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● 09.18.18

● Links 18/9/2018: Qt 5.12 Alpha , MAAS 2.5.0 Beta, PostgreSQL CoC

Posted in News Roundup at 1:33 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ Windows 7 to Linux: Preparations

• This is the first part of a series of articles that describes how to migrate from a Windows 7 device to a device running Linux. The main motivation behind the series of tutorials is to provide Windows 7 users with instructions to migrate to a Linux distribution and not to Windows 10.

• Support for Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system ends in January 2020. While Enterprise customers may extend the support phase by three years by paying Microsoft for extended support, that is not an option for regular users.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ ​Linux adds a code of conduct for programmers

• If you follow Linux development closely, you know Linux kernel discussions can be very heated. Recently, Linus Torvalds has admitted the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) and other Linux development spaces are hostile to many. Torvalds announced he’d change his behavior and apologized to the “people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development.” It was never just Torvalds. So, the Linux community announced it’s adopting, for the first time, a “Code of Conduct.”

=> ↺ Linux Adopts A New Code Of Conduct

• Even though the fundamental nature of open source projects is being open and accessible to all, many contributors, in the past, have expressed their concerns over the unwelcoming nature of some communities. Linux, the most successful open source project, isn’t untouched by the same.

• The Linux Boss, Linus Torvalds, is himself known to get often involved in heated discussions and say things that he shouldn’t. Just recently, he announced that he’d be taking a breaking from Linux and working to change his behavior. That’s not all. To make Linux development a more welcoming community, a new “Code of Conduct” has been adopted.

=> ↺ Torvalds Steps Back From Linux Kernel 4.19 Leadership

=> ↺ Torvalds takes a break from Linux dev

=> ↺ Can you teach a jerk how to be a nice person?

=> ↺ One of the world’s most important programmers says he’s taking time off so he can learn how to not be such a jerk

=> ↺ Linus Torvalds Takes Break From Linux Kernel For Personal Attitude Adjustment

=> ↺ Linux creator Linus Torvalds ‘truly sorry’ for online behavior, plans to take time off

=> ↺ Linux’s Creator Is Sorry. But Will He Change?

=> ↺ Linux’s Linus Torvalds: Sorry for Being a Jerk

=> ↺ Linux, Git Founder Linus Torvalds Taking Leave of Open-Source

=> ↺ Linux creator Linus Torvalds apologizes for being a dick all these years

=> ↺ Linux Founder Takes Some Time Off to Learn How to Stop Being an Asshole

=> ↺ Linux Community to Adopt New Code of Conduct, Firefox Reality Browser Now Available, Lamplight City Game Released, openSUSE Summit Nashville Announced and It’s Now Easier to Run Ubuntu VMs on Windows 10

• Following Linus Torvalds’ apology for his behavior, the Linux Community has announced it will adopt a “Code of Conduct”, which pledges to make “participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.”

=> ↺ Linux creator is taking time off, apologizes for ‘uncalled for’ behavior

• Linux is the open-sourced operating system that’s the basis for other operating systems like Google ‘s Android for phones and ChromeOS for computers. Many credit Torvalds for creating the foundation for a lot of today’s modern operating systems.

=> ↺ Linus’s awakening

• I understand Kelly’s position. It’s frustrating to push for a more welcoming and inclusive community only to be met with insults and then when someone finally comes around to have everyone celebrate. Kelly and others who feel like her are absolutely justified in their position.

• For myself, I like to think of it as a modern parable of the prodigal son. As tempting as it is to reject those who awaken late, it is better than them not waking at all. If Linus fails to follow through, it would be right to excoriate him. But if he does follow through, it can only improve the community around one of the most important open source projects. And it will set an example for other projects to follow.

• I spend a lot of time thinking about community, particularly since I joined Red Hat as the Fedora Program Manager a few months ago. Community members — especially those in a highly-visible role — have an obligation to model the kind of behavior the community needs. This sometimes means a patient explanation when an angry rant would feel better. It can be demanding and time-consuming work. But an open source project is more than just the code; it’s also the community. We make technology to serve the people, so if our communities are not healthy, we’re not doing our jobs.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ RADV’s Iffy 16-bit Integer Support Merged Into Mesa

• Just days after the patches were published for enabling 16-bit integers within shaders for the RADV driver, this Radeon Vulkan driver code has been merged.

• The code came out last week by Valve developer Samuel Pitoiset for enabling shaderInt16, the capability allowing 16-bit signed/unsigned integers within the shader code.

=> ↺ Mesa Eyeing The Removal Of Autotools Build Support In Favor Of Meson

• For those currently relying upon Autotools for building Mesa3D, the days are numbered and soon will likely need to shift over to their modern Meson build system support.

• For the past year now, Mesa developers have been working on bringing up their Meson build system support for its faster build speeds with Ninja, better cross-platform compatibility, and other benefits. Meson has co-existed with the Autotools (and SCons and Android build systems) support over the past year of Mesa releases, but moving forward they are likely very soon to drop the Autotools support.

Applications

=> ↺ SMPlayer Makes It Easy to Stream Videos from Your PC to Android Phone

• The handy feature means you can watch video on your computer from your phone with minimal effort as no uploading, no downloading, and no subscriptions are required.

• All you need to stream is the latest version of SMPlayer (v15.6) on your Windows, Mac or Linux desktop, plus an Android phone (or tablet) with a compatible media player, like MX Player or VLC for Android, installed.

=> ↺ The best open source alternatives to your everyday apps

• There are many compelling reasons to use open source software, where the code behind an app is free for anyone to view or contribute to. There’s the obvious benefit that it’s free to use. It’s arguably more secure (thanks to the many eyes on the source code). It’s built solely for the benefit of users. And it may have ethical appeal over an app built by, say, a multinational corporation. This in mind, here are 10 of the best open source alternatives to the software we use on our computers every day.

=> ↺ peek – animated GIF screen recorder

• I’m always on the look out for small indispensable utilities that make the Linux experience even better. This week, I’m seeking to garnish support for peek. It’s an unpretentious utility written in Vala. The utility has no delusion of grandeur. But it has qualities that carves out its own niche in the open source world.

• Peek is designed to make short screencasts. It’s not a general purpose screencast application like OBS Studio. Instead, peek captures silent screencasts of part of the screen. Examples of its usage including demonstrating user interface features of software, or creating a visual bug report. The software supports recording in GIF, APNG, WebM and MP4 formats.

=> ↺ Linux firewalls: What you need to know about iptables and firewalld

• A firewall is a set of rules. When a data packet moves into or out of a protected network space, its contents (in particular, information about its origin, target, and the protocol it plans to use) are tested against the firewall rules to see if it should be allowed through. Here’s a simple example…

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to get Apple-like gestures on the Linux desktop

• I understand a big part of the problem is that Apple owns patents on trackpad gestures, something which hinders the open source community’s ability to create a quality experience. But that hurdle shouldn’t equate to a bad experience, which many people have. Not only does Linux install without any sort of multi-touch gestures, it is sometimes over sensitive or under sensitive. I’ve installed Linux on laptop hardware and found the trackpad configuration was a losing battle—until I discovered Fusuma.

=> ↺ How to fix missing Python for Ansible in Fedora Vagrant

=> ↺ Kubernetes: Naming Things

=> ↺ [Older] Look Up Website Information With Whois in Linux

=> ↺ Getting started with openmediavault: A home NAS solution

=> ↺ Globbing and Regex: So Similar, So Different

=> ↺ Linux tricks that can save you time and trouble

=> ↺ Webinoly – Easily Setup Optimized LEMP Stack For WordPress In Ubuntu

=> ↺ How to Monitor your Desktop PC with Conky on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

=> ↺ How to Upgrade NoxPlayer to Android 7 Nougat

=> ↺ How to Take Screenshots in Ubuntu with a Time Delay

=> ↺ How to Install NextCloud 14 on CentOS 7

=> ↺ How To Install Asterisk on Debian 9

=> ↺ Automatic backup of users’ files on a NAS device to an external USB HDD

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

=> ↺ Ubuntu refuses to reboot – what now?

Games

=> ↺ Did your open source career begin with video games?

• Certainly you don’t need to be a gamer as a child to grow up and become a developer, nor does being a gamer automatically set you up for a career in technology.

• But there’s definitely a good bit of overlap between the two.

• After listening to the first episode of Command Line Heroes, and reading Ross Turk’s story of how MUDs led him to a career in coding, I’ve thought a bit about how gaming has influenced my own journey into technology, and how it lead to a career in open source.

• For me, that first important game was WarCraft II. Sure, I played games before it, and after it. But shortly after my family replaced our faithful Apple IIc with a blazing fast (by comparison) 486 PC with amazing features like color, and a sound card, and even a 2400 baud modem (that would take about three months to download the equivalent of an hour of Netflix today).

=> ↺ Monster taming RPG ‘Siralim 3′ now has a Linux version on Steam

• Siralim 3, the deep monster taming RPG from Thylacine Studios now has a Linux version available for those who gotta catch ‘em all.

• While it’s not exactly graphically impressive, the Siralim titles usually make it for it and then some with the amount of features they have. Seems to be a hit with users too, with a nice positive rating.

=> ↺ Humble has a pretty good Game Development book bundle

• For those thinking about or already creating games, you might want to take a look over at Humble with their game development book bundle.

=> ↺ Naval strategy game Victory At Sea Pacific is now available with Linux support

• Set during World War II, Victory At Sea Pacific from Evil Twin Artworks is an interesting naval strategy game that released recently with Linux support.

=> ↺ An update on what’s happening with Crazy Justice, the Battle Royale game from Black Riddles Studio

• It’s been a rather turbulent time for Black Riddles Studio, with Crazy Justice [Official Site, Steam] originally being scheduled to release in Early Access in July. I contacted Fig to see if they knew what was going on, who got an answer from Black Riddles for me. First, let’s sum up the situation for those not up to speed.

=> ↺ What Subset Games (FTL, Into the Breach) think of Valve’s Steam Play

• Subset Games [Official Site] are a developer I was especially keen to speak to about Valve’s Steam Play system, since Into the Breach is included as a white-listed game by Valve even though they’re working on a Linux version.

• Into the Breach is an interesting turn-based strategy game about the remnants of human civilization being threatened by gigantic creatures breeding beneath the earth. They confirmed back in early August that Into the Breach’s Linux version was in “active development”, so I thought their viewpoint might be quite interesting given the situation.

• They first made it clear they are doing a Linux version, then their programmer Mathew expanded on it a bit.

=> ↺ Overwatch Players Using Linux Get Accidentally Banned

• Overwatch is definitely one of the best FPS games around. Even despite the fact that is has been out for over 2 years now, it remains highly popular due to its varied roster of characters and the team-based mechanics. While everything hasn’t been smooth sailing, the game has also largely avoided any major issues as it develops further.

• In a report via PCGamesN though, Linux users of the game had a nasty surprise after they found their Overwatch accounts had been permanently banned.

=> ↺ Blizzard Throws Permanent Bans For Overwatch Players Using Linux

• Well, this is quite an interesting situation the players of Overwatch have found themselves.

• It seems like Overwatch players who have been using the Linux operating system to play Blizzard’s hero shooter game have now been banned, like permanently.

• Just recently when bans took place, players found out that their choice of OS was the reason for such bans. There is a lot of unrest among the community as fans are not too happy with this situation, they have been pushed into.

• As you may know that Overwatch has been playable on Linux for quite some time now and fans have been using this opportunity to play using, Linux operating system.

=> ↺ Blizzard has unbanned Overwatch players who were using Linux

• Blizzard has recently, and unexpectedly, banned several Overwatch players who have been using Linux as their operating system. After several players confirmed the inconvenience on Reddit, Blizzard responded with PR statements and unbans.

• Several players reported being banned for simply using Linux while playing Overwatch, with the automated system detecting an apparently unusual chat program that has not been officially authorized.

• Considering that Blizzard did in fact authorise playing Overwatch on Linux and even on Macs that use emulated Windows, it was rather odd that players got banned for using the opportunity. It was even worse since there was no warning they could be banned and their accounts got suspended out of the blue.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Paris Art School Looking for Krita Teacher

• An art school in Paris, France, is looking for a Krita teacher! This is pretty cool, isn’t it?

=> ↺ Linus Torvalds Taking a Break, Help Krita Squash the Bugs, Vulnerability in Alpine Linux, Flatpak Now Works on Windows Subsystem for Linux and AnsibleFest 2018 Announced

• Krita announced its developer fundraiser “let’s squash the bugs”! The goal this year for the open-source graphics editor is to “fix bugs, make Krita more stable and bring more polish and shine to all the features we have made possible together”. Visit here to learn how you can help.

=> ↺ kgraphviewer 2.4.3

• KGraphViewer, your favourite visualiser of .dot files, has a new update.

=> ↺ Qt 5.12 Alpha Released

• I am pleased to announce that Qt 5.12 Alpha is released today. There are prebuild binaries as well in addition to source code packages with Alpha release.

• Please check Qt 5.12 New Features wiki to see what new is coming with Qt 5.12 release. Please note that the feature list is still in progress and not to be considered final before the first Beta release.

=> ↺ Qt 5.12 Alpha Released With OpenGL ES 3.1 Renderer, Several Wayland Improvements

• The Qt Company has released the first alpha milestone of the upcoming Qt 5.12 tool-kit update.

Distributions

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE to Have Summit in Nashville

• The openSUSE community is headed to Nashville, Tennessee, next year and will have the openSUSE SUmmit Nashville April 5 through April 6, 2019, during the end of SUSE’s premier annual global technical conference SUSECON.

• Registration for the event is open and the Call for Papers is open until Jan. 15. Partners of openSUSE, open-source community projects and community members are encourage to register for the summit and submit a talk.

• The schedule for the openSUSE SUmmit Nashville will be released at the beginning of February.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Juniper Brings Contrail to the Edge, Works Closely With Red Hat

• Juniper Networks’ new Contrail Edge Cloud packs functionality into a small footprint to bring cloud capabilities and virtualization to the edge network. “Edge” according to Juniper includes base stations, hub sites, and switching sites.

• Service providers want to bring cost-effective compute to edge locations. But these locations have space limitations and power constraints. Juniper’s answer is its new Contrail Edge Cloud with capabilities packed into a software-defined data plane. While data plane functions are pushed to the edge, the technology keeps management functions centralized.

=> ↺ Juniper Networks Gives Service Providers a Powerful Edge with New Contrail Solution

=> ↺ Some heroes are born – others are compiled

• Almost a year ago today, my team set out on an adventure to listen, learn, and build. We had a sense that people’s relationship with the operating system (OS) was changing, and we wanted to learn more.

• We met a lot of heroes as we traveled the globe. No, I’m not talking about men or women in capes swooping in at the last moment to save kittens or to avert mankind’s total annihilation. I’m talking about real people who work real jobs where they solve real problems. I’m talking about developers, system administrators, and architects—people who live on the command line and dream in 1s and 0s.

=> ↺ How selfless is your open organization?

• “Community” is a defining characteristic of open organizations. A community could be many things—a “team,” a “group,” a “department,” or a “task force,” for example. What makes any of these groups a true community is two distinct factors: a well-defined purpose and clear investment in or value of that purpose.

• How does a person balance a community’s values with his or her own, personal values? How does that person negotiate this relationship when setting goals? Answers to these questions will expose and speak to that person’s character.

=> ↺ Juniper Expands Its Edge Networking Ambitions

• With Edge Computing, rather than having all functions occur in a centralized cloud, some data collection and compute elements can happen at the edge of a network, thanks in no small part to the emergence of 5G and SD-WAN capabilities.

• The new Contrail Edge Cloud technology was announced on Sept. 17, providing an edge optimized version of Juniper’s SDN platform. Contrail Edge Cloud is based on the Linux Foundation’s open source Tungsten project, which was formerly known as Open Contrail. The edge solution is integrated with Red Hat’s OpenStack platform and can also support Red Hat’s OpenShift Container Platform as well as other Kubernetes distributions.

Finance

=> ↺ Buy The Dip? I Would Not, But.. Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), Ventas, Inc. (VTR)

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Dips 3.02% for September 17

=> ↺ Forget What Wall Street Says: Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), Ventas, Inc. (VTR)

=> ↺ Short-Term Picks To Give You An Edge: Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), Valley National Bancorp (VLY)

=> ↺ Eye-Catching Hot Stocks – Red Hat (NYSE: RHT)

=> ↺ Current Change:: The Procter & Gamble Company, (NYSE: PG), Red Hat, Inc., (NYSE: RHT)

=> ↺ Stock Highlights: Red Hat (NYSE: RHT)

=> ↺ Rampart Investment Management Company LLC Has $646,000 Position in Red Hat Inc (RHT)

Fedora

=> ↺ Lukas “lzap” Zapletal: Switching to Universal Ctags

• For longer coding sessions, I am trying GNOME Builder which looks great and every single release it is catching up with Submlime Text 3, except it is fully open source and it has usable Vim emulation. I’ve tried Atom and VSCode but these slow things are not for me.

=> ↺ Say thank you this November during Fedora Appreciation Week 2018

=> ↺ Fedora Magazine: How to install more wallpaper packs on Fedora Workstation

Debian Family

=> ↺ Digital Minimalism and Deep Work

• Through Newport’s blog I learned that the title of his next book is Digital Minimalism. This intrigued me, because since I started thinking about minimalism myself, I’ve wondered about the difference of approach needed between minimalism in the “real world” and the digital domains. It turns out the topic of Newport’s next book is about something different: from what I can tell, focussing on controlling how one spends one’s time online for maximum productivity.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish New Features

• Ubuntu 18.10 which is codenamed as Cosmic Cuttlefish is around the corner, is planned to be released next month on 18th October 2018. You will be able to download this release from the official website as well upgrade manually from previous releases. This time there is no alpha or beta milestones rather testing weeks for releases.

=> ↺ Andres Rodriguez: MAAS 2.5.0 beta 1 released

• I’m happy to announce that MAAS 2.5.0 beta 1 has been released.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 545

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 545 for the week of September 9 – 15, 2018.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Aceinna launches open-source GNSS+IMU development kit for drones, robots

• MEMS-based sensing solutions company Acienna announces OpenIMU, a professionally supported, open-source GPS/GNSS-aided inertial navigation software stack for low-cost precise navigation applications.

• Integrating an inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based sensor network will greatly improve its navigation and self-location capabilities, Acienna said.

• It is aimed at developing autonomously guided vehicles for industrial applications, autonomous cars, factory or industrial robots, drones, remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) or any kind of smart machine that needs to move fast or slow, on land, in the air or in water.

=> ↺ Sensything Multi-Sensor Open Source Development Board

• Engineers, developers and hobbyists may be interested in the new multi sensor development board called Sensything. Offering an open source, high-resolution (24-bit), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled sensor interface platform that supports multiple sensor readings. “In most cases, it offers a single-board, single-platform solution for acquiring and logging multiple sensor readings that can be seen/sent through an Android app, an IoT or analytics platform, or over an ordinary USB connection.”

=> ↺ Compute module to debut faster i.MX8M Mini SoC

• Variscite unveiled a “DART-MX8M-Mini” module that runs on NXP’s new i.MX8M Mini SoC, a 14nm variant of the i.MX8M with one to four 2GHz Cortex-A53 cores and a 400MHz Cortex-M4, plus scaled down 1080p video via MIPI-DSI.

• [...] it will almost certainly run Linux, if not Android.

=> ↺ Arm delivers production-ready open source Bluetooth Low Energy software stack to unleash IoT innovation

• Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is quickly becoming the Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity protocol of choice for a variety of use cases, including smart lighting, smart cities and asset tracking, where low-cost, power consumption and small footprint are fundamental requirements. According to the 2018 Bluetooth Market Update, there will be more than 5 billion Bluetooth device shipments by 2022, with 97% of them containing Bluetooth Low Energy technology. The advances in Bluetooth 5 technology, along with the introduction of Bluetooth Mesh are driving new market opportunities across building automation, sensor networks, and other IoT solutions.

Android

=> ↺ Renault-Nissan Teams With Google and Lets Android Into the Dash

=> ↺ Google ‘sorry’ for remotely enabling Battery Saver on Android Pie handsets

=> ↺ Google partners with the world’s biggest auto group to bring Android to cars

=> ↺ AnyTrans Offers iPhone and Android Users a Seamless Transition to iPhone XS, XS Max, or XR

=> ↺ Cyber Sleuths Find Traces of Infamous iPhone and Android Spyware ‘Pegasus’ in 45 Countries

=> ↺ Galaxy Note 9 Catches Fire In Woman’s Purse, Samsung Faces Lawsuit

=> ↺ Woman says Galaxy Note 9 burst into flames inside her purse

• Samsung’s highly touted and supposedly fireproof Galaxy Note 9 cellphone spontaneously combusted inside a Long Island woman’s purse, she charges in a lawsuit.

• In what could be the first report of a Note 9 catching fire, real estate agent Diane Chung’s legal claim recalls the South Korean company’s 2016 disaster with the Galaxy Note 7, which ignited so often Samsung had to dump 2.5 million devices.

=> ↺ OnePlus To Launch OnePlus TV By 2019 To Compete In Smart TV Segment

=> ↺ Here’s How Xiaomi Mocked Apple For Steep Pricing Of New iPhones

=> ↺ SD Times news digest: Rust 1.29, Firebase Android SDKs, and Linus Torvald’s apology

=> ↺ Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Found in Honeywell Android Computers

=> ↺ Google apologizes for accidentally changing settings on some people’s smartphones without their knowledge or consent

=> ↺ In Major Auto Partnership, Google’s Android System to Power Dashboard Media Display

=> ↺ Google partners with Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi to put Android into millions of vehicles

=> ↺ How to use the Android Pie lockdown mode

=> ↺ 10 best customization apps for Android!

=> ↺ BlackBerry Key2 LE: A Competitive Android Offering

=> ↺ Nagra’s OTT solution support for Android TV

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ NYU applies open source Google AI to diagnose lung cancer

• If recent research is any indication, artificial intelligence (AI) has a bright future in medicine. Nvidia developed an AI system that can generate synthetic scans of brain cancer. Google subsidiary DeepMind has demonstrated a machine learning algorithm that can recommend treatment for more than 50 eye diseases with 94 percent accuracy. And in newly published research, New York University (NYU) showed how AI might aid in lung cancer diagnosis.

• A paper today published in the journal Nature Medicine (“Classification and mutation prediction from non-small cell lung cancer histopathology images using deep learning”) describes how a team of NYU researchers retrained Google’s Inception v3, an open source convolutional neural network architected for object identification, to detect certain forms of lung cancers with 97 percent accuracy.

=> ↺ Google AI Tool Identifies a Tumor’s Mutations From an Image

=> ↺ Announcing Heritage: An Open Source, Public Blockchain Project

• Heritage is a project of A​3​ by Airbus, the advanced projects outpost of Airbus in Silicon Valley. Airbus Foundation is the first strategic partner within Airbus to utilize blockchain technology developed by Heritage.

• Heritage is a decentralized application for the Airbus Foundation to hold charity fundraising campaigns internal to Airbus. Through open sourcing Heritage, Airbus Foundation will help charities onboard cryptocurrency and smart contracts, opening them to a new class of donor. Heritage hopes to set a standard non-profits can replicate to continue to grow the ecosystem while aiding an underserved market.

=> ↺ Versity announces next generation open source archiving filesystem

• Versity Software has announced that it has released ScoutFS under GPLv2. “ScoutFS is the first GPL archiving file system ever released, creating an inherently safer and more user friendly option for storing archival data where accessibility over very large time scales, and the removal of vendor specific risk is a key consideration.”

Web Browsers

Chrome

=> ↺ Chrome Beta 70 Brings 2-Factor Authentication Via Fingerprint Sensor To Android & Mac

• With the beta version of Chrome 70 on the roll, Google has added yet another useful feature to make signing into the websites easier. As announced in an official blog post, Chrome now supports 2-factor authentication in Android and Macbook with the device’s fingerprint sensor.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Fedora Firefox – GCC/CLANG dilemma

• After reading Mike’s blog post about official Mozilla Firefox switch to LLVM Clang, I was wondering if we should also use that setup for official Fedora Firefox binaries.

• The numbers look strong but as Honza Hubicka mentioned, Mozilla uses pretty ancient GCC6 to create binaries and it’s not very fair to compare it with up-to date LLVM Clang 6.

• Also if I’m reading the mozilla bug correctly the PGO/LTO is not yet enabled for Linux, only plain optimized builds are used for now…which means the transition at Mozilla is not so far than I expected.

=> ↺ September 2018 CA Communication

• Mozilla has sent a CA Communication to inform Certification Authorities (CAs) who have root certificates included in Mozilla’s program about current events relevant to their membership in our program and to remind them of upcoming deadlines. This CA Communication has been emailed to the Primary Point of Contact (POC) and an email alias for each CA in Mozilla’s program, and they have been asked to respond to the following 7 action items:

=> ↺ Emily Dunham: CFP tricks 1

• Some strategies I’ve recommended in the past for dealing with this include looking at the conference’s marketing materials to imagine who they would interest, and examining the abstracts of past years’ talks.

=> ↺ Thunderbird 60 with title bar hidden

• Many users like hidden system titlebar as Firefox feature although it’s not finished yet. But we’re very close and I hope to have Firefox 64 in shape that the title bar can be disabled by default at least on Gnome and matches Firefox outfit at Windows and Mac.

• Thunderbird 60 was finally released for Fedora and comes with a basic version of the feature as it was introduced at Firefox 60 ESR. There’s a simple checkbox at “Customize” page at Firefox but Thunderbird is missing an easy switch.

Databases

=> ↺ PostgreSQL adopts a code of conduct

• The PostgreSQL community has, after an extended discussion, announced the adoption of a code of conduct “which is intended to ensure that PostgreSQL remains an open and enjoyable project for anyone to join and participate in”.

=> ↺ PostgreSQL Is The Latest Open-Source Project To Announce A Code of Conduct

• The PostgreSQL database server is the latest open-source project adopting a Code of Conduct to promote inclusivity and appropriate conduct in engaging with the community.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ You Think the Visual Studio Code binary you use is a Free Software? Think again.

• I’m not a lawyer, I could be wrong or not accurate enough in my analysis (sorry!) but I’ll try nonetheless to give my understanding of the situation because the current state of licensing of Visual Studio Code tries to fool most users.

• Microsoft uses here a simple but clever trick allowed by the license of the code source of Visual Studio Code: the MIT license, a permissive Free Software license.

• Indeed, the MIT license is really straightforward. Do whatever you want with this software, keeps the original copyright and I’m not responsible of what could happen with this software. Ok. Except that, for the situation of Visual Studio Code, it only covers the source code, not the binary.

• Unlike most of the GPL-based licenses for which both the source code and the binary built from this source code are covered by the terms of the license, using the MIT license authorizes Microsoft to make available the source code of the software, but do whatever they want with the binary of this software. And let’s be crystal-clear: 99,99% of the VSC users will never ever use directly the source code.

=> ↺ First Azure Sphere dev board launches

=> ↺ Canonical Releases Ubuntu 18.04.1 Desktop Image Optimized for Microsoft Hyper-V

=> ↺ Microsoft and Canonical release Ubuntu Linux virtual machine image for Hyper-V Quick Create

• Linux may be the future of computing, but Windows is the present — on the desktop, at least. For now, both business and home users are wise to stick with Microsoft’s operating system. With that said, tech savvy users might be better served by, say, Linux Mint or Ubuntu. While Windows 10 is riddled with privacy and user interface issues, it is still the least stressful way to use your computer — you are less likely to have hardware or software compatibility issues.

=> ↺ Optimised Ubuntu Desktop images available in Microsoft Hyper-V gallery

• Today we’re very pleased to announce that an optimised Ubuntu Desktop image is available from the Hyper-V gallery. This will give an optimum experience when running Ubuntu Desktop as a guest on a Windows 10 Pro desktop host. From the Ubuntu Report data we know that a lot of people are using Ubuntu as a virtual machine, and so we want to make that experience as seamless as possible.

=> ↺ Flatpak on windows

• As I teased about last week I recently played around with WSL, which lets you run Linux applications on Windows. This isn’t necessarily very useful, as there isn’t really a lack of native applications on Windows, but it is still interesting from a technical viewpoint.

=> ↺ More Details On The WSL-Based Flatpak for Windows, Including Linux Games Running

=> ↺ App-y, app-y, joy, joy: Pain-free software installer Flatpak (kinda) works on Windows Subsystem for Linux

=> ↺ Microsoft’s Open Source Shift a ‘Profound Cultural Challenge’

=> ↺ Pulumi offers ‘code-based approach’ to cloud native apps

=> ↺ Linux on Windows 10: Running Ubuntu VMs just got a lot easier, says Microsoft

=> ↺ Microsoft Announce Enhanced Version of Ubuntu 18.04 for Hyper-V

• Well, it just got easier to run Ubuntu on Windows 10 as a virtual machine — and it’s all thanks to Microsoft.

• Windows 10 Pro users are now able to spin up an enhanced Ubuntu virtual machine directly from the Hyper-V Quick Create tool.

=> ↺ Microsoft Announces Azure Pipelines With Unlimited CI/CD Minutes for Open Source

=> ↺ How To Try Linux Without Making Any Changes To Your PC

=> ↺ Kong Inc. Launches Kong 1.0, the Only Open Source API Platform Purpose Built for Microservices, Cloud-Native and Serverless Architectures

• Kong Inc., the leading API platform for modern architectures, today launched Kong 1.0, the latest version of Kong’s core open source technology that incorporates learnings from three years of production experience for a fully featured offering. Developers, DevOps engineers and solutions architects at organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises use Kong to effectively secure, connect and orchestrate APIs within modern architectures to help meet evolving demands for scalability, performance and flexibility.

=> ↺ QUALCOMM DIRBS Software Platform to Solve Counterfeit Issue

=> ↺ Qualcomm Open-Sources Mobile ID Platform

• “Counterfeit devices are a significant problem worldwide and result in an estimated 45.3 billion EUR in lost sales to genuine manufacturers each year”

• Qualcomm has decided to share its Device Identification Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) for mobile devices as open-source software on GitHub.

• DIRBS is a sever-based platform developed by Qualcomm to help government authorities tackle trade in stolen mobile phones and identify counterfeiting activities.

Funding

=> ↺ Tidelift Reaches Milestone of One Million Dollars Committed to Pay Open Source Software Maintainers

• Select maintainers in the JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby ecosystems to receive at least $10,000 each

BSD

=> ↺ OpenBSD/NetBSD on FreeBSD using grub2-bhyve

• When I was writing a blog post about the process title, I needed a couple of virtual machines with OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Ubuntu. Before that day I mainly used FreeBSD and Windows with bhyve. I spent some time trying to set up an OpenBSD using bhyve and UEFI as described here. I had numerous problems trying to use it, and this was the day I discovered the grub2-bhyve tool, and I love it!

• The grub2-bhyve allows you to load a kernel using GRUB bootloader. GRUB supports most of the operating systems with a standard configuration, so exactly the same method can be used to install NetBSD or Ubuntu. [...]

=> ↺ OpenZFS Developer Summit 2018

• The sixth annual OpenZFS Developer Summit took place September 10th and 11th in San Francisco, California with an expanded focus on non-technical topics like community development and cross-project coordination. It also marked the “light at the end of the tunnel” status of several long-term OpenZFS features, notably dRAID, the distributed spare technology originally developed by Intel. [...]

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Washington State Electronic Notary Public endorsements

• [...] This all seemed to me to be something that GnuPG is designed to do and does quite well. So I sent an email on Friday night to the sender of the letter requesting specific issues that my provider did not comply with. This morning I received a call from the DoL, and was able to successfully argue for GnuPG’s qualification as an electronic records notary public technology provider for the State of Washington.

• In short, GnuPG can now be used to perform notarial acts http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=42.45.140 in the State of Washington!

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ Hindawi Limited Launches Open-Source Peer Review System Built on the PubSweet Framework

• Hindawi Limited is pleased to announce the launch of a new peer review platform built using the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation’s (Coko) open source PubSweet framework.

• This is the first complete open-source peer review system to come out of the Coko community, a group of like-minded organizations, including eLife, the European Bioinformatics Institute, and the University of California Press, keen on working collaboratively towards the advancement of openness in scholarly communications software.

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Surprise: Bill Introduced To Finally Make PACER Free To All

• This would be… amazing. We’ve spent years highlighting the massive problems with PACER, the federal court system that charges insane amounts for basically everything you do, just to access public records, and which functions very much like it was designed around 1995. There are a few court cases arguing that PACER fees are illegal and a recent ruling in one of those cases agreed. As we noted at the time, that was hardly the final word on the matter. A bill like the ones Collins introduced would be an amazing leap forward in giving public access to court documents.

=> ↺ Collins introduces bill to increase transparency and access to federal court documents

• Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) today introduced a bill to reform both parts of the federal courts’ electronic records system.

• “Americans deserve a justice system that is transparent and accessible. I introduced the Electronic Court Records Reform Act to modernize the judicial records systems and remove fee-for-access barriers that technology has rendered unnecessary,” said Collins.

• “As an attorney and the son of a law enforcement officer, I understand how crucial it is that this legislation ensures access to a freer, fairer and more accountable judiciary.”

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Learn To Code Games With The DevBoy Modular Open Source System

• Developer Nicolai Shlapunov has created a new modular open source system specifically created for learning how to program and develop games. The DevBoy has this week launched via Kickstarter with the aim of raising $100,000 over the next 30 days to make the jump into production. Watch the demonstration video below to learn more about the modular hardware kit can help you learn to dove games and allows you to configure different gaming systems depending on your needs. “Ever wanted to build your own game console? Robot remote control? May be an oscilloscope? DevBoy is what you need!”

=> ↺ RISC-V microconference accepted for Linux Plumbers Conference

• The open nature of the RISC-V ecosystem has allowed contributions from both academia and industry to lead to an unprecedented number of new hardware design proposals in a very short time span. Linux support is the key to enabling these new hardware options.

=> ↺ A $1, Linux-Capable, Hand-Solderable Processor

• Over on the EEVblog, someone noticed an interesting chip that’s been apparently flying under our radar for a while. This is an ARM processor capable of running Linux. It’s hand-solderable in a TQFP package, has a built-in Mali GPU, support for a touch panel, and has support for 512MB of DDR3. If you do it right, this will get you into the territory of a BeagleBone or a Raspberry Pi Zero, on a board that’s whatever form factor you can imagine. Here’s the best part: you can get this part for $1 USD in large-ish quantities. A cursory glance at the usual online retailers tells me you can get this part in quantity one for under $3. This is interesting, to say the least.

=> ↺ Open Source Paramotor Using Quadcopter Tech

• But not always. The OpenPPG project aims to create a low-cost paramotor with electronics and motors intended for heavyweight multicopters. It provides thrust comparable to gas paramotors for 20 to 40 minutes of flight time, all while being cheaper and easier to maintain. The whole project is open source, so if you don’t want to buy one of their kits or assembled versions, you’re free to use and remix the design into a personal aircraft of your own creation.

• It’s still going to cost for a few thousand USD to get a complete paraglider going, but at least you won’t need to pay hangar fees. Thanks to the design which utilizes carbon fiber plates and some clever hinges, the whole thing folds up into a easier to transport and store shape than traditional paramotors with one large propeller. Plus it doesn’t hurt that it looks a lot cooler.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ TNS Context: The CNCF Open Source Survey and the Ballerina Programming Language

• Today on The New Stack Context podcast, we talk with Chris Aniszczyk, co-founder of the TODO Group and Chief Technology Officer of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) about the results of our recent open source program management survey. We also talk about WS02‘s new cloud native programming language, Ballerina.

• Joining Context host TNS editorial director Libby Clark for this episode is TNS founder Alex Williams and TNS managing editor Joab Jackson.

=> ↺ The D Language Front-End Is Trying Now To Get Into GCC 9

• Going on for a while now have been D language front-end patches for GCC to allow this programming language to be supported by the GNU Compiler Collection. It’s been a long battle getting to this state but it looks like it soon might be mainlined.

• Last June was the approval by the GCC Steering Committee to allow D support in GCC. While the committee approved of its addition, the D language front-end didn’t end up getting merged in time for the GCC 8 stable release that took place earlier this year.

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ Being nice to your employees pays off: Research

• Researchers surveyed nearly 1,000 members of the Taiwanese military and almost 200 adults working full-time in the US, and looked at the subordinate performance that resulted from three different leadership styles.

• They found that authoritarianism-dominant leaders — who assert absolute authority and control, focused mostly on completing tasks at all costs with little consideration of the well-being of subordinates — almost always had negative results on job performance.

• On the other hand, benevolence-dominant leadership — where primary concern is the personal or familial well-being of subordinates — almost always had a positive impact on job performance.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ What The U.S. Could Do If So Much Money Wasn’t Wasted On Health Care

• The United States spends 7.2 percent points more of our gross domestic product (GDP) on health care than several industrialized countries. That is $1.3 trillion the country effectively wastes on health care without getting better health outcomes.

• This is such a large amount of money it is almost impossible to wrap one’s head around. But it’s important to highlight just what could be done with that much money.

=> ↺ Negotiated Deal Stands For UN Tuberculosis Declaration

• The final text of the declaration can be found here [pdf], and the letter from the President of the UN General Assembly marking the end of the “silence period,” during which member states have an opportunity to break consensus, can be found here [pdf].

• “In accordance with paragraph 6 of General Assembly resolution 72/268, the political declaration shall be approved by the high-level meeting on the fight against tuberculosis on 26 September 2018 and subsequently adopted by the General Assembly,” the letter states.

• The final version of the text could be stronger on intellectual property flexibilities that promote access to medicines, but it is important that a deal has been reached, and there is room for improvement, according to civil society groups.

Security

=> ↺ Quantum Computing and Cryptography

• Quantum computing is a new way of computing — one that could allow humankind to perform computations that are simply impossible using today’s computing technologies. It allows for very fast searching, something that would break some of the encryption algorithms we use today. And it allows us to easily factor large numbers, something that would break the RSA cryptosystem for any key length.

• This is why cryptographers are hard at work designing and analyzing “quantum-resistant” public-key algorithms. Currently, quantum computing is too nascent for cryptographers to be sure of what is secure and what isn’t. But even assuming aliens have developed the technology to its full potential, quantum computing doesn’t spell the end of the world for cryptography. Symmetric cryptography is easy to make quantum-resistant, and we’re working on quantum-resistant public-key algorithms. If public-key cryptography ends up being a temporary anomaly based on our mathematical knowledge and computational ability, we’ll still survive. And if some inconceivable alien technology can break all of cryptography, we still can have secrecy based on information theory — albeit with significant loss of capability.

• At its core, cryptography relies on the mathematical quirk that some things are easier to do than to undo. Just as it’s easier to smash a plate than to glue all the pieces back together, it’s much easier to multiply two prime numbers together to obtain one large number than it is to factor that large number back into two prime numbers. Asymmetries of this kind — one-way functions and trap-door one-way functions — underlie all of cryptography.

=> ↺ This New CSS Attack Restarts iPhones & Freezes Macs

=> ↺ Time to Rebuild Alpine Linux Docker Containers After Package Manager Patch

=> ↺ GrrCon 2018 Augusta15 Automation and Open Source Turning the Tide on Attackers John Grigg

=> ↺ Software Patch Claimed To Allow Aadhaar’s Security To Be Bypassed, Calling Into Question Biometric Database’s Integrity

• As the Huffington Post article explains, creating a patch that is able to circumvent the main security features in this way was possible thanks to design choices made early on in the project. The unprecedented scale of the Aadhaar enrollment process — so far around 1.2 billion people have been given an Aadhaar number and added to the database — meant that a large number of private agencies and village-level computer kiosks were used for registration. Since connectivity was often poor, the main software was installed on local computers, rather than being run in the cloud. The patch can be used by anyone with local access to the computer system, and simply involves replacing a folder of Java libraries with versions lacking the security checks.

• The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government body responsible for the Aadhaar project, has responded to the Huffington Post article, but in a rather odd way: as a Donald Trump-like stream of tweets. The Huffington Post points out: “[the UIDAI] has simply stated that its systems are completely secure without any supporting evidence.”

=> ↺ New CAS BACnet Wireshark Report Tool Helps User to Quickly Locate Intermittent Issues

=> ↺ Hackers For Good, Working To Gather Stakeholders To Find Answers To Cyberspace Challenges

• For a number of people, the word hacker means bad news. However, if some hackers have malevolent intentions, there are also hackers for good, and their skills were put to the challenge last week as they tried to save a fictitious city fallen into the hands of a group of cyber terrorists. The challenge was part of a two-day event organised by a young Geneva-based non-governmental organisation seeking to raise awareness about digital trust and bring accountability to cyberspace.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Wikileaks denies Assange sought Russian visa amid sex misconduct allegations

• WikiLeaks has vehemently denied the claims, however, stating that Assange did not write the document or apply for such a visa at any stage.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Deadly Florence Threatens Up to $18 Billion in Damage

=> ↺ Reports: Wilmington among communities cut off by floodwaters as Florence death toll rises to 17

• Florence has led to at least 17 deaths as its devastating rainfall continues to inundate North Carolina.

• Nearly 1 million people lost power at the height of the storm. Flooding has taken over entire towns, and officials are working frantically to restore power and rescue those trapped.

• Download the free AccuWeather app to stay up to date with Florence’s impacts.

=> ↺ Death toll grows, fear of flooding as Florence downgraded to tropical depression

=> ↺ September 2018: Hurricane Florence

• The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is now collecting damage assessment imagery in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. Weather permitting, aerial imagery is being collected in specific areas identified by NOAA in coordination with FEMA and other state and federal partners. During the mission, NGS will attempt two missions a day. Images are updated every 12 hours, which includes flight and processing time. Collected images are available to view online via the NGS aerial imagery viewer. View tips on how to use the imagery viewer.

Finance

=> ↺ I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

• Sanders has also been highlighting some of the 19th-century working practices used by Amazon to control and discipline its workforce inside of its fulfilment centres. Sanders’ bill – the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act, or the ‘Stop Bezos Act’ – would tax employers like Amazon when their employees require federal benefits.

• [...]

• Yet what I found while working for Amazon shocked me. I had done warehouse work previously when I was younger, along with a range of other poorly paid, manual jobs. In other words, my shock at the way workers were treated by Amazon was not a product of some wet-behind-the-ears naivety: I fully expected warehouse work to be tough. Yet what I witnessed at Amazon went far beyond that. This was a workplace environment in which decency, respect and dignity were absent.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ US power couple purchase Time Magazine for $190 million

• Time Magazine is being sold by Meredith Corp to Marc Benioff, a co-founder of Salesforce, and his wife.

• The Wall Street Journal reported that the iconic news magazine is being sold for USD 190 million to Benioff, one of four co-founders of Salesforce, a cloud computing pioneer.

=> ↺ Morning Edition’s Think Tank Sources Lean to the Right

• When it comes to seeking “expert” opinions on events for its reports, NPR often looks to a trusted roster of think-tank sources. In a study of NPR’s Morning Edition from February to July 2018, FAIR found that sources from left-of-center think tanks were underrepresented, with right-leaning think tank sources appearing almost twice as often.

• Out of 129 episodes aired Monday through Friday over the course of six months, researchers and fellows representing think tanks were quoted 144 times. Centrist think tanks were most commonly heard on Morning Edition, with 63 interview (44 percent of citations). Fifty-one (35 percent) of the show’s interviews were with conservative or center-right groups, while 28 (19 percent) involved progressive or center-left groups.

• Representatives from two think tanks—the pro-seafood Lobster Institute and the Rich Earth Institute, which promotes turning urine into fertilizer—could not be placed on the political spectrum.

=> ↺ The Election DataBot: Now Even Easier

• We launched the Election DataBot in 2016 with the idea that it would help reporters, researchers and concerned citizens more easily find and tell some of the thousand stories in every political campaign. Now we’re making it even easier.

• Just as before, the DataBot is a continuously updating feed of campaign data, including campaign finance filings, changes in race ratings and deleted tweets. You can watch the data come in in real time or sign up to be notified by email when there’s new data about races you care about.

• DataBot’s new homepage dashboard of campaign activity now includes easy-to-understand summaries so that users can quickly see where races are heating up. We’ve added a nationwide map that shows you where a variety of campaign activity is occurring every week.

• For example, the map shows that both leading candidates in Iowa’s 1st District saw spikes in Google searches in the week ending on Sept. 16 (we track data from Monday to Sunday). The Cook Political Report, which rates House and Senate races, changed its rating of that race from “Tossup” to “Lean Democratic” on Sept. 6.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Google’s Chinese Search Engine Will Censor Results, Provide Gov’t-Approved Pollution Data

• Google’s Chinese search engine also contains a blacklist of terms like “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize,” showing the government has a deep interest in using the custom-built search engine to deter and punish dissent. None of this is surprising, other than Google’s willingness to participate in government censorship. Google does pretty much the same thing with Android phones here in the US, where everything in the ecosystem is tied to the originating phone. There are ways to prevent that, but most phone users won’t take those steps. In China, however, the phones are also registered with the government, removing the third-party hop needed to tie internet activity to a person.

• Even Google’s seeming embrace of censorship and dissent deterrence may not be as surprising as it should be, as any number of social media platforms have made considerable concessions to authoritarian governments in recent years, rather than face losing market share in these countries.

• [...]

• Companies make bad decisions when faced with doing the right thing or doing the most profitable thing. Google premised its existence on not being evil. Pulling out of China lived up to that ideal. This does not. Concessions will always be made, but if these leaked documents are accurate, what Google is doing in China is far more than making small compromises to provide Chinese citizens with platforms not entirely controlled by their government. For all intents and purposes, Dragonfly is the government’s toy, built on tech underpinnings and expertise Google has apparently offered willingly.

=> ↺ Google’s search engine for China censors results for ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights,’ or ‘free speech’

• Early in August, a report from The Intercept claimed that Google was working to make a China-friendly version of its search engine that would censor results to make the government happy. A number of Google engineers quit the company after learning about this particularly egregious breach of Google’s “don’t be evil” policy, and now yet another report from The Intercept reveals exactly what Google was willing to censor.

• [...]

• More than anything, the report — which is well worth reading in full — shows the extent that even the biggest tech companies will go to in order to capture a share in a major emerging market. It’s easy to argue that if Google doesn’t acquiesce, a local firm will just do so anyway, but clearly Google’s own employees think it’s worth keeping the moral high ground.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Revealed: The Justice Dept’s secret rules for targeting journalists with FISA court orders

• Today, we are revealing—for the first time—the Justice Department’s rules for targeting journalists with secret FISA court orders. The documents were obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Freedom of the Press Foundation and Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

• While civil liberties advocates have long suspected secret FISA court orders may be used (and abused) to conduct surveillance on journalists, the government—to our knowledge—has never acknowledged they have ever even contemplated doing so before the release of these documents today.

• The FISA court rules below are entirely separate from—and much less stringent—than the rules for obtaining subpoenas, court orders, and warrants against journalists as laid out in the Justice Department’s “media guidelines,” which former Attorney General Eric Holder strengthened in 2015 after several scandals involving surveillance of journalists during the Obama era.

• When using the legal authorities named in the “media guidelines,” the Justice Department (DOJ) must go through a fairly stringent multi-part test (e.g. certifying that the information is critical to an investigation, that it can’t be obtained by other means, and that the DOJ exhausted all other avenues before doing so) before targeting a journalist with surveillance. They must also get approval from the Attorney General.

=> ↺ Federal Court Says NSA PRISM Surveillance Good And Legal Because The Gov’t Said It Was Good And Legal

• Three years after its inception, a prosecution involving possibly unlawful FISA-authorized surveillance, hints of parallel construction, and a very rare DOJ notification of Section 702 evidence has reached a (temporary) dead end. The defendants challenged the evidence on multiple grounds — many of which weren’t possible before the Snowden leaks exposed the breadth and depth of the NSA’s domestic surveillance.

• The federal judge presiding over the case — which involved material support for terrorism charges — has declared there’s nothing wrong with anything the NSA or FISA Court did, so long as the surveillance was authorized and possibly had something to do with national security. (via FourthAmendment.com)

• First, the defendants — all accused of providing material support to Al Qaeda (remember them?) — asserted the constitutionality of the NSA’s upstream collections should be revisited in light of the Snowden leaks. The court [PDF] says these more-recent exposures are no reason to upset the precedential apple cart.

=> ↺ Congress Is Poised to Give Trump Administration Powerful New Spying Powers

• Congress is once again using “national security” as magic words to increase the government’s surveillance powers in dangerous and unaccountable ways.

• The Trump administration wants more spying power — and Congress appears poised to give it to them.

• Touting national security to justify spying powers that jeopardize our constitutional rights is a strategy that we have seen before. It happened with the Patriot Act after 9/11, and members of Congress and government officials are now employing similar arguments again. This time it involves a drone bill that some in Congress are pressing to be sneakily inserted into a larger piece of legislation that could be considered this month.

• According to news reports, members of Congress are lobbying to add the Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018 to the Federal Aviation Agency Reauthorization Act. Proponents of the bill claim that it will make our country safer. But, in reality, the drone legislation will give new surveillance powers to the Trump administration to spy on journalists, activists, and other Americans without a warrant.

• According to bill sponsors, the bill’s intent is to arm the “Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department with the ability to act quickly and effectively when a drone poses a risk to large-scale events and government facilities.” This goal may be admirable, but the bill does not achieve it.

• Instead, the bill empowers these agencies to warrantlessly spy on Americans without complying with existing US laws — including the Wiretap Act, Stored Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Generally, these laws require the government to get a warrant if they want to wiretap or access other types of stored communications.

• The drone bill, however, exempts DHS and DOJ from these restrictions anytime it deems a drone a “threat” to certain covered areas. The bill defined covered areas so broadly — including areas where there may be emergency responses or federal investigations— that it will inevitably sweep in areas where media organizations have a legitimate interest in reporting.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ ‘This Is an Unprecedented Level of Secrecy and Non-Transparency’

• Media are certainly reporting the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. But there’s a case to be made that stories that just get views from various folks about what it would be like with Kavanaugh on the court, but sidestep serious questions about the process that would put him there, are doing less covering than covering up.

• Media get things wrong all the time, but among the deepest damage they do is invisibilizing possibilities, making it seem that things they don’t consider can’t happen. It’s a sort of implicit passivity that permeates corporate reporting, of which the air of “oh well, what’s next” fatalism wafting off of much coverage of Kavanaugh is just one example.

=> ↺ California Law Could be a Big Step Forward for Police Transparency

=> ↺ A Full Investigation Is Needed Into the Sexual Assault Allegations Against Brett Kavanaugh

• Both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, should testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

• Over the weekend, details of serious charges of sexual assault alleged to have been committed by Judge Brett Kavanaugh became public, as did the name of the woman raising these allegations. In a letter to Sen. Diane Feinstein and in an interview with The Washington Post, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford described an incident in high school when she says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party.

• Judge Kavanaugh has denied the allegations. “I have never done anything like what the accuser describes — to her or to anyone,” he said in a statement on Monday.

• These allegations, like all allegations of sexual misconduct, deserve to be taken seriously.

• Initially, Dr. Ford did not want her story to become public. She was afraid that doing so would “upend her life.” This is the reality women face, within a culture that too often vilifies people who come forward. Already, she has reportedly received threatening emails and is the subject of vicious online trolls, cruel tweets, and mocking Instagram posts, including one by Donald Trump Jr. But according to her lawyer, Debra Katz, “She’s willing to do whatever it takes to get her story forth.”

• It is critical that the confirmation hearings be delayed so that a thorough and transparent investigation can be conducted, including a hearing at which both Ford and Kavanaugh have an opportunity to testify under oath. The Senate cannot move forward with this lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land without considering the results of a fair, non-partisan, and complete process. If Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed, he could sit on the Supreme Court for the next 40 years. This confirmation process is the only process he will ever go through. Now is the time for the allegations to be investigated and testimony to be heard.

=> ↺ Blood-Spatter Expert in Joe Bryan Case Says “My Conclusions Were Wrong”

• A hearing to determine whether Joe Bryan should be granted a new trial came to a dramatic conclusion on Monday with a surprise, eleventh-hour admission from the expert witness whose testimony had proved critical in convicting the former high school principal of the 1985 murder of his wife, Mickey.

• “My conclusions were wrong,” retired police Detective Robert Thorman wrote in an affidavit introduced by the defense of the bloodstain-pattern analysis he performed. “Some of the techniques and methodology were incorrect. Therefore, some of my testimony was not correct.”

• Bloodstain-pattern analysis is a forensic discipline whose practitioners regard the drops, spatters and trails of blood at a crime scene as clues, which can sometimes be used to reverse-engineer the crime itself. Thorman had only 40 hours of training in the discipline when he was called in to work on the Bryan case. His testimony about a blood-speckled flashlight that Mickey’s brother found in the trunk of Bryan’s car four days after the murder made the state’s tenuous theory of the crime seem plausible.

• At Bryan’s trial in 1986 and then again at his 1989 retrial, Thorman testified that tiny flecks of blood on the flashlight could only be “back spatter” — a pattern that indicated a close-range shooting. What connection the flashlight had to the crime, if any, was never clear; in 1985, a crime lab chemist found that the blood on it was type O, which corresponded not only to Mickey but to nearly half the population. But Thorman effectively tied the flashlight to the crime scene, going so far as to say that the killer had likely held the flashlight in one hand while firing a pistol with the other.

• Bryan had been attending a principals’ convention in Austin, 120 miles from where the murder occurred in Clifton, Texas, in the days surrounding the murder. He has always maintained that he was in Austin, asleep in his hotel room, at the time of the crime.

=> ↺ How Facebook Is Giving Sex Discrimination in Employment Ads a New Life

• We’re taking on Facebook and 10 companies for using the social platform to direct job ads toward men, excluding others.

• In 1967, the newly formed National Organization for Women staged a weeklong protest of The New York Times and other newspapers. Their demonstration targeted the long-standing practice of printing classified listings in two separate columns: “Help wanted: Male” and “Help wanted: Female,” which of course resulted in the exclusion of women from high-paying jobs and industries. As a result of NOW’s advocacy campaign, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with enforcing Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting race and sex discrimination in employment, finally made clear — over the strong objection of newspapers — that limiting job postings to one sex was unlawful. Sex-segregated classified ads subsequently became a thing of the past.

• Or so we thought.

• Today, five decades later, sex-segregated job listings are roaring back to life. Enabled by social media platforms like Facebook, advertisers are increasingly using users’ personal data to direct their ads — including for jobs — to individual users based on characteristics such as sex, race, and age, thus excluding users outside of the selected groups from learning about these opportunities.

• We can’t let this archaic form of discrimination continue to take hold. That’s why on Tuesday, the ACLU, along with the Communications Workers of America and the employment law firm Outten & Golden LLP, filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Facebook and 10 companies that targeted ads for jobs in male-dominated fields to younger male Facebook users only, excluding all women and non-binary individuals, as well as older male users. The case is brought on behalf of three job seekers and the Communications Workers of America on behalf of a proposed class of millions of job applicants. It alleges that these job advertising practices violate federal civil rights laws prohibiting sex and age discrimination in employment.

=> ↺ Court: Trump’s ‘Get ‘Em Out’ Order Directed At Campaign Rally Protesters Is Protected Speech

• The Sixth Circuit Appeals Court has taken a look at some of President Trump’s campaign trail trash talk and decided urging fans to remove protesters wasn’t incitement, even if the phrasing was a bit graceless. (h/t Elizabeth Joh)

• The plaintiffs — Kashiya Nwanguma, Molly Shah, and Henry Brosseau — attended a Trump campaign rally for the express purpose of protesting it. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time, even if Trump tends to draw more detractors than most. During his speech, Trump had his critics ejected, telling attendees to “get ‘em out of here.”

• The plaintiffs, having been unceremoniously ejected (with some extra jostling from Trump supporters), sued, claiming Trump’s “get ‘em out of here” directly caused them harm and violated the state of Kentucky’s riot incitement law.

• The Appeals Court disagrees [PDF] with this assessment, using the plaintiffs’ own statements to undo their assertions. But it’s not happy with the lower court’s decision to apply a less strict standard to Trump’s wording to give the plaintiffs a better shot at hitting the mark with their state claims (“incitement to riot”). Applying the plausibility standard — that Trump’s “get ‘em out of here” could have conceivably incited a riot — makes no sense if the lower court wasn’t willing to apply that same standard to words Trump said directly after that.

=> ↺ Beyond Prisons — Episode 28: Prison Strike 2018

• Recorded in the midst of the strike on August 30, co-hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson have a conversation with Ware about the strike’s progress, as well as the challenges of organizing and why the press is woefully unprepared to report on the action.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Ajit Pai Whines About California’s Net Neutrality Effort, Calls It ‘Radical,’ ‘Illegal’

• Much like the giant ISPs he’s clearly beholden to, Ajit Pai isn’t particularly happy about California’s efforts to pass meaningful net neutrality rules. The state’s shiny new law recently passed the state assembly and senate, and is awaiting the signature of California Governor Jerry Brown. ISPs recently met with Brown in a last-minute bid to get him to veto the bill (a very real possibility) despite widespread, majority public support.

• Pai last week took some time to whine about California’s bill at the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a “free market” think tank supported by (shockingly) major ISPs.

=> ↺ Ajit Pai: California net neutrality law is “illegal”

• During the Obama years, when Pai was a mere FCC commissioner, he argued that states had the right to overrule federal telcoms rules. But he was arguing in favor of states’ rights to overrule federal regulations that said states couldn’t stop cities from building municipal internet services that competed with the telcos that Pai formerly served in an executive capacity.

=> ↺ Ajit Pai calls California’s net neutrality rules “illegal”

• California’s attempt to enforce net neutrality rules is “illegal” and “poses a risk to the rest of the country,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said in a speech on Friday.

• Pai’s remarks drew an immediate rebuke from California Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who authored the net neutrality bill that passed California’s legislature and now awaits the signature of Governor Jerry Brown.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Economic Analysis of Intellectual Property Notice and Disclosure

• Notice of intellectual property content, ownership, boundaries, scope of rights (and limitations), enforcement institutions, and remedial consequences plays a central role in resource planning and other economic and social functions. This chapter examines the function, design, and economic effects of intellectual property notice and disclosure rules and institutions. Based on this analysis, the chapter offers a comprehensive set of policy, institutional, and litigation reforms.

=> ↺ India: Patents Excluded

• Later, in 2012, Mr. Patel (Bharat Bhogilal Patel) filed a complaint against LG Electronics and multiple other importers for infringement. A circular was released by the govt. in 2009, which helped in the implementation of the IPR Rules, 2007. This circular addressed the issue of a Customs Officer not having the pre-requisite knowledge on Patents, Geographical Indication Infringements and design compared to Trademark and Copyrights. In order to deal with the infringements of the former kind, they should have been pronounced as offences by the court of law making the application by the Customs Officer simpler.

• In order to deal with this, vide notification no. 56/2018, the Central Government introduced amendments to the IPR Enforcement Rules, 2007 and introduced the Intellectual Property Rights (Imported Goods) Amendment Rules, 2018.

=> ↺ Germany: Abdichtsystem, Federal Court of Justice of Germany, X ZR 120/15, 16 May 2017

• This case concerns the question of whether, and under what conditions, a supplier of infringing products who is located abroad can be held liable for infringement of the German patent for acts committed abroad. The FCJ held that the supplier may be liable if he was aware or should have been aware of the fact that the products he was supplying would eventually also reach the German market through his customers. Where the supplier does not market the products directly to Germany, there is no general obligation to monitor the activities of his customers.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Cai v. Diamond Hong, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2018)

• Zheng Cai DBA Tai Chi Green Tea Inc. appealed an opinion of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) cancelling registration of his mark “WU DANG TAI CHI GREEN TEA” due to a likelihood of confusion with Diamond Hong, Inc.’s registered mark, “TAI CHI,” pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 1052(d) (2012).

• The Federal Circuit affirmed the decision, and despite the two marks (shown below) looking substantially different in appearance at first glance, other factors weighed in favor of the cancellation.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Traditional Knowledge and the Commons: The Open Movement, Listening, and Learning

• CC licenses and public domain tools help individuals, organisations, and public institutions better disseminate digital resources and data, breaking down the typical barriers associated with traditional “all rights reserved” copyright. At the same time, CC licenses can’t do everything for everyone. First, the licenses operate in the sphere of copyright and similar rights. They do not attempt to license, say, personality rights, trademark, or patent rights. Also, the CC community recognizes that voluntary licensing schemes will never be a comprehensive solution for access to and reuse of knowledge and creativity around the world. This is one reason why CC works on international copyright reform issues, including the protection and expansion of user rights.

• Another dimension of openness that could be better understood from the perspective of the “open” community is the sharing of cultural works related to indigenous communities. This has been talked about with terms such as “traditional knowledge”. Traditional knowledge consists of a wide range of skills, cultural works, and practices that have been sustained and developed over generations by indigenous communities around the world. These communities hold entitlement over this knowledge as well as responsibility for the preservation of their knowledge, but haven’t always had the autonomy to decide what can be done with their knowledge. International and national instruments have attempted to codify the value of traditional knowledge and rights of indigenous peoples, but the place of such knowledge within conventional intellectual property structures remains deeply contested and uncertain.

• These issues and more were brought up at the 2018 Creative Commons Global Summit as well, and has since started an important conversation within the CC community. I’m an attorney and doctoral candidate at UC-Berkeley Law, and over the summer I worked as a research fellow for Creative Commons to conduct an investigation into the current issues regarding traditional knowledge and its intersection with the open movement. A draft of the paper is complete, and we welcome your thoughts and suggestions to it.

=> ↺ Thanks To ISP Bahnhof, We Know Just How Crazy Copyright Trolling In Sweeden Is Getting

• For some time, Swedish ISP Bahnhof has been sounding the alarm over copyright trolling practices in its home country. While cynics will note that Bahnhof has absolutely made its refusal to hand over customer data a central part of its marketing messaging, the ISP has also made a point to publicly track copyright trolling court cases, threat letters, and pretty much everything else related to copyright trolling in Sweden. And, frankly, it’s due pretty much solely to Bahnhof’s tracking efforts that we now know just how insanely worse copyright trolling in Sweden has gotten in just the last year or so.

=> ↺ Apple Didn’t Delete That Guys iTunes Movies, But What Happened Still Shows The Insanity Of Copyright

• Last week we, like many others, wrote about the story of Anders G da Silva, who had complained on Twitter about how Apple had disappeared three movies he had purchased, and its customer service seemed to do little more than offer him some rental credits. There was lots of discussion about the ridiculousness — and potential deceptive practices — of offering a “buy” button if you couldn’t actually back up the “purchase” promise.

• Some more details are coming out about the situation with da Silva, and some are arguing that everyone got the original story wrong and it was incorrect to blame Apple here. However, looking over the details, what actually happened may be slightly different, but it’s still totally messed up. Apple didn’t just stop offering the films. What happened was that da Silva moved from Australia to Canada, and apparently then wished to redownload the movies he had purchased. It was that region change that evidently caused the problem. Because copyright holders get ridiculously overprotective of regional licenses, Apple can only offer some content in some regions — and it warns you that if you move you may not be able to re-download films that you “purchased” in another region (even though it promises you can hang onto anything you’ve already downloaded).

• [...]

• But, alas, we’re left with yet another example of the insanity driven by excessive copyright, in which copyright holders get so overly focused on the notion of “control” that they feel the need to control absolutely everything — including making sure that no wayward Canadians might (GASP!) purchase and download a movie meant for Australians. It’s this overwhelming, obsessive desire to “control” each and every use that messes with so many people’s lives — including da Silva’s — and makes sure that the public has almost no respect at all for copyright. Give up a little control, and let the edge cases go, and maybe people wouldn’t be so quick to condemn copyright for removing their own rights so frequently.

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