This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2017/09/07/llvm-5-0-0/.

● 09.07.17

● Links 7/9/2017: GNOME 3.26 RC 2, LLVM 5.0.0, GnuCOBOL 2.2 Releases

Posted in News Roundup at 6:57 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ Switching to xmonad + Gnome – and ditching a Mac

• I have been using XFCE with xmonad for years now. I’m not sure exactly how many, but at least 6 years, if not closer to 10. Today I threw in the towel and switched to Gnome.

• More recently, at a new job, I was given a Macbook Pro. I wasn’t entirely sure what to think of this, but I thought I’d give it a try. I found MacOS to be extremely frustrating and confining. It had no real support for a tiling window manager, and although projects like amethyst tried to approximate what xmonad can do on Linux, they were just too limited by the platform and were clunky. Moreover, the entire UI was surprisingly sluggish; maybe that was an induced effect from animations, but I don’t think that explains it. A Debisn stretch install, even on inferior hardware, was snappy in a way that MacOS never was. So I have requested to swap for a laptop that will run Debian. The strange use of Command instead of Control for things, combined with the overall lack of configurability of keybindings, meant that I was going to always be fighting muscle memory moving from one platform to another. Not only that, but being back in the world of a Free Software OS means a lot.

=> ↺ Google is trying to poach Microsoft Azure partners by sending them free Chromebooks

=> ↺ Google’s Cloud Team Is Sending Chromebooks To Microsoft Partners

• Microsoft has its Azure platform, Amazon has AWS, Google is entering the arena with Google Cloud and each company is throwing serious money to grab a slice of this market as it continues to expand.

=> ↺ Windows loses the market share growth battle against Linux

• In August, Windows dropped to a 90.70% market share from 91.45% from July, despite Microsoft’s effort. This drop of 0.75% is the biggest one that the operating system had recorded since April 2016. Back then, the OS’s market share collapsed from 90.45% to 88.77%.

Server

=> ↺ A key part of Google’s cloud strategy just got a boost

• Alphabet’s Google has picked up more support for a key piece of its cloud strategy.

• On Wednesday the San Francisco start-up Mesosphere announced the upcoming availability of a beta version of Google-led open-source software called Kubernetes inside its flagship software.

=> ↺ Mesosphere adds support for rival Kubernetes in nod to changing tide in container-orchestration market

• “Our worldview is that container orchestration is a type of workload customers need to run, and it has always been our goal to offer choice,” said Tobias Knaup, CTO and co-founder of Mesosphere, based in San Francisco.

=> ↺ ​NGINX builds platform for application development and delivery

=> ↺ NGINX releases application platform with new application server, centralized management tools

=> ↺ Nginx forges multilanguage app server for microservices

=> ↺ 3 Cool Linux Service Monitors

• The Linux world abounds in monitoring apps of all kinds. We’re going to look at my three favorite service monitors: Apachetop, Monit, and Supervisor. They’re all small and fairly simple to use. apachetop is a simple real-time Apache monitor. Monit monitors and manages any service, and Supervisor is a nice tool for managing persistent scripts and commands without having to write init scripts for them.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ GNU Linux-Libre 4.13 Kernel Launches Officially for Those Who Seek 100% Freedom

• Alexandre Oliva, the maintainer of the GNU Linux-libre project, an Open Source initiative to provide a 100% free version of the Linux kernel to those who seek 100% freedom, announced the release of the GNU Linux-libre 4.13 kernel.

=> ↺ AMD Secure Processor Support In Linux 4.14

• The crypto subsystem updates have been pulled in for the Linux 4.14 kernel and it includes more complete AMD Secure Processor support, among other changes.

=> ↺ Sound Updates Ready To Be Heard On Linux 4.14

• Takashi Iwai of SUSE has mailed in his sound driver updates for the Linux 4.14 kernel. This time around there isn’t too many speaker-shattering changes, but a wide range of fixes and a few notable changes.

=> ↺ The Role of OPNFV in Network Transformation

• The Understanding OPNFV book takes an in-depth look at network functions virtualization (NFV) and provides a comprehensive overview of The Linux Foundation’s OPNFV project. In this article, we provide some excerpts from the book and discuss some organizational elements required to make your NFV transformation successful. These best practices stress how both technical and non-technical elements are required, with non-technical often being more critical.

=> ↺ Android Oreo Adds Linux Kernel Requirements and New Hardening Features

• The Linux kernel continues to add security protections so developers don’t have to build them on their own. As a result, one of the first steps security experts recommend for protecting against embedded Linux malware threats is to work with the latest possible kernel release and then regularly update field devices. Now that Android is getting long in the tooth — it was nine years ago this month that Sergey Brin and Larry Page rollerbladed onto the stage to announce the debut of the flagship HTC G1 phone — more and more Android devices are being attacked due to out-of-date Linux kernels. To address the problem before it adds to Android’s substantial challenge with malware generated from rogue or unprotected apps, Google has announced new requirements in Android 8.0 (“Oreo”) to build on Linux kernels no older than kernel 4.4.

=> ↺ There’s Now A Patch Adding Ryzen / AMD Zen Temperature Support On Linux

• Linux hwmon developer Guenter Roeck has posted a patch adding support for Family 17h (Ryzen/Threadripper/Epyc) temperature monitoring support to the existing k10temp Linux kernel driver.

• Just like the separate and just-covered FreeBSD Zen thermal monitoring patch, adding the Zen monitoring support to Linux was quite simple, just patched the existing AMD Family 10h+ temp driver as opposed to needing a new driver, and was just 16 lines of new code.

=> ↺ New Media Drivers Ready For The Linux 4.14 Kernel

• Mauro Carvalho Chehab has sent in a big pull request of the media subsystem updates for the Linux 4.14 kernel. This time around there are multiple new drivers yielding around a net addition of around 30k lines to the Linux kernel.

=> ↺ New Intel DRM Code For Testing, Material For Linux 4.15

• Intel developers have published a new round of drm-intel-testing updates for those developers or enthusiasts wishing to begin testing this in-progress code for the Intel Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver with this code eventually being queued for the Linux 4.15 cycle.

• New material for testing in this Intel DRM kernel tree are more Cannonlake graphics workarounds, infoframe refactoring, the kernel bits needed so the Intel Mesa driver can expose ARB_timer_query, restoring GPU clock boosts on missed page-flip vblanks, and a variety of fixes and other code improvements.

=> ↺ Adreno A3xx Blobs Added To Linux-Firmware.Git

Applications

=> ↺ The Flathub Website Now Lists Apps, Lets You Install Them

• Read this site regularly enough and you’ll learn that I love Flathub. Flathub, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, is the quasi-official app store for apps packaged and distributed using Flatpak. But it hasn’t been easy to find out which apps are available on it. Until now.

=> ↺ A look at gPodder – Podcast player for GNU/Linux

• Podcasts have been around for years now, but I’ve noticed an increase among my social circles in people using them, and so using that as a general assumption that others are also starting to enjoy them I thought I should show off my favourite application for downloading and listening to them on my GNU/Linux systems; gPodder.

• gPodder is a GTK+ client that is written using Python, designed to be a podcast client and media aggregator. The interface is very minimalistic, so if you’re looking for something with a bunch of bells and whistles, you might want to look elsewhere.

=> ↺ PulseAudio 11 Debuts with Support for Newer AirPlay Hardware, Bluetooth Goodies

• The open-source and cross-platform PulseAudio sound system has been updated recently to version 11, a major release adding numerous new features and improvements to the audio to make it sound better on your favorite GNU/Linux distribution.

=> ↺ News: New release of PulseAudio.

=> ↺ PiCluster – A Simple, Web-based Docker Management Application

• PiCluster is a simple, open source, web-based docker management application used to manage Docker containers across multiple hosts. Unlike Docker Swarm or Kubernetes, PiCluster is easy to setup and use. The latest PiCluster version has brought new features. It makes the process of creating containers much easier than ever. Say for example, the users can now upload a zip of their Dockerfile’s to the PiCluster web console and the files will be copied to every node and extracted in the Docker directory specified in PiCluster config file. Also, when a container is added, the image will be automatically built and run in a single step. In previous releases, users would have to manually create the container. It will work on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.

=> ↺ Wikit – Get Wikipedia Summaries From Commandline In Linux

• Wikipedia has several millions of articles and the number of articles are steadily increasing every single day. It is the first place that comes to my mind when I’m looking for knowledge. Today, I have stumbled upon a simple, yet useful command-line utility called “Wikit”. It displays the summary of any Wikipedia article in Terminal. As we all know already, the Wikipedia has the largest and most comprehensive articles. If you don’t want to waste time to read a comprehensive Wikipedia article, you can then use Wikit to get Wikipedia summaries from commandline. To be precise, Wikit will display the first few paragraphs (the summary, of course) before the table of contents of a Wikipedia article.

=> ↺ massif-visualizer 0.7.0 released

• Massif Visualizer is a visualiser for output generated by Valgrind’s massif tool. It shows you graphs which measure how much heap memory your program uses.

=> ↺ Kdenlive 17.08.1 released

• Although the team is at full throttle getting ready for the 17.12 big refactoring release, we make available the first point release of the 17.08 series bringing various bugfixes and usability improvements. Stay tuned for testing the refactoring branch packages to be announced soon.

=> ↺ OpenShot 2.4 Released, Focuses on Stability

• A new version of OpenShot, the crash-happy open-source non-linear video editor, is available to download. While the previous couple of releases were big on features the latest release is a “stability-focused release”, says project lead Jonathan Thomas.

=> ↺ OpenShot 2.4.0 Released | Improved Stability & More!

• The latest and greatest version of OpenShot Video Editor (version 2.4.0) has been officially released, and I’m proud to bring you all the details! This is a stability-focused release, and much of the effort was “behind-the-scenes” type work.

=> ↺ OpenShot 2.4 Brings Better Stability To This Open-Source Video Editor

• Jon Thomas has announced the release of the OpenShot Video Editor 2.4 released. Among the features of OpenShot 2.4 are “vastly improved stability” for this non-linear, cross-platform video editor.

=> ↺ Essential Tools for Producing High Quality Podcasts on Linux

• Podcasts are a booming business, and many audio pros are seeing more and more work dedicated to this platform. Mac and Windows users have plenty of options for professionally recording and mastering audio, but Linux users aren’t quite as lucky. Yet if you really love the penguin, there are still awesome podcast tools for producing high-quality podcasts on Linux.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Twitter Finally Rolls Out Night Mode Feature to Linux, Windows and Mac Users

• The long-anticipated Night Mode feature is ready to conquer your desktop, help stop eye strain, and help you fall asleep after a long night of twittering. The feature is currently rolling out to the desktop version of twitter.com and should be supported on all modern web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Dissecting the Sierpinski Triangle program

=> ↺ Recording live presentations, Part 2: Software setup

=> ↺ How to use speedtest on a Linux server to check, store and report internet speeds graphically

=> ↺ 23 Useful PKG Command Examples to Manage Packages in FreeBSD

=> ↺ Understanding /etc/shadow file

=> ↺ Collecting logs from containers using Docker volumes

=> ↺ Controlling snap releases with channels, tracks and branches – Part 2

=> ↺ Install Ring, a FOSS VOIP Skype alternative

=> ↺ Installing Google Chrome On CentOS, Amazon Linux, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux

=> ↺ How to Install Ubuntu or Debian Linux on a Chromebook

=> ↺ How to Delete Old Unused Kernels in Debian and Ubuntu

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Release 2.16

• The Wine Staging release 2.16 is now available.

=> ↺ Wine Staging 2.16 is out with more D3D11, D3D8 & D3D9 work and fixes for games like The Witcher 3

• Wine Staging 2.16 sounds like a pretty fantastic release overall, with more work done on D3D11, D3D8 and D3D9.

• Reminder: Wine Staging is the testing area for patches to eventually make their way into development builds of Wine and then into stable Wine releases.

=> ↺ Wine-Staging 2.16 Released With More D3D9/D3D11 Bits

• Building off last week’s Wine 2.16 bi-weekly development snapshot, the crew working on the more bleeding-edge/experimental Wine-Staging branch have released their v2.16 update with various features tacked on.

Games

=> ↺ EA’s Frostbite Engine Has Been Internally Up And Running On Linux

• While not for public consumption at least for now, the Electronic Arts’ Frostbite game engine has seen internal Linux testing/development.

• EA developer Johan Andersson was comparing the size of the Linux kernel source tree to that of their Frostbite game engine: there are more files, lines, comments, and code in Frostbite than in the Linux kernel. Johan has been a technical fellow and director at EA since 2000.

=> ↺ Shuffle the Decks with These Ace Open Source Card Games

• A card game is a game that uses playing cards as the main way the game is played. The cards can be a standard deck of 52 French playing cards with 4 suits of Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs. Or the cards can be game-specific. There is a plethora of card games available, with families of related games.

• Card games offer many positive attributes. They can improve mental skills, memory and logic. They can test your patience, help you focus, and are popular for all ages. Having a good memory is essential to a person’s overall well-being. A good way to improve memory is playing fun games. Whether it’s a board game or a deck of cards, putting your brain to work definitely has its advantages. The earlier a person who has a poor working memory can begin to strengthen it, the more successful they’ll be in life.

=> ↺ Citadale: The Legends Trilogy, originally a Wii U title to come to Linux with two new chapters

• The original game was released in 2016, to mixed reviews with people noting it wasn’t really anything special. Hopefully with this new expanded release, which includes two new chapters: Chapter 2: Curse of Darkness and Chapter 3: Legacy of Fate, it might find a better audience.

=> ↺ The Frostbite engine apparently has partial Linux support but that doesn’t mean we’ll get ports anytime soon

• The technical director for Electronic Art’s SEED division who works on the engine has stated that it’s capable of running on Linux. While very cool, this isn’t a reason to get your hopes up when it comes to future AAA ports just yet.

=> ↺ Unsung Story, a game previously funded by Kickstarter has started again under a new developer

=> ↺ Godlike village simulator ‘Rise to Ruins’ new unstable version released with ‘doggo mobs’

=> ↺ Tyranny – Bastard’s Wound released, some thoughts

=> ↺ Survival game ‘Rust’ updated with a new Unity version & our server is now on a fresh map

=> ↺ Thursday Treats, a little look at some interesting Linux games on sale right now

=> ↺ XCOM 2: War of the Chosen review—A world worth saving

=> ↺ ‘Chessaria: The Tactical Adventure’ combines the gameplay of Chess with an adventure game

• What happens when you take the basics of Chess and you throw in an adventure game on top? Well, Chessaria: The Tactical Adventure [Steam] will let you find out.

=> ↺ Parkitect, the game that lets you build a theme park has come a long way

• Parkitect [Steam, GOG] really does remind me of Theme Park, the classic park building sim from Bullfrog. It’s in Early Access and it seems to have improved a lot recently.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ GPG Keysigning Protocol

• With Randa approaching, I’ll be meeting some KDE people, some for the first time. So it’s time for another GPG keysigning! The usual approach to a GPG keysigning is to have Harald organise it, that ensures a maximum amount of abiding-by-rules. But .. he’s not going to be there, this year. So this post is a random bit of throw-information-out-there about how typical KDE event keysignings work, and an annoucement of my own protocol in handling keysinging.

=> ↺ Elisa, Accessibility and other News

• I should be communicating more often about development related to the Elisa music player. Recently Safa Alfulaij added support for right-to-left interface. This is a very good excuse to talk about what happened since my previous post.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ MConnect, the Android GNOME Shell Extension, Has Been Updated

• An updated version of mConnect, the GNOME extension that helps you integrate your Android device with the Linux desktop, is now available. Rolling out on the GNOME Extensions site now, the update adds minor improvements to the Android-ingratiating add-on, including support for keyboard shortcuts, and tooltips to provide helpful pointers about its various features.

=> ↺ GNOME Mutter 3.25.92 Adds Built-In Screencast / Remote Desktop Capabilities

• GNOME Mutter 3.25.92 has been released and it incorporates some interesting changes for the end of the GNOME 3.26 development cycle.

=> ↺ GNOME 3.26 Desktop Environment Up to RC State, Launches on September 13

• GNOME Project’s Javier Jardón announced a few moments ago that the GNOME 3.25.92 milestone of the forthcoming GNOME 3.26 desktop environment is now available for public testing, marking the end of the development cycle.

• GNOME 3.26 has been in development since early April, and it’s now up to RC (Release Candidate) state, which means that the development cycle is over and the team will begin preparations for the final release of the highly anticipated desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions.

=> ↺ Support more than one Build System

• I’ve tried to add Meson build system to MyHTML, but fail. They prefer the one is used today. That’s OK.

• Support two build systems increase burden on project maintenance, this is the main reason to reject my pull request and is OK. As for GXml, we have both Autotools and Meson. I’m trying to keep both in sync, as soon as a new file is added, but you may forget one or the other.

• While I use GXml on my Windows programs, I need to make sure it will work properly out of the box, like Autotools does, before to remove the later.

=> ↺ GNOME 3.26rc2 (2.25.92) RELEASED

=> ↺ GNOME 3.26 RC2 Released: The Final Step For This Big GNOME Update

• GNOME 3.25.92 is available today, marking the last development release before the official GNOME 3.26 debut.

Distributions

=> ↺ Chakra GNU/Linux Issue May Leave Users Unable to Download Packages, Here’s a Fix

• Chakra GNU/Linux contributor Neofytos Kolokotronis informs users of the GNU/Linux distribution that they need to manually intervene the next time they attempt to update their installations due to an issue with the ca-certificates-utils package.

• The issue appears to be created by a symlink, which is generated by the post-install script during Chakra GNU/Linux installations. ca-certificates-utils 20170307 now includes the symlink, so it’s obvious that it will conflict with the file that exists on your computer. But simply deleting the symlink won’t let you download any packages.

Reviews

=> ↺ Bodhi Linux With Moksha Is Truly Enlightening

• Bodhi Linux is a very functional alternative to the run-of-the-mill distro offerings. It will extend users’ comfort zones as they get familiar with its different computing procedures. Newcomers to Linux, not knowing how Linux “is supposed to work,” actually may have an easier time gaining proficiency in using this Enlightened approach to computing.

• The Midori browser by default loads a help file with wiki-like links to some startup information. That file is part of the installation content, so new users can access the quick start guide and FAQ topics even if they are not able to access a wireless Internet connection.

• Minimum hardware specs include a 500-Mhz processor with 256 MB of RAM and 4 GB of drive space.

• Recommended specs are a 1.0-Ghz processor with 512 MB of RAM and 10 GB of drive space.

New Releases

=> ↺ Latest Parted Magic Release Adds Support for GParted 0.29.0, Linux Kernel 4.12.9

• Patrick Verner, the creator of the Parted Magic live system designed for disk partitioning, closing and erasing, as well as data recovery and rescue, and system benchmarking tasks, announced the release of Parted Magic 2017_09_05.

=> ↺ Gentoo-Based Porteus Kiosk 4.5 Debuts with EAPoL Support, Linux Kernel 4.12

• Tomasz Jokiel from Porteus Solutions announced the release of the Gentoo-based Porteus Kiosk 4.5 operating system designed for web terminals, which brings numerous improvements, updated components, and new functionality.

• First and foremost, Porteus Kiosk 4.5.0 bumps the Linux kernel version from the long-term supported Linux 4.9 series, which was used in the previous release, to the Linux 4.12 branch, shipping with Linux kernel 4.12.10 by default, thus adding an extra layer of hardware support to the free and open-source kiosk operating system for public access computers.

=> ↺ 4MLinux 22.2 Adds Better Support for Removable USB Drives, Linux Kernel 4.9.43

• 4MLinux creator Zbigniew Konojacki was pleased to inform Softpedia about the availability of the second maintenance update to the 4MLinux 22.0 stable series of the independently developed GNU/Linux distribution.

• That’s right, we’re talking about 4MLinux 22.2, which comes about a month after the release of the 4MLinux 22.1 update, and brings with it the long-term supported Linux 4.9.43 kernel, better support for removable USB drives, as well as updated programs like the Audacious audio player, FileZilla file transfer client, and the official Dropbox client.

Arch Family

=> ↺ Arch Linux 2017.09.01 Is Available for Download, Powered by Linux Kernel 4.12.8

• A new month, a new ISO snapshot of the popular Arch Linux operating system sees the light of day, offering newcomers or those who want to deploy the OS on new systems an up-to-date installation medium.

• Arch Linux 2017.09.01 is the Arch Linux ISO snapshot for September 2017, powered by the Linux 4.12.8 kernel, incorporating all the software updates and security patches, as well as other tweaks that have been released through the official repositories of the GNU/Linux distribution during the entire month of August 2017.

• It’s the most up-to-date Arch Linux installation medium, and you should download it if you want to deploy the operating system on new hardware or you want to reinstall your broken Arch Linux OS without having to download hundreds of updates from the repositories after the installation.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ NGINX Announces Ingress Controller Solution for Load Balancing on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

• NGINX Plus Ingress Controller Solution Provides Enterprise Grade Application Delivery, Management, and Added Security for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

=> ↺ Ansible announces AWX open source project

• Today the Ansible community adds another feather to its cap with the introduction of AWX. AWX is a public free and open source software project that produces code to help manage IT infrastructure via Ansible. Innovation in the AWX code base is powered by the community. The upstream open source project is used to create Ansible Tower, a Red Hat-supported commercial product.

=> ↺ AnsibleFest: Red Hat announces Ansible Engine, new Ansible innovations for the enterprise

• Ansible is quickly becoming one of the world’s most popular open source IT automation technologies, with nearly 3,000 unique contributors and more than 32,000 commits to the upstream Ansible project. At Red Hat’s AnsibleFest in San Franscisco, the company announced several new Ansible innovations aimed at enterprise customers that want to utilize Ansible and continue to adopt automation technology at the enterprise level.

=> ↺ Red Hat Launches Open-Source Ansible Tower AWX Automation Project

=> ↺ Red Hat Advances Enterprise and Network Automation with New Ansible Offerings

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today introduced new innovations designed to advance IT automation as its strategic importance grows in the enterprise.

Finance

=> ↺ DHS S&T Awards $8.6 Million for Five Mobile Application Security R&D Projects

=> ↺ Performance Focus on Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Shares Hold Above the Rising Trendline

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Shares Sold by Pacad Investment Ltd.

=> ↺ Atlantic Trust Group LLC Purchases New Position in Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Shares Sold by Utah Retirement Systems

=> ↺ Old Mutual Global Investors UK Ltd. Has $22.91 Million Stake in Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

=> ↺ Shares Seesawing on Volume: Red Hat Inc (RHT)

Fedora

=> ↺ Flock 2017 : Summary

=> ↺ Fedora 26 to Get Bluetooth Support for Raspberry Pi SBCs with Linux Kernel 4.13

• Principal IoT architect at Red Hat Peter Robinson recently revealed some of the highlights that the Fedora 26 Linux operating system brought for Raspberry Pi single-board computers (SBCs).

• The developer works on Raspberry Pi support for Fedora Linux in his spare time, and, for the Fedora 26 cycle, he managed to add a bunch of goodies that would most certainly please all those who want to run Fedora on their tiny Raspberry Pi SBCs. In fact, support for Raspberry Pi landed since last year’s Fedora 25 release.

=> ↺ Kernels need updates, no really

• Google has been announcing new details about its next Android release, Oreo. One of the items that came out is a new requirement for a minimum kernel version. SoC manufacturers must now use a kernel that is greater than 4.4, one of the long term stable (LTS) kernels maintained by Greg Kroah-Hartman. Android has long prided itself on differentiation and given device makers a lot of latitude. This has not infrequently led to fragmentation and difficulties with device upgrades. Google has started to work towards fixing this with efforts like project treble.

=> ↺ A modest proposal

=> ↺ Fedora Project Outage RCA :: DNS Outage 2017-09-06

• The problem was due to a misconfigured record in the registrar’s data about DNS. The previous week, multiple records had been added by the registrar to the DNS data in the .org.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian 10 “Buster” Switches GNOME Session To Wayland By Default

• For those not riding the in-development Debian “Buster” packages or the “Sid” bleeding-edge packages, the default desktop GNOME session is using Wayland by default.

• Changed back in July for Debian Sid and then during the middle of August for the Buster packaging, the gnome-session for Debian testing/Buster is defaulting to Wayland as outlined via the change-log (thanks to reader Fran for pointing it out).

=> ↺ Debian 10 development builds switch to Wayland

• Work on Debian 10 is under way already even though we won’t see it ready for mainstream consumption until 2019. One of the latest changes discovered in Debian 10 is that it drops X11 for Wayland. Debian is considered quite conservative in terms of how quickly it adopts new technologies in order to provide a stable experience and therefore will still continue to offer X11 as an alternative.

=> ↺ Reproducible Builds: Weekly report #123

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Systemd on Ubuntu 16.04 can’t (or won’t) reliably reboot your server

• On some servers, usually the busiest and most important ones, the system will just stop during the shutdown process and sit there. And sit there. And sit there. Perhaps it would eventually recover after tens of minutes, but as mentioned these are generally our busiest and most important servers, so we’re not exactly going to let them sit there to find out what happens eventually.

=> ↺ We have some questions to ask you about videos…

• Ubuntu got boring.

• And then it got even more boring.

=> ↺ Review: Ubuntu LTS 16.04.02 has a long shelf life

• Ubuntu is one of the most popular versions of Linux, with a very substantial market base, especially in the cloud.

• The server is friendly to OpenStack, making it desirable to those who want to use it in public and private cloud deployments.

=> ↺ The snapd roadmap

=> ↺ Canonical Design Team: Webteam development summary

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Jetson TX2 camera add-on features 6x HD cameras

• E-con has launched a Linux-driven camera system for the Jetson TX1 and TX2 dev kits with six 3.4MP, HD cameras that stream in uncompressed YUV422.

• Embedded vendor E-con Systems has long been known for its Linux-driven embedded camera modules and boards such as its i.MX6 based e-CAM50IMX6. Now, the company has launched an ambitious, six-camera “e-CAM30_HEXCUTX2” solution designed to work with Nvidia developer kits for the Nvidia Jetson TX1 and Jetson TX2 computer-on-modules.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi based OBD-II dongle connects your car to the cloud

• Now on Kickstarter: an “AutoPi” dongle based on a 4G- and GPS-equipped Raspberry Pi Zero W that plugs into a car’s OBD-II port to enable DIY cloud services.

• A Danish startup called AutoPi.io has gone to Kickstarter to launch a Raspberry Pi Zero W based AutoPi dongle that plugs into the same OBD-II port that automotive repair people use to run diagnostics and tap other telematics features. Automotive computers used for fleet management, such as iWave’s Linux-based Connected Car Device — OBD II, connect to the same telematics port.

=> ↺ Snapdragon 600 SBC offers an HDMI input and dual HDMI outputs for $99

• The Inforce 6420 SBC runs Android 5.1 on a Snapdragon 600, and features GbE, WiFi, BT, an HDMI input, and dual HDMI outputs for dual simultaneous displays.

=> ↺ Purism’s Librem 5 Smartphone Crosses $200k In Funding

• In two weeks now Purism has managed to raise over $200,000 USD towards their dream of building a privacy/free-software-minded smartphone running their own custom Linux-based software stack. But they remain a long ways to go from their $1.5 MM goal.

=> ↺ Anticipating Apple Strategy Shift with iPhone, with Warning From History

• There are a bunch of stories that signal the timing for an Apple shift in strategy. Some numbers from Apple tell that the ‘next iPhone’ has not materialized (iPad, Apple Watch) and the old businesses have more-or-less peaked (Mac, iPod) and now we are possibly on the verge of ‘Peak iPhone’.

Tizen

=> ↺ Take a look at Samsung’s promo video for the Tizen 3.0 based Z4

=> ↺ 3rd generation of ARTIK devices will be a training ground for Samsung’s “IoT 2020” vision

• With the Artik Cloud serving as an open cloud service Platform and the open source Tizen OS which is getting into more number of Samsung products, the “IoT 2020” vision surely seems to be on the right track.

Android

=> ↺ Android Oreo Adds Linux Kernel Requirements and New Hardening Features

• The Linux kernel continues to add security protections so developers don’t have to build them on their own. As a result, one of the first steps security experts recommend for protecting against embedded Linux malware threats is to work with the latest possible kernel release and then regularly update field devices. Now that Android is getting long in the tooth — it was nine years ago this month that Sergey Brin and Larry Page rollerbladed onto the stage to announce the debut of the flagship HTC G1 phone — more and more Android devices are being attacked due to out-of-date Linux kernels. To address the problem before it adds to Android’s substantial challenge with malware generated from rogue or unprotected apps, Google has announced new requirements in Android 8.0 (“Oreo”) to build on Linux kernels no older than kernel 4.4.

=> ↺ Huawei beat Apple for the second place in the global smartphone market

=> ↺ The smarter way to search on Android

=> ↺ The most exciting new Android phone is… an Android One?

=> ↺ 13 Critical Remote Code Execution Bugs Fixed in September Android Update

=> ↺ Tor Project Brings Security Slider Feature to Android App Orfox

=> ↺ Android 8.1 Is The Next Major Android Version, Traces Spotted In Google App v7.11 Beta

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Coinbase’s GDAX announces open source library of cryptocurrency trading tools

• San Francisco-based Coinbase has announced that its professional based exchange Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) has introduced the ‘GDAX Trading Toolkit (GTT)’ an open source library for trading digital currency across a variety of exchanges.

• The GTT provides a suite of tools for traders to design, create, and operate trading features such as automated trading bots and personal portfolio trackers.

=> ↺ The Washington Post starts using Talk, an open-source tool for improving online comments

• An open-source tool called Talk is being rolled out on The Washington Post website starting today (6 September), to help reimagine the online commenting experience for both the newsroom and readers.

• The tool is developed by The Coral Project, a joint initiative from Mozilla, Washington Post and The New York Times, initially supported by the Knight Foundation and funded by the Democracy Fund, the Rita Allen Foundation, and Mozilla.

• Talk is currently live on three sections on washingtonpost.com – business, politics and The Switch blog. Over the coming weeks, it will become more widely available on The Washington Post, and other organisations such as Fairfax Media titles in Australia will start using it.

• The tool, which launched in beta in March and is currently on its third version, can be installed by any newsroom using the available documentation, and more features are being added regularly.

=> ↺ CyberArk open-sources Conjur

• Security vendor CyberArk has released an open-source version of its Conjur secrets management software.

• CyberArk Conjur enables DevOps teams to automatically secure and manage secrets used by machines and users to protect containerised and cloud-native applications across the DevOps pipeline, company officials said.

=> ↺ Open-source stewardship key as CyberArk moves to help devs avoid another Heartbleed

• Conjur’s credential-management technology includes specific functionality for securely managing ‘secrets’ – access keys, privileged account credentials, API keys, and other sensitive information – and Lawler expects that the release of CyberArk Conjur Community Edition to the open-source community will drive a flurry of innovation that will further raise the level of open-source security overall.

=> ↺ CyberArk Launches Open Source Secrets Management Solution for DevOps

=> ↺ Eric S. Raymond: Heirloom Software: the Past as Adventure

• Through the years, I’ve spent what might seem to some people an inordinate amount of time cleaning up and preserving ancient software. My Retrocomputing Museum page archives any number of computer languages and games that might seem utterly obsolete.

• [...]

• For a work of art that was the first of its genre, ADVENT’s style seems in retrospect startlingly mature. The authors weren’t fumbling for an idiom that would later be greatly improved by later artists more sure of themselves; instead, they achieved a consistent (and, at the time, unique) style that would be closely emulated by pretty much everyone who followed them in text adventures, and not much improved on as style even though the technology of the game engines improved by leaps and bounds, and the range of subjects greatly widened.

=> ↺ Ohio Supercomputer Center Releases Open Source HPC Access Portal

• An innovative web-based portal for accessing high performance computing services has matured beyond the beta phase and now is available to HPC centers worldwide.The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) has launched Open OnDemand 1.0, an open-source version of OSC OnDemand, the Center’s online, single-point-of-entry application for HPC services.

CMS

=> ↺ ‘Open Innovation Initiative’ By Blackboard To Lure Open Source Developers

=> ↺ patent aggressor Blackboard

• With the likely goal of enticing more learning developers to adopt its platform, Blackboard has made a series of announcements and releases to make it easier to code functionality for the commercial LMS. They are wrapped into what Blackboard calls the “Open Innovation Initiative” that gives developers access to REST and LTI integrations to expand Blackboard services without upfront costs.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ CCA Leadership Award: Jeff Fagnan speaks on ‘open source philanthropy’

=> ↺ ContainerCon 2017 to Show Deepening Impact of Containers on Production Systems

=> ↺ promote it

=> ↺ Blockchain Technology Is Changing How Business Is Done

=> ↺ Reddit teams with Lucidworks to build new search framework

• Reddit revealed today that it has teamed with Lucidworks to provide a long-needed, modern search tool for the immensely popular online discussion platform.

• When you face the kind of scale that Reddit does with over 300 million monthly active users generating 5 million comments and a staggering 40 million searches every day across a more than a million communities, it’s a daunting task to find a search tool to handle that kind of volume.

Funding

=> ↺ Ready, Set, $50M ICO! TraneAi Funding Open Source AI-Training Blockchain Ecosystem

• TraneAi, an emerging player in the rapidly expanding artificial-intelligence market, announced that it will offer the sale of $50 million in tokens to seed its decentralized, open-source AI-development ecosystem built on blockchain technology.

BSD

=> ↺ LLVM 5.0.0 Release

• This release is the result of the community’s work over the past six months, including: C++17 support, co-routines, improved optimizations, new compiler warnings, many bug fixes, and more.

=> ↺ LLVM 5.0 Released With C++17 Support, Ryzen Scheduler, AMDGPU Vega & Much More

• After delays pushed its release back by about one month, LLVM 5.0 was just released a few minutes ago along with its associated sub-projects like the Clang 5.0 C/C++ compiler.

• LLVM 5.0 features a number of improvements to the ARM and MIPS targets, greater support for the POWER ISA 3.0 in the PowerPC target, the initial AMD Ryzen (znver1) scheduler support (already improved in LLVM 6.0 SVN), support for Intel Goldmont CPUs, greater AVX-512 support, improved Silvermont/Sandybridge/Jaguar schedulers, and initial Radeon Vega (GFX9) support within the AMDGPU target.

=> ↺ Android NDK r16: Developers Should Start Using LLVM’s libc++ With GCC On The Way Out

• Google has announced the availability today of the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) Release 16. This release is worth mentioning in that Google is now encouraging developers to start using libc++ as their C++ standard library.

• Moving forward, Google will only be supporting LLVM’s libc++ as the C++ standard library and not supporting other STLs. The Android platform has already been using libc++ since Lollipop and now they are looking to get more application developers using this STL.

=> ↺ Google publishes its documentation style guide for developers

• Documentation is often an afterthought — especially for open-source projects. That can make it harder for newcomers to join a project, for example, and sometimes badly written documentation is worse than having no documentation at all. To help developers write better documentation, Google this week opened up its own developer-documentation style guide.

=> ↺ Trying Out FreeBSD/TrueOS On The Xeon Scalable + Tyan GT24E-B7106 Platform

• While we have tested a number of Linux distributions on Intel’s new Xeon Scalable platform, here are some initial BSD tests using two Xeon Gold 6138 processors with the Tyan GT24E-B7106 1U barebones server.

=> ↺ FreeBSD Developers Tackle AMD Zen/Ryzen Temperature Monitoring Before Linux

• While Linux users of AMD’s new Zen-based Ryzen/Threadripper/Epyc processors are still waiting for thermal driver support to hit the mainline Linux kernel, FreeBSD developers have already managed to produce the Zen “Family 17h” CPU thermal monitoring support on their own.

• From this FreeBSD bug report, developers have managed to get the AMD CPU temperature monitoring working for Zen processors under Linux with their existing temperature driver.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ European Libraries’ Five Principles For Open Access Negotiations With Publishers

• European research libraries have issued five principles for libraries to use when holding open access negotiations with publishers, seeking to prevent over-charging and promote transparency and sustainable access.

=> ↺ Open educational resources can offer relief from high textbook prices

• Timbo X. Spartan is your typical MSU student. He goes to Economics 201 and Spanish 202 on Monday and Wednesday, and ISS 215 and Accounting 201 on Tuesday and Thursday.

• According to the Student Book Store’s current listings, the required texts for these courses would have our friend Timbo spending $100 on economics, $88 on Spanish, $160 on the ISS course and $187 on accounting. This adds up to $535 in materials for one semester.

• Of course, this is all hypothetical, but not unrealistic. Chemical engineering sophomore Megan Richardson has spent more than $400 on materials for classes this semester and isn’t finished shopping yet.

• “Last year I spent close to $300 on one chemistry textbook,” Richardson said. “This is on the higher end of what I’ve spent so far, but yeah. It’s kind of ridiculous.”

Programming/Development

=> ↺ What is your favorite open source Java IDE?

• That developers have strong opinions about the tools they use is no secret, and perhaps some of the strongest opinions come out around integrated development environments.

• When we asked our community what their favorite Python IDE is, more than 10,000 of you responded. Now, it’s time for Java developers to get their turn.

=> ↺ Qt Creator 4.4 Open-Source IDE Released with C++ and CMake Improvements, More

• The Qt Company’s Eike Ziller announced the release of the Qt Creator 4.4.0 free and open-source IDE (Integrated Development Environment) software for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.

• More than two months in the making, Qt Creator 4.4 introduces new inline annotations in the build-in editor, which could come in handy if you’re using Clang code model or bookmarks, along with the ability for the editor to display Clang errors, bookmarks errors, as well as other warnings at the end of the corresponding text line. The feature can be enabled under Options -> Text Editor -> Display.

=> ↺ C++17 Formally Approved, Just Waiting On ISO Publication

• C++17 (formerly C++1z) is ready for its debut. C++17 has been formally approved by its committee and is just waiting on ISO publishing.

• Back in March we reported on “C++17 being done” while work on C++20 is already underway. C++17 hasn’t changed since while the last major ballot has now passed with 100% approval and they are now ready to officially publish this latest C++ standard. They just need to make a few editorial comments to the standard for spelling/formatting and then send the firmed up document to the ISO for publishing.

=> ↺ Improving security through data analysis and visualizations

• My last tip is that in recent years, there have been a lot of new tools that make designing nice visualizations much easier. In fact, many really prevent you from creating the disasters that you’d find here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisugly/. If you are a Python user, you really should take a look at Seaborn, YellowBrick, and Altair as they are all really impressive libraries.

=> ↺ The DevSecOps Skills Gap

=> ↺ How I learned Go Programming

• Go is a relatively new programming language, and nothing makes a developer go crazier than a new programming language, haha! As many new tech inventions, Go was created as an experiment. The goal of its creators was to come up with a language that would resolve bad practices of others while keeping the good things. It was first released in March 2012. Since then Go has attracted many developers from all fields and disciplines.

=> ↺ Must go faster, must go faster! Oracle lobs Java EE into GitHub, vows rapid Java SE releases

• Oracle plans to accelerate the pace of Java SE releases – and has moved Java EE’s code repository to GitHub in keeping with its avowed desire to step back from managing the beast.

• Java SE has been on a two-year release cycle. That’s no longer fast enough, according to Mark Reinhold, chief architect of Oracle’s Java platform group.

• Java competes with other platforms that get updated more often, he explained.

=> ↺ GNU Tools Cauldron 2017 Kicks Off Tomorrow

• The annual GNU Tools Cauldron conference focused around the GNU compiler toolchain will kickoff tomorrow, 8 September, in Prague.

=> ↺ GnuCOBOL 2.2 Released To Let COBOL Code Live On As C

• For those of you still maintaining COBOL code-bases, GnuCOBOL 2.2 is now available as what was formerly OpenCOBOL and also the project’s first stable release in nearly one decade.

• GnuCOBOL has been living under the GNU/FSF umbrella for a few years while today’s GnuCOBOL 2.2 release is the first stable release since OpenCOBOL 1.1 back in 2009. (Since then was the GnuCOBOL 1.1 release, but just for renaming the project.)

=> ↺ GnuCOBOL 2.2 released

• Version 2.2 of the GNU COBOL compiler is out. Changes include a relicensing to GPLv3, a set of new intrinsic functions, a direct call interface for C functions, and more.

Leftovers

=> ↺ An open leader’s guide to starting digital transformation conversations

Science

=> ↺ Why Google’s AI Can Write Beautiful Songs but Still Can’t Tell a Joke

• Eck has spent about 15 years studying AI and music, and these days he’s a research scientist on the Google Brain team, leading Magenta—Google’s open-source research project that’s aimed at making art and music with machine learning.

=> ↺ We ignore what doesn’t fit with our biases – even if it costs us

• Most research on confirmation bias has focused on stereotypes that people believe to be true, says Stefano Palminteri at École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris. In such experiments, people hold on to their beliefs even when shown evidence that they are wrong. “People don’t change their minds,” says Palminteri.

Hardware

=> ↺ European court to review $1.3B fine against Intel

• The EU General Court is now slated to examine Intel’s arguments that it did not violate antitrust laws, raising the possibility for the chipmaker to avoid paying the $1.26 billion in full.

=> ↺ Intel’s $1.3 Billion Fine in Europe Requires Review, Court Says

• The move by the Court of Justice of the European Union raises the prospect that the 1.06 billion euro fine on Intel in 2009, equivalent to $1.26 billion at current exchange rates, could be reduced or scrapped entirely. The penalty — at the time the largest of its kind — was upheld by a lower court in 2014 and is likely to be the subject of legal battles for years.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Tap water from around the world contains tiny bits of plastic, survey finds

• Tiny bits of plastic commonly come rushing out of water taps around the world, according to a new survey of 159 water samples collected from more than a dozen nations.

• Overall, 83 percent of the 159 samples contained some amount of microplastics. Those samples came from various places in the US, Europe, Indonesia, Uganda, Beirut, India, and Ecuador. No country was without a plastic-positive water sample. In fact, after testing a handful of samples from each place, the lowest contamination rate was 72 percent. The highest—found in the US—was 94-percent positive rate.

=> ↺ House GOP blocks vote protecting medical marijuana states

• Several lawmakers said Wednesday that GOP leaders won’t allow the full House to vote on an amendment that bars the Justice Department from pursuing states that have legalized medical marijuana.

• Without legislation, states would lose protection they have enjoyed for the past four years, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions could begin his long-sought crackdown on the rapid expansion of legalized pot.

• At a Wednesday morning closed-door briefing of House Republicans, California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R) implored his GOP colleagues to press House leaders to allow a vote on his amendment.

• Fellow Californian Rep. Duncan Hunter told The Hill that after Rohrabacher “talked about it this morning in conference,” GOP leaders said “it splits the conference too much so we’re not going to have a vote on it.”

=> ↺ Texas Abortion Ban That Would “Require Doctors to Experiment on Women” Is Temporarily Blocked

• A federal judge in Austin issued a temporary restraining order last week blocking Texas from enforcing a new law that would in effect ban second-trimester abortions in the state.

• “The state cannot pursue its interests in a way that denies a woman her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy before the fetus is viable,” District Judge Lee Yeakel wrote in a 17-page order suspending the law just hours before it was slated to take effect on September 1.

• Texas quickly vowed that it would continue to “defend our state’s legal right to protect the basic human rights and dignity of the unborn,” a spokesperson for Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.

• At issue is an abortion method known as dilation and evacuation, or D&E, which is considered the safest and most effective method of termination during the second trimester of pregnancy. While Texas argues that it isn’t banning D&E per se, but rather the way the procedure is performed, doctors would have to completely change the procedure to comply with the new law.

=> ↺ Elizabeth Warren Jumps on Board Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All Bill

• Elizabeth Warren on Thursday announced her support for an upcoming bill from Vermont’s independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.

• Sanders said in March that he would follow through on his long-held support for single-payer insurance by introducing a bill extending Medicare-like coverage to achieve universal health care. The bill, which is still being crafted, is due to be unveiled Wednesday

• Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, shared the news with her supporters in an email that began, “I’m co-sponsoring Bernie’s Medicare-for-All bill.”

Security

=> ↺ Hackers {sic} attacking US and European energy firms could sabotage power grids

• Cybersecurity firm Symantec says ‘Dragonfly’ group has been investigating and penetrating energy facilities in US, Turkey and Switzerland

=> ↺ A Simple Design Flaw Makes It Astoundingly Easy To Hack {sic} Siri And Alexa

• [...] a team from Zhejiang University translated typical vocal commands into ultrasonic frequencies that are too high for the human ear to hear, but perfectly decipherable by the microphones and software powering our always-on voice assistants. This relatively simple translation process lets them take control of gadgets with just a few words uttered in frequencies none of us can hear.

=> ↺ The ‘internet of things’ is sending us back to the Middle Ages

• By gazing into this fish tank, we can see the problem with “internet of things” devices: We don’t really control them. And it’s not always clear who does – though often software designers and advertisers are involved.

=> ↺ ShadowBrokers return with the release of UNITEDRAKE exploit

• As noted by Joseph Cox, the September dump includes a manual for UNITEDRAKE (.PDF), modular malware which remotely targets Microsoft Windows machines.

=> ↺ ShadowBrokers accelerating NSA leaks to twice a month

• Previous exploits released from the group have caused massive damage. The global outbreaks of WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware were both based on the same Windows vulnerability released by the ShadowBrokers

=> ↺ Missed Shadow Brokers? The Group Is Back with Another NSA Exploit

=> ↺ New NSA Data Dump: ShadowBrokers Release UNITEDRAKE Malware

=> ↺ ShadowBrokers release UNITEDRAKE NSA malware

• The ShadowBrokers group of hackers has released a remote access and control tool used by the US NSA to capture information from Windows-based machines.

• The existence of the UNITEDRAKE RAT first came to light in 2014 as part of a series of classified documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

=> ↺ Shadow Brokers appear again with new exploit

• And a second, known as ETERNALROMANCE, was used to craft ransomware that was given various names — Petya (nomenclature given to ransomware that already existed), NotPetya, ExPetr, Nyetya and GoldenEye — which attacked Windows machines in Europe in June and spread to other countries.

=> ↺ Protego

• Today, September 7th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes four secret documents from the Protego project of the CIA, along with 37 related documents (proprietary hardware/software manuals from Microchip Technology Inc.). The project was maintained between 2014 and 2015.

=> ↺ Exploit goes public for severe bug affecting high-impact sites

=> ↺ ‘Critical’ Security Flaw Found in Plugin Used by Everyone From the IRS to Office Depot

=> ↺ ‘Critical’ RCE vulnerability found in open-source Struts framework

=> ↺ Boffins hijack bootloaders for fun and games on Android

• up bootloader vulnerabilities across a bunch of Android chipsets from six vendors.

• The team of nine researchers decided to look at a little-studied aspect Android architecture – the interaction between OS and chip at power-up. To get inside that operation, they built a tool dubbed “BootStomp” “designed to locate problematic areas where input from an attacker in control of the OS can compromise the bootloader’s execution, or its security features”.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Nikki Haley Falsely Accuses Iran

• The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program, is for Donald Trump one more of the Obama administration’s achievements to be trashed. It goes alongside the Affordable Care Act, the Paris climate change agreement, and other measures (most recently the “dreamers” program involving children of illegal immigrants) as targets for trashing because fulfilling campaign rhetoric is given higher priority in the current administration than whether a program is achieving its purpose, whether there are any realistic alternatives available, or what the effects of the trashing will be on the well-being of Americans and the interests and credibility of the United States.

=> ↺ Danish U-boat commander: Hatch slipped from fingers, bashed reporter’s head

• In a Copenhagen court hearing, Peter Madsen—the owner and skipper of the crowdfunded, amateur-built diesel-electric submarine UC3 Nautilus—testified that the death of Swedish reporter Kim Wall aboard the Nautilus was an accident. He also claimed that threw her body into the ocean, of which only the apparently deliberately dismembered torso was recovered, because he knew his career was over and burial at sea is a maritime tradition. He also claimed it was his intention to commit suicide by taking the sub to the depths of the Baltic Sea and sinking it.

=> ↺ Three Years After 43 Students Disappeared in Mexico, a New Visualization Reveals the Cracks in the Government’s Story

• The Mexican government’s story goes like this: On the night of September 26, 2014, roughly 100 students from Ayotzinapa, a rural teaching college, clashed with municipal police in the city of Iguala, in the southern state of Guerrero. Rocks were thrown, shots were fired, and 43 students were snatched up by the authorities and handed over to a local drug gang. The students were then driven to a garbage dump where they were murdered, burned to ash, and tossed into a river, never to be seen again. This, Mexico’s attorney general once said, was “the historical truth.”

• Horrific as it sounds, this “truth” is a hollow and misleading narrative, which has been debunked and exploded by independent inquiries. With the third anniversary of the tragedy approaching, a new project by an international team of investigators has taken the most damning of those inquiries and visualized them, offering a means of seeing the night of September 26 for what it truly was: a coordinated, lethal assault on the students involving Mexican security forces at every level, and grave violations of international law.

• The interactive platform, constructed by the research agency Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and shared with The Intercept in advance of its public release, pulls from a voluminous body of investigations into the crime. In addition to utilizing the most credible evidence available to illustrate how the night unfolded, the platform highlights inconsistencies in the government’s account of the events and tracks individual actors throughout the ordeal.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us

• What makes this so infuriating is that it shouldn’t be happening. Experts have warned for decades that global warming would increase these sorts of weather extremes and that people would suffer and die if protective measures were not implemented.

=> ↺ Natural Disasters Call for Good Governance, Not Charity

• Trump promised to donate $1 million to Harvey relief efforts—while dismantling the government we all rely on.

=> ↺ What to Know About Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia

=> ↺ Wind turbine manufacturers are dipping toes into energy storage projects

• Danish company Vestas Wind Systems is one of the biggest makers of wind turbines in the world, recently surpassing GE’s market share in the US. But as the wind industry becomes more competitive, Vestas appears to be looking for ways to solidify its lead by offering something different. Now, the company says it’s looking into building wind turbines with battery storage onsite.

• According to a Bloomberg report, Vestas is working on 10 projects that will add storage to wind installations, and Tesla is collaborating on at least one of those projects. Vestas says the cooperation between the two companies isn’t a formal partnership, and Tesla hasn’t commented on the nature of its work with Vestas. But the efforts to combine wind turbines with battery storage offer a glimpse into how the wind industry might change in the future.

=> ↺ HURRICANES And Hurricanes

• The damage will happen one way or another. Many deaths can be prevented by evacuating systematically starting today. The highways should be made one-way streets to the north. Every bus, truck or plane should be moving people north. Even northern Florida is not far enough. People should avoid the east coast all the way to the Carolinas.

• Instead, people are wasting time buying groceries and putting up plywood sheets. Half the highway lanes are being cluttered with fuel trucks bringing fuel to the south. Governments claim evacuation is not possible. They should make a plan and make it possible. Starting too late is avoidable.

=> ↺ Here’s what the world’s most accurate weather model predicts for Irma

• If you closely follow hurricane forecasting, you know that in recent years, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has the best forecast model in the world based upon skill scores. Often, the model produced by this intergovernmental organization of 34 nations generates the best forecasts for hurricane tracks. In some cases, during Hurricane Harvey, it even exceeded the skill of human forecasters at the National Hurricane Center.

Finance

=> ↺ Debt Ceiling, Explained

=> ↺ Apple Refusal to Approve India Spam App Antagonises Regulator

• Apple has put forth a long list of demands, including tax breaks and other concessions, to set up manufacturing facilities.

=> ↺ New leak of Brexit papers reveals fissures between Britain and EU

• The EU will risk heightening tensions with the UK on Brexit by publishing five combative position papers in the coming days, including one that places the onus on Britain to solve the problem of the Irish border, according to documents leaked to the Guardian.

• The Irish document shows that Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, will call on the UK to work out “solutions” that avoid the creation of a hard border and guarantee peace on the island.

• The leaks come a day after the Guardian obtained a draft memo showing the British government’s position on post-Brexit EU migration, which has been denounced as “completely confused”, “economically illiterate” and “a blueprint on how to strangle London’s economy”.

• The Ireland paper is one of five due to be published by the European commission in the coming days. Each is dated 6 September and was drawn up by Barnier’s article 50 taskforce in Brussels.

=> ↺ If we are serious about eliminating poverty, we need to re-humanise social security

• Amir is exactly the kind of person our welfare system exists to support. He suffers from a rare neurological condition which affects his movement and has left him struggling to walk. It’s one which his GP has only encountered once before in her career, “in 1986 when I was a medical student”. Amir wants to work – not least because his girlfriend Lindsey won’t move in until he’s in work. He’s awaiting a medical procedure to alleviate his symptoms and restore some movement, but his condition is degenerative – it will get worse with time. Yet following his work capability assessment, his Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) has been taken away. In an episode of Radio 4’s recent documentary series, The Untold, the producers followed Amir through the obstacle course that is the UK’s welfare system – a series of degrading hurdles which stand in the way of many would-be claimants. Part-way through, Amir attends a tribunal for Personal Independence Payments (PIPs), after failing the paper “mandatory reconsideration” for his ESA. He is so desperate that to prove he is sick he offers to show the panel his feet, which are primarily affected by his condition. This comes after he is quizzed on his ability to get in and out of the bath – something which has very little bearing on his ability to work in a factory. Amir’s case demonstrates starkly the unfairness of the UK’s welfare system. It also demonstrates the sheer number of those affected. GPs are allowed to object in writing to benefits decisions which contradict their medical judgement. But as Amir’s doctor points out, she just doesn’t have time to provide this kind of support to her patients alongside the medical advice and counselling she must provide to patients like Amir (all in a ten-minute slot). When Amir catches up with her in the documentary, he is the third of her patients to have their benefits cut that week. Instead, medical judgements are left up to outsource worker with insufficient medical training, who use “decision-making software” and a points-based system to make a work-capability assessment.

=> ↺ Merger review of Qualcomm-NXP: European Commission stops the clock AGAIN

• The website of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) indicates that the clock has been stopped for an unusual second time in the regulatory review of Qualcomm’s proposed acquisition of NXP, which went into Phase II a few months back as it raises serious concerns. In fact, the previous suspension ended on August 16, 2017 (as I mentioned in a recent post), but just the next day–August 17–the deadline was suspended again.

• Whatever the reason may be, it means that the deal still isn’t ready to be cleared.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ The lies Brits tell themselves about how they left behind a better India

• In May 2015, Shashi Tharoor, a former undersecretary general of the United Nations and a current member of India’s parliament, gave a stirring speech at a debate in the Oxford Union. He was speaking for the proposition that “Britain owes reparations to her former colonies.” The speech went viral, and Tharoor was perplexed.

=> ↺ May refuses invitation to address European parliament in public

• Theresa May has caused further ill will in Brussels by rejecting an invitation to address the European parliament in public, EU sources have said, instead insisting she will only talk to its leaders behind closed doors.

=> ↺ Nigel Farage to address far-right rally in Germany

• Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage will appear at a rally held by Germany’s far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) inside a renaissance fortress in Berlin on Friday.

• The South East England MEP will appear at the Spandau Citadel in the west of the German capital to talk about “developments in the European Union, Brexit, direct democracy” and “how to make the impossible possible”, according to AfD MEP Beatrix von Storch, who is hosting the event.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Venezuelan Citizens React Against State Censorship

• Many major news outlets have been covering the political crisis in Venezuela for quite some time, following President Nicolás Maduro’s decision to change the Venezuelan constitution through an elected constituent assembly. Many in the opposition interpret this as a power grab — an attempt to change Venezuelan law to give the president more power.

• However, the Maduro government is making it increasingly difficult for foreign news services to report in Venezuela.

• [...]

• AP reporter Hannah Dreier wrote about the decline of press freedom in Venezuela, covering the decline since Chavez.

=> ↺ Despite censorship, China has some cool bookshops

• IN AN underground railway station below the main public library in Shanghai is a spacious bookshop called Jifeng. It is one of the city’s most respected, but its days are numbered. A display inside the entrance (pictured, top) shows how many of them remain before the shop closes—147 as of September 6th. The authorities, it seems, have had enough of its open-minded selection of works and the talks it hosts on controversial topics.

=> ↺ European Union Calls For Massive Internet Censorship

• A leaked document from the European Union reveals that the EU presidency is calling for massive internet censorship and filtering. European Digital Rights (EDRi) reported on Wednesday that a Council of the European Union document leaked by Statewatch…

=> ↺ Leaked document: EU Presidency calls for massive internet filtering

• A Council of the European Union document leaked by Statewatch on 30 August reveals that during the summer months, that Estonia (current EU Presidency) has been pushing the other Member States to strengthen indiscriminate internet surveillance, and to follow in the footsteps of China regarding online censorship. Standing firmly behind its belief that filtering the uploads is the way to go [...]

=> ↺ Mandatory Piracy Filters Could Breach Human Rights, EU Members Warn

• Several EU member states are questioning whether plans to modernize copyright law in Europe are fully compatible with EU law. One of the main problems is the mandatory piracy filters Internet services could be required to use, which could violate existing case law and human rights.

=> ↺ Google fears monopoly talk spreading to US: sacked think-tank employee

• Any narrative about monopoly practices is deemed a threat by Google because it has just had to give in to the European Union on a big case, according to Barry Lynn, a former employee of the New America Foundation think-tank who lost his job recently after he criticised the search giant.

=> ↺ The anti-monopoly case against Google

• It’s important to talk about monopoly power in general because monopolies are a threat to our democracy and to our basic liberties and to our communities. Monopolization, this concentration of wealth and power, is a threat to everything that is America — everything we established America to ensure. So Open Markets is built to fight the environment of law and regulation that currently promotes unrestrained monopoly.

=> ↺ New America Chair Says Google Didn’t Prompt Critic’s Ouster

• The researcher, Barry Lynn, was director of Open Markets, which had been affiliated with New America. Lynn was told that Open Markets would be pushed out of the think tank, shortly after Lynn issued a statement praising a European antitrust ruling against Google and urging US regulators to take action against the search giant.

=> ↺ Journalist silenced: Amnesty flags concern over free speech

• “Critical journalists and activists have increasingly faced threats and attacks across India in recent years. State governments must act to protect those whose voices of dissent are being silenced,” Basu said.

=> ↺ Case Dismissed: Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai’s Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt

• As you likely know, for most of the past nine months, we’ve been dealing with a defamation lawsuit from Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email. This is a claim that we have disputed at great length and in great detail, showing how email existed long before Ayyadurai wrote his program. We pointed to the well documented public history of email, and how basically all of the components that Ayyadurai now claims credit for preceded his own work. We discussed how his arguments were, at best, misleading, such as arguing that the copyright on his program proved that he was the “inventor of email” — since patents and copyrights are very different, and just because Microsoft has a copyright on “Windows” it does not mean it “invented” the concept of a windowed graphical user interface (because it did not). As I have said, a case like this is extremely draining — especially on an emotional level — and can create massive chilling effects on free speech.

• A few hours ago, the judge ruled and we prevailed. The case has been dismissed and the judge rejected Ayyadurai’s request to file an amended complaint. We are certainly pleased with the decision and his analysis, which notes over and over again that everything that we stated was clearly protected speech, and the defamation (and other claims) had no merit. This is, clearly, a big win for the First Amendment and free speech — especially the right to call out and criticize a public figure such as Shiva Ayyadurai, who is now running for the US Senate in Massachusetts. We’re further happy to see the judge affirm that CDA Section 230 protects us from being sued over comments made on the blog, which cannot be attributed to us under the law. We talk a lot about the importance of CDA 230, in part because it protects sites like our own from these kinds of lawsuits. This is just one more reason we’re so concerned about the latest attempt in Congress to undermine CDA 230. While those supporting the bill may claim that it only targets sites like Backpage, such changes to CDA 230 could have a much bigger impact on smaller sites like our own.

=> ↺ Judge dismisses Shiva “I Invented EMAIL” Ayyadurai’s libel lawsuit against Techdirt

• A federal judge in Massachusetts has dismissed a libel lawsuit filed earlier this year against tech news website Techdirt.

• The claim was brought by Shiva Ayyadurai, who has controversially claimed that he invented e-mail in the late 1970s. Techdirt (and its founder and CEO, Mike Masnick) has been a longtime critic of Ayyadurai and institutions that have bought into his claims. “How The Guy Who Didn’t Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email,” reads one Techdirt headline from 2012.

• One of Techdirt’s commenters dubbed Ayyadurai a “liar” and a “charlatan,” which partially fueled Ayyadurai’s January 2017 libel lawsuit.

• In the Wednesday ruling, US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor found that because it is impossible to define precisely and specifically what e-mail is, Ayyadurai’s “claim is incapable of being proved true or false.”

• The judge continued: “One person may consider a claim to be ‘fake’ if any element of it is not true or if it involves a slight twisting of the facts, while another person may only consider a claim to be ‘fake’ only if no element of it is true.”

=> ↺ The far-right’s favorite social network is facing its own censorship controversy

• Social network Gab.ai, known as an anything-goes haven for the far-right, is seeing blowback from the past month’s online white supremacist crackdown. CEO Andrew Torba writes that last week, domain registrar AsiaRegistry told Gab to take down a post by the founder of neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer. Torba complied, but in the process, he set off a debate over the platform’s “free speech” bona fides — and the state of moderating online hate speech.

=> ↺ Stop SESTA: Congress Doesn’t Understand How Section 230 Works

=> ↺ Stop SESTA: Section 230 is Not Broken

• EFF opposes the Senate’s Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (S. 1693) (“SESTA”), and its House counterpart the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (H.R. 1865), because they would open up liability for Internet intermediaries—the ISPs, web hosting companies, websites, and social media platforms that enable users to share and access content online—by amending Section 230’s immunity for user-generated content (47 U.S.C. § 230). While both bills have the laudable goal of curbing sex trafficking, including of minor children, they would greatly weaken Section 230’s protections for online free speech and innovation.

• Proponents of SESTA and its House counterpart view Section 230 as a broken law that prevents victims of sex trafficking from seeking justice. But Section 230 is not broken. First, existing federal criminal law allows federal prosecutors to go after bad online platforms, like Backpage.com, that knowingly play a role in sex trafficking. Second, courts have allowed civil claims against online platforms—despite Section 230’s immunity—when a platform had a direct hand in creating the illegal user-generated content.

• Thus, before Congress fundamentally changes Section 230, lawmakers should ask whether these bills are necessary to begin with.

=> ↺ Defend Our Online Communities: Stop SESTA

• A new bill is working its way through Congress that could be disastrous for free speech online. EFF is proud to be part of the coalition fighting back.

• We all rely on online platforms to work, socialize, and learn. They’re where we go to make friends and share ideas with each other. But a bill in Congress could threaten these crucial online gathering places. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) might sound virtuous, but it’s the wrong solution to a serious problem.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation, R Street Institute, and over a dozen fellow public interest organizations are joining forces to launch a new website highlighting the problems of SESTA. Together, we’re trying to send a clear message to Congress: Don’t endanger our online communities. Stop SESTA.

=> ↺ Canadian students must stand up to censorship

=> ↺ Zodwa ban – Too much censorship emerging in Zimbabwe

• The Aeneas Chigwedere-led Board of Censors has unleashed controversy by banning South African socialite Zodwa Wabantu from performing at the Harare International Carnival.

• Apparently, the board -whose vision is to be the best providers of moral guidance and advisers to the public on entertainment matters in Zimbabwe as provided for in the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act (Chapter 10:04) – banned Zodwa ostensibly because she wanted to take part in the carnival without wearing underwear, her trademark.

=> ↺ ​Why many Russians have gladly agreed to online censorship

• The Russian government has persuaded many of its citizens to avoid websites and social media platforms that are critical of the government, a new study has found.

• Researchers analyzing a survey of Russian citizens found that those who relied more on Russian national television news perceived the internet as a greater threat to their country than did others. This in turn led to increased support for online political censorship.

• Approval of the government of President Vladimir Putin amplified the impact of those threat perceptions on support for censorship, according to the study.

=> ↺ Former Soviet republic goes to court in bid to ‘export censorship’ beyond its borders

=> ↺ California passes bill to protect scientific data from federal censorship

• Soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a page on climate change vanished from the White House website, sending a chill through the scientific community.

• Within weeks, state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, proposed a bill to protect whistleblowers and safeguard data collected by scientists, many of whom are worried that their research might be censored, rewritten or even destroyed for political reasons by those who have questioned the scientific consensus on climate change.

=> ↺ Our Opinion: Confederate flag censorship teaches the wrong lessons

• A controversial symbol that can stand for Southern pride as well as racial prejudice has been banned from three North Carolina public school districts.

• Durham Public Schools became the latest district to censor the Confederate battle flag on students’ clothing and accessories, following the Orange County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school systems’ lead.

=> ↺ Editorial: Too many Virginians want a safe space for censorship

• Lost in the Labor Day weekend news about North Korea and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was a dismaying new poll released by VCU. It showed how much the campaign against fundamental liberties has made inroads among the general public.

• Conducted by the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, the poll shows that half of Virginians think colleges and universities should place more emphasis on protecting people from discrimination, even if that infringes on the right to free expression. Only 40 percent thought colleges and universities should guarantee freedom of expression even if that means some groups face discrimination.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Another Client Loses Privilege Because Employer Policies Allowed Monitoring

• I’ve written about this a few times but, sadly, no one listens to me!

• Here’s the fact pattern: your client is emailing you from their work email account, or your client is using a computer that its employer owns. (Your client is not the employer, but an individual.) Whether your client is in litigation with its employer — or someone else! — if the employer has policies in place and in use that allow it to monitor employee email or the computer itself, there likely is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those emails or in the files on the computer and, if so, no privilege.

=> ↺ The Privacy Countdown is On: California’s Legislature Has Days to Decide to Protect Your Personal Data from Big Telecom

• California lawmakers have until Sept. 15 to decide whose side they’re on: broadband consumers like you or giant cable and telephone companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.

• The matter at hand: A.B. 375, legislation from Assemblymember Ed Chau that would restore many of the privacy protections that Congress stripped earlier this year, despite roaring opposition from their constituencies. The bill would require broadband providers to obtain your permission before selling your data, like the websites you visit.

• All things being equal, this should be a no-brainer for the Democratic-controlled California legislature. In Congress, the repeal was opposed unanimously by Democrats, who were joined by 15 Republicans. So what gives?

• That is not to say that Republican legislators would benefit from opposing the bill, because 75 percent of Republican voters believed the President should have vetoed the bill.

=> ↺ [Older] Trump Quietly Nominates Mass Surveillance Advocate To “Protect” Your Privacy Rights

• Amid this lack of attention toward the NSA, the president recently nominated a staunch advocate of mass surveillance to chair one of the few barriers standing between intrusive government spying and the American people’s privacy. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) was created in 2004 at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and was intended “to help the executive branch balance national security priorities with individual rights,” the Intercept reported earlier this year.

=> ↺ Privacy International: 21 EU countries are unlawfully retaining personal data

• Further to this, none of those states are in compliance with human rights standards as applied to their own legislation on data retention.

• The countries affected are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

=> ↺ Facebook digital ads figures differ from census data: analyst

=> ↺ Facebook sold 2016 election-related ads to “shadowy Russian company”

• This information was disclosed to congressional investigators, according to “several people familiar with the company’s findings,” after an internal Facebook investigation this spring linked $100,000 of ad buys to a Russian company known as the Internet Research Agency. The WP’s sources described the company as a pro-Kremlin “troll farm.” Facebook’s investigation confirmed, via “digital footprints,” that 3,300 ads from 470 “suspicious and likely fraudulent Facebook accounts and pages” were all linked to the same Russian company.

=> ↺ Facebook says it sold political ads to fake Russian accounts

• Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, made the revelation in a blog post Wednesday. Stamos said that 470 inauthentic accounts spent about $100,000 to buy roughly 3,000 ads. He added that the accounts have since been suspended.

=> ↺ No one is using Facebook stories, so Facebook is borrowing Instagram’s

• Facebook has apparently found a new approach to giving its Stories feature a much-needed shot in the arm: soon you’ll be able to just double-post your Instagram stories to Facebook directly from the Instagram app.

=> ↺ Facebook is testing a way for you to share your Instagram Stories directly to Facebook

• Under the test, Instagram users see a new option to share photos and videos created with Instagram’s in-app camera to their Facebook Story, as well as their Instagram Story, according to screenshots posted to Twitter.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ She laughed at Jeff Sessions — and now the feds are pursuing their 2nd trial against her

• Federal prosecutors could have decided to drop the case then and there. But they persisted — and now plan to continue prosecuting Fairooz after she rejected a plea deal {sic} that would have involved time served.

=> ↺ How Right-Wing Extremists Stalk, Dox, and Harass Their Enemies

• Chat logs obtained from message boards used by neo-Nazis and other far-right groups show a concerted effort to compile private information on leftist enemies and circulate the data to encourage harassment or violence.

• The messages were obtained by an anonymous source, who infiltrated and gained the trust of white nationalists and other right wingers and has been leaking the material to Unicorn Riot, a “decentralized media collective” that emerged from leftist protest movements.

• The chat logs originate from various web discussion communities hosted by the provider Discord and closed to the public. The communities, which have names like “Vibrant Diversity,” “Ethnoserver,” “Safe Space 3,” “4th Reich,” and “Charlottesville 2.0,” range from having 36 users to 1,269 users. The most active, with nearly a quarter million messages over seven months, is “Vibrant Diversity,” a neo-Nazi community forum that includes a channel called “#oven,” where users share racist memes. The 4th Reich server, the second most active, has 130,000 messages over the course of four months, and includes a channel called “#rare_hitlers,” where users share propaganda posters and other glorified media from Nazi Germany. The “Charlottesville 2.0” server, which contains 35,000 messages, is where the Unite the Right hate rally in Charlottesville was organized.

• This article is based solely on chat logs from a community called “Pony Power” (Unicorn Riot published the logs yesterday). The Pony Power server has 50 users, and the chat logs contain just over one thousand messages, posted over the course of 10 days and ranging in topic from far-right politics to advice about digital and operational security to debates about the legal limits of online behavior. The primary activity on the Pony Power server is posting private information like names, photos, home addresses, and phone numbers of dozens of anti-fascist activists.

=> ↺ Growing Fears in Immigrant Communities

• Federal and state initiatives targeting undocumented immigrants have spread alarm through Latino communities as people face ethnic profiling, and some in Houston even feared seeking refuge from Hurricane Harvey because of the possibility they would run afoul of law enforcement.

• “Texas is ground zero for the fight against Trump-inspired, white nationalist legislation,” said Salvador Sarmiento, National Campaign Coordinator for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), which represents thousands of day laborers across the country. Sarmiento has also been leading the fight against recently passed anti-immigrant legislation in Texas known as SB 4.

• I spoke to him in Dallas on August 30 about the dangers that SB 4 presents for undocumented people in Texas and about the implications for hundreds of thousands of so-called “Dreamers” and their families as President Trump moves to rescind President Obama’s directive allowing them to stay in the U.S., known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

=> ↺ Socialist Forced Off Democratic Campaign for Criticism of Israel

• Chicago Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a young populist politician who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), has been forced off a gubernatorial ticket that he only recently joined, after coming under fire for his ties to DSA and the group’s support of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement (BDS).

• Ramirez-Rosa joined Democratic state senator Daniel Biss’s gubernatorial ticket in late August — setting up Biss’s campaign as the unapologetic left edge of a Democratic primary in a field that includes a billionaire and a member of the Kennedy family.

• Ramirez-Rosa came under fire this week from a prominent member of his state party, but not for his support for democratic socialism.

• Illinois Democratic Congressman Brad Schneider penned a Facebook post on September 3 citing the alderman’s views on Israel and particularly his “affiliation with a group that is an outspoken supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel” — namely, DSA — as a cause for concern. He wrote that he had spoken to both Biss and Ramirez-Rosa and decided to withdraw his endorsement of the campaign.

=> ↺ Judge won’t release man jailed 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives

• A man jailed for two years for refusing to decrypt his hard drives must remain confined while he appeals his contempt-of-court order to the US Supreme Court, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

=> ↺ Military Appeals Court Says Demands To Unlock Phones May Violate The Fifth Amendment

• A decision [PDF] handed down by the Appeals Court presiding over military cases that almost affirms Fifth Amendment protections against being forced unlock devices and/or hand over passwords. Almost. The CAAF (Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces) doesn’t quite connect the final dot, but does at least discuss the issue, rather than dismiss the Fifth Amendment question out of hand. (h/t FourthAmendment.com]

• The case stems from a harassment case against a soldier who violated (apparently repeatedly) a no-contact order separating him from his wife. After being taken into custody, Sgt. Edward Mitchell demanded to speak to a lawyer. Rather than provide him with a lawyer, investigators asked him to unlock his phone instead.

=> ↺ The Politics of the DREAM Act Seem Pretty Easy, But Some Democrats Are Still Screwing It Up

• If Senate Democrats were united in 2010, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children would already be on the path to citizenship. A vote on the DREAM Act held after the disastrous midterm elections got three Republican votes, enough to break a filibuster at the time if Democrats held firm. But six Democratic defections — five no votes and one abstention — sunk the bill, leading then-President Barack Obama to eventually establish the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, to protect the “Dreamers.”

• Jon Tester, D-Mont., is one of two senators still in office who opposed the proposal seven years ago. Back then he faced enormous criticism from the left for calling a path to citizenship for those who had no choice in coming to the U.S. “amnesty.”

• On Tuesday, Tester criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel DACA six months from now. “I don’t support what the president did,” Tester told reporters. “I think it’s ill-informed, I think it rips families apart, and it’s not what this country stands for.”

• But, a reporter from The Intercept asked, would Tester commit to voting for the DREAM Act, which he voted against in 2010? “I support comprehensive immigration reform,” he said.

• Tester’s reaction (he said approximately the same thing in a prepared statement) is clearly well ahead of where he was in 2010. But where he lands on solving the problem — wedding relief for DACA recipients to an overall plan to “secure our borders” and “crack down on folks illegally entering our country” — is where the prospects for a reversal of the DACA reversal may break down in Congress.

=> ↺ Brexit: a ‘not welcome’ sign for forced migrants

• Forced migrants are turning away from the UK for fear of racial discrimination post-Brexit. While some on the right may cheer, is this really something to celebrate?

=> ↺ What Country is This?

• Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—are being choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, shoot, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

• Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans are being forced to accept that we have no control over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

• [...]

• What country is this indeed?

• Unfortunately, forced blood draws are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the indignities and abuses being heaped on Americans in the so-called name of “national security.”

• Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies and forced roadside strip searches are also becoming par for the course in an age in which police are taught to have no respect for the citizenry’s bodily integrity whether or not a person has done anything wrong.

• For example, 21-year-old Charnesia Corley was allegedly being pulled over by Texas police in 2015 for “rolling” through a stop sign. Claiming they smelled marijuana, police handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of the police cruiser, and then searched her car for almost an hour. No drugs were found in the car.

=> ↺ Breaking Down the Assault on Antifa

• Of late, violence has made headlines in the U.S. corporate media by serving to discredit the work of anti-fascist activists and distract from the actual threats of fascism and white supremacy. One would think that the very expression “anti-fascism” would immediately convoke pledges of allegiance in a country whose nationalist narratives include the story of its own rise to power as the global hegemon through the militant defeat of fascism in WWII. Regardless of whether or not we sanction its veracity, the story of the violent fight against fascism—not with kicks and punches, but with bombers, tanks, heavy artillery and nuclear bombs—is, indeed, one of the founding narratives of contemporary America.

=> ↺ Richard Spencer’s Racist Group Has a New Leader

• The infamous white nationalist Richard Spencer occupied his fair share of the spotlight at the “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month. As the far-right rally turned deadly — with 19 injured and 32-year-old Heather Heyer killed when a man rammed a crowd of counterprotesters — Spencer appeared shirtless on a livestream talking about how he was pepper-sprayed. Later, he held a brief press conference. As usual, Spencer had foisted himself into the center of attention.

• Quietly attending the rally alongside Spencer, however, was the new executive director of the right-wing leader’s nonprofit, the National Policy Institute. Evan McLaren had seemingly come out of nowhere: a far-right figure of little note, with little more than a history of online postings that espoused his white nationalist beliefs and a trail of older postings revealing the path that brought him to his worldview. In Charlottesville, McLaren didn’t attract the same attention as Spencer, but he was there nonetheless, taunting journalists on social media before the event kicked off, and tweeting out slogans of white pride after its bloody conclusion.

=> ↺ Multiple Legislators Looking To Neutralize AG Sessions’ Rollback Of Federal Forfeiture Reforms

• Jolly new Attorney General Jeff Sessions can’t wait to put the screws to all those Americans who didn’t have the sense to seek employment as law enforcement officers. Sessions wants harsher drug sentencing, less oversight, and the revival of programs abandoned in the 80s and 90s after they proved to have zero effect on rising crime rates.

• Sessions, with the support of the Trump Administration, is rolling back the last administration’s minor reforms to the 1033 program, which allowed local law enforcement agencies to obtain MRAPs, assault rifles, grenade launchers… whatever it took to defend the annual Mule Day Parade from terrorist attacks. Fun fact: these same items are apparently crucial components of flood rescue efforts in Houston, TX. [Cue shooting star and the words "The More You Know," soon to be riddled with bullet holes for startling MRAP-riding 1033 recipients with their sudden appearance…]

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ IPv10 Draft Specification Published

• It has been about one year since last hearing anything about the Internet Protocol v10 (IPv10) proposal while this week it’s now available in draft form.

DRM

=> ↺ How DRM and EULAs make us into “digital serfs”

• Washington and Lee law professor Joshua Fairfield is the author of a recent book called Owned: Property, Privacy, and the New Digital Serfdom, which takes up the argument that DRM and license agreements mean that we have no real property rights anymore, just a kind of feudal tenancy in which distant aristocrats (corporations) dictate how we may and may not use the things we “buy,” backed by the power of the state to fine or jail us if we fail to arrange our affairs to the company’s shareholders.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Federal Circuit: Even the Best Secondary Indicia Cannot Overcome this Prima Facie case of Obviousness

• In a split opinion, the Federal Circuit has affirmed summary judgment of obviousness in Intercontinenntal Great Brands (Kraft) v. Kellogg (Fed. Cir. 2017). Writing in dissent, Judge Reyna argued that the majority improperly applied a shortcut “prima facie obviousness test” without allowing for a full consideration of the patentee’s objective indicia of non-obviousness that the district court found both substantial and compelling.

Copyrights

=> ↺ European Union states question copyright law proposal

• Six European countries have publicly questioned whether a proposed new law that would require automatic upload filtering is actually legal.

• Article 13 of the controversial European Union (EU) copyright reform, which has been lumbering on for years, includes a rule to force any website that allows users to upload content to implement filtering mechanisms to detect if it is copyrighted.

=> ↺ Sci-Hub: ‘The Pirate Bay of science’ faces fines and a shut down

• Sci-Hub offers access to 62 million academic documents according to Wikipedia, and grabs them directly from the source before what is seen as illegally sharing them.

=> ↺ America’s crappiest patent judge hands down epically terrible copyright ruling

• Before leaving the show, Rothman used her phone to capture a nine-second video from the show’s archives, to use as evidence in a lawsuit alleging emotional distress and false imprisonment.

• Dr Phil’s company retaliated by registering a copyright in the nine-second clip and then sued her for infringement for having made her evidentiary video.

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