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● 04.10.17

● Links 10/4/2017: Linux 4.11 RC6, LabPlot 2.4, Shuttleworth Rants

Posted in News Roundup at 5:19 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ Discovering my inner curmudgeon: A Linux laptop review

• Quick refresher: I’m a life-long Mac user, but I was disappointed by Apple’s latest MacBook Pro release. I researched a set of alternative computers to consider. And, as a surprise even to myself, I decided to leave the Mac platform.

• I chose the HP Spectre x360 13″ laptop that was released after CES 2017, the new version with a 4K display. I bought the machine from BestBuy (not an affiliate link) because that was the only retailer selling this configuration. My goal was to run Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows.

• Here are my impressions from using this computer over the past month, followed by some realizations about myself.

=> ↺ The Linux Migration: Corporate Collaboration, Part 3

• In discussing support for corporate communication and collaboration systems as part of my Linux migration, I’ve so far covered e-mail in part 1 and calendaring in part 2. In this post, I’m going to discuss the last few remaining aspects of corporate collaboration: instant messaging/chat, meetings and teleconferences, and document sharing.

• [...]

• This wraps-up the series on corporate collaboration and communication using Linux. As you can see from reading the posts, some areas are far easier to solve than others, and a lot depends on the corporate solution being used on the backend. I suspect that a great majority of organizations out there are heavily reliant on Microsoft technologies (Exchange, Office, etc.), so using Linux in such environments might be a bit challenging depending on your job role. If your employer has gone “all in” on Office 365 and related services/offerings and you need to often host meetings and calls, then using Linux as your primary desktop OS is probably going to mean keeping a Windows VM running as well. If your employer is also leveraging some other technologies or meetings/calendaring isn’t quite as important, then you may be in better shape to adopt Linux as your primary desktop OS. As always, readers should evaluate their situation based on their specific needs and make the decision that is right for them, whether that means Windows, OS X, or Linux.

=> ↺ System76 Galago Pro: Specs, Price And Release Date

• System76, a US-based computer vendor, is known for its exclusive Ubuntu based laptops and desktops. In addition to that, System76 also deals in Linux servers.

• Galago Pro is the latest offering from System76 and this ultrabook has everything (at least on paper) to make it the best Ubuntu laptop you can buy.

=> ↺ Valuing Tech Diversity at My Public Library

• Like everyone, I have my preferences about the hardware and software I like. I think it is natural to want others to share your tastes. My Somali-American programmer friend has taught me to be more open-minded. Here is how that happened.

• [...]

• At my public library job, I love it when my Somali-American friend visits. He’s a highly skilled computer programmer, and we share many interests. The neat thing about our friendship is that it bridges very different cultures. He’s a Windows guy, and I’m a Linux person. He was raised Windows, and I was raised open-source. Yet we value our friendship and love talking about our areas of common interest.

• [...]

• I have some open-source friends who won’t have anything to do with Windows. That can be a reasonable preference, I suppose. My preference is to follow the open-source path and support Windows and Mac in my community the best I can. And now that my friend’s children have chosen to follow the Linux path, I feel I need to do even more in my community to support the Windows and Mac paths. I will not allow my very kind-hearted and smart friend to meet me halfway — without my walking the other half of the way to shake his hand. Right now, he has met me more than halfway. I need to figure out how I can meet him more than halfway too.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 08

• In this special episode, Joe, Ikey and Jesse discuss the bombshell that Ubuntu is abandoning Unity in favour of GNOME for its next LTS and has officially given up on dreams of mobile convergence.

=> ↺ Canonical Switches from Unity to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 and more | This Week in Linux #1

=> ↺ “elementary OS App Center w/Daniel Fore” – Lunduke Hour – Apr 3, 2017

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 4.11-rc6

• Things are looking fairly normal, so here’s the regular weekly rc.

• It’s a bit bigger than rc5, but not alarmingly so, and nothing looks particularly worrisome. Knock wood. The only slightly unusual thing is how the patches are spread out, with almost equal parts of arch updates, drivers, filesystems, networking and “misc”.

• But the late rc’s are small enough that you see more fluctuation in those kinds of statistics than you see over the bigger release, so “not the usual distribution” is more about the normal noise of development all over.

=> ↺ Linus Torvalds Announces a Slightly Bigger Sixth RC of Linux Kernel 4.11

=> ↺ Linux 4.11-rc6 Released

=> ↺ Linux 4.10.9

• I’m announcing the release of the 4.10.9 kernel.

• All users of the 4.10 kernel series must upgrade.

• The updated 4.10.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.10.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st…

=> ↺ Linux 4.9.2

=> ↺ Linux 4.4.60

=> ↺ Linux Kernels 4.10.9, 4.9.21 LTS and 4.4.60 LTS Bring Many XFS Improvements

• Renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman had the pleasure of announcing the release of three new maintenance updates for the long-term supported Linux 4.9 and 4.4 kernels series, as well as Linux kernel 4.10.

• The Linux 4.10.9, 4.9.21 LTS and 4.4.60 LTS kernels are now the latest versions of the kernel branches mentioned above, and they come exactly one week after the release of their previous maintenance updates, namely Linux kernels 4.10.8, 4.9.20 LTS and 4.4.59 LTS. The difference is that these are bigger patches, changing 91 files, with 1229 insertions and 1067 deletions for Linux kernel 4.10.9, and 87 files, with 1332 insertions and 1109 deletions for Linux kernel 4.9.21 LTS.

=> ↺ Kernel lockdown

• These patches provide a facility by which a variety of avenues by which userspace can feasibly modify the running kernel image can be locked down.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ AMDGPU-PRO 17.10 Proprietary Graphics Driver Adds Support for Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS

• AMD quietly released a few days ago a new stable version of its proprietary graphics driver for Linux-based operating systems, supporting various AMD Radeon graphics.

• AMDGPU-PRO 17.10 is here a little over two months after the AMDGPU-PRO 16.60 release, which added support for AMD Radeon HD 7xxx/8xxx graphics cards. This version, however, appears to add support for Canonical’s latest Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, but only for the 64-bit version of it.

=> ↺ Intel Has A Last Feature Pile Of Work For Linux 4.12 DRM

• On Friday, Intel’s Daniel Vetter submitted a final pile of feature material for DRM-Next that will target the Linux 4.12 kernel, with the deadline for 4.12 DRM-Next being this weekend.

• Already this cycle for DRM-Next we have seen from Intel atomic mode-setting by default, GPU reset improvements, power management improvements, continued work on Geminilake enablement, better context switching, refactoring of GuC and HuC firmware code, vGPU enhancements, and other changes.

=> ↺ Nouveau Gets Patches For OpenGL AZDO ARB_shader_ballot

Applications

=> ↺ A Powerful Image Editor Fotoxx 17.04 Has Been Released

• Fotoxx is powerful, open-source, complex image manipulation tool. It is better editor for those images made with digital camera. It can edit photos and manage a large collection. Includes thumbnail browser/navigator, RAW file import, a comprehensive set of edit functions working in deep color, rapid visual feedback, edit/copy/paste selected image areas, file versioning, batch operations, named collections (views), HDR, stack, panorama, montage, metadata edit and report, image search using any metadata and (partial) file names. It can crop, rotate, flip, resize, red-eye removal, sharpen fuzzy edges, reduce noise in low-light photos, stretch, and distort functionality.

=> ↺ Museeks: Better Audio Player For Linux? Find Out By Yourself!

• There are many audio players available for Linux and you may be using your favorite one and might ask why so many audio players, but there is no harm to try new stuff, you may consider it. Museeks a cross-platform, open-source audio player is around since last year (2016) and it is doing great. It is available for Linux, Windows and Mac; written in Node.js, Electron, Flux with Redux and React.js languages and released under MIT license.

=> ↺ LabPlot 2.4 released

• We are happy to announce the next release of LabPlot!

• The concise list of changes is available in the changelog. In the following we describe the most important new features in more details.

• Beginning with the previous release, LabPlot is available for the Windows platform. Now we further extend the support for different operating systems and starting with this release LabPlot will be available for Mac OS X, too. We’re providing a Mac OS X bundle in our download section.

=> ↺ Jeffrey Stedfast: GMime 2.99.0 released

=> ↺ MimeKit 1.14 released

=> ↺ MailKit 1.14 released

=> ↺ Matthew James: Spotify Web Player for Linux – Discontinued

Proprietary

=> ↺ Vivaldi 1.9 Enters Development, Will Let You Shuffle the Order of Your Add-Ons

• Development of the Vivaldi 1.9 web browser kicked off at the end of this week with the release of the first snapshot, versioned 1.9.804.3, for all supported operating systems.

• Vivaldi Snapshot 1.9.804.3 has over 40 changes, most of which are bug fixes for various regressions from the stable Vivaldi 1.8 series of the cross-platform web browser, but it also brings two new features, such as the ability to shuffle the order of installed extensions and to change the folder where screen captures are stored.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Verify Your Mastodon Account with Keybase

=> ↺ issue #75: Shoop, journal-triggerd, Bash, SSH, iostat, hadoop, MySQL, videos & more

=> ↺ An Easy And Fast Way To Share Files Over Internet From Command Line

=> ↺ Run software on the tty1 console instead of getty login on Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04

=> ↺ How to install Ubuntu safely with non-US keyboards

=> ↺ Delegating domain join privileges in Samba 4 from the command line (or not)

=> ↺ Compiling / Playing NetHack 3.6.0 on Fedora

=> ↺ How to install Asterisk on the Raspberry Pi

=> ↺ A to Z Kali Linux Commands

=> ↺ How to Install and Use Wekan – the Best Self-Hosted Trello Alternative

=> ↺ OpenShot 2.3.1 Crowd Funded Video Editor Released (4K Editing), Install in Ubuntu/Linux Mint

• OpenShot video editor is an open-source video editor for Linux but also available for Windows and Mac, it is free and released under GNU GPL 3 license. Using OpenShot video editor you can create a film with your videos, photos, and audio tracks that you have always thought of. It lets you add transitions, effects, and sub-titles, and you can export to DVD, YouTube, Video, and many other common formats. OpenShot is written primarily in Python, with a GTK+ interface, and uses the MLT framework, FFmpeg, and Blender to power many of the advanced features. After a successful Kickstarter campaign of OpenShot we have seen that it reached to 2.3.1 version in recent past and made tremendous improvement. Recently developers released a new update 2.3.1.

=> ↺ Try ‘Xatane Icons’ A Mixture Of Many Icon Themes

=> ↺ Customize your MOTD login message in Debian and Ubuntu

=> ↺ Building a Web-Based Sign-in System with the Raspberry Pi

=> ↺ Linux: Sundtek MediaTV Pro DVB-C stick without closed-source drivers

Games

=> ↺ An interview with Beamdog about Linux gaming, they say it’s worth it

• I had the pleasure of speaking to two different teams at game developer and publisher Beamdog, notable for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition and the soon to be released Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition.

=> ↺ Retro-tastic: GNOME Games Makes it into Ubuntu 17.04

• When we listed the best features in GNOME 3.24 we gave a slot to to the awesome new GNOME Games app.

• Akin to a music player, GNOME Games acts as a one-stop shop for browsing through your installed games, e.g., Steam games, Linux games, retro console game files. And, like a music player, it lets you launch and play most titles in a click or two.

• If you were hoping to try the app out on Ubuntu 17.04 I’ve some good news for you: GNOME Games is now available to install on Ubuntu 17.04 straight from the repos.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ Releases, releases, releases! Part 2

• Xfce – like many other open source projects – is not exactly following a test-driven development workflow. I would argue that we need a slight mindset change here plus we need some (standardized) infrastructure to make testing easier for people who want to get involved.

=> ↺ It’s Now Easier Testing Out Xfce Git Code With Docker

• Xfce-test is a Xubuntu 17.04 based container image designed for Docker that makes it very easy to deploy some of the latest Xfce Git components.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ 10 reasons why Ubuntu should use KDE Plasma instead of GNOME

• This is not a GNOME vs Plasma comparison, this specifically for Ubuntu and its users, considering the innovative vision they had till now. Just very personal thoughs ordered by importance for Ubuntu success in my opinion.

=> ↺ KDE Frameworks 5.33.0 Introduces More Plasma Framework and KWayland Improvements

• The KDE Project announced the release of KDE Frameworks 5.33.0, a new monthly update of the collection of over 70 add-on libraries for Qt application developers, needed for the KDE Plasma desktop and KDE Applications software suite.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ New GNOME ISO to launch with the next snapshot

• All the interesting details are in the softpedia post, but I want to clarify things for people who might misinterpret this: It does not take any of my time away. Joshua Strobl is the maintainer for the GNOME ISO.

• Remember, Budgie 10 is tightly based on GNOME, we already have, use, and rely on this GNOME stack. The core difference is that instead of having “lightdm”, “budgie-desktop”, and “budgie-desktop-branding” in the ISO definition file, we now have “gdm”, “gnome-shell”, “gnome-desktop-branding”.

=> ↺ GNOME’s Mutter Begins Landing Monitor/Display Rework

• Jonas Ådahl’s latest GNOME work to benefit the GNOME Wayland support and other areas is a rework of Mutter so it now handles all low-level monitor configuration.

=> ↺ GNOME Twitch – Watch Twitch Streams on Linux Desktop

• Gnome Twitch is an app that enables users to enjoy their favorite streams without the stress of using flash or a web browser on their GNU/Linux desktop.

• You can use the app to search for and watch streaming channels either by their name or by their game. You can also manage your favorite selections in order to enable be able to quickly find them when next you might need them.

=> ↺ Insights into the GNOME 3.24 Release Video

• We managed to release the video a day after the release of GNOME 3.24. The slight delay was partly because timing the music proved quite difficult due to the editing freeze, but me and Simon now have some experience dealing with this, so we will come up with a better approach for the next video.

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ Antivirus Live CD 22.0-0.99.2 Launches Based on 4MLinux 22.0 and ClamAV 0.99.2

• Zbigniew Konojacki‏ informs Softpedia today about the release and immediate availability for download of the Antivirus Live CD 22.0-0.99.2 live operating system.

=> ↺ OpenELEC 8.0 Linux OS Officially Out with Raspberry Pi Zero W Support, Kodi 17.1

• The development team behind the OpenELEC Linux-based entertainment operating system designed for embedded devices were proud to announce earlier the release and general availability of OpenELEC 8.0.

• Based on the latest Kodi 17.1 “Krypton” open-source and cross-platform media center software, OpenELEC 8.0 is here with a lot of updated internals, as well as support for new platforms, such as the recently launched Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board computer, WeTek Hub and WeTek Play 2.

=> ↺ OpenELEC 8.0 Linux distribution now available for PC, Raspberry Pi, WeTek Hub, and more

• When you want to play media in your living room, there are countless options nowadays. You can buy an Apple TV, Xbox One, Roku, or something else. Of course, for some people, a self-built home theater computer is a more rewarding experience. Thanks to Linux and solutions like Kodi, it can be easy to build a very capable media center machine.

• Today, popular Linux distro OpenELEC reaches version 8.0 stable. This operating system leverages Kodi to provide a well-rounded media center experience. Not only are there images for PC, but for Raspberry Pi and WeTek boxes too.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ PCLinuxOS 2017.03

• It has been about a year since I last explored the PCLinuxOS distribution. At that time I was experimenting with the project’s MATE edition. Since I have not taken the chance to try PCLinuxOS since the distribution launched an edition with the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment, I thought it would be fun to revisit this project. PCLinuxOS currently ships with version 5.8 of the Plasma desktop which is a long term support release of Plasma. The ISO file I downloaded for PCLinuxOS was 1.3GB in size.

• Booting from the distribution’s live media brings up a menu asking how we would like to launch the operating system. We can choose to launch PCLinuxOS with a graphical desktop with the default settings, load the desktop with safe mode graphics settings, boot to a text console or launch the project’s system installer. Taking one of the live desktop options soon brings up a window asking us to select our keyboard’s layout from a list. Then the Plasma desktop loads. PCLinuxOS has a varied and colourful wallpaper. There are icons on the desktop which open the Dolphin file manager and launch the system installer. At the bottom of the screen we find a panel which houses the application menu, a few quick-launch buttons, a task switcher and the system tray.

Gentoo Family

=> ↺ Gentoo-Based exGENT Live 2017 Distro Has Xfce 4.12.1 and LXQt 0.11.0, Linux 4.10

• GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton announced the release of yet another build of his Gentoo-based exGENT Live Linux distribution, using the lightweight Xfce and LXQt desktop environments.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat Software Collections 2.4 Beta & Red Hat Developer Toolset 6.1 Beta Now Available

=> ↺ No cost. No hassle. Plenty of RHEL developer benefits!

• A year ago Red Hat announced the availability of a no-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux developer subscription available as part of the Red Hat Developer Program. Offered as a self-supported, development-only subscription, this developer subscriptions provides you with a stable development platform for building enterprise applications – across cloud, physical, virtual, and container-centric infrastructures.

Finance

=> ↺ Somewhat Critical Media Coverage Somewhat Likely to Effect Red Hat (RHT) Stock Price

=> ↺ 3 Stocks You Can Safely Own Until 2027

=> ↺ A New Kind of Stock Chart: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Critical Pivot Points

=> ↺ Chevy Chase Trust Holdings Inc. Decreases Position in Red Hat Inc (RHT)

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Receives Average Rating of “Buy” from Analysts

Debian Family

=> ↺ Contribute your skills to Debian in Montreal, April 14 2017

• Join us in Montreal, on April 14 2017, and we will find a way in which you can help Debian with your current set of skills! You might even learn one or two things in passing (but you don’t have to).

=> ↺ manpages.debian.org: what’s new since the launch? (2017-04-09)

• On 2017-01-18, I announced that https://manpages.debian.org had been modernized. Let me catch you up on a few things which happened in the meantime:

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Unity8.org To Fork Unity8 Asking What Name Should Unity8 Fork Have

• As Mark Shuttleworth announced the discontinuation of Unity8 project, unity users have started asking many questions. One of the questions is ‘Is unity dead?’. We have seen so many projects discontinued and then after sometime somebody else from the community takes the charge and continue the development. The same is going to happen with Unity. Somebody has decided to develop Unity8 fork and looking for a name.

=> ↺ Canonical’s Dropping of Unity Is Only the Iceberg’s Tip

• The news that Ubuntu will be dropping development of key desktop components is probably going to eventually be a boon for enterprise users, especially in the cloud. I say “probably,” because there seems to be some kind of shakeup happening at the Linux distribution, and we’ll need to see how things pan-out before we can trust what our crystal ball is telling us.

• According to an announcement made Wednesday by Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, beginning next year Ubuntu will be dropping its home grown Unity desktop, replacing it with GNOME, which will bring it full circle to its beginnings as a Debian based GNOME distribution. As they say, everything old is new again.

• In addition to Unity, definitely gone are the Ubuntu phone and convergence, that nifty little feature that automatically switched a phone from a mobile interface to a full scale Linux desktop merely by plugging it up to an external monitor and keyboard. Probably gone as well is Mir, Ubuntu’s still under development display server, since GNOME is designed to work and play well with Wayland, and Mir development hasn’t gone as smoothly as originally anticipated.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Linux 17.04 Review ! Who’s this for ?!

=> ↺ The Mir “hate-fest”

• Mark Shuttleworth seems to be a little more vocal as of late and in this instance, he’s criticizing the FLOSS (Free/Libre Open-Source) community and their ‘hate-fest’ against Mir. He goes on to call many members of the FLOSS community “deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream,” which sounds something akin to calling them hipsters.

=> ↺ Unity is dead. Long live Ubuntu!

• Several days ago, Mark Shuttleworth publicly announced that Canonical will stop the development of Unity8, the phone and the whole convergence idea. This seemingly sudden and possibly shocking change will come into effect in 2018, with the next LTS release.

• By now, you’ve heard and read a lot of rumors and stories, analyzing this new situation, the future of Ubuntu as an operating system, and what all this means for us, Linux folks. Well, rather than quoting snippets from the Ubuntu Insights news article, I will focus on what the technical and strategic aspects of the change mean, and why you should be worried.

=> ↺ Flatpak Apps Are Awesome, But Boy Do They Look Bad on Ubuntu

• This week I installed my third Flatpak app on Ubuntu (the awesome GNOME Twitch 0.4, incase you’re interested) and it was an absolute breeze.

=> ↺ Here’s how GNOME Shell can look like Ubuntu Unity

• With the recent bombshell that Canonical is quitting the Unity desktop project as well as the overall goals for convergence and returning to GNOME, one can’t help but wonder what Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will look like. However, as you will see it is very easy to tweak GNOME to look and feel quite similar to Unity in a matter of minutes, so perhaps this gives an idea.

=> ↺ What Ubuntu Needs To Consider To Remain Remarkable

• Ubuntu is probably the most famous Linux distribution worldwide on the desktop. Since its start in 2004, the distribution was downloaded millions of times. The Ubuntu community has grown up largely as well. Today, there are tons of other Linux distributions which are based on Ubuntu. They definitely made a success in creating this huge userbase.

=> ↺ Canonical Shuts Door On Unity, Ubuntu Phone And Convergence

• Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical (parent company of Ubuntu), has just announced the shocking news.

=> ↺ Insights On Companies/Developers Behind Wayland

• Wayland is the new display server for the Unix-like platforms. The development started around 5 years ago in 2012 in order to create a modern alternative for the 30-years-old X display server which doesn’t inherit its issues. The results are “good” so far. GNOME and KDE teams are working on completing their ports and fixing issues with the new server.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Going Back To Gnome Desktop! Did I Hear It Right?

• Yes, indeed, you heard/read it right. A moment of silence for my and your feelings about Ubuntu on phones and desktop “convergence”. Yesterday was 5th of April not 1st and it doesn’t seem like a April fool joke. For sure I didn’t see that coming and it is shocking to me as well.

=> ↺ Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth insults free software community, compares Mir to gun control debate

• When it comes to Linux on the desktop, I am primarily a Fedora user. Sure, I like trying out other distributions for fun, but I always return to the wonderful Fedora. Heck, I even mess around with Ubuntu on occasion, although I am not a huge fan of Unity — I love GNOME. With that said, when Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder, recently announced that he was killing the Unity desktop environment and embracing GNOME, I was quite happy. It signaled less fragmentation and division in the Linux community.

=> ↺ Canonical drops Ubuntu phones, tablets. The future is in the Cloud

=> ↺ Ubuntu Is Discontinuing Its Unity, Phone, And Tablet Versions

=> ↺ Ubuntu Drops Phone, Unity8 And Convergence

=> ↺ GNOME to be Ubuntu’s default desktop environment, Canonical to stop investing in Ubuntu Phone

=> ↺ Unity out at Canonical amid big shakeups

=> ↺ Canonical discontinues Unity8 and goes back to Gnome

=> ↺ This developer is fighting a lonely battle to keep Ubuntu Touch and Unity 8 afloat

=> ↺ Canonical pulls out of the mobile industry, cites lack of interest in convergence

=> ↺ Remember the Canonical Ubuntu Project & Crowdfunding Campaign? They’ve Called it Quits on Smartphone Project

=> ↺ What’s next for Ubuntu Linux?

=> ↺ What’s Next for Ubuntu Desktop? Mark Shuttleworth Shares His Plans

• Mark Shuttleworth has revealed more about what’s next for the Ubuntu desktop.

• His comments follow last week’s bombshell announcement that Canonical is to stop developing Unity 8, convergence, Ubuntu Phones and tablets, and that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will use GNOME instead of Unity as its default desktop.

=> ↺ UBports’ Fork Of Unity 8 Plans To Eventually Get On Wayland

• UBports is one of the leading teams right now planning a fork of the Unity 8 desktop now that it’s being abandoned by Canonical. While a lead Mir developer hopes Mir will stick around and see compatibility with Wayland and Mark continues to believe in Mir, the UBports team is looking at getting Unity 8 on Wayland.

=> ↺ UBports Community Q&A: April 8, 2017

• On Friday, April 7th, 2017, we started what will be a long journey into the future. A core team meeting at 1800 UTC was quickly followed by a community Q&A. The Q&A is public for anyone to view. You can view it here or continue reading for a list of the Q’s and A’s. Remember that as this is still an early time for our project, almost everything here is subject to change.

=> ↺ Ubuntu GNOME Is Becoming Default Flavor, Unity 7 Will Be Installable from Repos

• A lot is happening in the Ubuntu world these days after Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth shocked the entire Linux community when he announced that the Unity 8 user interface would no longer be developed.

• Unity 8 was the latest vision of Canonical for the future of the Ubuntu desktop, along with convergence. It was supposed to give Ubuntu a bump by acting the same on both mobile and PCs, something that no other GNU/Linux distribution does, at least not at the moment of writing this article.

=> ↺ Mark Shuttleworth says some free software folk are ‘deeply anti-social’ and ‘love to hate’

• Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has labelled some members of the free software community habitual, hateful and reflexive contrarians.

• Shuttleworth added a comment to his own Google+ post thanking those who worked on Ubuntu’s recently-abandoned Unity Project.

• But as he read the comments on that post, his mood changed and he soon added a comment about past debate on the Mir windowing system.

=> ↺ [Video] Ubuntu Gnome – The Future is Now

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Resetter: Allows You To Reset Your Ubuntu/Linux Mint To Fresh Installation Stage

• Have you ever been in a situation when you want to reset your Ubuntu/Linux Mint to default but you can’t? The only way used to get default is do the complete new installation but now there is an App claims to do factory reset of your Ubuntu/Linux Mint, called Resetter.

=> ↺ Ubuntu-Based LXLE 16.04.2 “Eclectica” Released with Btrfs File System Support

• LXLE developer Ronnie Whisler announced the general availability of the final release of his Ubuntu-based LXLE 16.04.2 “Eclectica” computer operating system.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Zero Terminal Raspberry Pi device is a DIY handheld Linux PC in a 3D printed case

• Coders and homemade tech enthusiasts will be excited to see the latest work from n-o-d-e.net, which is now demonstrated on its website and Youtube channel. It’s a modified Raspberry Pi device, featuring a body case made using 3D printing technology. Dubbed the Zero Terminal, the portable computer is part of an ongoing project to make the ultimate handheld Linux device.

Phones

Android

=> ↺ The LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition will get Android Wear 2.0 in May

• The LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition was first in several areas. It was the first Android Wear device with LTE connectivity, the first with multiple function buttons, and the first with a speaker for voice calls. Unfortunately, it will be far from the first watch to get Android Wear 2.0.

=> ↺ Flexible memory brings bendable smartphones one step closer

=> ↺ Nexus and Pixel Devices Migrate to SDCardFS in Android O

=> ↺ XDA Just Spotted The “Next Big Thing” On Android O — “SDCardFS”

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy S8 – How does it stack up against its Android rivals?

=> ↺ LG G6 International Giveaway

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Open sourcing Wire server code

• The source code of the server components is licensed under AGPL and can be used according to those terms unless otherwise specified for third-party components.

=> ↺ The state of open source in Asia

• While Japanese companies have doubled down on open source software collaboration, including in new areas such as auto, Chinese firms have been slower to embrace it, which risks isolating projects from a key emerging technology centre

=> ↺ Take the #HappinessPacketChallenge!

• One of the most important lessons I was taught growing up is to say “thank you” when someone does something nice for you. Many months ago, someone first introduced me to something called Happiness Packets. The idea is simple but powerfully effective. Happiness Packets are like thank-you cards for open source users or contributors. You can send a packet to anyone for anything. Your message can be as short or as long as you like. You can put your name on your message or you can keep it totally anonymous. The choice is yours. And now, I want to challenge you to the #HappinessPacketChallenge!

=> ↺ Meson project status update

• The last few weeks have been an amazing ride for the Meson project. We have gone from “interesting but niche” to being seriously considered for such core infrastructure projects as Mesa, Wayland, Xorg and even systemd. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed in making this possible. Thanks to all contributors, evangelists, those who have converted their projects, or even proposed it. We would not be here without you.

• However having this much growth brings with it new problems. The main one of these, as most of you have probably noticed, is the growth in pull request backlog. I know there are MRs that have been waiting for quite a while and that this is very frustrating to those people who have filed them. My apologies to you, we are trying to make this better.

=> ↺ How the open source model will soar above the rest

• Defining a project is more than just discussing the results of the deliverable. For a project manager, this definition is about learning how to balance a series of interrelated elements. When it comes to the process of creation, the project manager has to manage the dependencies and the project’s critical chain. The project manager also has to communicate effectively with the various stakeholders’ personalities and the dynamic differences between Waterfall and Agile development methods.

Events

=> ↺ The Perl Conference in Amsterdam

• 9 .. 11 August, 2017

• These meetings were formerly known as YAPC::EU, the yearly meeting of Perl Mongers in Europe.

=> ↺ Talk proposals Akademy 2017

• Sprintime is here. So start planning for all the summer conferences. The KDE yearly summer conference, Akademy, takes place in the south of Spain from July 22nd to July 27th.

• Akademy is a great opportunity for all community members to tell their fellow KDE-ers about the things they have been working on. It provides a friendly environment where people contribute to the wonderful projects of KDE.

SaaS/Back End

=> ↺ Open source vendor Hortonworks shifting to packaged solutions for IoT and cyber security

Databases

=> ↺ New Features Coming in PostgreSQL 10

• The list of new features coming in PostgreSQL 10 is extremely impressive. I’ve been involved in the PostgreSQL project since the 8.4 release cycle (2008-2009), and I’ve never seen anything like this. Many people have already blogged about these features elsewhere; my purpose here is just to bring together a list of the features that, in my opinion, are the biggest new things that we can expect to see in PostgreSQL 10. [Disclaimers: (1) Other people may have different opinions. (2) It is not impossible that some patches could be reverted prior to release. (3) The list below represents the work of the entire PostgreSQL community, not specifically me or EnterpriseDB, and I have no intention of taking credit for anyone else's work.]

=> ↺ PostgreSQL 10 Is Going To Be Very Feature Rich

• PostgreSQL developer Robert Haas has shared a look at the features coming up to PostgreSQL 10 and it’s quite impressive for those using this database system.

BSD

=> ↺ Allan Jude Interview with Wendell – ZFS Talk & More

=> ↺ Getting OpenBSD running on Raspberry Pi 3

• So the next plan was to pop in a tiny OpenBSD computer with a uthum(4) temperature sensor and stream the temperature over WiFi.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Changes To Find With The Upcoming Release Of GCC 7

• GCC 7 is expected to see its first stable release this month, GCC 7.1, so here’s a look at some of the features to find with this annual feature update to the GNU Compiler Collection.

Project Releases

=> ↺ libnice 0.1.14

• Today, Olivier Crête, libnice maintainer and Collabora Multimedia Lead, announced the availability of libnice 0.1.14, the latest release of the NAT traversal library implementing the RFC for Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE). ICE is a key part of the WebRTC standard and libnice is used by many WebRTC implementations such as OpenWebRTC, Kurento and Janus.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ University System of Maryland gives 21 grants to promote open-source textbook use

• Twenty-one faculty members from 12 state universities and community colleges will receive a series of “mini grants” from the University System of Maryland to help them expand open education resources and mitigate student fees.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Pijul First Thoughts

• Given my interest in version control, a post on Pijul was pretty much inevitable. The thing I most wanted to understand was of course its conflict resolution algorithm. Unfortunately I don’t know enough category theory for that, which is a novel problem to have at least. There also don’t seem to exist explanations of how this algorithm works that don’t rely on category theory, which is unfortunate. The documentation that exists for this tool is generally sparse, which is fine; it’s new software, after all, and these are alpha releases.

• Fortunately, according to their blog, there’s been a useful version released recently. So what follows are my thoughts on playing with that version (0.4.1).

• First important thing is that the Pijul repository is itself kept in pijul. There’s a GitHub repository that has all the trappings of being an official mirror, but it looks to have stopped working when they switched the pijul repository off of darcs. To resolve the bootstrapping problem, I installed it with cargo instead, which took a short seven minutes to download and compile everything and dependencies. (Peeking behind my curtain slightly, I tried to write this post both Friday and yesterday, but was unable to do so because their hosting (Nest) was down.)

=> ↺ Secured OTP Server (ASIS CTF 2017)

=> ↺ FMTEYEWTK about Compilation vs Interpretation in Perl

=> ↺ #4: Simpler shoulders()

=> ↺ Top 5 programming languages for DevOps

• I’ve been focused on infrastructure for the majority of my career, and the specific technical skills required have shifted over time. In this article, I’ll lay out five of the top programming languages for DevOps, and the resources that have been most helpful for me as I’ve been adding those development skills to my infrastructure toolset.

• Knowing how to rack and stack servers isn’t an in-demand skill at this stage. Most businesses aren’t building physical datacenters. Rather, we’re designing and building service capabilities that are hosted in public cloud environments. The infrastructure is configured, deployed, and managed through code. This is the heart of the DevOps movement—when an organization can define their infrastructure in lines of code, automating most (if not all) tasks in the datacenter becomes possible.

Leftovers

Security

=> ↺ Apache Struts 2 exploit used to install ransomware on servers

• Attackers are exploiting a vulnerability patched last month in the Apache Struts web development framework to install ransomware on servers.

• The SANS Internet Storm Center issued an alert Thursday, saying an attack campaign is compromising Windows servers through a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2017-5638.

=> ↺ A quick look at the Ikea Trådfri lighting platform

• Overall: as far as design goes, this is one of the most secure IoT-style devices I’ve looked at. I haven’t examined the COAP stack in detail to figure out whether it has any exploitable bugs, but the attack surface is pretty much as minimal as it could be while still retaining any functionality at all. I’m impressed.

=> ↺ Over The Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack (Part 1)

=> ↺ [Older] Dual-Use Software Criminal Case Not So Novel

• All of this may be moot if the government can’t win its case against Huddleston. The EFF’s Rumold said while prosecutors may have leverage in Shames’s conviction, the government probably doesn’t want to take the case to trial.

=> ↺ HOWTO: Fight Cyberwars and Lose

• Russia sought to advance their national interests by engaging in a conflict that was waged purely in the informatics sphere — the theatre of combat operations was entirely cyber. They won. The results of the conflict was a clear and decisive Russian success in multiple ways [...]

=> ↺ New IoT/Linux Malware Targets DVRs, Forms Botnet

• The Amnesia botnet targets an unpatched remote code execution vulnerability that was publicly disclosed over a year ago in March 2016 in DVR (digital video recorder) devices made by TVT Digital and branded by over 70 vendors worldwide (a listing of which can be found on the original vulnerability report we’ve linked to).

=> ↺ Booby-trapped Word documents in the wild exploit critical Microsoft 0day

• First, it bypasses most exploit mitigations: This capability allows it to work even against Windows 10, which security experts widely agree is Microsoft’s most secure operating system to date. Second, unlike the vast majority of the Word exploits seen in the wild over the past few years, this new attack doesn’t require targets to enable macros. Last, before terminating, the exploit opens a decoy Word document in an attempt to hide any sign of the attack that just happened.

=> ↺ Hacking blamed for emergency sirens blaring across Dallas early Saturday

• We need to get to the bottom of it — what kind of vulnerabilities do we have?

=> ↺ Samsung’s squashing of malicious Tizen smart TV bugs is turning messy

• After 40 critical vulnerabilities on Samsung’s Tizen — used in smart TVs and smartwatches — were exposed this week by Israeli researcher Amihai Neiderman, the company is scrambling to patch them.

• But Samsung still doesn’t know many of the bugs that need to be patched. It’s also unclear when Tizen devices will get security patches, or if older Tizen devices will even get OS updates to squash the bugs.

=> ↺ Xen Patches Hypervisor Breakout Risk Without Breaking the Cloud

• The open-source Xen virtualization project patches a security vulnerability that could have enabled an attacker to breakout from hypervisor isolation. But unlike a Xen flaw in 2014, this time public cloud providers do not have to reboot all their servers.

=> ↺ That time I had to crack my own Reddit password

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Spotify executive among those killed in Stockholm truck attack

=> ↺ U.S. Strikes in Syria Are an Illegal Response to Atrocity

• In the face of constitutional law barring hostile use of force without congressional authorization, and international law forbidding unilateral use of force except in self-defense, President Trump has unilaterally launched strikes against a country that has not attacked us, and without any authorization from Congress. Doing so violates some of the most important legal constraints on the use of force.

=> ↺ The White Helmets: “Heroes” of Syria?

• Much of the information provided by the documentary is inaccurate. For instance, the White Helmets is not an independent Syrian organization as much of the corporate media have claimed. The organization was created by James LeMesurier, currently a British military contractor and former Blackwater employee, and is funded by the US and the UK. These funds are used in part to pay the members of the White Helmets, who are often misleadingly referred to as “volunteers.” The documentary also claims that the White Helmets are a neutral and independent organization with the sole aim of humanitarian aid. However, it has been found that the White Helmets tend to only stage their relief operations after armed militants are attacked. Not only are the White Helmets funded by foreign governments, but their actions are affected by other questionable influences—like Al Qaeda. Still, the corporate media continuously refer to the group as an autonomous, humanitarian organization.

=> ↺ Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes–Zero Are Critical

• Five major US newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and New York Daily News—offered no opinion space to anyone opposed to Donald Trump’s Thursday night airstrikes.

=> ↺ The Essential Pundit Take: ‘Trump Became President’ by Bombing Syria

• “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” last night, CNN host Fareed Zakaria said when asked about the significance of Trump’s airstrikes on Syria (New Day, 4/7/17). “I think this was actually a big moment.”

=> ↺ Arkansas Plans to Execute Seven People This Month, Continuing Long Tradition of Assembly-Line Killing

• On April 17, the state of Arkansas plans to kill Don Davis and Bruce Earl Ward, two men who have been on death row since the early 1990s. Neither has applied for clemency. Both will die on the same gurney, back to back, if all goes according to plan. Executioners will start by injecting them with a sedative called midazolam, never before used by the state, but which is supposed to render them unconscious for the two lethal drugs to follow. No one, apart from a handful of officials, knows where the drugs will come from, or who exactly will do the injecting. Those are secrets under the law. Most importantly, no one knows how well the midazolam will work, if it works at all. After nearly 12 years without a single execution, Arkansas is embarking on a kind of human experiment.

=> ↺ The Return of the Dangerous ‘Obama Did Nothing’ Narrative on Syria

• One of great ironies of our oversaturated media environment is that, often, the biggest falsehoods and most transparent acts of political theater enjoy the most widespread acceptance and demonstrate the most stubborn popularity. No matter how improbable, or how much obvious evidence exists to the contrary, once a media narrative becomes embedded into elite conventional wisdom, it can be nearly impossible to dislodge.

=> ↺ 4/6/17 Philip Giraldi says IC-Military Doubt Assad Gas Narrative

• Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, says that “military and intelligence personnel,” “intimately familiar” with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a “sham,” instead endorsing the Russian narrative that Assad’s forces had bombed a storage facility. Giraldi’s intelligence sources are “astonished” about the government and media narrative and are considering going public out of concern over the danger of worse war there. Giraldi also observes that the Assad regime had no motive to do such a thing at this time.

=> ↺ Reuters: Russia and Iran Say They Will ‘Respond With Force’ If US Strikes Syria Again

• A joint command center used by Russia, Iran and allied forces has issued a statement saying that red lines have been crossed in Syria and that there will be retaliation if they are crossed again. While multiple sources report this, we think it’s unlikely the Russians formally signed off on this statement.

=> ↺ The Spoils of War: Trump Lavished With Media and Bipartisan Praise For Bombing Syria

• In every type of government, nothing unites people behind the leader more quickly, reflexively or reliably than war. Donald Trump now sees how true that is, as the same establishment leaders in U.S. politics and media who have spent months denouncing him as a mentally unstable and inept authoritarian and unprecedented threat to democracy are standing and applauding him as he launches bombs at Syrian government targets.

• Trump, on Thursday night, ordered an attack that the Pentagon said included the launching of 59 Tomahawk missiles which “targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars.” The governor of Homs, the Syrian province where the attack occurred, said early this morning that the bombs killed seven civilians and wounded nine.

=> ↺ ‘There Are No Signs That Iraq Can Be Bombed Into Stability’

• Well, other news reports bow their heads longer before the “human toll,” as it’s often called. But that isn’t the same as deep consideration of the war on ISIS—launched as “targeted,” “limited” airstrikes, and since expanded to include four countries, more than 50,000 bombs and, of course, over $11 billion handed out to defense contractors. But the worry, expressed in a recent New York Times editorial, was that Congress hadn’t officially authorized it: “duck[ing] their constitutional responsibility for making war by not passing legislation authorizing the anti-ISIS fight,” was how the paper had it.

• We are joined now for an alternative view by Raed Jarrar, government relations manager at the American Friends Service Committee. He joins us by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Raed Jarrar.

=> ↺ Legal Experts Question Whether Trump’s Syria Strike Was Constitutional

• It has become normal over the past 15 years for the morning news to report that the president has bombed an obscure terror group in a far-flung region of the world. These attacks take place without any public debate or a vote in Congress — despite the fact that the Constitution gives Congress alone the power “to declare war.”

• President Bush and President Obama argued, with little pushback, that they could target a wide array of terror groups, thanks to the resolution Congress passed in the wake of 9/11 that allows the president to use “necessary and appropriate force” against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the al Qaeda terror attacks.

=> ↺ The Balance of Probabilities

• Unlike the famous chemical weapons “attack” portrayed by the BBC in Saving Syria’s Children, it does appear that in the latest incident at Idlib there was real horror inflicted by chemical attack of some kind. The question is who did it and why?

• I am no fan of the Assad regime, and I have no problem using the word “regime” to describe it. Dictators do hold and win elections. I have lived in severe dictatorships and seen from the inside how they do it. The human rights abuses of the Assad regime have been well documented for decades.

• But Bashar al Assad is neither stupid nor unsophisticated. Aided by Putin, he outwitted Obama by quickly giving up his chemical weapons to be destroyed and accepting transparency in verification. There is no justification for the destruction of Iraq, but if Saddam Hussein had been able to swallow pride as completely as Assad, he too could have had a very good chance of averting disaster.

=> ↺ Airstrikes Without Justice

• Without any recourse to international law or the United Nations, the Trump administration has embarked on an act of international aggression against yet another sovereign state in the Middle East, confirming that neocons have reasserted their dominance over US foreign policy in Washington. It is an act of aggression that ends any prospect of détente between Washington and Moscow in the foreseeable future, considerably increasing tensions between Russia and the US not only in the Middle East but also in Eastern Europe, where NATO troops have been conducting military exercises for some time in striking distance of Russian territory.

=> ↺ Is US Policy to Prolong the Syrian War?

• Many are claiming that Trump is being inconsistent in illegally attacking the Syrian regime with cruise missiles.

• After all, he had been saying the U.S. should focus on defeating ISIS, and now he seems to be going after Assad. But contradictions from Trump are a dime a dozen.

• A closer examination shows a deeper pattern of remarkable consistency in U.S. policy toward Syria that is far more critical than the perennial contradictions of politicians like Trump.

=> ↺ Where Was CIA’s Pompeo on Syria?

• As President Trump was launching his missile strike against Syria, CIA Director Pompeo and other intelligence officials weren’t at the table, suggesting their doubts about Bashar al-Assad’s guilt, reports Robert Parry.

=> ↺ Luring Trump into Mideast Wars

• After launching a missile strike on Syria, President Trump is basking in praise from his former critics – neocons, Democrats and mainstream media – who want to lure him into more Mideast wars, reports Daniel Lazare.

• Donald Trump entered military terra incognita on Thursday by launching an illegal Tomahawk missile strike on an air base in eastern Syria. Beyond the clear violation of international law, the practical results are likely to be disastrous, drawing the U.S. deeper into the Syrian quagmire.

=> ↺ Trump’s 59-Tomahawk ‘Tweet’

• Before President Trump’s “retaliatory” strike against Syria on Thursday, I had written: “This, fundamentally is the question posed by the alleged chemical attack in Syria this week: Do Western Intelligence Services still retain an ability to speak-out to ‘power,’ warning against going with the easy, immediate, ‘go-along’ MSM (mainstream media) 24/7 news memes – and counsel their governments, rather, to await careful investigation?

=> ↺ In Attacking Syria, Trump Breached the War Powers Resolution

• The War Powers Resolution is a series of barriers that Congress erected in the wake of the Vietnam War to defend the constitutionally-mandated role of Congress in deciding when the US will use military force if the US has not been attacked.

=> ↺ Trump Shocks World in Direct U.S. Strike on Syrian Airbase That Could Violate International Law

• Without congressional approval, on Thursday night the United States attacked a Syrian airfield, marking the first military action by the U.S. against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces since the Syrian war began over six years ago. The move comes after the U.S. accused Assad’s forces of using the air base to carry out a chemical weapons attack that killed 86 people, including at least 30 children. Syria denies carrying out the attack. “After six years of watching genocide, … today I am very happy that there is one less airfield,” says Lina Sergie Attar, a Syrian-American writer from Aleppo, in the first part of our roundtable discussion. We also speak with Alia Malek, journalist and former human rights lawyer, and Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. “The hypocrisy of it from the vantage point of the Trump administration is staggering,” Bennis says, calling the strike an act of war and arguing all sides in Syria have violated international law.

=> ↺ Cable News Loves War

• Nothing engorges the cable news id quite like a war waged by the United States, even when the war is only a one-off retaliatory Tomahawk strike, like Thursday’s missile attack on an airbase in Syria. From inside their command posts in Washington and New York, the network anchors have painted on their gravest battle masks and convened on-air skull sessions with correspondents gabbing about the hot action and the expected repercussions via from satellite link-up in Moscow, Beirut, Tel Aviv and border points in the Middle East. Retired generals and admirals kept on network retainer have powdered their noses and crowded into the broadcast studios like thirsty veterans heeding last call at the VFW hall to heave their approval or disdain on the strike.

• Nobody projects network war delight better than CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, whose metallic and nasal shrieking lands on virgin zones of mental irritation in these times. Blitzer, the king of the mundane observation and the champion of the generic question, was among the first to ride into virtual battle yesterday. His show, which generally degenerates into that dinner party you can’t wait to ditch, becomes even more unbearable when the main entrée is war. He see-sawed between hysteria—“This is the beginning of a new, a series of actions against the Syrian military?”—and morose panic—“Very, very sad situation unfolding.” After 30 minutes of such exposure, you feel Blitzered, craving relief from vague, hangover-like head pain pulsing through your brain.

=> ↺ Tillerson says missile strikes carry a message for others

• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the U.S. missile strikes against a Syrian air base in retaliation for a chemical weapon attack carries a message for any nation operating outside of international norms. He didn’t specify North Korea, but the context was clear enough.

=> ↺ US shows off military might to North Korea

• The possibility of a military confrontation has increased with a US navy strike group racing towards the Korean peninsula, but China’s stance on the North Korea issue remains unchanged, Chinese analysts said on Sunday.

=> ↺ NSA McMaster: ‘Prudent’ to send strike group to Korean Peninsula

• White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Sunday characterized the decision to relocate a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group to the Sea of Japan as “prudent,” given North Korea’s “pattern of provocative behavior.”

• “Well, it’s prudent to do it, isn’t it?” McMaster told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” adding that “the president has asked to be prepared to give him a full range of options to remove that threat the American people and to our allies and partners in the region.”

=> ↺ U.S. Navy sends strike group toward Korean Peninsula

• A U.S. Navy strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier was making its way toward the Korean Peninsula on Sunday “to maintain readiness” as Kim Jong Un’s regime in North Korea prepared to mark key anniversaries in the coming weeks.

=> ↺ Chris Hedges Criticizes Mainstream Media’s ‘Cheerleading’ for Syria Strike (Video)

• “They’ve fallen right into line and refuse to ask any substantial questions at all,” Hedges says of the media’s reaction to the U.S. attack. “This is precisely what the deep state wanted.”

• Noting that Trump’s chose to act partly due to photos of victims of a chemical attack in Syria earlier this week, correspondent Anya Parampil asks Hedges why there are “double standards” when it comes to caring about victims of war.

• War victims, Hedges says, “are manipulated to serve the interests of whatever warring party wants to hold up their corpses.” The missile strike, he argues, is the result of “the emotionalism of a very fickle, unstable, impulsive president who, frankly, sees the world through whatever is presented to him on a television screen.”

• “The corporate media has presented precisely the narrative and the images that the deep state wants,” Hedges concludes.

=> ↺ Britain’s secret wars

• Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Trump and one of the most influential people in his administration, says the fight to retake Mosul from ISIS is nearing its end. This view looks dubious when set against reports, for example by Voice of America’s Heather Mudock, that ISIS’s most experienced paramilitaries are still entrenched in the core parts of the old city. Moreover, even apart from the military realities, the dire problems being faced by civilians augur badly for any quick resolution (see “Dark Times Ahead in Battle for Mosul”, VOA, 4 April 2017).

• But the United States-led coalition will eventually declare victory in Mosul. To that end, Trump is more than willing to allow far more intensive airstrikes whatever the cost to civilians, and to sanction the more direct involvement of regular US combat troops in fighting on the ground.

=> ↺ Donald Trump’s Own Defense Secretary Warned in 2013 Against Rushing to War Against Syria

• The Trump administration reacted to the apparent use of chemical weapons against civilians by the Bashar al-Assad government with a flurry of air strikes against a Syrian military airfield Thursday night.

• The bombing occurred after a widespread clamor for Trump to “do something” and without a thorough debate about what ultimate goal the U.S. is attempting to reach.

• This is exactly what Trump’s defense secretary, Jim Mattis, warned about in remarks he made in 2013.

• Mattis had just retired from his role as the commander of U.S. Central Command, and agreed to be interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about U.S. policy in the Middle East.

=> ↺ Yet Another President Commits the Ultimate War Crime of Launching a War of Aggression

• President Donald Trump campaigned last year making the sensible argument that the US should no longer engage in a policy of regime change, and should attempt to have friendly relations with other countries like Russia and China. Yesterday he blew those ideas out of the water by launching 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase and by calling for the removal of Syria’s leader, Bashar al Assad.

• The pretext for the US cruise missile blitz, an alleged attack on a rebel-held town called Khan Shiekhun in Idlib province, where some 70 people, including children, were reported to have died from illegal Sarin-gas bombs said to have been dropped by Syrian planes, has yet to be investigated by any independent observers.

=> ↺ Bill Maher’s Muddled Attacks on Islam

• Bill Maher thinks he knows exactly why they hate us. In the world according to Bill, all those agitated Muslims on the receiving end of multiple interventions, numerous “double-tap” drone strikes, countless tons of falling bombs, the systematic imprisonment of “rendered” individuals and the widespread use of lawless torture are, simply put, the outgrowth of a backwards belief system. And those beliefs also inspire a type of religious violence that’s become a destructive force unparalleled in today’s world.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Trump needs a reality check: Environmental protections save lives, create jobs, strengthen the economy

• By nullifying Obama-era climate initiatives, Trump puts the nation at risk in several ways

=> ↺ Senators Allege DAPL Builder Didn’t Have Permit to Build Under Lake Oahe

• Top Senate Democrats are questioning whether the builder and manager of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) had a permit to construct a controversial stretch of the project near tribal land and water sources.

=> ↺ How to slash your electric bill by killing ‘vampire’ power drains

• With many of our consumer electronics products plugged into electrical sockets — an average of 40 items per household connected at any one time – they’re constantly “sucking” electricity, even when not in use. In fact, some of these products can still consume as much as 25% of its full power even when switched off.

=> ↺ How Climate Change Could Blow Up Your Electricity Bill

• Higher temperatures brought on by global warming means that we use more air conditioning and fans to keep us cool. In addition, global warming will bring an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves. And that means higher electricity demand—and cost.

=> ↺ Berta Is Dead, But The Movement She Started Lives

• The Convergence of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) has defied all efforts over the past year, by the Honduran government and the DESA dam company, to destroy it. This past Monday, March 27, 24 years after Berta Cáceres cofounded the Lenca indigenous organization, COPINH hosted an anniversary celebration of rebellion and recommitment.

• About 150 people from throughout Honduras and at least five other countries joined for a Lenca ceremony; a forum on challenges and advances; a concert; a film festival; and a humble feast of roasted pig, rice, tortillas, and birthday cake. The event closed late at night with an open-air performance of “Ancestras”, a new play by the Teatro Taller Tegucigalpa (Tegucigalpa Theater Workshop) about COPINH’s fight to defend the Gualcarque River, and structural injustice by the government and oligarchy.

=> ↺ Louisiana’s Bayou Bridge Pipeline Is One Permit Closer to Reality as Groups Plan Continued Resistance

• On March 30, heavy rain didn’t stop dozens of people in New Orleans from marching to the offices of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR), where they delivered a letter to the agency opposing the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

• Yet the group’s actions didn’t stop the DNR from granting the project’s operator, Energy Transfer Partners, the coastal use permit it needed a few days later, on April 3.

• The proposed pipeline project is a joint venture with Phillips 66 and Sunoco Logistics. If built, the Bayou Bridge pipeline will be the last leg of Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access pipeline, carrying oil fracked in North Dakota all the way to Louisiana.

=> ↺ The Koch Caucus Continues Its Assault on Healthcare

• Last month, the Congressional “Freedom Caucus” was instrumental in defeating a health bill put forward by Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan. That bill would have deprived an estimated 26 million Americans of health coverage to provide a tax cut for the wealthy, but the Freedom Caucus’ far-right members were demanding even harsher provisions and they haven’t given up the fight.

• The travails of the bill known as “Trumpcare” have been covered extensively in the media, but another aspect of the story has not: the overwhelming majority of Freedom Caucus members have received campaign funding from a PAC funded by the Koch Industries. The Kochs’ unpopular and extreme agenda is reflected in Caucus efforts to make a bad bill even worse.

• Perhaps it’s time to start calling the extremist crew–that wants to throw Americans under the bus and strip them of their emergency care–the Koch Caucus.

Finance

=> ↺ Italy just banned Uber in favor of taxis

• The court ruled in favor of the country’s taxi drivers — who filed the suit — claiming Uber was “unfair competition.” Now Uber can’t use it’s apps — including UberBlack, Uber LUX, X, and Select — and it can’t promote or advertise itself at all within the country.

• For all intents and purposes, Uber is banned in Italy.

=> ↺ The Gibraltar rock reveals the rubble of democracy

• Gibraltar is caught in the crossfire of a historical dispute between the UK and Spain. As tensions grow, the question that becomes most apparent is one of democracy.

• Gibraltar doesn’t appear in the international news very often, but last week it entered the spotlight. As the Brexit process commences, Gibraltarians found themselves at the hands of an unfairly played card, by democratic standards. In the first draft of the Brexit negotiating guidelines came a single clause with a large impact; the EU has stepped behind excluding Gibraltar from any agreements reached between the EU and the United Kingdom, unless Spain is in agreement with it. This is a futile exercise, as Gibraltarians know all too well, following an age old feud over the sovereignty of the Rock.

=> ↺ A Federal Reserve Bank Ignored Insider Trading Investigation When Re-Appointing Its President

• New documents obtained by a Federal Reserve watchdog group suggest that the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s board of directors may have known that its president was under federal investigation when the board re-appointed him to a new term.

• That president, Jeffrey Lacker, resigned his position this week after acknowledging his role in a leak of nonpublic information about Fed policy to an analyst for hedge fund and asset manager clients. The situation highlights the often cozy relationship between central bankers and Wall Street.

=> ↺ Marching for Trump Tax Transparency

• A broad coalition of groups has come together to offer an opportunity for people to vent their anger over Trump’s tax secrecy. On April 15 (Tax Day), marches will take place in 48 states and even a few non-U.S. cities like London and Tokyo to demand that he release his tax returns. (See full list of actions at www.taxmarch.org).

• The largest event will be in Trump’s back yard in Washington, D.C., where several Democratic leaders, including Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden and House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters — will speak, along with a slate of faith, consumer, labor, and other leaders.

=> ↺ Why tax resistance under Trump needs its antiwar edge

• There have always been fights about taxes — stretching back to the crates of over-taxed tea tossed into the Boston Harbor and a thoughtful man’s night in jail for refusing to pay taxes in the slave-holding state of Massachusetts. This country’s long history of tax resistance stretches from the American Revolution to the religious non-cooperation of groups like the Mennonites and the Quakers to the movement to abolish slavery to resistance to every war fought in the 20th century. Following in the footsteps of this history and the example of Henry David Thoreau, there have always been a principled few who refuse to pay all or part of their federal taxes as an expression of their pacifism, or as a way of opposing specific policies. And there have always been demonstrations on April 15.

• In my experience, these tax day actions are motley affairs. Handfuls of activists gather at post offices and IRS outposts around the country, where they try to engage stressed-out tax procrastinators with dense tracks about the atrocities our tax dollars are funding in the warzone du jour. There are always copies of the War Resisters League’s eye-catching pie chart, which shows the huge portion of federal tax money allocated to the military. In New York City, we have deployed a cumbersome Penny Poll and handed out rolls of pennies to passersby, asking them to put the coins in different tubes to show how they really want their tax dollars spent.

=> ↺ So Yeah, Here’s America, 2017

• As America’s new economy starts to look more like the old economy of the Great Depression, the divide between rich and poor, those who have made it and those who never will, seems to grow ever starker. I know. I’ve seen it firsthand.

• Once upon a time, I worked as a State Department officer, helping to carry out the occupation of Iraq, where Washington’s goal was regime change. It was there that, in a way, I had my first taste of the life of the 1%. Unlike most Iraqis, I had more food and amenities than I could squander, nearly unlimited funds to spend as I wished (as long as the spending supported us one-percenters), and plenty of U.S. Army muscle around to keep the other 99% at bay. However, my subsequent whistleblowing about State Department waste and mismanagement in Iraq ended my 24-year career abroad and, after a two-decade absence, deposited me back in “the homeland.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ How Senators Voted on the Gorsuch Filibuster and the Nuclear Option

• In a party-line vote, Republicans agreed Thursday to end the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees, passing the so-called nuclear option.

• The move came shortly after most Democrats filibustered the nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. A final confirmation vote is now set for as early as Friday evening.

• Below, see how every Senator voted on the filibuster and the nuclear option.

=> ↺ The White House Still Hasn’t Released Most Staffers’ Financial Disclosures

• Last Friday night, the White House began making staffers’ financial disclosures “available,” which give a glimpse of officials’ often extraordinary personal wealth. But it didn’t post the documents publicly. Instead, the White House required a separate request for each disclosure. It also didn’t release the names of staffers who have submitted the forms, forcing reporters and others to guess and play a game of Transparency Battleship.

• To combat the pointless opacity, ProPublica teamed up with the Associated Press and The New York Times to request disclosures for all the applicable staff that we know of — 171 people overall. We’ve received 88 filings to date, and posted all of them. (Check out our public Google Drive folder of disclosures. The Center for Public Integrity has also made them searchable.)

• The White House still hasn’t released most staffers’ financial disclosures – at least 80 are sitting around unreleased.

=> ↺ Trump the Loser

• Donald Trump claims to be good at making deals; what he is actually good at is gaming the system. He is even better at selling snake oil. The snake oil he sells is himself.

• He was so good at it last year that he has now become a clear and present danger – to people around the world and to the vast majority of Americans, especially Muslims, Hispanics, people of color, people who don’t conform to prevailing gender norms, and women.

=> ↺ Turkey’s Dangerous Referendum

• At first glance, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s drive to create an executive presidency with almost unlimited power through a nationwide referendum looks like a slam-dunk.

• The man has not lost an election since 1994, and he has loaded the dice and stacked the deck for the April 15 vote. Using last summer’s failed coup as a shield, he has declared a state of emergency, fired 130,000 government employees, jailed 45,000 people—including opposition members of parliament—and closed down 176 media outlets. The opposition Republican People’s Party says it has been harassed by death threats from referendum supporters and arrests by the police.

=> ↺ Top Trump Donor and Big Data Billionaire Helped Tip Election, Now Works to Reshape Media

• Rightwing computer scientist and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer was the top donor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. He contributed $13.5 million and laid the groundwork for what is now called the Trump Revolution. Mercer also funded Cambridge Analytica (CA), a small data analytics company that specializes in “election management strategies.” CA boasts on its website that it has psychological profiles, based on 5,000 separate pieces of data, on 220 million American voters. CA scoops up masses of data from peoples’ Facebook profiles and uses artificial intelligence to influence their thinking and manipulate public opinion. They used these skills to exploit America’s populist insurgency and tip the election toward Trump.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ New legislation (HR 1865) seeks to hold websites liable for content posted by third parties; degrade free speech online

=> ↺ We rush to condemn Islamophobia. What about anti-Christian attacks?

• [...] five uniformed railway “Transport Officers” watched the attack and did nothing to help him [...]

=> ↺ Why Does the West Keep Colluding with Terrorists?

• Like other criticisms of Hirsi Ali, the effort was to portray her as the problem itself rather than as the response to a problem.

• That this type of campaign can succeed — that speakers can be stopped from speaking in Western democracies because of the implicit or explicit threat of violence — is a problem our societies need to face. [...]

=> ↺ [Older] US: Release Singaporean Blogger Amos Yee

• US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials should immediately release persecuted Singaporean activist and blogger Amos Yee, who was granted asylum by a US immigration judge on March 24, 2017, PEN America and Human Rights Watch said today. Yee, who has been detained since December, remains in ICE custody on the grounds that the Department of Homeland Security may file an appeal against the grant of asylum.

=> ↺ Rubel: Analytics, censorship and our poisoned information stream

• Is all editing censorship?

• The question came up during a recent Sunshine Week panel discussion at New Mexico State University when I expressed my frustrations with Facebook and online news outlets that make no effort to verify that what they are disseminating is true.

• [...]

• She was claiming that any exercise of editorial discretion is, in fact, censorship. The Associated Press sends out several hundred stories every day. We only put a few of them in our newspaper. That’s censorship. The AP chooses its several hundred stories from the many thousands it could have reported on. That is also censorship. Any attempt to organize and prioritize the events of the day is censorship.

=> ↺ NYT’s BDS Debate Excludes BDS Proponents

• The most important editorial space in the English-speaking world dedicates a lot of column inches to the topic of Israel, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, but hasn’t provided any space to a pro-BDS voice on the topic in over three years.

=> ↺ Arkansas Legislator Pushes to Ban Books by historian Howard Zinn’s from Public Schools

• In March of 2017, Arkansas Representative Kim Hendren introduced House Bill 1834 to the state assembly which sought to ban any works written by, or relating to, historian Howard Zinn. The bill is entitled “An Act to Prohibit a Public School District or Open-Enrollment Public Charter School from Including in its Curriculum or Course Materials for a Program of Study Books or Any Other Material Authored by or Concerning Howard Zinn; And for Other Purposes.” The bill states any book authored by Zinn between 1959 and 2010 would be prohibited by public school districts, as would any work that concerns the historian—which could be interpreted as a ban on any work that cites Zinn as well.

=> ↺ Tennessee University Fires NPR Reporter After Politicians Complain

• Now Helbert has been fired by the university, after legislators objected to her report and complained that she hadn’t identified herself to them. Helbert has filed a lawsuit in response, while freedom of the press activists have organized rallies and petitions in her defense.

• Helbert’s report was posted online March 10, and included Sen. Mike Bell calling transgender identity “all hogwash;” comparing it to someone saying, “I might feel like a dog.”

=> ↺ Ghani Accused of Censorship After Cutting Off Journalist

• President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday addressed a press conference in Kabul after a week-long tour to the Asia-Pacific region and briefed journalists on the outcomes of his visit to Australia, Singapore and Indonesia.

• However, Ghani took questions from journalists but refused to respond to a question by TOLOnews reporter Sharif Amiri about rule of law.

• Ghani swiftly cut Amiri off when he asked the question and said that any questions had to be in the context of his trip.

=> ↺ North Korean Media: A Story of Language, Censorship, and Tech

• After the death Kim Jong-Nam, the official state-run North Korean news organization Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) issued a statement accusing South Korea of conspiring with Malaysia in the assassination. According to Chosun Media, a South Korean newspaper, the incentive for the alleged collaboration would be to “sabotage the North.”

=> ↺ Ninth Circuit Sends a Message to Platforms: Use a Moderator, Go to Trial

• The case involves LiveJournal, a social media platform that allows users to create “communities” based on a common theme or subject. The communities are partly managed by moderators, who review posts (including photos) that users submit to make sure they follow the rules for posting and commenting created by the community. A community focused on celebrity news, called “Oh No They Didn’t” (ONTD), became particularly popular, garnering millions of views every month.

• Enter Mavrix Photography, a photo agency that specialized in celebrities. Mavrix discovered that several of its celebrity photos had been posted on ONTD between 2010 and 2014. Rather than sending a DMCA takedown notice, Mavrix went straight to court to sue for copyright infringement. LiveJournal took the posts down immediately, and invoked the DMCA safe harbors, asserting that it was simply “hosting content at the direction of a user.” The district court agreed.

=> ↺ It Might Be Time to Delete Your LiveJournal

=> ↺ Russian-Owned LiveJournal Bans Political Talk, Adds Risk of Spying

=> ↺ LiveJournal now bans political talk

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

=> ↺ Livejournal’s Russian owners announce new anti-LGBT policy, fandom stages mass exodus

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Pornhub SHOCK – Court orders xxx-rated site to hand over users’ names and viewing history

• Pornhub has been ordered to hand over personal details of some of its users, following a court order from a federal court in California.

• The order has demanded the names, email addresses, IP addresses – which can be used to track a users’ location, viewing history, and other identifying information, of certain Pornhub users.

=> ↺ [Older] Facebook is turning into a confusing social nightmare

• The network, in its efforts to become a bit more social again, has drowned users in new features, tests and other distracting knickknacks — and for perhaps the first time in the service’s 13-year history, it’s not altogether clear what you’re supposed to do when you log in each day.

=> ↺ [Repeat] A beginner’s guide to microblogging on Mastodon

• Yet the fact remains that Twitter is a closed source communication method on the otherwise open HTTP medium.

=> ↺ Twitter Fights Effort by Customs and Border Protection to Identify Administration Critic

• Twitter is fighting an attempt by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency to obtain identifying information about an “alternative agency” Twitter account, @ALT_uscis. EFF applauds Twitter for standing up for users’ free speech and swiftly pushing back on the government’s attempts to identify a prominent critic. The government must not be able to use its formidable investigatory powers to intimidate and silence its critics, and CBP made almost no effort to justify its request. As Twitter’s complaint [.pdf] explains, the request should be barred by the First Amendment.

• Since January, accounts like @ALT_uscis have sprung up to criticize Trump administration policy on several fronts, including climate change, foreign relations, and immigration. Although some of these accounts purport to be operated by employees of government agencies, they usually tweet without identifying themselves.

=> ↺ Border Search Bill Would Rein in CBP

• As promised by Sen. Wyden in February, a bill was introduced this week in Congress that would require U.S. Customs and Border Protection or other government agents to obtain a probable cause warrant before searching the digital devices of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents at the border.

=> ↺ The Four Flavors of Automated License Plate Reader Technology

• Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) may be the most common mass surveillance technology in use by local law enforcement around the country—but they’re not always used in the same way.

• Typically, ALPR systems are comprised of high-speed cameras connected to computers that photograph every license plate that passes. The photo is converted to letters and numbers, which are attached to a time and location stamp, then uploaded to a central server. This allows police to identify and record the locations of vehicles in real time and also identify where those vehicles have been in the past. Using this information, police could establish driving patterns for individual cars.

• The type of data ALPRs collect, analyze, and access often depends on what kind of systems they use and how they combine the data.

• Whether you’re a policymaker, journalist, or a citizen watchdog, it is important to note the specifics about how these technologies are used.

=> ↺ Security Professionals Scoff at Trump’s Position on Privacy

• Attendants of this year’s RSA Conference—an event drawing thousands of digital security professionals, cryptographers, engineers, as well as tech companies and intelligence agencies looking to recruit—expressed skepticism of President Trump’s commitment to privacy.

• Silicon Valley’s response to President Donald Trump has been famously chilly. Tech leaders are organizing political opposition and tech workers are pledging to resist surveillance efforts and even taking to the streets to protest the new administration. But less has been written about the digital security community’s reaction to Trump’s election.

=> ↺ Trump’s FCC and FTC Chairs Rush in to Defend Big Telco’s Assault on Internet Privacy

• It’s hard to defend legislation that undermines internet users’ essential privacy rights. But that hasn’t stopped the broadband industry and its many friends in Washington from trying.

• Even amid widespread bipartisan outrage against the congressional resolution Trump signed this week — which rolled back online privacy protections the Obama FCC created in 2016 — Beltway Republicans want you to believe it’s a good idea to let AT&T, Comcast and Verizon follow your every move online.

• Chief among industry apologists is Trump’s FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, who alongside Federal Trade Commission Acting Chair Maureen Ohlhausen penned a mistake-riddled Op-Ed for the Washington Post on Wednesday. They claimed the resolution that struck down strong FCC protections somehow didn’t do just that

=> ↺ Wikileaks reveal NSA cyber weapons used to hack Pakistan mobile system

• NSA, National Security Agency responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes in the USA, has allegedly spied on Pakistani civilian and military leadership in the past. Edward Snowden, a former NSA employee, has also suggested in the past that NSA used wiretapping and cyber weapons to spy on many international leaders.

=> ↺ Top US spy agency hacked Pakistan’s most popular mobile network, claims WikiLeaks

• Global whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks in a damning revelation claimed US National Security Agency operators have been spying on Pakistan’s most popular mobile network.

=> ↺ American NSA hacking into Pakistan’s mobile system: WikiLeaks

• WikiLeaks has claimed that US National Security Agency (NSA) used cyber weapons to hack into the mobile system of Pakistan.

• In a tweet, it shared the information of a hacker group ‘Shadow Brokers’ which released a series of encrypted files.

=> ↺ U.S. NSA hacked Pakistani mobile system: WikiLeaks

• WikiLeaks has unearthed documents stating US’s National Security Agency (NSA) has allegedly spied on Pakistani civilian and military leadership in the past.

=> ↺ When Apps Secretly Team Up to Steal Your Data

• Imagine two employees at a large bank: an analyst who handles sensitive financial information and a courier who makes deliveries outside the company. As they go about their day, they look like they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. The analyst is analyzing; the delivery person is delivering. But they’re actually up to something nefarious. In the break room, the analyst quietly passes some of the secret financials to the courier, who whisks it away to a competing bank.

• Now, imagine that the bank is your Android smartphone. The employees are apps, and the sensitive information is your precise GPS location.

• Like the two employees, pairs of Android apps installed on the same smartphone have ways of colluding to extract information about the phone’s user, which can be difficult to detect. Security researchers don’t have much trouble figuring out if a single app is gathering sensitive data and secretly sending it off to a server somewhere. But when two apps team up, neither may show definitive signs of thievery alone. And because of an enormous number of possible app combinations, testing for app collusions is a herculean task.

=> ↺ Sen. Ron Wyden: Government Must Explain Why It Tried to Expose Twitter User

=> ↺ Citizen Four showing followed by National Union of Journalists panel

• This is the never before seen, utterly riveting first-person look at how director Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald first met with whistleblower Edward Snowden in Hong Kong where he gave them documents showing widespread abuses of power by the National Security Administration. It is an unprecedented fly-on-the-wall account of one of the most groundbreaking moments in recent history.

=> ↺ Hacker Group Releases Password to Alleged NSA Files

=> ↺ ‘Shadow Brokers’ give away more NSA hacking tools

=> ↺ Angry Shadow Brokers release password for suspected NSA hacking tools

=> ↺ Hackers release password to encrypted cache of NSA tools

=> ↺ Shadow Brokers, Hacker Group, Releases Password to Alleged NSA Files

=> ↺ Trump supporting hackers claim to release NSA archive of some kind

=> ↺ Hacking group Shadow Brokers dumps more NSA files in response to Trump’s bombing of Syria

=> ↺ ‘What the F*** Are You Doing?’ Hackers Angry at Trump Dump NSA Passwords

=> ↺ Definitely-not-Russian hackers just so happen to slam Trump after he bombs a Russian ally

=> ↺ Hackers Warn Trump to Get Back in Line on Syria

=> ↺ Rogue Hacking Group Releases NSA Hacking Tools Password

=> ↺ Hackers Leak Passwords to NSA’s “Top Secret Arsenal” against Trump’s Policies

=> ↺ ShadowBrokers releases password to NSA hack tool dump

=> ↺ Hacker group releases password to alleged NSA files

=> ↺ Hacker group releases password to alleged NSA files

=> ↺ NSA Hacking Tools Released: The Shadow Brokers Reveal Password For Encrypted Folder

=> ↺ Shadow Brokers hackers release NSA hacking tools to punish Trump for ‘abandoning’ his base

=> ↺ NSA Hacking Tools Leak Online But Are ‘The Shadow Brokers’ About To Be Unmasked?

=> ↺ ‘President Trump what the f**k are you doing’ say Shadow Brokers and dump more NSA hacking tools

=> ↺ Group Purportedly Behind NSA Hack Releases Alt-Right Letter Addressed To Trump

=> ↺ Alleged NSA hack group Shadow Brokers releases new trove of exploits

=> ↺ Shadow Brokers Publish the Password for the Rest the Stolen NSA Hacking Tools

=> ↺ Hackers disapppointed with Trump, release Top Secret NSA Info

=> ↺ Hackers post code in Trump protest: ‘Don’t forget about your base’

=> ↺ Don’t Forget Your Base

• Respectfully, what the fuck are you doing? TheShadowBrokers voted for you. TheShadowBrokers supports you. TheShadowBrokers is losing faith in you. Mr. Trump helping theshadowbrokers, helping you. Is appearing you are abandoning “your base”, “the movement”, and the peoples who getting you elected.

=> ↺ Airport: “We’re tracking every single footstep you take and can connect it to your mail address, but your privacy is safe because we say so”

• A sign on the revolving entrance to a European airport, one sign among many, says “the airport employs wi-fi and bluetooth tracking; your privacy is ensured”. The vast majority of people have no idea what this is, and just see it as one sign among many like “no smoking”. But this cryptic term is an indoor mass real-time positioning for every individual in the area at the sub-footstep level, and the airport knows who many of the individuals are.

=> ↺ A year later, no action from Chinese company whose insecure PVRs threaten all internet users

• Worse: a new malware strain called Amnesia is targeting TVT devices, recruiting them into a botnet alongside other devices with remote code execution bugs, estimates of whose number ranges up to 705,000 targets.

=> ↺ You can’t spend a penny without being snooped on

• The anonymity of cash has been an integral part of our economy and society for millennia. Getting rid of that is quite a step. Are we definitely going to get properly consulted on it?

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Sayeeda Warsi’s Blinkered View of Islamism

• Every Islamist agenda Warsi writes about, such as gender segregation, the veil or Sharia courts, is sanitised and trivialised, while almost every organisation or personality is either misunderstood, misrepresented or merely branded “controversial”.

=> ↺ The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain by Sayeeda Warsi – review

• Warsi’s solution to the situation we are faced with today is more of the same: more religion in the public space and stronger “religious identities”, though it is clearly less religion that we need, not more. And while she considers secularisation a threat, it is in fact the separation of religion from the state, universal values and citizenship rights that will provide minimum guarantees against the intolerance and violence of religion in politics and power.

=> ↺ Indonesia Permits Rare Papua Access to UN Health Rights Expert

• Papua has the lowest life expectancy in Indonesia and the country’s highest infant, child, and maternal mortality rates. Despite Papua’s glaring health service deficiencies, the government severely restricts access of international NGOs, including those that provide much-needed healthcare services.

=> ↺ Chatham Middle School Students Are Taught that Islam is the True Faith; Two Mothers Pilloried for Making It Public; Must See Video

• “It’s just not fair that within this unit of study the Chatham school district taught one religion to the exclusion of all others, and for the community to be so unkind and unwelcoming towards us, just for having raised legitimate questions as concerned parents.”

=> ↺ [Old] West still bowing to Saudi Arabia

• Yet Western nations continue to reward the oil kingdom.

=> ↺ [Older] US Senators bring resolution urging Pakistan to release Asia Bibi

• However, after an international outcry, the Pakistani Supreme Court stayed her execution.

• The senators also asked Pakistan to reform the laws that have led to the targeting of religious minorities.

• [...]

• These laws have been often alleged to have been misused to settle personal scores.

=> ↺ 2 men in Indonesia’s Aceh province face caning for gay sex

• Two men in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province each face up to 100 strokes of the cane after neighbors reported them to Islamic religious police for having gay sex.

• Marzuki, the Shariah police’s chief investigator, said Saturday that if found guilty, the men will be the first to be caned for gay sex under a new code implemented two years ago.

=> ↺ U.S. Immigration Agency Will Lose Millions Because It Can’t Process Visas Fast Enough

• Lost amid the uproar over the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants is a change coming to the legal immigration system that’s expected to be costly for both U.S. companies and the government itself.

• Each year at about this time, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services receives a tidal wave of applications for H-1B visas, the ones for college-educated workers. For-profit companies usually have a five-day window in April to send in applications for new visas just as existing visa holders begin renewing theirs.

• The new wrinkle is that earlier this week USCIS suspended so-called “premium processing,” a program that allowed employers to pay extra to reduce visa wait times from as long as eight months to just two weeks.

• Officials have depicted the temporary stoppage as the upshot of a “significant surge” in demand for expedited service, but, in reality, it appears to reflect the agency’s own mismanagement and waste.

=> ↺ Federal Judge Sees New York State Conspiracy to Thwart Care for Mentally Ill

• A federal judge in Brooklyn has accused state officials of secretly trying to subvert a landmark court order to improve care for thousands of mentally ill residents of New York City.

• Three years ago, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ended a prolonged lawsuit against New York state by ordering the Department of Health to begin moving as many as 4,000 mentally ill residents housed in group homes to less restrictive environments where they could live more independently. As part of his order, the judge had laid out a timetable for the state to meet its obligations to men and women who had long lived in homes marked by neglect and abuse.

=> ↺ Torturing Language to Put Best Light on Police Misconduct

• After a cop was arrested for allegedly assaulting his wife, CBS Miami’s headline was “Miami-Dade Police Officer Arrested After Wife Ends Up in Hospital”—suggesting that the arrest and the hospital visit might be entirely unrelated. An officer was arrested and, on a totally separate note, his wife “ended up” in a hospital.

• [...]

• These two sentences are almost a parody of how to bend words in the service of power. Note how Bradley’s wife (the victim) is to blame for “confront[ing] him,” which “led to a violent argument,” apparently by no one’s volition. Indeed, it was “the argument” that “turned physical”—not Bradley, who, despite having been arrested, is never described doing anything, much less anything violent.

• Instead, Bradley’s wife “received serious injuries,” as one receives guests while hosting a party. Who inflicted those injuries on her “face area” is never stated.

=> ↺ What Does Mike Pence’s ‘No Girls Allowed’ Rule Have in Common With School Dress Codes and Single-Sex Classrooms? Exclusion, Shaming, and Victim-Blaming.

• Of all the shockingly retrograde views about gender that the past year has brought us, a top contender is the revelation of Mike Pence’s policy of refusing to dine with women unless his wife is present.

• As commentators have been swift to point out, this policy is deeply problematic. It reduces women to the role of temptress, blaming them for male transgressions from marital infidelity to sexual assault, while relying on the equally demeaning assumption that men are incapable of controlling their sexual impulses. It is also discriminatory in the context of the workplace, depriving female employees of critical opportunities for networking, mentoring, and face time.

=> ↺ This Missouri City Banishes Domestic Violence Survivors for Calling the Police

• In 2012, the city of Maplewood, Missouri ordered Rosetta Watson to vacate her home. But the city wasn’t done punishing Watson yet and also barred her from living anywhere in the city for six months. Her offense? She called the police four times seeking protection from her abusive ex-boyfriend.

• Under Maplewood’s local ordinance, more than two calls to police regarding domestic violence within 180 days qualifies as a “nuisance,” as do commission of acts prohibited by federal, state, or local laws at a property. The ordinance does not exempt situations where residents need to call police for help or where they are crime victims. Once Maplewood decides that a nuisance took place, it can revoke the residents’ occupancy permits — which are required to live in Maplewood — and deny new ones for six months, exiling the residents from the city.

• Maplewood officials concluded that Ms. Watson should be removed from her home and banished from the city because she made calls for help with domestic violence, even though it was clear from the city’s own records that her ex-boyfriend had physically assaulted her. She was forced to move to St. Louis, where he again attacked her. This time, he broke in and stabbed her in the legs.

=> ↺ Resurrecting the Unholy Trinity

• When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney launched their forever wars — under the banner of a “Global War on Terror” — they unleashed an unholy trinity of tactics. Torture, rendition, and indefinite detention became the order of the day. After a partial suspension of these policies in the Obama years, they now appear poised for resurrection.

• For eight years under President Obama, this country’s forever wars continued, although his administration retired the expression “war on terror,” preferring to describe its war-making more vaguely as an effort to “degrade and destroy” violent jihadists like ISIS. Nevertheless, he made major efforts to suspend Bush-era violations of U.S. and international law, signing executive orders to that effect on the day he took office in 2009. Executive Order 13491, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations,” closed the CIA’s secret torture centers — the “black sites” — and ended permission for the Agency to use what had euphemistically become known as “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

• On that same day in 2009, Obama issued Executive Order 13492, designed — unsuccessfully, as it turned out — to close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, the site of apparently endless detention without charges or trials. In 2015, Congress reinforced Obama’s first order in a clause for the next year’s National Defense Authorization Act that limited permissible interrogation techniques to those described in the U.S. Army Field Manual section on “human intelligence collector operations.”

=> ↺ “Why Did You Come to the United States?” Central American Children Try to Convince Courts They Need Protection

• In 2014, the Mexican author Valeria Luiselli, waiting for her green card application to be resolved, took her family on a road trip through the American southwest. As she and her husband and young children drove to Roswell, New Mexico, they joked about their own status as “resident aliens” and informed Border Patrol officers at checkpoints that they are “just writers and just on vacation. … We are writing a Western, sir.”

• As they drove, the family followed the news of tens of thousands of Central American children crossing the border just hours south of them, most of them alone. They listened to radio reports describing the children being warehoused, overcrowded and underfed, in detention centers known as as hieleras, or iceboxes, for ICE, but mostly for their frigid temperatures. They saw photos of protesters in Arizona with signs saying “return to sender” and “illegal is a crime.” They overheard patrons at a diner trading rumors about a millionaire offering his private plane to personally deport the children.

=> ↺ Formula 1 will land in Bahrain next week. Do we forget the country’s human rights abuses?

• For an inkling of Bahrain’s human rights record, consider its ranking of 162nd out of 180 countries on the 2016 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders. This is a place where participating in a demonstration could lead to a serious stint behind bars. Political prisoners might go six months without enjoying this so-called sunshine, said Zainab al-Khawaja, who now lives in Denmark after having been repeatedly jailed in Bahrain for protesting. Many have been mistreated in detention and some even stripped of citizenship.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ A 1986 bulletin board system has brought the old Web {sic} back to life in 2017

=> ↺ The tech industry is already rebelling against the FCC’s latest plan for net neutrality

• Silicon Valley is already rebelling against a plan by Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai that would cancel the government’s net neutrality rules — and perhaps leave it to telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast to decide whether to adhere to open internet principles.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Can you use the Pope’s image on T-shirts and gadgets?

• According to Corriere della Sera, the Secretariat of State has hired a well-known law firm to monitor and repress any unauthorised third-party uses of the image of His Holiness.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Overturning a trade mark opposition decision – Part 1 – IWATCH, descriptive goods and acquired distinctiveness

• Arcadia opposed Apple’s application for IWATCH on the basis that it was (1) made in bad faith because it was filed in the name of Brightflash USA LLC and later assigned to Apple, and (2) descriptive or devoid of distinctive character in relation to Class 9 (computers, software, electronics etc).

Copyrights

=> ↺ Court Orders PayPal to Identify Pirate Site Owner

• PayPal must hand over the personal details of a pirate site operator to Sony Music, a German court has ruled.

=> ↺ Kodi Wants to Beat Piracy With Legal Content and DRM

• Instead, they’re inviting rightsholders to join their platform and are considering the addition of DRM to make that easier.

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