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● 08.15.17

● Links 15/8/2017: New LibreELEC and More

Posted in News Roundup at 7:02 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Server

=> ↺ Future Proof Your SysAdmin Career: Looking to the Cloud

• Sysadmins will always need core competencies such as networking and security, but increasingly, they can differentiate themselves by mastering new platforms and tools. Previously in this series, we’ve provided an overview of essentials, evolving network skills, and security. In this article, we’ll look at how experience with open cloud computing platforms such as OpenStack can make a difference in your sysadmin career.

=> ↺ Top 5 container mistakes that cause security problems

• Given that many companies are still wrapping their arms around the potential of container technology and how to best leverage it, there is still a lot of experimentation with containers.

• Developers are working in their own sandboxes, setting them up on their laptops and then putting them into production. The issue, though, is that if containers are done without security measures in mind, you may not have the agility you want with the right controls.

• As a result, unknown content can end up in containers, even with today’s growing marketing container tools. Kristen Newcomer, security strategist at RedHat, says before putting containers into production, you need to ask, “What’s the right process to manage this? How do I make sure things are controlled and managed as I would any other application?”

=> ↺ Time, Security Cited as Hurdles to Adoption of Containers

• Containers remain a nascent cloud platform choice for many enterprises. But lack of ecosystem maturity and familiarity are seen as early-stage hurdles toward adoption.

• Dustin Kirkland, VP of product at Canonical who’s on the company’s Ubuntu products and strategy team, said one of the biggest issues facing container adoption today is simply time. Containers are still relatively new in the eyes of enterprise customers who have only recently come to understand the benefits of virtual machines (VMs).

=> ↺ 4 container adoption patterns: What you need to know

• At this time of digital transformation, it’s crystal clear why today’s businesses desire speed. When a rival uses technology to make an unexpected move, or makes a big acquisition, you must react quickly. For example, the recent Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods demands fast action from supermarket competitors. To achieve that kind of business speed, IT leaders want to flip the 80/20 paradigm, where IT traditionally spent 80 percent of its budget on maintenance and 20 percent on innovation. CIOs seek to allocate more budget to help the business be agile and nimble.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ ZFS On Linux Adds Encryption Support

• ZFS On Linux (ZOL) has finally picked up support for native encryption.

• Those using this out-of-tree file-system support on Linux will be pleased to learn today that the encryption code has been merged into the ZOL code-base.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ How The Radeon OpenGL Performance Has Evolved From The HD 2900XT To RX Vega

• This comparison can’t easily be achieved on Windows due to the older cards being pushed off onto a different “legacy” driver path, which isn’t the case under Linux with the open-source drivers. All of these graphics cards from the R600 and RV770 to Vega were tested with the amd-staging-4.12 Linux 4.12 kernel paired with Mesa 17.3-dev built against LLVM 6.0 SVN. The mainline Linux kernel and Mesa continue going back to supporting hardware on the R600 Gallium3D driver and even older with the R300 Gallium3D driver still being semi-maintained within the Mesa source tree.

=> ↺ RADV Driver Already Latches Onto Vulkan 1.0.58

=> ↺ AMD Is Trying To Make It Easier To Update Radeon Linux Graphics Drivers

=> ↺ Broadcom Driver VC5 Instruction Scheduler Coming Together

• Eric Anholt at Broadcom continues working on the VC5 driver stack that should yield next-generation graphics for future Broadcom SoCs, some of which will hopefully make it into future Raspberry Pi revisions.

=> ↺ radv on SI and CIK GPU – update

• I recently acquired an r7 360 (BONAIRE) and spent some time getting radv stable and passing the same set of conformance tests that VI and Polaris pass.

• The main missing thing was 10-bit integer format clamping for a bug in the SI/CIK fragment shader output hardware, where it truncates instead of clamps. The other missing piece was code for handling f16->f32 conversions according to the vulkan spec that I’d previously fixed for VI.

=> ↺ Kodi’s Wayland Support Was Successfully Revived With GSoC 2017

=> ↺ AMD Patches MJPEG Decoding For VA-API Gallium3D

• Leo Liu of AMD is out today with another series if video/multimedia related patches for the open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver stack.

=> ↺ VDPAU Video Playback For The Radeon RX Vega On Linux

• An oversight from yesterday’s AMD Radeon RX Vega Linux review was forgetting to mention the VDPAU video playback capabilities for this Vega graphics card on the open-source driver stack.

Benchmarks

=> ↺ More Benchmarks Showing How Gallium3D With RX Vega Smacks AMDGPU-PRO’s OpenGL Proprietary Driver

• Of the many interesting findings from this morning’s AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 / 64 Linux review was how the open-source AMDGPU+RadeonSI driver stack with OpenGL actually outperforms AMDGPU-PRO driver, the hybrid Radeon Linux driver relying upon AMD’s closed-source OpenGL driver that’s also shared with the Windows OpenGL driver. Here are more benchmarks of the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64 showing the margins by which AMDGPU+RadeonSI can outperform AMDGPU-PRO.

=> ↺ Benchmarking small file performance on distributed filesystems

• The benchmark I used was compilebench, which was designed to emulate real-life disk usage by creating a kernel tree, simulating a compile of the tree, reading all the files in the tree, and finally deleting the tree. I chose this benchmark because it does a lot of work with small files, very similar to what most file access looks like in our school. I did modify the benchmark to only do one read rather than the default of three to match the single creation, compilation simulation and deletion performed on each client.

Applications

=> ↺ New projects on Hosted Weblate

=> ↺ The MusixMatch Desktop Lyrics App Is Available for Linux

• This weekend I learnt that the Musixmatch desktop app is available for Linux! Not that Linux users are short of desktop lyrics apps. We’ve written about several before, including ‘Instant Lyrics’ and ‘Lyricfier’, and many open-source music players sport some sort of song words integration. B

=> ↺ ANNOUNCE: virt-viewer 6.0 release

• I am happy to announce a new bugfix release of virt-viewer 6.0 (gpg), including experimental Windows installers for Win x86 MSI (gpg) and Win x64 MSI (gpg). The virsh and virt-viewer binaries in the Windows builds should now successfully connect to libvirtd, following fixes to libvirt’s mingw port.

=> ↺ 5 Best Linux Conky Themes

• Conky remains one of the coolest ways of customizing your Linux desktop. Conky uses the X window system allowing you to monitor system variables such as CPU usage, swap space, temperatures, network download and upload speeds, time, calendar and much more. Check out this article on how to set up Conky on your Ubuntu desktop. If you got Conky installed already, let us look at some awesome themes to get your desktop sparkling and make your friends jealous. These themes are quite varying in appeal and form and hopefully, there will be one or a few which surely would impress you. There are a ton of Conky themes out there and you can always find some from Deviantart.com and a few other sites. So let’s started.

=> ↺ Cryptomator – An Open Source Client-side Encryption Tool For Your Cloud

• Cryptomator is a free, open source, lightweight and multi-platform client-side encryption tool for your Cloud data. It uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) method to encrypt your data. And, Your passphrase is protected against brute-force attacks using scrypt, a password-based key derivation function. It encrypts each file individually, so if you edit just a small text file, only the corresponding encrypted file is changed. Since it is open source, anyone can download the source code and verify it. Cryptomator has won the special award for usable security and privacy at CeBIT 2016. If you’re looking for an easy and reliable way to secure your Cloud data, Cryptomator might be a good choice.

=> ↺ ANNOUNCE: libosinfo 1.1.0 release

• I am happy to announce a new release of libosinfo version 1.1.0 is now available, signed with key DAF3 A6FD B26B 6291 2D0E 8E3F BE86 EBB4 1510 4FDF (4096R). All historical releases are available from the project download page.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ 4 ways to find number of CPU-Cores in Linux

=> ↺ The HTTP Series (Part 4): Authentication Mechanisms

=> ↺ Jenkins milestone steps do not work yet

=> ↺ GSoC Week 11: Practical Use

=> ↺ The Post-TV Age?

=> ↺ How To Install PIP to Manage Python Packages in Linux

=> ↺ GCompris- Digital Electricity Tutorial mode

=> ↺ How to Find Files With SUID and SGID Permissions in Linux

=> ↺ How to install and setup Plex Media Server Ubuntu 16.04

=> ↺ How to Install PostgreSQL and pgAdmin on FreeBSD 11

=> ↺ SSLH – Share A Same Port For HTTPS And SSH

=> ↺ Difference between ext2, ext3 and ext4

=> ↺ 3 new OpenStack guides

=> ↺ GIMP Motion: part 2 — complex animations

=> ↺ How to become a python coder, first part

=> ↺ Install and Play Overwatch On Linux With Wine

=> ↺ Downloading all the 78rpm rips at the Internet Archive

=> ↺ Installing FreeIPA with an Active Directory subordinate CA

Games

=> ↺ Awesome looking mech combat game ‘BATTLETECH’ has slipped into a 2018 release

• Sad news for those of you wanting to play BATTLETECH, as the release has slipped into 2018. There is a glimmer of good news though.

=> ↺ Songbringer, a slick looking scifi action RPG will release with Linux support next month

• Need another slick RPG on Linux? Songbringer [Steam, Official Site] could be what you’re after. It’s releasing on September 1st with day-1 Linux support.

=> ↺ Football Manager 2018 release date announced with Linux support once again

• Good news for Football fans, as I have it confirmed to me today that Football Manager 2018 [Steam, Official Site] will launch on November 10th and it will feature day-1 Linux support. That will be the third in the series to support Linux, which is a really good sign. It seems SEGA and Sports Interactive have no trouble continuing to support us.

=> ↺ Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth released with day-1 Linux support, it’s fantastic

• Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth [Steam, GOG] has officially released today with day-1 Linux support thanks to Daedalic Entertainment, so I took a look.

=> ↺ Realms of Arkania: Star Trail, a hardcore RPG with turn-based combat has released with Linux support

• The game released on Steam back in 2013 with Linux support, but it just released left Early Access as a finished game. I’ll be honest, I forgot about this one completely. I don’t remember anyone even mentioning it since the original EA release. It doesn’t have too many reviews yet either, with multiple reviews claiming it still feels unfinished — ouch.

=> ↺ Colony sim ‘Maia’ has another big update improving many aspects of the game, also on sale

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Latte Dock 0.7 Released with Wayland Tech Preview

• A new version of Latte Dock is available to download.

• The popular desktop dock is designed for, but not exclusive to, the KDE Plasma desktop.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ It’s always fun to be at GUADEC

• As usual I would like to thanks the GNOME foundation for sponsoring my trip to Manchester to enjoy such a wonderful conference and give me the opportunity to present to the community the work I been doing on Glade’s UI for the past few months.

=> ↺ Wrapping up GUADEC 2017

• I’m now back home after attending GUADEC 2017 in Manchester, followed by a week of half-vacation traveling around the Netherlands and visiting old friends. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet others in the GNOME community once again; having gone to a few hackfests and conferences in the past two years, I now recognize many friendly faces that I am happy to get a chance to see from time to time.

• [...]

• This GUADEC conference had the best social event on Saturday night: a GNOME 20th birthday party, complete with cake, old farts Q&A panel, trivia quiz, raffle, and a blast from the past dance floor with music from back when GNOME started. There was even an afterparty way into the small hours … which I did not go to because my talk was in the first slot on Sunday morning!

=> ↺ GNOME at 20: Four reasons it’s still my favorite GUI

• The GNOME desktop turns 20 on August 15, and I’m so excited! Twenty years is a major milestone for any open source software project, especially a graphical desktop environment like GNOME that has to appeal to many different users. The 20th anniversary is definitely something to celebrate!

=> ↺ Happy 20th Birthday, GNOME!

• There have been 33 stable releases since the initial release of GNOME 1.0 in 1999. The latest stable release, GNOME 3.24 “Portland,” was well-received. “Portland” included exciting new features like the GNOME Recipes application and Night Light, which helps users avoid eyestrain. The upcoming version of GNOME 3.26 “Manchester,” is scheduled for release in September of this year. With over 6,000 contributors, and 8 million lines of code, the GNOME Project continues to thrive in its twentieth year.

=> ↺ GNOME Turns 20 Years Old

=> ↺ Happy 20th Birthday, GNOME!

=> ↺ GNOME Desktop Project celebrates 20 years with big bash

=> ↺ GNOME turns 20

=> ↺ Happy Birthday GNOME!

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ Solus 3 Released

• On behalf of the Solus team and community, we’re extremely proud to announce the immediate availability of Solus 3. This is the third iteration of Solus since our move to become a rolling release operating system. Unlike the previous iterations, however, this is a release and not a snapshot. We’ve now moved away from the “regular snapshot” model to accommodate the best hybrid approach possible – feature rich releases with explicit goals and technology enabling, along with the benefits of a curated rolling release operating system.

=> ↺ Solus 3 Linux Distribution Released For Enthusiasts

• Today marks the third iteration of the rolling-release Solus Linux distribution project that has become increasingly popular with enthusiasts and is also aligned with their own Budgie Desktop Environment.

• Solus 3 is riding off the Linux 4.12 kernel, Mesa 17.1.6, Firefox 55, and a plethora of other package upgrades. There are also various changes like enabling AppArmor LSM, adding support for Ubuntu Snaps, Budgie Desktop improvements, and a range of other enhancements throughout.

=> ↺ Solus 3 Debuts with Support for Ubuntu’s Snaps, Linux 4.12 & Budgie Desktop 10.4

• Solus Project’s Joshua Strobl informs Softpedia on Tuesday about the general availability of the Solus 3 operating system, a major release that introduces new kernel and graphics stacks, new technologies, and up-to-date components.

• Powered by the Linux 4.12 kernel and Mesa 17.1.6, Solus 3 contains all of the latest open-source apps, including but not limited to Mozilla Firefox 55.0.1 as default web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird 52.2.1 as default email and news client, LibreOffice 5.4.0.3 as default office suite, and Rhythmbox 3.4.1 as default audio player, which ships with the latest release of the Alternative Toolbar extension.

=> ↺ Solus 3 Linux Distro Released With New Features — Download Torrents & ISO Files Here

=> ↺ LibreELEC (Krypton) v8.1.0 BETA

• This is a BETA of our 8.2 release; a mid-year bump to enhance hardware support and capabilities. It adds 10-bit HEVC support for recent Intel GPU generations, Samba 4.6 which brings support for SMB2/SMB3, and several SSL issues are resolved in a switch to OpenSSL. We continue to refine firmware we embed; removing old and unused files to reduce image size while adding new drivers and firmwares based on team findings and user reports. Kodi is updated to 17.4-RC1 with minor bugfixes since v17.3.

=> ↺ New LibreELEC Kodi Linux distro update arrives — download it now!

• Kodi is one of the best media centers available. Its cross-platform nature makes it usable on many different operating systems. Not only is it good for locally stored music and video, but with the use of add-ons, the sky is the limit. Fans of Premier League Football (soccer), for instance, can use Kodi to watch matches.

• Where Kodi really shines, however, is with Linux. More specifically, the best experience is when the media center is the star of the show. Luckily, there are some Linux distros that exist solely to run Kodi. One such popular distro is LibreELEC — a fork of OpenELEC. Today, an update to that operating system becomes available and you can download it immediately. There are images available for Raspberry Pi, WeTek, and of course, x86_64.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ Mageia 6: is it the rise of Phoenix?

• A few years back, I was very happy running Mageia. I interviewed Mageia team members. I was a pro-Mageia person.

• Unfortunately, the lack of updates from the Mageia team made me leave this very nice and promising operating system. I am sure I am not the only person with the same sad feelings.

• Will Mageia gain its momentum again now? I hope so. It felt very fast, responsive and reliable during my Live run of Mageia 6 KDE. I faced no single issue, apart from the one with tiny buttons in the notification area. But this issue is too tiny (literally).

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE Leap 42.3

• openSUSE Leap is a conservative distribution that opts for stable packages over the latest and greatest. The latest release of Leap, version 42.3, ships with version 4.4 of the Linux kernel, but with many features backported from newer releases of the kernel. GNOME 3.20 and KDE Plasma 5.8 are the main desktops offered, but Xfce and LXDE can also be installed from the install media, with other options available post-install or via net-install. Firefox 52 ESR is the default browser in both GNOME and KDE and LibreOffice 5.3 serves as the default office suite.

• As someone who appreciates a slower, more cautious update cadence, I was intrigued by openSUSE Leap 42.3′s package selection. A slightly older desktop environment paired with an ESR Firefox and a recent release of LibreOffice is something I could find myself using as my main distribution, so I downloaded the 4.6GB ISO to give openSUSE Leap 42.3 a trail run. Below, I take a look at openSUSE’s installation process, the KDE Plasma desktop, and more before sharing my final thoughts.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Summer 2017 Red Hat Intern Expo

Finance

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Position Increased by LS Investment Advisors LLC

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Seeing Increased Volatility in Session

=> ↺ Is Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Stock is Risky?

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Given Consensus Rating of “Buy” by Brokerages

=> ↺ Honing in on Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) and Essex Property Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ESS)

Fedora

=> ↺ Fedora Classroom Session 4

• The Fedora Classroom sessions continues this week. You can find the general schedule for sessions on the wiki. You can also find resources and recordings from previous sessions there.

=> ↺ RHEL 7.4 multimedia packages and Skype repository removal

=> ↺ FESCo Elections: Interview with Till Maas (till)

Debian Family

=> ↺ Consensually doing things together?

• I’d like to explore what motivates one to start a project and what motivates one to keep maintaining it. What are the energy levels required to manage bits of Debian as the project keeps growing. How easy it is to say no. Whether we have roles in Debian that require irreplaceable heroes to keep them going. What could be done to make life easier for heroes, easy enough that mere mortals can help, or take their place.

=> ↺ @DebConf17: Ad-hoc BoF: Debian for the Remote Desktop

• On Thursday at DebConf17, all people interested in using this or that Remote Desktop solution on Debian (as a server, as a client, as both) came together for a BoF.

=> ↺ Reproducible Builds: Weekly report #119

• 29 package reviews have been added, 72 have been updated and 151 have been removed in this week, adding to our knowledge about identified issues.

=> ↺ “packages should build reproducibly” – after 4 years this work of many is in debian-policy now

• Four years ago Lunar held a BoF at DebConf13 which started the initiative in Debian. I only got involved in September 2014 with setting up continuous tests, rebuilding each package twice with some variations and then comparing the results using diffoscope, which back then was still called debbindiff and which we renamed as part of our efforts to make Reproducible Builds the norm in Free Software.

=> ↺ Debconf17

• I gave a talk entitled “Patterns for Testing Debian Packages”, in which I presented a collection of 7 patterns I documented while pushing the Debian Continuous Integration project, and were published in a 2016 paper. Video recording and a copy of the slides are available.

=> ↺ Qt 4 removal in Debian testing (Buster)/unstable

=> ↺ Debian Buster Hopes To Drop Qt4

• Debian developers are still hoping they will be able to remove the Qt4 tool-kit during the Debian 10 “Buster” development cycle.

• While there is still some open and proprietary software continuing to use the Qt4 tool-kit, Debian developers hope they transition soon to Qt5 or another tool-kit.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu GNOME Shell in Artful: Day 2

• Let’s continue our journey and progress on transforming current Ubuntu Artful. For more background on this, you can refer back to our decisions regarding our default session experience as discussed in my blog post.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Budgie Distro: Simple, Clean and User-Friendly

• The Budgie desktop lacks the glitz and glitter found in more seasoned desktop environments. Animation is nonexistent.

• That said, Budgie is an ideal desktop environment that is very user-friendly. Its customization options and ease-of-use make it a great trade-off.

• Still, its design seems a bit too simplified for seasoned Linux users.

• Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distro also offers users a Budgie desktop release. Do not confuse that Ubuntu flavor with the Ubuntu Budgie distro. The two desktop integrations have different appearances and feature sets.

=> ↺ Cloud-optimized Linux: Inside Ubuntu’s edge in AWS cloud computing

• While the market’s cloud infrastructure solutions are beginning to consolidate, there remains a multitude of options for software development environments. Of the operating systems available, however, Ubuntu overwhelmingly leads as the operating system in Amazon, according to Dustin Kirkland (pictured), head of product and strategy at Canonical Ltd., the company behind Ubuntu. In fact, about 70 percent of all instances running in Amazon right now are running open-source Ubuntu, Kirkland added.

=> ↺ Firefox 55 Upgrade Is Finally Rolling Out on Ubuntu

• Ubuntu users can finally upgrade to the Firefox 55 release on supported Ubuntu releases.

• The latest stable release of the popular open-source web browser took a little longer to arrive on Ubuntu than usual owing to a last minute point release.

• But the update is now rolling out across supported Ubuntu editions, including Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 17.04, through the standard update mechanism.

• You don’t need to add any PPAs or download things from websites to get the update. Just pop open the Software Updater utility, run a check for updates, and install those that are listed.

=> ↺ Ubuntu is adding a Trash Can Icon to the Desktop

=> ↺ Vanilla Framework has a new website

• We’re happy to announce the long overdue Vanilla Framework website, where you can find all the relevant links and resources needed to start using Vanilla.

=> ↺ Folder Color now has emblem file support

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ The Internet of Underwater Things: Open Source JANUS Standard for Undersea Communications

• Open standards exist for all manner of wireless and terrestrial communications, but so far none has emerged for underwater communications. Below the waves, submarines, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), and undersea sensor stations use a hodgepodge of incompatible proprietary technologies including acoustic, radio, and optical modems.

• Manned submarines and many automated subs can surface to communicate over the air, where the bandwidth is much higher, and some submersible AUVs and research stations can be tethered to floating wireless buoys. Yet, there are times when neither option is feasible, and with the huge expansion in AUVs, there’s a growing need for a universal undersea communication standard for persistent mobile communications.

• [...]

• The system was tested in San Diego aboard a highly modified Sea Robotics USV-2600 autonomous catamaran called the Gemellina USV. The sensor-laden catamaran navigates using an Ubuntu-driven computer.

Tizen

=> ↺ Samsung sponsors Tizen TVs for TEKKEN World Tour held in South Korea

• Samsung sponsored the event in South Korea as a potential opportunity to showcase their best display solutions to gamers who would be part of the event. The Electronics giant had sponsored six 65 inch QLED TVs and twenty 27-inch QLED Gaming monitors. With the Steam Link app recently announced, Samsung made use of the service to stream the Tekken 7 at the tournament for the gamers to display the capabilities of the QLED TV and the low latency it offers even in wireless streaming of the game.

Android

=> ↺ The LG V30 rumor roundup: OLED, f1.6 camera, fancy “HD” haptics

• LG’s next flagship smartphone is the LG V30, and while we’ve skipped the continuous drip of information that has been coming out about the device, a slow Monday is a perfect time for a rumor roundup! Maybe “rumor” is not the best way to describe a lot of this information—LG has been sending out non-stop press releases about the V30 all month.

=> ↺ HTC Promises to Bring Bluetooth 5.0 Support to HTC U11 Phones with Android 8.0

• Android 8.0 “O” is almost here, as Google’s latest and greatest mobile operating system for Android smartphones and tablets, and it looks like it could enable Bluetooth 5.0 support on certain devices.

=> ↺ Meizu’s upcoming M6 Note might go the way of the Snapdragon

=> ↺ How to Activate a Newly-Installed Module

=> ↺ New Google-backed Android TV box incoming?

=> ↺ You can now pay for public transport in China’s capital with Android phones

=> ↺ Qualcomm to Android users: Apple’s iris scanning is NBD

=> ↺ Android O probably isn’t named Orangina, but what if it is?

=> ↺ Android phones can now open Schlage’s premium smart lock

=> ↺ Will my phone get Android O?

=> ↺ Android phones will probably have depth-sensing IR cameras next year

=> ↺ How shared Android libraries could be weaponized for data theft

=> ↺ Google Allo for web finally arrives, but only for Android users

=> ↺ Google Assistant stops working for some Android Wear users

=> ↺ Samsung teases “big things” coming from the Galaxy Note 8 in new video

=> ↺ The ZTE Blade Z Max has a huge battery and 6-inch screen for just $129

=> ↺ What are Adaptive Icons and why do I want them?

=> ↺ New Android Malware Secretly Records Audio

=> ↺ Google’s Android O operating system could be released next week – here are 11 of the best new features

=> ↺ Sony announces a new Android Auto head unit with a DVD player, the XAV-AX200

=> ↺ Android O tipped to arrive on August 21

=> ↺ PayThink ‘Self-protection’ can shield banks from new Android BankBot card malware

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Is OpenStack enterprise-ready?

• The question of whether OpenStack enterprise deployments can work comes down to the skill level of in-house IT administrators.

=> ↺ Blockstream Satellite: Broadcasting Bitcoin from Space

• Blockstream Satellite uses GNU Radio , an open-source software development platform for Software-Defined Radio ( SDR ), expected to reduce costs and streamline development by eliminating the need for specialized hardware. Blockstream Satellite utilizes the Fast Internet Bitcoin Relay Engine (FIBRE) , an open-source protocol backed by several years of history operating and studying the Bitcoin Relay Network . “Together, these open-source technologies power the Blockstream Satellite network enabling Blockstream to provide this free service reliably and cost effectively,” noted the Blockstream press release .

=> ↺ The Faces of Open Source: Kate Stewart

• This is the third episode from the series in Shane Martin Coughlan’s, “The Faces of Open Source Law,” that puts a face to the vibrant open source community, and the fascinating discussions happening within it. This series of interviews focuses on issues related to law affecting open source projects and communities—copyright, licensing, patents, foundations, governance, etc.—and includes interviews with several current and former OSI Board Directors.

• In addition, Shane provides “production notes” for each of the videos (presented below), offering his own insights from the interviews

=> ↺ Former CIA Dir. Woolsey joins OSI member NAVO in movement to open source elections

• Former CIA Director and U.S. Ambassador James Woolsey recently issued a New York Times op/ed piece with open source stalwart, GNU Bash creator, and technology lead for OSI Affiliate Member NAVO/CAVO, Brian Fox, to call on politicians to expedite efforts toward open source election systems. Director Woolsey was blunt about the need for Microsoft and others to cease and desist lobbying efforts against the open source voting community and commended the open source momentum toward securing the elections.

Web Browsers

Chrome

=> ↺ Chrome 61 Beta: JavaScript modules, Payment Request API on desktop, Web Share API, and WebUSB

• Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome Beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

=> ↺ Chrome 61 Beta Rolls Out With JavaScript Modules, WebUSB Support

• Google today is shipping the beta version of the upcoming Chrome 61 web-browser release.

• Highlights of Chrome 61 Beta include native support for JavaScript modules, Payment Request API support in the desktop browser, support for the Web Share API for easily sharing content on social networks, and initial WebUSB support.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ Oracle Open Source Library now available to C and C++ developers

• The production release of the Oracle Database Programming Interface for C (ODPI-C), which gives more streamlined access to C and C++ developers to Oracle Database, has been launched on GitHub.

• The open-source wrapper is aimed primarily at language interface developers, allowing users to quickly call more common features of the Oracle Call Interface (OCI), the main C API for Oracle Database. But the company says that its conciseness makes it a flexible and accessible tool.

=> ↺ Mono 5.2 Released With Various Changes

=> ↺ Microsoft’s .NET Core 2.0: What’s new and why it matters

=> ↺ Microsoft Launches .NET Core 2.0 With Better Linux Support

=> ↺ Tips for finding partners open enough to work with you

• Imagine I’m working on the front line of an open organization, and I’m committed to following principles like transparency, inclusivity, adaptability, collaboration, community, accountability, and commitment to guide that front-line work. A huge problem comes up. My fellow front-line workers and I can’t handle it on our own, so we discuss the problem and decide that one of us has to take it to top management. I’m selected to do that.

• When I do, I learn there is nothing we can do about the problem within the company. So management decides to let me present the issue to outside individuals who can help us.

• In my search for the expertise required to fix the problem, I learned that no single individual has that expertise—and that we must find an outside, skilled partner (company) to help us address the issue.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ A history of microprocessor debug, 1980–2016

• Since the dawn of electronics design, where there have been designs, there have been bugs. But where they have been bugs, there inevitably was debug, engaged in an epic wrestling match with faults, bugs, and errors to determine which would prevail — and how thoroughly.

• In many ways, the evolution of debug technology is as fascinating as any aspect of design; but it rarely receives the spotlight. Debug has evolved from simple stimulus-response-observe approaches to sophisticated tools, equipment, and methodologies conceived to address increasingly complex designs. Now, in 2017, we sit at the dawn of a new and exciting era with the introduction of debug over functional I/O.

• This is the culmination of decades of hard work and invention from around the globe. I’ve been involved in debug since 1984, so to truly appreciate the paradigm shift we’re now experiencing in debug, it’s useful to take a look back at the innovation that has taken place over the years.

=> ↺ Testing in production: Yes, you can (and should)

• I wrote a piece recently about why we are all distributed systems engineers now. To my surprise, lots of people objected to the observation that you have to test large distributed systems in production.

• It seems testing in production has gotten a bad rap—despite the fact that we all do it, all the time.

• Maybe we associate it with cowboy engineering. We hear “testing in production” and assume this means no unit tests, functional tests, or continuous integration.

• It’s good to try and catch things before production — we should do that too! But these things aren’t mutually exclusive. Here are some things to consider about testing in production.

=> ↺ Hacker-Proof Coding

• At the University of Washington (UW) Medical Center, a radiotherapy system shoots high-powered radiation beams into the heads of patients, to treat cancers of the tongue and esophagus. Any software errors in the system could prove fatal, so engineers at the medical center have teamed with a group of computer scientists from the university to ensure the system will not fail, and that the beam will shut off if prescribed settings go out of tolerance.

• This is made possible by a process known as software verification, and verifying implementations of critical systems like that radiotherapy setup is one of the things about which Zachary Tatlock is passionate. Over three years ago, Tatlock was a Ph.D. candidate giving a talk at the university on his thesis research in program verification. The lead engineer for the medical center’s radiotherapy team was in the audience, and asked Tatlock how they could apply verification to that system. “That probably helped me get hired,” Tatlock recalls. Today, he’s an assistant professor of computer science at the university and, with other colleagues and students at UW, has also been working with the team at the medical center ever since.

=> ↺ RProtoBuf 0.4.10

=> ↺ #9: Compacting your Shared Libraries

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Launching the WebAssembly Working Group

• For over two years the WebAssembly W3C Community Group has served as a forum for browser vendors and others to come together to develop an elegant and efficient compilation target for the Web. A first version is available in 4 browser engines and is on track to become a standard part of the Web. We’ve had several successful in-person CG meetings, while continuing our robust online collaboration on github. We also look forward to engaging the wider W3C community at the WebAssembly meeting at this year’s TPAC.

Leftovers

=> ↺ A Bizarre Case at USC Shows How Broken Title IX Enforcement Is Right Now

=> ↺ Kicker Matt Boermeester was removed from USC after an unfair investigation, girlfriend says

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Trump’s Opioid Commission Had Some Stunningly Good Recommendations. He Ignored Them for 80s Drug War Nostalgia.

• The Trump administration will not declare a public health emergency on the opioid epidemic, dismissing the top recommendation his own blue-ribbon commission called for a week ago. The commission argued such a declaration was critical to unlock emergency funding and expand treatment.

• Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said at a Tuesday news conference that public health emergencies have traditionally been limited to specific areas of the country, like after Hurricane Sandy. “We believe … that the resources that we need, or the focus that we need to bring to bear to the opioid crisis at this point can be addressed without the declaration of an emergency,” Price said.

=> ↺ The opioid epidemic, explained

• “the Toyotazation of medicine — tremendous pressure on doctors within these large integrated health care centers to practice medicine in a certain way and get patients out in a timely fashion to be able to bill insurers at the highest possible level and to make sure that their patients were satisfied customers.”

=> ↺ Is State-Level Single Payer Within Reach?

• Scandinavian-style health care is part of at least one candidate’s platform for 2018.

=> ↺ How to strip 99 per cent of harmful BPA from water in 30 minutes

• Terrence Collins at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues set out to find a cheap way to remove BPA from water. After 15 years of work, the team came up with a solution: first, they add a group of catalysts called TAML activators to contaminated water, next they add hydrogen peroxide.

=> ↺ State health director asks judge to force release of Flint water documents

• Lyon is the highest-ranking state employee to face criminal charges for his role in the water crisis, and has received strong support from Gov. Rick Snyder.

=> ↺ The curse of blades and powders: FGM in Somaliland – in pictures

=> ↺ Barnardo’s under fire for using photo of a white girl in campaign against female genital mutilation

=> ↺ Liberals Provide Ammunition Against Single-Payer

• Holland raises concerns that employers and seniors won’t want to give up their private plans, but that is based on his mistaken belief that Improved Medicare for All will be the same as current Medicare. The reality is that people will be less worried about giving up what they have if they know that it will be replaced with something better and that they will no longer fear losing their doctor as they will all be in the new system. Improved Medicare for All will provide more comprehensive benefits, no out-of-pocket costs and an unrestricted network of health professionals from which to choose. Employers will no longer be burdened with the high costs of health insurance. People with pre-existing health conditions will no longer worry about losing coverage or having to pay more. Unions and employers can offer supplemental plans for extras not covered by the new system, as is done in countries like France, if they choose to do so.

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Monday

=> ↺ Former NSA Official Argues The Real Problem With Undisclosed Exploits Is Careless End Users

=> ↺ back doors

• As leaked NSA software exploits have been redeployed to cause computer-based misery all over the world, the discussion about vulnerability disclosures has become louder. The argument for secrecy is based on the assumption that fighting an existential threat (terrorism, but likely also a variety of normal criminal behavior) outweighs concerns the general public might have about the security of their software/data/personal information. Plenty of recent real-world examples (hospital systems ransomed! etc.) do the arguing for those seeking expanded disclosure of vulnerabilities and exploits.

• Former Deputy Director of the NSA Rick Ledgett appears on the pages of Lawfare to argue against disclosure, just as one would have gathered by reading his brief author bio. Ledgett’s arguments, however, feel more like dodges. First off, Ledgett says the NSA shouldn’t have to disclose every vulnerability/exploit it has in its arsenal, an argument very few on the other side of the issue are actually making. Then he says arguments against exploit hoarding “oversimplify” the issue.

=> ↺ But that’s not my job!

• This week I’ve been thinking about how security people and non security people interact. Various conversations I have often end up with someone suggesting everyone needs some sort of security responsibility. My suspicion is this will never work.

=> ↺ HBO hackers release Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes

• Hackers who broke into HBO’s computer systems last month continue to release the network’s content, including episodes of the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is slated to air in October.

=> ↺ The Ultimate Virus: How Malware Encoded In Synthesized DNA Can Compromise A Computer System

• If nothing else, this first DNA malware hack confirms that there is no unbridgeable gulf between the programs running in our cells, and those running on our computers. Digital code is digital code.

=> ↺ Security updates for Tuesday

=> ↺ Open Source Security Podcast: Episode 59 – The VPN Episode

=> ↺ Update gone wrong leaves 500 smart locks inoperable

• Hundreds of Internet-connected locks became inoperable last week after a faulty software update caused them to experience a fatal system error, manufacturer LockState said.

• The incident is the latest reminder that the so-called Internet of Things—in which locks, thermostats, and other everyday appliances are embedded with small Internet-connected computers—often provide as many annoyances as they do conveniences. Over the past week, the Colorado-based company’s Twitter feed has been gorged with comments from customers who were suddenly unable to lock or unlock their doors normally. Complicating the matter: the affected LockState model—the RemoteLock 6i—is included in an Airbnb partnership called Host Assist. That left many hosts unable to remotely control their locks.

=> ↺ Ransomware Targeting WordPress – An Emerging Threat

• Recently, the Wordfence team has seen ransomware being used in attacks targeting WordPress. We are currently tracking a ransomware variant we are calling “EV ransomware.” The following post describes what this ransomware does and how to protect yourself from being hit by this attack.

=> ↺ AWS unveils AI monitoring for Amazon S3

=> ↺ FancyBear Use Leaked NSA “WannaCry” Exploit To Target Hospitality Industry

• Microsoft has indicated that a number of different versions of Windows are vulnerable to the EternalBlue exploit, even those currently receiving support. It is imperative that IT teams from all businesses across all industries ensure that the version of Windows that they are using is not vulnerable to EternalBlue and, if so, take the necessary steps to remediate it. With three attacks using this exploit having occurred over just the past few months, we’re likely to see cybercriminals continuing to deploy it until devices are patched and it is no longer an effective vector for them to spread malware.”

=> ↺ Researcher who neutralized WCry pleads not guilty to writing banking malware

• Marcus Hutchins, the British security researcher instrumental in neutralizing the virulent WCry ransomware worm that shut down computers worldwide in May, appeared in federal court Monday and pleaded not guilty to unrelated criminal charges that he created and distributed malware that steals banking credentials.

• [...]

• Hutchins, who works for Kryptos Logic of Los Angeles, is going to live in Los Angeles while awaiting an undetermined trial date. He will be tracked by a GPS monitoring device. He has been ordered not to touch the WCry sinkhole, presumably because if it’s shut off, it could possibly make the ransomware start spreading again.

=> ↺ Innovation may be outpacing security in cars

• As the UK government’s car cybersec guidelines recognise, innovation may be outpacing security in cars. When you put new technology into cars, you’ll inevitably run into security challenges.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Does Qatar Support Extremism? Yes. And So Does Saudi Arabia.

• What has been happening for many years now, however, is that a set of beliefs has been advanced from Saudi Arabia that is, by any standard, extremist.

=> ↺ She Blamed Islamophobia, Then Her Husband was Arrested for Weapons Smuggling

• Rashid Jijakli aided in the smuggling of assorted military equipment, including rifle sights, night vision scopes and other materials. He crossed over into Syria, personally smuggled some of the equipment and may have even participated in the fighting. In one communication he complains that his trip to Syria hadn’t been much fun because he was unable to “join with (sic) some action.” In another, he tells an unindicted coconspirator that a “Russian weapon” would be available for him.

=> ↺ The Complex Task of Deterring Acid Attacks, Explained

=> ↺ Maumee man taken into custody for plowing into Virginia crowd, killing 1

• A car with a Lucas County license plate plowed into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally Saturday in a Virginia college town, killing one person, hurting at least two dozen more and ratcheting up tension in an increasingly violent confrontation.

=> ↺ Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district has third shooting in a week

• A 30-year-old man was shot in the buttocks on Tuesday night in what was the third shooting incident in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district within seven days. According to Copenhagen Police, as many as four shots were fired.

=> ↺ Is Donald Trump Tweeting the U.S. Into a War on North Korea?

• Trump has exhibited a disturbing pattern of reckless spontaneity, usually expressed publicly through his Twitter feed, when announcing what could rightly be construed as new U.S. policies. Indeed, when Trump’s senior adviser Sebastian Gorka was asked on Fox News what leverage Trump has left to pressure China to do more to contain potential threats from North Korea, Gorka shot back: “We have, you know, the president’s Twitter feed.”

=> ↺ Leaked Emails: Saudi Power Behind the Throne “Wants Out of Yemen”

• Mohammed bin Salman, a member of the Saudi royal family who effectively rules the country, made the comments to Martin Indyk and Stephen Hadley. Indyk was a high-level diplomat during both the Clinton and Obama administrations and Hadley a top adviser to former President George W. Bush.

• Indyk relayed the conversation to Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States, and the man most responsible for aiding bin Salman’s rise in Washington.

• “I think MBS is far more pragmatic than what we hear is saudi public positions,” Otaiba wrote to Indyk on the morning of April 20.

• Indyk replied quickly. “I agree on that too. He was quite clear with Steve Hadley and me that he wants out of Yemen and that he’s ok with the US engaging Iran as long as it’s coordinated in advance and the objectives are clear,” he said.

=> ↺ As Yemen Cholera Cases Reach 500,000, US and UK Condemned for Complicity

• Wright went on to single out two world superpowers—the United States and the United Kingdom—that have fueled conflict in Yemen by providing weaponry and intelligence to Saudi Arabia, which has for years been waging a relentless bombing campaign against its neighbor.

• “All those fighting and backing this war need to stop fueling the madness and instead come to the peace table for the sake of civilian families in Yemen. Too many people have died, too many have lost everything they owned, too many have seen their futures put on hold, Wright concluded. “In backing this war with billions of dollars of arms sales and military support, the U.S. and the U.K. are complicit in the suffering of millions of people in Yemen.”

=> ↺ Half a million people infected as Yemen cholera epidemic continues to spread

• In reaction to the announcement that more than 500,000 people are suspected of contracting cholera in Yemen, Katy Wright, Oxfam head of advocacy, shared the following statement.

• “Yemen’s catastrophic cholera crisis is rewriting the miserable history of this disease. Our common humanity tells us that this massive crisis demands a massive response.

=> ↺ Cholera count reaches 500,000 in Yemen

=> ↺ Trump’s Threats of Military Action in Venezuela Rejected Across Latin America

• The Venezuelan opposition and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos have both joined the growing chorus of voices in Latin America warning the Trump administration against any possibility of U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.

• Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to four countries in Latin America this week began with an unequivocal message for the Trump administration from Santos on Sunday.

• [...]

• Pence distanced himself from Trump’s comments while also appearing to leave the possibility of military action open, saying at his meeting with Santos, “We have many options for Venezuela, but President Trump also remains confident that working with all of our allies across Latin America, we can achieve a peaceable solution.”

=> ↺ Venezuela’s struggle is also ours

• Hard to imagine a better example of Chesterton’s barb than the unremitting assault on the current Venezuelan government by much of the Western media. They parrot the critical howls of politicians and pundits whose opinions they might otherwise view with scepticism, among them Donald Trump and Michel Temer, the unelected president of Brazil. Even Pope Francis has come out against Venezuelan President Maduro’s “regime”, but then the Catholic Church has a track record in these matters. It also sided with the Chilean military in the coup against Salvador Allende’s government in 1973.

• No one can credibly dispute that Venezuela is in a mess. Reasons to criticise the ineptness of the Venezuelan administration are not hard to find; though the same could be said of plenty of others, including the current inhabitants of 10 Downing Street and the White House, who in their respective elections failed to win over the majority of eligible voters (May) or even the majority of actual voters (Trump). Nevertheless, Venezuela is a functioning democracy with an elected president whose term ends in 2018. Should Maduro stand again, he can be democratically defenestrated, and there has been no suggestion that the next election will not take place on time.

• Why, then, the calls for regime change? Whence the hostility of the international media? Why, above all, is the Venezuelan government being tasked with acts of violence for which the Opposition is largely if not entirely responsible? It is the latter that has been firing on public buildings, attacking medical centres, erecting street barricades, destroying or blocking access to polling stations, using molotov cocktails and roadside bombs against police and security personnel, and horrifically burning alive the odd “Chavista” in broad daylight – aggressions that have been caught on camera – often by passers-by.

• [...]

• Venezuela is by far the most significant hold-out for the left, from the West’s point of view. It is suffering a major assault not just on the Maduro administration but on a political project – the Bolivarian Revolution – that for the first time in Venezuela’s history has given the poor access to health care, education and the prospect of dignified participation in the nation’s economic life. That assault is being orchestrated by the wealthiest sections of Venezuelan society with the overt backing of the United States , the European Union and much of Latin America. Should it succeed, it will be a triumph not for democracy but for neoliberal capitalism, and for government by the one percent. Such is the context of calls from Tories and from UK media for Jeremy Corbyn to condemn President Maduro. Corbyn is right to resist them. Venezuela’s struggle is also ours.

=> ↺ When All the World’s a War…

• Meanwhile, much of the country was distracted from that metaphorical war by an actual war in Vietnam, where the only metaphor around was the insistence of commander of U.S. forces General William Westmoreland that there was “light at the end of the tunnel” when it came to that disastrous conflict.

=> ↺ “Mad Dog” Mattis Making Life Interesting for Pentagon Stenographers

• Speaking at a troop event last week, Secretary of Defense Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis offered up the kind of rhetoric that helped earn him his nickname.

• And it leaves stenographers to grapple with the question: When a sailor curses like a sailor, what does the official government transcript look like?

• For last week’s event at Naval Base Kitsap in Washington state, the stenographers just rolled with it.

• “You will have some of the best days of your life and some of the worst days of your life in the U.S. Navy, you know what I mean? That says — that means you’re living. That means you’re living,” Mattis told the assembled sailors.

=> ↺ Fearful Villagers See the U.S. Using Afghanistan as a “Playground for Their Weapons”

• The province of Nangarhar, in eastern Afghanistan, is bearing the brunt of ongoing U.S. airstrikes against the Taliban and fighters who have declared allegiance to the Islamic State. Half of July’s U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan – at least 358 strikes – took place in eastern Nangarhar, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. And according to United Nations data released last month, U.S. strikes in Nangarhar are more likely to result in civilian casualties than strikes anywhere else the country. On July 23, one of these strikes reportedly killed at least eight civilians, including children, who were attending a funeral, allegations of which the U.S. military is investigating.

• Just last week, Afghan officials said that a U.S. attack in Nangarhar killed 16 civilians, including women and children. A spokesman for the U.S. military denied those claims, saying that the strike was “against militants [who] were observed loading weapons into a vehicle.”

=> ↺ The 16 Year War in Afghanistan – Headlines Tell the Story

• Since 2001 the US has been at War in Afghanistan – the longest war in US history. Headlines concisely tell the story of this cruel boomeranging quagmire of human violence and misery. Below are some newspaper headlines from 2010 to the present to show that a militarized foreign policy without Congress’s constitutional duties and steadfast public engagement will drift on, costing our soldiers’ lives and limbs, nearly three-quarters of a trillion taxpayer dollars, hundreds of thousands of Afghani lives and millions of refugees, with no end in sight.

=> ↺ We Can Stop North Korea From Attacking Us. All We Have to Do Is Not Attack Them.

• North Korea is not going to launch a first strike on America or its allies with nuclear weapons.

• To understand this, you don’t need to know anything about the history of U.S.-North Korea relations, or the throw weight of intercontinental ballistic missiles, or even where North Korea is. All you need to know is human history. And history says that small, poor, weak countries tend not to start wars with gigantic, wealthy, powerful countries — especially when doing so will obviously result in their obliteration.

• So what exactly is the “crisis” involving North Korea?

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Indonesian President Joko slams lack of progress in reforming forestry sector

• The National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (Lapan) revealed on Sunday that there were 239 hot spots in the country, mostly in West Kalimantan, Aceh and East Nusa Tenggara (NTT).

=> ↺ Malaysia minister seeking to visit Indonesia over forest fires before SEA Games

=> ↺ Leaked Report Reveals Truth About Climate Change

• A leaked report conducted on climate change by scientists from 13 U.S. federal agencies emphatically concluded that the effects of climate change are real, and that, in stark contrast to messaging from the Trump administration, those effects are clearly the result of human activity.

=> ↺ Billionaire Behind the Dakota Access Is ‘Baffled’ by Complaints About His New Pipeline

• In a letter to U.S. lawmakers Monday, Warren said he was “baffled” by federal energy regulators’ allegations that his company, Energy Transfer Partners LP, violated rules in building the $4.2 billion, 700-mile (1,127-kilometer) Rover gas pipeline and defended how the project has been constructed. That same day, his company reached a deal to sell a 32 percent stake in its Rover unit to Blackstone Group LP for about $1.57 billion in cash.

=> ↺ After damaging historic property and wetlands, pipeline CEO is ‘baffled’ by criticism

• Last week, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) sent a letter to the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC), requesting that the agency investigate “misstatements” made by Energy Transfer Partners during the construction of the Rover Pipeline. Cantwell and Pallone claimed that the company knowingly destroyed a historic house in Ohio near the planned pipeline route, despite assuring regulators that it would avoid damaging the property.

=> ↺ Experts cast doubt on Keystone XL construction despite political green light

• Low oil prices and the high cost of extracting Canadian crude from oil sands are casting new doubts on Keystone XL as executives with the Canadian company that wants to build it face the final regulatory hurdle next week in Nebraska.

=> ↺ Going outside could be deadly in some parts of the world by the end of this century, scientists warn

• The study used new research that looked at the way humidity changes how people’s bodies can deal with heat. Temperatures and the amount of moisture will mean that the body will simply be unable to cool itself and so people will die, the researchers found.

=> ↺ South Asia could face deadly heat and humidity by the end of this century

• The new study accounts for the combination of temperature and humidity, which reduces the human body’s ability to cool itself through evaporation of sweat. If the ambient temperature in humid conditions, known as the wet-bulb temperature, exceeds skin temperature of 35° Celsius (95° Fahrenheit), humans quickly overheat. These temperatures can equate to well over 38° C (100° F) in standard, or dry-bulb, temperature. Not even the fittest of humans would be able to survive a few hours in these conditions, even in well-ventilated shaded areas, Pal says.

=> ↺ Many Indonesian forest fires detected as dry season approaches

=> ↺ Farmer suicides in India may be linked to climate change, says study

• Climate change has led to over 59,000 farmer suicides over the last 30 years in India. For every 1 degree C increase in temperature above 20 degrees C during the crop growing season in India, there are about 70 suicides on average. The increase in temperature during the cropping season reduces crop yields, thus resulting in increased suicides, says a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

=> ↺ Seas rise, trees die: Climate change before your eyes

• It is happening around the world, but researchers say new ghost forests are particularly apparent in North America, with hundreds of thousands of acres of salt-killed trees stretching from Canada down the East Coast, around Florida and over to Texas.

=> ↺ South Australia okays giant solar thermal plant from SolarReserve

• On Monday the South Australian government awarded a key contract to a company called SolarReserve to build a 150MW solar thermal plant near Port Augusta. The California-based company uses giant mirrors, called heliostats, to direct sunlight to a thermal tower that heats molten salt, which can be stored in tanks for hours at very high temperatures. That molten salt can be pushed through a heat exchanger, where it will create steam to generate power, even when the Sun isn’t shining.

=> ↺ Scott Pruitt Is Turning the EPA into the KGB

• Scott Pruitt, polluters’ puppet and head of the Environmental Protection Agency, knows most Americans are strongly opposed to his anti-public health, anti-kids, anti-science agenda. That’s why he does all he can to hide it.

Finance

=> ↺ Big Money Runs Illinois. Can Small-Donor-Backed Daniel Biss Change That?

• The race for Illinois governor is expected to be one of the most expensive statewide races in U.S. history — with some anticipating as much as $300 million in spending.

• On the Democratic side, J.B. Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, has spent $21 million of his own money in a bid to win the nomination for his party. The Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner has dropped $50 million of his own money into his campaign.

• Democratic state Sen. Daniel Biss doesn’t have a lot of money. And as a mathematics professor who went into politics when he was elected to the state legislature in 2011, Biss isn’t from a long-time political family, like rival Chris Kennedy.

=> ↺ How can we miss our kids if they won’t go away?

• We had no idea that the economy would tank, and that even after things improved, the job market and wages would stagnate while the housing market went bonkers.

=> ↺ When Prisoners Are a ‘Revenue Opportunity’

• Unlike the in-facility video visitation systems, these remote setups come with charges of up to a dollar per minute, not counting account-deposit fees and set-up charges—expenses that can be quite burdensome for the often-poor families of inmates.

• [...]

• Such systems make jailers—whether local governments or private corporations—the de-facto business partners of the companies, while enriching private-equity firms (which own many video-visitation providers) and their investors.

=> ↺ Workers juggling two or three jobs to make ends meet

• She is one of 750,000 Australians working second or third jobs as result of high underemployment according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics. There has been a 9.2 per cent increase in secondary jobs compared to a 6.8 per cent increase in main jobs for the past three years.

=> ↺ City ‘haemorrhaging’ talent because of Brexit, says headhunter

• Brexit is being blamed for a decline in the number of job vacancies in the City and a drop in applications for key posts compared with last summer.

• According to headhunters Morgan McKinley there was an 11% slide in the number of City jobs in July, compared with a year ago, and a 33% fall in professionals seeking positions.

• Hakan Enver, Morgan McKinley’s operations director for financial services, said: “The City is still haemorrhaging talent because of Brexit, and we risk losing jobs, too.”

=> ↺ EU dismisses Britain’s post-Brexit customs plan

• The EU on Tuesday flatly rebuffed the U.K.’s first formal proposal on a post-Brexit trading relationship, saying a new position paper released by London was an effort to leapfrog divorce proceedings.

• In its response, Brussels noted that withdrawal terms must be settled first — a position they believe is strongly supported by Article 50, the brief provision in the EU treaty that sets the parameters for a nation’s withdrawal from the bloc.

=> ↺ Over 50,000 will be affected by state pension age changes in Theresa May’s constituency, analysis shows

• Planned increases to the state pension age will affect nearly 37m people, including 56,000 in Theresa May’s constituency, according to a new analysis by Labour.

• According to data from the House of Commons Library, which breaks down the number of people affected by the changes by constituency, 61,753 people under the age of 47 in the Chancellor Philip Hammond’s constituency of Runnymede and Weybridge will have to work longer before receiving a state pension.

• Under current plans, the state pension age for men and women will be equalised at 65 at the end of 2018, before rising to 66 in 2020 and 67 in 2028. The rise to the pension age to 68 will be phased in between 2037 and 2039.

=> ↺ Ethereum Mining: Getting Started

• If you’ve been following recent coverage of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, you’ve probably seen coverage of Ethereum. Although the Ethereum project has only been around for a couple of years, it has become wildly popular. In fact, in CoinDesk’s recent State of Blockchain report, nearly all of the respondents — 94 percent — said they feel positive about the state of Ethereum.

• So what is generating all this positive feeling?

• To understand that, you need to understand that Ethereum has two parts. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is a cryptocurrency. (Technically, the cryptocurrency is called “Ether,” but a lot of people refer to it as “Ethereum.”) Currently, Ethereum has the second highest market cap of any cryptocurrency (behind Bitcoin), and its price has been rising very quickly. In January 2017, 1 Ether was worth about $10. In June, it reached nearly $400. Obviously, that kind of rise is going to attract attention.

=> ↺ Two reasons Bitcoin just surged past $4,000

• The virtual currency Bitcoin hit a new record over the weekend, surging past the $4,000 mark. As of press time, one Bitcoin is worth $4,250. It’s an astonishing rally for a currency that was worth $580 a year ago and has risen 300-fold over the last five years.

=> ↺ ‘A fantasy’: EU leaders dismiss UK’s post-Brexit customs plan

• EU leaders have poured cold water on Britain’s hopes of being able to sign trade deals with non-EU countries during a Brexit transition period, with one describing the UK’s opening gambit for trade negotiations as a “fantasy”.

• The British government published proposals on Tuesday for “a new customs arrangement that facilitates the freest and most frictionless trade possible in goods between the UK and the EU”.

• The policy paper calls for “a continued close association with the EU customs union for a time-limited period after the UK has left the EU” in March 2019. It also makes clear that Britain intends to forge ahead with trade talks with other countries, but acknowledges that any new arrangements would have to respect the EU’s transition terms.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Fighting White Supremacy Means Owning Up to American History

• Trump’s failure to swiftly condemn racist violence is appalling. But he’s right that it’s always been part of this country’s story.

=> ↺ Trump Is Not the Problem

=> ↺ What I Realized as a Counter-Protester at the Charlottesville White Nationalist Rally

• We cannot simply out-hate white nationalists; they clearly cannot be shamed nor mocked into oblivion. Further, there are very real, very complicated, and very deeply embedded systemic issues that give rise to and sustain white supremacy and white supremacists. We need only look at our schools, our prisons, our news media, our neighborhoods to see them at play. But making those changes is the long game — it’s not accomplished through 10 hours of protest on a Saturday in August.

=> ↺ How Obama, Trump Had Their Wings Clipped

• President Donald Trump was backed into a corner in late July, forced to sign a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, despite opposing it on substance and form. Trump issued a signing statement, claiming that the new law impinges on “the President’s constitutional authority to recognize foreign governments” (referring to the case of Crimea and Ukraine), limits the President’s actions on sanctions, and violates “the President’s exclusive constitutional authority to determine the time, scope, and objectives of international negotiations”, among other things.

=> ↺ Green Party Urges Prosecution of White Supremacist Groups For Domestic Terrorism In The Wake of Racist Violence In Charlottesville

• The Green Party of the United States is calling for vigorous prosecution of white supremacist groups responsible for the violence, injuries, and deaths that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, August 12.

• Greens said that the violence inflicted on anti-racist counter-protesters, including a car driven into a crowd that killed one person and injured more than two dozen others, was a deliberate act of domestic terrorism.

• The Green Party strongly condemns the white supremacists and their rally and violent actions and expressed solidarity with all those who participated in the counter-demonstrations.

• White supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations thrive on violence and threats of death and mayhem. They support a violent overthrow of the U.S. government and various forms of subjugation, expulsion, and extermination for all people of color, LGBTs, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, and anyone who doesn’t conform to their vision of a white gentile male-dominated society based on an extremist “blood and soil” ideology.

=> ↺ Innovating Democracy in Latin America

• Latin America’s countries have been consistently scoring badly in assessments of quality of democracy. Many years of authoritarianism and political instability have led citizens to distrust their institutions and have made scholars doubt democracy’s ability to reinvent itself. The international scholarship and the media have long echoed what opinion polls and democracy indexes have confirmed: democracies in Latin America have been unable to become fully consolidated because they are flawed by clientelism, corruption, and populism, not to mention poverty, crime and inflation.

• This shadowed scenario and the pessimism associated with it have, however, for a long time hindered that constructive questions were asked and that their answers were sought in the right places. How can political trust be rebuilt? How does one strengthen democratic institutions after long periods of authoritarian rule? How can governments become more accountable and responsive in countries with long traditions of political instability? How can the rule of law be enforced where crime and corruption are permanent problems? How can democracy ensure political inclusion and social equality in countries where poverty and hunger are still a reality?

=> ↺ Donald Trump Has Been a Racist All His Life — And He Isn’t Going to Change After Charlottesville

• “Racism is evil,” declared Donald Trump on Monday, “and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

• OK, “declared” may be too strong a word for what we heard from the president. “Stated” is perhaps a better descriptor. “Read out” might be the most accurate of all. Trump made these “additional remarks” with great reluctance and only after two days of intense criticism from both the media and senior Republicans over his original remarks blaming “many sides” for the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The words were not his own: they were scripted by aides and delivered with the assistance of a teleprompter. The president reserved his personal, off-the-cuff ire on Monday for the black CEO of Merck, not for the white fascists of Virginia.

• Much of the frenzied media coverage of what CNN dubbed “48 hours of turmoil for the Trump White House” has overlooked one rather crucial point: Trump doesn’t like being forced to denounce racism for the very simple reason that he himself is, and always has been, a racist.

• Consider the first time the president’s name appeared on the front page of the New York Times, more than 40 years ago. “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City,” read the headline of the A1 piece on Oct. 16, 1973, which pointed out how Richard Nixon’s Department of Justice had sued the Trump family’s real estate company in federal court over alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act.

=> ↺ Congress is At Home, So Pay Your Members a Visit

• It’s August. In the United States, that means members of Congress will be swinging back home to their home districts to check in with their state-side staffers, hit some fundraisers, and maybe host a few public events.

• You can meet them. Constituents can request meetings with members of Congress while they are home this August by contacting their local congressional offices. If you coordinate a meeting request with a few local allies, you’ll likely be able to meet with staffers, and you may even be able to meet with your member of Congress herself.

• Meetings like this matter—a lot. When members hear repeatedly from multiple constituents about overlapping concerns, those views can influence how they vote on policy issues, especially if they think those concerns will animate controversy that might complicate their careers. With so many issues vital to digital rights looming in the congressional calendar, this August is a critical time for Internet users to pressure Congress to do the right thing on mass surveillance, net neutrality, and rules that insulate platforms for liability based on content written by users.

• Here are some of the key issues to bring up this August, whether in meetings with your Members of Congress, or when writing for public audiences…

=> ↺ After Charlottesville violence, World War II anti-fascist propaganda video finds a new audience

=> ↺ Intel CEO Brian Krzanich quits Trump manufacturing council

• Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has quit President Donald Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, he announced in a Monday statement.

• “I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues, including the serious need to address the decline of American manufacturing,” Krzanich wrote.

=> ↺ Intel CEO exits President Trump’s manufacturing council

• Intel said Monday that CEO Brian Krzanich was leaving President Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, the latest executive to distance himself from the president following the weekend’s events in Virginia.

• In a blog post, Krzanich said that the decline in American manufacturing remains a serious issue, but said that “politics and political agendas have sidelined the important mission of rebuilding America’s manufacturing base.”

• “I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues, including the serious need to address the decline of American manufacturing,” Krzanich said in a blog post. “Politics and political agendas have sidelined the important mission of rebuilding America’s manufacturing base.”

=> ↺ Trump’s Soft-Shoe on Racist Violence

• On Monday, President Trump did a second take on his remarks about the white-nationalist-sparked violence in Charlottesville, but his tepid first take offered a troubling look into his soul, says Michael Winship.

=> ↺ The Thankless Task of ‘Saving’ Trump

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ While Everyone Frets About State Censorship, Corporate Censorship Tightens The Noose

• Glenn Greenwald, who as my regular readers know is the subject of my endless adoration and entirely inappropriate sexual obsession, has written an article titled “The Misguided Attacks on ACLU for Defending Neo-Nazis’ Free Speech Rights in Charlottesville”, and it is the first article of his that I have no intention of ever reading. Not because I think he’s incorrect to defend the ACLU and argue against the censorship of hate speech, but because I only have so much time in my day and I see the debate over government censorship as an irrelevant red herring right now.

=> ↺ Nearly 50 Senators Want to Make It a Felony to Boycott Israel

• The proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act would make it a felony for Americans to support BDS, with a penalty of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison.

=> ↺ Texas sheriff’s Facebook war on “political correctness” upsets residents

• “I think political correctness is one of the reasons that these things happen. People are afraid they’re going to be called what I’ve been called: a racist, or islamophobe, or a hate mongerer,” he said earlier this year. “People don’t speak out because they don’t want to be called those things, and I’m not afraid to be called those things. I’m not that, I just speak the truth.”

=> ↺ Google Domains, GoDaddy blacklist white supremacist site Daily Stormer

• For years, the website Daily Stormer has promoted hatred against Jews, black people, LGBT people, and other minorities, making it one of the Internet’s most infamous destinations. But on Sunday, editor Andrew Anglin outdid himself by publishing a vulgar, slut-shaming article about Heather Heyer, a woman who was killed when someone rammed a car into a crowd of anti-racism protestors in Charlottesville.

=> ↺ Trump can block people on Twitter if he wants, administration says

• The administration of President Donald Trump is scoffing at a federal lawsuit by Twitter users who claim that their constitutional rights are being violated because the president has blocked them from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle.

• “It would send the First Amendment deep into uncharted waters to hold that a president’s choices about whom to follow, and whom to block, on Twitter—a privately run website that, as a central feature of its social-media platform, enables all users to block particular individuals from viewing posts—violate the Constitution.” That’s part of what Michael Baer, a Justice Department attorney, wrote to the New York federal judge overseeing the lawsuit Friday.

• In addition, the Justice Department said the courts are powerless to tell Trump how he can manage his private Twitter handle, which has 35.8 million followers.

=> ↺ Lawyer: Yahoo Lost Sec. 230 Immunity Because It Didn’t Hand Over Personal Info; Court: GTFO

• Sometimes litigants start out with a good case… or at least a credible one. Then they ruin it by getting creative. The day-to-day work of adjudicating may be a bit dry, but novel legal arguments rarely provide anything more than entertainment for bystanders.

• Lawyer and author Thomas Hall originally sued three individuals for alleged online harassment. According to his first complaint, Hall had drawn the ire of supposed white supremacists who bombarded him with hundreds of “threatening and disparaging emails.” Hall sought a restraining order against the three defendants, but apparently needed a bit more personal info before he could get that order approved. [via Eric Goldman]

=> ↺ Blocked by Trump on Twitter? You may have a strong case

• When Virginia resident Brian Davison tried to post on his county government’s official Facebook page last year, he couldn’t. He’d been blocked. Frustrated over his inability to communicate, Davison sued.

• [...]

• “The Davison rulings suggests that Trump can’t block members of the public from his Twitter account,” Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the UCLA School of Law, wrote in an email. “Social media accounts are a modern kind of public forum, from which government officials are not free to exclude people based on disagreement with their views.”

=> ↺ TECH HAS THE TOOLS TO FIGHT HATE. IT JUST NEEDS TO USE THEM

=> ↺ Amarinder Singh warns against censorship by cable operators

=> ↺ Kevin Myers to moderate talk on censorship in Limerick debate

• The Sunday Times published an apology following the publication of an article on July 30 last by Myers, which contained offensive remarks about women and Jewish people, while he was also dismissed from the paper.

=> ↺ Video: Google under fire for search and YouTube video ‘censorship’

=> ↺ Chinese Censorship Hits the Middle East

• A deal between Beijing and the increasingly despotic Erdogan regime in Turkey is raising fears of a new phase of Chinese political influence, in which Chinese soft power is used to persuade foreign governments to allow the same type of pro-Beijing censorship that constricts the Chinese internet in their own countries. After a meeting last week between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, it was reported that Turkey plans to block anti-China reports from its media and Turkish language websites. This has worried many activists from China’s persecuted Uighur minority, for whom Turkey has functioned as something of a safe haven after other Asian countries closer to Beijing crumbled in the face of political pressure to crackdown on Uighur refugees within their borders.

=> ↺ #SABC8 honoured for their stance against censorship

• Eight SABC journalists who were fired after openly protesting changes to the public broadcasters’ editorial policy have received the prestigious Guardian of Governance Award for their bravery.

• The prestigious award was bestowed on the “SABC8″ at a gala dinner during the 20th Annual Southern Africa Internal Audit Conference at the Sandton Convention Centre on Tuesday night.

• The journalists are Busisiwe Ntuli, Lukhanyo Calata, Thandeka Gqubule, Foeta Krige, Krivani Pillay, Jacques Steenkamp, Vuyo Mvoko, now a senior news anchor with eNCA, and the late Suna Venter.

=> ↺ Journalism, Propaganda, Censorship, and the 19th Party Congress

• At Deutsche Welle, Sabine Peschel talks to Audrey Jiajia Li, a former TV journalist who has turned to social media and foreign media outlets as the media climate within China grows ever frostier. Li discusses self-censorship and social media blocks, her hopes for journalism in China, unpromising recent developments, Liu Xiaobo, and Yang Shuping, the overseas student whose “unpatriotic” speech about China sparked a fierce backlash in May.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Building America’s Trust Act would amp up privacy concerns at the border

• If a new Senate Republican border security bill is passed as currently drafted, it would dramatically increase the amount of surveillance technologies used against immigrants and, in some cases, American citizens traveling to and from the United States.

• The bill, known as the “Building America’s Trust Act,” is authored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). It aims for a “long-term border security and interior enforcement strategy,” according to its summary. However, the senators have yet to formally introduce the text of the bill.

=> ↺ Rising Demands for Data Localization a Response to Weak Data Protection Mechanisms

• The digital economy relies on cross-border provision of services and goods, and in the past government trade regulators have embraced the borderless nature of the Internet and adopted light-touch regulation. But with the growing perception of data as the new oil, governments around the world are now flexing their muscles and stepping up efforts to limit or tax cross-border data flows. Multiple countries have enacted laws localizing storage and processing of data within their territory or subjecting cross-border transfers to to strict conditions.

• The wave of data localisation policies suggest that a marked regulatory shift is underway. National localization is creating tension within trade negotiations such as RCEP, NAFTA, and TiSA in which countries like the United States, Singapore, Thailand and Japan, along with tech companies, are seeking to prohibit data localization practices.

=> ↺ In J20 Investigation, DOJ Overreaches Again. And Gets Taken to Court Again.

• This time they served a search warrant on hosting provider DreamHost that would require the company to turn over essentially all information on a website it hosts, www.disruptj20.org—a site that was dedicated to organizing and planning the protest.

=> ↺ Feds demand 1.3 million IP addresses of those who visited Trump protest site

• The Justice Department is seeking the 1.3 million IP addresses that visited a Trump resistance site. The search warrant is part of an investigation into Inauguration Day rioting, which has already resulted in the indictment of 200 people in the District of Columbia. DreamHost, the Web host of the disruptj20.org site that helped organize the January 20 protests, is challenging the warrant it was served as being an “unfocused search” and declared that it was a “clear abuse of government authority.”

• A hearing on the dispute is set for Friday in Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

=> ↺ DOJ Goes Way Overboard: Demands All Info On Visitors Of Anti-Trump Site

• Not all search warrants are bad. Indeed, most of them are perfectly legitimate, and meet the qualifications under the 4th Amendment that there is probable cause of a crime being committed, and the warrant is narrowly tailored to seek out evidence to support that. But… not always. As Ken “Popehat” White explains in a recent blog post, the Justice Department has somehow obtained the mother-of-all bad search warrants while trying to track down people who were involved in protests of Donald Trump’s inauguration back in January. The government has brought felony charges against a bunch of protestors from the inauguration, and now it appears the DOJ is going on a big fishing expedition.

=> ↺ EFF Urges Supreme Court to Protect Your Cell Phone Location Data from Over-Curious Cops

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the U.S. Supreme Court today to curb law enforcement’s expansive tracking of suspects’ cell phones, arguing that police must get a warrant before collecting the detailed location data that all phones generate as part of their routine functioning.

• The defendants in U.S. v. Carpenter were convicted after hundreds of days of location data collected from their wireless carriers associated them with a string of armed robberies. But investigators obtained those location records through a lower legal standard than needed for a warrant, relying on the “third-party doctrine”—an outdated legal standard that says if you voluntarily give certain information to entities like banks or the phone company, you have no expectation of privacy in the data.

=> ↺ Can open source help agencies manage big data?

• Today’s guests are Hortonworks Federal President Shaun Bierweiler and his colleague Henry Sowell, the company’s technical director for Public Sector. They are in the studio to give some listeners some insight when it comes to Hadoop and big data.

=> ↺ Big data + private health insurance = game over

• Once big data systems agglomerate enough data about you to predict whether you are likely to get sick or badly injured, insurers will be able to deny coverage (or charge so much for it that it amounts to the same thing) to anyone who is likely to get sick, forcing everyone who might ever need insurance into medical bankruptcy, and turning Medicaid into a giant “high-risk pool” that taxpayers foot the bill for.

=> ↺ Big Data Is Coming to Take Your Health Insurance

• All kinds of incidentally collected data — shopping history, public records, demographic data — can be repurposed for assessing people’s health. For example, LexisNexis offers a product called a “Socioeconomic Health Score” that seeks to predict costs using such information as education, criminal records and personal finances.

=> ↺ DEA Looking To Buy More Malware From Shady Exploit Dealers

• The DEA — like other federal agencies involved in surveillance — buys and deploys malware and exploits. However, it seems to do better than most at picking out the sketchiest malware purveyors to work with.

• When Italian exploit retailer Hacking Team found itself hacked, obtained emails showed the company liked to route around export bans through middlemen to bring the latest in surveillance malware to UN-blacklisted countries with horrendous human rights records. It also, apparently, sold its wares to the DEA — an agency in a country with only periodic episodes of horrendous human rights violations.

• Maybe there’s a shortage of exploit sellers, but it would be nice to see a US agency be a bit more selective about who it buys from, rather than jumping into the customer pool with Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Egypt. But the DEA has done it again. Emails obtained via FOIA by Motherboard show the DEA attempting to get in bed with another questionable malware purveyor.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Holocausts R Us

• We cannot, I think, begin to approach the history of the United States without thoroughly ingesting, at the molecular level, the impact of European settler colonialism over the last half millennium. Thus it is that the comparatively new volume, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’, The Indigenous People’s History of The United States, 2015, seems to be an essential antidote to the rote mythologies of this country (essentially regurgitated by Zinn with a populist twist) and which, at the high school level, might be effective (perhaps in conjunction with an introduction to ‘green’ consciousness) in developing a generation that begins to understand this land’s History Degree Zero (to paraphrase Barthes’ term). In other words, a history that does not accept as natural, the imposition by means of genocide, of European values on a continent peopled by highly varied groups who nevertheless shared an ethos that almost always ran counter to the materialistic, hierarchical, monotheistic characteristics of Western civilization, (just as Barthes refused to accept the French literary canon, infused, as he correctly saw it, with the values of ‘a triumphant middle class’).

• The capture of the Republican Party by the extreme right and the installation of a racist demagogue in the White House have inevitably raised the specter of Germany in the 1930’s. Timothy Snyder has made explicit connections between the founding of the Third Reich and the rise of Trump (On Tyranny, 2017). Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ to rid the world of Jews in a messianic holocaust dominates any consideration of the German leader. His morbidly twisted mind personified both capitalism and communism within the Jewish people. The fabrication of Judeobolshevism was aggregated with a more traditional anti-Semitism into a bizarre pseudo-scientific theory of race whereby the Aryan people must exterminate the weaker Jew in order to ensure their survival and ultimate global supremacy. Hitler was a uniquely malignant leader. Yet he remains a shadowy presence behind more recent, far right-wing, fascist politicians, and once again our genocide radar is alerted.

=> ↺ Hours After Trump Finally Denounced White Supremacists… A Racist Tweet

• Late Monday night, just hours after (finally) delivering his “too little, too late” condemnation of “racism…white supremacists…and hate groups”—which critics noted appeared dispassionate and forced—President Donald Trump re-tweeted a message from Jack Posobiec, a well-known right-wing racist and conspiracy theorist, who raised objections to the media’s focus on the rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday by an alleged neo-Nazi member who killed one person and injured dozens of others.

• According to the Los Angeles Times, “Posobiec is well-known in alt-right circles. He was a vocal believer that top Democrats were involved in a child sex trafficking ring at a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor, and that the Democratic National Committee was behind the death of former staffer Seth Rich.” NewsWeek reports that Posobiec is “currently helping organize multiple alt-right rallies similar to the one in Charlottesville in cities throughout the U.S. this coming weekend” and “has in the past defended white supremacist Richard Spencer.”

=> ↺ Fascism Here We Come: the Rise of the Reactionary Right and the Collapse of “The Left”

• The white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over this last weekend is an important moment in American politics, symbolizing the ascendance of the reactionary right and showcasing the dangers of its toxic assault on democracy, equality, and the rule of law. News outlets on early Sunday reported that one person was killed on August 12th after a car accelerated into a crowd of counter-protestors, while dozens more were injured. That intimidation, terror, and murder are tools of the reactionary right in their war on people of color and non-Christians is nothing new in history. Still, the most recent wave of right-wing hate is instructive, offering numerous lessons regarding the state of American politics.

=> ↺ Charlottesville Is An Urgent Call for Voting Rights

• Saturday night I arrived in Virginia as the conscience of the country and world turned toward the state. Earlier that day, hundreds of organized white supremacists gathered for a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in the mountainous Western part of the state, home to the University of Virginia.

=> ↺ Making America Hate Again

• But it’s too little, too late. Trump’s unwillingness to denounce hateful violence has been part of his political strategy from the start.

• Weeks after he began his campaign by alleging that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists, two brothers in Boston beat up and urinated on a 58-year-old homeless Mexican national, subsequently telling police “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.”

• Instead of condemning the brutality, Trump excused it by saying “people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again.”

=> ↺ Backed by Police Unions, Legislators Stand By Laws to Protect Drivers Who Kill Protesters

• In the aftermath of the murder of activist Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, state legislators who had previously pushed to shield drivers who killed protesters with a moving vehicle are largely standing by their various efforts, arguing that their legislation would not have applied in this weekend’s attack.

• Before the killing on Saturday, a swath of bills had been proposed around the country, largely in the South and primarily in response to Black Lives Matter and Dakota Access Pipeline related protests. The bills targeted leftist demonstrators who have increasingly shut down traffic by blocking roads and highways to bring attention to their cause.

=> ↺ The Difficulty of Sponsoring Yazidi Refugees

• Many Yazidi abroad are in hiding, or living in fear in the UNHCR camps. Since camps are located within Muslim majority countries outside of Iraq, the Yazidi are often treated by UN employees with the same anti-Yazidi prejudices that they have experienced in Iraq and Syria.

=> ↺ The Toxic Impact of Indonesia’s Abusive Blasphemy Law

• These are just two of the two dozen or so blasphemy prosecutions filed since President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo took office in October 2014, according to databases of the Setara Institute and the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network, two Jakarta-based nongovernmental organizations. At least 10 of those prosecutions have produced convictions that have resulted in the imprisonment of 15 people. There have been zero acquittals.

=> ↺ Indonesia Again Silences 1965 Massacre Victims

• But since then, there has been deafening silence from the government. The security forces’ unwillingness to allow public discussion of compensation suggests that elements within the government and the security forces want to protect perpetrators even at the expense of redress for the victims. Jokowi will need to step in again or the victims and their suffering will go unrecognized and uncompensated.

=> ↺ Atheists in Malaysia should be hunted down, minister says

• “The (Federal Constitution) does not mention atheists. It goes against the Constitution and human rights.

• “I suggest that we hunt them down vehemently and we ask for help to identify these groups,” he said in a press conference at Parliament today.

=> ↺ Malaysian atheist group under investigation over alleged Muslim apostate members

• Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki, the country’s deputy minister who oversees religious affairs, told reporters: “If it is proven that there are Muslims involved in atheist activities that could affect their faith, the state Islamic religious departments or Jawi could take action,” New Straits Times reported.

=> ↺ Gov’t probing viral claim Muslims joining KL Atheist Club

=> ↺ A look at Rwanda’s genocide helps explain why ordinary people kill their neighbors

• In reality, only about 20 percent of Hutu men, an estimated 200,000, seriously injured or killed at least one person during the genocidal outbreak, estimates Rwanda genocide researcher Omar McDoom of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

=> ↺ Atheists should be “hunted down vehemently” by authorities, says Malaysian minister

• A photo of the gathering by the Kuala Lumpur chapter of Atheist Republic, or “consulate”, has caused uproar from some in the Muslim community recently after it was highlighted by pro-Islamist blogs, leading to violent and death threats on social media.

=> ↺ Saudia Airlines refuses to fly passengers who expose arms or legs

=> ↺ Close loopholes that allow forced child marriage in the UK

=> ↺ NSPCC reports large rise in forced marriage counselling for children

• More help is being provided than ever before for children in Britain who fear being forced into marriages, with some potential victims as young as 13, the NSPCC has said.

=> ↺ [Reposted] Saudi Arabia is to execute 14 young men for protesting – where is Theresa May’s condemnation?

• There are 14 pro-democracy demonstrators who face execution after being caught up in protests against the royal family which turned violent. What’s even more disturbing is the fact that British police may have directly helped arrest them

=> ↺ Iran’s Killing Fields

• MacEoin continued, “The long term aim is to rid the country (Iran) of the Baha’is while inflicting as much pain on them as possible. Islam is intolerant of heretics and apostates, even if the group is not even a remote threat. Baha’is believe in world peace, universal brotherhood, tolerance, and the equality of the sexes. They are forbidden to resort to violence. They are even commanded as a religious principle to obey the government in whatever country they live in. There is something else that deeply upsets the clerical regime in Tehran, the Baha’is have their holiest shrine and international shrine in Haifa, Israel.”

=> ↺ Annual Report : Iran 2016/2017

• The authorities heavily suppressed the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly and religious belief, arresting and imprisoning peaceful critics and others after grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained common and widespread, and were committed with impunity. Floggings, amputations and other cruel punishments continued to be applied. Members of religious and ethnic minorities faced discrimination and persecution. Women and girls faced pervasive violence and discrimination. The authorities made extensive use of the death penalty, carrying out hundreds of executions, some in public. At least two juvenile offenders were executed.

=> ↺ FBI and DHS Warned of Growing Threat From White Supremacists Months Ago

• The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Foreign Policy.

• Even as President Donald Trump continues to resist calling out white supremacists for violence, federal law enforcement has made clear that it sees these types of domestic extremists as a severe threat. The report, dated May 10, says the FBI and DHS believe that members of the white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year.”

=> ↺ Surveillance Footage Shows Border Officers Forcing Teen to Drink Liquid Meth

• On July 29, ABC News published a surveillance video of two border officers asking a young person to drink a substance that was later revealed to be a solution containing methamphetamine, 100 times more potent than a usual dose. The teen later died, and the incident, which occurred during the evening of November 18, 2013, is now making headlines after nearly four years because of the footage.

=> ↺ These playing cards are so Singaporean, it’s got Amos Yee and Steven Lim as jokers

• “We picked them as ‘jokers’ not to condemn them in any way, but rather to open up a conversation.”

=> ↺ Come at me, motherfucker! A Crash Course Guide to Amos Yee

• “Lee Kuan Yew is dead. Finally! Why hasn’t anyone said, ‘Fuck yeah! The guy is dead?’” These are the words of sixteen-year-old Amos Yee; who at one point was the world’s youngest prisoner of conscience according to Amnesty International.

=> ↺ In the name of honour

• Qandeel Baloch was an anathema for a country like Pakistan. Coming from poverty, she rose to become independent and support herself and her family. She was an anathema because she did not care. She did not care what society thought of her and she did not care if they made fun of her. She was the bold and the beautiful. And one year ago, on July 15, 2016, she was murdered in the name of that tenuous and all important property of Pakistani men: honour.

=> ↺ Liberal Magazine Asks Why the Left Ignores ‘Sexism, Homophobia’ In Muslim Culture

• “I fear that the truth is Islam has become an untouchable shibboleth for some on the left,” Sullivan writes. “What they lacerate in other religions, they refuse to mention in Islam. Sexism, homophobia, the death penalty for apostasy … all of this is to be rationalized if the alternative is Islamophobia. Why, one wonders? Is it because Muslims are a small minority? But the same could be said for Jews.”

=> ↺ Ann Arbor Jihad: Muslim shot by SWAT: ‘Get on the ground and bow before Allah’

=> ↺ Court: New Jersey Residents Can’t Mention ’Islam’ or ’Muslim’ at Public Hearing on Mosque

=> ↺ Celine Dookhran: ‘Honour killing victim’ kidnapped and had throat cut before being stuffed in freezer, hears inquest

=> ↺ Sweden Turns the Blind Eye to Creeping Islamism, Refugees Flying Daesh Flags

• Hörby Municipality in Sweden has recently renounced an agreement with an asylum home for unaccompanied young people after there were reports that the staff were radicalizing young men. According to Merzek Botros, an Arab pastor from Stockholm, the incident in Hörby is far from the only one of its kind.

=> ↺ Denmark: Rapes Soared 196 PERCENT Since Liberal Government Took Power, Invited Refugees

=> ↺ Court: Residents Can’t Mention “Islam” or “Muslim” At Public Hearing on Mosque Construction; Thomas More Law Center Files Federal Lawsuit

• TMLC’s lawsuit alleges that Bernards Township’s settlement agreement constitutes a prior restraint on speech based on content, as well as, a violation of the Establishment Clause because it prefers Islam over other religions. The lawsuit asks the court to: declare that the settlement agreement is unconstitutional; and to enter a preliminary and permanent injunction against its enforcement.

=> ↺ Love kills as amorous terrorists throw caution to the wind

• Talha was smitten by the daughter of a superintending engineer in state PWD and made this amply clear to him. He asked the engineer to let his daughter, a cultured and highly-educated girl, be with him. The bewildered father did not know what hit him and packed off the girl to her grandparents’ place. A miffed Talha got Dukhtaran-e-Millat to issue a ‘fatwa’ against the girl saying that she wore too much make-up. When the girl still did not show up, Talha threatened her entire family with dire consequences.

=> ↺ Daesh Slavery Business: Over 1,700 Yazidis Bought From Terrorists’ Captivity

• Ali Husein al-Khansuri, a Yazidi activist from Iraq who is helping Iraq’s Yazidi minority search for loved ones who were enslaved by Daesh terrorists, told Sputnik that they have been able to buy back 1,700 Yazidis, mostly women and children, who have been held in captivity since 2014.

=> ↺ Europe’s Cities Absorb Sharia Law

• Two years later, Europe’s three most important cities — London, Paris and Berlin — are adopting the same sharia trend.

=> ↺ Atheists in Muslim world: Silent, resentful and growing in number

• “I wear a headscarf despite being an atheist,” said Ms. Ahmed, who studies biology at the school, about 115 miles south of Baghdad. “It is difficult not to wear it in southern Iraq. Few women take the risk not to cover their hair. They face harassment everywhere.”

=> ↺ U.S. Muslims Concerned About Their Place in Society, but Continue to Believe in the American Dream

• When asked whether targeting and killing civilians can be justified to further a political, social or religious cause, 84% of U.S. Muslims say such tactics can rarely (8%) or never (76%) be justified, while 12% say such violence can sometimes (7%) or often (5%) be justified.

=> ↺ Bondi synagogue ban over terrorism risk leaves Jewish community shocked and furious

• A local council has banned the construction of a synagogue in Bondi because it could be a terrorist target, in a shock move that religious leaders say has caved in to Islamic extremism and created a dangerous precedent.

=> ↺ Drawing a ‘major sin’ in Islam: Moeen Ali slammed on Twitter

• However, certain section of his fan base were not amused by this development, as they seem to believe that a devout Muslim should not draw pictures.

=> ↺ The Islamophobia Scam

• Islamophobia is classic political correctness. You don’t have to deal with the substance of arguments against Islamic extremism. All you have to do is label critics a cluster of “Islamophobes.” If this lie prevails, we become infinitely more vulnerable to terrorism and the negative impact of Islam because we are afraid to talk about them. As a manipulation, it has been highly effective.

=> ↺ If We Can’t Criticize Islam, We Can’t Reform It

• We know from history that the European Enlightenment did not happen overnight. It’s not as if Europe woke up one fine morning and delightfully jumped into the formation of a secular and pluralistic society. To construct this new world, Europe went through a dialectic process of reformation, characterized by destructive historical conflicts.

• A similar process, though at a more modest level, can be observed in various parts of the Muslim world. Unfortunately, though, it looks like this process will encounter a most stubborn resistance. This is not only a result of efforts from fundamentalist Muslims, but also on the part of Western intellectuals, regressive leftists, and the political far right.

=> ↺ Europe’s Muslims hate the West

• So, we blame ourselves in order to remain blameless. Safer to blame our own societies and socioeconomic conditions than to blame the religious and cultural concepts with which terrorists poison their own minds.

=> ↺ Indonesia denies claims of Papuan rights restrictions

• Vanuatu has repeatedly called for UN action on human rights violations by Indonesian security forces in Papua.

=> ↺ West Papua protest: Indonesian police kill one and wound others – reports

• Indonesian paramilitary police have shot and killed one person and wounded a number of others at a protest in a West Papuan village, according to human rights groups and local witnesses.

=> ↺ Preaching violence from the pulpit

• Left-of-center outlets, also known as mainstream media, apparently saw nothing to report.

=> ↺ 25 taxi drivers lose licences as part of Operation Sanctuary sex exploitation investigation

=> ↺ Eighteen people found guilty over Newcastle sex grooming network

• Four trials find 17 men and one woman guilty of nearly 100 offences including rape and human trafficking of vulnerable women and girls

=> ↺ More than 700 women and girls victims of sexual exploitation in North East as hunt for grooming gangs continues

• More than 700 women and girls have been identified as potential victims of sexual exploitation in the North East and authorities expect the figure to rise following the conviction of a high profile grooming gang.

=> ↺ Newcastle sex ring: People care more about being called racist than preventing child abuse, says Rotherham’s Labour MP

=> ↺ On abuse it’s time to call a spade a spade

=> ↺ Sex Slavery In Islamic India

• Women and children were special targets for enslavement throughout the medieval period, that is, during Muslim invasions and Muslim rule. Captive children of both sexes grew up as Muslims and served the sultans, nobles and men of means in various captives. Enslavement of young women was also due to many reasons; their being sex objects was the primary consideration and hence concentration on their captivity.

=> ↺ Rees-Mogg fan ‘warned by police’ for posting content that is critical of Islam

• The owner of a Facebook page praising the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has told their followers that they have been visited by two police officers who provided ‘advice’ that included a warning to stop posting content that is ‘critical of Islam.’

=> ↺ Man decapitates wife for not quitting job in Lahore

• He said the woman worked as a labourer in a factory in Raiwind area but her husband did not like her job and would ask her to quit.

=> ↺ Muslim Refugees Visit Concentration Camp, Cheer Hitler

=> ↺ Don’t forget the Yazidis: To avoid the next genocide, remember the last

• Why, then, has the world turned such a blind eye to their genocide? In large part it is because, numbering only 600,000, they rank as a minority in the genuine sense of the word. There are no Yazidi politicians in the West to press their case, no Yazidi columnists to beat the drum on their behalf.

=> ↺ How Should NATO React to the Threat from Sweden?

• Sweden is in a state of collapse. Dozens of areas are now under Islamist control, which leaves locals in the hands of violent sharia patrols. According to the Swedish police, thousands of Islamic State sympathizers are on the loose, endangering not only native Swedes, but also neighbouring countries such as Denmark, Norway, and Finland—the first two of them being NATO members.

• The Swedish state has shown no genuine determination to contain the problem.

=> ↺ Racist rapists handed lower sentences because their victims were WHITE

=> ↺ Imam charged over sermon calling for non-practicing Muslims to be ‘killed in their homes’

• He is accused of calling for the murder of non-praying Muslims during a sermon on October 21, 2016.

=> ↺ Singing anthem, recording video un-Islamic: Clerics

=> ↺ Birmingham Sikh TV channel accused of encouraging victims of grooming to take vigilante action

=> ↺ WhatsApp messages, pamphlets calling for boycott of Muslims fuel tension in Narkhed

=> ↺ Topless man arrested after scrawling, ‘Stop Muslim grooming gangs’ on his skin

=> ↺ The demographic threat to the West

• Because French law forbids census-takers asking religious questions, estimates of the number of Muslims in France varies, but Muslims may comprise as much as 10 percent of the population of 70 million. A third of those describe themselves in other surveys as “observing believers.” Germany as recently as 2015 was believed to count about 4.5 million Muslims, nearly 6 percent of the population of 83 million. That was before Chancellor Angela Merkel permitted a million Syrian and other refugees, nearly all Muslims, to enter in 2016.

=> ↺ Muslim woman awarded $85,000 after her hijab was forcibly removed by Long Beach police officer

• The city of Long Beach has agreed to pay $85,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a Muslim woman whose hijab was pulled off by a male officer while she was in police custody.

• The settlement, approved Tuesday, concludes the legal battle undertaken by Kirsty Powell, an African American Muslim. Her lawsuit, filed in 2016, prompted the Long Beach Police Department to reverse its policy barring inmates from wearing religious head coverings.

=> ↺ Americans, Irish, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Pakistanis – They All Have More Balls Than We Scots

• The fascist violence in Charlottesville was in defence of prominent public statues to those who fought to uphold slavery. History should not be destroyed, and there is a place for such statues in appropriate explained context in museums. But public celebration of advocates of slavery ought to end. People always throw off the monuments of their oppressors, and so they should. The statues should be removed from their prestigious positions.

• Hardly anybody remembers now that O’Connell Street in Dublin was Sackville Street. You will scour Ireland with little success for surviving statues of British Imperial rulers and commanders – there were once hundreds. I found that Burnes Road in Karachi is no more. Uzbekistan and Ukraine are no longer dotted with great statues of Lenin.

=> ↺ The Trump Administration Is Detaining Immigrant Kids for Gang Membership Without Evidence. So We Sued.

• Wearing a blue soccer jersey with “El Salvador” written on it. Doodling an area code from home on a school notebook. Law enforcement agencies have used both of these as “evidence” that a teenage immigrant high school student belongs to a dangerous gang. And both have triggered a process that results in the teenager’s detention in prison-like facilities far from his or her family and home.

• In the government’s latest effort to be tough on immigration, federal immigration agents are picking up teenagers in what appears to be a coordinated effort to detain anyone whom they suspect of gang affiliation — regardless of whether they have any real evidence to back that up.

=> ↺ There’s No Evidence I’m in a Gang — Because I’m Not. But I’ve Been Locked Up for Two Months for Gang Membership.

• I came to the U.S. to be safe from gangs. Now officials are accusing me of being in one.

• One Friday after school last June, I went to play soccer with friends in the park in Brentwood, New York, where I live. I love the soccer fields there. There are lights and grass, and it feels so much nicer and safer than the fields where I used to play. In El Salvador, where I’m originally from, a gun might go off or gang members might grab a player off the field and beat him up.

• Walking home with my friend, Juan* around 8 p.m., I felt good. We ran into a kid we knew from school, Andres,* and he joined us. I knew Andres’ face, and I would say, “Hey, what’s up?” when we ran into each other at school, but I didn’t know him well.

=> ↺ Misdemeanor Defendants Facing Jail Time Not Told They Have a Right to Counsel, Bar Association Finds

• The defendants were booked, photographed, fingerprinted and then led into Court 1A in the county courthouse in Nashville. There was no judge. Prosecutors handling the misdemeanor cases invited the accused who were interested in pleading guilty to step forward and finalized plea deals for suspended sentences and an array of fines. There were no defense lawyers, nor were any of the defendants advised they were entitled to one.

• Later that day in September 2016, a group of five defendants was called up by a local prosecutor and offered the previously arranged plea deals, some of which might have resulted in days behind bars. One defendant asked to see a judge. The prosecutor said that was not possible, and that her only choice at that moment was to plead guilty, or to plead not guilty and go to trial. The defendant could only speak to the judge, the prosecutor said, if she rejected the plea offer. Again, none of the defendants was told they had the right to see a lawyer before entering any plea.

=> ↺ White Supremacist Chaos In Charlottesville Is Just the Beginning

• Arriving in downtown Charlottesville about a half-hour before the scheduled noon start time for the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, it was clear that violence was inevitable. I rode past a throng of men with semiautomatic rifles slung across their backs, and a group of left-wing counterprotesters bearing sticks and clubs.

• I was dropped off at Justice Park, where groups of peace-promoting hippies and religious liberals congregate blocks from the rally site. At the perimeter, observers from the National Lawyers Guild, wearing their trademark green caps, stood ready to offer protesters advice on their rights, and to stand vigil as men with assault rifles stood guard. The men were revolutionaries of Redneck Revolt, a left-wing group that embraces armed resistance. Virginia is an open-carry state, so there was no stopping anyone from arriving in Charlottesville with a permitted gun strapped to their bodies.

• A counterprotester later told me that members of the pro-Trump group the Proud Boys had “menaced” the Redneck Revolt guards at the park’s perimeter. Proud Boys is a recently formed group whose fundamental aim appears to be to engage in physical conflict.

=> ↺ India at 70: bigotry rules

• As India marks 70 years of independence today (August 15), two events of the past week illustrate the predicament a country that often preens itself as the world’s largest democracy finds itself in.

• One was a vitriolic and graceless speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a farewell ceremony for Mohammad Hamid Ansari, who was stepping down after two terms as Vice-President. The other a prominent television anchor declaring that a panellist’s mention of the deaths of dozens of children in a hospital in Uttar Pradesh state was an attempt to divert attention from the real issue, which in her opinion was the rectitude of the state government’s order to Muslim schools to celebrate Independence Day with the recitation of a nationalist song entitled Vande Mataram (salute the motherland).

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Broadband ISP Cox Will Now Charge You $50 More To Avoid Usage Caps, Overage Fees

• We’ve noted repeatedly how large ISPs for years have happily abused the lack of competition in the broadband market by imposing arbitrary, unnecessary and confusing usage caps and overage fees. While ISPs had tried for a while to suggest these caps were “only fair,” or necessary due to congestion, repeated debunking of those excuses forced the ISPs a few years back to finally stop pretending there’s any good reason for these limits.

• These days, ISPs don’t even give coherent reasons for the limits, because they know caps are about one thing: abusing a lack of competition to raise rates and protect TV revenues from streaming video competition. More importantly, they know that thanks to this limited competition, there’s nothing you can do about it either way.

=> ↺ Hughes signs deal to launch 100Mbps satellite Internet service in 2021

• In March, Hughes Network Systems launched an upgrade of its satellite-based Internet service, HughesNet, that transformed it into the first residential satellite-based Internet service to meet the Federal Communications Commission’s definition of “broadband.” Now, the company is planning for its next major leap in bandwidth—a 100 Mbps-capable network based on a new satellite to be launched in 2021.

=> ↺ SDN and a life beyond the death of the internet

• For decades, enterprises have relied on the public internet for business-critical SaaS applications and data traffic. The reason why is pretty simple: it’s cost-efficient, it’s easy to use and it’s already there. Compare that to the logistical, financial and implementation challenges of installing an alternative private network, and it’s clear why enterprises have been pretty content with the internet for their entire digital lives.

• But, it’s 2017. And, if there’s one thing clear about the public internet today, it’s that it no longer cuts it. Rampant DDoS attacks and other cyber threats posed by hackers, rogue employees and nation-states have not just revealed the security, reliability and transparency cracks in the public internet — they’ve blown them wide open.

• For enterprises concerned about secure and consistent network performance, the public internet cannot be the default solution anymore. Enterprises need to look beyond the public internet to their own private WANs — and specifically, to SDN.

=> ↺ New FCC Broadband ‘Advisory Panel’ Stocked With Telecom Consultants, Allies & Cronies

• On the one hand, FCC boss Ajit Pai proclaims to be a man dedicated to hard data, transparency, and closing the digital divide. But we’ve repeatedly highlighted how his public rhetoric is miles from his actual policies, which by and large focus on making life easier than ever for the nation’s entrenched, uncompetitive broadband mono/duopolies. From gutting broadband privacy and net neutrality protections, to protecting the cable industry’s monopoly over the cable box, Pai’s actions consistently reveal anti-competitive intent, while his words gracefully try to imply another, artificial artifice.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Danish University And Industry Work Together On Open Science Platform Whose Results Will All Be Patent-Free

• Here on Techdirt, we write a lot about patents. Mostly, it’s about their huge downsides — the stupid patents that should never have been awarded, or the parasitic patent trolls that feed off companies doing innovative work. The obvious solution is to get rid of patents, but the idea is always met with howls of derision, as if the entire system of today’s research and development would collapse, and a new dark age would be upon us. It’s hard to refute that claim with evidence to the contrary because most people — other than a few brave souls like Elon Musk — are reluctant to find out what happens if they don’t cling to patents.

Copyrights

=> ↺ How The DMCA’s Digital Locks Provision Allowed A Company To Delete A URL From Adblock Lists

• Starting late last week, there’s been a bit of a fuss in various circles about a DMCA notice being used to remove a domain from one of the most prominent adblocking server lists, known as Easylist. AdGuard had a big blog post about it, as did TorrentFreak and Gizmodo. But, the whole situation is somewhat confusing, and requires understanding a variety of different things, from how adblocking works, to how certain paywalls work and, most importantly, how two separate parts of the DMCA — the notice and takedown portions of DMCA 512 intersect with the anti-circumvention/”digital locks” provisions of DMCA 1201.

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