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● 11.28.18

● Links 28/11/2018: Red Hat Buys One Last Company, Mozilla’s Annual Report

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

Desktop

=> ↺ Turn an old Linux desktop into a home media center

• My first attempt to set up an “entertainment PC” was back in the late 1990s, using a plain old desktop computer with a Trident ProVidia 9685 PCI graphics card. I used what was known as a “TV-out” card, which had an extra output to connect to a standard television set. The onscreen result didn’t look very nice and there was no audio output. And it was ugly: I had an S-Video cable running across my living room floor to my 19″ Sony Trinitron CRT TV set.

• I had the same sad result from Linux and Windows 98. After struggling with systems that never looked right, I gave up for a few years. Thankfully, today we have HDMI with its vastly better performance and standardized resolution, which makes an inexpensive home media center a reality.

=> ↺ What Was the Windows Briefcase Used For, Anyway?

• The Windows Briefcase was introduced in Windows 95 and was the Dropbox of its day. It’s still part of Windows 7, but was deprecated in Windows 8 and is no longer part of Windows 10.

=> ↺ Capitalism, Competition And Microsoft Antitrust Action

• In 1994 Microsoft settled with the Department of Justice, agreeing to refrain from tying the sale of other Microsoft products to the sale of Windows. It is reasonable to assume that the demise of Apple, Microsoft’s only significant competitor in desktop computer operating systems, would have increased the antitrust scrutiny on Microsoft.

=> ↺ Windows 10 Version 1809 Breaks Windows Media Player

• As if there weren’t already enough problems with this release, Windows 10 version 1809 breaks Windows Media Player too.

• “After installing this update, users may not be able to use the Seek Bar in Windows Media Player when playing specific files,” a Microsoft support document notes. “Microsoft is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.”

=> ↺ Microsoft Re-Releases Windows Cumulative Update KB 4469342 For Version 1809, Fixes Old Issues

• Microsoft Windows 10 version 1809 has been under a lot of criticism and the company has been working tirelessly to fix the issues. In another attempt to fix the issues faced by Windows 10 version 1809 users, Microsoft has re-issued a cumulative update KB 4469342 for the version 1809. The tech giant had released the cumulative update earlier at the start of the month.

=> ↺ Microsoft Fixes Windows 10’s File Association Bug, Unless You’re Using the October Update

• On November 27, Microsoft released a “cumulative update” for Windows 10 that fixes a variety of bugs. As Bleeping Computer notes, Microsoft says the problem that prevents some Windows users from setting their default applications is fixed. Unfortunately, the Windows Media Player bug is still not fixed.

Server

=> ↺ Microsoft reveals terrible trio of bugs that knocked out Azure, Office 362.5 multi-factor auth logins for 14 hours

• Microsoft has delivered its postmortem report detailing the failures that led to unlucky folks being unable to log into its cloud services for 14 hours last week.

• Redmond said on Monday this week that there were three separate cock-ups that combined to cause the cascading mess that left Azure and Office 363 users unable to sign-in for much of Monday, November 19 via multi-factor authentication.

• “There were three independent root causes discovered,” the Microsofties explained. “In addition, gaps in telemetry and monitoring for the MFA services delayed the identification and understanding of these root causes which caused an extended mitigation time.”

=> ↺ Red Hat buys hybrid-cloud, data-storage company NooBaa

• After IBM acquired Red Hat, I suggested IBM paid $34 billion for the Linux power so it could become a hybrid-cloud power. With the news that Red Hat will acquire NooBaa, a hybrid-cloud, data-storage company, it’s become clearer than ever that the IBM-Red Hat deal is all about the hybrid cloud.

• NooBaa is a software-defined storage company. Its primary program of the same name is open-source software, which puts a virtual layer over private and public clouds storage resources.

=> ↺ Red Hat Acquires Multicloud Storage Vendor NooBaa

=> ↺ Red Hat acquires hybrid cloud data management service NooBaa

=> ↺ Red Hat Acquires Hybrid Cloud Data Management Provider NooBaa

=> ↺ Red Hat Acquires NooBaa for Hybrid Cloud Data Management

=> ↺ Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM: Now supported on AWS

• If there’s one thing that the past several years of IT evolution have taught us, it’s that choice is king. This starts with enterprises not wanting to be locked into a closed, single vendor technology stack. Choice now not only includes the option of footprint – from bare-metal servers to public cloud instances – but also the underlying architecture powering a technology stack. For many organizations, this means considering Arm processors as part of their computing mix, a consideration that was highlighted last night with the launch of Amazon’s EC2 A1 instances.

=> ↺ Installation of “RHEL 8” Beta with Screenshots

=> ↺ RHEL 8 BETA installation with screenshots

• In this article, we will walk you through step by step installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 BETA along with screenshots. Before you begin read what’s new in RHEL 8 and how to download RHEL 8 ISO. For this article, we installed RHEL 8 BETA on Oracle VM VirtualBox but process almost remains the same whether you install on VM or physical machine. So, let’s learn how to install RHEL 8 BETA with screenshots.

• Boot server with bootable ISO and you will be presented with below boot menu. Test media and install will be by default selected and you get 60 sec timer to cancel it out. Since ISO is almost 6.5 GB it takes a while to test media so you can cancel this out, move up and choose to install without checking media.

=> ↺ Google Integrates Istio Service Mesh into Kubernetes Service

• Istio reached production ready status just earlier this year, but Google says in a blog post announcing the integration that the service mesh is in use by “dozens of early access customers already running it in production” and it expects that number to grow quickly, as more than 80 percent of its largest customers already use GKE to run their workloads in production.

• Indeed, Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure at Google, predicted in his talk at Cloud Next last August when Istio 1.0 was announced, that upwards of 90 percent of Kubernetes users will be running Istio within the next two years.

=> ↺ Azure Exec: Microsoft to Continue Supporting Customers Using IBM’s Red Hat Solutions

=> ↺ Microsoft’s Exchange Online service goes missing

• Users of Microsoft’s Exchange Online service have been unable to access email since 10.10am UTC (9pm Monday AEDT), with the company promising another update in about eight hours.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Let your geek flag fly

• Myles and Mark talk about being intentional with your life instead of letting your life happen to you.

=> ↺ Skipping Fedora 31 | LINUX Unplugged 277

• Fedora might take a year off, to focus on it self. Project Lead and Council Chair Matthew Miller joins us to explain this major proposal.

• Plus Wimpy shares his open source Drobo alternative, and our final Dropbox XFS hack.

• Special Guests: Brent Gervais, Martin Wimpress, and Matthew Miller.

=> ↺ Linux Sucks. Forever.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 4.19.5

=> ↺ Linux 4.14.84

=> ↺ Linux 4.9.141

=> ↺ Linux 4.4.165

=> ↺ Linux 3.18.127

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 4.18 Reached End of Life, Users Urged to Upgrade to Linux 4.19

• Released on August 12, 2018, by Linus Torvalds, the Linux 4.18 kernel series introduced Spectre Variant 1 and Spectre Variant 2 mitigations for 32-bit ARM architectures, Spectre Variant 4 mitigations for the ARM64 (AArch64) and ARMv8 architectures, and initial support for the Radeon Vega 20 GPUs.

• It also brought a just-in-time compiler for eBPF programs on 32-bit (x86) architectures, better discard support for F2FS (Flash-Friendly File System), improved USB Type-C and USB 3.2 support, as well as official support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 ARM mobile processor.

=> ↺ New Intel Stratix 10 FPGA Drivers Coming To Linux 4.21 Kernel

• At the end of last year Intel announced the Stratix 10 FPGA with HBM2 memory for HPC workloads. With the Linux 4.21 kernel cycle, the support for this hardware will be further improved upon for FPGA programming with the mainline kernel.

=> ↺ Some Linux Users Are Reporting Software RAID Issues With ASRock Motherboards

• Making the rounds this morning is an ASRock forum post about a motherboard accidentally and repeatedly wiping out Linux Software RAID meta-data. A few Phoronix readers have also reported similar issues such as in the forums and Twitter. This appears to stem from an UEFI issue.

• The original report is pertaining to an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard. The indications are at boot time the ASRock UEFI implementation is accidentally zeroing out part of the disk containing the MD RAID meta-data during the start-up process. The belief by the user is that the UEFI thinks its trying to repair the GUID Partition Table (GPT), not knowing its a Linux RAID setup. So take this as a word of caution for the moment; it’s obviously unintentional damage and likely the result of ASRock not testing their consumer products under Linux much.

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Offers Open Source Certification Exams from Anywhere

=> ↺ Machine Learning, Biased Models, and Finding the Truth

• Machine learning and statistics are playing a pivotal role in finding the truth in human rights cases around the world – and serving as a voice for victims, Patrick Ball, director of Research for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, told the audience at Open Source Summit Europe.

• Ball began his keynote, “Digital Echoes: Understanding Mass Violence with Data and Statistics,” with background on his career, which started in 1991 in El Salvador, building databases. While working with truth commissions from El Salvador to South Africa to East Timor, with international criminal tribunals as well as local groups searching for lost family members, he said, “one of the things that we work with every single time is trying to figure out what the truth means.”

• In the course of the work, “we’re always facing people who apologize for mass violence. They tell us grotesque lies that they use to attempt to excuse this violence. They deny that it happened. They blame the victims. This is common, of course, in our world today.”

• Human rights campaigns “speak with the moral voice of the victims,’’ he said. Therefore, it is critical that statistics, including machine learning, are accurate, Ball said.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ LunarG Rolls Out Vulkan Configurator With Updated SDK

• LunarG has shipped the latest version of the Vulkan SDK that pulls in support for the many recently introduced extensions from VK_NV_ray_tracing to VK_EXT_pci_bus_info and VK_EXT_transform_feedback, among other recent vendor extensions. There is also bug fixes and improved validation coverage for this Vulkan SDK.

=> ↺ Intel Iris Gallium3D Open-Source Driver Continues Speeding Along

• Fresh out of the US holiday weekend, the Intel Iris Gallium3D driver that is forming as the company’s future OpenGL Linux driver with better performance potential and modern design, saw a number of new code commits.

• A lot of new code has landed in the Iris driver thanks to its lead developer Kenneth Graunke as well as Chris Wilson and Jason Ekstrand of Intel OTC and also David Airlie of Red Hat has been contributing some patches too for this driver.

Applications

=> ↺ Open Source Tools for Working Writers

• When it comes to writing, using the right tools can free you up to focus on your content.

• Sooner or later, open source development comes to every field, and tools for working writers are no exception. However, if you search for the topic, you will find the lists of writing tools are full of apps that are no longer in development and have been dropped from most distributions.

• Accordingly, here is a list of useful writing apps that are still available as of late 2018. Some have been around for a long time, while others are newer and little known.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Install Joomla! CMS on Debian 9

=> ↺ How to Install Oracle Java 11 in Ubuntu 18.04/18.10

=> ↺ How to Install VirtualBox on Ubuntu

=> ↺ How to Update Ubuntu through Terminal

=> ↺ How to Root the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4

=> ↺ How does Linux Secure Boot affect Hyper-V 2016 VMs?

=> ↺ Customer Q&A: Managing Linux & FreeNAS File Servers from the Cloud

=> ↺ How To Install Firefox ESR In Ubuntu Or Linux Mint (PPA Or Snap)

=> ↺ How to Change Your Password on a Chromebook

=> ↺ How to Debloat the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4

=> ↺ How to install Viber on Ubuntu 18.04

=> ↺ How to install WordPress with Nginx on CentOS 7

=> ↺ How to install Xubuntu 18.10

=> ↺ How to test your network with PerfSONAR

=> ↺ ImunifyAV 3.8.5 Beta is here

=> ↺ Linux finger Command Tutorial for Beginners (5 Examples)

=> ↺ Logging Into Websites With Python

=> ↺ Let’s flip the flags! Is my SAP HANA database in sync or not?

=> ↺ Python 101: Episode #35 – The virtualenv Package

=> ↺ BBN challenge resolutions: “A properly secured parameter” and “Exploiting a static page”

=> ↺ The power of installed-base snap metrics

=> ↺ An example of how C++ destructors are useful in Envoy

=> ↺ Deploy a SUSE Enterprise Storage test environment in about 30 minutes

Games

=> ↺ A 2018 Thanksgiving retrospection about the open source game engine ‘xoreos’

• xoreos is a FLOSS project aiming to reimplement BioWare’s Aurora engine (and derivatives), covering their games starting with Neverwinter Nights and potentially up to Dragon Age II. This post gives a short update on the current progress.

• Another year nears its end. After unfortunately skipping last year’s Not-Thanksgiving post, we are, back to our regular yearly retrospection. For people new to xoreos: this series is a kind of introspective look into what happened with the xoreos project over the past year. I’m not in the USA, so I don’t observe Thanksgiving, but nevertheless, I do want to give thanks to all the great people working with me on xoreos, and supporting us in other ways.

=> ↺ Lutris – Install and Play Linux Games with Ease

• Linux gaming gets more awesome by the day and Lutris is another title that supports my assertion.

• Lutris is an open source Linux gaming platform with support for different game platform titles including native Linux Games, Gamecube, Windows, and PlayStation.

• Lutris helps you install, configure, manage, and launch games (using programs referred to as “runners“) from a single interface. All runners, except those of web browsers and Steam, belong to and are managed by Lutris.

=> ↺ MXGP3 – The Official Motocross Videogame, some thoughts on the Linux version

• With MXGP3 – The Official Motocross Videogame now on Linux from Milestone S.r.l. With porting from Virtual Programming, I took a look. Note: Copy personally purchased.

• As the first game from Milestone to land with Linux support, it didn’t get the best start. For a day it didn’t work for anyone and after that it crashed quite often. It was quickly fixed up, so thankfully it does work fine now.

=> ↺ SOMOS is an arcade game with simple visuals and a simple idea, executed extremely well

• SOMOS might not look like much with the simplistic visual style, however, it’s the gameplay that hooks you in this arcade-action game.

=> ↺ Woodpunk, a pretty sweet action roguelike is coming to Linux hopefully soon

• There’s a lot of cyberpunk games, steampunk and more but what about Woodpunk? It’s an action roguelike that looks good and it’s coming to Linux.

• It released for Windows a few days ago, after checking it out I thought it looked pretty sweet. Before speaking to the developer, I perused the Steam forum and as expected there was already someone asking about Linux support. The answer from the developer was surprising “We’re aiming pre-christmas!” and so we should hopefully see it soon.

=> ↺ BATTLETECH for Linux updated, releases Flashpoint expansion – some thoughts

• Coinciding with a patch and an expansion, BATTLETECH has been updated for Linux. I’ve spent some time with both the base game and DLC and have come away with a lot to say.

=> ↺ Evolution simulator ‘Species: ALRE’ allows you to tinker with life itself and it now has a Linux version

• Here’s one we missed you might like. Species: ALRE is an evolution simulation game which puts you in control of life itself. It entered Early Access on Steam back in September, with a Linux version arriving last month.

=> ↺ Bloody Rally Simulator, a top-down 2D racer with a violent side coming soon to Linux

• I have some pretty fond memories of top-down racers on the Amiga and Bloody Rally Simulator is bringing back those memories. Coming to Linux next month.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5.14.4 Desktop Environment Released with 45 Changes, Update Now

• Highlights of the KDE Plasma 5.14.4 update include improved Flatpak support and better global progress display for updates in the Plasma Discover graphical package manager, updated Weather add-on to correctly display temperatures of 0 degrees, as well as improved label contrast in Folder View for better compatibility with certain wallpapers.

• Updated components in this release include Plasma Desktop, Plasma Discover, Plasma Workspace, Plasma Audio Volume Control, Plasma Networkmanager (plasma-nm), plasma-browser-integration, Plasma Addons, Breeze, KScreen, KWin, and kactivitymanagerd. A total of 45 changes are included, so check out the official changelog for more details about the KDE Plasma 5.14.4 update.

Distributions

Screenshots/Screencasts

=> ↺ Parrot Security 4.4 Run Through

Fedora

=> ↺ Bodhi 3.11.1 released

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu Touch OTA-6 Update for Ubuntu Phones Slated for Release on December 7th

• Coming only two months after the OTA-5 update, which finally rebased the mobile OS on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system series, the Ubuntu Touch OTA-6 release is expected to introduce more improvements like support for passwords that contain special characters for Nextcloud accounts.

• The new Morph web browser received various improvements like support for restoring the previous browsing session at startup, ReCaptcha support, the ability to stop the media when closing a tab, themed scrollbars, better tabbed browsing experience, and support for web apps to access locally stored content on the device.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Server development summary – 27 November 2018

• The purpose of this communication is to provide a status update and highlights for any interesting subjects from the Ubuntu Server Team.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ A New Raspberry Pi Board

• Raspberry Pi Trading, the company behind the revolutionary Raspberry Pi platform, has announced a new board – Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ [1].

• “You can now get the 1.4GHz clock speed, 5GHz wireless networking and improved thermals of Raspberry Pi 3B+ in a smaller form factor, and at the smaller price of $25. Meet the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+,” said Eben Upton, the founder of the Raspberry Pi project.

• The board is powered by Broadcom BCM2837B0, Cortex-A53 (ARMv8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.4GHz; comes with 512MB LPDDR2 SDRAM and 2.4GHz and 5GHz IEEE 802.11.b/g/n/ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.2/BLE.

=> ↺ Limited Edition, Second-Generation “Kodi Edition” Raspberry Pi Case Now on Sale

• The non-profit technology consortium XBMC/Kodi Foundation proudly announced the limited availability of the second-generation “Kodi Edition” Raspberry Pi case. It’s been more than two years since Kodi Foundation surprised everyone by announcing their plunge into hardware manufacturing with the “Kodi Edition” Raspberry Pi case, so the time has come for a new version that adds things missing in the first edition, as well as improves other aspects to make it better and more reliable.

• “For the past year, we’ve been working with Flirc on an exciting and ambitious newly-designed case to follow that one. Using the second-generation Flirc case as a starting point, we wanted something prominent that both matches the character of Kodi and blends seamlessly into your entertainment systems,” said the Kodi team.

=> ↺ Tor’s Strength in Numbers Campaign, New ask.krita.org Site, Kodi Announces Limited-Edition Raspberry Pi Case, IPFire 2.21 Core Update 125 Released, and Chrome and Firefox Developers Plan to End Support for FTP

• Kodi recently released a new limited-edition “Kodi Edition” Raspberry Pi case. This version 2 of the case Kodi released two years ago is newly designed, aluminum, but it’s “now gone to the dark side with a metallic, jet black coating for that cool Vader look”. In addition, “the second-generation case features better access to the SD card, a better built-in heatsink, precision manufacturing, and subtle details that make a great case amazing.” A percentage of every sale of this case goes to the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. You can order one from FLIRC for $19.95.

=> ↺ How to Measure Distance with Raspberry Pi

• You can measure distance using the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor with Raspberry Pi. The HC-SR04 sensor can measure distance from 2mm (.02m) to 400cm (4m). It sends 8 burst of 40KHz signals and then waits for it to hit an object and get reflected back. The time it takes for the ultrasonic 40KHz sound wave to travel back and forth is used to calculate the distance between the sensor and the object on its way. That’s basically how the HC-SR04 sensor works.

=> ↺ Happy Birthday Jolla Phone

• Jolla phone is now 5 years old!! We write this blog post while remembering all the emotions and hard work from the year 2013 when we launched the device to the public. We made it, we made an iconic Finnish product with a small but passionate team of engineers and designers. Despite the fact that half way through the development we had to redesign the hardware due to a new chipset and adapt Sailfish OS to it, we made it, we brought the first Jolla smartphone with blood, sweat and passion in it to the market. We saw room for another player, to come and disrupt the business of mobile operating systems. We showed the world that against all odds, it can be done, and it can be done with class!

Android

=> ↺ Nokia 6.1, Honor 9N, Honor 7X Smartphones Being Updated with New Android Security Patches

=> ↺ Nokia 7.1 receives stable Android 9.0 Pie update

=> ↺ Galaxy Note 9 One UI/Android 9 beta program registration open in the US!

=> ↺ The Galaxy S10+ is currently the best performing Android smartphone according to Antutu

=> ↺ Google Adds Support For Hashtags on Maps For Android Devices

=> ↺ Are you using your Pixel 3 with or without a case?

=> ↺ Google Pixel Slate review: a strong case for death of Android tablets

=> ↺ Google Pixel Slate Review: Android Apps On a Chrome Tablet

=> ↺ Android 9 Pie now rolling out to Nokia 7.1 w/ November security patch

=> ↺ Android Pie moves to Nokia 7.1

=> ↺ Android adware has plagued the Google Play Store in the past two months

=> ↺ Google expands support in Android to include Foldable Phones

=> ↺ OnePlus announces a closed beta program for the OnePlus 6T

=> ↺ Sprint will release an HTC-made 5G hub in early 2019

=> ↺ HMD Global Rolls Out Latest Android 9 Pie Update To The Nokia 7.1 Midrange Smartphone

=> ↺ Android 9 Pie officially available for Nokia X6

=> ↺ Nokia 7.1 gets Android 9 Pie

=> ↺ LG Canada Announces Android 9 Pie Update Now Available for LG G7 One

=> ↺ Download the first Android Pie beta for the Xiaomi Mi Max 3

=> ↺ Android Pie update rolling out for some Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite users

=> ↺ [Poll] How are you liking the Galaxy S9 Android Pie beta?

=> ↺ Cybercriminals, Mobile Internet Companies Committing Ad Fraud On Android, iOS Users

=> ↺ Eight Android apps with 2 billion+ downloads are committing ad click fraud

=> ↺ Consumer groups ask if anyone has considered whether Android tracking is legal under GDPR

=> ↺ Google adds support for hashtags on Maps for Android devices

=> ↺ Sony Xperia XZ4 shown with triple rear cameras in first renders

=> ↺ Android people: Save $100 on the Samsung Gear S3 or Gear Sport smartwatches at Best Buy

=> ↺ Fast Pair now syncs Bluetooth accessories across Android devices, Chromebook support in 2019

=> ↺ Best Android tricks You Didn’t Know About

=> ↺ Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 benchmark reveals Android Oreo and Qualcomm CPU

=> ↺ Google Pixel Slate review: An Android tablet with Chromebook dreams

=> ↺ Chrome for Android could integrate gestures already seen on Chrome OS

=> ↺ Three Studios Join Forces On New Warhammer Android Game

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Anatomy of an OSS Institutional Visit

• I recently visited the UK Meteorology Office, a moderately large organization that serves the weather and climate forecasting needs of the UK (and several other nations). I was there with other open source colleagues including Joe Hamman and Ryan May from open source projects like Dask, Xarray, JupyterHub, MetPy, Cartopy, and the broader Pangeo community.

• This visit was like many other visits I’ve had over the years that are centered around showing open source tooling to large institutions, so I thought I’d write about it in hopes that it helps other people in this situation in the future.

=> ↺ The Future of Technological Advancement Is Open Source

• The influence of open source on the IT industry for the past few decades has been undeniable, and the scale and speed of the open source development have been remarkable. The primary reason behind this is, it is cost-effective and also provides an opportunity for faster and more reliable innovation which allows enterprises to scale their infrastructure. Many employers allow developers to work on projects within the given time frame. Removing internal restrictions about open source will encourage developers, rather than making them feel like they are violating IT policies.

• Employers are enabling developers to work in conjunction with the latest innovations and accelerate the way at which these technologies are being adopted. Open source is a crucial area one can encounter in the present and the future. It is quickly becoming a necessity for success as enterprises realize the benefits it can offer and also provides a cost-effective option as compared to proprietary alternatives.

=> ↺ Lambda Debuts First Ever Blockchain Open-Source PoST Algorithm on GitHub

• Lambda recently unveiled its transparent Proof-of-Space-Time (PoST) protocol with high-speed verification capabilities, repetition computation, and streamlined proofs. It is reportedly the first ever blockchain open source PoST algorithm available to developers on GitHub – the popular software development platform.

=> ↺ Blockchain Storage Revolutionist Lambda Surpasses FileCoin Unveiling First Open-Source Proof-of-Space-Time Algorithm Available to Developers on GitHub

• Lambda, the leading decentralized infrastructure project providing innovative unlimited and scalable data storage capabilities on the blockchain, today announced its groundbreaking open-source Proof-of-Space-Time (PoST) protocol is the first available to developers worldwide on GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform

=> ↺ Open Source VoIP Specialist Ecosmob Launches Next-Generation Softswitches

• Ecosmob, a specialist in open source VoIP technologies, has launched a wholesale softswitch solution for VoIP service providers.

• Over the years Ecosmob has been refining its expertise in open source technologies in the softswitch area, including class four and five softswitch technology for VoIP services.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ State of Mozilla 2017: Annual Report

• The new report outlines how Mozilla operates, provides key information on the ways in which we’ve made an impact, and includes details from our financial reports for 2017. The State of Mozilla report release is timed to coincide with when we submit the Mozilla non-profit tax filing for the previous calendar year.

• Mozilla is unique. We were founded nearly 20 years ago with the mission to ensure the internet is a global public resource that is open and accessible to all. That mission is as important now as it has ever been.

=> ↺ These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 50

=> ↺ The Rust Programming Language Blog: Rust Survey 2018 Results

• Another year means another Rust survey, and this year marks Rust’s third annual survey. This year, the survey launched for the first time in multiple languages. In total 14 languages, in addition to English, were covered. The results from non-English languages totalled 25% of all responses and helped pushed the number of responses to a new record of 5991 responses. Before we begin the analysis, we just want to give a big “thank you!” to all the people who took the time to respond and give us your thoughts. It’s because of your help that Rust will continue to improve year after year.

=> ↺ Brussels Mozilla Mornings: Critically assessing the EU Terrorist Content regulation

• On the morning of 12 December, Mozilla will host the first of our Brussels Mozilla Mornings series – regular breakfast meetings where we bring together policy experts, policy-makers and practitioners for insight and discussion on latest EU digital policy developments. This first session will focus on the recently-proposed EU Terrorist Content regulation.

• The panel discussion will seek to unpack the Commission’s legislative proposal – what it means for the internet, users’ rights, and the fight against terrorism. The discussions will be substantive in nature, and will deal with some of the most contentious issues in the proposal, including the 60 minute takedown procedure and upload filtering obligations.

=> ↺ Mozilla Localization (L10N): Multilingual Gecko Status Update 2018.2

• Welcome to the third edition of Multilingual Gecko Status Update!

• In the previous update we covered the work which landed in Firefox 59 and Firefox 60.

• At the time, we’ve been finalizing the platform work to support Fluent localization system, and we were in the middle of migration of the first Firefox UI component – Preferences – to it.

• Today, we’ll pick up right where we left off!

=> ↺ Next Steps in DNS-over-HTTPS Testing

• Over the past few months, Mozilla has experimented with DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH). The intention is to fix a part of a DNS ecosystem that simply isn’t up to the modern, secure standards that every Internet user should expect. Today, we want to let you know about our next test of the feature.

• Our initial tests of DoH studied the time it takes to get a response from Cloudflare’s DoH resolver. The results were very positive – the slowest users show a huge performance improvement. A recent test in our Beta channel confirmed that DoH is fast and isn’t causing problems for our users. However, those tests only measure the DNS operation itself, which isn’t the whole story.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ LibreOffice localisation sprint: Bengali

• LibreOffice’s localisation communities translate the software’s user interface and documentation. They help to make a powerful office suite available to millions of people around the world, in over 100 languages!

CMS

=> ↺ Upgraded my blog to Ghost 2.6

• I have been maintaining my blog. It is a self hosted Ghost blog, where I have my theme as Casper, the Ghost default. In the recent past, September 2018, Ghost has updated its version to 2.0. Now it is my time to update mine.

• It is always advisable to test it before running it into production server. I maintain a stage instance for the same. I test any and all the changes there before touching the production server. I did the same thing here also.

BSD

=> ↺ DragonFly 5.4rc1 image to use

• I uploaded the current 5.4 release candidate – there’s an ISO and an IMG file, though your local mirror may be a better place to get it than those links. Or just wait; I think the release won’t be long.

• Note that I was smart for once and named it ‘rc1’, so if there’s another release candidate, it can be named ‘rc2’. I used ‘rc’ in previous releases and was never sure if I should name a second candidate rc1, rc2…

=> ↺ Intel Cascade Lake Target Added To LLVM / Clang Compiler

• Similar to the GCC patch for Intel Cascade lake CPU support that was posted last week, the LLVM Clang compiler stack now supports these forthcoming Intel server CPUs.

• As of today the cascadelake target was added to LLVM and hooked up as well for Clang with the “-march=cascadelake” targeting for optimized code around this successor to Skylake-SP.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ New article by Richard Stallman: Anonymous Payment by Phone

• Here is an idea for an anonymous payment system that would be useful for some applications.

=> ↺ GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 18 new GNU releases!

• bison-3.2.2 emms-5.1 gnuhealth-3.4.0 guile-cv-0.2.1 icecat-60.3.0 indent-2.2.11 libextractor-1.8 libmicrohttpd-0.9.60 libredwg-0.6.2 librejs-7.18.1 mit-scheme-10.1.1 mtools-4.0.21 nano-3.2 orgadoc-1.0 parallel-20181122 pspp-1.2.0 swbis-1.13.1 unrtf-0.21.10

=> ↺ Release of GNU Health 3.4

• We are proud to announce the release of GNU Health 3.4 series ! It’s been over a year of hard work, integrating the latest in technology and Social Medicine into GNU Health.

=> ↺ DejaGnu 1.6.2 released

• DejaGnu 1.6.2 was released on 28 November 2018. A maintenance release.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ Decisive leadership is needed even more acutely in the digital open source era

• I was speaking recently at a seminar in Switzerland about leadership in the age of digital disruption, and an interesting question came up. Someone asked me why I was propagating the need for strong, decisive leadership and at the same time talking about open source era. “Isn’t open source about getting results without a clear (singular) leadership?” he asked while citing examples of open source operating systems (OS) like Linux, social movements like the Arab Spring and the recent rise of cryptocurrencies.

• This gentleman went on to say he was really confused. “Not only does your claim about the need for strong leadership in the open source era go against the very essence of open source systems, you go to the extent of advocating autocratic leadership?”

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Thales joins RISC-V Foundation to help secure open-source microprocessors

• Membership of the RISC-V Foundation is the latest illustration of Thales’s commitment to free open-source hardware architectures based on RISC-V processors, and an opportunity for the company to play a major role in a new era microprocessor design. Based on the same philosophy as the Linux success story in the world of software, open source hardware is becoming increasingly important in many key sectors.

=> ↺ RISC-V and Linux Foundation partner up

• The RISC-V Foundation and the Linux Foundation agreed to a collaboration to accelerate open source development for the open source RISC-V ISA, starting with RISC-V starter guides for Linux and Zephyr.

• The RISC-V Foundation and the Linux Foundation announced a partnership to “accelerate open source development and adoption of the RISC-V ISA” and “grow the RISC-V ecosystem with improved support for the development of new applications and architectures across all computing platforms.” The Linux Foundation will advise RISC-V on “neutral governance and best practices for open source development” and provide resources for training programs, infrastructure tools, community outreach, and marketing and legal expertise.

=> ↺ Linux lobby org joins with RISC-V bods to promote open chip spec

• The Linux Foundation, the non-profit funded by for-profit tech firms to promote the open source operating system, has begun working with the RISC-V Foundation, another non-profit backed by well-heeled companies, to encourage adoption of the open source RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA).

• The two organizations on Tuesday plan to announce a collaboration to enhance the appeal of the RISC-V ISA, tech that proprietary chip designer Arm recently tried to stifle. The results of the tie-up should come in the form of training programs, tool development, community building and governance, marketing support, and legal advice.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ the first pygame 2 community game. Starting now! Are you in?

=> ↺ pygame 2 update – the examples all work

=> ↺ Asynchronous vs Synchronous Python Performance Analysis

• This article is the second part of a series on using Python for developing asynchronous web applications. The first part provides a more in-depth coverage of concurrency in Python and asyncio, as well as aiohttp.

• If you’d like to read more about Asynchronous Python for Web Development, we’ve got it covered.

• Due to the non-blocking nature of asynchronous libraries like aiohttp we would hope to be able to make and handle more requests in a given amount of time compared to analogous synchronous code. This is due to the fact that asynchronous code can rapidly switch between contexts in order to minimize time spent waiting for I/O.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Dear Silicon Valley Tech Companies: Stop Treating Your Structural Challenges As Political Challenges

• A couple weeks back Karl wrote up an excellent analysis of the NY Times’ big piece looking at how Facebook tried to deal with ongoing criticism of the company concerning the influence operations that it appears Russians used their site for. Karl’s post focused on just how many companies make use of similar political smear campaigns, and everyone (including the press) should be much more tuned into this kind of thing. Indeed, a followup story from the NY Times last week showed that a bunch of other tech companies — namely Lyft, Lime, Juul and Qualcomm — all had hired the very same “Definers” firm that Facebook had hired to smear its opponents.

• I wanted to write a follow up post, though, to make a slightly different point. This one is more directed at the people who work at all of the big tech companies: Stop thinking about running your companies as political campaigns, and focus most on what is best for end-users. It should be noted, of course, that all of these companies are a bit different, and they all do take different approaches to the market, but over the last few years, especially, one thing that has shined through with many of these companies is that they’ve dealt with the challenges suddenly being directed at them as political issues, rather than structural issues.

=> ↺ Sanitation Salvage, Troubled Garbage Hauler, Surrenders Operating License

• Sanitation Salvage, the embattled private trash hauler recently suspended from operations by New York City regulators, has decided to surrender its operating license.

• In a letter sent to city regulators Tuesday, lawyers for Sanitation Salvage said the company would cease operations “forthwith.”

• Officials at the Business Integrity Commission, or BIC, the city agency charged with overseeing the private trash industry, did not have an immediate public response. The BIC this year declared the company, one of the largest in the city, a threat to the public after two fatal crashes and a rash of safety violations documented by the agency’s investigators. The company returned to operations in October, but it remained under investigation and was required to agree to the installation of a monitor to oversee its daily operations.

Science

=> ↺ We Interrupt All The Hating On Technology To Remind Everyone We Just Landed On Mars

• It was hardly more than 100 years ago that human beings figured out powered flight. Barely 80 since flight became jet-powered, 70 since it broke the sound barrier, and 60 since we mastered jet flight sufficiently for ordinary commercial use. It was also not even 60 years ago that we figured out how to send human beings into space, and not even 50 since we put them on the moon. These time periods hardly span geological epochs; they can be measured by a lifetime.

• For those whose consciousness developed after these tectonic shifts in the development of human civilization, it can be easy to forget that mankind spent vastly more of its existence not being remotely able to succeed at any of these things than being able to do them all. It can be easy to lose sight of what a triumph each leap is when today they all seem so ordinary. We take it for granted that we can board a metal tube and just a few hours later end up a continent away. We become glib about putting people in space when we have them sitting up there 24/7. And the moon, that celestial body that from the dawn of man has been the object of every dream, has long faded into the rearview mirror. Been there, done that, we think, as the knowledge that it is within our grasp slowly extinguishes the wonder that used to fuel our drive to seek the impossible.

• Fortunately space is full of other frontiers to tantalize us. And Mars is one of them. Orbiting our solar system between 35 and 250 million miles away from Earth (depending on our respective orbital positions), barely visible to the naked eye, and full of even more mystery than our much more proximate moon (which is less than 240,000 miles away), it passes through the heavens flashing its enticing red glow like a bullfighter to his charges. And so, like moth to flame, we go.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ U.S. Panel Says China Is Not Doing Enough to Stem Tide of Fentanyl

• Fentanyl exporters have skirted Chinese laws by shifting to analogues, or molecules that have similar effects on the body, but do not fall under bans the country has imposed on fentanyl itself. China has been too slow to add new categories of analogues to the list of prohibited substances, according to the U.S. report.

=> ↺ Pharma companies are changing tack following major patent cases

• Recent high profile pharmaceutical patent disputes in the UK are forcing companies to go back and look at their business plans, according to HGF partner Rachel Fetches. Speaking at the Life Science IP conference in London this week, Fetches sad that both big pharma companies and manufacturers of generic drugs are going back and looking at their business plans as a result of high profile pharma patent cases in the UK Supreme Court.

• The most recent of which, the Pregabalin second medical use, saw the court dismiss an appeal from Warner-Lambert after Mylan and Actavis successfully revoked its patent.

=> ↺ UCB has reduced its patent portfolio to focus on a patient-centric approach

• Scientific research company UCB has reduced its patent portfolio by 25 percent to “focus on core innovation” and its “patient-centric approach”. According to UCB associate patent counsel, Manisha Desai and director of intellectual property policy, Aaron Smethurst, UCB opted to reduce its portfolio by one quarter in order to refocus on these goals.

• Speaking at the Life Science IP event in London this week, both Desai and Smethurst said this was conducted across the board, even on patents that relate to a product that is currently on the market.

=> ↺ Why are Certain NGOs Trying to Condemn Rural Residents to an Even Longer Pesticide Fate?

• When I first started the UK Pesticides Campaign 17 years ago in 2001 I did so largely because I had discovered that there was no specific representation in the UK for rural residents and communities exposed tothe vast cocktails of poisons sprayed on crops.

• As a resident myself directly affected from pesticide spraying in my locality I had started to attend various conferences and meetings on pesticides and whilst NGOs and environmental groups would make the odd comment here and there about operators health, environmental impacts, or pesticide residues in food, there was no mention of the risks and adverse health impacts for rural residents and communities across the UK.

Security

=> ↺ Mirai Bot Targets Linux Servers Through Hadoop Vulnerability

• Mirai Bot, best-known for exploiting IoT Devices has recently been attacking Linux Servers through the Hadoop YARN Vulnerability. Reportedly, many Linux servers are under threat of attack.

• Hackers have been trying to hack Linux servers using around 225 binaries through which the hackers are making numerous attempts against the Hadoop YARN (Yet Another Resource Negotiator). Besides DDoS Attacks on the Linux servers, the Mirai Bot has also leveraged certain Monero mining software.

=> ↺ Unbound open sources security protocol for blockchain and crypto asset wallet developers

• Unbound Tech announced today it has made available its bank-grade security solution via open source. The company’s newly released blockchain-crypto-mpc library is now available for free on GitHub. It’s an open source library for blockchain and crypto assets that protects cryptographic keys using the company’s MPC-based technology used by the Fortune 500.

=> ↺ Reproducible Builds: Weekly report #187

=> ↺ Security updates for Tuesday

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Our Man in Riyadh

• What does President Trump’s recent nomination of retired Army General John Abizaid to become the next U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia signify? Next to nothing — and arguably quite a lot.

• Abizaid’s proposed appointment is both a non-event and an opportunity not to be wasted. It means next to nothing in this sense: while once upon a time, American diplomats abroad wielded real clout — Benjamin Franklin and John Quincy Adams offer prominent examples — that time is long past. Should he receive Senate confirmation, Ambassador Abizaid will not actually shape U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia. At most, he will convey policy, while keeping officials back in Washington apprised regarding conditions in the Kingdom. “Conditions” in this context will mean the opinions, attitudes, whims, and mood of one particular individual: Mohammed bin Salman. MBS, as he is known, is the Saudi crown prince and the Kingdom’s de facto absolute ruler. By no means incidentally, he is also that country’s assassin-in-chief as well as the perpetrator of atrocities in a vicious war that he launched in neighboring Yemen in 2015.

=> ↺ Border Patrol Officer Who Shot Unarmed Teenager on Mexican Soil Is Acquitted of Manslaughter Charges

• As Democrats hoping to sit at the helm of their party in the House in the next congressional term vie for support ahead of a January vote on the House floor, dozens of progressive groups released a letter Tuesday telling candidates that their leadership must include a firm stance against the fossil fuel industry, including a rejection of all donations from oil and gas companies.

• Forty-seven national organizations including 350.org, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace USA wrote that with the scientific community making it abundantly clear that carbon emissions must be immediately curbed in order to keep the planet from warming more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, Democrats must fully extricate themselves from fossil fuel interests.

=> ↺ International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases

• The elimination of poverty could be at hand for the first time in the history of humanity. World hunger could easily be abolished with only a small diversion from military budgets. Yet, military spending is expanding, and with it global poverty.

• On November 16-18, some 300 peace activists representing over 35 countries gathered in Dublin, Ireland for the first International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases to address this tragic paradox of the technical ability to serve humanity and the political proclivity to do the opposite. Roger Cole of the Irish peace organization PANA identified the twin threats to humankind of global warming and global war, both driven by accelerating militarization.

• Ajamu Baraka of the US-based Black Alliance for Peace highlighted the reactionary role of the US and its allies, which have by far the largest military expenditures in the world. The material basis for the absence of peace and the accelerating proliferation of military bases, in his words, is US imperialism.

=> ↺ The Dark Side of the New Deal: FDR and the Japanese-Americans

• Not long ago, I had lunch with Arn Kawano, a friend and Marxmail subscriber whose parents had been interred during WWII for no other reason than being Japanese-Americans living in California. I was anxious to discuss a film with him that I had reviewed recently titled “Resistance at Tule Lake”, which described how Japanese-Americans stood up for their rights as citizens against FDR’s fascist-like Executive Order 9066 that gave the green light to the camps.

• Arn, who has a law degree, told me that despite liberal obsessions with constitutional rights, there is very little to protect such citizens when a government acts in the name of a national emergency. If anything, FDR’s willingness to shred the constitution should alert those invoking the New Deal as some kind of golden era for democracy and human rights to look more closely and objectively at American history. To give you an idea of the inability of American liberals to comprehend the depravity of FDR’s internment camps, Herbert Wechsler, an attorney who was part of the Nuremberg prosecution team, was also the government’s lawyer in a case defending the legality of Executive Order 9066. Later on, when Wechsler was teaching at the Columbia University law school, a student named Arn Kawano asked him if he had to do it all over again, would he have defended 9066? When he answered yes, Arn gathered up his books and walked out of the classroom.

• A superficial understanding of the crime against Japanese-Americans might lead to the conclusion that Pearl Harbor was of such a profound blow to national security that internment was necessary. Keep in mind that even the Communist Party accepted the need to support Executive Order 9066 mandating the concentration camps. Through a front group called the Japanese American Committee for Democracy, it opposed Norman Thomas’s call for hearings on 9066 and endorsed army claims that an “evacuation” was necessary in the face of a potential Japanese invasion. As it happens, Japanese-Americans could avoid the camps if they agreed to evacuate California but the logistics of selling their homes and finding a new place to live elsewhere made this impossible.

• In the course of our conversation, Arn recommended a book by Greg Robinson titled “By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans” that makes clear that 9066 was not only decades in the making but an Executive Order that FDR would have rejoiced in signing since his racist views on the Japanese dated back to his earlier years serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy between 1913 and 1919.

=> ↺ ‘Yemen Can’t Wait’: Ahead of War Powers Vote, Urgent Push for Senate to End US Complicity in Saudi Atrocities

• With a vote on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) resolution to end U.S. complicity in the Saudi-led assault on Yemen expected as early as Wednesday, grassroots anti-war organizations are ramping up pressure on Democratic senators who sided with the Republican majority in voting down the same measure earlier this year and demanding that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) act on his words by co-sponsoring the resolution.

• “The Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, with U.S. support, has killed thousands of civilians. Over 85,000 children have died of starvation. Enough is enough,” Sanders, who introduced the bill alongside Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), declared on Tuesday. “The Senate must vote to end U.S. support for this war.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Assange Never Met Manafort. Luke Harding and the Guardian Publish Still More Blatant MI6 Lies

• The right wing Ecuadorean government of President Moreno continues to churn out its production line of fake documents regarding Julian Assange, and channel them straight to MI6 mouthpiece Luke Harding of the Guardian.

• Amazingly, more Ecuadorean Government documents have just been discovered for the Guardian, this time spy agency reports detailing visits of Paul Manafort and unspecified “Russians” to the Embassy. By a wonderful coincidence of timing, this is the day after Mueller announced that Manafort’s plea deal was over.

• The problem with this latest fabrication is that Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these “Russians” are in the visitor logs.

• This is impossible. The visitor logs were not kept by Wikileaks, but by the very strict Ecuadorean security. Nobody was ever admitted without being entered in the logs. The procedure was very thorough. To go in, you had to submit your passport (no other type of document was accepted). A copy of your passport was taken and the passport details entered into the log. Your passport, along with your mobile phone and any other electronic equipment, was retained until you left, along with your bag and coat. I feature in the logs every time I visited.

=> ↺ The Guardian publishes fabricated claims of Paul Manafort visiting Assange

• The Guardian has published claims from unnamed sources that Paul Manafort, former head of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, had “secret talks” with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on three occasions. These claims are completely false and the story has been fabricated.

• The Embassy’s visitor logs – maintained by Ecuador – show no such visits, since they did not occur.

• This is not the first time that the Guardian, and in particular its writer Luke Harding, have fabricated a story about Assange.

=> ↺ Manafort Denies Meeting WikiLeaks’s Assange and Calls Newspaper Story ‘Libelous’

=> ↺ Manafort dismisses Assange meeting claims as ‘totally false’

=> ↺ No decision yet on unsealing possible charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

=> ↺ ‘Secret indictment’ of Assange could be made public if court challenge succeeds

=> ↺ Judge appears reluctant to unseal Assange case

=> ↺ Julian Assange calls for Guardian editor’s decapitation if Manafort story proves false

=> ↺ Manafort denies meeting WikiLeaks’ Assange

=> ↺ US judge delays ruling on ‘interesting’ Julian Assange case

=> ↺ US may have ‘legitimate basis’ to keep mystery Assange case sealed: Judge

=> ↺ Ex-Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort strongly denies secret meeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after bombshell Guardian report

=> ↺ Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort denies meeting WikiLeaks’ Assange

=> ↺ Scholar on Assange’s Case: It Has Been ‘Obeying to Geopolitical Interests’

• Sputnik spoke about Julian Assange’s case to Professor Emeritus Marcello Ferrada de Noli, the founder of the NGO Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, SWEDHR.

=> ↺ Federal Prosecutors Challenge Request To Unseal Assange Charges

• Free-press advocates asked a judge to make charges against Assange public after those charges were accidentally mentioned in a court document.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ If You Hate Traffic, Curb Your Love for Online Shopping

• But if you hate traffic as much as you love online shopping, freeze that finger. Research completed in the past decade suggests the boom in ecommerce plays an outsize role in worsening urban congestion and pollution. McKinsey estimates trucks alone will be responsible for $34 billion a year in American urban congestion costs by 2020, up 20 percent since 2014.

=> ↺ Emmanuel Macron’s Fuel Problem

• Governments and ruling regimes tend to face revolution in the face of harsh hikes in prices. Margaret Thatcher’s rule in Britain was rocked by the poll tax. In France, the once enthusiastically embraced Emmanuel Macron has decided to leave the ground rich with challenges against his administration. The Yellow Vests, the gilet jaunes, have decided to take up the chance protesting with such intensity it has led to death and serious injury.

• The pretext was an old one. An increase in carbon taxes was imposed in 2017 as part of a push to support renewables. “Support for renewable energy,” announced the environment ministry, “will be increasingly financed by a tax on fossil fuel consumption.” In 2018, the amount rose from 30.5 euros to 44.6 euros per ton, rising to 55 next year. Diesel and petrol have been affected, a matter than proves less of a problem for those in city environs, serviced by public transport, than rural areas, where the car remains essential. “Macron has to understand,” camethe familiar sentiment from demonstrator Patrick Perez, “that Paris is not France.”

• Macron is now being accused of being icily out of touch, a self-conscious creature of arrogance who insists on the dignity of his office even as he attempts to dismantle the pride of others. But his current approval rating – with 25 percent, according to Ifop, is strikingly accurate, given the share of the vote he garnered in the first round of the 2017 presidential elections. A mere 24.01 percent favoured him, with Marine Le Pen of the National Front breathing down his neck with 21.3 percent, followed by the Republicans choice of François Fillon with 20.01 percent and the left wing Jean-Luc Melenchon with 19.58 percent.

=> ↺ David Schnare Forced to Disgorge Dark Money From ‘Free Market’ Piggy Bank

• Lawyer David Schnare has made a career of suing and harassing climate scientists, abusing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to demand masses of scientists’ emails and wasting people’s time.

• Much of this work has been executed via a dark money-funded 501(c)(3) “public charity” called the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (EELI), where he was General Counsel among other roles.

• Schnare’s work at EELI was often in conjunction with another shadowy group he founded, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FMELC), which he co-founded in 2011 with long-time associate Chris Horner. These two groups dispute the scientific reality of climate change, and have made a business of targeting climate scientists with invasive and harassing lawsuits.

• FMELC recently imploded in spectacular fashion. Embroiled in multiple lawsuits and mired in infighting, the operation and legality of the “public charity” FMELC have been in heated dispute.

• Recently, Schnare was ordered to disgorge $630,000 from FMELC, whose bank account he is alleged to have used as his own personal bank.

=> ↺ Polish Coal Company Announced as First Sponsor of UN Climate Talks in Katowice

• One of Poland’s leading coal companies has become the first official sponsor of the UN climate talks, which start in the southern city of Katowice next week.

• Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa (JSW), a majority state-owned corporation and one of the largest tar producers in the European Union, has announced the partnership with COP24 in a statement on its website.

• JSW said the partnership would guarantee “the company’s active participation in the event and the possibility of promoting pro-ecological changes in the mining sector”.

• It added that through the partnership, the company will organise panel discussions to showcase the company’s environmental activities and will offer “solutions” that will allow the coal sector to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and use resources such as land and by-products more effectively.

• Although some coal-friendly countries such as the US and Poland have been pushing the idea of “clean coal”, scientists from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have warned that the world needs to take “rapid and unprecedented measures” to move away from fossil fuels and halve its greenhouse gas emission in the next 12 years to avoid catastrophic climate change.

=> ↺ How a Climate Change-Fueled Drought & U.S.-Fed Violence Are Driving Thousands from Central America

• President Trump is urging Mexico to deport the thousands of Central American migrants who are at or approaching the U.S. border in an attempt to seek asylum, days after U.S. border authorities fired tear gas into a crowd of asylum seekers as some tried to push their way through the heavily militarized border near San Diego. Trump tweeted, “Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!” This comes just days before Andrés Manuel López Obrador is sworn in as Mexico’s new president. López Obrador’s incoming government has denied it made any deal with the Trump administration to force asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their U.S. asylum claims are processed. We speak with John Carlos Frey, Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and PBS NewsHour special correspondent. He recently returned from reporting trips in Guatemala, Mexico City and Tijuana, where he was documenting the migrant caravan.

=> ↺ To Fight Climate Emergency, Democrats Told: ‘We Need Leaders With the Backbone to Stand Up to Big Polluters. Full Stop.’

• As Democrats hoping to sit at the helm of their party in the House in the next congressional term vie for support ahead of a January vote on the House floor, dozens of progressive groups released a letter Tuesday telling candidates that their leadership must include a firm stance against the fossil fuel industry, including a rejection of all donations from oil and gas companies.

• Forty-seven national organizations including 350.org, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace USA wrote that with the scientific community making it abundantly clear that carbon emissions must be immediately curbed in order to keep the planet from warming more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, Democrats must fully extricate themselves from fossil fuel interests.

=> ↺ Australian Kids Plan “Big School Walkout for Climate Action”

• The climate rebellion is growing. Over the weekend in London, over 2000 protesters, part of the new Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement, took part in demonstrations, including holding a memorial in the famous Parliament Square to “mark the loss of life our planet is experiencing”. As part of the ceremony, activists carried a coffin with “our future” written on it.

• In a statement, Extinction Rebellion, who have repeatedly criticised the UK Government for its inaction on climate change, said: “We Rebel because we love this world. It breaks our hearts to see it ravaged, to watch so many people and animals all over this world already dying, to know that this will soon happen to our children without urgent changes.”

• The group added: “There is no way forward without giving credence to our grief. We are serious, this is an emergency, this is our home we are watching collapse.”

• But the UK Government is not the only one under fire. Any regular reader of this blog will know we repeatedly criticise the Trump administration for its lack of urgency on climate change, including most recently here, in a blog entitled Black Friday; Black Planet.

• Just hours after this blog was written, the US Government released its US National Climate change assessment, a 1,656 page work by 300 scientists and 13 federal agencies, which is the most comprehensive study to date outlining the consequences of climate change to the US.

=> ↺ Rebuffing Prime Minister’s Order to Stay in Class, Australian Students Forge Ahead With #ClimateStrike Walkouts

• As the United Nations issued its latest report detailing the climate emergency facing humanity—finding that world governments must triple their efforts to reduce carbon emissions in order to stop the dangerous warming of the globe—schoolchildren in Australia demonstrated that young people are largely taking the lead in fighting the climate crisis while many of their elected officials debate scientific conclusions and argue in favor of protecting corporate polluters’ profits.

• Thousands of students in Australia applauded the Senate on Tuesday as it voted in favor of supporting a national “School Strike 4 Climate Action,” comprised of several walkouts across the country planned for this week.

Finance

=> ↺ Trump Suggests 10% Tariffs May Be Placed on iPhones, Laptops

• Apple Inc., which has lost a fifth of its value in a tech market rout since October, is poised for another setback after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that 10 percent tariffs could be placed on mobile phones, like the iPhone, and laptops made in China.

=> ↺ Google Drops $1 Billion on Real Estate Near Its Headquarters

• Alphabet Inc.’s Google has closed a $1 billion deal for a 51.8-acre business park next to its Mountain View, California, headquarters. The purchase adds to a mammoth real estate expansion the company is in undertaking in both California and New York City.

=> ↺ Fixing Campaign Finance Needs to Be at the Center of Democracy Reform

• In the years following the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, fixing the way campaigns are funded was at the center of the discussion about reforming our democracy. But in recent years, as concerns about voter suppression and gerrymandering have rightly grown, accompanied by a cavalcade of ethical sleaze from the Trump administration, the issue has at times taken a backseat.

• In the wake of an election that highlighted the many shortcomings of our democracy across the board, from poor ballot design to the lack of up-to-date voting equipment, we may finally be getting serious about strengthening our system. And campaign finance reform needs to be prominent in the conversation.

• Voting problems in Georgia and Florida, the product of both intentional suppression and incompetence, again took most of the headlines for the 2018 midterms. But according to Open Secrets, this was also the most expensive midterm election in history. Senate and House candidates spent $2.1 billion. On top of that was $1.3 billion in outside spending, much of it on negative ads trashing candidates. When big money buys misleading political ads to sway voters, it doesn’t inspire faith in democracy.

=> ↺ One day a historian will assert that the outcome of Brexit was inevitable all along

• A day or so ago this blog set out that in the current fog of Brexit there were three visible paths: Deal, No Deal, or (even) No Brexit.

• That is still the case, and others – no doubt more sensible – can also see other paths, such as ones which head toward a further referendum or an extension of the Article 50 period.

• Today’s post is about what an odd situation this is, given we are now only a few months away from when the UK is set to leave the EU by automatic operation of law, unless (as I aways say) something exceptional happens.

• We have had the Article 50 notification, we have had negotiations, we have had “sufficient progress” and a joint report, and we now have a draft withdrawal agreement agreed in principle between the UK and EU, and which has been approved at a senior level at the EU. All which is now required is formal acceptance and ratification on both sides.

• This should be the most certain point in the Brexit story so far. All the formalities are in place for an orderly departure.

• And yet: Brexit has never been as uncertain as it seems today.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Jack Ma Confirmed as Chinese Communist Party Member

• Ma, co-founder and chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., is one of 100 people the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee will honor as part of a celebration marking 40 years since the country’s economic reform and opening up. The honorees also include Tencent Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Pony Ma, Baidu Inc. CEO Robin Li, basketball star Yao Ming and volleyball coach Lang Ping.

• The lines between business and politics have become increasingly hazy in China as President Xi Jinping has led a campaign to ensure the Communist Party plays a leading role across all aspects of society. That has at time created tensions when the interests of private business people and the state have conflicted.

=> ↺ The Trump penis Wikipedia war has kicked off again

• None of these attacks would work if the other precautions Wikipedia has pushed out had proved effective. Right now, Trump’s Wikipedia page is under “extended confirmed protection” which severely limits the number of people that can make edits. Only accounts that have been around for more than a month and that have chalked up over 500 edits can rewrite the President’s history, which sounds like a sensible precaution. You have to be really dedicated to Wikipedia winkles to jump through those hoops.

• But apparently the vandals have got around this, hacking dormant accounts of older editors, and even getting trusted editors to smuggle in ham candles unnoticed, Wikipedia admin TheSandDoctor told The Verge. Four accounts have apparently been blocked as a result of the latest dong edits.

=> ↺ Is it Time to Throw US History Textbooks Away?

• Wineburg, who studies the way history is taught in the United States, says that instead of protecting students from the [I]nternet, it’s time to teach them how to differentiate the good information from the bad.

• [...]

• Beyond teaching students how to evaluate and verify what they find online, Wineburg believes history classes should also give students a broad chronological knowledge of history and a fundamental understanding of the nation’s founding principles.

=> ↺ Democratic Party “Leadership” Is Upside Down

• When Democrats take control of the House in early January, they’ll have two kinds of leadership—one from the top of the party’s power pyramid, the other from its base. With formal control, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer can brandish huge carrots and sticks to keep Democratic lawmakers in line. With grassroots support, a growing number of those lawmakers can—and should—strategically step out of line to fight for progressive agendas.

• Pelosi and Hoyer have been running the Democratic machinery in the House of Representatives since 2003, and they’re experts at combining liberal rhetoric with corporate flackery. Pelosi is frequently an obstacle to advancing progressive proposals. Hoyer is significantly worse as he avidly serves such “constituents” as giant banks, Pentagon contractors and other Wall Street titans. The duo has often functioned as top-drawer power tools in the hands of powerful corporate-military interests.

• Pelosi is a longtime wizard at generating and funneling hundreds of millions of election-cycle dollars, and as speaker she’ll wield enormous power over committee assignments. But she must keep Democratic House members minimally satisfied—and along the way that should mean yielding more power to the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Buoyed by wins in the midterm elections, the caucus includes two-fifths of all Democrats in the House.

=> ↺ Noam Chomsky: How the US “Politically Vulgarizes” Genocide and War Crimes

• Noam Chomsky has revolutionized multiple fields of study, from psychology to linguistics to political science. With books such as Manufacturing Consent (with Edward S. Herman), The Fateful Triangle, Hegemony or Survival, and others, he has enlightened people all over the world. For these reasons and more, Chomsky is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of our time.

• Shortly after the 2016 US elections, Truthout had the privilege of being able to sit down with Professor Chomsky in his office for a chat on an array of different topics, from ethnic conflicts to anarchism.

=> ↺ What Bernie needs to win the presidency

• It’s time to talk about the very real possibility of President Bernie Sanders.

• I know, I know: The midterm elections are just barely over. And the 2020 presidential election is more than 700 days away. But the sad reality of the U.S. electoral system is that positioning over the 2020 election has already begun. And it seems likely that Sanders will run again, despite his advanced age, and that he will be by far the favored candidate for the American left — by simple process of elimination if nothing else.

• Donald Trump is a weak, unpopular president whose party got wiped out in the midterms despite unemployment being at a 50-year low. Sanders consistently tops Trump’s approval numbers by 20 to 30 points. He could legitimately beat Trump in a general election, as could plenty of other would-be Democratic nominees.

=> ↺ The One Mistake Democrats Cannot Afford to Repeat

• When Democrats take control of the House in early January, they’ll have two kinds of leadership—one from the top of the party’s power pyramid, the other from its base. With formal control, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer can brandish huge carrots and sticks to keep Democratic lawmakers in line. With grassroots support, a growing number of those lawmakers can—and should—strategically step out of line to fight for progressive agendas.

• Pelosi and Hoyer have been running the Democratic machinery in the House of Representatives since 2003, and they’re experts at combining liberal rhetoric with corporate flackery. Pelosi is frequently an obstacle to advancing progressive proposals. Hoyer is significantly worse as he avidly serves such “constituents” as giant banks, Pentagon contractors and other Wall Street titans. The duo has often functioned as top-drawer power tools in the hands of powerful corporate-military interests.

• Pelosi is a longtime wizard at generating and funneling hundreds of millions of election-cycle dollars, and as speaker she’ll wield enormous power over committee assignments. But she must keep Democratic House members minimally satisfied—and along the way that should mean yielding more power to the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Buoyed by wins in the midterm elections, the caucus includes two-fifths of all Democrats in the House.

• That’s where the other kind of leadership comes in—if a hefty number of self-identified progressives in Congress go to the mat to vigorously represent progressive constituencies. For that to happen, a dubious aspect of the Progressive Caucus past must not repeat itself.

=> ↺ Trump’s fascist efforts to demolish democracy

• Fascist politics is once again on the rise in the United States, Europe and Latin America.

• As an echo from the past, its principles and attitudes are re-emerging in a populist rhetoric that embraces extreme forms of nationalism, the cult of the leader, systemic racism, a culture of fear, a hatred of dissent and an utter disdain for the truth.

• Driven by a hatred of “the other” and infused with narratives of decline and victimization, fascist politics trade in an incendiary rhetoric of fear, demonization and violence.

• It creates divisions by targeting groups it defines as criminal, less than human, and then expands its hate-mongering to other groups as part of an attempt to deepen and expand a culture of terror, insecurity and disposablilty.

• It attempts to build power through aggressive attacks on the media, critics and the judiciary.

=> ↺ Anti-Semitism Rises in Europe, as Memories of the Holocaust Decline: CNN Report

• The killing of eleven Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27 was a chilling reminder for American Jews that anti-Semitism is not a relic of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, but a real, even fatal aspect of American life that was merely hidden from view. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 57 percent increase in American anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, compared to 2016. And Pittsburgh wasn’t the only anti-Semitic incident the week of the Pittsburgh attack, as a bomb was hand-delivered to billionaire philanthropist George Soros (a frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories) that Monday. What’s more, as a new report from CNN reveals, anti-Semitism is also on the rise in Europe.

• CNN’s poll of 7,092 people from seven countries showed that almost a quarter of respondents believe that “Jews have too much influence in business and finance.” And “Nearly one in four said Jews have too much influence in conflict and wars across the world.”

• “One in five,” CNN continued, believe “[Jews] have too much influence in the media and the same number believe they have too much influence in politics.”

• At the same time that anti-Semitic beliefs have risen, awareness of the Holocaust has decreased. According to CNN, “A third of Europeans in the poll said they knew just a little or nothing at all about the Holocaust, the mass murder of some six million Jews in lands controlled by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s.”

=> ↺ An American Horror Story

• Be besting herself, the incomparable Melania has for a second year aptly chosen a Dystopian Nightmare Theme for her Christmas decorations, engulfing the White House in gaudy blood-red fake trees which, an obliging public has variously speculated, represent The Handmaid’s Tale, The Shining, a car wash, a murder forest, a Tim Burton/ David Lynch movie gone terribly wrong, used tampons, Elmo pelts, hot Cheetos, furry KKK hats, the empty void where her soul should be, or the combined blood of her enemies, gun violence and sexual assault victims, disappeared asylum-seekers, starving murdered children in Yemen, trans victims of violence, and broken migrant kids in cages. Despite her “There Will Be Blood” hallway and the lurid excess surrounding it – 20,000 feet of lights, 14,000 ornaments, 12,000 bows, Be Best! balls and wreaths of sharpened Be Best! pencils – there is as yet no baby in a manger. Maybe, some ruminated, her husband’s regime has already tear-gassed them all?

• The display was revealed in a video and statement about the year’s theme of “American Treasures.” It includes a Gold Star Family Tree (they love the military unless it’s raining), celebrations of children (unless they’re brown), a model White House (“Look it’s my prison!”), trees that “sparkle in hues of blues and golds amongst the vermeil for all to see” and 29 trees boasting 14,000 red ornaments, “a symbol of valor and bravery.” Gushing it was all “beautiful,” her fans blessed “you and your wonderful husband (for) returning us to our Judeo-Christian roots” with their “Faith Bases decisions.” Many disagreed, focusing on the tacky gilded mall look, blood-red corridor, “War of the Worlds” mood and “Be Best tear gas grenades” as proof everything these people touch dies: “Flotus looks like an evil witch living alone in a castle because the good people realized that she is wicked & have abandoned her.” In the video, Melania floats from tawdry to garish mess in gloves and coat, like she just dropped in, celebrating “The People’s House.” Yes. Which means we can evict her. Till then, Merry Trashy Christmas!

=> ↺ ‘In Front of Your Nose’—A Sequel to Orwell in the Trump Era

• In 1946, George Orwell wrote a piece about the unfortunate human habit of failing or refusing to see what plainly lay before one’s face. Whether through conscious mendacity, or intellectual laziness, or the universal tendency to euphemism, or because facing the truth would be too personally unsettling, people espouse beliefs blatantly at odds with the evidence. Orwell titled his essay “In Front of Your Nose.”

• Several of the examples he cited there and in much of his postwar writing arose from the fact that what was obvious to any unbiased observer— that Britain’s global status had diminished and political decision-making must take that into account—was intolerable; therefore it had to be ignored, contradicted, or euphemized.

• Seven decades on, this attitude is still endemic to Britain: witness Monty Pythonesque upper-class twits like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg (the UK appears to have an inexhaustible supply of these walking caricatures) breezily opining that Brexit will teach all those bloody foreigners on the wrong side of the Channel.

=> ↺ The President Isn’t Orange. He’s Yellow.

• But as we cascade toward the latter half of his first and, God hope it, only term, Donald Trump’s craven fearfulness is worth a reminder simply because of its vast continuing implications for our country and the world.

• Of course, there’s the surface narcissistic indifference and insensitivity to others, in particular his disregard for members of the military and veterans, despite his many tweeted proclamations of support and gratitude.

• This disrespect was made manifest in early November during the 100th anniversary celebrations of the armistice that ended World War I. His well-known fear of wet head kept him indoors, a no show both on one of the days he was in France and later at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Panic at the prospect of a bad hair day apparently took precedence over Veterans’ Day.

=> ↺ ‘This Is Sketchy’: Critics Warn Against Blind Acceptance of Explosive Guardian Report About Secret Manafort-Assange Meetings

• After the Guardian sent the punditry into a frenzy on Tuesday by publishing a bombshell report alleging that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly met with WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London during the 2016 presidential race, journalists and critics were quick to warn against blindly accepting the claims made in the piece due to the story’s scant material evidence, anonymous sources, and explosive political implications.

• As independent national security journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote on Twitter, “skepticism” about the Guardian’s reporting—which was quickly picked up by corporate outlets—”couldn’t be more broad-based” as it brought together journalists and legal experts from an array of political persuasions and opposing views.

=> ↺ Voter Suppression Has Gone Digital

• This month’s elections were fought online to an unprecedented degree, with an estimated $900 million in digital ad spending — more than two and a half times the 2014 midterms. Not all of this spending was intended to persuade voters to favor one side or the other, however. Some online activity tried to keep people from voting altogether. My research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found hundreds of messages on Facebook and Twitter aimed at voter suppression — designed to discourage or prevent people from voting.

• Online voter suppression in 2018 showed similarities to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. We found three categories of messages: deception about how or when to vote, calls to boycott the election, and attempts to threaten or intimidate potential voters.

• Voter suppression messages appeared online despite the platforms’ efforts to stop them. In October, Facebook broadened its election integrity policies to combat voter suppression and committed to taking down such content. Just a few days prior to Election Day, Reuters reported that Twitter also purged more than 10,000 automated accounts that discouraged voting. Clearly, the problem has not yet been solved.

=> ↺ Without New Leadership, the New House Majority Will Fail (Again)

• As the nascent House Democratic majority of the 116th United States Congress prepares for its role as Last Bulwark Against Trumpian Annihilation, the question of who should be the next speaker of the House has been looming large. Nancy Pelosi, who has served in Congress for 31 years and held the post from 2006 until the 63-seat wipeout in 2010, has been the clear front-runner since the election.

• Pelosi throws more weight than any other House Democrat. She is a fundraising powerhouse who has been in the building longer than the water fountain in the Rotunda. Her political skills are legendary; thanks to her leadership, not one single House Democrat voted in favor of the Trump tax cuts or the Affordable Care Act replacement bills. In a nation where large swaths of the electorate have been gulled into believing “tax cuts” are magic words and “Obamacare” is an epithet, wrangling all those “no” votes was the best trick anyone has seen since “Lazarus, come forth.”

• Pelosi’s run for the speakership is supported by new progressive superstars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose leadership on the matter has staved off a left-bent insurrection from new members seeking to shake things up. The only real resistance to Pelosi’s nomination from congressional Democrats has come from conservative members of the party, 16 of whom signed a seemingly doomed letter of opposition.

=> ↺ The Koch Brothers’ Freedom Partners Group Spends $115.2 Million in 2017

• The billionaire Koch brothers’ primary fundraising vehicle called the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, raised $127.3 million and spent over $115 million in 2017 according to an IRS 990 disclosure obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy. The amount raised is down $20 million from 2016.

• Freedom Partners, officially organized as a 501 (c)(6) trade association for the purpose of “promoting economic freedom,” funnels money from the Koch Network of billionaire donors to a growing number of political advocacy organizations controlled by Koch operatives.

• These operatives make a good living. Freedom Partners reports $18.7 million in compensation, salaries and wages presumably for the groups in the network, a whopping 15 percent of the total raised.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ German Hate Speech Legislation Receives Mixed Review At German Internet Governance Forum

• Germany’s controversial hate speech legislation is working well, a representative of the German Ministry of Justice said during a panel on 27 November at the German national Internet Governance Forum in Berlin.

• Big social media providers have adapted the reporting mechanisms and hired considerable staff to deal with the complaints. Former Minister of Consumer Protection Food and Agriculture and Green Party Member Renate Kuenast, herself a victim of hate speech, promoted advancing the legislation to include games and said she favours a bigger package.

• “Games were part of the original draft and should not have been taken out,” she argued, pointing to illegal speech in the chats running alongside the games.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Israeli Exploit Developer Caught Negotiating Spyware Sales With Saudi Government

• More ugly news has surfaced about Israeli malware developer NSO Group. Over the past year, investigations have uncovered sales of phone-targeting spyware to countries known mostly for their human rights violations. Even less questionable governments have purchased NSO’s software ostensibly for law enforcement purposes only to use it to target activists, journalists, and government critics.

• There’s no telling how US agencies will deploy this malware, but there’s no question federal entities like the DEA think NSO spyware would be a useful addition to their investigative tool kits. The US government doesn’t appear to be worried about getting in bed with tech companies willing to sell software to blacklisted countries, so NSO Group is still a viable option.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ ‘This Is a War’: Prisons Want Cell Phone Jammers to Stop Inmates from Communicating With the Outside World

• Prisons want jamming technology to stop criminal activity, but critics warn there would be dire consequences if jamming was allowed to propagate.

=> ↺ The shifting power at the heart of the UK’s ‘spy’ row

=> ↺ School Security Software Decides Innocent Parent Is Actually A Registered Sex Offender

• Raptor says its system is reliable, stating it only returned one false positive in that county last year. (And now the number has doubled!) That’s heartening, but that number will only increase as system deployment expands. Raptor’s self-assessment may be accurate, but statements about the certainty of its search results are hardly useful.

• The company’s sales pitch likely includes its low false positive rate, which, in turn, leads school personnel to believe the system rather than the person standing in front of them — one who bears no resemblance (physical or otherwise) to the registry search results. Mitchell still isn’t allowed into the building without a security escort and is hoping that presenting school admins with his spotless criminal background check will finally jostle their apparently unshakeable belief in Raptor’s search results.

• This failure is also an indictment of the security-over-sanity thinking. The Sentinel asked government officials if there were any incidents in which sex offenders had gained access to schools, thus necessitating this $100,000+ investment in Raptor’s security system. No results were returned.

=> ↺ Tear Gas at the Border: Trump and the Endgame of Capitalism

• Toddlers scrambled alongside their parents on Sunday to escape sprawling clouds of tear gas. A mother attempting to scale a border fence fell and was impaled by a piece of rebar in front of her children. Thousands of desperate people, fleeing nightmares of brutality the US helped to cultivate, are met with a wall of militarism.

• As many have stated, this is not new. The United States has committed unspeakable acts against women and children within its own borders, and far beyond, just as European countries have, in many instances, horribly abused migrants amid their own refugee crisis. And yet, here we are, living in our own unique moment of horror that must be reckoned with in its own right, regardless of what’s come and gone before.

• Because this is the way the world ends, under neoliberalism or fascism. The reigning politics that preceded Trump’s xenophobic white nationalism — free market worship, paired with window-dressing reforms — and the catastrophes unfolding before us today offer different stories with the same conclusion.

=> ↺ A Defendant Shows Up in Immigration Court by Himself. He’s 6.

• It was shortly before Thanksgiving in an immigration court in San Antonio, and the third defendant to come before Judge Anibal Martinez walked into the courtroom without an attorney, wearing a gray winter hat that was stitched with a pair of blue googly eyes and a floppy red yarn mohawk.

• When the bailiff asked his name, he piped up proudly: Wilder Hilario Maldonado Cabrera.

• “How old is Wilder?” the immigration judge asked.

• An attorney, who was there with other clients, came forward and volunteered to stand in for Wilder. She turned to the boy and in Spanish asked his age.

• “Seis años,” he said, 6, his legs dangling from a chair at the defendant’s table.

• Wilder, a smiley, pudgy Salvadoran boy, missing his two front teeth, was the youngest defendant on the juvenile docket that day. But that wasn’t all that made him special. He was one of the last children left in government custody who had been affected by the administration’s widely criticized zero-tolerance policy, and who were still awaiting reunification with parents detained in the United States.

• The policy, which was announced with great fanfare in April and was scuttled two months later in the face of bipartisan opposition, required immigration authorities to file criminal charges against anyone caught crossing the border illegally and separate them from the children they brought with them.

=> ↺ Risk Of Death From ‘Extremely Poor’ Illinois Prison Medical Care Has Worsened

• Medical care in Illinois prisons remains “extremely poor” and conditions leading to preventable deaths have worsened since a court-appointed team of experts first assessed the state’s prison health program.

• Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and the Uptown People’s Law Center challenged the systemic problems with health care in state facilities in 2013.

• The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered an expert to evaluate the services, and that report was released in 2015.

• Following the report, the court certified the complaint as a class action lawsuit, allowing the attorneys to represent the interests of all prisoners failed or harmed by negligence in the Illinois Department of Corrections’ (IDOC) health program.

• The federal court requested a second report by a medical investigation team. That report was released on November 14, and it concluded examples of “preventable morbidity and mortality” seemed worse than what was initially uncovered by the first evaluation.

• “The vendor, Wexford, fails to hire properly credentialed and privileged physicians,” the report states. “This appears to be a major factor in preventable morbidity and mortality and significantly increases risk of harm to patients within the IDOC. This results from ineffective governance.”

=> ↺ Congress Urged to Freeze Border Patrol Funding Until Trump Ends “Illegal” Treatment of Asylum Seekers at US-Mexico Border

• The human rights group Amnesty International is calling on Congress to freeze funding of the U.S. Border Patrol until the Trump administration ends its illegal treatment of refugees attempting to apply for asylum status at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• The demand comes as U.S. President Donald Trump denied that his Border Patrol used tear gas against asylum-seeking children in Mexico despite an abundance of photo and video evidence showing they did precisely that. Late Monday, Mexico’s foreign ministry formally called on the U.S. conduct an “exhaustive investigation” into the federal agents’ behavior as they enforced the White House’s anti-immigrant border policy.

=> ↺ Families Are Still Being Separated at the Border, Months After “Zero Tolerance” Was Reversed

• The Trump administration has quietly resumed separating immigrant families at the border, in some cases using vague or unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing or minor violations against the parents, including charges of illegally re-entering the country, as justification.

• Over the last three months, lawyers at Catholic Charities, which provides legal services to immigrant children in government custody in New York, have discovered at least 16 new separation cases. They say they have come across such instances by chance and via their own sleuthing after children were put into temporary foster care and shelters with little or no indication that they arrived at the border with their parents.

• ProPublica stumbled upon one more case late last month after receiving a call from a distraught Salvadoran father who had been detained in South Texas, and whose 4-year-old son, Brayan, had literally been yanked from his grasp by a Customs and Border Protection agent after they crossed the border and asked for asylum. Julio, the father, asked to be identified only by his first name because he was fleeing gang violence and worried about the safety of relatives back home.

• “I failed him,” said Julio, 27, sobbing uncontrollably. “Everything I had done to be a good father was destroyed in an instant.”

=> ↺ Mississippi Memories: “You’re Not Black Are You?”

• In Gulfport, Mississippi, 1998, you could depend on the gracious hospitality from whites and blacks alike, a haircut for just $3 — and perodic proof of an uncanny racism.

• It’s hard to relate how bigotry on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was any different from racial indifference you might experience in say, Philadelphia or New York City.

• But during my two and half years living on the coast, covering a burgeoning casino industry for the local daily newspaper, driving a cab and fronting the Rockin’ Daddy Blues Band, I experienced that unmistakable undercurrent of engrained bigotry.

• Listening to the supremacist rhetoric from Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi) who rallied in Biloxi/Gulfport Monday for today’s Mississippi Senate runoff with Democratic challenger Mike Espy, reminded me of such things.

• As an east coast white, yankee boy lover and player of the blues, I was pretty much naive about the south’s present day racial tensions. Hadn’t the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gone a long way towards repairing the divide?

• My first night at the newspaper in Biloxi, making calls to find a place to stay, my future landlady asked me over the phone, point blank: “You’re not black are you?”

• I remember being taken aback. Up north they wouldn’t put it so bluntly, and yet so smoothly.

=> ↺ Elkhart, Indiana, Police Chief Suspended for 30 Days Following Release of Beating Video

• For the last two weeks, the police chief in Elkhart, Indiana, has been a no-show at various forums where he might have been expected to appear, from civilian oversight board hearings to town hall meetings focusing on the city’s Police Department.

• On Tuesday, Mayor Tim Neese confirmed what others had been left to wonder: He had suspended the police chief, Ed Windbigler, placing him on a 30-day unpaid leave. The suspension started Nov. 14, but Neese had made no public announcement. A South Bend Tribune reporter had left repeated messages at City Hall on Monday, asking about the police chief’s status.

• [...]

• At a Nov. 14 town hall meeting, Neese said he disciplined Windbigler for his handling of the officers who punched the handcuffed man. But he did not elaborate or specify what the discipline was.

• Jim Rieckhoff, chair of Elkhart’s Police Merit Commission, was unaware as recently as Monday that Windbigler had been suspended. Rieckhoff told a reporter that he did wonder about the absence of the chief at a meeting on Monday, at which the chief’s top assistant appeared in Windbigler’s stead.

• Neese has said in “hindsight” that Windbigler should have issued more severe discipline than reprimands to officers Cory Newland and Joshua Titus, who were videotaped punching the handcuffed man Jan. 12 in the police station’s detention area. The mayor’s son, Sgt. Drew Neese, was in the room while the officers punched the man. He walked over and spoke into his radio as the beating ended. Newland, Titus and Drew Neese have not responded to requests for comment.

=> ↺ Matthew Hedges: British academic pardoned by UAE – BBC News

• A British academic who was jailed for spying in the United Arab Emirates has been freed after a pardon.

=> ↺ Universities must learn from the Matthew Hedges case

• The case of Matthew Hedges should prompt all universities to reflect on the role of ethics committees, and PhD supervisors, in the process leading to approval of potentially dangerous overseas PhD research (UAE frees British academic but insists Hedges was a spy, 27 November). As a recent member of a University of York ethics committee which dealt with political research, I frequently encountered such applications from PhD candidates. These requests were often accompanied by reassurances to the effect that – like Matthew Hedges, who spent his childhood in UAE, where his father still lives – the researcher had roots, or close connections, in the country concerned, and that these would be sufficient to protect her/him from dangers which could otherwise affect less well-connected people.

=> ↺ Mississippi GOP Sen. Hyde-Smith Wins Racially Charged Runoff

• Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith won a divisive Mississippi runoff Tuesday, surviving a video-recorded remark decried as racist and defeating a former federal official who hoped to become the state’s first African-American senator since Reconstruction.

• The runoff was rocked by the video, in which Hyde-Smith said of a supporter, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” A separate video showed her talking about “liberal folks” and making it “just a little more difficult” for them to vote.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Consumer Groups Say FCC Weakening Oversight Of Cell Carriers Under Pretense Of Battling Text Message Spam

• Consumer groups say that the Ajit Pai FCC is once again being misleading as he continues his ongoing quest to eliminate most meaningful oversight of cell carriers and broadband providers.

• Last week, the FCC announced several major initiatives the agency claimed were intended to help fight text message spam. One of them involves the creation of a reassigned number database, which would help marketers market more efficiently by ensuring that a target of marketing calls and text messages are receiving the messages they either opted in to, or opted out of. But another effort, only vaguely hinted at in the announcement, would further weaken the FCC’s consumer protection authority over wireless cell providers, already greatly eroded after the assault on net neutrality.

• So some background: a little more than a decade ago, Verizon decided to ban a pro-choice group named NARAL Pro-Choice America from sending text messages to Verizon Wireless customers that had opted in to receiving them. Verizon justified the ban by declaring the text messages “controversial or unsavory”; a curious move for an industry that often cuddles up to marketing spammers and crammers when it’s profitable. Ever since then consumer groups, worried that cellular carriers would use their power as gatekeepers to stifle certain voices, have been urging the FCC to declare text messages a “telecommunications service,” making it illegal for carriers to ban such select SMS services.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Comparative study on the stay of patent proceedings in Europe

• Malte Köllner, Eric Sergheraert and Mihnea Hanganu compare the frequency of stays in patent infringement proceedings in Germany with the frequency of stays in other European countries, and conclude the German practice of staying proceedings gives serious cause for concern

Trademarks

=> ↺ Lawyers For Kobe Bryant Tout His Uselessness In Potential Trademark Opposition Fight

• Kobe Bryant made his name, and his Black Mamba nickname, playing basketball. Like many athletes, however, he expanded his business reach off the court and into branding. Utilizing the Black Mamba nickname, he entered into all sorts of licensing arrangements, including with Nike, which makes athletic apparel. As far as I can tell, he has no licensing arrangements for health supplements.

• And, yet, he has been embroiled in a years-long fight with Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, makers of the Black Mamba HYPERRUSH line of diet pills. Aside from the divergent marketplaces, the entire dispute is something of a mess. Hi-Tech applied for its trademark a year before Bryant applied for his own Black Mamba mark, after which Bryant opposed Hi-Tech’s application on grounds of customer confusion. Hi-Tech has been battling this out, claiming that Bryant has information that would be helpful to its side of the argument. To that end, they want to depose Bryant, who has thus far refused to hand over documents. Now a motion to compel has been filed, but Bryant’s lawyers’ strategy for refusing to have him be deposed is essentially to highlight just how useless he would be in a deposition.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Civil Society Offers Range Of Advice To WIPO Negotiators On Broadcast Treaty

• Civil society doesn’t see things from behind a window, but takes the lead in international policy negotiations to discuss issues that affect everyday life. At this week’s World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee meeting, some of the observers took the floor to let delegates know their opinion on the crucial matter of a treaty on broadcasting under negotiation.

• [...]

• The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions highlighted the need for exceptions and limitations to the signal as they are needed on the use of the transmitted work and also pointed out that libraries have an important role of preserving and giving access (on the premises, for research purposes) to broadcast material: “Broadcasting organisations do not necessarily preserve and archive all their content, and researchers that go there might be referred to a library. Some university libraries also make copies of broadcast content for it to illustrate teaching at the university. Without E&Ls, all this will not be possible.”

• The Society of American Archivists stated: “Regardless of whatever measures are put into place to provide the signal protection that broadcasters need, it is essential that they do not add any further layers on the copyright protection that already exists in the content or extend that protection for terms beyond the current business needs of broadcasters.”

• Health and Environment Program in Cameroon made the case that “Our members are very interested in the work of the SCCR. To get a verified information is for them at the base of a good education; it can also influence their health, for example information about obsolete drugs. Verified information is especially important concerning radio-diffused information. Another important topic is free access.”

=> ↺ 12 Best Free Music Websites To Download Songs Legally In 2018

• he internet offers a lot of things and among them is free music. You can find plenty of websites that offer free downloadable music; however, not all of them are legal. So if you are looking for songs that can be availed safely and free of cost, we have handpicked the best music websites for you.

=> ↺ Court Rules MusicMonster Stream-Ripping Service Illegal

• A music service that scans Internet radio streams for specific music tracks, records them, and makes them available for download in MP3 format, has lost its case in a German court. The case, brought by Sony Music against MusicMonster.fm, ended with a declaration that the service cannot rely on the private copying exception so is both unlicensed and illegal.

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