● 08.04.14

● Links 4/8/2014: Linux Kernel 3.16, Another Steam Users Survey

Posted in News Roundup at 8:00 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• While market predictions for PCs have been generally bleak, Chromebooks–portable computers based on Google’s Chrome OS platform–have been doing well in sales terms. That’s especially true in schools, where many districts are purchasing the low cost systems that run cloud applications for students to use.

Server

• Docker, a new container technology, is hotter than hot because it makes it possible to get far more apps running on the same old servers and it also makes it very easy to package and ship programs. Here’s what you need to know about it.

• Work in the technology trenches tends to bubble over like an ignored pot of pasta boiling on the stovetop — but not because it’s being ignored. Rather, we fall victim to the fact that we need to be available at any given moment to deal with emergencies or to clarify technical facts for future planning or to provide an answer to a blocking problem. Folks who do data center and system architecture design and management do not have the luxury of being able to concentrate on a single task. Switching gears quickly and abruptly is part of the game.

Kernel Space

• The final version of Linux kernel 3.16 has been released by Linus Torvalds and the next development cycle for the 3.17 branch has been officially opened.

• There are many theories around why the pather might be doing it. Some say that he is writing a University Thesis on trolling the kernel development process (either by seeing if an obviously broken patch could be snuck past the peer review system, or to see if he can try to get someone to lose their temper much like Linus is supposed to do all the time — not realizing that this only happens to people who really should know better, not to clueless newbies), are that he’s a badly written AI chatbot, or just a clueless high school student with more tenacity than one usually expects at that age,” says Theodore.

• For Linux 3.16 the KVM improvements were mostly about POWER, S390, and MIPS architectures while for Linux 3.17 the table has turned to focus upon x86 improvements to the Kernel-based Virtual Machine.

• Paolo Bonzini sent in the first round of KVM changes for the Linux 3.17 merge window. The MIPS/S390 architectures in particular have seen little changes this kernel development cycle while x86 has been a greater focus. Linux 3.17 KVM has nested VMX improvements, optimizations for old processors (up through Intel Nehalem CPUs), and various x86 emulator bug-fixes.

• With the Linux 3.17 kernel that’s now officially under development since yesterday’s Linux 3.16 release is now support for Xen EFI.

• With the upcoming Linux 3.17, it’s possible to boot using (U)EFI under Xen Dom0. Daniel Kiper who worked on the Xen EFI patches explained, “Standard EFI Linux Kernel infrastructure cannot be used because it requires direct access to EFI data and code. However, in dom0 case it is not possible because above mentioned EFI stuff is fully owned and controlled by Xen hypervisor. In this case all calls from dom0 to EFI must be requested via special hypercall which in turn executes relevant EFI code in behalf of dom0.”

Graphics Stack

• Tom Stellard of AMD is seeking the approval of other LLVM developers to rename the R600 back-end to something more generic like “AMDGPU” instead. The R600 back-end was originally developed for AMD’s R600 class hardware with support through the HD 6000 “Northern Islands” graphics cards, just as is the case for the R600 Gallium3D driver. However, while AMD developed the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for the HD 7000 series graphics processors and newer, the existing R600 LLVM back-end has been extended to support all newer AMD GPUs up through the latest Rx 200 series graphics cards. As a result, the “R600″ name is rather irrelevant and no longer meaningful.

• The latest Linux GPU benchmarks at Phoronix for your viewing pleasure are looking at the OpenCL compute performance with the latest AMD and NVIDIA binary blobs while also marking down the performance efficiency and overall system power consumption.

Applications

• Plex Media Server, a software that makes it easy for everyone to play movies and TV shows on the computer, is now at version 0.9.9.14 and is available for download.

Proprietary

• Dropbox, a client for an online service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere, is now at version 2.11.5 and it has been released for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

• This is a development build of Dropbox, and beginning with the 2.11.x branch, the developers have started to make a number of important changes to the Linux client, after quite a long time of stagnant development.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• The Steam for Linux rate of adoption has dropped somewhat in comparison with the previous month, but it still holds around 1.1%.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The Akademy Program Committee is excited to announce the Akademy 2014 Program. It is worth the wait! We waded through many high quality proposals and found that it would take more than a week to include all the ones we like. However we managed to bring together a concise and (still packed) schedule.

• David Edmundson and I have been working hard the last weeks. It’s not that we don’t usually work hard, but this time I’m really excited about it.

• A bit of context: in Plasma an important part of the system drawing is painting frames (others are icons, images and the like). Those are in general the elements that are specified in the Plasma themes. These will be buttons, dialog backgrounds, line edit decorations, etc.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

Distributions

• We have released the Preview of Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6. The release of Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6 signals our 8 years of operation in the enterprise and education sectors. There were three things that we focused on with this release.

• Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6 Preview, a distribution that is better known after its previous name, OS/4 OpenLinux, has been released and is now available for testing.

• Michael Tremer, a developer for the ipfire.org team, has announced that IPFire 2.13 Core 80, a new stable build of the popular Linux-based firewall distribution, has been released and is now available for download.

• Evolve OS, a Linux distribution that it’s still under development and which boasts a beautiful new desktop environment called Budgie, has just got its third Alpha release.

Red Hat Family

• Libvirt 1.2.7, a collection of software tools that provide a convenient way to manage virtual machines and other virtualization functionality, such as storage and network interface management, has been released and it’s now available for download.

• Oracle has this month introduced the Oracle-flavoured Linux 7 open source operating system. Freely distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPLv2), Oracle Linux is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and follows the RHEL7 release, which arrived this June.

• This distribution of Linux represents what Oracle would like to us to consider as its more open and community focused side, although of course a paid support model is available and widely adopted.

Debian Family

• Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Kernel 3.16 stable will be released soon, for now only the seventh release candidate of the kernel being available (Kernel 3.16 RC7).

• The usage of a new kernel is a very important, due to the fact that the newest kernels support the newest hardware specs and come with important performance improvements, compared to the previous ones.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu for phones is constantly receiving improvements and updates, but the browser was a little behind. It looks now that it’s about to receive an overhaul.

• The Ubuntu developers are constantly working on their Unity desktop environment and most of changes and new features will most definitely land in the next versions of the operating system.

• Canonical has published details in a security notice about a Samba vulnerability that has been corrected in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system.

• The Ubuntu community has made a habit of spotting their favorite operating system in the most unexpected places. The Linux distribution built by Canonical has been observed “flying” over an Antarctic region, during a NASA mission.

Devices/Embedded

• Itus Networks is set to launch a $149 “iGuardian” network security appliance on Kickstarter that runs OpenWRT Linux and the Snort IPS stack on a MIPS64 SoC.

• Few vendors have targeted the consumer network security appliance market, and even fewer have done so with pricing under $500. A San Jose, Calif.-based startup called Itus Networks, however, plans to protect your home WiFi router with a $149, open source Linux iGuardian device that offers both a network intrusion prevention system (NIPS) and a network intrusion detection system (NIDS). The device blocks cyber attacks while also filtering out malware “and other undesirable content,” says the company. Like other network security appliances, it sits between your Internet source and your WiFi router, acting as a security firewall.

Phones

Android

• Android has raced past iOS to become the top mobile operating system for the first time.

• Figures from Net Applications show that devices powered by Android were used more than iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch devices running iOS throughout July 2014.

• A new official version of Android 4.4.2 KitKat, with the build number I9506XXUCNG3, was recently rolled out for the international LTE model of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s (KRX:005935) Galaxy S4 that comes with the model number GT-I9505.

Free Software/Open Source

• The real motivation for Sandstorm is, and always has been, making it possible for open source and indie developers to build successful web apps.

• In today’s popular software-as-a-service model, indie development simply is not viable. People do it anyway, but their software is not accessible to the masses. In order for low-budget software to succeed, and in order for open source to make any sense at all, users must be able to run their own instances of the software, at no cost to the developer. We’ve always had that on desktop and mobile. When it comes to server-side apps, hosting must be decentralized.

• The appeal of open source solutions to government agencies around the world is not surprising as these solutions can address concerns which had prevented governments from reaping the full benefits of cloud, including security, governance and data transparency. The number of countries actively using open source solutions in their infrastructure is a testament to how it is an appropriate model for IT systems in the public sector.

• Don’t trash the traditional resume just yet, but developers who contribute to open source projects may find their code becomes their best career-boosting tool.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Mozilla’s website dedicated to developers has suffered from a database error that has exposed email addresses and encrypted passwords of registered users for about a month, the company announced.

Databases

• MongoHQ and GoGrid have partnered to deliver a turnkey NoSQL MongoDB storage solution, which they say will make it easier to perform Big Data analytics with no major investment in time or resources.

CMS

• The open-source WordPress blog and content management system platform is widely deployed around the world and powers some of the most popular sites on the Internet. WordPress’ popularity has also made it a target for attackers. WordPress is deployed in one of two ways, which affects what steps users should take to secure themselves. Users can directly set up and host a site with the WordPress.com service. In that scenario, much of the heavy lifting for ensuring secure configuration and server platforms is done by WordPress.com. The other scenario is the self-hosted one in which users set up their own WordPress sites, with code that is freely available under an open-source license from WordPress.org. For self-hosted WordPress users, the security challenge is more involved and requires that users take proactive steps to reduce risk. In multiple incidents in the last year, self-hosted WordPress user sites were attacked and leveraged as a basis for attacks against others. In March, the pingback URL tacking feature in WordPress was abused in a widespread attack. In June, attackers took advantage of flaws in the Timthumb image-processing library plug-in. Here are guidelines to help users limit security risks in WordPress.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

• Toxins possibly from algae on Lake Erie fouled the water supply of the state’s fourth-largest city Saturday, forcing officials to issue warnings not to drink the water and the governor to declare a state of emergency as worried residents descended on stores, quickly clearing shelves of bottled water.

• “It looked like Black Friday,” said Aundrea Simmons, who stood in a line of about 50 people at a pharmacy before buying four cases of water. “I have children and elderly parents. They take their medication with water.”

• Residents in Toledo are flocking to stores in Michigan in search of water after Ohio officials issued a “do not drink” warning and declared a state of emergency.

• Authorities in Toledo issued an alert around 2 a.m. Saturday, warning residents not to consume any of its water after tests revealed the presence of a toxin possibly related to algae on Lake Erie. The warning applies to about 400,000 people in the area. By the afternoon, Ohio’s governor had declared a state of emergency.

Security

• Cisco has shipped a patch for a buggy Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing implementation it says offers exploits that include traffic blackholing or interception.

• As the advisory notes, the vulnerability “could allow an unauthenticated attacker to take full control of the OSPF Autonomous System (AS) domain routing table, blackhole traffic, and intercept traffic”, which makes El Reg wonder why the NSA ever had to go to the alleged bother of intercepting hardware for to allegedly install its compromises.

• Crafted OSPF packets can be sent to devices running the faulty code, and those packets would make the targeted router flush its routing table. A crafted OSPF Link State Advertisement (LSA) type 1 update can then be propagated through a targeted domain.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• The Gaza offensive, which Israel says is also intended to quash rocket salvoes, has been the deadliest in the territory since Israeli settlers and soldiers left in 2005. At least 1,868 Palestinians have been killed, including hundreds of civilians, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra. Sixty-seven people have been killed on the Israeli side, 64 of them soldiers.

• Palestinians have accused Israel of breaking its own cease-fire by launching an attack which killed an 8-year-old girl in a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip

• Israeli soldiers mourn over the grave of Israeli Army 2nd. Lt. Hadar Goldin during his funeral at the military cemetery in the central Israeli city of Kfar Saba on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014. Israel announced that Goldin, a 23-year-old infantry lieutenant feared captured in Gaza, was actually killed in battle. Israel had earlier said it feared he had been captured by Hamas militants Friday near Rafah in an ambush that shattered an internationally brokered cease-fire and was followed by heavy Israeli shelling that left dozens of Palestinians dead. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

• In this century, a full-scale second “Defense Department,” the Department of Homeland Security, was created. Around it has grown up a mini-version of the military-industrial complex, with the usual set of consultants, K Street lobbyists, political contributions, and power relations: just the sort of edifice that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his famed farewell address in 1961. In the meantime, the original military-industrial complex has only gained strength and influence.

• Increasingly, post-9/11, under the rubric of “privatization,” though it should more accurately have been called “corporatization,” the Pentagon took a series of crony companies off to war with it. In the process, it gave “capitalist war” a more literal meaning, thanks to its wholesale financial support of, and the shrugging off of previously military tasks onto, a series of warrior corporations.

• August 2 marked the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the U.S. reported attacks on a Navy destroyer by North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Lyndon Johnson the authority to send U.S. forces to Vietnam to combat “communist aggression.”

• To provide the background to the U.S. government’s war drive, we reprint an excerpt from the 2007 book Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost by SocialistWorker.org contributor Joe Allen. It is taken from the chapter “From the Overthrow of Diem to the Tet Offensive.”

Finance

• Australia’s tech jobs market is booming, with the rate of growth for tech jobs outpacing both the US and the UK, according to a new report by the Progressive Policy Institute.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Me and Ben & Jerry’s want to get the influence of big money out of politics. You too? Well, we are the people, and its is up to us to make the impossible possible.

• Is it impossible to get big money out of the governor’s position? You tell me. If it’s up to me, I will.

• Without big money, how does one run for governor, you might ask? I meet a lot of people, write a lot of letters, go a lot of places. If you want money out of politics too, you are going to have to help level the playing field.

• We’ve written a bunch about Larry Lessig’s MayDay SuperPAC and its crowdfunded attempt to elect politicians who promise to change the way money in politics works. And many users also pointed to Wolf PAC, which is another high profile political action committee committed to dealing with the issue of money in politics. Now another such PAC has been announced, kicked off by some more Silicon Valley folks, called CounterPAC, the focus is on getting candidates to take a pledge not to accept so-called “dark money”.

Censorship

• As he prepares to host a Wikimania festival in London, the Wikipedia co-founder is also gearing up to challenge Europe’s controversial ‘right-to-be-forgotten’ legislation

Privacy

• Philip Hammond launched an attack on critics of GCHQ and the British intelligence community on a visit to Cheltenham today.

• The Foreign Secretary described the listening post as a “critical asset” which helps keep people safe at home and abroad.

• But with the operations of GCHQ under more scrutiny than ever amid the continuing revelations of the American whistle blower Edward Snowden Mr Hammond believes some people have lost sight of how important its work is.

• He told the Echo: “There are people across the political spectrum who have given the intelligence community a hard time who see this only through one lens; the civil liberties, data protection lens, and refuse to look at the benefits that this work brings us.

• Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was right last week to demand further action on an internal CIA report that confirmed, despite Director John Brennan’s earlier denials of wrongdoing, that the agency hacked Senate Intelligence Committee computers that were used to produce a damning review of the CIA’s former interrogation program.

• The Germans are correct that the U.S.A. has a multitude of failings, but they don’t deny our easy access to wild landscape. We have inadequate biking lanes here in S.B., our government attacks foreign lands, we aerially assassinate thousands, the NSA spies on us, our infrastructure is collapsing, and some foolish politicians want to starve government and privatize public schools. At least we can easily drive to the nearby hills with our kids from time to time and temporarily escape this madness.

• After a 2008 presidential campaign that criticized the Bush administration for increased government surveillance and lack of government transparency with the Patriot Act, the Obama administration has since expanded those very things it sought to diminish.

• Documents published Monday by The Intercept revealed the “far-reaching” extent of the U.S. National Security Agency’s collaboration with Israeli intelligence services. The revelations came as the U.S. State Department criticized Israel for its “disgraceful” shelling of a U.N. school, and the death toll in the Israeli offensive in Gaza surpassed 1,800 Palestinians and 60 Israelis.

• The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

• As if revelations about government spying weren’t alarming enough, it’s clearer that what have become routine practices that erode the privacy of citizens need thoughtful legislative intervention.

• State lawmakers from this region such as Senators Ted O’Brien, Joe Robach and Michael Ranzenhofer, who are all members of a special Senate committee that deals with technology issues, should take the lead in conducting an assessment. If their special Senate Science, Technology, Incubation and Entrepreneurship Committee isn’t best suited for the task, then they should push Senate leaders to find better alternatives.

• A state response to growing privacy concerns is a logical followup to steps currently underway in Washington to reform the National Security Agency. Red flags went up after it was learned that the NSA collects and stores phone data on virtually all Americans’ phone records.

• On February 24, 2014, Turkish daily Yeni Şafak broke the story that the authorities had eavesdropped on the phone calls and intercepted e-mail messages of thousands of citizens, including several Daily Sabah journalists, under secret court orders. Local media reported that the scandal was uncovered after several prosecutors were reassigned in mid-January citing their affiliation with the Gülen Movement, which the news outlets claimed had formed a shadow state involving members of law enforcement, public prosecutors and judges. Five months later, on July 22, dozens of police officers who allegedly were involved with unlawful mass surveillance were detained for questioning. Subsequently, an Istanbul court ordered the formal arrest of over 30 police officers on charges of wiretapping, forging documents and espionage. Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of Istanbul withdrew terrorism charges against victims of unlawful wiretapping and ordered the destruction of all illegally obtained personal data.

• The Green Party has called on Prime Minister John Key to “come clean” after revelations that a US National Security Agency (NSA) engineer was in New Zealand in 2013, discussing with the GCSB the setting up of an interception site on the country’s only fibre optic cable.

• Documents obtained by the New Zealand Herald show that in February 2013, an engineer from the NSA visited Blenheim, the location of the GCSB’s Waihopai spy base, to participate in discussions about a future Special Source Operations (SSO) site.

• This Israeli start-up no longer operates a website. But it has peddled its wares to the Mexican government, gotten on the radar of Central Intelligence Agency officials and recently was bought by an American private equity firm.

• The fifth edition of the India-US Strategic Dialogue was not a cheerful occasion for US Secretary of State John Kerry, the highest-ranking leader to visit India since Narendra Modi came to power.

• Kerry wanted the dialogue to be the right springboard for Modi’s trip to Washington in September but returned dissatisfied over India’s strong reservations against NSA snooping, the US immigration bill and a sense that economic reforms may not be introduced at a faster pace.

Civil Rights

• Two officials with access to the declassified executive summary told VICE News that some of the redactions allegedly pertain to the manner in which the detainees were held captive, and to certain torture techniques that were not among the 10 “approved” methods contained in a Justice Department legal memo commonly referred to as the “torture memo.” The officials said the never before–revealed methods, which in certain instances were “improvised,” are central to the report because they underscore the “cruelty” of the program. Some other redactions allegedly pertain to the origins of the program and the intelligence the CIA collected through the use of torture, which the Senate report claims was of little or no value — a claim with which the CIA disagrees.

• U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee member Senator Angus King said on Sunday that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel committed an “unjustifiable” act when they tortured 9/11 terror suspects.

• Before his election to the top office, Obama was known as a soft-spoken person and enjoyed image of a gentleman who feels for others. But soon after his entry in the White House he understandably had to follow dictates of the very powerful US establishment. Then he took several decisions which could not be considered as a true reflection of sentiments of the President but his frank admission at the televised news conference shows that he was opposed to the mistreatment that security officials done to the detainees. But what is more surprising is that to this day many of the Bush era officials who carried out the CIA programme insist that what they did was not torture.

• Truth in state government and here in the federal capital again has trumped all as the most elusive quality in public affairs. Five months ago, CIA Director John Brennan blandly said of charges that his agency spied on Congress, “nothing could be further from the truth.”

• “We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks; we did some things that were contrary to our values. When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line. And that needs to be understood and accepted,” said President Obama at a press conference a couple of days ago.

• [...]

• I believe American business investments in Africa without morality breed only misery and thievery.

• U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, issued the following statement on the CIA’s redactions to the executive summary of the Committee’s study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.

• The torture debate will continue with the release of a Senate report on the controversial interrogation techniques the CIA used after the September 11 attacks.

• The move was extraordinary: Germany, one of America’s closest allies, went public with a private gripe. More, the move was the kind expected by a rival country like Russia, signaling a complete breakdown of diplomacy between the U.S. president and the German chancellor.

• Will an apology be enough to soothe the strained relations between the CIA and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee? It’s a critical lingering question in the rare public spat between the intelligence agency and the lawmakers charged with the agency’s oversight.

• Tempers on the committee flared in recent months over reports that the CIA spied on computers used by intelligence committee staffers. A CIA inspector general’s report confirmed these reports this past week, prompting CIA Director John Brennan to apologize to committee members Thursday. However, some members aren’t satisfied, citing Brennan’s previous remarks that batted down the spying accusations…

• CIA responded to Obama’s acquiescence when it spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Transparency has been one of the key issues for TTIP – and is, of course, a prime concern of this blog. As people who follow me on Twitter may have noticed, I recently had quite a long, er, discussion with the TTIP team at the European Commission that centred on transparency, or lack of it.

Copyrights

• Every time somebody questions the copyright monopoly, and in particular, whether it’s reasonable to dismantle freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of information, and the privacy of correspondence just to maintain a distribution monopoly for an entertainment industry, the same question pops up out of nowhere:

• “How will the artists get paid?”.

• The copyright industry has been absolutely phenomenal in misleading the public in this very simple matter, suggesting that artists’ income somehow depend on a distribution monopoly of publishers. If the facts were out, this debate would have been over 20 years ago and the distribution monopoly already abolished quite unceremoniously.

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