This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2018/02/27/linux-4-16-rc3/.

● 02.27.18

● Links 27/2/2018: Linux 4.16 RC3, Wayland 1.15 Alpha, Mesa 17.3.6

Posted in News Roundup at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ ‘Getting to Done’ on the Linux command line

• There is a lot of talk about getting things done at the command line. How many articles are there about using obscure flags with ls, nifty regular expressions with Sed and Awk, and how to parse out lots of text with Perl? That isn’t what this is about.

• This is about Getting to Done, making sure that the stuff we have to do actually gets tracked and done using tools that don’t require a graphical desktop, a web browser, or an internet connection. To do this, we’ll look at four ways of tracking your to-do list: plaintext files, Todo.txt, TaskWarrior, and Org-mode.

Desktop

=> ↺ Chrome OS to support running Linux software in virtual machines

• The idea of a fusion of Android and Chrome OS might not be totally dead but is, instead, taking on a different form. And that form comes in Chrome OS’ ability to run almost any kind of software from any OS, officially or otherwise. A recently spotted change to the Chromium source seems to imply that, in just a few months, Chromebooks might officially support running Linux software, considerably expanding the number of possible uses these “cloud” machines can have.

=> ↺ Google Plans to Add Support for Containerized Linux Apps to Chromebooks

• Google is apparently working on Project Crostini for Chrome OS to allow Linux VMs on Chrome OS, according to a Reddit thread, which points to a recent Chromium commit explaining a new device policy designed will allow Linux virtual machines to run on Chrome OS if it’s set to true.

• “If the policy is unset or set to true, running Linux VMs on Chrome OS is allowed. The unset is allowed means non-managed devices are allowed. At this time, in order for Linux VMs to run, the Finch experiment also needs to be enabled. After this feature is fully launched, the Finch control logic will be removed,” reads the commit.

=> ↺ Chrome OS could be getting containers for running Linux VMs

=> ↺ ​Chrome OS could be getting containers for running Linux VMs

=> ↺ Google Developing Linux Virtual Machine Support In Chrome OS

=> ↺ Why containers could finally bring Linux apps to Chrome OS

=> ↺ Google code commits point to Linux-on-Chrome OS plans

=> ↺ Soon You’ll Be Able To Run Linux Apps In VM On Chrome OS

=> ↺ Chromebooks may get native support for (some) Linux apps via Crostini

=> ↺ Crostini: A First Look At The New Linux Terminal For Chrome OS

• This past weekend, we discovered the Crostini Project which appears to bring Linux terminal to Chrome OS in a native environment that cicumvents the current method that requires Developer mode and sacrifices the security of your Chromebook.

=> ↺ Linux Virtual Machines vs Linux Live Images

• I’ll be the first to admit that I tend to try out new Linux distros on a far too frequent basis. Yet the method I use to test them, does vary depending on my goals for each instance. In this article, we’re going to look at both running Linux virtual machines and running Linux live images. There are advantages to each method, but there are some hurdles with each method as well.

=> ↺ Chromebooks could soon run Linux applications and VMs using containers

• With Linux being at the core of Chrome OS, it perhaps seems surprising that there’s no easy way to run Linux distros or applications on Chromebooks. Yes, there’s a Crouton script that can help you to achieve this, but it’s far from ideal as it massively lowers system security. All this could be about to change, however.

=> ↺ Chrome OS to support running Linux software in virtual machines

• Google could be set to make its Chrome OS a much more potent threat to Microsoft if a new commit in the Chromium source is any guide. A developer project known as Crostini shows signs of Google officially introducing support for Linux virtual machines on Chrome OS.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ EzeeLinux Show 18.10 | XBT 2 2, Ubuntu Wants Info and I Don’t Do Windows!

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 4.16-rc3

• We’re on the normal schedule for 4.16 and everything still looks very regular.

• rc3 is larger than rc2 was, but as mentioned last week, that’s expected – rc2 really was tiny. People have started finding things to fix, but there’s nothing that really stands out as particularly scary here.

• “Small changes all over” is the word.

• About half the changes are drivers (networking, rdma, scsi, usb, gpu), with half of the remainder being core networking (most of it netfilter, but it’s all over). The remaining 25% of the patch is “misc” – arch fixes, core kernel and vm, security subsystem, and tooling being the main stuff.

• The appended shortlog gives an overview of the details for interested parties.

=> ↺ Linux 4.16-rc3 Released With “Small Changes All Over”

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Ribbon Communications Joins The Linux Foundation as Silver Member

• Ribbon Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: RBBN), a global leader in secure and intelligent cloud communications, today announced that it has joined The Linux Foundation and the Linux Foundation Networking Fund (LFN) as a Silver Member. The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ AMDGPU DC Gets HDMI Fixes, More Raven/DCN Patches

• DC patch wrangler Harry Wentland of AMD has sent out the 33 latest patches for the AMDGPU display code stack.

• This latest public update to the DC code includes fixes for HDMI 4K displays at 60Hz for some GPUs as well as fixing an HDMI info-frame problem. This batch of updates also increases the LUT size to 4096, there are an umber of multi-plane fixes for Chrome, a null pointer came up when trying to wake up a screen, and “bunch of other DCN patches.”

=> ↺ wayland 1.14.91

=> ↺ Wayland 1.15 Alpha Released, Pulls In Libwayland-EGL

• Derek Foreman of Samsung’s Open-Source Group has announced the alpha release of Wayland 1.15.

=> ↺ Weston 4.0 Alpha Brings Atomic Mode-Setting, New Protocol Support

• Shortly after announcing the Wayland 1.15 Alpha release on Monday, Samsung’s Derek Foreman did the adjoining alpha release of the Weston 4.0 reference compositor.

=> ↺ Samsung Proposes Session Management Protocol For Wayland

• Samsung OSG developer Mike Blumenkrantz is proposing a new Wayland protocol for dealing with session management behavior.

=> ↺ GSoC 2018 Could Bring Better Video Decode, Nouveau Vulkan, Wayland Improvements

• The X.Org Foundation is calling on student developers to consider applying for this year’s Google Summer of Code where you could be working on exciting projects for Nouveau, Mesa, Wayland, and more while gaining valuable work experience and earning a nice stipend.

• GSoC is a wonderful way to find a career in Linux/open-source developer and particularly with the X.Org-related projects, former GSoC students have a great track record of landing a related job from the big companies investing in Linux graphics drivers.

=> ↺ Mesa 17.3.6 Released To Fix Intel GPU Hangs

• It’s been just one week since the Mesa 17.3.5 debut while today it’s been succeeded by v17.3.6 as what’s being advertised as an emergency release.

• Mesa 17.3.6 solely contains i965 OpenGL driver changes for addressing GPU lockups that came in during the Mesa 17.3 development cycle. A handful of changes are needed for addressing these Intel GPU driver bugs that have been present the past few months.

=> ↺ Freedreno Is Looking Forward To Mesa SPIR-V/OpenCL Too

• There has been some interesting open-source GPU compute happenings in the works this year including SPIR-V support for Gallium3D Clover and Nouveau NIR support along with associated Mesa changes. Rob Clark of Red Hat and lead developer on the Freedreno driver has also jumped on board these recent Mesa compute initiatives.

• Rob Clark posted some patches this weekend pertaining to the recent Mesa OpenCL compute efforts. Curious if he had plans for OpenCL with the Freedreno driver, the reverse-engineered open-source driver stack for Qualcomm Adreno hardware, I fired off an email for more details.

Applications

=> ↺ AtCore update 2/18

=> ↺ Tidal CLI Client – Stream Tidal Music From Linux Command Line

• Tidal CLI Client is an open-source command line-based music streaming app with which Tidal users can search for and play music on their Linux PCs. Users can search for tracks either by track or artist name and add tracks to queues.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Zenkit Brings Its Project Management App To Windows, MacOS And Yes, Linux Desktops

• The Linux thing is an interesting twist for Zekit. Often we see mobile or web-based apps transition to stand-alone desktop application on Windows or Mac operating systems, but Linux is usually left out in the cold

=> ↺ Green Hills Software Delivers The Most Advanced Compilers for Critical Embedded Software

=> ↺ REDMINT NETWORK Launches Loud ML Deep Learning API for Linux in the US in Partnership with InfluxData

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Prioritize BuildRequires from Copr

=> ↺ On generating kickstart passwords

=> ↺ Working with git branches was the best decision I made

=> ↺ Install Grub Customizer on Ubuntu

=> ↺ How to install Popcorn Time movie player on Debian 9 Stretch Linux

=> ↺ Dual Boot Windows with Linux on your PC – A Basic Guide

=> ↺ Comparing Elasticsearch with Solr

=> ↺ Installation of Lemur Certificate Manager on Ubuntu

=> ↺ How to install the latest NVIDIA drivers on Debian 9 Stretch Linux

=> ↺ How compilers work: Meticulous Transformer

=> ↺ Automated provisioning in Kubernetes

=> ↺ How to block local spoofed addresses using the Linux firewall

=> ↺ How to setup web server in AWS vlog

=> ↺ How to Use a Chromecast as a Quick Information Dashboard

=> ↺ Mytop – A Useful Tool for Monitoring MySQL/MariaDB Performance in Linux

=> ↺ Whisking Functions with Promises

=> ↺ How to Use WSL Like a Linux Pro

=> ↺ Deploying Ubuntu OpenStack to ARM64 servers

=> ↺ How to Install Eclipse Oxygen IDE in Debian and Ubuntu

=> ↺ Qubes Desktop Tips

=> ↺ Simple Guide to install OpenVPN on CentOS, Ubuntu (& their derivatives)

=> ↺ Convolutional Autoencoder as TensorFlow estimator

=> ↺ hauhan: Decoupling GStreamer Pipelines

=> ↺ Linux who Command Tutorial for Beginners (8 Examples)

=> ↺ Kubuntu 17.10 Guide for Newbie Part 8

=> ↺ The Longest Debugging—The journey towards a reliable Linux workstation

Games

=> ↺ The 80′s inspired action-adventure Crossing Souls is out, it’s pretty good

• Crossing Souls [GOG, Steam], from Fourattic and Devolver Digital is an action-adventure love letter to the 80′s and it’s pretty good overall. I did some impressions of the demo previously, where I actually came off pretty impressed and wanting more.

=> ↺ Albion Online ‘Lancelot’ update to land March 12th with Fishing, Roaming Mobs & more

• Albion Online [Official Site] is set to expand again with the ‘Lancelot’ update that has been announced for release on March 12th.

=> ↺ The developer of ‘Rise to Ruins’ has shared some Linux sales and players data

• While obviously small, the numbers are in-line with what we’ve seen a few times, it’s also much higher than the currently reported Linux market share on the Steam Hardware Survey. This is a similar situation as seen with games like Maia, Helium Rain and Deep Sixed in regards to a higher share of Linux sales than developers might have expected.

• [...]

• …developer also shared the percentages per-platform of actual players who loaded it up during December, where Linux accounted for approximately 5.12%.

=> ↺ Godot Engine to work on Vulkan support

• Speaking on their official blog, Godot Engine [Official Site] developer Juan Linietsky writes about how the open source game engine will be getting Vulkan API support.

=> ↺ Moving to Vulkan (and ES 2.0) instead of OpenGL ES 3.0

• Edit: Changed post title for clarity (previously Abandoning OpenGL ES 3.0 for Vulkan (and ES 2.0)). We are not abandoning the current OpenGL ES 3.0 backend right now: as outlined in the post, we will start working on a Vulkan backend, which will eventually coexist with the OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0 backends – and eventually we might deprecate the OpenGL ES 3.0 backend if Vulkan cuts it.

=> ↺ Godot To Focus On Vulkan Over OpenGL ES 3.0 Now That There’s Mac Support

• The Godot Game Engine is one of the few projects already announcing a change in their plans following this morning’s announcement of better and open-source Vulkan support on macOS/iOS.

• The Godot engine had been focusing on its OpenGL ES 3.0 renderer as the single code-base for supporting all of their major platform targets. But with OpenGL ES 3.0 not working perfectly everywhere (particularly on some mobile devices) and poor WebGL 2 adoption along with driver issues in some cases, it hasn’t worked out as they would have liked. But now they are interested in having Vulkan replace this OpenGL ES 3.0 renderer.

=> ↺ Feudal Alloy, a metroidvania action-RPG with robots controlled by fish will support Linux

• That’s a title I didn’t think I would ever write! Robots controlled by fish is certainly an amusing idea and it’s coming with the metroidvania action-RPG ‘Feudal Alloy’ [Steam, Official Site] later this year.

=> ↺ Attrition: Tactical Fronts, a quick play, turn-based strategy game for 1-2 players added Linux support

• Here’s one that didn’t seen to get any attention, Attrition: Tactical Fronts [itch.io, Steam, Official Site] a quick play, turn-based strategy game for 1-2 players added Linux support back in December.

=> ↺ The developer of Solstice Chronicles: MIA is continuing to work on a Linux port

• Solstice Chronicles: MIA [Steam] might still be a few months away, but the developer has confirmed they’re continuing to bring it to Linux.

=> ↺ BYTEPATH is an arcade shooter with a huge skill tree, retro visuals and it’s insane

• It might not seem like much on the surface, but boiling below is actually a rather good arcade shooter full of character. There’s quite a lot of customisation on offer through different classes, different ships, a big skill tree and so on.

=> ↺ Vulkan can now run on Mac as MoltenVK is now open source

• Not exactly Linux news, but still interesting since Vulkan is what will likely power many Linux games in future and having Vulkan on Mac could result in easier ports to Linux. The Khronos Group has worked with Valve, LunarG, and The Brenwill Workshop to make this happen.

• Announced today by The Khronos Group, the MoltenVK project is now officially open source under the Apache License 2.0 and you can find it on GitHub right now. There’s no fees or royalties involved, so any game developer can use it without any hassle—which is really great.

=> ↺ Vulkan Is Now Available On macOS/iOS By MoltenVK Being Open-Sourced, Vulkan SDK for Mac

• Two years and a few days since the Vulkan 1.0 release is now marked by a new significant milestone for this cross-platform graphics/compute API… It’s not a new Vulkan release today, but Vulkan is now available on Apple’s iOS and macOS platforms! Here are the details with the embargo just expiring on Vulkan now on macOS/iOS but still without the official support from Apple.

=> ↺ Vulkan is coming to macOS and iOS, but no thanks to Apple

=> ↺ Vulkan graphics will enable faster games and apps on Apple platforms

=> ↺ Bringing Vulkan to Apple’s Platforms: Khronos Group Announces Open Source MoltenVK 1.0 & SDKs

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ IU not UI – Want a great desktop? Use the brain.

• The desktop works. It’s a given. Plasma works, too. No argument there. But that does mean we’ve peaked, or even come remotely close to nailing the desktop formula. It is true that a lot of things we do today have become a habit, which is why people rarely look at the norms and wonder if they might be silly or inefficient. They just are. But Plasma is a growing, evolving, and it has the power – and chance – to break through the stagnation. It won’t be trivial or fast. But it’s possible.

• The main reason why Plasma can do this – it has the most advanced desktop ecosystem in the Linux world, and it’s probing into the waters of mobile usage. It could become the superior, superlative face of the desktop, so that one day, when the technology and human needs finally meet, i.e. the Linux desktop will have the applications that the majority of people need, it will not fail due to a classic mistake of neglecting the convoluted randomness of computer usage. Linux never had to face this problem due to its small share. But that day may yet come. You don’t want to be the guy telling your grandma to chroot her mail, now do you?

=> ↺ Qt Visual Studio Tools 2.2.0 Released

=> ↺ Outta the way, KDE4

• KDE4 has been rudely moved aside on FreeBSD. It still installs (use x11/kde4) and should update without a problem, but this is another step towards adding modern KDE (Plasma 5 and Applications) to the official FreeBSD Ports tree.

• This has taken a long time mostly for administrative reasons, getting all the bits lined up so that people sticking with KDE4 (which, right now, would be everyone using KDE from official ports and packages on FreeBSD) don’t end up with a broken desktop. We don’t want that. But now that everything Qt4 and kdelibs4-based has been moved aside by suffixing it with -kde4, we have the unsuffixed names free to indicate the latest-and-greatest from upstream.

=> ↺ On Benchmarks

• A well knwon Linux website published a “benchmark” about Plasma Wayland vs Plasma Xorg vs Gnome Shell (Wayland and Xorg). Before anybody tries to draw any conclusion: this is not a proper benchmark. It shows no statistical relevance as it was only tested on one hardware and only on one distribution. It shows numbers, that’s it. The numbers might be nice or not, I don’t know. I am not able to draw any conclusions from these numbers.

=> ↺ Event Notes

• But if you’re thirsting for more KDE events, there’s the list of KDE Sprints which is where you will find the small, focused, fairly short events for hacking on a well-defined project. Some are open for visitors, and if there’s something you want to hack on with a group of KDE contributors, get organising! (Like, seriously, getting a hacking weekend together is just a few phone calls to reserve a rental house somewhere nice and to arrange for transportation — if you can get the people together, which is usually the biggest problem).

Distributions

=> ↺ Why I fell in love with Antergos Linux

• My first experience with Linux was with Ubuntu 9.4. I installed it as a dual-boot with Windows 7. Dual-boot, for those who are new to Linux, allows you to choose whether to use your computer with Windows, Linux, or another operating system. It was my first adventure in something completely different from mainstream computing, and while I was intrigued, I couldn’t get hardware like my new printer and scanner to work with Ubuntu. That was not the only deal-breaker; I was also unable to open or convert some files so that my Windows-using friends could see things exactly as I did. I appreciated where Ubuntu was going, but it wasn’t ready for prime time to me.

Reviews

=> ↺ Review: OviOS 2.31

• OviOS is a Linux-based distribution which is designed to act as a storage appliance. OviOS can be thought of along similar lines as a network attached storage (NAS) device, a box dedicated to holding and sharing files over a network. Where OviOS differs from most NAS solutions is OviOS does not feature a graphical or web-based interface. Everything on OviOS is managed from a command line shell, typically over a secure shell (OpenSSH) connection. The OviOS distribution ships with its own, custom shell which should streamline administration. The central idea behind the project appears to be making file storage and sharing as minimal as possible, without any unnecessary features such as web-based control panels.

• OviOS ships with ZFS support, giving us the ability to create multi-disk storage volumes, compress files at the file system level and create snapshots of our data. The distribution currently does not support booting on UEFI-enabled computers and runs on 64-bit x86 machines which support booting in legacy BIOS mode only.

=> ↺ Linux Deepin Review – For The Record

• Linux Deepin Review. Today I take a close look at Deepin Linux. It’s a Linux distro from a company in China called Wuhan Deepin Technology Co., Ltd. Despite being a little unsure what to expect at first, I came to appreciate a lot of the thoughtful features that went into the desktop.

• There are some rough edges, but overall it’s a fascinating distro taking a very different approach to blending FoSS and proprietary software.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ Mageia Infrastructure planned outage

• That means Forums, Wiki, Bugzilla, Mailing lists, website (www.mageia.org) and the buildsystem will be unavailable until the maintenance is done.

=> ↺ Mageia Weekly roundup 2018 – Weeks 7 & 8

• Before we get in to the roundup, here’s a huge thank-you to the Mageians who helped with all the password resets after our security problem reported last week. Everything is mostly sorted now, but please contact the forum or the discuss mailing list if you still need help.

Arch Family

=> ↺ ArchLabs First Release for 2018

• The end of February is nigh, the official end to summer in NZ is almost over though the heat shows no sign of slacking.

• On that note, ArchLabs has a new release.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ GNOME Shell vs. KDE Plasma Graphics Tests On Wayland vs. X.Org Server

• A premium member this week had requested some benchmarks of openSUSE Tumbleweed when looking at the performance of KDE Plasma vs. GNOME Shell in some open-source graphics/gaming tests while also looking at the Wayland vs. X.Org Server performance.

• With KDE Plasma 5.12 that openSUSE Tumbleweed has picked up, there is much better Wayland session support compared to previous releases. While KDE developers aren’t yet ready to declare their Wayland session the default, in my experience so far it’s been working out very well but still routinely will find application crashes in Kate and the like when testing under the KWin’s Wayland compositor.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat Enterprise Linux now available on Alibaba Cloud

• Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, has announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the enterprise open source operating system developed by open-source solutions provider Red Hat, is now available globally in the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace on a pay-as-you-go basis, bringing more choice and flexibility to customers of both Alibaba Cloud and Red Hat globally.

=> ↺ Atos Launches Managed Container Services Leveraging Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes

• Atos has launched a managed container service built on Red Hat OpenShift. The offering, leveraging Linux and Kubernetes, enables customers to create and run cloud-native applications and migrate legacy workloads to hybrid cloud environments, Atos claims.

=> ↺ Cisco, Intel, Red Hat take aim at closed 5G radio systems

• Cisco has used Mobile World Congress 2018 to tout a group of vendors working on open tech for the mobile radio access network.

• “Virtual RAN” – Radio Access Network – refers to a shift in base station architecture away from proprietary functions running on vendor-specific base station hardware.

• vRAN remakes the mobile network on the principles of the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU’s) network function virtualisation (NFV) standards: the base station becomes a minimally-featured radio unit, with baseband, management, and subscriber functions on shared, virtualised, general-purpose computers in the carrier core.

=> ↺ DevOps jobs salaries: 9 statistics to see

=> ↺ Netronome Collaborates with Red Hat to Drive Performance for Open Cloud and NFV Infrastructure Technologies

=> ↺ archive.rpmfusion.org

• As of now we have moved all unsupported releases (EL-5, Fedora 8 – 25) to our archive (http://archive.rpmfusion.org/) and clients are now being redirected to the new archive system. The archive consists of 260GB which means we can reduce the size mirrors need to carry by more than 75%.

=> ↺ [Podcast] PodCTL #27 – The Serverless Landscape

=> ↺ python-libevdev – a python wrapper for libevdev

Finance

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Showing Positive Momentum in the Technicals

Fedora

=> ↺ Meet the supplemental wallpapers in Fedora 28

• The release of Fedora 28 is growing closer, and now you can see the supplemental wallpaper for the upcoming release. The Fedora Design team works with the community to supplement the standard wallpaper for each release. For this release there is a set of 16 additional wallpapers for your enjoyment and use. Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to all those who submitted — do try again next release. Here are the amazing entries included in the upcoming release.

=> ↺ Bodhi 3.4.0 released

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian updates: CafeOBJ, Calibre, Html5-parser, LaTeXML, TeX Live

• The last few days have seen a somehow quite unusual frenzy of uploads to Debian from my side. Mostly due to the fact that while doing my tax declaration (btw, a huge pain here in Japan) I needed some spare time and dedicated them to long overdue package maintenance work as well as some new request.

=> ↺ Report from SnowCamp #2

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ LXD weekly status #36

• This past week we’ve been working very hard to land all those last few bits ahead of us tagging a number of 3.0.0.beta1 releases of all our repositories.

• We’re now waiting for a few last bits to land, including LXD clustering and some reshuffling of templates, bindings and tools in LXC. The current plan is to start tagging a number of projects later today, tomorrow and Wednesday, with all of them making their way into Ubuntu by end of day on Thursday.

• Note that all of those will be beta releases and so will not see our usual backporting effort at this point nor get full release announcements, we’ll keep all that for the final 3.0 release in about a month’s time.

• For snap users, we expect to push all of this to the currently unused beta channel, allowing you to try the upcoming LXD 3.0 along with the matching LXC 3.0 and LXCFS 3.0.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Five Tiny Features of Linux Mint Cinnamon I’ve Come to Love

• I’m often asked by traumatized Windows users which Linux operating system I would recommend. Until a year and a half ago I recommended Zorin OS without hesitation. However, last year at this time, Zorin was still working on a major re-write and could not offer an LTS (long-term support) release.

• One of the problems of the Linux world is that distros great and small come and go. So lacking any certainty that Zorin would be ready before my version lost its support—or that Zorin would still exist—I downloaded Linux Mint Cinnamon 18 and have been using and recommending it ever since.

=> ↺ List of elementary OS PPA Links

• While we want to follow elementary OS latest updates, we may find it’s difficult to find its official Launchpad PPA addresses. For example, if you want to try 5.0 “Juno” but you cannot get latest ISO image, then installing software in development version from PPA on Loki is the only way. If you are a review writer (like me) you need those PPAs, but believe me it’s hard to find them on elementary OS website. So, I think it will be good to have a list of elementary OS PPAs in one article with instruction to install each. As a bonus, these PPAs of elementary OS are also installable for Ubuntu or Mint i.e. to install Pantheon Desktop on Ubuntu.

=> ↺ What’s New in LXLE 16.04.3 Eclectica

• LXLE 16.04.3 is latest release of LXLE 16.04.x series. This release brings various package updates and improvements, integrated with various of the components of the MATE and LXQt desktop environments, as well as some from the Linux Mint. The application menu received improvements to its layout and how items are organization, the system theme was tweaked for consistency and LXhotkey replaces the Obkey Openbox key editor.

• Based on Lubuntu 16.04 LTS and powered by Linux Kernel 4.4 series, some GTK+ theme tweaks have also been implemented to make Qt apps look better, login and bootloader wallpapers were added for system-wide theme consitency, and various desktop effects like transparency, fading, and shadows are now provided by Compton.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Crankshaft: Open Source Car Computer

• Modern cars and head units are pretty fancy gadget-wise. But what if your car still has an 8-track? No problem. Just pick up a Raspberry Pi 3 and a seven-inch touchscreen, and use Crankshaft to turn it into an Android Auto setup.

• The open source project is based on OpenAuto which, in turn, leverages aasdk. The advantage to Crankshaft is it is a plug-and-play distribution. However, if you prefer, you can build it all yourself from GitHub.

=> ↺ Oreo-driven dev board showcases octa-core Snapdragon 845

• Intrinsyc’s Android 8.0 powered “Open-Q 845” HDK debuts the Snapdragon 845 with 8x “Kryo 835” cores split between Cortex-A75 and -A55 like designs, plus security and neural network engines.

=> ↺ Build a DIY Google Assistant controlled Smart home Light with a Raspberry Pi

• Smart home Lights in recent times have become quite common thanks to the growing IoT market. But more recently, we are getting to see these lights being controlled with just the power of voice (instead of apps) through AI assistants on people’s phones, speakers, computers, etc. However, these Smart Lights haven’t yet beaten the conventional lights in terms of price and hence require a bit of an investment. So, if you have a Raspberry Pi lying around, we will show you how you can make your own Smartlight with a dumb one that can be controlled using Google Assistant. The project will involve playing around with IFTTT and Particle services so below is a bit of background about them-

=> ↺ Jolla Working To Ship Sailfish OS 3.0 This Year

• Jolla is talking up Sailfish OS 3.0 this week at the Embedded World conference as the “next-generation of the independent mobile operating system” and plans to ship it this calendar year.

=> ↺ SAMA5D27 SOM: Linux Performance in a Compact Package

• The processor supports QSPI Execute-in-Place (XIP) Linux. In addition, a 256-byte EEPROM contains a pre-programmed MAC address for the 10/100 Ethernet interface.

Android

=> ↺ 10 Best Android Photo Editor Apps In 2018

• Don’t you hate it when the photos you’ve clicked doesn’t seem right even after a dozen attempts? You may not like its brightness, contrast, orientation or, you may want to add something to make the photos look catchy. That’s when photo editing apps come to your rescue. They pack a lot of features and are on par with lightweight desktop editors. Most social media apps already include editors in their interface. But, if you want more vivid customizations, you can use any of these photo editor apps we’ve compiled in this post.

=> ↺ Power Max P16K Pro Smartphone Has A Massive 16,000 mAh Battery, Charges In Just 90 Minutes

• The Android-powered smartphone, which weights 350g, can last for around five days after a full charge and provides a standby time of up to 40 days.

=> ↺ Nokia Floods Market With 4 New Android Smartphones And A Resurrected “Banana Phone”

• The Finnish smartphone maker HMD Global has been doing a great of job of bringing back Nokia heroes from the dead. First, it was the Nokia 3310, and now, HMD has announced the release of Nokia 8110 – the feature phone that starred in The Matrix.

• However, the relaunch comes with a twist. The new Nokia 8110 keeps the same banana-like curved form factor but boasts 4G LTE connectivity with VoLTE support. The device comes loaded with a Snapdragon 205 running Linux-based KaiOS. It supports a variety of apps like Google Maps, Google Search, Google Assistant, etc. Another big feature included is WiFi support.

=> ↺ ​Nokia attempts a smartphone comeback with Android

• Remember when Nokia was the mobile phone powerhouse? Under a new owner, HMD Global, the brand is trying to make a comeback to the top with Android smartphones.

• It’s a smart move. While most of the attention is going to Nokia’s 8110 4G, a modern, low-powered slider phone you may remember from The Matrix, which runs KaiOS, there’s so many users who want to take a nostalgic visit to 1999 feature phones.

=> ↺ Photos companion is the fastest way to bring your Android photos to Windows 10

=> ↺ Google Assistant now launches specific tasks in Android apps

=> ↺ Amazon brings AR View feature to Android

=> ↺ Forget Android Oreo, the next Google OS will have THIS awesome feature

=> ↺ The best weather apps for iOS and Android to keep you on top of forecasts

=> ↺ Amazon’s AR shopping tool is now available on Android

=> ↺ The leaked BlackBerry ‘Ghost’ is reportedly a high-end Android phone built for India

=> ↺ Google’s Phone app for Android now transcribes voicemail for T-Mobile customers

=> ↺ Apple rolls out new iPhone ads to convince Android users to make the switch

=> ↺ HMD/Nokia’s smartphones join Google’s Android One program ‘leading the charge’

=> ↺ Sony’s smartphone comeback starts with the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact

=> ↺ Our guide to Android Oreo

=> ↺ The 4 Best Cheap Phones May Surprise You

=> ↺ Google Android Go: Nokia, ZTE and Alcatel unveil first super-cheap smartphones

=> ↺ Netflix is testing a navigation bar on Android

=> ↺ Android Messages adds RCS support for dual SIM phones

=> ↺ The Nokia 1 joins Google’s Android Go effort with removable Xpress-on covers

=> ↺ Nokia 8 Sirocco hands-on: Android One goes sexy and expensive

=> ↺ 20 New Software Features in Android Oreo for the Galaxy S9

=> ↺ New LineageOS, based on Android 8.1, lands on Monday

=> ↺ Huawei kicks off MWC 2018 with premium Windows laptops and Android tablets

=> ↺ How to watch Sony’s MWC 2018 press conference on Chromecast, Android, Chrome OS, and Android TV

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Top 10 open source legal stories that shook 2017

• Like every year, legal issues were a hot topic in the open source world in 2017. While we’re deep into the first quarter of the year, it’s still worthwhile to look back at the top legal news in open source last year.

=> ↺ Has OSS finally come into its own?

• Many moons ago – more than 15 years, in fact – South Africa’s government decided it would go open source.

• Back in 2002, the Government Information Officers’ Council (Gito) – a body of government CIOs – released a policy framework document recommending government `explicitly’ support the adoption of open source software (OSS) as part of its e-government strategy.

• Some eight years after the policy document was released, open source as a solution got the nod, with some government departments actually making the move. Back then, open source was seen as a way to stimulate skills development.

=> ↺ Improving teamwork by engineering trust

• Even in highly mature open organizations, where we’re doing our best to be collaborative, inclusive, and transparent, we can fail to reach alignment or common understanding. Disagreements and miscommunication between leaders and their teams, between members of the same team, between different teams in a department, or between colleagues in different departments remain common even in the most high-performing organizations. Responses to their intensity and impact run the gamut, from “Why did someone take our whiteboard?” to “Why are we doing this big project?”

=> ↺ Community metrics: The challenge behind the numbers

• We are all obsessed with the numbers and statistics we can measure in our lives. We are concerned about our health, so we monitor our weight, blood pressure, and calorie intake. We also observe ourselves and our work environments to evaluate our efficiency and team dynamics. This mindset of focusing on the numbers carries over to how we evaluate open source communities.

Events

=> ↺ 6 Days Left to Submit a Proposal to Speak at LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen China

• Submit a proposal to speak at LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen China (LC3), taking place in Beijing this June 25 – 27, and share your expertise with 3,000+ open source technologists, executives and community members.

=> ↺ Yet Another Perl Conference :: Europe :: 2018

• The Perl Conference – which in the Perl community is usually referred to as Yet Another Perl Conference Europe (YAPC::EU) – is the annual meeting of Perl Mongers, developers, administrators, technical managers and interested parties in Europe. In 2018 the European Perl Conference will be held at The Studio in Glasgow between 13th-17th August.

=> ↺ SiFive to Host RISC-V Hackathon at Embedded Linux Conference

• SiFive will hold its first hackathon at the Embedded Linux Conference, providing an opportunity for developers to test SiFive’s HiFive Unleashed board featuring the Freedom U540 SoC, the industry’s first RISC-V based, 64-bit quadcore processor running Linux.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ It’s Resilient CSS Week

• Writing code that works in all web browsers at the same time is one of the most important things we do. New technology is coming out all the time. Yet many of the people visiting the websites we build are using old browsers. How can we use new CSS if it’s not supported in every browser — especially when users keep using old, crufty browsers? Do we have to wait until 100% of people have a browsers with the new feature? Don’t we have to wait until Internet Explorer is dead before we can use the new stuff?

=> ↺ Speed Without Wizardry

• Most of the improvements that mraleph implemented are desirable regardless of the programming language that is our medium. Excessive allocation rates make any garbage collector (or malloc and free implementation) a bottleneck. Monomorphization and inlining are crucial to eking out performance in both Rust and JavaScript. Algorithms transcend programming languages.

=> ↺ This Week In Servo 105

• Welcome back to This Week in Servo, and apologies for the long delay since the last update! Servo has continued making progress throughout that time, including shipping the Stylo CSS engine in Firefox among many other things. We’re resuming weekly updates now that the pressure has let up a bit!

• In the last week, we landed 87 PRs in the Servo organization’s repositories.

=> ↺ Mozilla removes individual cookie management in Firefox 60

• The most recent version of Firefox Nightly, currently at version 60, comes with changes to Firefox’s cookie management. Mozilla merged cookie settings with site data in the web browser which impacts how you configure and manage cookie options.

• If you run Firefox 59 or earlier, you can load about:preferences#privacy to manage privacy related settings in Firefox. If you set the history to “use custom settings for history” or “remember history”, you get an option manage cookie settings and to remove individual cookies from Firefox.

=> ↺ Using Permissions to Establish Trust

• I used to work in an industry where being ISO 9001 certified was necessary in order to remain competitive. If you are unfamiliar with ISO 9001, it is a set of standards that requires a business to document each process, and then follow those documented processes. And every autumn, sure as the leaves falling from the trees, an independent auditor would show up to verify we were indeed documenting and following our processes. It’s like a tax audit you impose on yourself (and about as unpleasant).

• The idea behind ISO 9001, though, is that a certified business can be trusted, both in its business dealings and its delivered products. It is meant to convey a sense of quality and security to customers.

=> ↺ Firefox 59 Beta 14 DevEdition Testday, March 2nd

• We are happy to let you know that Friday, 2nd of March, we are organizing Firefox 59 .0b14 DevEdition Testday. We’ll be focusing our testing on the following features: Toolbars & window controls and Default & custom theme support.

SaaS/Back End

=> ↺ Weighing Open Source’s Worth for the Future of Big Data

• The open source software movement began in earnest 20 years ago, when a group of technology leaders in Silicon Valley coined the term as an alternative to the repugnant “free software.” Fast forward to 2018, and the concept has been cemented in our psyches. But does open source have the staying power to drive the next 20 years’ worth of innovation?

• There was, of course, open source software before 1998. Linus Torvalds created the first Linux kernel in the open back in 1991, and even IBM engaged in sharing of operating system internals going back into the 1950s.

Databases

=> ↺ MariaDB launches innovation labs

• he open source database company MariaDB is launching a research division aimed at tackling the most pressing issues in the database field.

• Speaking at the M18 user conference in New York yesterday, MariaDB CEO Michael Howard identified that the labs will focus on three key areas: “Machine learning, distributed computing and the use and exploitation of new chips, persistent storage and in-memory processing.”

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ LibreOffice 6 Review

• LibreOffice is an office productivity suite that is similar to Microsoft Office Suite. It has word processor program called Writer, spreadsheet known as Calc, and presentation as Impress. Other than these programs it also has a Draw, Base, and a Math program. LibreOffice can be installed on almost all platforms: Windows, OS X, Linux and certain UNIX OS.

CMS

=> ↺ SuiteCRM brings open source CRM to new level

• SalesAgility has announced the release of the latest version of SuiteCRM and a new online documentation platform.

• SuiteCRM is the worlds largest open source CRM, it was created after SugarCRM stopped its open source development of the product. It was first released in October 2013 as version 7.00. The latest release is 7.10 and comes with a series of enhancements.

• The second announcement around the documentation platform sees SugarCRM bring online documentation to the wider community. One of the changes is that it enables non developers from customers to add value to the community.

=> ↺ SalesAgility, the driving force behind SuiteCRM, joins Open Source Initiative as Corporate Sponsor

=> ↺ SalesAgility joins open Source initiative

• SalesAgility has joined the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as a Premium Corporate Sponsor. In some ways it is surprising that it has taken this long for SalesAgility to have joined OSI. SalesAgility are the developers of SuiteCRM, the leading open source CRM software. It was created in 2013 when it forked from SugarCRM. Prior to 2013 SugarCRM had an at times fractious relationship with OSI.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ Microsoft brings its quantum dev kit to macOS, Linux; new kind of qubit this year

=> ↺ Mass Protest in Support of Net Neutrality Tomorrow, Linux Support Added to Microsoft’s Quantum Development Kit and More

=> ↺ Radisys Open Sources 4G RAN Software on the Qualcomm® FSM™ Platform for Small Cell and CBRS Deployments

=> ↺ Radisys open sources 4G RAN software on Qualcomm FSM platform for small cell, CBRS deployments

=> ↺ TrackNet Contributes to LoRaWAN Ecosystem with Open-Source Version of Large-Scale Firmware Updates Over-the-Air

BSD

=> ↺ An Open Letter to BSD-powered Companies and Projects

• For three years, the Tor BSD Diversity Project (TDP) has worked to bring the BSDs into the mainstream of the privacy-enhancing technology ecosystem (PETs).

• We aim to expand the use of the BSDs as a platform for Tor relays, public nodes in the Tor anonymity network. Tor is a critical tool for maintaining privacy online, frequently employed by journalists, human rights workers and those residing in repressive and censored environments.

• [...]

• iIf your entity isn’t ready to run a Tor node, but you’re interested in donating resources such as bandwidth, hardware or some type of monetary support, contact us. TDP looks forward to assisting your staff in configuring and maintaining BSD relays.

=> ↺ [llvm-dev] [6.0.0 Release] Release Candidate 3 source, docs and binaries available

=> ↺ LLVM 6.0 Release Candidate 3 Arrives As The Official Release Nears

• The third release candidate is available today of LLVM 6.0 and its associated components like Clang, Compiler-RT, libc++, LLDB, etc.

• Hans Wennborg just announced the 6.0.0 RC3 milestone that is now available for download.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ GNU Automake 1.16 Preps For More Changes Ahead Of Automake 2.0

• While Meson+Ninja remains all the hype these days when it comes to open-source build systems, the GNU build system isn’t going away any time soon and a key component of that was just updated, Automake 1.16.

• GNU Automake 1.16 has fixes around its automatic dependency tracking, improvements around dealing with the reproducible builds effort, a custom test suite driver for the Guile Scheme SRFI-64 API, and various other minor changes.

=> ↺ GNU Automake 1.16 released

• We are pleased to announce the GNU Automake 1.16 minor release.

• This release follows 1.15.1 which was made 8 months ago.

• See below for the detailed list of changes since the previous version, as summarized by the NEWS file.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ GREEN WAVES : GreenWaves Technologies Unveils GAP8, the Industry’s Lowest Power IoT Application Processor, Enabling Groundbreaking Embedded Artificial Intelligence at the Very Edge

=> ↺ GreenWaves Technologies unveils Gap8 processor for AI at the edge

• Grenoble, France-based GreenWaves is announcing its Gap8 internet of things (IoT) application processor today to handle low-power AI processing in sensor devices. The chip is based on the RISC-V open source processor architecture, and it is meant to solve problems that a lot of other processors were not designed to handle.

=> ↺ CEVA Extends its IP Platforms for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi with RISC-V

• Mobile World Congress – CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors for smarter, connected devices, today announced that its market-leading RivieraWaves Bluetooth and Wi-Fi intellectual property (IP) platforms are now offered with an optional integrated open-source RISC-V MCU.

=> ↺ RISC-V Gains Its Footing

• The RISC-V instruction-set architecture, which started as a UC Berkeley project to improve energy efficiency, is gaining steam across the industry.

• The RISC-V Foundation’s member roster gives an indication who is behind this effort. Members include Google, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Rambus, Samsung, NXP, Micron, IBM, GlobalFoundries, and Siemens, among many others.

=> ↺ IoT apps processor boasts eight RISC-V cores

• Fabless startup Greenwaves Technologies has announced the availability of its GAP8 IoT application processor.

• Martin Croome, vp of business development, said: “GAP8 is aimed at battery powered devices performing content understanding and control applications. Examples include keyword spotting, beam forming and speech analysis. It could also be used for vibration analysis and face detection.”

=> ↺ 5 keys to building open hardware

• The science community is increasingly embracing free and open source hardware (FOSH). Researchers have been busy hacking their own equipment and creating hundreds of devices based on the distributed digital manufacturing model to advance their scientific experiments.

• A major reason for all this interest in distributed digital manufacturing of scientific FOSH is money: Research indicates that FOSH slashes costs by 90% to 99% compared to proprietary tools. Commercializing scientific FOSH with open hardware business models has supported the rapid growth of an engineering subfield to develop FOSH for science, which comes together annually at the Gathering for Open Science Hardware.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Introducing Qt Automotive Suite 2.0

• We are excited to announce the Qt Automotive Suite 2.0, a great leap forward towards a unified HMI toolchain and framework for digital cockpit, available end of February 2018.

=> ↺ Qt Automotive Suite 2.0 Released

• Two years after unveiling Qt Automotive Suite 1.0 for designing digital cockpits for the ever increasing number of screens within cars, The Qt Company has today announced Qt Automotive Suite 2.0.

=> ↺ Conan package manager brings C and C++ to devops

• Conan, a distributed, open source package and dependency manager, promises to bring C and C++ into devops.

• The multiplatform package manager builds and shares native binaries. Conan’s ability to quickly create builds, port packages, and run them on different operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOS, and FreeBSD) helps make C and C++ suitable for devops, said Harry Manley, a senior solutions engineer at JFrog, which sponsors the Conan project.

=> ↺ An ethical oath for programmers

• Nick Johnstone’s “Programmer’s Oath” is billed as “An oath for programmers, comparable to the Hippocratic Oath.” Naturally, it’s on Github and you can create a pull request if you think that Johnstone got something wrong.

=> ↺ Compiler bug? Linker bug? Windows Kernel bug.

• Flaky failures are the worst. In this particular investigation, which spanned twenty months, we suspected hardware failure, compiler bugs, linker bugs, and other possibilities. Jumping too quickly to blaming hardware or build tools is a classic mistake, but in this case the mistake was that we weren’t thinking big enough. Yes, there was a linker bug, but we were also lucky enough to have hit a Windows kernel bug which is triggered by linkers!

• In September of 2016 we started noticing random failures when building Chrome – 3 out of 200 builds of Chrome failed when protoc.exe, one of the executables that is part of the build, crashed with an access violation. That is, we would build protoc.exe, and then run it to generate header files for the next build stage, but it would crash instead.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Apple confirms it now uses Google Cloud for iCloud services

• Apple has confirmed that it uses Google’s public cloud to store data for its iCloud services in its latest version of the iOS Security Guide last month, as spotted by CNBC. Reports that Apple relied on Google’s cloud services surfaced in 2016 but were previously never confirmed.

• Apple had previously used remote data storage systems provided by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Apple’s edition of the iOS Security Guide in March 2017 still listed Microsoft Azure instead of Google Cloud Platform.

• The new edition describes its iCloud service: “The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as [Amazon] S3 and Google Cloud Platform.”

Science

=> ↺ ‘Two-way signaling’ possible with a single quantum particle

• Classically, information travels in one direction only, from sender to receiver. In a new paper, however, physicists Flavio Del Santo at the University of Vienna and Borivoje Dakić at the Austrian Academy of Sciences have shown that, in the quantum world, information can travel in both directions simultaneously—a feature that is forbidden by the laws of classical physics.

=> ↺ Largest molecular spin found close to a quantum phase transition

• An international research team headed by Professor Dr. Annie Powell, a chemist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and Professor Dr. Jürgen Schnack, a physicist at Bielefeld University, has synthesized a new magnetic molecule. The team has reported the largest ground state spin ever attained. It is publishing its new findings today (26.02.2018) in the new Nature partner journal npj Quantum Materials.

=> ↺ Going with the DNA flow: Molecule of life finds new uses in microelectronics

• For sheer versatility, there’s no molecule quite like DNA. The iconic double-helix carries the genetic blueprint for living forms ranging from single-celled organisms to human beings.

• Recently, researchers have found that DNA’s remarkable properties of self-assembly and its ability to conduct electrical charge over considerable distance make it ideally suited for myriad applications, including tiny electronic circuits and computing devices, nanorobots and new advances in photonics.

=> ↺ MIT boffins reckon private browsing still leaks data, but they have the answer

• At MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the smart folk found that so-called private browsing modes aren’t nearly private enough. The researchers noted that such modes still leak data like DNS cache, file system info and “on-disk reflections of RAM such as the swap file”.

=> ↺ Stanford, MIT, Johns Hopkins University and Waterloo University eye Hong Kong as regional base for stem cell research

• Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University and Waterloo University want to form a consortium in the city to engage in biotechnology R&D, source says – but hurdles remain

=> ↺ China spirals past US in genome research

• The US government’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is studying if every American baby should undergo extensive DNA sequencing and analysis at birth, while China and other countries are already more advanced toward that goal despite rights concerns.

• DNA, the double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid, can reveal a person’s physical and psychiatric health, identity, relatives and other details. But databases of people’s DNA could also enable governments, police, hackers, corporations, forgers and others to abuse the information.

=> ↺ Forecasts of genetic fate just got a lot more accurate

• When Amit Khera explains how he predicts disease, the young cardiologist’s hands touch the air, arranging imaginary columns of people: 30,000 who have suffered heart attacks here, 100,000 healthy controls there.

• There’s never been data available on as many people’s genes as there is today. And that wealth of information is allowing researchers to guess at any person’s chance of getting common diseases like diabetes, arthritis, clogged arteries, and depression.

Hardware

=> ↺ Secretive U.S. security panel discussing Broadcom’s Qualcomm bid – sources

• A national security panel that can stop mergers that could harm U.S. security has begun looking at Singapore-based chipmaker Broadcom Ltd’s plan to take over rival Qualcomm Inc, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

• CFIUS, an opaque inter-agency panel, has been in touch with at least one of the companies in the proposed merger, one source said, and met last month to discuss the potential merger of the two big semiconductor companies, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ The high-tech medicine of the future may be biased in favor of well-off white men

• The promise of precision medicine is that all sorts of information about you—your genetics, ethnicity, diet, even neighborhood—could be used to create highly personalized treatments for whatever ails you, replacing the one-size-fits-all medicine of the past.

• Doctors hope this will make everyone healthier. But a new report by the Data & Society Research Institute in New York says certain groups in the US are in jeopardy of being worse off when medicine is tailor-made. The one group notably not at risk: white men who can afford health insurance and a decent lifestyle.

=> ↺ Federal Watchdog Identifies New Workplace Safety Problems at Los Alamos Lab

• Los Alamos National Laboratory has failed to keep track of a toxic metal used in nuclear weapons production, potentially exposing workers to serious health consequences, a federal watchdog has found.

• The New Mexico lab’s failure to adequately track beryllium — small amounts of which can cause lung disease and cancer — violates federal regulations put in place to prevent worker overexposure, according to a report last week from the Department of Energy’s inspector general.

=> ↺ Trump Era Threatens the Rights of People with Disabilities

• In the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly threatened the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). According to Rewire, repealing the ADA would force significant cuts to Medicaid, compromising health care for people with disabilities. Medicaid pays for personal care assistants to help with employment, education and integrating in society for those with disabilities. Michelle Diament of Disability Scoop says that as of early January, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was also rescinding guidance documents related to ADA.

• The possible repeal of the ADA and the rescinding of documents by Sessions are alarming to the disabled community. Guidance documents define expectations on everything from “service animals to accessible building practices as well as a 2016 letter on employment of people with disabilities.” Documents such as these are important because they offer civil rights and protections to people with disabilities. One of the documents, established in 2016, enforces opportunities for people with disabilities to be gainfully employed. The main concern is that without such guidance people with disabilities will be employed in sheltered workshops, away from other employees.

=> ↺ Trump White House Releases Biopharmaceutical Pricing Reform White Paper

• The White House Council of Economic Advisers recently released a report titled, “Reforming Biopharmaceutical Pricing at Home and Abroad.” [Report] The Report points to basically two problems: 1) overpricing in the United States; and 2) underpaying outside the United States.

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Monday

=> ↺ Developer gets prison after admitting backdoor was made for malice

• An Arkansas man has been sentenced to serve almost three years in federal prison for developing advanced malware that he knew would be used to steal passwords, surreptitiously turn on webcams, and conduct other unlawful actions on infected computers.

=> ↺ New bypass and protection techniques for ASLR on Linux

• Many important application functions are implemented in user space. Therefore, when analyzing the ASLR implementation mechanism, we also analyzed part of the GNU Libc (glibc) library, during which we found serious problems with stack canary implementation. We were able to bypass stack canary protection and execute arbitrary code by using ldd.

• This whitepaper describes several methods for bypassing ASLR in the context of application exploitation.

=> ↺ Who Wasn’t Responsible for Olympic Destroyer?

• Evidence linking the Olympic Destroyer malware to a specific threat actor group is contradictory, and does not allow for unambiguous attribution. The threat actor responsible for the attack has purposefully included evidence to frustrate analysts and lead researchers to false attribution flags. This false attribution could embolden an adversary to deny an accusation, publicly citing evidence based upon false claims by unwitting third parties. Attribution, while headline grabbing, is difficult and not an exact science. This must force one to question purely software-based attribution going forward.

=> ↺ A Technical Deep Dive: Securing the Automation of ACME DNS Challenge Validation

• Earlier this month, Let’s Encrypt (the free, automated, open Certificate Authority EFF helped launch two years ago) passed a huge milestone: issuing over 50 million active certificates. And that number is just going to keep growing, because in a few weeks Let’s Encrypt will also start issuing “wildcard” certificates—a feature many system administrators have been asking for.

=> ↺ Linux 4.16 Receives More Spectre & Meltdown Fixes/Optimizations

• The in-development Linux 4.16 kernel has already received a few rounds of updates for the mitigation work on the Spectre and Meltdown CPU vulnerabilities while more is on the way.

• Thomas Gleixner today sent in another batch of “x86/pti” updates for Linux 4.16 in further addressing these CPU security vulnerabilities that were made public in early January.

=> ↺ SecOps Spends Its Days Monitoring

• Developers, Security and Operations: DevSecOps. The operations part of the term usually refers to IT operations. However, today narrows in on SecOps, that work in security operations centers (SOCs) and cyber incident response teams (CIRTs). The Cyentia Institute’s survey of 160 of these security analysts shows they face some of the same challenges developers and IT operations teams do. They spend more time on monitoring than any other activity, but they much rather solve problems and “hunt” new threats. SecOps does not like reporting or something called Shift Ops — the actual details of change control and making sure the team doesn’t burn out. Given the shortage of information security professionals, it is concerning that only 45 percent of respondents said their job experience was meeting their expectations.

=> ↺ Covert ‘Replay Sessions’ Have Been Harvesting Passwords by Mistake

• Bulk data collection is always a privacy red flag. But the Princeton research group that first published findings about session replay scripts has uncovered a troubling series of situations where seemingly well-intentioned safeguards fail, leading to an unacceptable level of exposure.

=> ↺ How to Check if Your Password Has Been Stolen

=> ↺ More than half of IT pros believe their organization was breached at least once in 2017

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Why does the NRA have a non-profit, tax exempt status?

=> ↺ Growing Risk of U.S.-Iran Hostilities Based on False Pretexts, Intel Vets Warn

• As President Donald Trump prepares to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week, a group of U.S. intelligence veterans offers corrections to a number of false accusations that have been levelled against Iran.

=> ↺ U.S. Imposes New N. Korea Sanctions

• The Trump administration announced harsh new sanctions against North Korea on Friday, just before the Olympic Games ended in South Korea. During the games, North Korean officials met with their south Korean counterparts and reportedly expressed a willingness to hold talks with the United States.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Slovakian journalist investigating claims of tax fraud linked to ruling party shot dead

• Ján Kuciak, 27, and his fiancee, Martina Kušnírová, were discovered shot dead in the home they shared after worried relatives alerted police, saying it had been a week since they had heard from the couple.

• Slovakia’s most senior police officer, Tibor Gašpar, told reporters the murders “likely have something to do with [Kuciak’s] investigative activities”.

=> ↺ The mediation proposal on the Assange case “has not enhanced”

• Ecuador’s proposal to the United Kingdom for a mediation on the case of Julian Assange “has not enhanced,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility, Maria Fernanda Espinosa. “To mediate you need two parties, Ecuador is willing, but not necessarily the other party”, she explained.

=> ↺ Julian Assange: Ecuador says UK ‘at fault’ as talks on future break down

• Julian Assange looks set to continue his “refugee” status indefinitely after Ecuador admitted talks with the UK over his exit from its London embassy have failed.

• Maria Fernanda Espinosa, the South American country’s foreign minister, suggested British officials had been unwilling to negotiate over the Wikileaks founder’s potential release.

• Earlier this month, Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot upheld the warrant for the arrest of Mr Assange for skipping bail – saying he should have the courage to face court and not feel he is “above the law”.

• His legal team again argued that the outstanding warrant – which dates back to 2012 – should be dismissed because it had “lost its purpose and function” after a Swedish investigation over sex-related allegations was dropped last year.

=> ↺ Ahead of Trial, Government Vilifies NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner

• As whistleblower Reality Winner nears trial, prosecutors for the United States government have focused on framing Winner as “anti-American,” denying her bail and due process, and depriving her defense attorneys of adequate access to resources.

• Winner, an Air Force veteran working for an intelligence contractor in Augusta, Georgia, printed out and mailed a classified NSA document to The Intercept in May 2017. The document reported that Russian hackers conducted cyberattacks against a United States voting software supplier and sent phishing emails to more than 100 election officials leading up to the November 2016 election, though the data used to develop this analysis was not included in the report.

=> ↺ Julian Assange hung out to dry — yet again

• Italian investigator Maurizi, using freedom of information requests, and with the support of her newspaper Repubblica, has unearthed some of the real motives underlying the British attitude. It has nothing to do with “justice” and everything to do with kowtowing to the Americans — the latter making no secret of their desire to see Assange prosecuted for treason and locked up for a very long time.

• Maurizi showed that the Swedish authorities wanted to drop the sexual assault charges back in 2013, but were persuaded by the British to keep the case going.

• The British efforts included dissuading the Swedish authorities from coming to London to interview Assange, despite repeated offers from him, and a history of such interviews in 44 other extradition cases involving Sweden and the United Kingdom.

• The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, wrote to the Crown Prosecution Service on 18 October 2013, advising her British contacts that Swedish law would not allow the extradition case to continue. This followed an earlier email from the British to the Swedish authorities, saying ‘don’t you dare get cold feet’.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Are Driving Bans Coming for German Cities?

• A court ruling could ban millions of diesel cars from German city centers, rendering the vehicles worthless. The federal government has considered responding with free public transportation and by forcing car manufacturers to submit to new requirements. By DER SPIEGEL Staff

=> ↺ Major EPA reorganization will end science research program

• A federal environmental program that distributes grants to test the effects of chemical exposure on adults and children is being shuttered amidst a major organization consolidation at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

• The National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) will no longer exist following plans to combine three EPA offices, the agency confirmed to The Hill Monday.

• The program provides millions of dollars in grants each year.

• Perhaps best known for its handling of fellowships that study the effects of chemicals on children’s health, NCER will be dissolved and science staff serving there will be reassigned elsewhere within the department, EPA said.

=> ↺ Relying on renewables alone significantly inflates the cost of overhauling energy

• A growing number of US cities and states have proposed or even passed legislation that would require producing all electricity from renewable energy sources like solar and wind within a few decades.

• That might sound like a great idea. But a growing body of evidence shows it’s not.

=> ↺ North Pole surges above freezing in the dead of winter, stunning scientists

Finance

=> ↺ Coinbase: We will send data on 13,000 users to IRS

• Coinbase reminded its users that it is “unable to provide legal or tax advice.” The company also noted, “If you have concerns about this, we encourage you to seek legal advice from an attorney promptly. Coinbase expects to produce the information covered by the court’s order within 21 days.”

=> ↺ Capio to acquire the Swedish primary care group Novakliniken

• Capio has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of Novakliniken with operations in the southeastern parts of [Scania], Sweden. Novakliniken operates eight primary care centers and two branches, and provides some occupational health and dental services. 2017 net sales were MSEK 245. The acquisition of Novakliniken complements and strengthens Capio’s presence and healthcare offering in [Scania].

=> ↺ The American midwest is quickly becoming a blue-collar version of Silicon Valley

• Alongside the traditional high-flying software jobs that are plentiful in Silicon Valley, mid-tech jobs, loosely defined as tech jobs requiring less than a college degree, are growing fast in the Midwest. While not an official designation, mid-tech jobs can be defined as skilled tech work that doesn’t require a college degree: just intense, focused training on the job or in vocational programs like those of blue-collar trades of the industrial past.

=> ↺ Uber, Lyft drivers are making city traffic worse, studies find

• One promise of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft was fewer cars clogging city streets. But studies suggest the opposite: that ride-hailing companies are pulling riders off buses, subways, bicycles and their own feet and putting them in cars instead.

• And in what could be a new wrinkle, a service by Uber called Express Pool now is seen as directly competing with mass transit.

=> ↺ American Manufacturing Doesn’t Have to Die

• Twelve-and-a-half million Americans worked in manufacturing in 2017, down from 14.1 million 11 years earlier.

=> ↺ Why blockchain challenges conventional thinking about intellectual property

• Cryptocurrencies are getting a lot of attention, but finance is only one of many applications of the blockchain technology behind it.

• Blockchain technology is poised to revolutionise almost everything from supply chains (including illegal fishing and human rights abuses), insurance and health.

• [...]

• History is littered with examples of patents harming rather than aiding innovation. James Watt’s steam engine was an advance over existing steam engines, yet the technology could not be built upon because of Watt’s patents.

=> ↺ Chinese Tycoon Makes $9 Billion Bet on Mercedes E-Car Know-How

• A dozen years ago, Chinese carmaker Geely announced its arrival on the global stage with a giant “I Am Geely” sign over its stand at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Last week, Geely founder Li Shufu effectively added an “I am Mercedes-Benz” banner to his collection.

• Li on Friday disclosed that he has become the top shareholder in Daimler AG, the storied company that is one of the crown jewels of German industry. Li, chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., said the 7.3 billion-euro ($9 billion) stake — 9.7 percent of Daimler’s shares — will help his company better compete as the likes of Google and Apple Inc. vie for a role in the shift to electric and self-driving vehicles.

=> ↺ The Dropbox IPO is a transformative moment for Y Combinator

• Dropbox on Feb. 23 announced plans to raise $500 million through an initial public offering (pdf), making the 11-year-old file-storage startup the first company in Y Combinator’s portfolio to make a market debut.

• It’s a big moment, and a potential inflection point, for the influential incubator. Y Combinator has a roster of big companies, including Stripe and Airbnb, that plan to go public eventually.

=> ↺ Cooke Aquaculture Pacific urges lawmakers to consider jobs, science-based policy, fair and equitable treatment

• Cooke Aquaculture Pacific urges lawmakers to consider jobs, science-based policy, fair and equitable treatment; Will seek NAFTA arbitration if ban on Atlantic salmon farming is approved

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Trump campaign gamed Facebook ads even better than we thought

• So how much did the Clinton campaign pay? Here it gets a bit tricky. Last fall, a member of the Clinton campaign team told me that their CPMs averaged $10 to $30, which they described as typical for a targeted Facebook campaign. But that figure represented the cost only of paid impressions. As described above, ads that perform well can reach larger audiences as they receive likes, comments, and shares — so-called “organic reach.” That lowers the overall cost of the ad.

• When Parscale says “we had CPMs that were pennies in some cases,” he almost certainly took organic reach into account. (It’s very hard to place an ad for anything on Facebook for literal pennies.) Unfortunately, the person I spoke with at the Clinton campaign no longer had access to organic reach data. Still, they said, it was unlikely that organic reach would have lowered a $10 paid CPM to a $1 organic one, as my Facebook source had suggested.

=> ↺ FCC Republican faces ethics complaint after calling for Trump’s re-election

• Also on Friday, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly called for the re-election of President Donald Trump during his appearance at CPAC. Advocacy group American Oversight called for an investigation of O’Rielly, saying that he violated a rule against “engaging in partisan political activity while on duty.”

=> ↺ Bots, Assange, an alliance: Has Russian propaganda infiltrated the Philippines?

• Top Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that all 3 Twitter accounts shared news articles in support of Catalan independence. All 3 tweeted 24 hours a day. All 3 tweeted the exact same articles at the exact same times.

• The 3 accounts were “part of an online army of robot profiles, who, armed with gasoline canisters brimming with fake news, stalk social media and fan the flames of debate as ordered by their generals,” said Spain’s widest read newspaper and second most read online news site.

• “At the beginning of October, this army went to work on the issue of Catalan independence. Evidence shows a total of 87% of the 65 accounts who most shared RT and Sputnik content were automated,” El Pais said.

• “Those accounts helped ensure that Russian news outlets were the fourth most influential in the digital conversation about Catalonia.”

=> ↺ China Proposes Lifting Presidential Term Limit

• China’s ruling Communist Party has proposed scrapping constitutional term limits for the country’s president, which would give President Xi Jinping the option to stay on after the end of his second term in 2022. Critics see the move as reversing decades of efforts to create rules in China for the orderly exercise and transfer of political power.

• The official New China News Agency reported Sunday that the party’s 205-member Central Committee proposed that the term limits be removed from the constitution. The changes must be ratified by China’s parliament at its annual session next month, but that parliament, known as the National People’s Congress, has never rejected a law that the party or government has put before it.

=> ↺ China moves to silence outcry over abolition of Xi’s term limit

=> ↺ China censorship after Xi Jinping presidency extension proposal

• China’s governing Communist Party has proposed removing a clause in the constitution which limits presidencies to two five-year terms – which means President Xi Jinping could remain as leader after the end of his second term in 2023.

• The controversial move has ignited discussion on Chinese social media and pushed online government censors into overdrive.

=> ↺ Xi Jinping’s power grab ‘does hark back to darker times in China,’ says expert

• Critics shared Winnie the Pooh images, including one that showed the cartoon bear hugging a pot of honey and featured the caption, “Find the thing you love and never let go.” Pooh Bear is often used to represent Xi, though censors cracked down on that last year.

=> ↺ California Democratic Party declines to endorse Dianne Feinstein for re-election

• In a surprising show of discontent with one of California’s most enduring political leaders, the state Democratic Party declined to make an endorsement in this year’s U.S. Senate race on Sunday, snubbing Sen. Dianne Feinstein in her bid for a fifth full term.

• Her main challenger, State Senate leader Kevin de León, won the support of 54 percent of delegates at the state party convention here this weekend, short of the 60 percent needed to secure the party’s endorsement. Feinstein received only 37 percent of the votes.

• The rebuke of Feinstein by the party delegates comes even though the 25-year incumbent has led polls by wide margins and received the backing of political luminaries like Sen. Kamala Harris and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

=> ↺ Surveillance-happy authoritarian “Democratic” California senator Dianne Feinstein loses California Democratic Party endorsement

• Dianne Feinstein has represented California in the US senate for 28 years, garnering the California Democratic Party endorsement every year despite her far-right positions on mass surveillance, military adventurism, and authoritarian rule (she’s trumpeted these policies as evidence of her “independence”).

• After a quarter-century of legislative malpractice, California Democrats have had enough. Yesterday, the California Democratic Party denied her their endorsement. The candidate favored by the state party is State Senator Kevin De León, a moderate left-wing Democrat who backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election but says he admires Bernie Sanders’ campaign and platform.

=> ↺ The Democratic party is now publicly attacking progressive candidates

• In their desperation to win back the House in the 2018 midterm elections, the Democrats have turned to eating their own. How else to make sense of the unhappy drama unfolding in Texas’ 7th congressional district?

• The district, which includes much of affluent west Houston, has a Republican incumbent named John Culberson, but was carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. Culberson, a gun-loving, climate change-denying champion of Donald Trump, is a dreary exemplar of the kind of reactionary outlier who now passes as a mainstream Republican politician. And so the effort to unseat him has attracted a crowded field of seven Democrats, all vying to win the 6 March primary.

=> ↺ Who Benefits from Russia’s ‘Peculiar’ Doping Violations?

• Viewers of the 2018 Winter Olympics were offered a constant reminder of Russia’s supposed deviousness with the “OAR” – or Olympic Athlete from Russia – designation that Russian athletes competed under as a punishment for doping. The image of Russia being penalized for cheating fit in neatly with ongoing geopolitical narratives of Russia being blamed for election meddling in the United States and military aggression in Ukraine.

=> ↺ How the Anti-Democracy Movement Used Media to Command the Narrative

• As far back as 1835, perhaps our nation’s earliest and most astute observer, Alexis de Tocqueville, understood the power of the media. He described the press as “the chief democratic instrument of freedom.” But today our “instrument of freedom” seems to mean the freedom to enrich oneself privately, whatever it takes. How did we get to this sad state?

• In 1969, the US Supreme Court unanimously upheld the public-good understanding of the press, stating, “The First Amendment is relevant to public broadcasting, but it is the right of the viewing and listening public, and not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.” In the 1960s, for example, media broadcasting gas-guzzling car advertisements had to pay for rebuttal airtime by public interest groups. But soon dramatic changes undermined this frame, as market ideology tightened its grip during the 1980s. “Television is just another appliance—it’s a toaster with pictures,” quipped Mark Fowler, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, as he mocked the very notion of media as a public good.

=> ↺ Chinese censors move to block ridicule of ‘Emperor’ Xi Jinping’s power grab

• Beijing’s vast army of online censors have been mobilised to stamp out the ridicule and criticism to the announcement that President Xi Jinping could rule for life.

• China proposed to remove a two-term limit from its president on Sunday, in a move which would see the current Chinese leader rule beyond 2023 and perhaps indefinitely.

=> ↺ End to term limits at the top may be start of global backlash for China, analysts say

• The proposed elimination of presidential term limits in China risks an international backlash over China’s strongman politics, but would help ensure the continuity of the country’s policies, diplomatic observers said.

• The bold move would send a message that Xi and his initiatives were here to stay and cement China’s ambition to fill the global leadership vacuum left by US President Donald Trump, they said.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ YouTube conspiracy video problem ‘bigger than thought’

• The problem of conspiracy videos on YouTube appears to be growing, with a data journalist unearthing nearly 9000 such clips after a search using the video platform’s API.

=> ↺ CJ Gopal Parajuli orders media censorship

• Chief Justice Gopal Parajuli on Sunday issued an interim order directing the Press Council to probe news reports published by Kantipur daily that highlighted discrepancies in his birth date mentioned by him in official documents.

=> ↺ China Proposes Lifting Presidential Term Limit

=> ↺ China’s move to abolish presidential term limits is more unpopular than the government thought — so it’s turning to censorship

• Criticism of the Chinese government’s desire to abolish presidential term limits has seen censorship soar since Sunday.

• China’s constitution restricts the president and vice-president to serving a maximum of two terms – 10 years – with President Xi Jinping’s leadership due to end in 2023.

• While censoring social media is a regular occurrence in China, the latest incident may mean the Communist Party’s proposal to scrap presidential term limits, and essentially allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely, was more unpopular than anticipated.

=> ↺ Curbing hate speech isn’t censorship – it’s the law

• IT IS hard to hear the phrase “political correctness” these days without reflexively appending the words “gone mad”. Thanks to self-appointed guardians of liberty, the inoffensive idea that people should try to avoid insulting language has been turned into a battleground over free speech.

• This might sound like a silly spat straight out of the pages of the tabloid press, but people who care about science ought to be paying attention. Free speech is a vital ingredient of enlightened scholarship and education.

=> ↺ Mistakes And Strategic Failures: The Killing Of The Open Internet

• Sometime tomorrow, it’s widely expected that the House will approve a terrible Frankenstein bill that merges two separate bills we’ve spoken about, FOSTA and SESTA. The bills are bad. They will not actually do what the passionate and vocal supporters of those bills claim they will do — which is take on the problem of sex trafficking. Neither bill actually targets sex traffickers (which, you know, one would think would be a prime consideration in pushing a bill that you claim will take on sex trafficking). Instead, they seek to hold third parties (websites) responsible if people involved in sex trafficking use them. This has all sorts of problems that we’ve been discussing for months, so I won’t reiterate all of them here, but suffice it to say if these bills were really about stopping sex trafficking, they sure do a horrible job of it. If you want to try to stop these bills, check out EFF’s action page and please call your Congressional Rep., and let them know they’re about to do a really bad thing. If you want more in-depth information, CDT has you covered as well. Finally, Professor Eric Goldman details piece by piece what this Frankenstein bill does and how bolting SESTA and FOSTA together make two bad bills… even worse, and even less clear as to what it actually does.

=> ↺ Letter: Board opening Pandora’s box for censorship

• Censorship of books is never good. Particularly when that book has been carefully chosen and is highly recommended by respected library sources.

=> ↺ Section 230 Isn’t About Facebook, It’s About You

• Longtime Techdirt readers know how important Section 230 is for the Internet to work, as well as many of the reasons why the proposed SESTA bill threatens the operation of the law, and with it the operation of the Internet. But especially for people less familiar with the ins and outs of Section 230, as the law hangs in the balance, we want to take moment to explain why it’s something that everyone should want to preserve.

• These days a lot of people are upset with Facebook, along with many other of its fellow big Internet companies. Being upset with these companies can make it tempting to try to punish them with regulation that might hurt them. But it does no good to punish them with regulation that will end up hurting everyone – including you.

=> ↺ Judge Tells Coal Boss Bob Murray The Judicial Equivalent Of ‘Eat Shit, Bob’

• Remember Bob Murray? He’s the Ohio-based coal mining CEO who threatened and then sued John Oliver and HBO over this fun episode of Oliver’s show, Last Week Tonight, which discussed the ridiculousness of our President’s focus on “coal jobs.” However, it also spent a fair bit of time talking about Bob Murray, Murray Energy, and how his actions did not appear to support actual coal miners. A prominent part of the story features the phrase (originally written by a coal miner at Murray Energy as part of the process to void a bonus check) “Eat Shit, Bob.”

=> ↺ Why muzzling social media is no answer

• The Russian government clearly sought to influence the 2016 election. This should not incite a rush to censor dissonant opinions on websites and social media, but that could easily happen in the good intentions to safeguard democracy from truly false and subversive content.

• Like the printing press, broadcast radio and television and cable television, the internet and social media revolutionized communications by making mass distribution of news and analysis more broadly accessible. That has widened public dialogue on everything from parking regulations to who should be president — it’s too good to lose even if it’s sometimes as annoying and discomforting as persistent demonstrations on the Washington Mall.

Privacy/Surveillance

Dropbox files to go public with over $1.1 billion in annual revenueHere’s what the filing said: Revenue: $1.11 billion in 2017, up 31 percent from the prior yearNet loss: $111.7 million in 2017, narrower than 2016′s loss of $210.2 millionAverage revenue per paid user: $111.91, up from 2016 but down from 2015500 million registered users, 100 million signed up since the beginning of 2017More than 11 million paying usersGross margin: 67 percentDropbox will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker “DBX.” Dropbox’s plans to go public were unsealed by the SEC on Friday, after previously filing the documents confidentially.

=> ↺ Case against alleged hoarder of NSA documents gets tougher for federal prosecutors

=> ↺ UK Metro Police Sued Over Phone Malware Purchase

• Last spring, a hacker who had illicitly obtained data from malware/spyware company FlexiSpy shared some of it with Motherboard. In the trove of customer data, it was discovered that one purchase was linked to an officer in the UK Metro Police.

• FlexiSpy is powerful malware, capable of gathering communications from multiple messaging services, as well as providing GPS location, emails, and phone call records. The purchase of this malware is questionable, considering it’s regulated under the UK’s Computer Misuse Act. The most obvious limitation of the malware is the fact that it requires physical access to targeted devices. But phones, tablets, and computers are seized all the time by law enforcement officers, and they’re sometimes returned to their owners after being searched. Malware like this would allow officers to hitch a virtual ride on someone’s phone or laptop, seeing everything they see.

=> ↺ Analog Equivalent Privacy Rights (18/21): Our analog parents had private conversations, both in public and at home

• Our parents, at least in the Western world, had a right to hold private conversations face-to-face, whether out in public or in the sanctity of their home. This is all but gone for our digital children.

=> ↺ The Problems With FISA, Secrecy, and Automatically Classified Information

• We need to talk about national security secrecy. Right now, there are two memos on everyone’s mind, each with its own version of reality. But the memos are just one piece. How the memos came to be—and why they continue to roil the waters in Congress—is more important.

• On January 19, staff for Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) wrote a classified memo alleging that the FBI and DOJ committed surveillance abuses in its applications for and renewal of a surveillance order against former Trump administration advisor Carter Page. Allegedly, the FBI and DOJ’s surveillance application included biased, politically-funded information.

=> ↺ Rancher Sues CBP After Officers Install A Camera On His Private Property

• The CBP’s habit of moving further and further inland in their search for deportees, drugs, and water to dump on the ground isn’t making it any new friends. Residents of small towns near the border are getting very sick of having to assert their citizenship multiple times a day thanks to Checkpoint Charlie camping out on every road out of town.

• The federal government doesn’t care. No sacrifice is too great to demand from citizens to keep this country safe from job seekers, victims of violence, and the occasional MS-13 gang member. Rights are optional within 100 miles of US borders and they’re completely nonexistent within 25 miles of crossing points. It’s this 25-mile cutoff that’s key to federal lawsuit arising from trespassing CBP officers and the spy cam they placed on the property of a local who’s spent years complaining about the CBP’s incursions.

• Cyrus Farivar covers the story of Texas rancher Ricardo Palacios at Ars Technica. And it’s a good one. Palacios discovered a camera on his property and took it down. Shortly thereafter, the CBP and the Texas Rangers rang him up, demanding the return of their surveillance camera. Palacios refused and was threatened with criminal charges.

=> ↺ Cakewalk for French tech-wiz, Aadhaar and Telangana portal easy hack

• A French security researcher on Monday breached the Telangana government benefit disbursement portal ‘TSPost’ and lay bare its vulnerabilities. The portal has account details including Aadhaar numbers of 56 lakh beneficiaries of NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme) and 40 lakh beneficiaries of social security pensions (SSP).

=> ↺ In re Silver – Texas Supreme Court Follows CAFC Lead and Recognizes Limited Patent-Agent Privilege

• I’ve written about Queen’s University, the CAFC case that recognized a privilege over patent agent communications, and the dissent by Judge Reyna who (properly) recognized that if its scope is limited to what agents are authorized to do, patent agents may need lawyers to advise them about the scope of the privilege.

=> ↺ Surveillance watchdog investigates security risks of GCHQ IT contractors

• The investigatory powers commissioner is reviewing the security arrangements for IT contractors that have access to live computer systems at GCHQ holding highly sensitive records on the UK population

=> ↺ MIT’s ‘Veil’ Fixes Holes In Private Browsing Modes To Boost Anonymity

• Web browsers’ private browsing mode is the first resolution taken by most users to protect their privacy online. But subconsciously they’re aware that the private mode or incognito mode is doing nothing but deleting the browsing activity from their computer. According to past studies, it’s possible to track people’s browsing habits even when privacy mode is enabled.

=> ↺ The Dropbox IPO filing is here

• The company is not yet profitable, having lost nearly $112 million last year. This shows significantly improved margins when compared to losses of $210 million for 2016 and $326 million for 2015.

=> ↺ Dropbox saved almost $75 million over two years by building its own tech infrastructure

• After making the decision to roll its own infrastructure and reduce its dependence on Amazon Web Services, Dropbox reduced its operating costs by $74.6 million over the next two years, the company said in its S-1 statement Friday.

=> ↺ Dropbox Gears Up for IPO

• Dropbox has filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its initial public offering (IPO). The company did not mention any pricing details in the filing, but it values the entire offering up to $500 million. The company intends to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol DBX.

• The underwriters for the offering are Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Allen, Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets, Jefferies, Macquarie Capital, Canaccord Genuity, JMP Securities, KeyBanc and Piper Jaffray.

=> ↺ Military, FBI, and ICE Are Customers of Controversial ‘Stalkerware’

• Dozens of employees from US federal law enforcement agencies and the armed forces have bought smartphone malware that can, in some cases, intercept Facebook messages, track GPS locations, and remotely activate a device’s microphone, according to a large cache of data stolen by a hacker [sic] and obtained by Motherboard.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ ‘Would you burn the Mona Lisa if it was sent?’: Our horror bureaucratic bungle

• It’s a bungle that has floored botanists around the globe and embarrassed the Australian government. How did 105 priceless and irreplaceable historical plant specimens, sent here by the French, end up being destroyed by biosecurity officers?

=> ↺ Texas police shoot man who disarmed possible church shooter

• Police in Amarillo shot an innocent man who helped foil a possible church shooting.

• The shooting happened shortly after 9 a.m. Feb. 14 at the Faith City Mission, a faith-based outreach organization. Police said Joshua Len Jones, 35, of Amarillo, barged into a church building at Faith City Mission, pulled out a gun and was holding about 100 congregants and church staff hostage.

• In the time between when police were dispatched and when officers arrived, a handful of churchgoers wrestled Jones to the ground. One of the congregants was able to grab Jones’ gun.

=> ↺ A Mother and Child Fled the Congo, Only to Be Forcibly Separated by the US Government

• The mother hasn’t seen her 7-year-old daughter in nearly four months, and the government won’t explain why.

• On Nov. 1, 2017, Ms. L. and her 7-year-old daughter, S.S., arrived at a United States port of entry near San Diego and presented themselves to border agents. Ms. L. had fled with her child from their home in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Ms. L. left in fear for her life. Now, the pair was finally in the United States, seeking asylum in a country where they thought they would be safe.

• Approximately four days later, Ms. L.’s young daughter was taken from her without any explanation or justification. When the officers separated them, Ms. L. could hear her daughter in the next room screaming that she did not want to be taken away from her mother. No one explained why her daughter was being taken away, where she was being taken, or when she would see her child again. More than 3 1/2 months later, Ms. L. remains at a detention center in the San Diego area, while her daughter is detained in Chicago, halfway across the country, without her mother or anyone else she knows.

=> ↺ 20,000 Protest Israeli Plan to Push Out African Migrants

• In other news from Israel, up to 20,000 people rallied in Tel Aviv Saturday to protest Israel’s plans to push out as many as 40,000 African migrants in the coming months. Israel is threatening to jail the migrants if they do not leave Israel. Protesters on Saturday condemned the Israeli government for shutting the door on refugees.

=> ↺ How Grassroots Activists in Georgia Are Leading the Opposition Against a Dangerous “Computer Crime” Bill

• A misguided bill in Georgia (S.B. 315) threatens to criminalize independent computer security research and punish ordinary technology users who violate fine-print terms of service clauses. S.B. 315 is currently making its way through the state’s legislature amid uproar and resistance that its sponsors might not have fully anticipated. At the center of this opposition is a group of concerned citizen-advocates who, through their volunteer advocacy, have drawn national attention to the industry-wide implications of this bill.

• Scott M. Jones and David Merrill from Electronic Frontiers Georgia—a group that participates in the Electronic Frontier Alliance network —spoke to us about their efforts to inform legislators and the public of the harms this bill would cause.

=> ↺ A Supreme Court Rebuke to the Trump Administration on DACA

• In a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration, the Supreme Court today refused to hear the government’s challenge to a lower court’s decision ordering the government to keep in place the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). Since the administration announced last fall that it was ending the program on March 5, many DACA recipients have already lost their residence and work permits.

• While the court’s decision is good news, it doesn’t end the uncertainty, confusion, and fear of deportation for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children.

=> ↺ Childhood Is Now A Punishable Offense

• Who here hasn’t inhaled helium from a balloon and talked in a cartoon voice?

=> ↺ Kansas Legislature Introduces Two Bills Mandating Speedy Release Of Police Body Cam Footage

• Two new bills have been introduced in the Kansas state legislature with the intent of forcing law enforcement agencies to turn over body camera footage in a timely manner. They appear to have been prompted by the family of a man shot and killed by police officers late last year. It took police 11 weeks to turn over footage of the incident. Even then, it wasn’t as though the footage was given to the executor of Dominique White’s estate. Instead, White’s father was “granted access” to the the body cam footage, which means he was able to watch the video on police equipment at a police station by himself with no other surviving family members.

• This is the state of Kansas’ current laws regarding body camera footage. Very few people are given access to footage and, with rare exceptions, the footage remains completely in the hands of law enforcement. The only people granted access to footage at this point in time are subjects of recordings, parents of minors who are subjects of recordings, attorneys for a recording subject, or a person’s heir.

=> ↺ Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse

• The internet might seem like a level playing field, but it isn’t. Safiya Umoja Noble came face to face with that fact one day when she used Google’s search engine to look for subjects her nieces might find interesting. She entered the term “black girls” and came back with pages dominated by pornography.

• Noble was horrified but not surprised. The UCLA communications professor has been arguing for years that the values of the web reflect its builders—mostly white, Western men—and do not represent minorities and women. Her latest book, Algorithms of Oppression, details research she started after that fateful Google search, and it explores the hidden structures that shape how we get information through the internet.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Twitch community, YouTube creators join protest to save net neutrality

• Dozens of websites and internet agencies are banding together to protest the FCC’s decision to kill net neutrality.

• Internet advocacy group Fight for the Future has organized Operation: #OneMoreVote, which will take place on Feb. 27. The campaign will enlist the help of communities like Twitch’s and companies like Reddit alongside organizations like YouTuber Hank Green’s Internet Creators Guild, to raise awareness about the appeal process. Only one more vote in the Senate is needed to take the case to the House of Representatives, where cosponsors can vote to block the repeal of net neutrality. If unsuccessful, net neutrality will be repealed in April.

=> ↺ Charter Spectrum Fails To Wiggle Out From Under State Lawsuit For Crappy Service

• But the lawsuit also exposed how Charter was gaming an FCC program that uses routers with custom firmware to track real-world ISP performance. The lawsuit also hints at the fact that Charter executives toyed with intentionally creating congestion at peering points in order to extract additional money out of content and transit companies, something you’ll recall was at the heart of an industry battle with Netflix a few years ago. Those problems miraculously disappeared with the passage of net neutrality rules that governed interconnection (read: expect this problem to resurface with the elimination of the rules).

=> ↺ AMP: the missing controversy

• One of the main implications of publishing an AMP page is that the page will be served from the Google domain. Or whoever is serving the AMP cache, yet mostly that will be Google.

• This means less direct traffic on your origin, and more time spent at Google. Less traffic on your origin could mean less monetization opportunities. In general, it means less control of anything. You’re subject to whatever the AMP standard allows or disallows.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Exclusive interview with Johanne Bélisle, Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office

• With respect to “brand Canada” from CIPO’s perspective, we strive to be known as a modern, internationally-leading IP office, one that provides high-quality and timely rights and that serves its clients well. We are a trusted source of IP information and knowledge for Canadian businesses and innovators. And we work in partnership with others, including our international partners in the IP ecosystem, to help make Canada a global centre of innovation. Canada is already an attractive place for business, trade and innovation to flourish, and we continue to make it more attractive all the time.

Trademarks

=> ↺ GUCCI as a well-known mark, with special attention to evidence, surveys, and unfair advantage

• Disputes involving luxury brands and the issue of well-known marks seem ubiquitous. Most often, two questions are asked: Is the mark at issue “well-known” and, if so, has there been dilution or an unfair advantage taken of the distinctive character of the well-known mark? A particularly interesting instance occurred recently before the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore involving the “GUCCI” mark, with particular attention to whether survey evidence was necessary and the need to prove that dilution or unfair advantage had occurred.

Copyrights

=> ↺ When a Pro-Copyright Rant Goes Wrong….

• It is no secret that copyright issues can trigger heated debates. On the one hand there are those who caution against stricter regulation, fearing that Internet freedom is at stake, while others argue that artists need more protection. Ironically, one of the most vocal pro-copyright activists lost sight of his core mission recently.

=> ↺ Most Users of Exclusive Torrent Site Also Pay For Services Like Netflix or Prime

• A survey carried out on HDBits, one of the world’s most exclusive private torrent sites, has revealed that even the most hardcore of pirates are happy to pay for content. The poll, carried out among more than 5,300 respondents, found that not only do 57% pay for streaming accounts on services like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime, but 26% use those platforms more than they use torrent sites.

=> ↺ BMG Wants Appeals Court to Rehear Cox Piracy Liability Case

• Music publisher BMG has petitioned the Court of Appeals for a rehearing of the piracy liability case against Internet provider Cox. The panel of judges reached the wrong conclusion when it overturned the $25 million verdict and issued a new trial, the company says. The RIAA and the National Music Publishers Association back the request.

=> ↺ Pirate Site Operators’ Jail Sentences Overturned By Court of Appeal

• Four men sentenced last year for their part in running several pirate sites have been told they will no longer have to spend time behind bars. After being ordered to spend up to ten months in prison, the court of appeal has now decided that for their activities on Dreamfilm, TFplay, Tankafetast and PirateHub, the men should walk free but pay increased damages to the entertainment industries.

=> ↺ ESA Comes Out Against Allowing Museums To Curate Online Video Games For Posterity

• A week or so back, we discussed the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE) calling on the Copyright Office to extend exemptions to anti-circumvention in the DMCA to organizations looking to curate and preserve online games. Any reading of stories covering this idea needs to be grounded in the understanding that the Librarian of Congress has already extended these same exemptions to video games that are not online multiplayer games. Games of this sort are art, after all, and exemptions to the anti-circumvention laws allow museums, libraries, and others to preserve and display older games that may not natively run on current technology, or those that have been largely lost in terms of physical product. MADE’s argument is that online multiplayer games are every bit the art that these single-player games are and deserve preservation as well.

=> ↺ Does embedding copyrighted content constitute infringement? NY judge says yes

• In a summary judgement delivered on February 15, Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that embedding a tweet containing a copyrighted image on a website amounts to direct infringement.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.