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● 08.25.17

● Links 25/8/2017: GIMP 2.9.6 Released, SUSE Cushions Btrfs

Posted in News Roundup at 12:25 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ 5 Reasons Linux Is Now a Great Option for Anyone

• With the rise of cloud services, more of us are now encountering Linux at work. People know it’s great for developers and does a good job of keeping the internet up and running — but why would anyone want to use Linux at home?

• At best, mentioning you run Linux might make people think you’re a hacker. More than likely, they might think you’re a bit weird. At least that’s how it is in the much of the U.S., where Windows is king and macOS is the only other option most people know exist.

=> ↺ Half a dozen clever Linux command line tricks

• Working on the Linux command can be a lot of fun, but it can be even more fun when you use commands that take less work on your part or display information in interesting and useful ways. In today’s post, we’re going to look at half a dozen commands that might make your time on the command line more profitable.

Desktop

=> ↺ Meet the Laptops & Desktop PCs Being Sold with Ubuntu Budgie

• UK-based computer outfit Nimbusoft is gearing up to sell two laptops and an all-in-one desktop PC pre-loaded with the aforementioned nimble, GNOME-based Ubuntu spin.

• Product pages for these “Ubuntu Budgie Edition” devices are live over on the Nimbusoft website, although neither the company or the Ubuntu Budgie project itself has made an announcement about the partnership.

=> ↺ Germans force Microsoft to scrap future pushy Windows 10 upgrades

• Microsoft sparked fury when it aggressively pushed its Windows 10 operating system onto people’s PCs – from unexpected downloads to surprise installations.

• Now a consumer rights group has forced Redmond to promise it will never do it again, in Germany at least.

• In 2015, Microsoft offered existing Windows 7 and 8 users a free upgrade to its new cloud-friendly OS, and rapidly become increasingly ambitious about getting it onto machines. After bundling the upgrade alongside its monthly security patches and resorting to tricky tactics, loads of users found they were downloading gigabytes of unwanted Redmond code.

Server

=> ↺ When Not to Use Docker: Understanding the Limitations of Containers

• Docker is a great tool. But Docker containers are not a cure-all. If you really want to understand how Docker is impacting the channel, you have to understand its limitations.

• Docker containers have become massively popular over the past several years because they start faster, scale more easily and consume fewer resources than virtual machines.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Ubuntu 17.10 Shifts To Linux 4.12, Linux 4.13 Still In Testing

• The Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark has finally moved past the Linux 4.11 kernel and now has a 4.12-based kernel in its main archive.

=> ↺ Rethinking the D-Bus Message Bus

• Later this year, on November 21, 2017, D-Bus will see its 15th birthday. An impressive age, only shy of the KDE and GNOME projects, whose collaboration inspired the creation of this independent IPC system. While still relied upon by the most recent KDE and GNOME releases, D-Bus is not free of criticism. Despite its age and mighty advocates, it never gained traction outside of its origins. On the contrary, it has long been criticized as bloated, over-engineered, and orphaned. Though, when looking into those claims, you’re often left with unsubstantiated ranting about the environment D-Bus is used in. If you rather want a glimpse into the deeper issues, the best place to look is the D-Bus bug-tracker, including the assessments of the D-Bus developers themselves. The bugs range from uncontrolled memory usage, over silent dropping of messages, to dead-locks by design, unsolved for up to 7 years. Looking closer, most of them simply cannot be solved without breaking guarantees long given by dbus-daemon(1), the reference implementation. Hence, workarounds have been put in place to keep them under control.

=> ↺ D-Bus Broker Announced As A New, High Performance Message Bus

• D-Bus Broker is an implementation of the D-Bus message bus that’s compliant with its specification while aiming for better performance and reliability. This D-Bus message bus is written against modern Linux kernel features and is designed exclusively for Linux systems.

=> ↺ Four new stable kernels

• Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 4.12.9, 4.9.45, 4.4.84, and 3.18.67 stable kernels. As usual, they contain fixes throughout the tree and users should upgrade.

=> ↺ Linux 4.12.9

=> ↺ Linux 4.9.45

=> ↺ Linux 4.4.84

=> ↺ Linux 3.18.67

=> ↺ Freedreno MSM Driver Updates Submitted For Linux 4.14

• Adding to the DRM changes for Linux 4.14 is a late pull request for adding the Freedreno MSM DRM driver changes for Qualcomm hardware.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ VK_KHX_multiview Patches For RADV Radeon Vulkan Driver

=> ↺ Radeon Vega Firmware Binaries Added To Linux Firmware Git

• It’s now a little bit easier getting the Radeon Vega graphics cards working under Linux with the open-source driver stack.

=> ↺ Intel OpenGL/Vulkan Developers Join #intel-3d

• For those having issues with the “i965″ OpenGL or “ANV” Vulkan drivers within Mesa, Intel open-source developers have now setup the #intel-3d IRC for discussions around these Intel Mesa 3D drivers.

=> ↺ Vulkan Debug Report Extension For Intel’s ANV Driver

=> ↺ 16-bit Support Being Worked On For Intel ANV, Gallium3D TGSI

=> ↺ Mesa DRM 2.4.83 Library Released

• Mesa’s DRM library, libdrm, that sits between the Linux kernel DRM and Mesa among other possible user-space components, is out with a new release today.

Benchmarks

=> ↺ A Look At The Xeon Gold 6138 + Tyan GT24E-B7106 1U Linux Server Performance

• Last week I began testing the Tyan GT24E-B7106, a 1U barebones server designed for Intel’s new Xeon Scalable processors. I am still carrying out many benchmarks of the Tyan GT24E-B7106 paired with two of the Xeon Gold 6138 CPUs, but for those curious about the Linux performance potential of this server when slotting in 96GB of DDR4-2666 RDIMMs and these two CPUs that yield a combined total of 40 cores / 80 threads, here are some initial benchmarks.

Applications

=> ↺ GIMP 2.9.6 Released

• After more than a year of hard work we are excited to release GIMP 2.9.6 featuring many improvements, some new features, translation updates for 23 languages, and 204 bug fixes.

• As usual, for a complete list of changes please see NEWS. Here we’d like to focus on the most important changes.

=> ↺ GIMP 2.9.6 Released With GEGL Multi-Threading & Better HiDPI Support

• We are one step closer to the long-awaited GIMP 2.10 update with today seeing the newest development release, GIMP 2.9.6.

• With GIMP 2.9.6 being the first official development release in more than one year, it’s quite feature heavy. First up, GIMP 2.9.6 is now finally multi-threaded for modern processors! The GEGL implementation now handles multi-threading! They do expect some bug reports to come in, but as a workaround, via the preferences area GIMP can be limited to a defined number of threads. OpenCL support also remains available.

=> ↺ GIMP 2.9.6 Released with Experimental Multi-Threading Support

• A new development release of graphics editor The GIMP is available to download — the first in over a year — and boy is it packing some big changes.

=> ↺ Taking over siphashc for Python

• Since some time we’re using siphash algorithm to speed up looking up strings in Weblate. Even though it is used by Python internally, it’s not exposed in the standard library so several third party modules appeared in the PyPI. Out of all these siphashc or rather it’s Python 3 fork siphashc3 seemed to perform best, so I’ve started to use that.

=> ↺ LXD 2.17 has been released

=> ↺ Double Commander – An Excellent Dual Pane File Manager for Linux

• If you have been following our reviews for up to 4 months then you must have come across fman, a present day file manager for power users. It is feature-rich with native support for dual-pane display and a plethora of keyboard shortcuts, among other features.

• Today, I bring you another relatively powerful file manager that is arguably as feature-rich and powerful. It’s called Double Commander.

=> ↺ Take a Break – Force Yourself To Take Breaks Away From Your Computer

• Take a Break is a petite application you can use to sort of force yourself to take breaks away from your computer after a configurable work time.

• It works by dividing time into 2 sections: up-time and break-time. Up-time is when your system isn’t active and when that time is up the computer switches to break time during which the screen takes on a handful of display options including screen upside-down, dimmed, and screen saver.

• I have written on Gnome Pomodoro and Go For It which are both nice productivity timer apps, but neither of them forces you to actually go away by locking you out of your workspace. Maybe, Take a Break is what you have been looking for.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How To Downgrade All Packages To A Specific Date In Arch Linux

=> ↺ How log rotation works with logrotate

=> ↺ How to restrict users access on a Linux machine

=> ↺ Essential controls to tame Exim4

=> ↺ How to install Stress on Linux For generating work load

=> ↺ Children multiplication tables practice test with Bash script on Linux

=> ↺ Jmol: Viewing Molecules with Java

=> ↺ Sander van Vugt’s Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) Video Course

=> ↺ Splitting and Re-Assembling Files in Linux

=> ↺ How To Speed Up Compilation Process When Installing Packages From AUR

=> ↺ ArchI0 – Arch Linux Applications Post Installation Script

=> ↺ Difference between elastic IP and public IP

=> ↺ Using nVidia with SELinux

=> ↺ How to check if your touch screen is really sending touch events

=> ↺ How to Install ADB on Windows, macOS, and Linux

=> ↺ How to prevent root login on your Linux servers

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Release 2.15

• The Wine Staging release 2.15 is now available.

=> ↺ Wine Staging 2.15 released with more Direct3D 11 improvements

• The latest Wine Staging build 2.15 is now available and it brings in some more Direct3D 11 improvements.

• Usual reminder: Wine Staging is the testing area for features and patches to eventually make their way into the main Wine development builds and later stable releases.

=> ↺ Wine-Staging 2.15 Adds More Direct3D 11 Patches, Other Improvements

• Building off last weekend’s Wine 2.15 development release is now a re-based Wine-Staging version that also includes some new testing/experimental patches.

Games

=> ↺ Fun to Play Open Source Turn-Based Strategy Games

• If you adore hectic racing games, death-defying first person shooters, entertaining arcade classics, or nervy tower defense games, this article might not up your street. Here we’re covering turn-based strategy games that require intelligence, and the ability to come up with an innovative plan that will leave the competition mesmerized. As the title indicates, we are covering a genre where players take turns when playing, strategically seeking to outsmart the enemy.

• Many of the biggest computer games concentrate on explosion-filled genres. But there is a place for high quality turn-based strategy games. It’s a neglected genre in the mainstream, yet contains many marvelous titles. The genre might conjure thoughts of board games with dice and individualized pieces. But, now, they can use the latest technology to make more realistic and immersive experiences.

=> ↺ The Enduring Legacy of Zork

• During its 1980s heyday, commercial versions of Zork released for personal computers sold more than 800,000 copies. Today, unofficial versions of the game can be played online, on smartphones, and on Amazon Echo devices, and Zork is inspiring young technologists well beyond the gaming field.

=> ↺ Voxel Turf, a voxel sandbox that has elements of GTA, base building and so much more

=> ↺ Shotgun Farmers, the FPS where you grow your weapons has a decent update with bots

=> ↺ The ARK: Survival Evolved launch trailer is here, more tests done, no Vulkan support soon

=> ↺ The Total War: WARHAMMER Norsca Race Pack and Foundation Update now support Linux

• Feral Interactive have now pushed out the Foundation Update and the Norsca Race Pack for Linux getting our version of The Total War: WARHAMMER [Steam, Feral Store] up to scratch.

=> ↺ Crusader Kings II – Jade Dragon expansion announced, introducing China as an off-map influence

=> ↺ Natural Selection 2 updated with an improved spectator system, new tutorial and 64bit is near

=> ↺ The Civilization VI “Summer Update” for Linux will not feature cross-platform multiplayer

• Sad news for those waiting on it, as Aspyr Media have again delayed cross-platform multiplayer for the Linux version of Civilization VI [Steam].

=> ↺ Looks like a Linux version of Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation with Vulkan is still on the table

=> ↺ Some early thoughts on Helium Rain, the single-player space simulation

• Few games genuinely make me feel in awe, but even this early on Helium Rain [Steam, Official Site] has made a lasting impression on me.

=> ↺ Tyranny – Bastard’s Wound expansion trailer released along with a release date

• Ready for more Tyranny [Official Site]? Well the Tyranny – Bastard’s Wound expansion releases on September 7th and we have the trailer for you.

=> ↺ Bundle Stars offer $140 worth of games for just $3.49 in its Indie Legends 6 bundle

• Bundle Stars has once again churned out some great discounts, with the launch of its Indie Legends 6 bundle offering. This deal trades nine indie games – including Goat Simulator – all worth $139.87, for just $3.49. These games have a combined average user rating of 87%.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GSOC 2017 Keysign wrap up

• The transfer of the keys on GNOME Keysign was limited to the LAN only. This limitation can be a problem when e.g. one user does not have access to a WIFI/Ethernet connection or when the users are connected to an isolated network (like a guest WIFI or an University Intranet).

=> ↺ GUADEC & BuildStream

• After a much needed 2 week vacation following GUADEC, finally I’m getting around to writing up a GUADEC post.

=> ↺ Code Search for GNOME Builder : Final report

• This is the final report for my GSOC Project Code Search for GNOME Builder. First I want to thank to Christian Hergert for helping me in this project. I successfully achieved 2 objectives in this project, fuzzy search of symbols in the project and improving Go to Definition in GNOME Builder. Here is the final code GitHub of this project which will be merged.

=> ↺ Meet the Saner, Streamlined GNOME Settings App [Video]

• As you may be aware, the GNOME Control Center is getting some long overdue love and attention in GNOME 3.26. The macOS inspired icon grid used since the early days of GNOME 3 gives way to a cleaner, saner side-bar based layout, punctuated with some sleek new symbolic icons.

=> ↺ GNOME Control Center Switches To Its New Settings Layout

• Georges Stavracas has announced that for GNOME 3.25.91 they have finished up work on their new GNOME Settings user-interface, a.k.a. the redesign to the GNOME Control Center.

• The new settings layout is now used by default, now that they finished up the new GNOME Network panel for this settings area. With the new UI they are rebranding GNOME Control Center as GNOME Settings.

=> ↺ Introducing Settings (or, the new Control Center)

• if you’re following the GNOME development closely, you’re now more than aware of this movement of reworking GNOME Control Center. It was a remarkably colossal work, specially because we used a bottom-up approach: fix the panels, then switch to the new shell.

Distributions

Screenshots/Screencasts

=> ↺ What’s new in Solus 3 Budgie

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ SUSE Now Offers Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications on the Google Cloud

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is now available as the operating system for SAP solutions on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), allowing enterprise customers to become more agile and reduce operating costs by only paying for what they use

=> ↺ Butter bei die Fische!

• If Brazil, one of the world biggest producers of beef, would announce to stop producing fish: would you wonder, whether Peru, one of the world biggest producers of fish, would stop producing fish?

• You probably wouldn’t.

• If one of the rather small contributors to the btrfs filesystem announced to not support btrfs for production systems: should you wonder, whether SUSE, strongest contributor to btrfs today, would stop investing into btrfs?

=> ↺ SUSE pledges endless love for btrfs, says Red Hat’s dumping irrelevant

• SUSE has decided to let the world it has no plans to step away from the btrfs filesystem and plans to make it even better.

• The company’s public display of affection comes after Red Hat decided not to fully support the filesystem in its own Linux.

• Losing a place in one of the big three Linux distros isn’t a good look for any package even if, as was the case with this decision, Red Hat was never a big contributor or fan of btrfs.

=> ↺ SUSE Remains Committed To The Btrfs File-System

• While Red Hat is backing away from Btrfs support in favor of their next-gen Stratis project and mature Linux file-systems like EXT4 and XFS, SUSE is reaffirming their support for Btrfs.

• SUSE was the first to significantly back Btrfs by making it the default file-system in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12. While other major distributions haven’t been following in that same direction and Red Hat recently deprecating their Btrfs support, SUSE has made it clear they will continue investing in Btrfs.

=> ↺ In riposte to Red Hat, SUSE affirms support for Btrfs

• Germany-based SUSE Linux has reacted to Red Hat’s recent announcement that it would be deprecating the Btrfs filesystem by affirming that it would continue to be the default option for its enterprise Linux distribution.

=> ↺ Introducing Kubic: a community-driven container-as-a-service platform

• MicroOS is SUSE’s modern and slightly different take on cluster computing for containers and microservices. This is what you ought to know about it.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat Helps Intermountain Healthcare Digitally Transform with Modernized Infrastructure and IT Automation

=> ↺ Red Hat & Microsoft on a mission to simplify container adoption for enterprises

=> ↺ Red Hat Continues Container Development Efforts with Microsoft

=> ↺ Support for Windows Server Containers on Red Hat Coming Next Year

=> ↺ Red Hat Says Goodbye to Btrfs — Is Stratis the Future?

• It wasn’t long ago that Red Hat was revering Btrfs and praising it as not only a viable storage solution, but an excellent one. Today, Btrfs is thought to pair very well with GlusterFS (a form of networked redundant storage) for data center use, and still an amazing solution for many other applications. Yet, Red Hat has bid adieu with the recent decision to deprecate Btrfs as a storage solution moving forward.

Finance

=> ↺ Needle Action Activity Spotted in Red Hat Inc (RHT)

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Downgraded to “Hold” at Zacks Investment Research

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Stock Traded 6.4% Above Its 50 Day Moving Average

=> ↺ Red Hat Helps Intermountain Healthcare Digitally Transform with Modernized Infrastructure and IT Automation

=> ↺ October 6th Options Now Available For Red Hat (RHT)

Fedora

=> ↺ Flock interviews: Fedora Security Lab

=> ↺ Flock interviews: Fedora G11N – What’s going on?

=> ↺ Flock interviews: The Future of Fedmsg?

=> ↺ Flock interviews: State of the Fedora Server

=> ↺ Flock interviews: Fedora Workstation User’s Guide

=> ↺ Flock interviews: What does RedHat want?

=> ↺ Flock interviews: Fedora on Windows Subsystem for Linux

=> ↺ Flock interviews: User Feedback on Modularity

=> ↺ Flock interviews: Build Your Own Fedorator

• As you probably know, there is annual convention called Flock. This year’s is happening in Cape Cod, Hyannis, MA and will begin the morning of Tuesday, August 29. Sessions will continue each day until midday on Friday, September 1.

• I have asked all of the session leaders from Flock some questions.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ SnapRoute Integrates its FlexSwitch with Canonical’s Ubuntu

• SnapRoute and Canonical joined forces to create an integrated software stack for white-box switch deployments. They’re combining SnapRoute’s FlexSwitch and Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system for cloud environments.

• The FlexSwitch+Ubuntu stack is certified on multiple white-box switches including the Facebook Wedge 100, according to the partners.

=> ↺ Canonical announces further enterprise Kubernetes support options

• Canonical continues to push forward with its Kubernetes container DevOps management plans. In its latest move, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company announced two consulting packages for enterprise Kubernetes deployments. In addition, it’s offering expanded enterprise support with partners. This will include Galactic Fog’s serverless infrastructure, Rancher’s container management workflow, and Weaveworks’ Weave Cloud.

• This comes as Canonical prepares for an initial public offering (IPO). These moves are both to gain new cloud and container customers and to show that Canonical is laser-focused on the enterprise market. Earlier, Canonical had tried, and failed, to dominate the Linux desktop and become a smartphone leader.

=> ↺ New Features: Ubuntu 17.10 Will Ship With Indicator Applets And New Ubuntu Dock

• Ubuntu Desktop team is busy making the final transition to GNOME Shell and polishing the end user experience. To bring the best of both worlds, the team has added a new Ubuntu Dock and support for Indicator Applets. Ubuntu 17.10 will also come with the trash shortcut on the desktop. Ubuntu 17.10, codenamed Artful Aardvark, will finally arrive on October 19, 2017.

=> ↺ This Linux tool could improve the security of IoT devices

• Snappy, a software deployment and management system designed by Canonical for the Ubuntu operating system, could be a shortcut to building trusted IoT applications.

=> ↺ No strategic change for Canonical, says Mark Shuttleworth

• Mark Shuttleworth doesn’t intend to make any “significant change” to Canonical’s executive direction and strategy now that he has resumed his position as CEO.

• The founder of Canonical, behind the open source operating system Ubuntu, retook his former post as head of the company in July, replacing the long-serving Jane Silber, who took over for him in 2010 when he transitioned to a more product-focused role.

• “She had a good stint, which was extended several times, and so now it’s my turn back at the helm,” Shuttleworth told IT Pro in an interview last week. However, he made it clear that he was not planning on making any major changes to the company’s business model.

• “She and I have worked closely throughout her tenure,” he said. “It doesn’t really represent a very significant change in executive direction, because she and I were always pretty closely aligned on how we wanted things to work.”

=> ↺ Ubuntu System Cleaner ‘Stacer’ Has Binned Electron

• The popular utility, which is best described as a cross between CCleaner for Ubuntu and a regular system monitor, has been rewritten in C++ for its latest release.

• Yup, the Ubuntu cleaner app has binned Electron — news that will please many of you, I’m sure!

• The rewrite also means the app now uses fewer resources when running, and is, overall, more responsive too.

=> ↺ New Features: Ubuntu 17.10 Will Ship With Indicator Applets And New Ubuntu Dock

• Ubuntu Desktop team is busy making the final transition to GNOME Shell and polishing the end user experience. To bring the best of both worlds, the team has added a new Ubuntu Dock and support for Indicator Applets. Ubuntu 17.10 will also come with the trash shortcut on the desktop. Ubuntu 17.10, codenamed Artful Aardvark, will finally arrive on October 19, 2017.

=> ↺ Materialistic Gorgeous Cabbage – Ubuntu Podcast

=> ↺ Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes: Development Summary- August 24

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Zorin OS 12.1 Lite, the Xfce one

• Zorin OS 12.1 Lite is the first distribution from the Zorin team featuring Xfce desktop environment. Maybe that’s the reason why I was not too convinced with its stability.

• Apart from the issue with Parole player that I mentioned above, I also received a black screen during my Live run of this operating system. The system restored after few seconds, but I was forced to enter the username (guess it: zorin without password), and all the open applications were closed.

=> ↺ Plasma 5.10.5 and Frameworks 5.37 updates now in backports PPA for Zesty 17.04

• The final 5.10.5 bugfix update of the Plasma 5.10 series is now available for users of Kubuntu Zesty Zapus 17.04 to install via our backports PPA.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Touch-panel PCs run Raspbian on Raspberry Pi CM3

• Comfile has launched two IP65 protected, resistive touch panel PCs with 7- and 10.2-inch 800 x 480 displays, built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3.

• In February, Saelig Co. announced distribution of Janz Tec’s Raspberry Pi 3-based emPC-A/RPI3 industrial controller. Now, Saelig has launched North American distribution of Korea-based Comfile’s ComfilePi line of touch panel computers built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 (CM3) computer-on-module version of the Raspberry Pi 3.

=> ↺ Rugged little embedded PC builds on Apollo Lake

• Portwell’s “WEBS-21D0” features a quad-core Atom E3900 SoC, -20 to 60°C support, M.2 Type E expansion, and SATA and mSATA storage.

=> ↺ Skylake-U Mini-ITX features mini-PCIe and PCIe x4

• Habey’s Linux-ready “MITX-6960” Mini-ITX board features Intel’s 7th Gen U-series CPUs with 16GB DDR4, triple displays, dual SATA, mini-PCIe, and PCI x4.

=> ↺ Adlink gear to showcase VMWare’s Liota based IoT framework

• Adlink will offer the new VMware Pulse IoT Center service and Linux-friendly Liota (Little IoT Agent) to Adlink customers as pre-integrated solutions.

• VMWare, which is primarily known as a virtualization software vendor, stepped into the IoT market last year by announcing a vendor-neutral, open source Liota (Little IoT Agent) SDK for building secure IoT gateway data and control orchestration applications. Recently, VMWare followed up with a VMware Pulse IoT Center IoT framework built around Liota, and it has now announced its first major hardware partner for the technology. Adlink will support the VMware Pulse IoT Center via pre-integrated solutions bundled with unnamed Adlink hardware.

=> ↺ ARM Linux industrial computer gets EtherCat.

• Inside the box are a 1GHz ARM processor running Linux , 1Gbyte of ram, a 4Gbyte eMMC memory and up to 128Gbyte of flash via a Micro SD Card.

• The enclosure measures 132 x 86 x 35mm plus plugs, and there is a DIN rail mount option.

• EtherCat is real-time industrial Ethernet originally developed by Beckhoff Automation, with the main development focus, according to Harting, on short cycle times – not greater than 100µs, low jitter – not greater than 1µs – for accurate synchronisation and low hardware costs.

=> ↺ Linux-based security phone to ship with source code

• Purism is crowdfunding a security minded “Librem 5” smartphone that runs Linux on an i.MX6 or i.MX8, and offers a 5-inch screen and privacy protections.

• After the death of Firefox OS, the discontinuation of the Ubuntu Phone, and Samsung’s painfully slow rollout of its Tizen phones, the dream of establishing alternative Linux phone platforms not called Android appeared to be heading for the dustbin of history. Lately, however, several new projects have emerged such as the Raspberry Pi Zero based ZeroPhone and Halium OS project.

=> ↺ You can help Purism build the secure open source Linux-based ‘Librem 5′ smartphone

=> ↺ A GNU/Linux Smartphone Running GNOME & HTML5 Web Apps? Priced At $599, Ships In 2019 If The Stars Align

=> ↺ Purism Unveils Plans to Build Librem 5, the World’s First Encrypted, Open Smartphone Ecosystem Giving Users Complete Device Control

=> ↺ This Linux-powered phone wants to give you back your privacy

=> ↺ Purism will try its hand at security-focused smartphones

=> ↺ Purism plans to build a GNU/Linux smartphone that will sell for $599

=> ↺ Purism is Crowdfunding an Encrypted Linux Phone

Tizen

=> ↺ Learn how to completely setup your Tizen Samsung Smart TV

• Anyone who loves quality products will always dream of owning a Samsung Smart TV. You finally have your new TV and you are ready to get it setup so you can show it off to all your friends, but you will need to properly connect the cables first. Follow along with the videos below to learn everything you need to know about setting up your new Samsung Smart TV. Here you will find videos of how to identify the One Connect and power cables, insert them into the right ports on the back of your TV, and the right ports on the One Connect box.

=> ↺ Samsung Gear Sport will be first wearable device to run latest Tizen 3.0 OS

=> ↺ Tizen Store expands with the addition of Creative Frame Editor & Creative Photo Frame

=> ↺ Samsung to expand Bixby, voice recognition features to more smart home appliances by 2020

=> ↺ Find the best of Tizen mobile apps and games with the 9 Apps Grid

Android

=> ↺ Hands-on with the Galaxy Note8: Haven’t we seen this before?

• That’s the overwhelming feeling I got after a test drive with the Galaxy Note8. Samsung’s earlier flagship for 2017, the Galaxy S8—specifically the Galaxy S8+—is so close to the Note8 I’m not sure why anyone would wait the five months of lag time between the two devices.

=> ↺ Q2 Smartphone Market Top 10 Numbers

• There you go, no big changes but note, the ‘other OS’ combined category is mathematically at 0.53% so we are JUST about to round ‘other’ to zero, quite possibly in Q3 or latest by Q4. It is a two-horse race haha (which is no race, Android won this long ago).

=> ↺ Android O is now officially Android Oreo

=> ↺ Meet Android Oreo’s all-new emoji

=> ↺ Yu Yureka Black Starts Receiving Android 7.1.1 Nougat Update

=> ↺ What do macOS and Android have in common? Both are booming malware markets

=> ↺ Pixel 2 launching on October 5 with Snapdragon 836: Evan Blass

=> ↺ Android on Chromebook Edges From Fantasy Into Reality

=> ↺ Android 8.0 Oreo: All of the smaller changes and features you might have missed

=> ↺ Oreo has a game-changing Android feature, but you won’t even realize it’s there

=> ↺ Android 8.0 Oreo Brings ‘Rescue Party’ Feature That Helps Rectify Bootloop Issues

=> ↺ 11 Things You Can Do in Android Oreo That You Couldn’t Before

=> ↺ This Android Oreo Feature Could Fix a Huge Google Problem

=> ↺ Watch Live: Samsung Launches Galaxy Note 8 Android Phone

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Open source professionals are more in demand than ever

• So, you want a technology job, do you? Then you should work on your open-source skills because that’s where the jobs are. According to Dice, the leading technology job site, and The Linux Foundation, opportunities for open-source professionals are abound, as companies strive to improve efficiency and cut time to market.

=> ↺ 2017 Open Source Jobs Report Available For Download

=> ↺ 2017 Jobs Report Highlights Demand for Open Source Skills

• Dice® and The Linux Foundation have once again partnered to produce the annual Open Source Jobs Report, focusing on all aspects of open source software.

=> ↺ The 2017 Open Source Jobs Report: Employers Prioritize Hiring Open Source Professionals with Latest Skills

=> ↺ Open source and proprietary software solutions: the key for an analytic project

• In the world of data analysis it may be no coincidence that open source tools like the ‘R’ statistical computing language have blossomed as analytics and big data have matured together.

• Hadoop, Python… There seems to be a special kind of magic between the curious minds of data analysts (with a small ‘a’ – as they may be ‘line of business’ users that don’t have a degree in statistics or a qualification in coding) and with new ways of exploring the world.

• Open source software has proven itself to be a very useful way of rapidly finding quality insights out about the world when out to the challenging task of finding insights from the enormous volumes of data out there. Big data analytics provides an opportunity for open source data quality tools to deliver new insights.

=> ↺ Telstra launches open source powered security operations centre

• Telstra has formally launched the first of what is intended to be a string of Security Operations Centres (SOCs) that will deliver services to its enterprise and government customers.

• Telstra CEO Andrew Penn and the minister assisting the prime minister for cyber security, Dan Tehan, today officially opened the Sydney SOC.

=> ↺ Telstra launches Sydney cybersecurity centre

=> ↺ Organizations are desperate for open-source technology skills

• Open-source technology skills are becoming highly sought after as organizations fight among themselves to attract the talent they need to take advantage of the burgeoning trend.

• That’s according to the Linux Foundation’s new 2017 Open Source Jobs Survey and Report, which found that companies are increasingly looking for full-time hires to boost efficiency and reduce time to market.

=> ↺ This Man Wants To Open Source Your Car

• So Hotz scrapped it and, last November, gave his technology away for free, releasing an open- source, self-driving platform called Openpilot. He also released open-source plans for Neo, a smartphone-powered device…

=> ↺ An open source approach to drive NFV innovation

• Network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN) will play a vital role in the development and future of the telecoms industry. The hybrid network model, based on virtualised technology and hardware, has become mission critical, not just to operations but commercial success also. Telecoms is an industry traditionally steeped in proprietary solutions and insulated approaches to network development, writes Tzvika Naveh, the marketing director for NFV orchestration at Amdocs, however, the introduction of an open-source approach will help further fuel NFV and SDN commercialisation and innovation through collaboration.

=> ↺ Understanding OPNFV Starts Here

• If telecom operators or enterprises were to build their networks from scratch today, they would likely build them as software-defined resources, similar to Google or Facebook’s infrastructure. That’s the premise of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

• NFV is a once in a generation disruption that will completely transform how networks are built and operated. And, OPNFV is a leading open source NFV project that aims to accelerate the adoption of this technology.

=> ↺ Open Source Jobs Report: In-Demand Developers Can Get Paid to Earn Certification

=> ↺ Demand for Open Source Skills Continues to Grow

• On a scale of one to five, how are your open source skills? If you picked a number below four, you might want to do something about it. According to the Linux Foundation’s annual Open Source Jobs Report released on Wednesday, employment prospects for open source workers continues to rise.

• Consider this: 86 percent of open source professionals believe that just knowing open source has advanced their careers, with 52 percent saying it would be easy to find another job. If that doesn’t wet your whistle — only 27 percent report not receiving a recruiting call in the past six months.

=> ↺ Open source talent in demand, but jobs tough to fill

• Almost 90% of hiring managers reported difficulties acquiring qualified talent for open source jobs, according to a report released Wednesday from career site Dice and The Linux Foundation.

=> ↺ The Secret Sauce To Open Source

• One of the first items discussed when companies start using and leveraging open source is the determination of what, in their IP portfolio, is the unique differentiation between themselves and their competitors. What is, in other words, their “secret sauce.” Companies can then use open source to allow them, and their development, to focus on their secret sauce and to consume, or contribute/donate, non-differentiating software to the open source community. This allows companies to focus their time, talent and resources on those aspects of technology that provide the most innovation to them and their customers.

• Some companies, known as Open Core companies, also leverage the idea of “secret sauce” in that they release their code under an Open Source license, but sell “Enterprise Extensions” as commercial products, and keep that technology private and confidential, as their own secret sauce.

• But the most important “secret sauce” in Open Source is also the most unrecognized and most misunderstood. Ironically, science fiction understands this secret ingredient better than most. It’s the delicacy specified in the Twilight Zone’s “How To Serve Man”; it’s the basic constituent of Soylent Green; it’s Arthur C. Clarke’s “Food of the Gods.”

• It’s people.

=> ↺ How to handle criticism of your open project

• Over the course of the past year, the project I’m working on has been using open organizational principles as the cornerstone of the work. It’s the first attempt at using open methodologies inside of Greenpeace. The project, code named Planet 4, is the global redesign and development of Greenpeace’s digital presence. To put it quite simply, we are building a piece of software that content and web editors will use to put Greenpeace content on the web. We’re building the software on top of WordPress, a platform we selected in part because of its own open source roots. Throughout the project, we’ve used a remixed version of the Open Decision Framework to document and share everything we’re doing. Aside from me, this way of working was new to my team.

=> ↺ YOLO: Open source real-time image recognition

• For those of you who are looking to play around with image recognition in your UAS projects, there’s an open source real-time image recognition system for that. I am not sure yet how well this would work at longer distances with smaller images when capturing footage from a flying platform but could be interesting. I wonder if SAR and related ops could perhaps benefit from such an open source project. Gene?

Events

=> ↺ Much awaited.. DebConf’17 in Montreal.

• On 5th August I got a chance to attend, speak and experience DebConf 2017 at Montreal, Canada. The conference was ‘stretch’ed from 6 August to 12 August .

=> ↺ Technoshamanism at Aarhus University

• We talked about the traditions of festivals before the festivals of technoshamanism, such as Brazilian tactical media, Digitofagy, Submidialogy, MSST (Satellitless Movement), etc. We presented the Baobáxia and the indigenous / quilombola struggles in the city and the countryside. The aesthetic manifestations of encounters of technoshamanism as well as ideas about free or postcolonial thoughts, ancestorfuturism and new Subjective territories.

=> ↺ UbuConLA 2017 Summit Summary

• These are my notes about UbuconLA, a bit of social activities and thoughts on the talks related to the snappy ecosystem.

=> ↺ Moby Summit at OSS North America

• In case you missed it, the next Moby Project Summit will take place on September 14, 2017 in Los Angeles, as part of the Open Source Summit North America. Following the success of the previous editions, we’ll keep the same format which consists of short technical talks / demos in the morning and Birds-of-a-Feather sessions in the afternoon.

Databases

=> ↺ Quest Software Releases New Platform to Tackle MySQL Open Source Environments

• Quest Software, a global systems management and security software provider, is releasing Toad Edge, a new commercial database toolset that can manage next-generation open source database environments.

• This release will support MySQL, saving time, minimizing the MySQL learning curve, and mitigating risks that can be associated with building applications on an open source database platform.

• “It’s a brand new development and DBA administration tool for the MySQL database whether that database is running on-prem or on Amazon RDS Azure, it doesn’t matter our tool can help the developer and DBA develop an application on MySQL on-prem or in the cloud,” said Greg Davoll, Executive Director of product management and product marketing.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ Kolab Now Is a Smooth On-Ramp for LibreOffice Online

• As cloud popularity grows, so does the collection of free or low-cost online office tools that services like Microsoft Office Online and Google Docs/G Suite provide.

• However, those two major league offerings, along with a swarm of other cloud-based productivity platforms, are proprietary. Open source vendors have been promising a free open source online alternative. Until now, online open source office suites have been little more than vaporware.

• You can get your document work done fine using an open source local installation. Exchanging documents via email attachments or shared links to files stored on Dropbox and other cloud storage farms work reasonably well for low-level collaborative team tasks.

• However, the inconvenience factor kicks in very quickly when you try to handle collaborative tasks and need access to a continual stream of live edits. That is when a cloud-based open source office suite is sorely missed.

• Kolab Systems last month announced Kolab Now, a full-featured online office suite. The launch had the blessing of The Document Foundation, which gave up on fulfilling promises for a free open source online version of the LibreOffice suite it sponsors.

Healthcare

=> ↺ Open Source Collaboration Key to Healthcare Blockchain Adoption

• Interest in healthcare blockchain continues to grow as organizations realize the potential data sharing advantages. Blockchain is not currently used in healthcare, but open source projects, such as Hyperledger, are working to develop blockchain standards that can eventually be used in healthcare.

• Entities are showing genuine interest in blockchain and are currently working on projects for future adoption, according to Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf.

• Last year the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hosted a healthcare blockchain essay contest in response to vendors approaching the agency and suggesting uses for blockchain in healthcare for provider directories and EHRs. The contest gave HHS a broad pool of examples from vendors and providers alike to get a better grasp on the potential reality of healthcare blockchain implementation.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ Open-Source Software Won’t Ensure Election Security

=> ↺ guard Microsoft’s control over the ballot box

BSD

=> ↺ LLVM’s Clang C/C++ Compiler Is Still Having Problems With ~5% Of Debian Packages

• Debian developer and LLVM/Clang enthusiast Sylvestre Ledru has provided an update regarding the build results for trying to compile the Debian archive using this GCC compiler alternative.

=> ↺ Rebuild of Debian using Clang 3.9, 4.0 and 5.0

• tldr: The percentage of failure is decreasing, Clang support is improving but there is a long way to go.

• The goal of this initiative is to rebuild Debian using Clang as a compiler instead of gcc. I have been doing this analysis for the last 6 years.

• Recently, we rebuilt the archive of the Debian archive with Clang 3.9.1 (July 6th), 4.0.1 (July 6th) and 5.0 rc2 (August 20th).

• For various reasons, we didn’t perform a rebuild since June 2016 with version 3.8. Therefor, we took the opportunity to do three over the last month.

=> ↺ ARC Backend Merged In LLVM

• LLVM 6.0 SVN/Git now has landed a Synopsys DesignWare ARC processor back-end.

=> ↺ AF3e status, 22 August 2017

• Your irregular “Absolute FreeBSD” status report!

• It’s at 123,700 words. 12 of 26 chapters exist as first drafts. (Yes, the last report said 7 of 24. I can’t count.) Two more chapters are partially done. One of those partially-done chapters, on “Pre-Install Considerations,” won’t be done until I finish the whole book. I keep going back to add tidbits to it. It’s complete, except when I find something else I have to add to it.

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Growing groups of administrations show value of sharing & reuse

• Well-established groups of public administrations working together on ICT solutions continue to attract new members, and new groups continue to form. These joint projects help to reduce IT costs and increase efficiency.

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ Patrick McHardy and copyright profiteering

• Many in the open source community have expressed concern about the activities of Patrick McHardy in enforcing the GNU General Public License (GPL) against Linux distributors. Below are answers to common questions, based on public information related to his activities, and some of the legal principles that underlie open source compliance enforcement.

• Who is Patrick McHardy? McHardy is the former chair of the Netfilter core development team. Netfilter is a utility in the Linux kernel that performs various network functions, such as facilitating Network Address Translation (NAT)—the process of converting an Internet protocol address into another IP address. Controlling network traffic is important to maintain the security of a Linux system.

=> ↺ Facebook Refuses to Alter React’s Open Source License

• The Apache Foundation recently announced that Facebook’s BSD+Patents open source license has been disallowed for inclusion with Apache products. The resulting fallout has caused gnashed teeth and much soul searching for React developers and Facebook has so far refused to reconsider.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ Community building with a Q&A vs. online forum

• If you’ve ever built an online community, you know that the sheer number of options available can be daunting. Should you set up a forum, a Q&A site, or both? Would users prefer Slack, IRC, or perhaps a mailing list? Where does Telegram fit in? Maybe you should you just set up one of every available solution…

• I’ll discuss this topic at length during the upcoming Open Source Summit North America. But in the meantime, let’s focus on one aspect to better understand the overall decision-making process.

Open Data

=> ↺ Estonia to focus presidency on free movement of data

• Estonia, holding its first Presidency of the European Council as of July, hopes to advance the EU’s digital single market by focusing on the free movement of data. One of three key suggestions in a vision paper by the country’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications is to encourage the cross-border exchange of public administration data on the basis of the once-only principle.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Top 3 open source Python IDEs

• Python is everywhere. These days, it seems it powers everything from major websites to desktop utilities to enterprise software. Python has been used to write all, or parts of, popular software projects like dnf/yum, OpenStack, OpenShot, Blender, Calibre, and even the original BitTorrent client.

=> ↺ Users as Co Developers OR The Secret of Programming Success

• And so I inherited popclient. Just as importantly, I inherited popclient’s user base. Users are wonderful things to have, and not just because they demonstrate that you’re serving a need, that you’ve done something right. Properly cultivated, they can become co-developers.

• Another strength of the Unix tradition, one that Linux pushes to a happy extreme, is that a lot of users are hackers too. Because source code is available, they can be effective hackers. This can be tremendously useful for shortening debugging time. Given a bit of encouragement, your users will diagnose problems, suggest fixes, and help improve the code far more quickly than you could unaided.

=> ↺ Oracle to open source Java Enterprise Edition (JAVA EE)

• They say that you can never expect a favor from the corporate world without them getting some profit. Oracle seems to be shutting shop on Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and has now decided to open source it. After earning millions from Java EE, now Oracle seems to have realized that it needs to move on.

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ WIPO, IFPMA Adviser Sees No Problem With Trump Comments, May Become US Science Envoy

• A United States State Department science envoy quit yesterday in protest over US President Donald Trump’s pullout from the Paris climate accord and defensive comments after violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. But according to a press report, Peter Hotez, a past science adviser who has been a featured speaker of a UN agency and pharmaceutical industry group in Geneva, is stepping up to offer his services without concern for Trump’s actions.

Hardware

=> ↺ Thin Mini-ITX board dishes up 15W Skylake-U chips

• Advantech’s Linux-ready “AIMB-232” thin Mini-ITX SBC offers 6th Gen U-Series CPUs plus triple displays, 2x GbE, 2x SATA III, and 2x mini-PCIe links.

=> ↺ New Ryzen Is Running Solid Under Linux, No Compiler Segmentation Fault Issue

• As a quick update to the AMD Linux “Performance Marginality Problem” affecting some early Ryzen processors under heavy load, today I received a new Ryzen 7 processor and indeed it’s been running strong now for the past few hours under demanding load and has yet to hit the compiler segmentation fault bug.

=> ↺ Intel Quietly Drops Xeon Phi 7200 Coprocessors

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Malaysia Inclusion In Gilead Voluntary Licence – A Product Of Compulsory Licence Pressure

• Gilead’s announcement today that they would include four middle-income countries (Malaysia, Thailand, Belarus, Ukraine) in their sofosbuvir voluntary licence was a welcome surprise, and will enable millions access to their highly effective, but exorbitantly priced, drug.

• The decision to include these countries, however, no doubt is a response to increasing pressure from within these countries to either issue a compulsory licence (CL) or a government use licence (GUL), invalidate the sofosbuvir patents, or block data exclusivity for the drug.

=> ↺ Access To Medicines Foundation Details Methodology For 2018 AMR Benchmark

• The Amsterdam-based Access to Medicines Foundation today published the methodology it will use for its 2018 framework for evaluating how pharmaceutical companies are taking action to limit antimicrobial resistance, addressing the rising the global problem of overuse of antibiotics leading to resistance with few new ones in the pipeline.

• The methodology will analyse company research and development, manufacturing and production, and appropriate access and stewardship.

Security

=> ↺ Xen Hypervisor Patched for Privilege Escalation and Information Leak Flaws

• The Xen Project has fixed five new vulnerabilities in the widely used Xen virtualization hypervisor. The flaws could allow attackers to break out of virtual machines and access sensitive information from host systems.

• According to an analysis by the security team of Qubes OS, an operating system that relies on Xen for its security model, most of the vulnerabilities stem from the mechanism that’s used to share memory between domains. Under Xen, the host system and the virtual machines (guests) run in separate security domains.

=> ↺ Crunchy Data Unveils Open Source Security Compliance Automation Platform

• The Defense Information Systems Agency released a STIG for Crunchy Data’s PostgreSQL open source database in March to provide guidance on how to deploy the database in government networks in compliance with DoD security requirements.

• “Crunchy Data’s mission is to enable enterprises to adopt open source PostgreSQL as a means to reduce [information technology] infrastructure costs and avoid unwanted vendor lock-in,” said Paul Laurence, chief operating officer of Crunchy Data.

=> ↺ How to scan and clean malware from a Linux server

• At first blush, you might be wondering why anyone would need to scan a Linux server for malware. Even though the Linux platform isn’t nearly as vulnerable to malware as other systems, that doesn’t mean your email or file server can’t host malicious files that could take down a connected (and vulnerable) machine. Say, for instance, your Linux server uses Samba to allow users to store files. Or maybe it’s a cloud server that allows users to sync and share their files to various devices. How do you know a user hasn’t inadvertently uploaded a malicious file to the server? You don’t, unless you take action.

=> ↺ GCHQ Knew FBI Wanted To Arrest MalwareTech, Let Him Fly To The US To Be Arrested There

• It looks like the UK found an easy way to avoid another lengthy extradition battle. Its intelligence agency, GCHQ, knew something security research Marcus Hutchins didn’t — and certainly didn’t feel obliged to tell him. Not only that, but it let a criminal suspect fly out of the country with zero pre-flight vetting. (Caution: registration wall ahead.)

=> ↺ Security updates for Thursday

=> ↺ Wanted: Weaponized exploits that hack phones. Will pay top dollar

• In a sign of the soaring demand for zeroday attacks that target software that’s becoming increasingly secure, a market-leading broker is offering serious cash for weaponized exploits that work against Signal, WhatsApp, and other mobile apps that offer confidential messaging or privacy.

=> ↺ White House cyber tsar warns against Kaspersky use

• The cyber security co-ordinator of the White House has publicly warned against the use of software from Kaspersky Lab.

=> ↺ Latest Linux Mining Malware Uses Minergate’s Monero Pool

• It has been a while since we last saw a new malware threat in the form of a cryptocurrency miner. Do not be mistaken in thinking cybercriminals have given up on the idea, though. A new cryptocurrency mining malware referred to as Linux.BTCMine.26 is actively distributed to Linux computers using default Telnet credentials. Unlike what the name suggests, it does not mine Bitcoin but is more interested in Monero. Additionally, it only targets X86-64 and ARM hardware-based devices.

=> ↺ SourceClear Announces First-of-its-Kind Domain-Specific Language to Identify Open-Source Vulnerabilities

=> ↺ How to protect your network from ransomware attacks

=> ↺ Google Improves Security in Android 8.0 Oreo

• Google officially announced the latest iteration of its mobile operating system on August 21 with the debut of Android 8.0 Oreo. While performance is one of the headline features in the new release, Google is also implementing multiple security enhancements in Oreo as well.

=> ↺ Over 500 Android apps with a combined 100 million downloads found to secretly contain spyware

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Reporting on Trump’s Afghan Escalation Omits Dead Afghan Civilians

• US media also continued their rich tradition of not blaming the US or Trump for the war—instead laying responsibility at the feet of some unknown geopolitical dark matter that has forced the US to occupy Afghanistan permanently. The US isn’t waging ongoing war in the Central Asian country; it is simply “stuck,” according to the AP (8/21/17) and the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty. Trump isn’t continuing the occupation; according to the Sacramento Bee (8/21/17); he “Keeps US Stuck in Afghanistan Quagmire.” The US doesn’t seek further war and occupation, but to “break free from the quagmire,” the Chicago Tribune (8/22/17) spells out.* Bush, Obama and Trump didn’t make a deliberate choice to bomb Afghanistan, according to PBS’s Judy Woodruff (8/21/17); attacking the country just became “the burden of three presidents.” War was consistently depicted as being thrust upon the US government by forces outside of its control.

• The number of Afghan civilians killed during the 16-year US military occupation is well over 31,000, according to researchers at Brown University. The average American couldn’t possibly know this fact, since it’s almost never mentioned when weighing the cost/benefit ratio of further military occupation and bombing.

=> ↺ America’s ‘Global Policeman’ Role

• Global disorder is on the rise. What can the U.S. do about it? There are two fundamentally different approaches one can take — it all depends on your philosophy of how the world works.

=> ↺ Saudi Bombing Kills Dozens, and US Complicit, as ‘Man-Made Crisis’ in Yemen Worsens

• An airstrike by the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition on a hotel near the Yemeni capital Sanaa killed dozens of people on Wednesday, multiple news agencies have reported, as a “man made” humanitarian crisis extends its grip on the impoverished nation.

=> ↺ ‘Good Parents’ Who Kill Strangers

• A troubling paradox in world leaders is their apparent love for their own children while showing callous disregard for the lives of children and other innocents at the receiving end of their bombs and bullets, as Philip A Farruggio observes.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Whistleblower Lawsuit Charges Illegal Retaliation, Dangerous Practices at CIA’s Elite Directorate of Operations

=> ↺ Senate bill would label WikiLeaks ‘non-state hostile intelligence service’

• Congress will formally consider WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” if lawmakers adopt the annual Intelligence Authorization Act passed 14-1 by a Senate panel last month — a provision the bill’s sole dissenter now cites as his reason for rejecting it.

• Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat and the only member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to cast a ballot against the 2018 authorization act during last month’s vote, said Tuesday his decision was driven by the inclusion of language specifically targeting WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy website responsible for publishing millions of pages’ worth of U.S. state secrets ranging from military documents and diplomatic cables to internal Democratic Party emails.

• The provision was included at the very end of the annual intelligence authorization act passed in committee and quietly introduced in the full Senate on Friday amid summer recess.

=> ↺ Former NSA Official Sure DNC Wasn’t Hacked

• William Binney, a former “highly placed NSA official,” told investigative journalist Aaron Klein he’s convinced the Democratic National Committee wasn’t even hacked, much less that it was hacked by Russians seeking to do damage to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

=> ↺ Senate bill would label WikiLeaks ‘non-state hostile intelligence service’

• Congress will formally consider WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” if lawmakers adopt the annual Intelligence Authorization Act passed 14-1 by a Senate panel last month — a provision the bill’s sole dissenter now cites as his reason for rejecting it.

• Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat and the only member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to cast a ballot against the 2018 authorization act during last month’s vote, said Tuesday his decision was driven by the inclusion of language specifically targeting WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy website responsible for publishing millions of pages’ worth of U.S. state secrets ranging from military documents and diplomatic cables to internal Democratic Party emails.

=> ↺ Intelligence Committee Pins A ‘Surveil Me’ Sign On Wikileaks’ Back In Latest Authorization Bill

• President Trump seemed to think Wikileaks was a fine establishment while on the campaign trail. As long as Wikileaks kept serving up DNC documents, it could do nothing wrong. Since his election, however, things have changed. The administration is plagued by leaks. Even though Wikileaks hasn’t played a part in those leaks, it has continued to dump CIA documents — something the White House isn’t thrilled with.

• Back in April, the new DOJ — under the leadership of 80s throwback AG Sessions — announced it had prepared charges to arrest Julian Assange. This was something Obama’s administration talked about, but never actually got around to doing. Pursuing Assange and Wikileaks for publishing leaked documents would set a dangerous precedent, paving the way for domestic prosecutions of news agencies.

• Fortunately, nothing has moved forward on that front yet. But it appears at least a few Senators would like to further distance Wikileaks from any definition of journalism. As Spencer Ackerman reports for The Daily Beast, the Senate Intelligence Community wants to redefine Wikileaks as a hostile entity.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Rick Perry’s “baseload” study released, offers a lifeline to coal, nuclear

• The US Department of Energy (DOE) released a report late Wednesday night recommending that power markets revise how they value coal and nuclear power. The report also admits that low natural gas prices are a primary cause of recent coal plant closures.

=> ↺ Analysis of 187 documents concludes Exxon “misled the public” on climate change

• The documents included internal papers published by journalists at InsideClimate News as well as 50 “peer-reviewed articles on climate research and related policy analysis” written by ExxonMobil researchers. The oil and gas company made the internal papers public and challenged anyone to “read all of these documents and make up your own mind,” accusing journalists of cherry-picking data.

• Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, from Harvard’s Department of the History of Science, took up that challenge, comparing the information in the documents cited by ExxonMobil against the information conveyed in the publicly-available advertorial columns published by the company on anthropogenic (or human-caused) climate change in the New York Times. They found that “83 percent of peer-reviewed papers and 80 percent of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12 percent of advertorials do so, with 81 percent instead expressing doubt.”

Finance

=> ↺ Labor Day Used to Be a Grand Celebration in This Storied Factory Town

=> ↺ FTC: We won’t stand in the way of pending Amazon-Whole Foods merger

• The Federal Trade Commission has formally allowed Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods to go forward.

• According to a statement released Wednesday by acting FTC director Bruce Hoffman, “Based on our investigation, we have decided not to pursue this matter further. Of course, the FTC always has the ability to investigate anticompetitive conduct should such action be warranted.”

• Last month, there had been some public opposition to the deal. Back in June, the online retail giant announced it would acquire Whole Foods Market for approximately $13.7 billion.

=> ↺ The FTC says it won’t stop Amazon from buying Whole Foods

=> ↺ The government’s new Brexit position paper is actually pretty good

• Today’s Brexit position paper on enforcement and dispute resolution is a good piece of work. It makes reasonable demands and puts to bed a lot of the crazier hard Brexit rhetoric from No.10. It also has one central argument, which is that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is not a suitable body to arbitrate on whatever new arrangement the UK and the EU strike up. As it happens, they are correct on both counts – the hard Brexiters are wrong and so is Brussels.

• The hard Brexiters want May to abide by her promise last autumn to remove Britain completely from ECJ jurisdiction. This was the exact moment it was clear she was a lunatic, reading scraps of paper her aides wrote without thinking and using them as the basis for the country’s future prosperity. It was an amazingly stupid thing for her to have said. The drawbacks became clear almost instantly, when the government confirmed its involvement in a new EU patent court which would have an umbilical cord to the ECJ. Suddenly, years of work and income were at risk. Later, it became clear that our entire nuclear regulation system, under Euratom, had been put in jeopardy due to this commitment.

=> ↺ Jeremy Corbyn’s living wage plan ‘would give one in four British workers a pay rise’

• Jeremy Corbyn’s £10-an-hour living wage plan would give one in four British workers a pay rise, new analysis from his party claims.

• Around 40 per cent of those in employment would benefit from Labour’s plan in some parts of the UK, it said, with warnings the Conservatives had not done enough to boost pay.

• The Government said 1.7 million workers had benefited from the latest rise in the living wage in April, which saw an increase from £7.20 to £7.50.

=> ↺ Manufacturing Giant Midea Wants to Put Bitcoin Miners in Household Appliances

• Midea Group, a major manufacturer of electrical appliances in China, is seeking to patent a method for mining bitcoin with household items, public records show.

• The previously unreported application was submitted last November and published earlier this year by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People’s Republic of China.

• The company’s application calls for appliances ranging from air conditioners, dehumidifiers and TVs to be built with specialized mining chips embedded inside. Once programmed, the products would connect to a cloud-based service and contribute their hashing power in the background.

=> ↺ Republicans try comparing tax code to Legend of Zelda, mix up their facts

• American Republican legislators have begun aiming their sights on a major policy initiative: the nation’s tax code. Any changes will certainly impact the American technology sector, but before getting to that possible impact, there’s the matter of the GOP’s publicity campaign on the matter.

• On Wednesday afternoon, the GOP showed that it could use some help in its attempts to make its sales pitch look “hip.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ 7 Rules For Reading Trump’s Approval Rating

• It still isn’t entirely clear how much President Trump’s reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — which was criticized by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers after he blamed “many sides” for the violence there — has affected his job approval rating. As of Wednesday evening, Trump’s approval rating was 36.9 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight average, down only slightly from 37.6 percent on the day before1 a counter-protester and two police officers were killed in Charlottesville. His disapproval rating was 56.8 percent, up only slightly from 56.3 percent before Charlottesville. So perhaps there’s been a little movement — but there hasn’t been the sort of unambiguous decline in Trump’s approval rating that occurred at earlier moments in his presidency, such as when Republicans began to debate their health care bill in March or after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May.

• Approval ratings, of course, aren’t the only way to judge a president’s standing. The fact that Republicans in Congress have become much more openly defiant of Trump could spell trouble for him later on, whether or not rank-and-file voters were all that moved by Charlottesville. Nonetheless, approval ratings provide a reality check of sorts, as the media’s guesses about what will or won’t affect public opinion aren’t always accurate. So let me walk you through a few propositions for what I think we’ve learned about Trump’s approval through the first seven months of his presidency — and why his approval ratings’ modest response to Charlottesville shouldn’t have been all that surprising.

=> ↺ Blocking Prosecutors From Creating Trump’s Enemies List

=> ↺ State Dept. science envoy resigns with letter that spells out ‘Impeach’

• The science envoy for the State Department has resigned following President Trump’s response to the violent clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

• Daniel Kammen announced his resignation in a letter addressed to Trump — in which the first letter of every paragraph spelled out “Impeach.”

• “My decision to resign is in response to your attacks on core values of the United States,” Kammen said in the letter.

• “Your failure to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis has domestic and international ramifications.”

=> ↺ MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch: Trump possesses traits of a sociopath

• MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch on Wednesday read traits of a sociopath on air, arguing that President Trump exhibits many of the same qualities.

• “What a sociopath is a condition that prevents people from adopting to ethical and behavioral standards of community,” Deutsch said on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” reading from a paper.

• “Sociopaths are usually extremely charming and charismatic. Sociopaths oftentimes feel entitled to certain positions, people and things. They believe their own beliefs and opinions are the absolute authority and disregard others.”

=> ↺ Hillary Clinton: My “skin crawled” when Trump stood behind me

• MSNBC’s Morning Joe has the first batch of excerpts from “What Happened,” Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming memoir on the 2016 presidential election, which feature her reflecting why she wrote the book and on President Trump’s intimidation tactics that made her “skin [crawl]” during their second, town hall-style debate.

=> ↺ Fact check: At Phoenix rally, Trump revises history, exaggerates accomplishments and makes false claims

• President Trump delivered a raucous, error-filled speech in Arizona on Aug. 22, just days after he was uniformly criticized for blaming “both sides” for the deadly violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

• The president gave a revisionist account of his remarks about Charlottesville, exaggerated his accomplishments, and made a series of false and misleading claims:

• • Trump cherry-picked excerpts from his past statements about Charlottesville to put a positive spin on his remarks. But in his retelling, Trump failed to say he blamed “both sides” for the violence that left one counterprotester dead and 19 others injured.

• • Trump also wrongly suggested that the media didn’t report that he had said “racism is evil,” a quote from his second statement — on Monday, Aug. 14 — on the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. That quote was widely reported by the media.

=> ↺ Trump’s Fit in Phoenix Shames the Presidency and Humiliates America

• Trump’s disturbing diatribe and brutish assault on the media prove, once and for all, that he’ll never get better

=> ↺ The Arpaio Pardon: You’re Not the Audience

=> ↺ Donald Trump’s Defining Moments

• In the last few weeks, President Trump has gone through a series of defining moments in which his disturbing rhetorical reactions to historical developments have opened a window on his sense of the world and the nation.

=> ↺ Will Nothing Rid Us of President WTF?

• The Doomsday Clock has been edging closer to midnight since Donald Trump got his hands on the nuclear codes – not for ideological reasons, as would have been the case had Hillary Clinton not blown her chance to become Commander-in-Chief, but because he is morally inert and psychologically unhinged. Giving such a miscreant control over a nuclear arsenal is like handing a troubled teenager a loaded gun.

=> ↺ Wall Street Journal Editor Admonishes Reporters Over Trump Coverage

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ It isn’t only the Chinese who chill academic debate

• The campaign against Cambridge University Press also misses the more subtle way that academic freedom in the UK is restricted. Despite the 1,000+ petitioners arguing that, ‘as academics, we believe in the free and open exchange of ideas and information on all topics, not just those we agree with,’ many threats to free speech on campus today emerge from within universities themselves.

=> ↺ The Most Shortsighted Attack on Free Speech in Modern U.S. History

• A faction on the left wants to weaken the free-speech rights that protect marginalized people at the very moment when doing so would help Donald Trump to persecute them.

=> ↺ Valerie Plame Wilson wants to buy Twitter and ban President Trump

• Wilson — best known for being revealed as a CIA operative because of a leak during the George W. Bush administration — has started a GoFundMe page to buy a controlling interest in Twitter, in order to delete the president’s account. The company is currently worth nearly $12 billion, with its shares going for around $16.

=> ↺ Ex-CIA Agent Wants to Buy Twitter to Kick Trump Off

=> ↺ Why Are Media Outlets Giving Commentary Space to Wannabe Censors?

• I’ll give Jennifer Delton—Skidmore College’s “Douglas Family Chair in American culture, history, and literary and interdisciplinary studies”—this much: She’s not disguising her calls for censorship of conservative opinion by claiming this will achieve some sort of racial enlightenment or equality. She openly describes this censorship as a tool for stopping the spread of political arguments she sees as dangerous.

=> ↺ Kevin Myers withdraws from Limerick talk about censorship

• Former Sunday Times columnist Kevin Myers has withdrawn from moderating a talk on censorship in Limerick after his appearance in the line-up provoked a storm of “vitriolic” abuse.

• Mr Myers, who was dismissed from the Sunday Times last month, was due to moderate a talk in Limerick city next month on the subject of censorship, which will be given by Jodie Ginsberg of the Index on Censorship.

=> ↺ The Internet’s “Nazi Purge” Shows Who Really Controls Our Online Speech

• The Daily Stormer’s unceremonious booting from large swaths of the internet has made plenty of headlines; tech companies, the story goes, are “joining the resistance.” Silicon Valley is conducting a “Nazi purge,” and Charlottesville is “reshaping the fight against online hate.”

• But the demise of this hateful website has also raised a new debate about an old problem: Silicon Valley’s control of our online speech.

• Companies like Facebook and Twitter have been making hard decisions about hate speech for a long time. These platforms, as well as web-hosting companies and other intermediaries, are not governed by the First Amendment. Instead, they must obey 47 U.S.C. § 230, known colloquially as “CDA 230.” This gives them immunity from liability for most of the content they host, and says they are free to host (or not host) whatever they want.

• Those rights are important, but they also come with great responsibility. And I believe these companies are failing to live up to that responsibility.

=> ↺ 10+ Years of Activists Silenced: Internet Intermediaries’ Long History of Censorship

• Recent decisions by technology companies, especially “upstream” infrastructure technology companies, to drop neo-Nazis as customers have captured public attention—and for good reason. The content being blocked is vile and horrific, there is growing concern about hate groups across the country, and the nation is focused on issues of racism and protest.

• But this is a dangerous moment for Internet expression and the power of private platforms that host much of the speech on the Internet. People cheering for companies who have censored content in recent weeks may soon find the same tactic used against causes they love. We must be careful about what we are asking these companies to do and carefully review the processes they use to do it. A look at previous examples that EFF has handled in the past 10+ years can help demonstrate why we are so concerned.

=> ↺ Russian art community turns out to support detained director

=> ↺ Russian theater and film director arrested

=> ↺ Russian art community turns out to support detained director

=> ↺ At Beijing book fair, publishers admit to self-censorship to keep texts on Chinese market

=> ↺ Trump’s Latest Nonsensical Announcement About Censoring The Internet

=> ↺ Here’s a way to silence Trump on Twitter: Buy the microblogging service

=> ↺ Group claims cunning manoeuvre to thwart state censorship of the Internet

=> ↺ Cambridge University Press battles censorship in China

=> ↺ Cambridge University Press censorship attacks are misguided

=> ↺ China Bullies Western Universities Because They Let It

=> ↺ In China, publishers admit self-censorship

=> ↺ YouTube Personality Upset About Criticism Of His Video Loses Infringement/Defamation Lawsuit

• Last year, YouTube personality [add scare quotes as needed] Matt Hosseinzadeh (a.k.a., “Matt Hoss,” “Horny Tony,” “Bold Guy”) sued H3H3 Productions (composed of YouTube personalities Ethan and Hilla Klein) for copyright infringement. His argument? Their video criticizing his pickup-lines-and-parkour video infringed on his registered copyright by using footage from his video. He decided to make his lawsuit even stupider by adding defamation claims after the Kleins criticized his legal threats.

=> ↺ Lebanese censors stall ‘Annabelle: Creation’ release

• According to local sources, two priests on the multi-faith, cross-party body ruled that the film could be offensive to people of Christian faith.

• Annabelle: Creation is the second Warner Bros. title to have come-up against Lebanese censors in less than two months.

• The US studio’s early summer hit Wonder Woman was banned in Lebanon in June on the basis that its star Gal Gadot hails from Israel, a country which is officially at war with Lebanon.

=> ↺ DreamHost takes a beating after hosting racist Daily Stormer

• The infamous neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer is back online again, but maybe not for very long.

• The saga of The Daily Stormer is well into its second week. Earlier this month, a white supremacist allegedly rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protestors in Charlottesville, killing protestor Heather Heyer. Stormer editor Andrew Anglin responded with a vulgar post attacking Heyer. Then anti-racism activists started lobbying technology companies to stop doing business with the site in an effort to drive the Stormer off the Internet.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Here’s How CIA Spies On Its Intelligence Liaison Partners Around the World

=> ↺ CIA’s secret spy tool helps agency steal data from NSA & FBI, WikiLeaks reveals

• Details of an alleged CIA project that allows the agency to secretly extract biometric data from liaison services such as the NSA, the DHS and the FBI have been published by WikiLeaks.

• Documents from the CIA’s ‘ExpressLane’ project were released by the whistleblowing organization as part of its ongoing ‘Vault 7’ series on the intelligence agency’s alleged hacking capabilities.

• A branch within the CIA – known as Office of Technical Services (OTS) – provides a biometric collection system to liaison services around the world “with the expectation for sharing of the biometric takes collected on the systems,” according to a file released by WikiLeaks.

• ExpressLane, however, suggests the system has inadequacies as it was developed as a covert information collection tool to secretly exfiltrate data collections from such systems provided to liaison services.

=> ↺ ExpressLane

• Today, August 24th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes secret documents from the ExpressLane project of the CIA. These documents show one of the cyber operations the CIA conducts against liaison services — which includes among many others the National Security Agency (NSA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

• The OTS (Office of Technical Services), a branch within the CIA, has a biometric collection system that is provided to liaison services around the world — with the expectation for sharing of the biometric takes collected on the systems. But this ‘voluntary sharing’ obviously does not work or is considered insufficient by the CIA, because ExpressLane is a covert information collection tool that is used by the CIA to secretly exfiltrate data collections from such systems provided to liaison services.

=> ↺ DOJ Walks Back Its Demands For Info On Everyone Who Visited A Trump Protest Site As Some Of Those Visitors Protest Subpoena

• Last week we wrote about a crazy warrant from the DOJ, effectively demanding information — possibly identifying information — on everyone who visited the site disruptj20.org, which had been used by people organizing protests of Trump’s inauguration. When we wrote about it, the site’s hosting company, DreamHost, had just announced that it was pushing back on the demand in court. On Monday of this week, some of the visitors to the site pushed back too. Public Citizen Litigation Group took on the case of five individuals who had visited the site, asking the court if they could intervene to oppose the warrant.

=> ↺ DOJ Backs Down From Overbroad J20 Warrant. But Problems Still Remain

• The government has backed down significantly in its fight with DreamHost about information related to the J20 protests. Late on Tuesday, DOJ filed a reply in its much publicized (and much criticized) attempt to get the hosting provider to turn over a large amount of data about a website it was hosting, disruptj20.org—a site that was dedicated to organizing and planning protests in Washington, D.C. on the day of President Trump’s inauguration.

• In the brief, DOJ substantially reduces the amount of information it is seeking. It also specifically excludes some information from its demand, including some of the most obvious examples of overreach.

=> ↺ It’s Time to Strengthen California’s Public Records Law

• In 2015, the Center for Public Integrity undertook a major investigation aimed at grading all 50 states to ascertain their transparency and accountability. When it came to California, the state received an abysmal ‘F’ rating in the category focusing on public access to information. That is unacceptable.

• Transparency advocates for years have complained about the enforcement measures in the California Public Records Act (CPRA). There is no appeal process when an agency rejects or ignores a records request. The burden is on the requester to go to court to fight for the documents. While the agency may have to pick up the requester’s legal bills, there is no penalty for agencies that willfully, knowingly, and without any good reason violate the law.

• The union’s most populous state and the sixth largest economy in the world should be setting an example rather than lagging behind the many states—such as North Dakota and New Mexico—that penalize agencies that improperly handle or reject request for public records.

=> ↺ Mozilla causes stir with opt-out data collection plans

• Mozilla has announced that it would like to collect anonymous user data in order to “better understand how people use” Firefox. The proposed move is quite contentious for many users because Mozilla is making it opt-out; many users feel betrayed by the move given that Mozilla touts Firefox as a privacy-oriented browser.

=> ↺ Silicon Valley siphons our data like oil. But the deepest drilling has just begun

• Recent reports suggest that three of the country’s largest supermarket chains are rolling out surge pricing in select stores. This means that prices will rise and fall over the course of the day in response to demand. Buying lunch at lunchtime will be like ordering an Uber at rush hour.

=> ↺ Sonos Users Forced To Choose Between Privacy And Working Hardware

=> ↺ Sonos to insist that users bend to its new privacy rules

• “If a customer chooses not to acknowledge the privacy statement, the customer will not be able to update the software on their Sonos system, and over time the functionality of the product will decrease.”

=> ↺ Hardware maker: Give up your privacy and let us record what you say in your home, or we’ll destroy your property

• Sonos is particularly sneaky about the part where they record sound. They say in their blog post that they “don’t keep the recordings” of sound recorded in your home, with the new Voice Assistant. However, they point out that they share their collected data with a large number of parties, the services of which you have “requested or authorized” — where people tend to read “requested”, but where “authorized” is the large part. Further, they point out that they share recorded sound with Amazon under all circumstances, and Amazon is already known to keep recordings for later use by authorities or others, so the point is kind of moot. “We don’t keep the recordings, we let others do it for us” would be a more straightforward wording.

=> ↺ Big push to go cashless, but hurdles remain

=> ↺ Facebook confirms it will add subscriptions to Instant Articles

• CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the company will begin testing subscriptions inside Instant Articles, the company’s fast-loading news format, later this fall.

=> ↺ Mark Zuckerberg confirms Facebook will add subscriptions for publishers, not take a cut

• Here’s how it works: Publishers using Instant Articles, Facebook’s fast-loading article pages, will be able to have a paywall (certain number of articles per month) or have locked articles (freemium model). For either case, Facebook users will be prompted to subscribe to read more. All payments will be processed directly via publishers’ websites, and Facebook will not take a cut—at least not now.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ James Damore Case Could Spawn More Legal Headaches for Google

• Damore says he felt more persecuted as managers responded to his memo and, he says, misrepresented his arguments. He accused one manager of “providing a platform to crucify me.” Such exchanges helped prompt him to file the unfair-labor-practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board on Aug. 2. Damore says that Google was aware of the NLRB charge when he was fired five days later.

=> ↺ Supermarket Removes All Foreign Food From Shelves To Make A Point About Racism, And Here’s The Result

• When customers walked into Edeka supermarket in Hamburg recently, they were surprised to find that the shelves were almost empty, and the small handful of products that remained were all made in Germany. It seemed like the supermarket had simply forgotten to restock their produce until customers saw the mysterious signs left around the shop. “So empty is a shelf without foreigners,” read one sign at the cheese counter. “This shelf is quite boring without variety,” read another. It turns out that Edeka, in a rather controversial move, had opted to solely sell German food for a day in order to make a powerful statement about racism and ethnic diversity. As a result, there were no Greek olives, no Spanish tomatoes, and very little of anything else that can normally be found in a typical modern household. “Edeka stands for diversity, and we produce a wide range of food in our assortment, which is produced in the different regions of Germany,” said an Edeka spokesman. “But it is together with products from other countries that we create the unique diversity that our customers value.”

=> ↺ Deputy Who Rear-Ended Driver At 104 MPH Had Horrendous Service Record, Received Almost Zero Discipline

• Normally, I wouldn’t grab an isolated story about police misconduct and present it here. The misconduct is indeed serious — an officer involved in high-speed crash that left another man critically injured — but one cop doing something dumb is barely even newsworthy these days.

• But the more you read about this law enforcement officer, the worse it gets. And it starts with Deputy Brandon Hegele nailing a smart car driven by a sixty-year-old man while Hegele was travelling 100+ MPH towards a suspect he’d already been told repeatedly not to pursue.

=> ↺ EU nationals deportation letters an ‘unfortunate error’, says May

• Theresa May admitted the Home Office made an “unfortunate error” when it mistakenly sent up to 100 letters to EU nationals living in the UK ordering them to leave the country or face deportation.

• The prime minister was forced into the statement after it emerged that a Finnish academic working in London had highlighted the warning letter she had received, which told her to leave the UK or risk being detained.

• Although Eva Johanna Holmberg has lived in the UK with her British husband for most of the last decade, the correspondence from the Home Office said that if she did not leave the country of her own accord the department would give “directions for [her] removal”. It added that she was “a person liable to be detained under the Immigration Act”.

• Holmberg, a visiting academic fellow from the University of Helsinki at Queen Mary University of London, was told that she had a month to leave, a demand that left her baffled. “It seems so surreal and absurd that I should be deported on the grounds that I’m not legal. I’ve been coming and going to this country for as long as I remember,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of image they have of me but it’s clearly quite sinister based on the small amount of info they actually have on me.”

• [...]

• The government has repeatedly told the 3.5 million EU nationals living in the UK they did not need to apply for residency after Brexit because their status was not at risk. Despite this, there have been several occasions where people have been told wrongly they should leave the country after trying to apply for permanent residency but this is the first time the Home Office has issued a letter telling people to leave.

• After the mistake came to light, the Home Office called Holmberg to “apologise profusely”, she said. But the person who telephoned her would not confirm that the government would cover her legal costs of about £3,800. “The best way to apologise and ease my distress would be to cover my expenses,” she said. The Home Office would not say whether it intended to cover the costs of those who received the letters.

=> ↺ UN racism committee issues ‘warning’ over US tensions

• A UN committee tasked with combatting racism has issued a formal “early warning” over conditions in the United States, a rare move often used to signal the potential of a looming civil conflict.

• The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said it had invoked its “early warning and urgent action procedure” because of the proliferation of racist demonstrations in the US.

• It specifically noted the unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a woman was killed after an avowed white supremacist ploughed his car into a group of anti-racism counterprotestors.

=> ↺ Artificial Intelligence at Any Cost Is a Recipe for Tyranny

• The more powerful technology becomes, the more governments and corporations may use it to endanger our rights.

• This post was adapted from a presentation at an AI Now symposium held on July 10 at the MIT Media Lab. AI Now is a new initiative working, in partnership with the ACLU, to explore the social and economic implications of artificial intelligence.

• It seems to me that this is an auspicious moment for a conversation about rights and liberties in an automated world, for at least two reasons.

=> ↺ Pro-Russian Bots Take Up the Right-Wing Cause After Charlottesville

• Angee Dixson joined Twitter on Aug. 8 and immediately began posting furiously — about 90 times a day. A self-described American Christian conservative, Dixson defended President Donald Trump’s response to the unrest in Charlottesville, criticized the removal of Confederate monuments and posted pictures purporting to show violence by left-wing counterprotesters.

• “Dems and Media Continue to IGNORE BLM and Antifa Violence in Charlottesville,” she wrote above a picture of masked demonstrators labeled “DEMOCRAT TERROR.”

=> ↺ New Scottish Tory MP slammed for anti-Gypsy attack

• New Moray MP Douglas Ross has been slammed by Amnesty International and Traveller groups after saying that his top-priority is “tougher enforcement against Gypsies”.

=> ↺ New Bill Would Force Arrested Protesters to Pay Police Overtime, Other Fees

• A new bill introduced by seven Pennsylvania Republican state lawmakers could force protesters arrested at demonstrations to pay for police overtime and other fees related to the action.

• The bill, SB 754, has been introduced by Rep. Scott Martin of Lancaster County; his district has been the site of anti-pipeline protests aimed at the Atlantic Sunrise natural gas pipeline.

• Under the terms of the bill, “a person is responsible for public safety response costs incurred by a State agency or political subdivision as a result of the State agency’s or political subdivision’s response to a demonstration if, in connection with the demonstration, the person is convicted of a felony or misdemeanor offense.”

=> ↺ Mar-a-Lago is paying for Trump’s Charlottesville comments

• At least 18 charities have cancelled their plans to hold events at Donald Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago following his incendiary comments on the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

• Not all of the charities — which include the Red Cross, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and the Salvation Army — publicly cited politics, or even any reason at all, for their abrupt departure. Many had been holding events at the Palm Beach, Florida club for years — some of the club’s biggest money makers.

• The loss of one of the latest charities to cancel, the Bethesda Hospital Foundation, will likely hit Mar-a-Lago hard: In 2015, the charity spent about $95,000 in total on the event, dwarfing most of the other charities that spent anywhere between $25,000 and $40,000. On Monday, a local chapter of United Way also canceled a reception scheduled for the Trump National Golf Club in Teaneck, New Jersey, citing the events in Charlottesville.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Longread: what will it take to re-decentralize the web?

=> ↺ Groups urge FCC to release net neutrality complaints

• Sixteen groups signed a letter urging the FCC to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for tens of thousands of complaints that have been filed since the net neutrality rules were implemented in 2015.

=> ↺ Net Neutrality: Verizon Caps Streaming Video On New Unlimited Data Plans

• Beginning Wednesday, Verizon will now split its unlimited data offerings into three separate tiers that will all feature capped streaming video quality:

DRM

=> ↺ Remembering That Xbox Wanted Always Online DRM For Its Console In The Wake Of Major Xbox Live Outtage

• Nearly half a decade into the current generation of gaming consoles, you will be forgiven if you don’t recall some of the consternation surrounding Microsoft’s initial plan to make the Xbox One have an “always online” requirement to play the games customers purchased. Microsoft initially floated this concept ahead of the console’s release, perhaps testing the public waters for the requirement. If that was indeed the plan, the instinct to take the public’s temperature on it was a good one, as the backlash was both swift and severe, particularly in light on Sony taking every opportunity to remind consumers that the Playstation 4 would have no such requirement. Predictably, at least to this author, Microsoft caved and removed this “feature”, even as company employees who should have known better made insulting comments about how always online was the way of not just the future, but the present, and everyone should essentially shut up and get used to it.

Intellectual Monopolies

Trademarks

=> ↺ General Mills loses bid to trademark yellow color on Cheerios box

• The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board on Tuesday set aside the cereal maker’s two-year quest to trademark “the color yellow appearing as the predominant uniform background color” on boxes of “oat-based breakfast cereal.” A contrary ruling could have given the Cheerios maker an exclusive right to yellow boxes of oat cereal.

=> ↺ Chateau Marmont, Hotel For Celebrity Humans, Sends Trademark C&D To Cateau Marmont, Hotel For Cats

• While spending a great deal of time writing about dumb trademark disputes can be both monumentally frustrating and fill your mind with despair, I will be the first to admit that it also is a great avenue for entertainment and laughter. This story is about a situation firmly in the latter categories. The Chateau Marmont is a famous hotel in Los Angeles with a reputation for catering to celebrities both in its lodgings and at the restaurant. Roman Polanski took up residence there, while Hunter S. Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Tim Burton all produced some of their works from within its walls. John Belushi overdosed while residing there in 1982. It’s kind of a thing for human celebrities, in other words.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Copyright Troll Insists Septuagenarian Is An Enormous Copyright Infringer, Then Runs Away After Backlash

• Except that this only brings up more questions. We can start with the obvious one: why did Culpepper agree to dismiss Harding? What makes his case different than all of the others? It cannot simply be his age. The Elderly are capable of infringing copyright, after all, and if all of the evidence against Harding equates to the evidence against younger targets of these letters, his age alone shouldn’t be the difference maker. Except that of course it is. What this dismissal does is highlight the laughable idea that the authors of these settlement offers have any real evidence against the recipients at all. If they did, this evidence could not be defeated by someone simply shouting, “But I’m just so old!”

• And yet the threat letters go out, embarrassing miscalculations and mistargets and all. It’s probably long past due that we had some legal clarity on the legal value of IP addresses as evidence of infringement.

=> ↺ Graham v Prince set to test the limits of fair use

• A case that is heating up in a New York district court could have broad implications for copyright in the context of social media and the internet, and could ultimately end up at the Supreme Court

=> ↺ Will TPP-11 Nations Escape the Copyright Trap?

• Latest reports confirm that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being revived. The agreement had been shelved following the withdrawal of the U.S. from the negotiation process. Over the past year, countries eager to keep the pact alive have continued dialogue and rallied support of less enthusiastic members to move forward with the agreement without the U.S. A revised framework is expected to be proposed for approval at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) TPP-11 Ministerial Meeting in November.

• We had previously reported the remaining eleven nations (TPP-11) had launched a process to assess options and consensus on how the agreement should be brought into force. A recent statement by New Zealand’s Prime Minister suggests that countries favor an approach that seeks to replicate TPP provisions with minimal number of changes. The revival of the trade bloc comes at a critical juncture. Two trade agreements—the U.S. led North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and China led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are racing to establish rules to control data flows and the digital economy. The TPP without the U.S offers an alternative to the China-centric and U.S led treaties under negotiation.

=> ↺ The Dilemma Of Fair Use And Expressive Machine Learning: An Interview With Ben Sobel

• Intellectual Property Watch recently conducted an interview with Ben Sobel, law and technology researcher, teacher, and fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Sobel has focused his research on copyright and the fair use doctrine, in particular in the context of artificial intelligence (AI). Below, he shares his views on expressive machine learning, “the fair use dilemma” and “Big Content versus Little Users”. Of note: the most pressing copyright question has to do with AI readers, not AI authors, according to Sobel.

=> ↺ Is the copyright industry above the law and exempt from respecting human rights? Some companies seem to think so

• The whole sorry tale exposes how easy it is for deep-pocketed companies to abuse the legal system in an attempt to crush weaker opponents. Even when judges subsequently strike down those abuses, the damage already caused is not easily reversed. Above all, it shows once again how some members of the copyright industry seem to regard themselves as above the law and exempt from respecting the basic human rights of the people they bully.

=> ↺ Why universities can’t be expected to police copyright infringement

• The other problem, less discussed, is the danger that universities could be enlisted as copyright surveillance and enforcement watchdogs.

=> ↺ Police Intellectual Property {sic} Crime Unit Secures Funding Until 2019

• The London-based operation, which has been instrumental in disrupting the activities of dozens of sites and people operating generally in the ‘pirate’ sector, has been given £3.32m to spend over the next two years.

• [...]

• Formed four years ago and run by the City of London Police, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) [...]

=> ↺ Pirate Bay Founders Ordered to Pay Music Labels $477,000

• Two founders of The Pirate Bay have been ordered by a court in Finland to pay record labels more than $477,000 in compensation. Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm were found liable for ongoing copyright breaches on the site. Neither appeared to mount a defense so both were found guilty in their absence.

=> ↺ BREIN Goes After Developers of ‘Pirate’ Kodi Builds

• Pursuing sellers and developers of pirate Kodi add-ons has become a prime focus in recent months after the European Court of Justice handed down a landmark ruling.

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