● 05.18.15

● Links 18/5/2015: Russia Chooses Jolla, Many New Distro Releases, Meizu Devices

Posted in News Roundup at 1:01 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Greenpeace should be pushing GNU/Linux on ARMed PCs, not attacking efficient operations.

• How do you know if you are a potential candidate to become a Linux user? It’s this simple: What’s the first app you fire up after booting into your system? If you said ‘browser’, then you are a potential Linux user.

• Open source fans have long had a rocky relationship with Microsoft. Everyone knows that. But, in many ways, the tension between Apple and supporters of free or open source software is even starker—even if it receives much less attention in the press.

Desktop

• I’m a Linux noob. A newcomer. A beginner. Call it what you like, the fact is I’m new to Linux.

• And, three years ago I was new to open source, too. It’s not uncommon for my generation—my peers—to have PCs and Macs, use Windows exclusively, and not really understand why someone would choose not to own an iPhone. But these days, the people I compare myself to and strive to be more like are most often my work collegues. And they have Thinkpads and run Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and have a notable number of open source-related stickers on their laptops. They have Android phones, the newest version. Some could even be caught with a 3D printed figurine or two in their backpacks.

• The world of Linux is ready to welcome you, with a shower of free open-source software you can use on any PC: hundreds of active Linux distributions, and dozens of different desktop environments you could run on them. It’s a far cry from the one-size-fits-all, this-is-just-what-comes-with-your-PC vision of Windows.

• Open source is becoming a powerful alternative to proprietary software and proof of that is that many municipalities, governments, and companies are now adopting open source solutions, but that is happening in schools and universities as well. The Augustinian College of León in Spain is just such a place.

• Most people believe that moving from Windows to Linux isn’t possible because it lacks critical software and tools they need. Perhaps in some limited instances they’re right, but I believe the bigger challenge is making sure critical workflows remain intact.

• In this article I’ll examine two application workflows that are often not considered until the need for these tools arise.

• So, this is GNU/Linux’s year. The year when positive feedback is kicking in. The year when M$ burned it’s bridges to consumers and OEMs with ill-conceived nonsense. The year the world realized it had a choice of operating systems for PCs. Amen.

Kernel Space

• I’m announcing the release of the 4.0.4 kernel.

• All users of the 4.0 kernel series must upgrade.

• Only four days after the announcement of Linux kernel 4.0.3 as the latest and most advanced kernel version, Greg Kroah-Hartman has just published today, May 17, news about the fourth maintenance release of Linux kernel 4.0.

• Immediately after announcing Linux kernel 4.0.4, Greg Kroah-Hartman published details about Linux kernel 3.10.79, an LTS (Long Term Support) release that will be updated for a few more years.

Graphics Stack

• For users of the Freedreno Gallium3D driver for having unofficial open-source Qualcomm graphics support, the Adreno 306 is the latest graphics processor now supported.

• Nearly one month ago AMD published the open-source code to their new “AMDGPU” kernel driver and the necessary user-space driver changes too. That code is continuing to mature for the Linux 4.2 kernel and for supporting the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver that code is continuing to be polished.

• The RandR components are updated for version 1.5.0 to take advantage of new functionality in the X.Org Server.

Applications

• BitTorrent is a great way to transfer and share large files, but it’s only as convenient and efficient as the application you use to seed and download them. This week, we’re looking at five of the best BitTorrent clients, based on your nominations.

• The applet, developed by Lester Carballo Pérez (lestcape) is based on the GNOME Shell AppIndicator extension and it makes use of unity-gtk-module (so it requires unity-gtk2-module and unity-gtk3-module to be installed). Thanks to this, the new Cinnamon global menu works with GTK2, GTK3 and Qt applications (requires appmenu-qt) as well as LibreOffice.

• A new release of our random package for truly (hardware-based) random numbers as provided by random.org is now on CRAN.

• Gedit, the default GUI text editor in Fedora Workstation has a neat new minimap feature in the works. This feature provides a shrunk-down version of the document you are editing on the right of the screen to make it easier to jump between different parts of larger documents.

• When designing a product/service, it is hard to agree on what a user is, specially in engineering environments. In marketing/product environments, in general is in the DNA of those involved in product design to differentiate buyers from consumers (users). Market segmentation is understood by default. In my experience, this is not always the case in engineering environments.

Instructionals/Technical

• Ubuntu is an open source software platform that runs from the smartphone, the tablet and the PC to the server and the cloud. If you’re looking for a free, friendly and powerful operating system, Ubuntu is an excellent Linux distribution. The latest release of Ubuntu, codenamed the “Vivid Vervet”, offers some fundamental changes under the bonnet. One of the most controversial changes is the switch to systemd, a suite of system management daemons, libraries, and utilities designed as a central management and configuration platform. systemd has seen buckets of complaints because there’s a feeling the project is taking over too much of the Linux system, thereby flying in the face of the Unix philosophy: ‘do one thing and do it well’. Ubuntu 15.04 also brings new desktop, cloud, server and Internet of things (IoT) capabilities.

Wine or Emulation

• Wine 1.7.43 was released on Friday and following it this weekend was the latest Wine-Staging update that re-bases atop the latest upstream Wine while carrying extra, experimental features like DXVA2, CUDA 7, and various other features.

Games

• Cyberia 2: Resurrection is another classic game added to our collections thanks to GOG and DOSBox. I’ve tested it, and it’s interesting.

• Hero of the Kingdom is a nice looking casual RPG, and the Linux release is almost upon us. The developers took to their Steam forum to keep everyone informed.

• The rather atmospheric game Dark Echo was released last week. With its minimalist graphics and simple gameplay, it stands out from other recent releases. After giving it a spin, I had a few thoughts to share on the game.

• MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and darling of fanatical retro arcade gamers, is going open source for the first time in its 18-year history. MAMEdev.org, the non-profit group behind the emulator’s continuing development, announced the move in a surprise tweet Thursday.

• MAME is beloved of retro-gamers, who delight in its ability to run the ROMs of vintage cabinet and console games on Windows, MacOS and Linux.

• Popular arcade emulator, MAME, is becoming open-source in the hopes of becoming a learning tool for developers. Although the emulator’s source code has been available for some time, it has been under a modified BSD license which prohibited commercial use of the code.

• Guns of Icarus Online, a multiplayer airship combat title developed and published on Steam by Muse Games for multiple platforms, is now available for purchase with a 75% discount.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• A few days ago the Rust community announced v1.0 of their new systems programming language, Rust. Having followed the project for some time and finally having used the language for a number of small projects this year, I’ve come to feel that using Rust is interesting, fun and productive. I’d like to highly encourage everyone to give it a look now that it’s finally considered ready for prime time.

• To aid the effort I’ve put some Sunday hacking time into a basic Rust code completion plugin for Kate today. It’s built around Phil Dawes’ very nifty Racer, freeing it up to concern itself only with exposing some configuration and getting data provided by Racer into Kate. Not difficult at all.

• I am going to be adding ‘Constellation Art’ unto the sky map in KStars. This project is precisely what I have been looking for, a perfect blend of astronomy and coding – the best of both worlds!

• I think it was when I started using Linux about 3-4 years ago. Or when I found out about the artist David Revoy and read about Krita on his website.

• The work on unified graphics for GCompris was completed in the time allocated by the fundraiser. Here is a video to show the result.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GNOME 3.18 is under heavy development and already thus far this cycle we’ve seen GTK+ do away with Windows XP support and integrate other toolkit improvements along with other work like in-progress file manager improvements. Here’s more of the GNOME 3.18 work items to get excited about.

• GNOME 3.18 is expected to arrive in September, but until then developers plan to work to improve it as much as possible. Two components that will get some special attention are File (former Nautilus file manager) and Calendar.

Distributions

• A gaming distro, by definition, is host not only to a large variety of games, or software that allows one to play games, but it also has drivers and support for essential devices such as graphics cards and controllers.

• Unlike most other genres of Linux distributions, gaming distros aren’t a thriving bunch. But this isn’t because Linux users dislike games, instead it’s due to the fact that this niche category is almost redundant thanks to most modern desktop distros. Almost all desktop distros are equipped nowadays with drivers for most modern graphics cards, which means that just about any distro can be turned into a gaming station.

• Despite this, some distros continue to churn out special gaming editions which provide hundreds of games right out of the gate, and the means to install even more with additional software such as Play on Linux, Wine and Steam.

New Releases

• Ikey Doherty from the Solus OS development team has had the great pleasure of informing us today about the immediate availability for download and testing of the second Beta release of Solus (formerly Evolve OS) Linux.

• MakuluLinux Aero, a Linux distribution based on the Debian testing branch that uses Cinnamon and some customization that make it look like a Windows OS, has been released.

• MakuluLinux Aero Edition Now available for download.

• Read the release notes in the Aero Section and Grab the ISO from the download section above.

• One of the wonderful things about Linux distributions is the various desktop environments available. Unlike Windows and OS X, if you do not like the user interface, you can simply change it. I am a big fan of GNOME 3, but I know that many people dislike it. That’s OK — different strokes for different folks as they say.

• Another desktop environment I like, and recommend to many, is KDE Plasma. The latest version, Plasma 5, is wonderful, and former Windows users will feel comfortable with it. Today, the best KDE distribution, Netrunner, reaches version 16. Dubbed “Ozymandias”, it embraces KDE Plama 5.

• The Tiny Core developers were happy to announce the availability of the first Release Candidate version of the upcoming Tiny Core Linux 6.3 computer operating system. Tiny Core Linux is being known as one of the tiniest distributions in the world.

• Zbigniew Konojacki, the developer of the 4MLinux distributions, had the pleasure of informing Softpedia about the immediate availability for download and testing of the Beta versions of 4MLinux 13.0, 4MLinux Core 13.0, and 4MLinux 13.0 Allinone Edition.

Arch Family

• Shortly after having announced the ninth update of Manjaro Linux 0.8.12, the Manjaro Linux development team informed its dedicated users about the immediate availability for download and testing of Manjaro Linux 0.8.13 RC1.

Ballnux/SUSE

• As of this weekend, openSUSE Tumbleweed is now defaulting to the KDE Plasma 5.3 experience alongside the KDE Applications 15.04.1 packages.

• The openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling release version of the famous operating system has moved to KDE Plasma 5.3, and it looks like it’s a smooth transition, although any help from the community is always welcomed.

Red Hat Family

• Enterprise IT organizations are moving, or planning to move to OpenStack for their cloud infrastructure, a new survey from Red Hat finds. The OpenStack enterprise adoption survey of more than 310 IT decision makers and professionals from around the world, commissioned by Red Hat through TechValidate, found that the majority of respondents (75 percent) are planning to use OpenStack for cloud initiatives. The survey found respondents in varying stages of deployment, ranging from learning and evaluation (40 percent) and proof of concept/pilots (40 percent) to preparing for deployment (18 percent) and in production (16 percent).

Fedora

• Anaconda is the OS installer used by Fedora and RHEL GNU/Linux distributions and all their derivatives.

• Fedora’s default desktop environment is GNOME, but MATE, KDE, XFCE, Sugar and LXDE spins are also available for those who prefer them. And starting with Fedora 23, scheduled for release in October/November this year, Cinnamon joins the Fedora family.

Debian Family

• I got an email last year pointing out a cosmetic issue with changelogs.debian.net. I think at the time of the email, the only problem was some bitrot in PHP’s built-in server variables making some text appear incorrectly.

• Neil McGovern, Debian’s new leader has recently announced that the future Debian systems will receive support for PPAs, the deb packages being technically compatible with both Ubuntu and Debian systems.

• But it looks like Neil did not refer to the existing PPAs designed for Ubuntu, but some Debian-specific PPAs. The PPAs are needed so that the Debian developers and users easily maintain and provide updates for community-driven software.

Derivatives

• Parsix GNU/Linux is a live and installation DVD based on Debian. Our goal is to provide a ready to use and easy to install desktop and laptop optimized operating system based on Debian’s testing branch and the latest stable release of GNOME desktop environment. Users can easily install extra software packages from Parsix APT repositories. Our annual release cycle consists of two major and four minor versions. We have our own software repositories and build servers to build and provide all the necessary updates and missing features in Debian stable branch.

• Alan Baghumian was proud to inform us earlier today about the immediate availability for download of the final release of Parsix GNU/Linux 7.5r0, a computer operating system derived from Debian 7 Wheezy.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• After using Ubuntu (13.10) for like almost one year I decided to move back to Fedora (Fedora 21). This is going to be a short post on my experience on mounting the same /home I used in Ubuntu for Fedora.

• It wasn’t a far-fetched prediction when I stated that 2015 may be the year of Ubuntu. After Bq now Meizu is bringing their Ubuntu phone to the market; this will be the second Ubuntu phone to go on sale in 2015.

• So far the Ubuntu operating system is little-known, but it looks as though there will soon be a further push to give this platform a higher profile, as a Meizu MX4 Ubuntu version launch date is being tipped. This will be only the second smartphone to release running Ubuntu, after the lower-end BQ Aquaris E4.5 that arrived earlier this year.

• Meizu has finally announced Ubuntu MX4, the first phone from this company with Canonical’s operating system. It’s aimed at developers from China, but it should land in Europe soon as well.

• Meizu is now teasing the community suggesting that something will be happening on May 18 (tomorrow) and many Chinese blogs suggest that their Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition will get released tomorrow.

• Ubuntu enthusiasts in Europe have been able to buy the first Ubuntu phone for some time now, the BQ Aquaris, while starting now Chinese developers are able to buy the second official Ubuntu phone: the Meizu Ubuntu MX4.

Flavours and Variants

• Both of the Linux Mint Debian flavors, Cinnamon and MATE, were released a month ago, but until now users of the previous version could not upgrade from one release to another. The upgrade path for the upgrade has been opened, and it’s now possible to switch from LMDE 1 to LMDE 2.

• For as long as I can remember people have been creating Linux distributions with a view to emulating the look and feel of other operating systems such as Windows and OSX.

• For instance there used to be an Linux distribution called Lindows which obviously attempted to emulate Windows and more recently Zorin OS has produced a desktop that looks and feels like Windows 2000, Windows 7 and OSX.

• The Xubuntu project recent unveiled a stripped-down build of its Xfce-based Ubuntu: Xubuntu core. Core offers a very basic version of the Xfce desktop, along with the basic look and feel of Xubuntu, but any extras like an office suite, media player, Xfce add-ons or even a web browser will have to be installed separately.

• The “core” name is a little confusing since Ubuntu proper recently began shipping Ubuntu Core, a lightweight version of Ubuntu optimized for container-based environments like Docker. Xubuntu core is unrelated and derived from Xubuntu, not Ubuntu Core.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

• Based on Finland’s Sailfish operating system, the plan is the latest way Russia is fighting for independence from US technology

• In an effort to boost its independence from Western technology, Russia has announced that it will be creating its own mobile operating system, the Russian-language news site RBC reports (English language summary). Russia’s Ministry of Communications is working with the Finnish company Jolla, which already offers a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices called Sailfish.

Android

• An Android 5.1 Lollipop update for the Sony Xperia and HTC One series devices have yet to materialize. Oddly, the unlocked Google Play Edition for the HTC One M7 is receiving the Android 5.1 Lollipop over-the-air. This is the only HTC One device to be getting the update. We will examine the current Android update situation for the Sony Xperia Z3, Z2; HTC One M7, M8.

• It’s been a little while since we’ve heard from Motorola about its progress bringing Android Lollipop updates to its lower-tiered devices, but now there’s some big news. The Android 5.1 Lollipop OTA update release date for the second generation Moto E (2015) is… now.

• Android 5.0 Lollipop is now in use on smartphones and tablets but we’re future thinking and here’s what we want to see in Android M, whatever version number and name it will be (Milkshake? M&Ms? Marshmallow?). Read: How to get Android L now. and Android M UK release date and new features.

• While Sony is busy testing the Android Lollipop upgrade for the Xperia Z series device, a leaked video has been spotted, suggesting the Android 5.1.1 for the Xperia Z3 smartphone.

• If you’ve got the latest version of Android Wear — that is, Android 5.1.1 — and use Google Play Music, you now have a new option for controlling tunes on your watch.

• More recently, however, developers are moving more to Android as money follows eyeballs. Last year, mobile research firm Digi-Capital reported that Android reported more app revenue than Apple for the year, if you count its Android-forked Chinese revenue. Even so, counting App store revenues is still missing the big picture in regards to Google’s big opportunity.

• Motorola has released its Droid Turbo on October 28 last year with Android 4.4 KitKat on it. It could be recalled that Google released its latest mobile operating system, the Android 5.0 Lollipop, in November 12, 2014 or barely two weeks after the release of the Motorola Droid Turbo.

• Android (rooted with Xposed): Some Android apps, like Gmail, may show that you have multiple unread notifications—but they won’t tell you how many. Notification Count is an Xposed module for rooted phones that adds a number badge to all your notifications.

• Almost two weeks ago, mobile software developer community Resurrection Remix rolled out a new customs ROM to Samsung Galaxy S3 that is based on Android 5.1 Lollipop that practically delighted sentimental users of Samsung’s 2012 flagship smartphone almost to no end.

• One of the best things about Android is that apps have a lot more freedom compared to those found on iPhones.

• Some of the most interesting Android apps are exclusive to Android because they do something Apple wouldn’t allow.

• What’s one of the easiest ways to breathe in new life in your phone’s interface is by giving it an icon overhaul. There are already a great lot of totally awesome and beautiful icon packs for Android.

• Welcome to this week’s roundup of the latest, greatest Android apps and games, covering smartphones and tablets.

• Motorola India has started rolling out the Android 5.1 Lollipop update to the Moto E (Gen 1) in India. The Lenovo-owned company last week rolled out the Lollipop update for the second-generation Moto E.

• Samsung Denmark’s website is now revealing that the Samsung Galaxy S5 mini (SM-G800) will be receiving an update to Android 5.0.1. The handset is currently running Android 4.4.2. The update actually takes the less-spec’d mini version of Samsung’s last generation flagship phone, to a slightly higher build than the Android 5.0 version received by the Samsung Galaxy S5 (SM-G900). That update took place in February.

• Xposed is a fantastic tool for modders whose phones aren’t as popular as mainstream models and don’t get as much ROM support, or if they simply want a few Android tweaks without flashing completely custom firmware. Unfortunately, both the Xposed Framework and the module you’re using need to be updated with each major release of Android for the functionality to reliably work. That’s now true for GravityBox, a popular collection of tweaks and mods bundled into a single module, and Lollipop 5.1.

Free Software/Open Source

• After over seven years of publishing, this is the last column on the Open Enterprise blog. You can access all 1400 posts from the complete listing in reverse chronological order; if you want to start at the beginning you can use this page.) For my last post, I thought it might be interesting to pick out some of the key events that have taken place in open source and its related fields during that time. It’s pretty astonishing how much has happened, and how much has been achieved. As I said in one of my recent posts, free software has definitely won, but it’s certainly not finished. Thanks for sharing that amazing journey.

Events

• I’ve got three words: It Was Amazing! Congratulations to the organizers and the volunteers who put it all together. I’m so happy that I was once again part of it.

• As the OpenStack Summit is set to start May 17 in Vancouver, B.C., here’s a look at the trends and issues that will dominate the five-day conference.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• A couple of years ago, Google declared war on extensions for the Chrome browser not hosted on the Chrome Web Store. As the Chromium blog made clear: “Many services bundle useful companion extensions, which causes Chrome to ask whether you want to install them (or not). However, bad actors have abused this mechanism, bypassing the prompt to silently install malicious extensions that override browser settings and alter the user experience in undesired ways, such as replacing the New Tab Page without approval.”

Mozilla

• First up, Rust has reached version 1.0, though this is an announcement that was hardly unexpected. It has a lot to live up to given the Rust web site goes for such unloaded language as “blazingly fast, prevents nearly all segfaults, and guarantees thread safety”. The real test for Rust, at least for me, is how well Servo, Mozilla’s browser written in Rust and the application Rust was created with in mind. It seems this is the best possible test case, so…

• Recently, Firefox 38.0.5 Beta has been released, bringing a bunch of new features. While the first Beta version of Firefox 39 was expected, Mozilla has released a new Beta version for Firefox 38, which is unexpected and does not happen too often.

Funding

• On 27th April, 2015 with the announcement of selected students for GSoC 2015, my upcoming adventurous summer was set to begin.

BSD

• For DragonFlyBSD users out there, the swap device with the latest Git kernel can now be encrypted.

• It’s trivial with the newest DragonFlyBSD code as of this weekend to support an encrypted swap. The commit by DragonFlyBSD founder Matthew Dillon explains, “Implement crypting of the swap device. When enabled in this manner /dev/urandom is used to generate a 256-bit random key and the base device is automatically cryptsetup and mapped, making crypted swap trivial. Implement the ‘crypt’ fstab option, so swapon -a and swapoff -a work as expected for crypted swap. Again, the base device (e.g. /dev/da0s1b) should be specified. The option will automatically map it with cryptsetup and swap on the mapping.”

• An interview with George Neville-Neil about the recently published 2nd edition of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System.

• PC-BSD 10.1.2 was released today as the latest quarterly update to the FreeBSD-derived operating system.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Maintenance and minor feature enhancements.

Public Services/Government

• Using open source in school greatly reduces the time needed to troubleshoot PCs, shows the case of the Colegio Agustinos de León (Augustinian College of León, Spain). In 2013, the school switched to using Ubuntu Linux for its desktop PCs in class rooms and offices. For teachers and staff, the amount of technical issues decreased by 63 per cent and in the school’s computer labs by 90 per cent, says Fernando Lanero, computer science teacher and head of the school’s IT department.

Openness/Sharing

• While the mechanical and green part of the build is exactly what you would expect from something designed from hardware store parts, the electronics are rather interesting. All the plants in either a hydroponic or dirt-based setup will have their moisture level and PH monitored by a a set of electronics that push data up to the cloud.

Open Data

• The Montenegrin Centre for Democratic Transition (CDT) is to develop a mobile app that citizens can use to ask government agencies for data of public interest. The Centre is one of four winners of the Technology for Citizen Engagement competition, organised by the Cyprus office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Mahallae, a “digital neighbourhood for civic engagement developed by Cypriot civil society and innovators from the Euro-Mediterranean region”.

Open Hardware

• As I worked on the concept, I decided I needed some printed circuits (PCB). The main motivation here was to be able to run some workshops at the local Java User Group, where people would solder the board and then program it.

Programming

• As a Solution-level member of the Eclipse Foundation, Azul will be actively participating in the Eclipse Foundation’s IoT working group. Azul’s latest open source offering, Zulu Embedded, provides developers and manufacturers in the embedded, mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) markets with a robust, flexible open source alternative to traditional embedded Java implementations. Zulu Embedded is particularly relevant to organisations that require customisable, multiplatform, reduced-footprint, and standards compliant Java SE runtimes and development solutions. Launched in March 2015, Zulu Embedded is already installed in over 2 million devices worldwide.

Leftovers

• House-hunters scouting north London’s most rarefied streets once had a simple wish list for their perfect home: a south-facing garden, parking space for a 4×4, room to expand into the loft. Throw in a good school and a walk to Hampstead Heath.

• But residents in Dartmouth Park now have an extra demand: pitch blackness outside their bedroom walls when the sun goes down. In fact, conservation groups have become so worried about the “quality of darkness” in their area at night that they have asked for town planners to consider how it can be protected when new home improvement applications are sent to Camden Council.

• The Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Advisory Committee, a group of local residents and conservationists who examine all homeowner planning applications for work, insists that its neighbourhood is “semi-rural”, regardless of its inner London postcode, and that the night-sky darkness must be protected.

Science

• It is a question that keeps some parents awake at night. Should children be allowed to take mobile phones to school? Now economists claim to have an answer. For parents who want to boost their children’s academic prospects, it is no.

• The effect of banning mobile phones from school premises adds up to the equivalent of an extra week’s schooling over a pupil’s academic year, according to research by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy, published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

Security

• Did Chris Roberts hack a plane? Possibly. Did he hack a plane such that he could gain access to critical flight systems from the comfort of his seat, and possibly even alter the plane’s movement during the flight itself? Possibly.

• The entire affair came into the public eye when Roberts sent a now-famous tweet from a United Airlines flight on April 15: “Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? “PASS OXYGEN ON” Anyone ? :)”

• The first response to that tweet—”…aaaaaand you’re in jail. :)”—didn’t quite happen, as Roberts has yet to be charged with a crime for his alleged security probing. According to Roberts, he never connected his laptop to any Seat Electronic Box (SEB) on that specific flight, the means by which he could probe the plane’s networks and, possibly, its control systems. FBI agents, noticing that the SEBs under the seats where Roberts had been sitting showed signs of tampering, didn’t seem to believe him.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• The police and Royal Navy are hunting for a whistleblower who is on the run after publishing a dossier of alleged security failings on board Trident nuclear submarines.

• Able Seaman William McNeilly, 25, a newly qualified engineer, claimed that Britain’s nuclear deterrent was a “disaster waiting to happen” in a report detailing 30 alleged safety and security breaches.

• He wrote that a chronic manpower shortage meant that “it’s just a matter of time before we’re infiltrated by a psychopath or a terrorist; with this amount of people getting pushed through”.

• The Ministry of Defence has launched an investigation into the claims, published in a 19-page report titled The Secret Nuclear Threat, which it said contained a “number of subjective and unsubstantiated personal views … with which the Naval Service completely disagrees”.

• A security official said that the drone fired two missiles at a ‘hideout’.

• “Six militants were killed and two injured in the attack,” he said.

• The death toll is feared to rise as those injured in drone attacks seldom survive.

• Three of the five were reported to be ethnic Uzbeks, and Pakistani officials dubbed the house destroyed in the strike a “suspected Taliban compound.”

• [...]

• The US claims to have a secret “understanding” with Pakistan on such drone strikes, something that was reached back during the Musharraf junta, but the Sharif government has denied any such deals.

• The family of an American captive killed in a drone strike said Wednesday it would welcome the creation of a hostage czar to coordinate government efforts to free those held.

• Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., introduced legislation last week to set up a “czar,” soon after President Barack Obama apologized for a drone strike in January that accidentally killed Warren Weinstein of Maryland and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian citizen. The strike targeted an al-Qaida compound along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

• Rep John Delaney has introduced legislation that he hopes would enable the government to better coordinate its efforts to rescue Americans captured overseas.

• The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and several other human rights groups are asking President Obama to begin investigating all civilian deaths and injuries resulting from U.S. counterterrorism drone strikes and to make the results of those investigations public.

• Following President Obama’s acknowledgement that a US drone strike killed an Italian and US citizen held in Pakistan, and his announcement of an independent investigation into the strike, a group of human rights organisations have urged the President to do the same for other US drone strikes in which civilians were killed.

• In January, a barrage of American missiles struck a suspected Al Qaeda hideout in Pakistan. Unbeknownst to intelligence officials, however, American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, both kidnapped aid workers, were held hostage inside and died in the attack. Then three weeks ago, after a preliminary investigation, President Obama did something wholly unprecedented in his global war of “targeted killings”: he stepped up to a podium in the White House and apologized to Weinstein and Lo Porto’s families.

• There were reports of continued ground fighting in some areas, with security officials and witnesses saying fierce combat broke out about a half hour after the cease-fire began when rebels tried to storm the southern city of Dhale, firing tank shells, rockets and mortars. But no airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition battling the rebels were reported.

• At least 17 suspected Taliban members died in a US drone strike in eastern Afghanistan, sources from the police and NATO told Efe news agency on Tuesday.

• Unknown drone has crashed in a remote area in South-Western Somalia as cause of the crash is still unclear, Horseed Media reports.

• Locals in Somalia’s Burhakaba city told Anadolu Agency that the drone crashed in the nearby Bashir town earlier on Sunday.

• The Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabaab on Sunday said it has captured a drone which fell down in the Bay region of Somalia.

• The militants said they were in possession of the drone which they claimed belonged to the United States after it came down near El Bashir village.

• But does his death put an end to terrorism? No. In fact, ever since America’s drone campaign reached Yemen, al-Qaeda’s presence in the Arabian Peninsula has intensified, which has sparked debate concerning the counter productivity of drone warfare. The Washington Post reported a doubling of AQAP core insurgents in Yemen since the first strike in 2009. Theorists argue the reason for the amplification of terrorism in drone-affected regions stems from exacerbated anti-Americanism, which each drone strike ultimately spurs on.

• In a May 11 letter to U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the bishops said leaders should consider the “full cost” of drone warfare.

• “Drones provoke anxiety among populations where there are targets, inflicting psychological damage on innocent civilians who live in constant fear they may be hurt or killed and listed as ‘collateral damage.’ This fear and civilian casualties feed into increasing hostility towards the United States so that many say the use of armed drones in these targeted killings is counterproductive to establishing and sustaining longer-term security relationships with countries where drones are used,” they said.

• Armed drone technology has the potential for “much harm,” the bishops continued. More countries are acquiring drones and government spending on the technology is rapidly increasing.

• Armed drones may be used excessively due to their low initial costs, the bishops warned. This risks expanding conflict zones and increasing the likelihood for war. The use of surveillance drones by China, Japan and the Philippines have worsened tensions over disputed territories.

• The decision by India’s National Disaster Response Force to use drones to help Nepal map the scale of devastation caused by last month’s earthquake indicates how India has enthusiastically taken to these pilot-less aircraft — the so-called eyes in the sky.

• With 22.5 per cent the world’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imports, between 1985 and 2014, India ranks first among drone-importing nations, followed by United Kingdom and France. UAVs, or drones as they are commonly known, are pilotless aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence gathering and aerial combat missions.

• With 22.5 percent the world’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imports, between 1985 and 2014, India ranks first among drone-importing nations, followed by United Kingdom and France. UAVs, or drones as they are commonly known, are pilotless aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence gathering and aerial combat missions.

• Rather than make vague and contradictory statements about the success of drone strikes in eliminating the jihadi threat, journalists should concentrate on the concrete damage drones are doing to both US security and rule of law. It is necessary and natural that a nation that opposes tyranny and advocates for the rule of law would examine the danger inherent in giving the president the power to determine life and death based on questionable intelligence. But the Post confirms without a hint of indignation that signature strikes “do not require a finding that the targets pose an imminent threat to the United States, though they must still involve a judgment of ‘near certainty’ that no civilians will be killed.” In the least US citizens should demand what “near certainty” means and to whom the term “civilian” applies. The slope becomes very slippery when the president labels those targeted and all military age males collaterally killed as terrorists. A 2014 analysis conducted by The Guardian found that 41 targeted drone assassinations had led to 1,147 deaths. Contrary to limiting the terrorist problem, these numbers would indicate that terrorist ranks might be filled with those seeking revenge against arbitrary US assault.

• Though U.S. media didn’t make much of it, Malala made a point of emphasizing that drone strikes fuel terrorism.

• Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain says the panel will include language that would shift America’s armed drone program to the Pentagon, rather than leave the matter to the full chamber.

• [...]

• “I think it should be conducted [with] oversight and administered by the Depart­ment of Defense. I don’t believe the drone program ought to be run out by the CIA,” McCain said, adding it “should be operated exclusively out of the Pentagon.”

• Britain’s Royal Air Force carried out 301 Reaper drone missions over Iraq between the start of UK operations against Isis last September and the end of March, firing a total of 102 Hellfire missiles on 87 separate occasions, according to new Ministry of Defence figures.

• The numbers were obtained by the Drone Wars UK organisation, which also reveals today that RAF Tornados carried out 115 strikes in Iraq during the same period.

• How could this be? How could the loss of capable and charismatic leaders not degrade their group? The answer may lie in a little-known study carried out in Iraq in 2007 by a small semisecret unit, the Combat Operations Intelligence Center. Targeting “high value individuals” was the principal U.S. strategy in Iraq, and the COIC analysts were interested to see whether it worked. They took the list of 200 “IED cell leaders” eliminated between June and October 2007 and looked at the results.

• At least 10 people were killed in overnight battles between Houthis and militiamen in the Yemeni city of Taiz, residents and medical sources said on Sunday.

• The United Nations envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, called on a Saudi-led military coalition and the country’s warring parties to extend by five more days a ceasefire set to expire on Sunday evening.

• HONOLULU (AP) – Smoke and fire rushed from a crash site in Hawaii after a U.S. Marine Osprey went down in a “hard landing,” killing one Marine and injuring 21 other people, some critically.

• Macedonia said on Sunday its police had wiped out a group of ethnic Albanian veterans of insurgencies in ex-Yugoslavia in a day-long gun battle that left at least 22 dead and deepened fears of instability following months of political crisis.

• The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) is an enigma: most of what we know about it comes from the brutal media apparatus of the IS itself. It lets everyone see executions and war the terrorists are waging – but still, how does life go under jihadist rule? One man decided to find out for himself, spending 10 days in the ‘capital city’ of the IS and coming back alive. Today, investigative journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer tells his story to Sophie Shevardnadze.

• Army says it shot down a reconnaissance aircraft after residents report hearing explosions near military site

• Arab media has cited the Sudanese army as saying it shot down an Israeli drone in the Valley of the Prophet whilst Israel claimed it had no knowledge of such an incident.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• THE worst recorded drought in California’s history has forced state regulators to restrict people’s water use by a quarter. In the long-run, though, climate change and limited supply mean the state must radically change the way it manages water, particularly below ground.

Finance

• Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that the Senate would pass legislation aimed at facilitating pending trade agreements being sought by the Obama administration.

• Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday that an effort to give President Obama the ability to fast-track trade deals his administration is currently negotiating is moving along.

• “We will have the votes. We’re doing very well. We’re gaining a lot of steam and momentum,” Ryan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

• The U.S. Senate advanced the Fast Track bill today in a rushed vote following a slew of concessions made to swing Democrats who had voted to block it earlier this week. The setback on Tuesday could have forced proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and other secretive, anti-user trade agreements to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new bill. Unfortunately, Senate leaders were able to get around this impasse within 48 hours by agreeing to let Democrats vote on some other trade-enforcement measures first before holding the vote on Fast Track.

• CEO Obama rules Plutocracy through fear, intimidation and secrecy.

Privacy

• When I was working with the Guardian on the Snowden documents, the one top-secret program the NSA desperately did not want us to expose was QUANTUM. This is the NSA’s program for what is called packet injection–basically, a technology that allows the agency to hack into computers.

• From TVs that listen in on us to a doll that records your child’s questions, data collection has become both dangerously intrusive and highly profitable. Is it time for governments to act to curb online surveillance?

• A Belgian watchdog has urged all Internet users to download privacy software specifically to shield themselves from Facebook’s grasp.

• The social network has been under fire for the ways in which it tracks user and non-user behaviour online, without consent, most recently becoming the target of a Europe-wide lawsuit headed up by activist Max Schrems.

• The UK government has quietly passed new legislation that exempts GCHQ, police, and other intelligence officers from prosecution for hacking into computers and mobile phones.

• While major or controversial legislative changes usually go through normal parliamentary process (i.e. democratic debate) before being passed into law, in this case an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act was snuck in under the radar as secondary legislation. According to Privacy International, “It appears no regulators, commissioners responsible for overseeing the intelligence agencies, the Information Commissioner’s Office, industry, NGOs or the public were notified or consulted about the proposed legislative changes… There was no public debate.”

• Privacy International also suggests that the change to the law was in direct response to a complaint that it filed last year. In May 2014, Privacy International and seven communications providers filed a complaint with the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), asserting that GCHQ’s hacking activities were unlawful under the Computer Misuse Act.

Civil Rights

• Students could bring a small toy gun to school, point their finger like a gun or — yes — even brandish “a partially consumed pastry or other food item to simulate a firearm” under a bill that has two steps to go before becoming law in Nevada.

• An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced former President Mohammed Morsi and 120 others to death for a mass prison break in 2011 that saw Hosni Mubarak, who was president at that time, being ousted from power. Most of the others accused in the case were tried in absentia. The next hearing of the case was set for June 2, with Judge Shaaban el-Shami’s decision being referred to the country’s Grand Mufti for a non-binding opinion. Morsi, the first democratically elected President of the country, was removed from power by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in July 2013.

• The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that an annual march to celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem, scheduled for May 17, can proceed as planned despite fears of anti-Arab violence. At the same time, the justices said the police must arrest and indict anyone who shouts racist slogans. Two dovish Israeli organizations had petitioned the court, asking them to change the route of the march, which celebrates Israel’s “reunification” and annexation of east Jerusalem in 1967. In past years there has been nationalistic violence and most Palestinians are forced to close their shops and stay inside their homes. Last year, clashes broke out when masked Palestinian youths attacked police officers with stones and then barricaded themselves inside the al-Aqsa mosque. Israel says that east Jerusalem is part of its united capital, while Palestinians say that east Jerusalem must be the future capital of a Palestinian state.

• By the end of July during last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip, more than 3,000 Palestinians crowded into a United Nations-run elementary school in Jabaliya, a northern Gaza town. They had moved there for temporary shelter after the Israeli military warned them to leave their homes.

• An hour before dawn on July 30, explosions shook the classrooms and the courtyard, all packed with people.

• Mahmoud Jaser was camped outside with his sons.

• “We were sleeping when the attack started. As we woke up, it got worse,” he said.

• Shrapnel hit Jaser in the back. Three of his sons were also hurt. About 100 people were injured overall. Almost 20 were killed.

• The United States acknowledged before the UN Monday that it has not done enough to uphold civil rights laws, following a string of recent killings of unarmed black men by police.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• China and Russia have made little attempt to hide their geopolitical ambitions. Militarily, each has asserted a right to terrain not recognized as theirs. Economically, the two have designs on gaining a greater foothold in the world marketplace, Western roadblocks be damned.

• And while an unprecedented pact not to deploy network hackers against each other may prove largely symbolic, it’s yet another glaring sign of the two countries’ shared desire to shake up a world order largely dominated by the U.S. since the end of World War II.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Developers considering adding a torrent search engine to their portfolio should proceed with caution, especially if they value their income streams. Following a complaint from the MPAA one developer is now facing a six month wait for PayPal to unfreeze thousands in funds, the vast majority related to other projects.

• The RIAA continues to reduce its workforce, which has been slashed in half in just five years. According to the organization’s latest tax return the RIAA now employs 55 people. The group’s top three executives account for a quarter of all salaries paid, including several sizable bonuses.

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