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● 05.25.18

● Links 25/5/2018: OpenSUSE 15 Leap Released, PostgreSQL 11 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 3:07 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ 15 books for kids who (you want to) love Linux and open source

• In my job I’ve heard professionals in tech, from C-level executives to everyone in between, say they want their own kids to learn more about Linux and open source. Some of them seem to have an easy time with their kids following closely in their footsteps. And some have a tough time getting their kids to see what makes Linux and open source so cool. Maybe their time will come, maybe it won’t. There’s a lot of interesting, valuable stuff out there in this big world.

=> ↺ 10 Reasons Why Desktop Linux Isn’t Mainstream – For The Record

• 10 Reasons Why Desktop Linux Isn’t Mainstream. Yeah, the title is totally link-bait. However, it’s worth noting that I actually deliver what the title describes and then some. Linux is awesome, but sadly, most people haven’t heard of it. Here’s why.

=> ↺ Linux Works For You

• Linux allows YOUR computer to work for you, not against you. Wearing this shirt/hoodie demonstrates to all who see it that you are not a slave to your PC. You are in control and Linux is the reason for this.

=> ↺ Robin “Roblimo” Miller

• The Linux Journal mourns the passing of Robin Miller, a longtime presence in our community.

Server

=> ↺ Living in a Docker world

• Once upon a time, I worked at a startup that was looking to “Dockerize” its backend infrastructure. This developed into a running joke where the programmers on the team would ask me if I knew what Docker was, and I would say:

• “Yes, it’s like a boat.”

• This would frustrate the programmers, which was my intention. They would howl about how wrong I was, and they could never quite calm down enough to clarify how Docker wasn’t like a boat.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Thunderbolt Networking Now Supported in Linux’s NetworkManager Tool

• Implemented by Intel developer Mika Westerberg last year during the development of the Linux 4.15 kernel series, Thunderbolt networking arrived for Linux-based operating systems to enable peer-to-peer (P2P) network connections where you connect two computers directly via a certified Thunderbolt cable to transfer files.

• But while the implementation was there in the Linux kernel, the userspace bits were missing to make Thunderbolt networking work on a standard installation of a GNU/Linux distribution. By adding a new udev rule in the NetworkManager the two developers managed to load the thunderbolt-net kernel module.

=> ↺ NetworkManager Now Supports Link-Local Thunderbolt Networking

• With the Linux 4.15 kernel there was the introduction of the Thunderbolt networking driver but support was still needed in user-space for making this peer-to-peer Thunderbolt networking support a reality.

=> ↺ Systemd Introduces “Portable Services” Functionality, Similar To Containers

• The past several months Lennart Poettering has been working on a “portable services” concept and that big ticket new feature has now landed in Systemd. Portable services are akin to containers but different.

• Portable Services is a big addition to systemd at around six thousand new lines of code for this init system and also brings the new portablectl utility.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Vega 20 GPU Support & VCN Clock/Power Gating Sent In For Linux 4.18

• Last week was the main AMDGPU features update for Linux 4.18 via DRM-Next while today a secondary pull request of further feature work has been submitted.

• Last week’s AMDGPU update included Vega M GPU support for Kabylake G hardware, reserving the initial scan-out buffer prior to the driver initialization for a more seamless console to driver experience, Raven Ridge GFXOFF support, various Vega 10 updates, and more.

=> ↺ NVIDIA 396.24.02 Linux Driver Brings New Vulkan Extensions

• The NVIDIA 396.24.02 Linux driver is available today and while it’s a beta update, it ends up being quite an exciting release thanks to new Vulkan extensions.

• The newly-supported Vulkan extensions for the Linux driver build include VK_KHR_draw_indirect_count, VK_EXT_global_priority, and VK_KHR_get_display_properties2.

=> ↺ Vulkan 1.1.76 Released With KHR_draw_indirect_count & KHR_get_display_properties2

• Vulkan 1.1.76 has just been released ahead of the US Memorial Day weekend with new extensions to excite Vulkan developers.

• The two new extensions in Vulkan 1.1.176 are VK_KHR_get_display_properties2 and VK_KHR_draw_indirect_count, both of which are notable additions.

Applications

=> ↺ A free e-learning tool for creating digital content

• It’s common to see a software app stand still—no new versions, no updates. Eventually, it gets overtaken by advancing technology and its user base drifts away. Open source software is not immune to this fate, but it is easier to revive than commercial software, where optimistic accountants cling to the hope that it still holds financial value.

• eXeLearning (also called eXeLearn, or eXe), an open source XHTML editor that was created with support from Auckland University of Technology, University of Auckland, and Tairawhiti Polytechnic, achieved a measure of popularity among its target audience. The introduction to the version 1 manual described it as “an authoring environment to assist teachers and academics in the design, development, and publishing of web-based learning and teaching materials without the need to become proficient in HTML or complicated web-publishing applications.” Despite a few annoying glitches, I liked and recommended that program. However, development stalled around 2010 and eXeLearning fell off my recommended list. eXeLearning is back on my list now.

=> ↺ Best Free Linux e-book Tools – Updated (2018)

• An electronic book (commonly abbreviated e-book) is a text and image-based publication which can be read on a computer or other digital devices such as an e-book reader.

• The rise of multimedia digital downloads in recent years has been truly extraordinary. The impact has been so great in respect of digital music downloads. Digital music accounted for half of the all the revenue generated by the music industry in 2016 and amounted to a total of 7.8 billion U.S. dollars that year. Over the years, many music labels stopped releasing singles on a physical format. We do not foresee that major book publishing companies will abandon paperbacks. However, the expansion of digital downloads equally applies to books. The biggest booksellers have reported that they sell more digital books than paperbacks.

=> ↺ Zammad – An Open Source Help Desk and Support Ticket System

• Zammad is a free open source, fully featured web based ticketing system for helpdesk or customer support. It ships in with a multitude of features for handling customer communication through various channels such as social networks (Facebook and Twitter), live chat, e-mails as well as telephone. It has an API for integrating your telephone system into in and outgoing calls.

=> ↺ BTFS – A Bittorrent Filesystem Based On FUSE

• The torrents have been around for a long time to share and download data from the Internet. There are plethora of GUI and CLI torrent clients available on the market. Sometimes, you just can not sit and wait for your download to complete. You might want to watch the content immediately. This is where BTFS, the bittorent filesystem, comes in handy. Using BTFS, you can mount the torrent file or magnet link as a directory and then use it as any read-only directory in your file tree. The contents of the files will be downloaded on-demand as they are read by applications. Since BTFS runs on top of FUSE, it does not require intervention into the Linux Kernel.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Pidgin / Libpurple SkypeWeb Plugin Sees New Stable Release

• SkypeWeb is a plugin that allows using Skype in Pidgin / libpurple chat clients. The plugin can be used to send instant messages and participate in group chats, but it does not yet support voice / video calling.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ VNC Desktop with Automation Broker

=> ↺ How to clean up your data in the command line

=> ↺ Simplify Local Variable Type Definition Using the Java 10 var Keyword

=> ↺ How to Install and Configure MRTG on Ubuntu 18.04

=> ↺ kill the first docker container in docker ps

=> ↺ Mail Command : Send mail from terminal on Linux machines

=> ↺ Kubernetes and the Challenge of Adding Persistent Storage

=> ↺ Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide to Jupyter Notebooks for Data Science & Machine Learning

=> ↺ 4 Easy Ways to Get Out of a Ubuntu Crash

=> ↺ How To Install Nginx, MariaDB, PHP (LEMP stack) on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Linux

=> ↺ The Perfect Server – Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) with Apache, PHP, MySQL, PureFTPD, BIND, Postfix, Dovecot and ISPConfig 3.1

=> ↺ How to Set Different Wallpaper for Each Monitor in Linux

• If you want to display different wallpapers on multiple monitors on Ubuntu 18.04 or any other Linux distribution with GNOME, MATE or Budgie desktop environment, this nifty tool will help you achieve this.

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Vulkan Adds An Exception To Address Wine’s Code License Incompatibility

• The Vulkan’s documentation/generator being re-licensed from an MIT-style license to the Apache 2.0 license had caused problems for the Wine project supporting newer than Vulkan 1.0.51, but fortunately that issue has been resolved.

• The previous re-licensing of Vulkan-Docs has caused some problems for the LGPL-licensed Wine code, as we’ve covered previously, but that technicality has now been addressed with The Khronos Group adding an exception to their license to benefit the Wine project and others using code generated from the Vulkan vk.xml reference file so as not to have (L)GPL and Apache licenses clash.

Games

=> ↺ Feral’s GameMode May Soon Have Soft Real-Time Capabilities

• Feral Interactive’s Linux system tuning daemon, GameMode since being introduced earlier this year has primarily offered the ability to easily change the CPU scaling governor when gaming but not much more. Though a new feature is now in the works for GameMode.

=> ↺ Looks like Nightdive Studios enhanced version of ‘Turok’ might be coming to Linux (update: it’s out!)

• This is certainly fun news, since Turok is a game I always wanted to play but never got a chance. It seems it’s coming to Linux!

=> ↺ Anima: Gate of Memories: The Nameless Chronicles action RPG announced, will support Linux

• Anima: Gate of Memories: The Nameless Chronicles [Steam] is a new action RPG from developer Anima Project and they’ve said they will be doing a Linux release just like they did for Anima Gate of Memories.

=> ↺ Steam’s Spring Cleaning Event has multiple Linux titles to play for free for a limited time

=> ↺ Reminder: Update your PC info for the next round of statistics updates

• This is your once a month reminder to make sure your PC information is correct on your user profiles. A fresh batch of statistics is generated on the 1st of each month.

=> ↺ Expand your city with something fun with the Cities: Skylines – Parklife expansion, now out

• Cities: Skylines – Parklife is the new expansion to the already rather good city builder from Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive, it’s now out.

=> ↺ Guns of Icarus Alliance is free to keep if you grab it on Steam before Tuesday

• In need of a new game? How about one that’s free? You can grab Guns of Icarus Alliance right now and get a permanent copy added to your Steam library.

=> ↺ The next Surviving Mars update named ‘Curiosity’ will add more types of domes

• Surviving Mars, the city building survival game from Haemimont Games and Paradox Interactive is set to expand with a new update due soon. Specifically, they’re hoping to release the update on Monday.

• The first major addition, is that they’re putting in a tutorial. While I haven’t had trouble figuring out what to do, in fact I saw that as part of the fun, others weren’t so happy. Fair enough—everyone is different and so Haemimont will add a tutorial. It’s a five-part “monster of a tutorial” that should keep new players from throwing a fit.

• The next major addition, is the inclusion of five new types of domes. These are skins either, they are all entirely new with different shapes, functionality and cost. Most are unlocked together with the older dome types too, so you won’t be waiting forever to see them.

=> ↺ Scalak, a puzzle game from the creator of Zenge & Art Of Gravity arrives with Linux support

• Hamster On Coke Games, creators of PUSH, Zenge, Art Of Gravity and more have released their latest puzzle game called Scalak.

=> ↺ Squad-based strategy game ‘Steam Marines 2′ adds official Linux support

• Steam Marines 2 [Official Site], the in-development squad-based strategy game from Worthless Bums is now officially available on Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ LXQt 0.13 Arrives with Minor Improvements

• LXQt 0.13 is available to download. It’s the latest version of the LXQt desktop, which aims to provide an elegant, resource friendly ‘next-gen’ LXDE.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Promo Sprint Report: What We Did and How You Can Help Us

• February was a big month for the Promo team – we held a long-awaited sprint in Barcelona, Spain from the 16th to 18th. The aim of the sprint was to look at information we had collected over the prior years, interpret what it meant, and use it to discuss and plan for the future. The activities we came up with should help us accomplish our ultimate goal: increasing KDE’s visibility and user base.

• Nine members of the team made it to Barcelona: Aleix Pol, Ivana Isadora Devčić, Jure Repinc, Kenny, Łukasz Sawicki, Lydia Pintscher, Neofytos Kolokotronis, Paul Brown, and Rubén Gómez. We met at Espai 30, an old factory converted into a social center for the neighborhood. Coincidentally, that is one of the places where the Guifi.net project started — rather fitting for a meeting that comprised Free Software and communication.

• [...]

• That last thing is important because the Promo team must discover what technologies people use, how they use them, and what they like and dislike about them to be able to market KDE products. We decided to take a step back and work on a market research project that will provide us with solid information on which to base our actions.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME 3.30 Desktop Environment Receives Support for ARM64 Hardware Architectures

• GNOME 3.29.2 has been released today as the second of four development snapshots towards the GNOME 3.30 desktop environment, due for release this fall. It comes five weeks after the first snapshot, GNOME 3.29.1, with even more improvements and new features across various components.

• One of the most exciting new features that landed during this development cycle is support for building the GNOME desktop environment for ARM64 (AArch64) architectures, which would allow it to run on various ARM hardware, including the upcoming Librem 5 Linux smartphone from Purism.

=> ↺ GNOME 3.29.2 Released As The Second Step Towards GNOME 3.30

=> ↺ Looks Like GNOME’s Nautilus File Manager Will Allow Running of Binaries, Scripts

=> ↺ Boxes + Flatpak

• It might seem at first sight that Boxes is a simple application, and that is partially true if you ignore the deep stack under the hood responsible for making virtualization simple™. The various modules (some of them gigantic such as qemu, libvirt, freerdp…) need to be setup in perfect harmony for us to boot a whole operating system with its essential functionalities.

Distributions

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ Based on Enterprise Code, Tested Millions of Times: openSUSE Leap 15 released

• Today’s major release of openSUSE Leap 15 is offering professional users, entrepreneurs and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) a new, fresh and hardened code base for their workloads that supports modern hardware, based on a stable, community- and enterprise-based open-source GNU/Linux distribution – but developed with a modern, more secure, better tested and much more open open-source build system unique to SUSE and openSUSE.

=> ↺ openSUSE Leap 15 Officially Released, Based on SUSE Enterprise Linux 15

=> ↺ OpenSUSE Leap 15 Released, Based On SUSE Linux Enterprise 15

=> ↺ OpenSUSE Conference 2018 Kicks Off In Prague, Video Streams Available

=> ↺ TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 13 Is the First Laptop Preloaded with openSUSE Leap 15

• The OpenSuSE Project announced today that openSUSE Leap 15 is available for download as 64-bit installation images, which users would need to write on USB flash drives or DVDs to install the operating system on their personal computers. However, the openSUSE Leap 15 operating system also comes preloaded with the TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 13 laptop we reviewed last year and Linode cloud images.

• “Today’s public release of Leap 15 aren’t only released as DVD and Network ISO: Linode and hardware vendor TUXEDO Computers have cloud images through of Leap ready, too. While the brand new TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 13 is immediately available with Leap 15 preinstalled and ready-to-run, Linode has Leap available for all infrastructure needs,” said openSUSE Project’s Douglas DeMaio in today’s announcement.

=> ↺ OpenSUSE 15 Leap Released, Facebook and Google Already Face GDPR Complaints, GNOME 3.29.2 and More

Slackware Family

=> ↺ [Slackware] May update for Plasma5

• On with the show.

• After recompiling LibreOffice and VLC to compensate for the recent poppler update in Slackware-current, my next target was – naturally – my Plasma5 package set. The KDE-5_18.05 release of ‘ktown‘ for Slackware-current offers the latest KDE Frameworks (5.46.0), Plasma (5.12.5) and Applications (18.04.1) on top of Qt5 5.9.5 (I decided to wait with an update to Qt5 5.11.0). You can and should check out the README file for more details and for installation/upgrade instructions.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat certifies multiple Ribbon VNFs on Open Stack platform 10

• Ribbon Communications Inc., a global provider of secure and intelligent cloud communications, announced that its Session Border Controller Software Edition (SBC SWe), Insight Element Management System (EMS) and Centralised Policy and Routing Software Edition (PSX SWe) are certified on Red Hat® OpenStack® Platform 10.

• Ribbon’s relationship with Red Hat Inc., a provider of open source solutions that bring Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) to the market, includes membership in the Red Hat Connect for Technology Partners and Red Hat Connect for Business Partners programs.

=> ↺ Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Cloud launches

• Red Hat expanded its hyper-converged infrastructure product line to target cloud environments by combining its supported OpenStack Platform and Ceph storage software distributions.

=> ↺ Red Hat powers Tata Comm’s IZO Private Cloud

• To offer its enterprise customers a reliable hybrid cloud experience across the globe, Tata Communications has selected Red Hat Cloud Suite to enhance its IZO Private Cloud service.

• Today, enterprises are adopting private and hybrid cloud strategies to help address the complexity and competitive pressures created by the evolution of new technologies. Tata Communications’ IZO Private Cloud is an integrated cloud platform that allows enterprises to build a hybrid cloud environment with the flexibility to burst to public cloud with enterprise-grade control and security. It is part of Tata Communications’ IZO cloud enablement platform that is underpinned by the company’s global network and partnerships with the world’s biggest cloud companies.

=> ↺ Open sass: Ubuntu/Red Hat drama erupts at Openstack

• Canonical founder and part-time hobby astronaut Mark Shuttleworth began his Openstack keynote this week by criticising Red Hat for being too expensive.

• Among the nervous laughter someone at the front yelled “fact check!” – but speaking with Computerworld UK, Shuttleworth insists no one has refuted his numbers.

• “Good luck to it,” he commented when asked about the fact-check-heckler. “Everything I put out there is supported by customers. There have been a number of analyst surveys of cloud economics that put Canonical on top of the list in terms of doing it efficiently.

=> ↺ Red Hat’s David Egts, Unisys’ Peter O’Donoghue Outline DevOps Challenges in Public Sector

• David Egts, chief technologist for Red Hat‘s public sector business, has said public sector organizations may encounter challenges in adopting DevOps in their information technology systems due to a culture that focuses on long-term initiatives.

=> ↺ Red Hat powers Tata Communications’ IZO private cloud platform

=> ↺ What Does The Red Hat And IBM Cloud Private And Deep Learning Combination Bring To Enterprise IT?

Fedora

=> ↺ PHP version 7.1.18 and 7.2.6

=> ↺ Getting started with the Python debugger

=> ↺ Fedora 28 : Video about development and fix packages.

Debian Family

Derivatives

=> ↺ Elive Brings Enlightenment to the Linux Desktop

• For the longest time, Enlightenment was my Linux desktop of choice. It was incredibly fast, highly configurable, and gorgeous. Since that time, I’ve migrated to desktops that veer toward being simpler, more efficient to work with… but I always consider my years with E16 and E17 with great fondness. Fortunately, at least two outstanding distributions focus on either Enlightenment E17 or a fork of E17. Bodhi Linux is a darling distribution (that I looked at previously) that uses a fork of E17, called Moksha Desktop. The developers of Bodhi have done some remarkable work with Enlightenment, but this article isn’t about Bodhi. Instead, I want to focus on a distribution that uses straight up Enlightenment E17. That distribution of Linux is Elive.

=> ↺ Mini DebConf Hamburg

• Last week I attended the MiniDebConfHamburg. I worked on new releases of dracut and rinse. Dracut is an initramfs-tools replacement which now supports early microcode loading. Rinse is a tool similar to debootstrap for rpm distributions, which now can create Fedora 28 environments aka chroots.

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Welcome the new Dell Precision developer editions!

• Today I’m proud to announce the new the Linux-based Dell Precision Mobile workstation line: the 3530, 5530, 7530 and the 7730. These systems, which represent the fourth generation of the Precision developer editions, come preloaded with Ubuntu and have been RHEL certified.

• These new thinner, lighter, premium-built Precision mobile workstations feature the latest Intel Core and Xeon processors, blazing-fast memory and professional graphics.

=> ↺ Dell Launches New Precision Mobile Workstation Line-Up Powered by Ubuntu Linux

• Dell has launched a new Dell Precision Mobile Workstation line-up powered by the Ubuntu Linux operating system, featuting thinner and lighter designs with premium builds and using the latest technologies.

• Targeted mostly at developers, the new Dell Precision Mobile Workstation “Developer Edition” line-up consists of the Dell Precision 3530 Mobile Workstation, Dell Precision 5530 Mobile Workstation, Dell Precision 7530 Mobile Workstation, and Dell Precision 7730 Mobile Workstation, which come with a much lighter and thinner design, and offer a premium build.

=> ↺ Dell Unveils New Ubuntu Laptops

• Thinner, lighter and more powerful — three ways to describe the latest Ubuntu powered laptops from Dell.

• Everyone’s favourite Linux laptop vendor has lifted the veil on a fresh set of Linux-powered laptops.

• Their all-new Dell Precision Mobile Workstation ‘developer editions’ combine the latest Intel Core and Xeon processors, memory options and discrete graphics with the steady and stable Ubuntu operating system.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Android and Automotive Grade Linux battle, as car becomes a data center

• Volvo’s decision to pick Intel’s Atom automotive system-on-chip (SoC) to run in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) for its new XC40 SUV highlights the intensifying competition among chipmakers in this fast growing sphere. The decision to base the system on Android also illuminates the evolving operating system scene for cars, with Linux the primary alternative in its AGL (Automotive Grade Linux) variant. However, given the complementary strengths of Android and Linux, it looks more likely that both will be deployed by many automobile makers in hybrid packages, so that they can take advantage of Android’s huge app ecosystem, encouraging plenty of third party enhancements, as well as harnessing the independence and enterprise scale of Linux. As cars become mini-data centers or edge compute…

=> ↺ Vending machine boardset works with UP or UP Squared boards

• Aaeon’s “AIOT-MSSP01” is a vending machine boardset powered by a PIC32 MCU that’s optimized to work with the UP or UP Squared SBCs. It offers vending-friendly I/O like MDB, EXE, and DEX, as well as motor controllers and 6x USB ports.

• The AIOT-MSSP01 is an industrial-grade vending machine controller (VMC) solution designed to run 24/7 “without a glitch,” says Aaeon. The boardset is optimized for use with the UP or UP Squared SBCs, but works with standard PCs and “most computer boards on the market.” There’s no mention of OS support for the connected computer, but the UP SBCs support Linux, Android, and Windows.

Android

=> ↺ Huawei reverses its stance, will no longer allow bootloader unlocking

=> ↺ Best BBQ and Grilling Accessories for Android

=> ↺ OnePlus 6 includes seamless updates to compliment its stock Android-like OS

=> ↺ Nokia 1 arrives in the UK as the first Android Go edition smartphone

=> ↺ Essential Phone 2: Did Android founder Andy Rubin just cancel his next phone?

=> ↺ This car stereo has Android Auto and CarPlay for $137

=> ↺ Pioneer’s in-dash unit supports both Android Auto Wireless and CarPlay

=> ↺ Unlocked Moto Z and Z Play being updated to Android 8.0 Oreo in the US

=> ↺ BlackBerry teaser shows the KEY2 Android phone with dual cameras

=> ↺ Huawei says it’ll stop offering bootloader unlock codes

=> ↺ Explore new features of Android P

=> ↺ The Nvidia Shield gets a new UI with Android Oreo update

=> ↺ Essential Phone 2 reportedly canceled, Android founder may sell company

=> ↺ Why Android P gestures are a risk worth taking

=> ↺ Qualcomm’s new processor means next year’s cheap Android phones will suck a little less

=> ↺ Pioneer NEX receivers first with wireless Android Auto, CarPlay

=> ↺ The Trusted Places Smart Lock has shown back up in Android

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ FOSS as a Part of a Corporate Sustainability Plan

• In 1983 the United Nations convened a commission of 22 people to investigate the question of the worldwide environmental and social impact of human development. Four years later, in 1987, the commission released Our Common Future, more commonly known as the Brundtland Report in honour of Gro Harlem Brundtland, chairperson of the commission. This report detailed the very real socio-environmental issues facing humanity. One of its recommendations was for governments, organizations and companies to start engaging in what it called sustainable development. That is, “…development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

• Since then there’s been steep growth in the number of corporations that maintain and operate according to a corporate sustainability plan. These plans encompass environmental as well as social aspects of doing business. They encompass actions within an organization—such as natural resource usage, diversity and inclusion, and fair treatment of employees—as well as those external to the organization—such as the sustainability operations of their entire supply chain as well as the overall impact the corporation has on the Earth and its inhabitants.

=> ↺ Securing Third-Party and Open Source Code Components: A Primer

• The increasing popularity of open source code continues to be a boon for developers across the industry, allowing them to increase efficiency and streamline delivery. But there are security risks to be considered when leveraging open source and commercial code components, as each carries with it a significant risk of becoming the enemy within, creating a vulnerability in the program it helps build.

Events

=> ↺ Speak at Open Source Summit Europe – Submit by July 1

• Open Source Summit Europe is the leading technical conference for professional open source. Join developers, sysadmins, DevOps professionals, architects and community members, to collaborate and learn about the latest open source technologies, and to gain a competitive advantage by using innovative open solutions.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Firefox 63 to Get Improved Tracking Protection That Blocks In-Browser Miners

• Mozilla developers are working on an improved Tracking Protection system for the Firefox browser that will land in version 63, scheduled for release in mid-October.

• Tracking Protection is a feature that blocks Firefox from loading scripts from abusive trackers. It was first launched with Firefox’s Private Browsing mode a few years back, but since Firefox 57, released in November 2017, users can enable it for normal browsing sessions at any time.

=> ↺ Firefox 63 To Block Cryptojackers With Advanced Tracking Protection

• It has been reported by Bleeping Computer, a security blog, that Firefox 63 will be launched with an improved tracking protection system to ward off the threats and security concerns posed by in-browser miners.

• With the surge in incidents involving mining malware trying to use your CPU power to perform some CPU-intensive calculations for their own benefit, many browsers have raised their guards by providing additional security features. (You can read more about blocking cryptocurrency mining in your browser in our earlier published article.)

=> ↺ What’s the 411 on 404 messages: Internet error messages explained

• Nothing’s worse than a broken website. Well, maybe an asteroid strike. Or a plague. So maybe a broken website isn’t the end of the world, but it’s still annoying. And it’s even more annoying not knowing what those weird error messages mean. That’s why we’ve decoded the most common HTTP error messages.

SaaS/Back End

=> ↺ Canonical founder calls out OpenStack suppliers for ‘lack of focus’ on datacentre cost savings

• The OpenStack supplier community’s reluctance to prioritise the delivery of datacentre cost savings to their users could prove “fatal”, says Canonical co-founder Mark Shuttleworth.

=> ↺ OpenStack in transition

• OpenStack is one of the most important and complex open-source projects you’ve never heard of. It’s a set of tools that allows large enterprises ranging from Comcast and PayPal to stock exchanges and telecom providers to run their own AWS-like cloud services inside their data centers. Only a few years ago, there was a lot of hype around OpenStack as the project went through the usual hype cycle. Now, we’re talking about a stable project that many of the most valuable companies on earth rely on. But this also means the ecosystem around it — and the foundation that shepherds it — is now trying to transition to this next phase.

=> ↺ Free OpenStack Training Resources

=> ↺ How the OpenStack Foundation Is Evolving Beyond Its Roots

• The OpenStack Foundation is in a period of transition as it seeks to enable a broader set of open infrastructure efforts than just the OpenStack cloud project itself.

• In a video interview at the OpenStack Summit here, OpenStack Foundation Executive Director Jonathan Bryce and Chief Operating Officer Mark Collier discussed how the open-source organization is still thriving, even as corporate sponsorship changes and attendance at events declines.

• At the event, Collier said there were approximately 2,600 registered attendees, which is nearly half the number that came to the OpenStack Boston 2017 event. OpenStack’s corporate sponsorship has also changed, with both IBM and Canonical dropping from the Platinum tier of membership.

Databases

=> ↺ PostgreSQL 11 Beta 1 Released!

• The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the first beta release of PostgreSQL 11 is now available for download. This release contains previews of all features that will be available in the final release of PostgreSQL 11, though some details of the release could change before then.

• In the spirit of the open source PostgreSQL community, we strongly encourage you to test the new features of PostgreSQL 11 in your database systems to help us eliminate any bugs or other issues that may exist. While we do not advise for you to run PostgreSQL 11 Beta 1 in your production environments, we encourage you to find ways to run your typical application workloads against this beta release.

=> ↺ PostgreSQL 11 Beta 1 Released With JIT Compilation, More Performance Tuning

• The first beta of PostgreSQL 11.0 is now available for testing.

• Just yesterday we happened to be talking about the new features coming for PostgreSQL 11 and today happened to mark the beta availability. PostgreSQL 11 is bringing continued performance optimizations, better handling of large data sets, usability improvements. initial JIT compilation support by making use of LLVM, and more.

=> ↺ MariaDB launches Oracle compatible enterprise open source database

• Enterprise computing has often been reliant on proprietary database architecture, but this can be both complex and costly, putting up a barrier to innovation.

• Now open source database specialist MariaDB is launching its latest enterprise offering with Oracle compatibility. This allows existing Oracle Database users to reuse existing code and established skill sets when migrating applications or deploying new ones.

• MariaDB TX 3.0 introduces built-in, system-versioned tables, enabling developers to easily build temporal features into applications. This eliminates the need to manually create columns, tables and triggers in order to maintain row history, freeing DBAs to simply create new tables with system versioning or alter existing tables to add it, streamlining the process significantly. Developers can query a table with standard SQL to see what data looked like at a previous point in time, such as looking at a customer’s profile history to see how preferences have changed over time.

=> ↺ MariaDB TX 3.0 Delivers First Enterprise Open Source Database to Beat Oracle, Microsoft and IBM

• MariaDB® Corporation today announced the release of MariaDB TX 3.0, the first enterprise open source database solution to deliver advanced features that, until now, required expensive, proprietary and complex databases.

=> ↺ 5 Open-Source SQL IDEs for You to Learn and Explore

• If you’ve done a lot with SQL, you’ve probably used some form of SQL IDE to help you complete that work. Yes, it’s possible to do everything in SQL from the command line; but creating or even maintaining databases and tables that way is an exercise in masochism. There are some nice commercial IDEs such as dbArtisan and SQL Server’s Management Studio, but IDEs is one area where open-source can do just as well (or in some cases, even better).

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ LibreOffice 6.1 Branches & Now Under Feature Freeze, LibreOffice 6.2 On Master

• LibreOffice has reached its hard feature freeze and branching period with the first beta release being imminent.

• As of yesterday is now the libreoffice-6-1 branch for continued with on this next open-source office suite while the Git master code is tracking what will later become LibreOffice 6.2.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ FOSSID Awarded Grant for Artificial Intelligence in Open Source Auditing by Sweden’s Government Agency for Innovation

=> ↺ Intel AI Lab open-sources library for deep learning-driven NLP

• The Intel AI Lab has open-sourced a library for natural language processing to help researchers and developers give conversational agents like chatbots and virtual assistants the smarts necessary to function, such as name entity recognition, intent extraction, and semantic parsing to identify the action a person wants to take from their words.

• Just a few months old, the Intel AI Lab plans to open-source more libraries to help developers train and deploy artificial intelligence, publish research, and reproduce the latest innovative techniques from members of the AI research community in order to “push AI and deep learning into domains it’s not a part of yet.”

BSD

=> ↺ ‘monitor mode for iwm(4)’

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ FSFE Newsletter – May 2018

• Following a more than a decade long tradition, the FSFE once again led its annual Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop (LLW) in Barcelona, Spain, as a meeting point for world-leading legal exper…

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ Opinion: Should Human-Animal Chimeras Be Granted “Personhood”?

• There are several emerging biotechnologies that raise ethical questions regarding the definition of personhood. One of these innovations is xenotransplantation, which uses gene editing (CRISPR-Cas9) and stem cell technologies to create human-pig or human-sheep chimeras that can grow human organs for transplantation. While most people understand that pigs growing human livers and kidneys could save lives, there is an ethical fear that these technologies may generate animals that incorporate human cells into their brains or sex organs—situations that require broader discussions regarding the question whether such organisms attain the status of personhood.

=> ↺ Ingestible “bacteria on a chip” could help diagnose disease

• MIT researchers have built an ingestible sensor equipped with genetically engineered bacteria that can diagnose bleeding in the stomach or other gastrointestinal problems.

• This “bacteria-on-a-chip” approach combines sensors made from living cells with ultra-low-power electronics that convert the bacterial response into a wireless signal that can be read by a smartphone.

• “By combining engineered biological sensors together with low-power wireless electronics, we can detect biological signals in the body and in near real-time, enabling new diagnostic capabilities for human health applications,” says Timothy Lu, an MIT associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering.

Hardware

=> ↺ Internal Documents Show Apple Knew the iPhone 6 Would Bend

• Apple’s internal tests found that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are significantly more likely to bend than the iPhone 5S, according to information made public in a recent court filing obtained by Motherboard. Publicly, Apple has never said that the phones have a bending problem, and maintains that position, despite these models commonly being plagued with “touch disease,” a flaw that causes the touchscreen to work intermittently that the repair community say is a result of bending associated with normal use.

• The information is contained in internal Apple documents filed under seal in a class-action lawsuit that alleges Apple misled customers about touch disease. The documents remain under seal, but US District Court judge Lucy Koh made some of the information from them public in a recent opinion in the case.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Swiss Group Suggests Switzerland Use Compulsory Licences To Curb Cancer Drug Prices

• Public Eye, a well-known Swiss non-governmental organisation, convened the side event at the 71th World Health Assembly, taking place from 21-26 May. On this occasion, they launched a new campaign: ‘For Affordable Drugs’.

• According to Public Eye’s press release, the Swiss healthcare system is struggling to cope with the skyrocketing prices of new treatments, and in particular cancer drugs. Cancer treatments often reach over CHF 100,000 (US$100,000) per patient, per year, they said.

=> ↺ Why Your Health Insurer Doesn’t Care About Your Big Bills

• Michael Frank ran his finger down his medical bill, studying the charges and pausing in disbelief. The numbers didn’t make sense.

• His recovery from a partial hip replacement had been difficult. He’d iced and elevated his leg for weeks. He’d pushed his 49-year-old body, limping and wincing, through more than a dozen physical therapy sessions.

• The last thing he needed was a botched bill.

• His December 2015 surgery to replace the ball in his left hip joint at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City had been routine. One night in the hospital and no complications.

• He was even supposed to get a deal on the cost. His insurance company, Aetna, had negotiated an in-network “member rate” for him. That’s the discounted price insured patients get in return for paying their premiums every month.

• But Frank was startled to see that Aetna had agreed to pay NYU Langone $70,000. That’s more than three times the Medicare rate for the surgery and more than double the estimate of what other insurance companies would pay for such a procedure, according to a nonprofit that tracks prices.

Security

=> ↺ [Crackers] infect 500,000 consumer routers all over the world with malware

• VPNFilter—as the modular, multi-stage malware has been dubbed—works on consumer-grade routers made by Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, TP-Link, and on network-attached storage devices from QNAP, Cisco researchers said in an advisory. It’s one of the few pieces of Internet-of-things malware that can survive a reboot. Infections in at least 54 countries have been slowly building since at least 2016, and Cisco researchers have been monitoring them for several months. The attacks drastically ramped up during the past three weeks, including two major assaults on devices located in Ukraine. The spike, combined with the advanced capabilities of the malware, prompted Cisco to release Wednesday’s report before the research is completed.

=> ↺ Do Not Use sha256crypt / sha512crypt – They’re Dangerous

• I’d like to demonstrate why I think using sha256crypt or sha512crypt on current GNU/Linux operating systems is dangerous, and why I think the developers of GLIBC should move to scrypt or Argon2, or at least bcrypt or PBKDF2.

=> ↺ Intel CPU Bug Affecting rr Watchpoints

• I investigated an rr bug report and discovered an annoying Intel CPU bug that affects rr replay using data watchpoints. It doesn’t seem to be hit very often in practice, which is good because I don’t know any way to work around it. It turns out that the bug is probably covered by an existing Intel erratum for Skylake and Kaby Lake (and probably later generations, but I’m not sure), which I even blogged about previously! However, the erratum does not mention watchpoints and the bug I’ve found definitely depends on data watchpoints being set.

• I was able to write a stand-alone testcase to characterize the bug. The issue seems to be that if a rep stos (and probably rep movs) instruction writes between 1 and 64 bytes (inclusive), and you have a read or write watchpoint in the range [64, 128) bytes from the start of the writes (i.e., not triggered by the instruction), then one spurious retired conditional branch is (usually) counted. The alignment of the writes does not matter, and it’s not related to speculative execution.

=> ↺ Security updates for Friday

=> ↺ Ryzom falling: Remote code execution via the in-game browser

• Ryzom’s in-game browser is there so that you can open links sent to you without leaving the game. It is also used to display the game’s forum as well as various other web apps. The game even allows installing web apps that are created by third parties. This web browser is very rudimentary, it supports only a bunch of HTML tags and nothing fancy like JavaScript. But it compensates for that lack of functionality by running Lua code.

• You have to consider that the Lua programming language is what powers the game’s user interface. So letting the browser download and run Lua code allows for perfect integration between websites and the user interface, in many cases users won’t even be able to tell the difference. The game even uses this functionality to hot-patch the user interface and add missing features to older clients.

=> ↺ For Red Hat, security is a lifestyle, not a product

• Red Hat has a sterling reputation in Linux security circles. That means the company has a workable process for preventing problems and responding to them. Even if you don’t use Linux, the Red Hat security approach has a lot going for it, and some of its practices might be worth adopting in your own shop.

=> ↺ How insecure is your router?

• Your router is your first point of contact with the internet. How much is it increasing your risk?

• [...]

• I’d love to pretend that once you’ve improved the security of your router, all’s well and good on your home network, but it’s not. What about IoT devices in your home (Alexa, Nest, Ring doorbells, smart lightbulbs, etc.?) What about VPNs to other networks? Malicious hosts via WiFi, malicious apps on your children’s phones…?

• No, you won’t be safe. But, as we’ve discussed before, although there is no such thing as “secure,” it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t raise the bar and make it harder for the Bad Folks.™

=> ↺ 24 best free security tools

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ The NFL’s ‘Anthem Policy’ Is Pure Hypocrisy

• The NFL’s new “anthem policy” requires players to “respect” the flag and the national anthem or stay in the locker room until it is played. The NFL refers to this as a compromise — it was anything but.

• This was a mandate, not a decision arrived at through a collaborative process. Despite claiming that they would consult with the players before making a decision on this issue, the National Football League Players Association said, “The NFL chose to not consult the union in the development of this new ‘policy.’” So the league and owners will decide what shows “respect.”

• Kneeling is out. The Pittsburg Steelers indicated that raising a fist or linking arms is out. If one team decides a gesture or posture is respectful but another team doesn’t like it, what will happen? One of the NFL officials actually said, “We will know it when we see it.”

• [...]

• John Elway and other NFL officials have said that we should “take the politics out of football.” Really? What about the millions of dollars paid to the NFL by the Department of Defense to promote the military? If encouraging people not to serve in the military is a political act, then encouraging them to serve is equally political. What about the show of military aircraft flying overhead and flags streaming across the field? Kneeling during the anthem has nothing to do with being for or against military recruiting, but the Pentagon paid for the NFL to promote the military — an overtly political act — and the NFL has been delivering. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is. The NFL gave up being non-political a long time ago.

• The NFL said the new policy would change “a false perception among many that thousands of NFL players were unpatriotic.” Think about that for a minute. There was a false perception that players were unpatriotic, meaning the players kneeling were patriotic. The cure for this false perception is to force players to stand when they would prefer to kneel. By forcing them to stand, the fans will now know they are patriotic. This makes no sense.

=> ↺ Cuba regrets CIA Bay of Pigs veteran died without trial

• Havana expressed regret Thursday that a former CIA agent who led a bloody campaign against Fidel Castro had died without ever being brought to justice for “terrorist” crimes against Cuba.

• Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born veteran of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, died Wednesday aged 90 at his home near Miami.

=> ↺ Cuba regrets CIA veteran died in Miami without facing trial for ‘terrorist’ crimes

=> ↺ U.S. Attacks That Killed ‘Hundreds’ of Russians and Syrians Detailed in New Report

• ew details have emerged regarding clashes between a U.S.-led coalition and an alliance of Syrian and Russian forces fighting on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a new, dramatic report.

• Citing interviews and documents obtained by the newspaper, The New York Times revealed how a four-hour firefight erupted February 7 in eastern Syria, leaving hundreds of pro-Syrian government fighters—including Russians—dead. Syria has blamed the U.S. for the bloodshed, which the U.S. argues was in self-defense. Russia has distanced itself from the incident, telling the Pentagon that the Russians involved were volunteer fighters, not part of Russia’s armed forces.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Julian Assange’s refuge ‘in jeopardy’

=> ↺ Assange’s refuge in Ecuadorian embassy ‘in jeopardy’

• Julian Assange’s nearly six-year refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London is in danger, opening the WikiLeaks founder to arrest by British authorities and potential extradition to the US, multiple sources with knowledge tell CNN. While Assange has in the past claimed his position in the embassy was under threat, sources say his current situation is “unusually bad” and that he could leave the embassy “any day now,” either because he will be forced out or made to feel so restricted that he might choose to leave on his own. His position there is “in jeopardy,” one source familiar with the matter said. Assange’s exit from the embassy could open a new phase for US investigators eager to find out what he knows.

=> ↺ Report: Julian Assange Might Get Kicked Out of Ecuadorian Embassy

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is on the verge of being evicted from his hideout at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, according to CNN. A source said Assange could leave “any day now,” subjecting himself to extradition to the United States. CNN reports that the U.S. is pressuring Lenin Moreno, Ecuador’s new president, to kick Assange out. Assange might also be “made to feel so restricted that he might choose to leave on his own,” according to CNN.

=> ↺ Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange May Be Forced Out of Ecuadorian Embassy in London ‘Any Day Now’

• Wikileaks founder Julian Assange may be forced out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has lived for the past six years “any day now,” according to a CNN report.

=> ↺ Julian Assange “in jeopardy” of being forced into UK and US detention

• According to a CNN report today, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in imminent danger of being forced to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He would face arrest by British authorities and potential extradition to the US, where he could face life imprisonment or execution on espionage charges.

• CNN said that “multiple sources with knowledge” of Assange’s “unusually bad” situation warned that he could be removed from the embassy “any day now”—either forced out or made to feel so restricted that he might leave on his own.

• Since seeking political asylum in the embassy in 2012, Assange has been effectively detained in a tiny room without charge for 2,726 days. For 59 days, he has been denied visitors and outside communications since the Ecuadorian government cut off his access on March 28.

=> ↺ If Trump’s team was colluding with Russia, why did it keep asking WikiLeaks for things?

=> ↺ Assange’s protection from US extradition “in jeopardy”

• Almost two months after Julian Assange’s ability to receive visitors and access to digital communications was severely curtailed by the Government of Ecuador, CNN reports that the situation has become “unusually bad”.

• Without the protection of the Ecuadorian government, Assange is liable to be arrested in the UK on charges related to a bail violation. More seriously, this would also open the way to questioning and a likely extradition request from the United States, where a grand jury investigation has been looking into Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing US secrets since 2010.

• Last week, the Guardian reported that the UK and Ecuador were engaged in negotiations to attempt to bring the impasse over Assange’s asylum status to an end, without a guarantee that Assange should be protected from the prospect of extradition for his publication activities. Such a settlement would appear to breach principles of international and Ecuadorian domestic law.

=> ↺ Both Democrats And Republicans Blame The Messenger When Leaked Emails Are Made Available

• Back during the 2016 election, when Wikileaks published John Podesta’s leaked emails, Democrats freaked out and blamed Wikileaks, and even tried to lie about the validity of those emails. Many supporters of the Democratic party, to this day, believe that Wikileaks and/or Julian Assange should face legal consequences for publishing those hacked emails. Of course, Republicans cheered on that effort. Sean Hannity, who back in 2010 was screaming about how Assange was “waging his war against the U.S.” by publishing the leaked documents from Chelsea Manning and demanding that Obama “arrest” Assange, is now seen as one of Assange’s most vocal supporters even having him on his show.

• But, of course, when the shoe is on the other foot, things change. Just recently, various news organizations started reporting on shenanigans by top Trump fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, based on a leak of Broidy’s emails. Broidy’s not taking this very well, issuing a subpoena to the Associated Press to try to uncover the news organization’s source for his emails.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Tesla says its factory is safer. But it left injuries off the books

Finance

=> ↺ Trump is proposing to lift ZTE’s ban for $1.3bn and nobody is happy

• The latest word is that Trump wants a complete management overhaul at ZTE and a $1.3bn ‘fine’ paid to lift the restrictions which prevent the company from buying parts made by American companies.

• As if that wasn’t enough, Congress appears to be united against Trump on this – both sides of the house have expressed the wish that no deal is done and that the ZTE ban remains in place.

=> ↺ Media Quote Frank on Rolling Back Dodd/Frank–Not Disclosing He’s Now a Bank Director

• The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to roll back key provisions of the landmark Dodd/Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a 2010 law that increased regulatory scrutiny of banks following the 2008 financial crisis.

• One of the many provisions of the original Dodd/Frank law subjected banks with over $50 billion in assets to annual economic “stress tests” to gauge their potential for collapse in the event of an economic crisis. The rollback bill raises that threshold to $250 billion, which would exempt at least two dozen “small” banks, including SunTrust, BB&T, Charles Schwab and American Express. By comparison, in 2008, key failed bank Countryside had only $172 billion in assets, and so would have avoided stress testing, while other financial dominos like Washington Mutual ($264 billion) and Bear Stearns ($289 billion) were close to the lower limit.

• The Dodd/Frank rollback also relaxes banks’ reporting requirements on borrowers, and adds exemptions for banks with less than $10 billion in assets from the Volcker Rule, a Dodd/Frank provision that bars banks from investing deposits in risky private equity and hedge funds.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Elon Musk has a very bad idea for a website rating journalists

• Fact-checking sites perform an invaluable service, but they are labor-intensive, not a self-regulating system like what Musk proposes. Such systems are inevitably and notoriously ruled by chaos, vote brigades, bots, infiltrators, agents provocateur and so on.

=> ↺ Tom the Dancing Bug: Our Nation’s Leaders Analyze the Data on USA’s Gun Violence

=> ↺ European Earthquake as Populist Government Forms in Italy

• The revolt of voters across the Western world has reached a high point in Europe.

• The Five Star Movement and the League, two so-called “populist” political parties in Italy, are preparing to form a government after Wednesday’s appointment of a new prime minister following an election result that could directly challenge the foundations of the European Union.

• Like other anti-system movements around Europe, the Italian parties are calling in particular for abandoning the neoliberal economic policies and speculative finance, which are hollowing out the middle class.

• The breakthrough comes two and a half months after the elections held on March 4, in which Italian voters sent an unequivocal message to the current political institutions, not simply of protest, but of a desire to actually give power to those willing to implement deep changes.

=> ↺ Hey Elon Musk, Let’s Talk About The Media

• And, yesterday you went on a bit of a Twitter rant about the media and said that you were going to start a media truth rating site called Pravda (clever!). And, as with the Boring Company, I believe you’ll do it. I mean, you actually did incorporate Pravda Corp. last fall. So, you’ve got that going for you.

• On top of that, I even think you have a general point about how bad the mainstream media is. We’ve been at this for over 20 years, and some of our most successful stories have been calling out really bad reporting by big publications. It’s good to keep them honest.

• That said, I have some pretty serious concerns about this whole setup and believe you’ve misdiagnosed the problem.

• [...]

• I’m curious if you could point to any actual example of that happening in practice today for a mainstream publication? I know that Gawker — who your former colleague Peter Thiel killed off — used to pay writers a bonus based on clicks, but I can’t think of any other news organization that still does that. It’s a nice story that people outside the media like to claim, but actual journalists know is not actually the case. Hell, here at Techdirt, I’ve never actually told any of our writers how much traffic their stories get, because I don’t want them thinking about clicks at all. I want them to write the best stories they can write, and then they can let me focus on how to monetize good content and a good insightful community, rather than just going for scale and clicks.

• [...]

• But, there is a larger, more important issue here that should be discussed. I know you’ve dismissed a few people who have suggested your anti-media rant does more harm than good, but you might want to rethink that stance. Yes, the media makes mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are pretty serious. And, yes, some media organization are just… terrible. But painting the entire media industry with a broad brush, at the same time that many other powerful institutions who don’t want to be held accountable (cough cough) are doing the same thing, doesn’t help make the media better or more credible. It just empowers those who seek to discredit the actually good and necessary job of underpaid, overworked reporters who are actually breaking important stories, holding the powerful accountable and speaking truth to power.

=> ↺ Are Democrats Screwing Themselves Over By Suing Russia?

• The DNC is suing Russia, Wikileaks, and Donald Trump for alleged campaign and election interference, and this lawsuit might be one of the biggest mistakes the Party has made in recent years. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss this.

=> ↺ Trump Administration Ordered to Help DNC With Lawsuit Against Russia

• The Democratic National Committee won a court order forcing President Donald Trump’s administration to help in the group’s lawsuit accusing Russia of interfering in the 2016 election.

• U.S. District Judge John Koeltl on Wednesday granted the DNC’s request to enlist Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s department to formally serve Russia with the complaint through a provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Russia generally refuses to accept U.S. legal complaints in the mail, complicating the Democratic group’s suit over the meddling.

• [...]

• Beginning in mid-2016, WikiLeaks released almost 20,000 emails from inside the DNC that showed, among other things, how staffers had favored Hillary Clinton during her primary campaign against Bernie Sanders — prompting Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida to resign as committee head. Later in the campaign, WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of emails from the Gmail account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Federal judge rules that Trump can’t block Twitter users

• Ever since Donald Trump took office, there’s been controversy around his Twitter addiction. Chief among the issues with president’s use of Twitter is how he frequently blocks his critics. As an elected official, many have argued that his account represents official communication that should be free for anyone to see, and there have already been several lawsuits around his habit of blocking users. As of today, it looks like there’s some legal weight behind that argument: a Federal judge just ruled that Trump should not be allowed to block users because it is a first amendment violation.

=> ↺ Court rules that Trump can’t block people on Twitter

• A New York federal judge has ruled that Donald Trump can’t block people he doesn’t like on Twitter, because he uses Twitter to communicate his edicts and policies as President of the United States, and the US government can’t exclude communications based on viewpoint, as this violates the First Amendment.

=> ↺ A Judge Ruled It’s Unconstitutional for President Trump to Block Twitter Users

• Because Trump’s account is considered a “public forum,” the judge ruled that “blocking of the plaintiffs based on their political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment.”

=> ↺ Judge rules Trump can’t block users on Twitter

• But Buchwald did not order Trump or Scavino to unblock the individual plaintiffs in the case or prohibit them from blocking others from the account based on their views as the plaintiffs’ had asked.

• She said a declaratory judgment should be sufficient.

=> ↺ Court Says It’s Unconstitutional For Trump To Block People On Twitter, But Doesn’t Actually Order Him To Stop

• Just last month, we noted that a court in Kentucky had ruled that the Governor of that state was free to block critics on social media accounts, saying that while people are free to speak, the First Amendment does not mean that the Governor has to listen. As we noted at the time, that ruling did not bode well for a more high profile case that was filed by the Knight First Amendment Center at Columbia University against President Donald Trump under similar circumstances. However, as you may have heard, a federal court in New York has now ruled that Trump’s blocking is unconstitutional.

• This is, not surprisingly, getting lots of attention, but many people commenting on it are not fully understanding the actual issues in the lawsuit (shocking, I know, that people doing legal analysis on the internet might sometimes not get it right…). As we’ve noted plenty of times in the past, the First Amendment does not apply to private platforms, and nothing in this ruling means that Twitter is a “public forum” (as some nuttier lawyers are trying to argue in other cases). Instead, the ruling is specific that it is just the commentary in response to Donald Trump that has become a public forum.

• [...]

• There is one odd bit that is not mentioned in most of the commentary on this ruling. And it’s this: the court does not actually order Trump to stop blocking people. It just says that it’s unconstitutional. Given the choice between giving the Knight Center injunctive relief (i.e., forcing the defendant to comply) and merely declaratory relief (i.e., telling the plaintiff they are correct), it chose the latter. It notes that there is some question of whether or not the courts can impose injunctive relief on a sitting President, and decides to side-step the question altogether.

=> ↺ Swedish Journalist Probed for ‘Hate Speech’ Over Sharia-Mocking Cartoons

• According to Sjunnesson, he was reported to the police by the taxpayer-funded Näthatsgranskaren (Net Hate Examiner) group, which is on the lookout for online posts containing hate [sic] speech. The group presents itself as independent, yet received a total of SEK 600,000 ($74,000) in state aid via the Swedish Agency for Youth and Society (MUCF) in 2017.

• Fellow journalist and writer Katerina Janouch urged the public to share these “insulting” pictures to “give these Net Hate Terrorists a pain in the neck” and support Jan Sjunnesson. “Please RT. Let’s commit felony together,” Janouch tweeted.

=> ↺ NRATV host equates gun restrictions to media censorship

• “You can still report on the shootings, we just need reasonable laws that place limitation on the glory and fame you give to these killers and their twisted motivations,” he said.

• Noir then goes on to reveal that the calls to censor media coverage of shooters was a setup.

• “You know that feeling of anxiety that shot through your body when I said the government should pass laws to limit the media’s ability to exercise their First Amendment right?” Noir asked. “That’s the same feeling gun owners get when they hear people say the same thing about the Second Amendment.”

=> ↺ Childish Gambino shows pop music can be powerfully political despite censorship

• The ConversationIt is a violently subversive darkly comic take on police brutality, white supremacy, and US machismo – and Childish Gambino’s music video, This is America, has been released to critical acclaim, 180 million YouTube hits (and counting), and minimal backlash.

• It may seem incongruous, then, that in 1988, Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman proposed that the media industry would not oppose state or private power in any fundamental way.

• Herman and Chomsky highlighted five causal factors that led them to this conclusion: concentrated corporate ownership; the prevalence of advertising money; the reliance on official information sources; the disproportionate ability of powerful organisations to issue flak against dissenters, and a pervasive axiom that the Western economic system is a panacea.

=> ↺ Swedish ISP Telenor will voluntary block The Pirate Bay

• Now, a year later, Telenor – an ISP which has long fought against site-blocking in Sweden – will voluntarily begin blocking The Pirate Bay.

=> ↺ Prosper High School journalists allege newspaper censorship by principal, fight editorial policy

• Student journalists at Prosper High School are fighting an editorial policy that they say unfairly restricts what they can and cannot print after three controversial pieces were censored this year.

• Students were told by principal John Burdett that editorials would not be published because they were “incorrect, not uplifting and did not voice all 3,000 students at their high school,” a news release states.

=> ↺ Students protest censorship, job cuts at Otago uni

• About 170 students braved freezing weather to march on the University of Otago clocktower brandishing signs opposing the disposal of editions of Critic magazine, university job cuts, and too much of a focus on marketing at a protest today.

• [...]

• Representatives of the group Students Against Sexual Violence also spoke at the protest, about what they perceived as an attempt to censor them from speaking about sexual assault on campus.

=> ↺ Conservatives Fail the N.F.L.’s Free Speech Test

• The United States is in the grips of a free-speech paradox. At the same time that the law provides more protection to personal expression than at any time in the nation’s history, large numbers of Americans feel less free to speak. The culprit isn’t government censorship but instead corporate, community and peer intimidation.

• Conservatives can recite the names of the publicly shamed from memory. There was Brendan Eich, hounded out of Mozilla for donating to a California ballot initiative that defined marriage as the union of a man and woman. There was James Damore, abruptly terminated from Google after he wrote an essay attributing the company’s difficulty in attracting female software engineers more to biology and free choice than to systemic discrimination. On campus, the list is as long and grows longer every semester.

• It is right to decry this culture of intolerance and advocate for civility and engagement instead of boycotts and reprisals. The cure for bad speech is better speech — not censorship. Take that message to the heartland, and conservatives cheer.

=> ↺ Ukraine war on free speech coordinated with US

• There is no independent policy in Kiev, they do everything in conjunction with the US, and new sanctions against Russian media reinforce those suspicions, executive editor of 21st Century Wire.com Patrick Henningsen told RT.

• Ukraine has blocked access to the websites of Russian news organizations by including them on a sanctions list that is in sync with the US Treasury. RIA Novosti-Ukraine and Sputnik with the agencies’ resources are banned for three years.

=> ↺ Russia accuses Ukraine of ‘censorship’ after sanctions on RIA news agency

• Ukraine’s decision to include a Russian state news agency in its sanctions list amounts to “political censorship”, the agency, RIA, quoted Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying on Thursday.

• Kiev has added Russian state news agency RIA Novosti to its sanctions list, the website of the Ukrainian president said earlier on Thursday.

=> ↺ Ukraine blocks access to websites of leading Russian TV channels

=> ↺ Sanctions Against Sputnik Another Act of Political Censorship – Foreign Ministry

=> ↺ ‘USSR Blocked Western Media, Modern Ukraine Blocks Russia’s’ – Writer

=> ↺ Journalistic Community Slams Kiev’s Ban on Russian media

=> ↺ Sputnik, RIA Novosti Ukraine Blocked in Ukraine According to New Sanctions List

=> ↺ Menstruation magazine cover sparks censorship row in New Zealand

=> ↺ Row over New Zealand student magazine’s ‘period issue’

=> ↺ Kevin McCarthy Won’t Stand For Conservative Censorship

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ The EU’s new data-privacy law takes effect Friday. Its reach extends into the Triangle.

• Red Hat, SAS and other companies that hold data on Europeans have a new set of data privacy rules to deal with as of Friday.

• But while the local software giants, like other firms, have had two years’ notice of the advent of the European Union’s “General Data Protection Regulation” and think they’ve made a solid effort to comply, they admit the jury is still out on whether they’ve thought of and covered everything.

=> ↺ ​ICANN Makes Last Minute WHOIS Changes to Address GDPR Requirements

• The Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) struggled and sweated and with days left came up with a way to make the Domain Name System (DNS) and WHOIS, the master database of who owns what website name, compliant with the European Union (EU)’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

• We’ll see.

• It doesn’t appear to me that ICANN’s “Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data” will pass muster with the GDPR Article 29 working party, the GDPR enforcement group.

=> ↺ What is the GDPR Privacy Law and Why Should You Care?

• The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new European Union law that takes effect today, and it’s the reason you’ve been receiving non-stop emails and notices about privacy policy updates. So how does this affect you? Here’s what you need to know.

• The new GDPR law takes effect today, May 25th, 2018, and it covers data protection and privacy for EU citizens, but it also applies to a lot of other countries in various ways, and since all the tech giants are huge multi-national corporations, it affects a lot of the stuff that you use on a daily basis.

=> ↺ Woman says her Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

• A Portland family contacted Amazon to investigate after they say a private conversation in their home was recorded by Amazon’s Alexa — the voice-controlled smart speaker — and that the recorded audio was sent to the phone of a random person in Seattle, who was in the family’s contact list.

• “My husband and I would joke and say I’d bet these devices are listening to what we’re saying,” said Danielle, who did not want us to use her last name.

=> ↺ Amazon Alexa Records Couple’s Personal Conversation And Sends It To A Contact

• Another day, another stop in the ‘privacy breach’ journey of IoT.

• In a startling and alarming incident, a Portland, Oregon based woman named ‘Danielle’ has accused Amazon Alexa of recording her personal conversation with her husband and sending it to a contact without permission.

=> ↺ Wireless Carrier Abuse Of Location Data Makes The Facebook, Cambridge Scandal Look Like Amateur Hour

• As we’ve noted a few times now, however bad the recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal was, the nation’s broadband providers have routinely been engaged in much worse behavior for decades. Yes, the Cambridge and Facebook scandal was bad (especially Facebook threatening to sue news outlets that exposed it), but the behavior they were engaging in is the norm, not the exception. And watching people quit Facebook while still using a stock cellphone (which lets carriers track your every online whim and offline movement) was arguably comedic.

• As the recent Securus and LocationSmart scandal highlights, wireless carriers pretty routinely sell your location data to a laundry list of companies, governments, and organizations with only fleeting oversight. And while some lawmakers are pressuring the FCC to more closely investigate the scandal (which resulted in the exposure of wireless location data of some 200 million users in the U.S. and Canada), few expect the same FCC that just killed net neutrality to actually do anything about it.

=> ↺ Trial Underway for Refugee Who Challenged NSA Surveillance

• A refugee from Uzbekistan conspired to support a terrorist group financially and planned to travel overseas to join them, U.S. prosecutors said Thursday, walking jurors through a trove of phone calls, emails and other online activity they said proves the man’s desire to help the group.

• The start of Jamshid Muhtorov’s trial comes more than six years after his arrest at a Chicago airport. The case led to the U.S. Justice Department’s first disclosure that it intended to use information obtained through one of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance programs.

• Muhtorov challenged the constitutionality of the warrantless surveillance program but Judge John Kane ruled in 2015 that the program may have potential for abuse but did not violate his rights.

=> ↺ ‘Obama already did it to the French’: WikiLeaks weighs in on Trump’s ‘Spygate’ claims

• US President Donald Trump has seemingly found a ‘Spygate’ ally in WikiLeaks, after the whistleblowing organization tweeted to remind the public of CIA “espionage orders” for the 2012 French election.

• Reports that domestic intelligence chiefs in the US instructed an FBI informant to contact Trump’s campaign team during the 2016 US presidential election have incensed the current US commander-in-chief. In a hail of tweets, Trump dubbed the revelation ‘Spygate’ and described it as “one of the biggest political scandals in history.”

• Trump has since instructed the Department of Justice to investigate whether the alleged informant, an unnamed Cambridge University professor, was planted by his predecessor Barack Obama’s administration. WikiLeaks soon weighed in and responded directly to Trump’s tweets on the matter.

=> ↺ Comcast bug made it shockingly easy to steal customers’ Wi-Fi passwords

• A security hole in a Comcast service-activation website allowed anyone to obtain a customer’s Wi-Fi network name and password by entering the customer’s account number and a partial street address, ZDNet reported yesterday.

• The problem would have let attackers “rename Wi-Fi network names and passwords, temporarily locking users out” of their home networks, ZDNet wrote. Obviously, an attacker could also use a Wi-Fi network name and password to log into an unsuspecting Comcast customer’s home network.

• Shortly after ZDNet’s story was published, Comcast disabled the website feature that was leaking Wi-Fi passwords. “Within hours of learning of this issue, we shut it down,” Comcast told ZDNet and Ars. “We are conducting a thorough investigation and will take all necessary steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

=> ↺ Comcast Exposes Customer WiFi SSIDs and Passwords For Customers Paying To Rent A Comcast Router

• Look, when it comes to Comcast, it’s obviously quite easy to slap the company around for any number of its anti-consumer practices. Just sampling from the most recent news, Comcast was sued over its opt-out mobile hotspot from your home router plan, the company has decided to combat cord-cutting by hiking prices and fees on equipment for customers who cord-cut cable television, and it also has put in place a similar plan to charge all kinds of bullshit fees on equipment installations for customers who aren’t bundling in other services with its ISP offering. You should be noticing a trend in there that has to do with how Comcast handles so-called “equipment rental” fees for its broadband customers and how it handles customers that choose to bring their own device to their home networks instead. Comcast has always hated customers that use their own WiFi routers, as the fees for renting a wireless access point represent a huge part of Comcast’s revenue.

• Which is why you would think that the company would at least not expose the home networks of customers who use that equipment. Sadly, it seems that Comcast’s website made the network SSIDs and passwords available in plain text of customers who were renting router equipment, while those that used their own routers were completely safe.

=> ↺ What Facebook’s New Political Ad System Misses

• Facebook’s long-awaited change in how it handles political advertisements is only a first step toward addressing a problem intrinsic to a social network built on the viral sharing of user posts.

• The company’s approach, a searchable database of political ads and their sponsors, depends on the company’s ability to sort through huge quantities of ads and identify which ones are political. Facebook is betting that a combination of voluntary disclosure and review by both people and automated systems will close a vulnerability that was famously exploited by Russian meddlers in the 2016 election.

• The company is doubling down on tactics that so far have not prevented the proliferation of hate-filled posts or ads that use Facebook’s capability to target ads particular groups.

=> ↺ Zuckerberg accused of avoiding questions in luke-warm European Parliament grilling

• Indeed, many MEPs in attendance complained that the format meant that Zuckerberg had to wait for all of the leaders of the European Parliament’s various political groups – who, of course, all love the sound of their own voice – to ask several questions apiece before he could respond. Zuckerberg could then pretty much decide which questions he condescended to respond to.

• As a result, Zuckerberg spent a total of just 22 minutes answering questions, missing out any he didn’t like the sound of.

=> ↺ How GDPR will affect HR departments

• Here are four ways in which HR departments will be affected by GDPR.

=> ↺ FBI repeatedly exaggerated how many phones it needed to decrypt and couldn’t

• The agency has – not once – but repeatedly provided hugely inflated stats to Congress about how bad things are, claiming that 7800 devices had been nabbed last year, locked, as part of investigations.

• The real figure is somewhere between 1000 and 2000 says The Washington Post. The exact figure is somewhere around 1200, as far as we know.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ There Is Power in a Union

• For a period of 40 years, something managed to keep inequality in check in the United States. From 1940 to 1980, the richest 1 percent took home 9 percent of the wealth generated by the economy. Today, just as they did in the 1920s, the top 1 percent grabs about double that share. Surprisingly, the cause of this midcentury “Great Compression” has been largely neglected by economists, with many of them casually dismissing the role of unions.

=> ↺ Trump’s Assault on American Governance Just Crossed a Threshold

• The President has demanded that the Justice Department open an investigation into its own investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

=> ↺ Why Low-Level Offenders Can Get Longer Sentences Than Airplane Hijackers

• Marion Hungerford has a severe form of borderline personality disorder that led to her numerous suicide attempts. As her mental state deteriorated, her husband of 26 years left her. Alone and unable to support herself, she began a relationship with a man whom she helped to commit a string of armed robberies. She never even touched the gun the man used for the robbery. Even though this was her first offense, Hungerford was sentenced to 159 years in federal prison.

• Her case tells us everything we need to know about a set of harsh sentencing laws, particularly one known as “924(c),” that prosecutors use to swell prison populations and perpetuate injustice. There are already too many stories like hers, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ charging and enforcement policies — which roll back the previous administration’s more enlightened approach — will only worsen the problem and fuel mass incarceration across the nation.

• The details of Hungerford’s case do not match her over-a-century sentence. She “took no active part other than driving [the man] to or from the scene of the crime or casing the stores that [he] later robbed,” as one of the judges who reviewed her case explained. Together, they stole fewer than $10,000. No one was injured during the crime. The man turned on Hungerford in exchange for leniency in his sentencing — he got 32 years. At trial, a psychiatrist testified that she had a “very low capacity to assess reality” and “low level of intellectual functioning.”

=> ↺ DHS Fusion Center Gets Request For Documents On Extremists, Decides To Hand Over Mind Control Docs Instead

• Once you release a document to a public records requesters, it’s a public record, whether you meant to release it or not. The person handling FOIA requests for the Washington State Fusion Center (a DHS/local law enforcement collaboration known more for its failures than successes) sent Curtis Waltman something unexpected back in April. Waltman asked the Fusion Center for records pertaining to Antifa and white supremacy groups. He did get those records. But he also got something titled “EM effects on human body.zip.”

• [...]

• The files did not appear to have been generated by any government agency, but rather collected from other sources who thought there might be some way the government could control minds using electronic stimulation or “remote brain mapping.” Why the Fusion Center had them on hand remains a mystery, as does their attachment to a FOIA request containing nothing about electronic mind manipulation.

• This inadvertent disclosure has led to more requests for the same documents. Only this time, requesters — like Joshua Eaton of ThinkProgress — are asking specifically for government mind control files. It appears the Fusion Center first thought about withholding some mind control docs, but somewhere along the line decided it couldn’t pretend the documents that weren’t supposed to be released hadn’t actually been released.

=> ↺ In the ‘50s, CIA decried Soviet torture tactics that would later be used at Gitmo and Agency black sites

• In the early days of MKULTRA, while the Central Intelligence Agency scrambled to defend against the alleged “brainwashing” programs of foreign countries, and to create its own, Agency staff responsible for the program responded to a report describing reported Soviet brainwashing efforts. In a letter formerly classified SECRET, CIA staff dismissed the Soviet techniques as “police tactics which would not be condoned in a democratic country.” The tactics described in the report not only mimic tactics which have been used in Guantanamo and in CIA black sites, proved to be a source of inspiration for some post-9/11 interrogation programs.

• [...]

• The stress positions included the benign sounding forced prolonged standing, the effects of which are described in excruciating detail. According to the report, an edema is produced, resulting in the ankles feet, and even thighs swelling to twice their normal size. “The skin becomes tense and intensely painful. Large blisters develop … Eventually there is a renal shutdown. Urea and other metabolites accumulate in the blood.” The ultimate result would be “a delirious state, characterized by disorientation, fear, delusions and visual hallucinations,” which the report described as “psychosis.”

=> ↺ The Fairfax, Virginia, Fire Department Is Sexist

• When I returned to the FRD in the spring of 2016 after my fellowship, I was on a high, feeling optimistic about creating positive change for our department’s future leaders. A few weeks after my return in the spring of 2016, a young firefighter named Nicole Mittendorff took her own life. It turned out that she had been harassed on an anonymous website by people claiming to be her male co-workers. In response to the media scrutiny over the department’s sexist culture, I was named to the long-vacant position of women’s program officer.

• I knew firsthand how important it was to create a culture that’s more inclusive for women firefighters. Ever since Judy Brewer became America’s first female firefighter 45 years ago, women have been hazed in the fire service, including sabotaged oxygen tanks and glass in their boots. Today, fewer than four percent of the nation’s firefighters are women. One landmark study found that the majority of them face differential treatment, wear ill-fitting safety gear meant for male bodies, work in departments with no anti-discrimination procedures, and witness disrespectful treatment of female leaders.

• In Fairfax, I’ve been trying for a long time to tackle similar problems. In 2005, I joined with a group of FRD women to sue the department over a wide range of disparities, from hiring to promotions to harassment. We settled a year later, in exchange for promises that things would change. Although a report published in 2017 found that FRD is on par with the national average of women in the rank and file, we still lag far behind in command staff. That’s despite five more sex discrimination lawsuits filed against the department since it settled mine.

=> ↺ Reality Check: Will Haspel Stick to Her Word on Torture?

• It has been a heated fight for the nomination of Gina Haspel as the new CIA director. Some have nicknamed her the “Queen of Torture.”

• [...]

• Keep in mind, as I have told you before, Gina Haspel didn’t just oversee a black site prison. She helped to destroy evidence of the program she now says did damage to the U.S. standing in the world.

=> ↺ Egyptian Blogger and Activist Wael Abbas Detained

• When we wrote of award-winning journalist Wael Abbas being silenced by social media platforms in February, we never suspected that those suspensions would reach beyond the internet to help silence him in real life. But, following Abbas’s detention on Wednesday by police in Cairo, we now fear that decisions—and lack of transparency—made by Silicon Valley companies will help Egyptian authorities in their crackdown on journalists and human rights activists.

• Abbas was taken at dawn on May 23 by police to an undisclosed location, according to news reports which quote his lawyer, Gamal Eid. The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) reported that Abbas was not shown a warrant or given a reason for his arrest. He appeared in front of state security yesterday and was questioned and ordered by prosecutors to be held for fifteen days. According to the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE), Abbas was charged with “involvement in a terrorist group”, “spreading false news” and “misuse of social networks.”

=> ↺ ICE Trying To Deport Journalist For Reporting On Abusive ICE Behavior

• For many years (looong before this current administration), we’ve documented the problems with ICE, a government agency that has long been totally out of control, abusing its power and authority not just in dealing with immigration, but in literally seizing blogs, because Hollywood told them to do so. The organization has done nothing to improve its reputation over the years, and lately almost seems to relish in the free reign it has to act like complete thugs in uniform.

• The latest story — as with seizing blogs — appears to have some serious First Amendment concerns, though there’s no indication that ICE cares at all about that. In this story, ICE detained a journalist and is trying to have him deported because of that reporter’s coverage of ICE activities. Freedom of the Press has the details, but the short version is that Manuel Duran, who fled El Salvador a decade ago over death threats there, has been living in the US and reporting for a few different Spanish language news organizations.

=> ↺ [Old] Trust damaged between Milwaukee police and community, Department of Justice draft report says

• The Milwaukee Police Department fails the community and its own officers by not communicating clearly, making too many traffic stops and applying inconsistent standards when disciplining officers, according to a draft of a federal report obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

• The draft report offers a particularly damning critique of Chief Edward Flynn’s reliance on data, a signature component of his strategy since he took over the department in 2008. Federal evaluators found this approach is having a damaging, if unintended, effect on police-community relations.

• “MPD’s attention to crime data has distracted the department from the primary tenet of modern policing: trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they protect and serve,” the draft report states.

=> ↺ Report On Milwaukee PD Body Cams Show Fewer Complaints, Fewer Stops, But No Reduction In Use Of Force

• The DOJ also found officers had no idea what community policing entailed, suggesting it only applied to other officers officially designated as community liaisons. The DOJ highlighted the disconnection between the MPD’s statements and actions on community policing using this depressing anecdote.

• [...]

• It’s not all negative, however. As noted above, officers with cameras received 50% fewer complaints, suggesting the presence of another “witness” causes both parties to treat each other with a little more respect. Camera use can result in de-escalation, which is something rarely willfully practiced by officers.

• But we can’t read too much into that either. The drop in complaints is tracked by a drop in stops, which may suggest the cameras aren’t “civilizing” interactions so much as fewer of them are taking place.

• Body cams are band-aids, at best. They can never be a panacea, but they’re far from useless. Things do change when law enforcement operates under additional scrutiny. But they don’t change as quickly or dramatically as proponents of cameras hope they will. A seismic cultural shift is needed in most departments and body cameras will only incrementally increase the speed in which bad apples are expunged from the barrel. But the barrel will still be filled with slightly-less-rotten apples. That being said, cameras should be a requirement as should the presumption that missing footage weighs against a cop’s statements. Just because they’re not working as well as many of us thought they would doesn’t mean it’s without its merits.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ A free [I]nternet is a configurable [I]nternet

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Brian Soucek on Aesthetic Judgment in Law

• As noted in my last post, one of the most quoted lines in copyright law is from Justice Holmes’s 1903 opinion in Bleistein: “It would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations.” This aesthetic neutrality principle has found purchase far beyond copyright law. But in a compelling new article, Aesthetic Judgment in Law, Professor Brian Soucek challenges this dogma: “Almost no one thinks the government should decide what counts as art or what has aesthetic value. But the government often does so, and often, it should.” Soucek’s article may have flown under the radar for most IP scholars because he does not typically focus on copyright law, but it is well worth a look.

• Soucek’s first point is that despite the “widespread aversion to aesthetic judgment” by government decisionmakers, such judgments are ubiquitous both at the “retail” level of individual artworks and at the “wholesale” level of “what constitutes art or aesthetic value in the first place.” A number of scholars have made similar points in the IP space; see, for example, Andrew Gilden’s argument that courts are more likely to consider images of women and racial minorities to be “raw materials” that are free to use. But the point holds even more strongly in other areas of law. Perhaps most obviously, there is significant direct spending on the arts that falls on the “government-set” side of the who decides? spectrum, including grant decisions by the National Endowment for the Arts, book purchases by public libraries, and hiring and curriculum decisions by humanities departments at public universities. Other examples are easy to find: Tariff and tax laws embody Congress’s decision to benefit only certain types of art, and they require government officials to make judgments such as whether abstract art is art. Land-use laws ban conduct that is “offensive to the visual sensibilities of the average person” like front-yard clotheslines. The test for obscenity asks whether the work “lacks serious literary [or] artistic” value.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Woof: The Prosecco People Successfully Oppose A Pet-Treat Company’s ‘Pawsecco’ Trademark Application

• In the realm of the alcohol industry, the French champagne makers have distinguished themselves for their jealous protection of the name of their sparkling white wine. This protectionism is taken to the extreme, with association groups representing champagne makers essentially forbidding anyone else from even using the term. France’s neighbor, Italy, has its own sparkling white wine called prosecco. And it seems that the makers of prosecco are trying to take a page from their champagne-making cousins in “protecting” their trademarks to a ridiculous degree.

• A maker of drinks for pets recently tried to trademark the name of a product it makes called “Pawsecco.” The pet treat is not alcoholic, is sold only to pet owners, and is, frankly, puntastic. Despite all of this being supremely obvious, Woof and Brew faced a trademark opposition from the prosecco people.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Forget The GDPR, The EU’s New Copyright Proposal Will Be A Complete And Utter Disaster For The Internet

• Today is GDPR day, and lots of people are waking up to a world in which EU regulations are having a widespread (and not always positive) impact on how the internet works. As we’ve detailed over the past couple of years, while there are many good ideas in the GDPR, there are also many ridiculously bad ones, combined with poorly thought out drafting, and we’re already seeing some of the fallout from that. But, believe it or not, there’s an even larger threat from the EU looming, and it’s received precious little attention: the EU’s new copyright reform proposal is set to be voted on next month and it will truly be disastrous to the internet. As it currently stands, it will require widespread censorship in the form of mandatory filtering and also link taxes that have already been shown to be harmful to news.

=> ↺ The Demise Of Copyright Toleration

• Although denying fair use, these content owners were acknowledging a larger truth about copyright, the Internet, and even the law in general: It works largely due to toleration. Not every case is clear; not every outcome can be enforced; and not every potential legal outcome can be endured. Instead, “grey area” conduct must be impliedly licensed, or at least tolerated.

• Counsel then or now could not have cited a single court holding on whether the private, noncommercial recording of a song is a lawful fair use. Long before the Supreme Court in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. said that video home recording from broadcasts as a fair use, the music industry could have pursued consumers for home audio recording from vinyl records. But the risk of losing and establishing a bad precedent was too great.

=> ↺ Mexico’s new copyright law allows censorship of online content, rights advocates warn

• Legal censorship of online content could be much easier in Mexico due to recently approved changes to the country’s copyright laws.

• On April 26, the Mexican Senate passed a bill that modified the Federal Copyright Law, enabling judges to order the removal of internet content that allegedly violates copyright law without needing to prove it in court or by sentence.

• The bill allows the suspension and removal of public content and includes “precautionary measures” against the equipment that enables the spread of such content. Approval of these changes was given hastily without following legislative procedures.

=> ↺ BPI Wants Piracy Dealt With Under New UK Internet ‘Clean-Up’ Laws

• This week, Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, announced the launch of a consultation on new legislative measures to clean up the ‘Wild West’ elements of the Internet. In response, music group BPI says the government should use the opportunity to tackle piracy with advanced site-blocking measures, repeat infringer policies, and new responsibilities for service providers.

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