.12 while another pull has now landed for -next.

=> ↺ Vulkan 1.0.42′s VK_KHR_push_descriptor Now Supported In RADV

=> ↺ NVIDIA’s “Open-Source Guy” Has Left The Company

• One of the main public-facing figures to NVIDIA’s open-source driver efforts has left the company to pursue a new opportunity.

=> ↺ On “Insights On Companies/Developers Behind Wayland”

• I recently read a peer-reviewed academic paper from a couple years ago that analyzed the contributions of different companies to WebKit. The authors didn’t bother to account for individuals using non-corporate email addresses, since that’s hard work, and did not realize that most Google developers contribute to the project using @chromium.org email addresses, resulting in Google’s contributions being massively undercounted. There were other serious mistakes in the paper too, but this is the one that came to mind when reading The FOSS Post’s article Insights On Companies/Developers Behind Wayland.

• The FOSS Post didn’t bother to account for where some big developers work, incorrectly trusting that all employees use corporate emails when contributing to open source projects.

=> ↺ You’ll Need To Wait Until Next Week To Torture Your Linux GPU With Superposition

• Unigine’s first public Unigine 2 tech demo, Superposition, was due to be released yesterday (6 April) but was delayed at the last minute. But next week Linux (and Windows) users — including RadeonSI drivers — should be able to have fun torturing your hardware with this demanding OpenGL benchmark.

=> ↺ AMDGPU-PRO 17.10 Released With Ubuntu 16.04.2 Support

• AMD has released the AMDGPU-PRO 17.10 hybrid Linux graphics driver.

• The only “highlight” listed for AMDGPU-PRO 17.10 is Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS support. But that itself is significant since if they are referring to 16.04.2′s hardware enablement stack, then AMDGPU-PRO is now working on at least the Linux 4.8 kernel without issues. I am in the process of setting up AMDGPU-PRO 17.10 on my Radeon test systems to see if Linux 4.8 is working nicely and if Linux 4.10~4.11 will work. This should also mean AMDGPU-PRO 17.10 should play nicely now on Ubuntu 16.10 due to sharing the same components of the 16.40.2 HWE stack.

=> ↺ AMDGPU-PRO 17.10 driver released

=> ↺ Vulkan 1.0.47 Released

• Another week, another update to the Khronos Vulkan specification. This Saturday morning brought the Vulkan 1.0.47 release.

=> ↺ GP10B & GP107 NVIDIA Support Land For Nouveau Linux 4.12

• Ben Skeggs has queued up some of the last patches from NVIDIA’s open-source enabler who last week left the company and queued up the code in DRM-Next for introduction in Linux 4.12.

• These patches authored by Alexandre Courbot include enablement of the GP10B and GP107 for this open-source NVIDIA DRM driver. GP10B is the GPU found within the Tegra X2 SoC on the recently released Jetson TX2 board. This is a mobile Pascal graphics processor that packs a fair punch on this SoC. As usual for Maxwell+ GPUs, GP10B requires some new firmware images.

Applications

=> ↺ Streamlink 0.5.0 Adds Support For Streaming Google Drive / Google Docs Videos

• Forked from Livestreamer, which is no longer maintained, Streamlink is a command line tool (and API) that can be used to stream videos from various streaming services, such as Twitch, YouTube Live and many more, and play them using your favorite video player, be it VLC, mpv, and more.

=> ↺ PB For Desktop 5.0.0 Brings Support For SMS Notification Mirroring

• PB For Desktop 5.0.0 was released today, bringing some important enhancements and fixes, like support for SMS mirroring, improved reconnection (in case the network gets disconnected), and more.

=> ↺ Polo Is An Interesting New GTK3 File Manager (Beta)

• Developed by Tony George, who’s also behind other fairly popular applications such as Selene Media Converter, TimeShift backup tool, and more, Polo is only available for users who donate for now. The stable release will be available for all users, however, those who donate will get a few extra features.

=> ↺ List of Desktop RSS Reader for Ubuntu & GNU/Linux

• This article accompanies our big list of GNU/Linux & FLOSS RSS feeds so you can choose suitable reader for your desktop. Here I list Firefox, Thunderbird, Akregator, Liferea, Blam, and Evolution with some details of each. It’s possible later for me to update this list, because there are still many other good readers. I hope you enjoy this!

=> ↺ Taskwarrior – A Command line TODO Task Manager Application

• The most common mistake we often do is “I don’t need to take notes. I will remember it”. Isn’t it? Indeed, it is. I am not an exception too. I have done this mistake so many times. Not anymore! Today, I found an useful command line TODO task manager application called “Taskwarrior”. It is a free and Open Source utility that manages your TODO list from the command line. It is efficient, flexible, fast, and unobtrusive tool. You can add all sorts of tasks, such as daily, weekly, monthly chores, personal goals, official-related works, family events, and manage them like a pro from the command line.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Skype for Linux 5.0 Beta and the rise of the bots

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Red Hat Open House Brno 2017 – aka rebinding my mouse buttons.

=> ↺ Cheat sheet for Intel Processor Trace with Linux perf and gdb

=> ↺ Quick Guide: How To hack android with Kali Linux

=> ↺ Clicking through a translucent window: using X11 input shapes

=> ↺ Matrix as IRC Bouncer

=> ↺ How To Install Kernel 4.11 RC5 on Ubuntu and Derivatives

=> ↺ How To Save Traffic With nginx’s HttpGzipModule on Debian Jessie

=> ↺ Dockerizing WordPress with Nginx and PHP-FPM on Ubuntu 16.04

=> ↺ Samba 4 Domain Controller Installation on CentOS 7

=> ↺ Pyinotify – Monitor Filesystem Changes in Real-Time in Linux

=> ↺ An Easy Way to Hide Files and Directories in Linux

=> ↺ How to install Moodle 3.2 on Ubuntu 16.04

=> ↺ How To Enable Desktop Sharing In Ubuntu and Linux Mint

=> ↺ Remmina – A Feature Rich Remote Desktop Sharing Tool for Linux

=> ↺ Install vnStat PHP on Ubuntu Desktop for Beginners

=> ↺ How to Add a New Disk Larger Than 2TB to An Existing Linux

=> ↺ Fix AppIndicator Not Working For Electron Apps In Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus w/ Unity

=> ↺ 12 interesting Linux Commands that can make you laugh

=> ↺ FreeFileSync – Compare and Synchronize Files in Ubuntu

=> ↺ Be careful relabeling volumes with Container run times. Sometimes things can go very wrong?

=> ↺ Build your own DNS name server on Linux

Games

=> ↺ Fort Triumph, an upcoming fantasy tactical RPG, is looking for Linux testers for its public test build

• This colorful game with tactical battles looks interesting. The developers have asked for feedback in the build up to the launch of their crowdfunding campaign.

=> ↺ Pray for Death, a classic fighting game has been packaged up with DOSBox on GOG

=> ↺ Freedom Penguin’s Unleaded – Steam Machines Feedback

=> ↺ FlightGear 2017.1.3 — Released April 4, 2017

=> ↺ Lose your castle and sell some weapons in ‘Weapon Shop Fantasy’, now on Linux

• Well that’s a fancy title isn’t it. Weapon Shop Fantasy [Steam] is a new 2D mix of an RPG and a weapon-shop simulator wrapped up neatly together and it was recently released for Linux.

=> ↺ Feral Interactive have released a new teaser for a Linux & Mac port to come

• Yup, it’s teaser time again! Feral Interactive are teasing another new Linux & Mac port on their infamous teaser radar.

• You know how this works by now, Feral tease a picture with another clue and we have no idea what it will be until it’s released.

=> ↺ Hyperspace Dogfights, the roguelike air combat brawler is now available on itch

• I was going to put this up earlier, but the developer had to sort out a proper launch script for the itch.io client so it would actually launch. Now that it launches correctly from the itch client, I took a little look at it.

=> ↺ Shroud of the Avatar major update, also free to try for a few days

• Shroud of the Avatar [Steam, Official Site], the RPG that has single-player and selective online modes has a big new release out. You can also try it for free for a few days to see if you want to buy it. I tried it again and have some thoughts for you.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Qt 5.9 Beta Released

• I am pleased to announce that Qt 5.9 Beta is now released. Convenient binary installers are available for trying out the cool new features coming in Qt 5.9. With this release we are adjusting the release process to make it easier for users to check out the upcoming release conveniently using the online installer.

=> ↺ Qt 5.9 Beta Released

• The official Qt 5.9 Beta is now out thanks to The Qt Company and the Qt developer community.

=> ↺ Akademy 2017 Call for Papers deadline is in a week!

=> ↺ From “I really want to be a open source contributor” to “Look ma, my name is in the credits”

=> ↺ About Procrastination, Programming and Writer’s Block

=> ↺ My 11 years within KDE (Or, my life before it)

• Since I was a kid I had dreamed about being a tech guy, I remember that I used to search the trash of my father looking for broken circuit boards back in 1988, he had a notebook computer, a Toshiba T1000 with amazing ~5mhz and 512kb ram, one of the best machines of the time. He tried to teach me how to Pascal back then, but I had better things to do like stuck my foot in my mouth, or look for broken circuits for I had learned on the TV that I could just plug random eletricity circuits and cables and I would have a Super Sentai robot for me, and I would fight crime dressed like Jaspion.

=> ↺ Krita 3.1.3 beta 1 released

• A week after the alpha release, we present the beta release for Krita 3.1.3. Krita 3.1.3 will be a stable bugfix release, 4.0 will have the vector work and the python scripting. The final release of 3.1.3 is planned for end of April.

• We’re still working on fixing more bugs for the final 3.1.3 release, so please test these builds, and if you find an issue, check whether it’s already in the bug tracker, and if not, report it!

=> ↺ Icemon 3.1.0 release

• More than one year after the 3.0.1 release, here’s a new minor release of Icemon: 3.1.0.

• Lots of bug fixes and small code refactorings, but also a few feature additions made it into this release.

=> ↺ QStringView Diaries: The Eagle Has Landed

=> ↺ New KDE Connect Indicator Ubuntu / Linux Mint PPA

• The KDE Connect Indicator (fork) PPA maintainer is not available any more, and I was asked to create a new PPA.

=> ↺ Complex text input in Plasma

• A brief note: If you’re a developer or user of input methods in the free desktop space, or just interested in learning about “How does typing Chinese work anyway?”, you might be interested in a discussion we’re now having on the plasma-devel mailing list. In my opening mail I’ve tried to provide a general overview about what input methods are used for, how they work, who they benefit, and what we must do to improve support for them in KDE Plasma.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ gspell maintenance

• If you like the work I’m doing, the gspell fundraising is still open. With GTK+ 4 more maintenance work will be needed. My priority for gspell is to make it a rock-solid library, fixing bugs when they arrive in the bug tracker, writing more unit tests, etc. gspell is now used by at least 6 applications (see the list on the wiki page), and with both GtkTextView and GtkEntry support I’m sure a lot more applications will use it in the future.

=> ↺ The new contribution workflow for GNOME

• I have big good news to share with you. You might know we have been working for years on materializing what we wanted the future of contribution to be, we did multiple iterations and we worked full time on our developer experience… and finally, I’m glad to announce, we achieved it, we have a new way to contribute to GNOME!

• One image says more than 1000 words, the whole process of contributing to GNOME is as easy as you will see, all documented in the new newcomers wiki

=> ↺ GNOME Paint Is Soon Coming As An Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Paint

• GNOME developer Marcin Kolny is working on a new tool named GNOME Paint, which can be seen as an alternative to Microsoft Paint. He hopes to create an application that would be good enough for GNOME core apps, making simple image editing easier. Currently, Kolny’s project is in the initial stage and he has invited help from experts.

Distributions

=> ↺ Solus GNOME Edition Launching Soon with the GNOME 3.24 Desktop Environment – Exclusive

• Solus Project leader Ikey Doherty just informed us today that the next Solus ISO snapshot, due for release in the coming weeks, will be accompanied by a GNOME edition too.

• We believe that this is a dream become a reality for many Solus users out there, not that they weren’t able to install the GNOME Shell interface before, but because having an officially supported edition that features the GNOME 3 desktop environment by default makes Solus adoption a lot easier.

Reviews

=> ↺ Bodhi Linux 4.1.0: Like Visiting an Old Friend

• If you never got to experience the Enlightenment desktop, back in the day, I highly recommend you give Bodhi Linux a try. It has just the right combination of “Those were the days” and “Hey, this works really well.” This modern take on the old classic will have your hardware screaming and you configuring the desktop like it was 1999!

=> ↺ Q4OS- Olden Linux for modern times, first test

• Well, that was not what I expected. I got attracted by the colorful offering, got dismayed by its inability to handle modern software, almost gave up completely and had it erased from my synapses, and then, just for the sake of it, I had the virtual session running and boy was it glorious. Crazy really. It was slick and modern and fast and fault-free and even tolerable when it comes to aesthetics. Confused and delighted, that is what I am.

• But this means I will endeavor to run Q4OS 1.8.3 Orion on my older LG box, which does not have UEFI, but it does have an Nvidia card, and this is a critical piece, especially since this distro had proprietary drivers on its can-do list, so that will be most interesting to test. I might fail, but I am liking it enough to give a chance. Who would have thought. Anyway, for now, no grade, as Q4OS is a bundle of sweet contradictions. TBC.

New Releases

=> ↺ First x86_64 TalkingArch

• The TalkingArch team is pleased to present the latest version of TalkingArch, available from the usual location. This version features all the latest software, including Linux kernel 4.10.6.

• The most important feature of this live image is the new x86_64 only compatibility, removing the i686 compatibility that was present in previous images. This makes the latest version much smaller, but it will no longer work on older i686 machines.

=> ↺ Neptune 4.5.4 Arrives with Linux Kernel 3.18.48 LTS, Dozens of Security Fixes

• The developers behind the Debian-based Neptune Linux distribution announced today, April 7, 2017, the release and immediate availability for download of the fourth maintenance update to the Neptune 4.5 stable series of the OS.

• Neptune 4.5.4 is here four months after the release of Neptune 4.5.3, which was launched on the first day of 2017, and it includes lots of updated components, all the latest security fixes released upstream in the Debian GNU/Linux repositories, as well as various other improvements and bug fixes.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ Open Build Service Version 2.8 Released

• The Build Service Team is happy to announce to release of Open Build Service 2.8! We’ve been hard at work to bring you many new features to the UI, the API and the backend. The UI has undergone several handy improvements including the filtering of the projects list based on a configurable regular expresion and the ability to download a project’s gpg key and ssl certificate (also available via the API). The API has been fine-tuned to allow more control over users including locking or deleting them from projects as well as declaring users to be sub-accounts of other users. The backend now includes new features such as mulibuild – the ability to build multiple jobs from a single source package without needing to create local links. Worker tracking and management has also been enhanced along with the new obsservicedispatch service which handles sources in an asynchronous queue. Published packages can now be removed using the osc unpublish command.

=> ↺ publican available for openSUSE

• Publican is a DocBook publication system, not just a DocBook processing tool. As well as ensuring your DocBook XML is valid, publican works to ensure your XML is up to publishable standard.

• Because upstream depreached FOP support and prefers wkhtmltopdf, this version comes without FOP package dependencies. If you want to use FOP, then deinstall wkhtmltopdf. After the next start publican will use FOP again.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ The CEO of Red Hat shares the 4 books that most influenced his career

• …oversees more than 8,000 employees in 80 countries at the open-source software company. His unique views on corporate culture — including the importance of killing terminally nice cultures and his belief that employees who cry are good hires — have been shaped by several thought leaders along the way.

=> ↺ RHEL 7 STIG v1 updates for openstack-ansible-security

Finance

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Position Cut by Dimensional Fund Advisors LP

=> ↺ Analysts Near-Term outlook: Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), CMS Energy Corporation (CMS)

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Stock Support And Resistance Levels

Fedora

=> ↺ Radka Janekova: How do you Fedora?

• Radka Janekova is a former game programmer and community manager. She actively contributes to gaming and open source communities. Radka describes herself as: “Currently wearing her Red Hat, inspiring the desolate whitespace of Linux world with the delicate C# letters of simplified artificial intelligence. Trails of her C#, C++ and Python keystrokes can be found in the World of Tanks and several of the Angry Birds games. Her Fedora feels the delicate .NET presence as well.”

=> ↺ PHPUnit 6.1

Debian Family

=> ↺ openvpn deployment with Debian Stretch

• Debian Stretch feels like an excellent release by the Debian project. The final stable release is about to happen in the short term.

• Among the great things you can do with Debian, you could set up a VPN using the openvpn software.

• In this blog post I will describe how I’ve deployed myself an openvpn server using Debian Stretch, my network environment and my configurations & workflow.

Derivatives

=> ↺ Univention Corporate Server 4.2 released

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Mark Shuttleworth sells Ubuntu to hedge funds.

• Back around 2004/5 I remember a healthy debate with Jono Bacon and others where I prophesied that one day you’d have to pay for Ubuntu. Back in 2012 Canonical started actively asking users to pay for the distribution, now there’s nothing wrong in looking for donations how else are some projects to be supported? What got a lot of people’s backs up was the ‘in your face’ method that was put in place. For me this was an early indicator that finances at Canonical was becoming an issue, especially when services such as the Music Store and Ubuntu One were axed which was a very strange decision given that Canonical had just started to promote a mobile phone solution. A music and on-line storage service is pretty de rigueur in the mobile phone industry, very strange axing those services? The only reason I can think of is money. Mark has been pumping his own money into Canonical Holdings since day one however sadly the group have not been doing as well as you’d think. The liabilities are starting to outpace the assets with Canonical Groups net worth being £-59.4m as of 2016

=> ↺ Mark Shuttleworth Reportedly Returning To Role As Canonical CEO

• There’s a big meeting going on today at Canonical regarding changes being made at the company. This follows the dramatic news this week of Ubuntu dropping Unity 8 and switching back to GNOME Shell. There’s now information obtained that Mark is planning to reprise the role of CEO.

=> ↺ Mir Developer Hopes Community Will Use It & Add Wayland Compatibility

=> ↺ Canonical drop the Unity desktop environment for Ubuntu favour of going back to GNOME

=> ↺ Former Compiz Developer: Free Software Desktop Might Enter A Dark Age

• With the big shake-up this week at Canonical resulting in abandoning Unity and switching back to GNOME, former Compiz developer and Canonical employee Sam Spilsbury has shared a retrospective on his years of working on Compiz and Unity for Ubuntu.

=> ↺ The end of a dream?

• We read in the press that Canonical has pulled out of the dream of “convergence”. With that the current support for a whole family of related projects dies.

=> ↺ Vale Unity

• Its been almost six years since Ubuntu shipped with Unity as the default desktop and compiz as the underlying compositor. For every release since then, a similar software stack has shipped on every subsequent release up until 17.04 . Those ten releases make up about half of the Ubuntu desktop’s lifespan and certainly more than half of the person-hours invested into the project, so today’s announcement to wind it down is a pretty significant moment.

=> ↺ File Manager on Ubuntu 17.04 Unity 8

=> ↺ Users wait for Ubuntu more than any other distribution

• Linux notes from DarkDuck blog likes to run different polls for the readers. The most recent poll was about the most awaited distribution for the second quarter of 2017. It is time now to check the results.

=> ↺ Mark Shuttleworth Makes More Comments On Ubuntu GNOME, Mir, Convergence

• By now you have probably read Mark Shutttleworth’s Google+ comments from Friday concerning Ubuntu GNOME, including the continuing of Snaps, UBports looking to take over Unity 8, and the desire to move quickly in supporting Ubuntu GNOME. He has now provided more follow-up comments.

• In going through that thread setup by Mark, below are some of his more interesting follow-up comments about his view on Mir haters, Unity, and more.

=> ↺ Shuttleworth Gives Up Hope for Convergence Breakthrough

=> ↺ Canonical Heads Back to GNOME (aka They Were Wrong)

• I don’t even remember when Canonical opted to branch away from GNOME and make their own desktop environment (Unity) but I do remember that it was quite the controversial decision. So many people were invested in GNOME on Ubuntu and in my honest opinion, without Ubuntu I’m certain that GNOME wouldn’t be what it is today.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Mobile and Desktop Success Zooms Out of Reach

• I had predicted long ago that Unity and Ubuntu Mobile would fail and fail it has, mostly because Shuttleworth ignored signals that were there from the community and industry for years and continued to dump a fortune into a fight that could not be won.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 18.04 LTS To Use GNOME By Default; Unity 8 And The Phone To Be Discontinued

=> ↺ The Worst Day Of This Year, Ubuntu To Kill Unity8

• When I switched to Linux, I remember the first two months I used Ubuntu. Later on to ease the path of learning Linux, I started using Linux Mint. Today, I use Ubuntu and most of my life is around its derivatves. Yesterday, I was shocked when I read that Ubuntu is no more going to invest into Unity8 development and the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will ship with GNOME. It really broke my heart.

=> ↺ ThankHN: A Thank-You Note to the HackerNews Community, from Ubuntu

• Rest assured that I have read every single one, and many of my colleagues has followed closely along as well.

• In fact, to read and process this thread, I first attempted to print it out — but cancelled the job before it fully buffered, when I realized that it’s 105 pages long! Here’s the PDF (1.6MB), if you’re curious, or want to page through it on your e-reader.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Detailed change log for deepin 15.4 RC2

• deepin is a Linux distribution devoted to providing beautiful, easy to use, safe and reliable system for global users.

• After the test of deepin 15.4 RC1, we’ve received a lot of suggestions and feedback, we adopted part of them and fixed a lot of problems, and also added and optimized part of the functions.

=> ↺ deepin 15.4 Linux OS Just Around the Corner, Second Release Candidate Fixes Bugs

• The development team behind the Debian-based deepin Linux distribution announced today, April 7, 2017, the release and immediate availability of the second Release Candidate milestone towards the upcoming major deepin 15.4 release.

=> ↺ LXLE Eclectica 16.04.2 Released

• LXLE 16.04.2 is built upon Ubuntu Mini LTS. Lubuntu-core is used as a starting point.

=> ↺ Switching to Ubuntu MATE 16.10 – first impressions

• It’s been just over 72 hours since I switched to Ubuntu MATE 16.10 after spending close to one year on Fedora. Overall, Fedora was pretty good, but I started experiencing problems when I changed my hardware two months ago.

• At first, I could live with the odd GNOME crash, because they were few and far between, and it would usually restart itself after a few seconds. Recently though, the crashes became fairly regular and more disruptive. It wasn’t uncommon for me to attempt restarting GNOME from the virtual terminal which didn’t always work.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Latest Orange Pi offers quad -A53 cores and 2GB of RAM

• Shenzhen Xunlong’s Linux-ready “Orange Pi Win Plus” SBC offers a quad -A53 Allwinner A64, 2GB DDR3, GbE and wireless, and a 40-Pin RPi connector.

• The $30 Orange Pi Win Plus adds to a flood of Orange Pi boards in recent months. Like the $20 Orange Pi PC 2 and recent, $20 Orange Pi Plus 2 H5, the Orange Pi Win Plus runs on a quad-core, Cortex-A53 SoC, but instead of offering the Allwinner H5, it uses the older Allwinner A64, which has a slightly less capable Mali-400 MP2 GPU instead of a Mali-450 MP2.

=> ↺ Skylake takes flight on industrial EBX and Mini-ITX boards

• Perfectron announced a rugged, Linux-ready EBX SBC with Skylake-H Xeon and Core CPUs, plus an industrial Skylake-S Mini-ITX board.

• Perfectron, which recently announced a rugged, 3.5-inch OXY5361A SBC with Intel 6th Gen Core Skylake-U CPUs, has unveiled EBX and Mini-ITX boards with 6th Gen Skylake-H and Skylake-S chips, respectively. The rugged, EBX form-factor OXY5739A SBC lists support for Fedora 20 and Ubuntu 13.04/13.10/14.04 in addition to Windows, while the full-height Mini-ITX INS8349B makes no mention of OS support.

Phones

Android

=> ↺ Google releases the third developer preview of Android Things

• Google is adding new features and bug fixes to its Internet of Things development platform. The company revealed a recent update to the platform, Android Things Developer Preview 3.

• “This preview is part of our commitment to provide regular updates to developers who are building Internet of Things (IoT) products with our platform. Android developers can quickly build smart devices using Android APIs and Google services, while staying secure with updates directly from Google,” Wayne Piekarski, developer advocate for IoT at Google, wrote in a post.

=> ↺ Google Names BlackBerry PRIV as One of the Most Secure Android Phones

• Google released its “Android Security: 2016 Year in Review” report last month, and to no one’s surprise, included its own flagship phones. However, one surprise on the list was the BlackBerry PRIV, which Google named one of the best Android devices for privacy.

• The PRIV was BlackBerry’s first phone to run Android, and with little experience on the platform, was seen in Google’s eyes as a leader for smartphone privacy.

=> ↺ Google and Nokia might finally make the Android phone fans are dying for

=> ↺ LastPass users, here’s what to expect in Android O

=> ↺ Android device updates: Android 7.1.2 arrives for Pixel and Nexus devices

=> ↺ Best Clips alternatives for Android

=> ↺ Google wants Android developers to think more about color

=> ↺ Android woes give iOS the upper hand

=> ↺ Sorry Huawei Watch owners, you’re actually not getting Android Pay

=> ↺ Understand Android for Work

=> ↺ Android TV Needs Better Live TV & MVPD Support

=> ↺ Android phones susceptible to Wi-Fi based attacks

=> ↺ Android Nougat Running on Nearly 5 Percent of Active Devices, Says Google

• Google’s Android 7.0 Nougat operating system has been seeing a faster pace of adoption than before, but it still has a long way to go. According to the latest Google Play distribution data, Android Nougat is now running on 4.9 percent of active devices, up from 2.8 percent from last month’s data and a significant improvement from January’s data which stood at a measly 0.7 percent.

=> ↺ Android Nougat continues solid growth to 4.9% in April distribution numbers

=> ↺ Install Magisk on Your Android Device

=> ↺ LG pushing Android Wear 2.0 to the LG G Watch R and Watch Urbane starting today

=> ↺ Android Wear 2.0 is making its way to the LG G Watch R and Watch Urbane

=> ↺ Gboard update brings text selection mode and resizing to Android keyboard app

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ A beginner’s guide to Mastodon, the hot new open-source Twitter clone

• Mastodon is a fast-growing Twitter-like social network that seeks to re-create the service’s best parts while eliminating its whale-sized problems. The distributed, open-source platform offers better tools for privacy and fighting harassment than Twitter does, but it also comes with a learning curve. Mastodon’s federated nature means there’s no single website to use, and learning how to wade through its timeline of tweets (which it calls toots) takes some time to adjust to.

• But for anyone who misses “the old Twitter” — the days of purely chronological timelines, no ads, and an inescapable flood of harassment — Mastodon can feel like a haven. So before you evacuate the blue bird hellmouth, here’s everything you need to know.

=> ↺ Google Cloud to host open source Elasticsearch

• The Elastic stack—Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Logstash—has become a powerful open source alternative for doing real-time searches on generated data like logs. Now Google is turning one of them into a cloud commodity.

• Google has partnered with Elasticsearch BV, the group that commercially supports the Elasticsearch stack’s cloud—called Elastic Cloud, appropriately enough—and is preparing to offer managed editions of Elastic Cloud on Google Cloud Platform.

=> ↺ Open source Elastic analytics snaps into Google’s Cloud Platform

• Open-source search analytics are coming to Google’s Cloud Platform courtesty of Elastic.

• GCP will host Elastic’s open-source search and analytics platform under a partnership deal, as managed Elastic Cloud. The managed service is due later this year.

• The Elastic stack – including Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats and Logstash – offers search, log analysis and visualisation tools for search, logging, security, metrics and analytics, all of which will now be available on GCP.

=> ↺ Google Cloud and Elastic Form Partnership

=> ↺ Elastic Brings Search And Analytics To Google Cloud Platform

=> ↺ Google Cloud partners with Elastic for advanced search and analytics

=> ↺ Google will launch an Elasticsearch cloud service in second half of 2017

=> ↺ DeepMind Open Sources Sonnet Library To Make It Easier To Create Complex Neural Networks

• Sonnet is a new open source library announced by Alphabet’s DeepMind. It is built on top of their existing machine learning library TensorFlow along with extra features that fit DeepMind’s research requirements. Sonnet is designed to make it easier to create complex neural networks using TensorFlow.

=> ↺ Google DeepMind open sources Sonnet so you can build neural networks in TensorFlow even quicker

• Google’s DeepMind announced today that it was open sourcing Sonnet, its object-oriented neural network library. Sonnet doesn’t replace TensorFlow, it’s simply a higher-level library that meshes well with DeepMind’s internal best-practices for research.

• Specifically, DeepMind says in its blog post that the library is optimized to make it easier to switch between different models when conducting experiments so that engineers don’t have to upend their entire projects. To this avail, the team made changes to TensorFlow to make it easier to consider models as hierarchies. DeepMind also added transparency to variable sharing.

=> ↺ Blogging challenge: Share your knowledge about how community works

• Help us collect community knowledge by blogging about the weekly community management theme. This week’s theme is Encouraging New Contributors.

• Communities are what make open source software work. No two pieces of open source software are the same and so no two communities are the same but they can often learn from each other. Some have shared their best practices for bringing communities together, growing them, and fostering them. We have several books about communities and several conferences dedicated to them.

=> ↺ What is Chef? A primer for DevOps newbies

• Mastering the cloud is a lot easier with the DevOps program Chef in your kitchen.

• Chef is an open source cloud configuration management and deployment application. It’s meant to help anyone orchestrate servers in a cloud or just in a departmental data center. Instead of system administrators sweating over management programs that were designed for single, stand-alone servers, Chef allows DevOps to spin off dozens or hundreds of server instances in less time than it takes you to read this article.

=> ↺ Meson Build System Prepares For Growth

• Jussi Pakkanen of the Meson Build System has issued a project status report following more projects like X.Org and Mesa exploring Meson.

• Many of the projects exploring Meson are doing so as a possible replacement to their CMake or Autotools build systems. A number of them are commonly turned onto Meson by its superior Windows support, the possibility of condensing two or three build systems down into a single unified build system, and certainly the much faster performance of Meson thanks in part to its Ninja back-end.

=> ↺ Tracking the explosive growth of open-source software

• That’s why we decided to create a new, detailed index to track popular open-source software projects, and gain some insights into the new companies powered by these technologies.

=> ↺ Fuchsia: a new operating system

• It’s always fun to see a new operating system pop up out in the wild and be far along enough in its development to actually be useful. Fuchsia is not there yet, but it appears headed in the right direction. With Google’s resources behind the project, the development of Magenta and other Fuchsia components is happening at a brisk pace; all commits are visible to the public. However, there is no public mailing list, and it’s a bit of puzzle to figure out where this project is going.

• This is a new take on open-source development where it is out in the open, yet secret. It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on Fuchsia’s development to see what it eventually grows into.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Quantum work

• Last week we had a work week at Mozilla’s Toronto office for a bunch of different projects including Quantum DOM, Quantum Flow (performance), etc. It was great to have people from a variety of teams participate in discussions and solidify (and change!) plans for upcoming Firefox releases. There were lots of sessions going on in parallel and I wasn’t able to attend them all but some of the results were written up by the inimitable Ehsan in his fourth Quantum Flow newsletter.

=> ↺ Mozilla Thunderbird 52 Released with Various Improvements

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ The Document Foundation releases LibreOffice 5.3.2

• The Document Foundation (TDF) releases LibreOffice 5.3.2, the 2nd minor release of the LibreOffice 5.3 family, focused on bleeding edge features, and as such targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters, and power users. LibreOffice 5.3.2 integrates over 50 patches, with a large number of fixes related to RTF and DOCX documents.

Education

=> ↺ Tech Universities: Adopt a Free Software as your own children

• Some things will never change on Programming classes in universities: There will always be students crying to understand pointers, there will always be people going to stackoverflow hoping that somebody would do their homework, Every semester the students would start thousands of lines for their conclusion project and those lines ould probably go to the trash bin as soon as the semester ends. This shouldn’t be like that, this really shouldn’t be like that.

Mastodon

=> ↺ Mastodon’s sudden popularity should serve as Twitter’s wakeup call

=> ↺ This Social Network Is Suddenly So Popular, You Can’t Even Register For An Account

=> ↺ Mastodon the Band Is Having Fun Clowning Mastodon the New Social Media Site

=> ↺ Mastodon: new beast to challenge Big Social, or another white elephant?

=> ↺ How to use Mastodon, the Twitter alternative that’s becoming super popular

=> ↺ Mastodon, the new alternative to Twitter

=> ↺ Literally anything could replace Twitter at this point and we’d be better off

=> ↺ Meet the 24-year-old behind the toot-filled social platform Mastodon

=> ↺ Mastodon, the social network that wants to crush Twitter

=> ↺ Step aside Twitter, it’s time to ‘toot’ on Mastodon

=> ↺ Mastodon the metal band trolls Mastodon the social media network

=> ↺ Mastodon social, a free alternative to Twitter is intriguing

=> ↺ Cool kids are dumping Twitter for this new app

=> ↺ It could be goodbye Twitter soon as Mastodon has arrived to heat up the competition!

=> ↺ Mastodon: The social network that might just kill Twitter

=> ↺ Mastodon the band’s response to Mastodon the platform is metal AF

=> ↺ Mastodon Takes On Twitter While Mastodon Continues To Melt Faces

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ French CIOs share recipe for success of big IT projects

• Government IT systems can be unusually complex, SGMAP writes in its announcement, published on 3 April. Combined with government’s multi-faceted decision making process, this creates all sorts of risks for new IT projects. So DINSIC, which drives government modernisation and simplification, is sharing the common principles as a way to control these risks.

• [...]

• Share and reuse; and

• Exploit open data.

=> ↺ Portugal pilots new use for healthcare data exchange

• The PNB is based on reusable, publicly available software components. The system handles over 300,000 messages per day.

=> ↺ Army Research Laboratory releases Open Source policy to share software

• Army Research Laboratory officials developed an Open Source policy for the sharing ARL-developed software. The goal is to increase collaboration and incentivize innovative ideas among federal and nonfederal research organizations.

• The Federal Source Code Policy ensures new custom-developed federal source code be made broadly available for reuse across the federal government. ARL’s policy is a concrete implementation of the goals of the Federal Source Code Policy, officials say.

• ARL’s Open Source policy allows external researchers to analyze and verify software generated by the lab.

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ Difference Between Different Types Of Open Sources Licenses

• While open sourcing a project, one needs a license so that the terms distribution, linking, modification, private use, etc., can be automatically taken care of. There are many open source licenses to choose from, some of them being MIT, GNU GPL, Apache 2.0, Creative Commons, BSD licenses. Each has its own terms of the above characteristics that even decide the ownership and credibility of the project.

=> ↺ dmd Backend converted to Boost License

=> ↺ Review of BeansBooks, Released Under ‘Open Code’ License

• Before using BeansBooks, be sure to take a look at its “open code” license, which is a free software license but incompatible with the GPL and all GPL compatible licenses, whether “copyleft” or “permissive.”

• Open software often reduces the barrier to entry for small businesses. FOSS fans might well have heard of personal and small-business accounting software GnuCash, which is taught in the Penn Manor School District in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and described in Charlie Reisinger’s book The Open Schoolhouse. Less well known is BeanBooks, an “open code” SaaS accounting program created by the well-known folks at System76, which came onto my radar just recently. This screencast review of the software does a good job showing you its features.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ With Eye on Precision Medicine, tranSMART, i2b2 Foundations Merge

=> ↺ Open Source Foundations TranSmart, i2b2 to Merge

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Happy birthday, Git

• In the world of version control, Git has clearly claimed the mantle of the preferred version control tool of most developers. In a recent developer survey on Stack Overflow, Git was the preferred version control of 69.2% of participants, over seven times as many votes as the next runner up, Subversion.

• And today, we celebrate a dozen years passing since the initial release of Git on April 7, 2005. Created by Linus Torvalds to manage the expansive source code of the Linux kernel, Git now manages the source code of countless open source projects you know and love. We’ve rounded up a collection of articles from Opensource.com community moderator Seth Kenlon highlighting the many great uses of Git, and how you can use it to version nearly everything in your day-to-day workflow.

=> ↺ #3: Follow R-devel

• A few years ago, I mentioned to Duncan Murdoch how straightforward the setup of my CRANberries feed (and site) was. After all, static blog compilers converting textual input to html, rss feed and whatnot have been around for fifteen years (though they keep getting reinvented). He took this to heart and built the (not too pretty) R-devel daily site (which also uses a fancy diff tool as it shows changes in NEWS) as well as a more general description of all available sub-feeds.

=> ↺ The review gap

• The free-software community is quite good at creating code. We are not always as good at reviewing code, despite the widely held belief that all code should be reviewed before being committed. Any project that actually cares about code review has long found that actually getting that review done is a constant challenge. This is a problem that is unlikely to ever go completely away, but perhaps it is time to think a bit about how we as a community approach code review.

• If a development project has any sort of outreach effort at all, it almost certainly has a page somewhere telling potential developers how to contribute to the project. The process for submitting patches will be described, the coding style rules laid down, design documents may actually exist, and so on; there is also often a list of relatively easy tasks for developers who are just getting started. More advanced projects also encourage contributions in other areas, such as artwork, bug triage, documentation, testing, or beer shipped directly to developers. But it is a rare project indeed that encourages patch review.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Evira: 22% of Finnish chicken samples contain ‘super bacteria’

• Research by the Finnish Food Safety Authority (Evira) indicates that 22 percent of the fresh chicken on retail sale in Finland last year contained antibiotic-resistant ‘super bacteria’.

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Friday

=> ↺ Researcher: 90% Of ‘Smart’ TVs Can Be Compromised Remotely

• So we’ve noted for some time how “smart” TVs, like most internet of things devices, have exposed countless users’ privacy courtesy of some decidedly stupid privacy and security practices. Several times now smart TV manufacturers have been caught storing and transmitting personal user data unencrypted over the internet (including in some instances living room conversations). And in some instances, consumers are forced to eliminate useful features unless they agree to have their viewing and other data collected, stored and monetized via these incredible “advancements” in television technology.

=> ↺ Pandavirtualization: Exploiting the Xen hypervisor

• On 2017-03-14, I reported a bug to Xen’s security team that permits an attacker with control over the kernel of a paravirtualized x86-64 Xen guest to break out of the hypervisor and gain full control over the machine’s physical memory. The Xen Project publicly released an advisory and a patch for this issue 2017-04-04.

• To demonstrate the impact of the issue, I created an exploit that, when executed in one 64-bit PV guest with root privileges, will execute a shell command as root in all other 64-bit PV guests (including dom0) on the same physical machine.

=> ↺ Be careful, Cisco Mobility Express is shipped with some Cisco Aironet devices has a hard-coded password. Fix it!

• The Mobility Express Software shipped with Cisco Aironet 1830 Series and 1850 Series access points has a hard-coded admin-level SSH password.

=> ↺ Grasshopper

• Today, April 7th 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 “Grasshopper” — 27 documents from the CIA’s Grasshopper framework, a platform used to build customized malware payloads for Microsoft Windows operating systems.

• Grasshopper is provided with a variety of modules that can be used by a CIA operator as blocks to construct a customized implant that will behave differently, for example maintaining persistence on the computer differently, depending on what particular features or capabilities are selected in the process of building the bundle. Additionally, Grasshopper provides a very flexible language to define rules that are used to “perform a pre-installation survey of the target device, assuring that the payload will only [be] installed if the target has the right configuration”. Through this grammar CIA operators are able to build from very simple to very complex logic used to determine, for example, if the target device is running a specific version of Microsoft Windows, or if a particular Antivirus product is running or not.

=> ↺ Preparing enterprise systems for the scriptless Linux exploit

=> ↺ Kaspersky warns of spike in ‘cheap’ ransomware targeting large firms

• The method goes as follows: the criminals would search for an organisation that has an unprotected server with Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) access, they would guess the password or buy access to it on the black market, and then they would encrypt a node or server manually.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ How a radical Islamist group exploits British law to call for apostates to be executed

• Hizb ut-Tahrir campaigns for the creation of a pan-global caliphate, ruled under strict sharia law. The group is banned in countries in Europe and the Middle East, and has been described as a “conveyor belt” for terrorists.

=> ↺ Stockholm Truck Attack Kills 4; Terrorism Is Suspected

• A nationwide manhunt conducted through much of the evening ended when the police “caught one person of particular interest,”

=> ↺ Stockholm attack: ‘At least three killed’ after lorry drives into crowd of people

• A manhunt is underway in Sweden after a lorry ploughed into crowds in a shopping area in central Stockholm killing at least three people and leaving several injured.

• Armed police rushed to the scene but the driver of the vehicle fled.

• All trains in and out of Stockholm have been cancelled for the rest of the day, while the Oresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark has been partially closed to limit traffic.

=> ↺ Tomahawk missile: weapon of deadly precision comes back to fore in Syria

• Each unit costs reportedly about US$1.5m

=> ↺ Put nukes in South Korea and KILL Kim Jong-un: National Security Council gives Trump options for dealing with North Korea

• The White House National Security Council has drawn up North Korea options for President Trump that involve killing the country’s erratic dictator Kim Jong-un and reinserting U.S. nuclear weapons into South Korea.

• The bold options were revealed by NBC News just as President Xi Jinpeng of China wrapped up a visit and meetings with Trump at to Mar-a-Lago. Trump wants China to use its leverage to get North Korea to back off its threatening behavior.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ No: Assange is a political prisoner who’s exposed crimes and atrocities

• Julian Assange is a political prisoner who has never been charged with a crime.

• That few people know this and that large media outlets have conveniently ignored this fact is an indictment of all Western political leaders and journalists who claim to care about human rights and civil liberties but remain silent – or worse – about one of the world’s most famous prisoners of conscience.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Reindeer police stop Norwegian far north from going Wild West

• Mathis Andreas, an indigenous Sami reindeer herder, sees a snowmobile with glowing fluorescent strips approach his remote cabin in the frozen tundra and worries what the neighbouring herder may think.

Finance

=> ↺ Eager crowds are flattening Southern California’s vibrant ‘super bloom’

=> ↺ Is Britain selling its soul to Saudi Arabia amid EU divorce?

• If the name alone does not make you recoil, allow me to summarize the nature of that Middle Eastern regime with a few chosen adjectives: violent, reactionary, self-righteously vindictive, oppressive and above all inherently intolerant. Weaved around the concept of Takfirism – an ideology that professes the murder of all religious minorities and denominations other than that it professes – Saudi Arabia has held a genocidal blade over the Islamic world, forever calling for religious cleansing to assuage its thirst for control.

=> ↺ Lyft exec may join Trump’s DOT

• Lyft general manager Derek Kan may soon be nominated to join the Department of Transportation as under secretary of transportation for policy, according to Reuters report Thursday.

=> ↺ Uber contract ‘gibberish’, says MP investigating gig economy

• Publishing full details of Uber’s contract terms, along with those for the takeaway courier firm Deliveroo and Amazon, Field said all three used some kind of “egregious clause” which attempted to prevent people challenging their “self-employed” designation, [...]

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ When hosting SNL, Donald Trump ‘struggled to read,’ says former cast member. Can the President read?

• “He struggled to read at the table read, which did not give many of us great confidence. Didn’t get the jokes, really. He’s just a man who seems to be powered by bluster.”

=> ↺ Kushner Omitted Meeting With Russians on Security Clearance Forms

• When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years.

• But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest.

=> ↺ Justice Neil Gorsuch

• Neil Gorsuch has now been confirmed by the Senate and will swear-in next week as one of the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court. I expect Justice Gorsuch to support strong patent rights, but primarily focus on statutory language and historic precedent. I.e., do not expect Gorsuch to see patents as a fundamental right, but rather a policy tool that can be fully regulated by Congress.

=> ↺ Senate confirms Gorsuch to Supreme Court, giving Trump big win

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ After Moving Servers to Russia, LiveJournal Bans ‘Political Solicitation’

• Last December, the blogging platform LiveJournal — purchased in 2007 by the Russian company SUP Media — finally relocated its data servers from California to Russia.

• Calling attention to the shift, Anton Nossik (a former advisor to SUP Media) declared, “LJ’s servers have moved ‘closer’ not to its authors and readers, but to those who want to monitor them.”

• This Tuesday, April 4, LiveJournal released an updated user agreement, revealing what steps it’s taking to adjust to its new existence as a blogging platform in full compliance with Russia’s stifling Internet laws. In particular, users like Nossik have expressed concerns that the website’s data will now be fully accessible to Russian police snooping, in accordance with recently enacted “anti-terrorist” legislation.

=> ↺ Revenge Pornster Craig Brittain Issues DMCA Notices Demanding Google Delist Entire Websites, Including Wikipedia

• Former revenge porn site operator/lawyer impersonator Craig Brittain is once again engaged in some DMCA abuse. A couple of years ago, Brittain issued bogus DMCA notices in hopes of whitewashing his past. Along with posts at Popehat, Vice, Huffington Post, Ars Technica, and Reddit, Brittain asked Google to delist the FTC’s press release about its settlement with Brittain over his revenge porn misdeeds.

• It didn’t work, obviously. A new set of stories highlighting Brittain’s sordid past swiftly filled up any gaps in the revenge porn purveyor’s vanity Google searches.

=> ↺ Choose Wisely: Political Correctness Or A Retreat To Conservative Censorship?

• Beginning with the very inception of the country, conservative censorship has dominated the United States of America as a way to moderate public opinion. Beginning in the twenty-first century, however, a new kind of censorship dominated the headlines, schoolrooms, and workplaces of America: liberal political correctness. With the rise of right-wing ideals and isolationism, will we witness

=> ↺ Censorship & certification – Outlining the CBFC’s role under law

• The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) functions as the primary body certifying films for public exhibition in India. It is guided by the Cinematograph Act, 1952, and various rules and guidelines in determining the nature of certification to be granted to a film. However, over the past few months, reports about the Central CBFC’s alleged overreach – moving from certification of films to moral policing, for instance, by denying certification to films which address LGBTQ issues – have made the news. This post outlines the legal framework within which the CBFC operates and discuss the prospects for change within this framework.

=> ↺ Bias Response Teams: campus censorship at its most sinister

• This is just a ploy, of course – an attempt to shift the spotlight and avoid having to justify the not only censorious but patently unhinged behaviour of campus officials of late. But it’s also a crap one. Because with every year that passes, university administrations cook up more and more GDR-lite ways to cleanse campuses of disagreeable speech.

• [...]

• Reason’s Robby Soave waded through the University of Oregon BRT annual report last year. What he found was equal parts hilarious and terrifying. One student reported that a sign encouraging students to clean up after themselves was sexist. The sign was promptly removed. Another anonymous student complained that the student newspaper was giving insufficient coverage to trans and ethnic minority people. So the BRT went and had a word with the editor.

=> ↺ German Proposal Threatens Censorship on Wide Array of Online Services

• Anticipating federal elections in September, Germany’s Minister of Justice has proposed a new law aimed at limiting the spread of hate speech and “fake news” on social media sites. But the proposal, called the “Social Network Enforcement Bill” or “NetzDG,” goes far beyond a mere encouragement for social media platforms to respond quickly to hoaxes and disinformation campaigns and would create massive incentives for companies to censor a broad range of speech.

• [...]

• Under the proposal, providers would be required to promptly remove “illegal” speech from their services or face fines of up to 50 million euros. NetzDG would require providers to respond to complaints about “Violating Content,” defined as material that violates one of 24 provisions of the German Criminal Code. These provisions cover a wide range of topics and reveal prohibitions against speech in German law that may come as a surprise to the international community, including prohibitions against defamation of the President (Sec. 90), the state, and its symbols (Sec. 90a); defamation of religions (Sec. 166); distribution of pornographic performances (Sec. 184d); and dissemination of depictions of violence (Sec. 131).

=> ↺ Trigger Warning: A High School Censors A Speech About Censorship

• Wallkill Senior High School just censored my lecture about censorship.

• Several months ago, the school in an upstate New York community known for its prisons and apple orchards invited me to participate in its annual “Author’s Day” event on April 4 and 5. Published writers gab to administrators, librarians and educators over a buffet dinner and then lecture to several classes of students the following day. It’s a schlep from Manhattan, but writers receive a modest honorarium and I enjoy talking to kids about my passion.

=> ↺ Peace, Trump, censorship and fake news up for discussion

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Privacy Experts Say CIA Left Americans Open to Cyber Attacks

• WikiLeaks release of the latest cache of confidential C.I.A. documents as part of an ongoing “Vault 7″ operation exposed some of the U.S. government’s hacking and digital espionage capabilities—this time having to do with iPhones and other smart devices used by hundreds of millions of people across the globe. But cyber security experts and computers scientists are raising concerns over the C.I.A.’s disregard of safety measures put in place for discovering these dangerous flaws in smart gadgets.

=> ↺ The Justice Department refused to prosecute CIA for illegal surveillance

• In 1976 and again in 1977, the Justice Department decided not to prosecute anyone for the CIA’s illegal surveillance and mail openings. The report issued in 1977 reveals the Justice Department’s highly flawed reasons, including claims that prosecution would not serve to prevent such questionable or outright illegal surveillance from happening again – ironically setting the stage for modern surveillance programs.

=> ↺ US lawmakers demand to know how many residents are under surveillance

=> ↺ US lawmakers want to know how many Americans under surveillance

=> ↺ Congress Asks White House for an Estimate of How Many Americans Under Surveillance

=> ↺ Lawmakers seek intel on surveillance of Americans

=> ↺ Congress Judiciary Panel Seeks Number of Americans Under Surveillance by Intel

=> ↺ U.S. Lawmakers Want To Know Number Of Americans Under Surveillance

=> ↺ Oh, Sure, Now Congress Is Serious About Asking NSA About Surveillance On Americans

• For many, many years, Senator Ron Wyden has been directly asking the US intelligence community a fairly straightforward question (in his role as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee): just how many Americans are having their communications swept up in surveillance activities supposedly being conducted on foreigners under the FISA Amendments Act (FISA being Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Wyden started asking way back in 2011 and got no answers. His continued questioning in 2013 resulted in Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lying to Congress in a public hearing, which Ed Snowden later claimed was a big part of the inspiration to make him leak documents to the press.

• Just last month, we noted that Wyden had renewed his request for an accurate depiction of how many Americans have had their communications swept up, this time asked to new Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats. Unfortunately, for all these years, it’s basically felt like Senator Wyden tilting at a seeming windmill, with many others in Congress basically rolling their eyes every time the issue is raised. I’ve never understood why people in Congress think that these kinds of things can be ignored. There have been a few attempts by others — notably on the House Judiciary Committee — to ask similar questions. Almost exactly a year ago, there was a letter from many members of the HJC, and there was a followup in December. But, notably, while there were a number of members from both parties on that letter, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, did not sign the letter, meaning that it was unlikely to be taken as seriously.

=> ↺ Well, That Was Quick: Twitter Dismisses Lawsuit After Feds Drop Attempt To Unmask Rogue Tweeter

• Yesterday we wrote about Twitter suing the US government after officials at the Department of Homeland Security sought to use a law designed to gather information for figuring out import duties, to unmask the operator of @ALT_uscis, alleging to comment on immigration issues from within the US Citizenship and Immigration Service. Twitter broke out the big guns for that case, as the lead attorney representing it was Seth Waxman, a former Solicitor General in the Clinton administration.

=> ↺ New York Supreme Court Says Facebook Can’t Challenge The 381 Broad Warrants Handed To It By New York Prosecutors

• Almost four years ago, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance’s office issued 381 warrants seeking information on Facebook subscribers. The warrants arrived almost immediately after the first Snowden leaks, which quite possibly pushed Facebook towards challenging the multitude of overbroad warrants.

• Once the gag order was lifted, Facebook was able to reveal the astonishing breadth of the DA’s demands. Hoping to dig up info on participants in a disability fraud scheme — one that had already resulted in the arrests of more than 100 former police officers and firemen — the 381 warrants demanded everything Facebook had on the named accounts, including private messages, Friends lists, and a variety of non-public content.

• Facebook spent the next three years fighting the warrants in New York courts. It hasn’t gone particularly well. There’s the issue of standing, which few courts are willing to grant to third parties seeking to protect the privacy of their subscribers and users.

=> ↺ Judge Says FBI’s NIT Warrant Invalid, Points Out FBI Agent Knew It Was Invalid When He Requested It

• A Minnesota judge has granted a motion for suppression in an FBI Playpen case, using an agent’s nineteen years of service and expertise against the government’s good faith arguments. The court here found the warrant to be invalid from the moment it was signed, meaning everything obtained past that point to be fruit of the poisonous tree. (via FourthAmendment.com)

=> ↺ Twitter sues government over attempt to unmask anti-Trump account

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Koran Reciters to Get Leg Up in IPB Entrance Selection

• According to the new rule, students who can recite 30 chapters of the Koran will be rewarded with additional entrance points equal to those awarded to winners of international-level science competition.

=> ↺ European Parliament’s biggest political group calls for EU-wide ban on Islamic face veils

=> ↺ Women smearing Ayaan Hirsi Ali are ‘carrying water’ for Islamists

• I want to hear what Hirsi Ali has to say, in order to agree with her if she is right, to disagree with her if she is wrong, to reason with her if her approach in criticising Islam is harming Muslims, and more importantly, to collaborate with her in what could be the best way to uphold the human rights of even those who wish death for her. Because All Lives Matter, even the ones who are out to silence dissenters with knives stabbed to dead director’s chests with the next target named in a bloody note.

=> ↺ PEN America and Human Rights Watch asks for the immediate release of blogger Amos Yee

• PEN America* and Human Rights Watch has released a statement on 5 April to ask for the immediate release of Singaporean blogger Amos Yee, who is still detained in the US despite being granted asylum by US immigration judge Samuel Cole.

• It is being reported that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is still detaining Yee while deciding if the government will appeal Judge Samuel Cole’s decision. The Department of Homeland Security has 30 days to file an appeal.

=> ↺ Madrasa super arrested for attempted rape of a minor girl

• Police have arrested a madrasa superintendent from Charbaria of Barisal for attempting to rape his daughter’s classmate, a 10-year-old girl.

• The detainee is Maulana Md Masum Billah, superintendent of Sapania Dakhil Madrasa. He hails from Kalapara of Patuakhali district, but used to live on the madrasa premises with his family.

• He was arrested from his house Friday morning soon after the girl’s father filed a complaint with Kaunia police.

=> ↺ Attorney General’s Memo Indicates Trump’s DOJ Is Only Interested In The Blue Side Of The Justice Equation

• Here comes the rollback. As President Trump made clear with his pick for Attorney General, the days of police reform are over. The administration is only willing to put its weight behind efforts that give cops more power, weapons, and funding. Everything else — including several years-worth of consent agreements with dysfunctional police departments — is unimportant.

• The first wave of Trump’s planned United Police State was a series of divisive directives seeking to bolster support for law enforcement by informing them the president had their back and anyone who didn’t was simply wrong.

=> ↺ Former Director of NSA and CIA Speaks on the Importance of Espionage for Democracy

• American espionage is not only compatible with but essential to democracy, former director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency Michael Hayden told an audience of more than 200 people in Robertson Hall April 6.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Ajit Pai’s net neutrality plan is nonsense

• And these are just the simple questions. If Ajit Pai wants to get rid of net neutrality, he should maybe answer some of them before walking back a law that millions of Americans vocally supported.

=> ↺ European roaming charges will be binned in June

• The fees, which were agreed by representatives from the European Council, European Parliament and the EC back in February, were given the thumbs up on Thursday. The wholesale charges have been capped at €0.032 per minute for voice calls, €0.01 per SMS and €7.70 per GB of data used, a figure that will eventually fall to €2.50 per GB in 2022.

=> ↺ G20 IT Ministers Want Access For All, Commit To Conflicting Objectives

• The Group of 20 (G20) ministers responsible for the digital economy today called for further efforts to advance access to the internet for everyone and close the digital gaps that still exist. Gathered in Dusseldorf, Germany, for the two-day IT related preparatory conference for the G20 Summit in Hamburg in July, the ministers signed a declaration on “Shaping the Digitalisation for an Interconnected World.” It was the first time that ministers for digital economy met in the G20 format.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Can a public domain artwork be registered as a trade mark or would that be contrary to public policy and morality?

• When can an artwork be registered as a trade mark? The question is not an easy one, and may be complicated further by consideration that the artwork at hand may be no longer eligible for copyright protection due to the expiry of the term of protection. This means that the question may turn out to be not just one relating to the requirements for trade mark registration, but also involve broader, public interest considerations that relate to the opportunity to continue protecting by means of other IP regimes items (works) in relation to which the primary IP right (in this case, copyright) is no longer available.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Germany Approves Draft Law to Protect WiFi Operators From Piracy Liability

• Germany has approved a draft law that will enable businesses to run open WiFi hotspots without being held liable for the copyright infringements of their customers.

=> ↺ Sketchy Copyright Takedown Kills Bad Lip Reading’s Force Awakens Remix

• If you haven’t ever seen a Bad Lip Reading video, you’ve been missing out. For many years, they’ve posted a ton of videos taking footage from basically anywhere, and overlaying new audio, matching what people are saying/singing with, well, something else, that is plausible (but usually very, very funny). Here’s one of the inauguration, a music video and one on the NFL. That gives you the basic idea. The last time we wrote about them was back in 2011, but it was (of course) about a silly DMCA takedown involving one of BLR’s videos done by Universal Music.

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