● 06.04.15

● Links 4/6/2015: Sourceforge Hijacks Nmap Account, IBM Acquires BlueBox

Posted in News Roundup at 5:32 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• If you fancy an affordable computer, this offer from HP and Ebuyer will net you a laptop for as little as £98.98. That buys you a fully featured and pretty decent laptop.

• There’s a couple of caveats. The laptop, a HP 255 G3, runs on Ubuntu rather than Windows 8.1 (which you can upgrade for free to Windows 10).

Server

• Docker. It’s as if you cannot escape reading that name or hearing about the wonders of containers. The question is becoming common and the demand acute within the infrastructure hosting space: what are solutions that users can easily utilize when it comes to deploying and managing Docker environments?

• [...]

• We started to run into this gotcha with some containers requiring environment variables, links, or volumes to be created at run time, yet very little information on those requirements being there in the first place (except in the Dockerfile if present) and no real way to automatically suck them in. While this isn’t a direct Docker issue, it does cause headaches and, at times, bewilderment as to why a container just isn’t spinning up, or has inherited an environment variable that we were expecting to be blank. We also saw issues where some pre-built containers — even those from official repositories such as MySQL — set default values for optional environment variables in the container, yet the user is unaware as to what is optional, what is required, and what has a predefined value that probably should be changed, e.g. password handling in MySQL.

• When it comes to the public cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the clear winner today. Outside of the public cloud, the winner on the private side is also clear and it’s the open-source OpenStack cloud platform.

• Simply put, no other cloud technology platform is as widely supported or deployed as OpenStack. OpenStack got its start in 2010 as a joint effort of NASA and Rackspace and in the last five years has grown well beyond its origins. The biggest names in technology now all support OpenStack. HP, IBM, Intel, Cisco, Dell, EMC, VMware, Symantec, Huawei and Yahoo are among its members.

• With our shared vision, me and Walton created the Cyberunions podcast. We began before—but in the same year as—the Occupy movement. We discussed in great detail software that we knew would be beneficial to the labor movement, as well as elements in the labor movement that free software communities could adopt. Walton and I had and continue to have visions of labor unions funding free software, but we also felt it was a struggle to convince a union to use free software, let alone support its development. The podcast has been around for a while now, though we have been bad about keeping it up to date as of late—but there are plans to bring it back.

Kernel Space

• The Linux Foundation partnership with edX platform is expanding, and users will now get the Essentials of Linux Systems Administration (LFS201) online course, which should help prepare the SysAdmins of tomorrow.

• Jon Masters tells us the latest in the Linux kernel community, as the merge window for Linux 4.1 closes and work begins towards Linux 4.2

• “Automakers are not terribly happy with the idea of a single vendor’s proprietary platform dominating what many believe will be a huge commercial opportunity,” said tech analyst Charles King. “Automotive Grade Linux offers them a workable, flexible alternative. That is great for the industry as a whole, and should also inspire healthy competition that will result in benefits for consumers.”

• The latest controversy coming out of the systemd camp is an announcement this week that they’re effectively deprecating their FreeDesktop.org-based infrastructure and looking to setup their workflow around GitHub.

• While KDBUS tried to be included for Linux 4.1, it was ultimately rejected for this current Linux kernel development cycle. However, it looks like developers might be gearing up to try to push it into the Linux 4.2 kernel.

• Willy Tarreau, the maintainer of the 2.6 kernel series, has published earlier some details regarding the status of the LTS (Long Term Support) branch, informing users that it will reach end of life in the coming months.

Graphics Stack

• Wayland 1.8 along with the adjoining Weston compositor update were released over the night by Bryce Harrington of Samsung.

Benchmarks

• Yesterday I ran a set of interesting CPU-focused benchmarks on 45 of the Linux systems within my custom-built basement server room that represents many of the systems powering the upstream daily open-source testing at LinuxBenchmarking.com. The tests ran yesterday were primarily processor focused as not all of these computers/servers are equipped for handling GPU testing, etc. This article is basically to provide a look at many different old and new, low-end and high-end systems. The software stacks for the different systems vary based upon what they’re testing day-to-day within the server farm, so take these results as you wish. Most of the systems are running Ubuntu 14.04/14.10/15.04 with recent Linux kernel versions.

Applications

• Audacious is an open-source music player, having the features of a modern music player, including support for audio effects, equalizer, lyrics and plugins, visualization, support for Winamp skins and support for playlists organized in tabs.

• Not too long ago I did a short post on the Linux screenshot tool Shutter. While I still find Shutter to be a fantastic screenshot tool, I recently found myself wanting for some additional features. This led me to discover some nice alternative screenshot tools for Linux, namely Hotshots and Kaption. While I found Kaption to be rather nice and easy, I find it lacks the functionality and is a bit too dated (last updated in 2011) to be a realistic replacement for Shutter (It is still worth checking out though, you can find out how to install it here).

Proprietary

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• After several rounds, Hot Date announces that “YOU’RE THE BEST” and rolls credits before launching you right back into yet another date with the same identical dog, over and over until you finally give up and quit. There’s probably a metaphor there, but at least Hot Date has something going for it that real online and speed dating rarely does: adorable dogs. The game is pay-what-you-will for Windows, Mac and Linux users.

• Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty, a remake of the original Abe’s Oddysee, is a game developed by Just Add Water (Developments) and available on Steam for Linux. The game is now available for short time with a 40% discount.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• In later versions of Plasma 4, the Folder View widget adopted a special appearance when placed in a panel: It would arrange folder contents in a simple list instead of the usual icon grid. Folder View had to be rewritten completely for Plasma 5, and while there were various improvements along the way, the list view mode unfortunately went missing. Until now – on popular request, this feature will make a return soon in Plasma 5.4:

• Today, the KDE Community is happy to announce the release of KDE Applications 15.04.2.

• Exactly a month ago, on May 4, we reported that the Krita developers decided to do another Kickstarter campaign, after last year’s successful one, this time to rise €20,000 ($22,000) for making the next version of the application faster the Photoshop.

• A few hours ago, Krita’s fundraising campaign was successfully completed, raising a little over €30,000 ($34,000), which means that the developers will concentrate all of their efforts in making the open source digital painting app much faster than Photoshop.

• We ended with €30,520 on kickstarter and €3108 through paypal — making for a grand total of €33,628, and that means LOD, Animation and nine stretch goal. We’re so happy. It’s really an amazing result. So, thanks and hugs to all our supporters! And we promise to make Krita better and better — and better!

• This is a weekly update on my GSOC 2015 Project Integrate Cantor with LabPlot. As I mentioned in my last post that I will be starting my work with integration of UI of Cantor inside LabPlot. I would like to inform my fellow developers that I have integrated the UI successfully. I present the screenshots hereafter.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Cinnamon 2.6 was released yesterday and the developers have promised that it will be available in the supported Linux Mint flavors by the end of the month.

• Cinnamon 2.6 was released yesterday, bringing important changes like improved multi-monitor (with multi-panel) support, redesigned and reorganized system settings, a plugin manager for Nemo as well as various other changes which should bring improved responsiveness, load times and CPU usage.

Distributions

Red Hat Family

• Software security vulnerabilities are a fact of life. So is the subsequent publicity, package updates, and suffering service restarts. Administrators are used to it, and users bear it, and it’s a default and traditional method.

• On the other hand, in some circumstances the update & restart methods are unacceptable, leading to the development of online fix facilities like kpatch, where code may be surgically replaced in a running system. There is plenty of potential in these systems, but they are still at an early stage of deployment.

• In The Open Organization Jim Whitehurst decries this “‘Tom Sawyer’ model of collaboration,” in which organizations treat external communities as Tom treated his buddies: as gullible drones willing to work without any promise of reciprocation. It’s the model of collaboration at work in so many accounts of successful “crowdsourcing” efforts, where companies tap the creativity and wisdom of communities simply to further their own ends. It’s an approach that’s just not sustainable, Whitehurst writes. How many times could Tom expect his friends to work for him without receiving anything in return?

Fedora

• The biggest new for Fedora 23 is that blivet-gui will no longer require root privilegies for the GUI part. There are now two separate processes, one for the UI, running as a regular user and second one for the “backend”, running as root. But you’ll still need to provide your root password to start the backend (it isn’t a daemon). This feature is already finished and packaged in rawhide repos.

• [...]

• Other new features for Fedora 23 includes LVM thin-provisioning support and support for creating and managing LVM snapshots.

• Fedora 22 is out and it’s again the most quality release we’ve ever released. Our quality assurance is improving and on the developer side, we’re also trying to do our best heavily using ABRT retrace server to prioritize bugs that affect many users. Unfortunately while the quality of releases itself is improving, the quality of updates that follow the release is not.

• One of the main points regarding the functionality of the Fedora Hubs site is the idea that each user will have the ability both to become a member of various hubs, and also to subscribe to them. For easy access to these hubs, a list of the hubs each user ‘follows’ is collected sitewide in the header area of Fedora Hubs. The mockups in this post describe the ways that users will be able to customize their personal hub ‘bookmarks’.

• Sorry to spam your feeds today! I’m trying to collect all my thoughts about what I’ve been working on before the Fedora Hubs workshop tomorrow morning. Since my last post was pretty long, I’m combining these two different concepts I’ve been designing over the past week into one post. While both of them are at least as complex as the hub bookmarks, I ran into a lot fewer mental roadblocks when figuring it out, so I have fewer random thought tangents to explain away, so (hopefully!) this post will be a little shorter. (edit: It really wasn’t. Sorry!)

• Fedora Project was extremely proud to announce the release of the highly anticipated Fedora 22 Linux operating system, including all of its flavors, last week, on May 26, 2015.

• The Fedora 22 Linux operating system was released last week, and it is our great pleasure to introduce you guys today to its Server edition, which brings some awesome new features, and numerous under-the-hood improvements.

Debian Family

• The deadline for submitting proposals is approaching, with only 12 days left to submit your event by June 15th. Events submitted after that date might not be part of the official DebConf schedule.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Project Soli is a new project from Google that aims to integrate radar technology into a small chip that can be used to track hand motions, and from the looks of it, the engineers are using Ubuntu.

• Numerous Qt vulnerabilities have been identified and fixed in the Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems.

• They’re still not available in the States, but EU country citizens can get a bigger, better Ubuntu Linux smartphone: The Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition.

• 2015 is finally the year we’re getting to see full, production model Ubuntu Phones that everyone can have. Out of the gate it had a bit of a weak start, which you can read about in our review of the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, but a lot of the hardware issues we had look like to be somewhat addressed with the release of the BQ Aquaris E5 Ubuntu Edition.

• Canonical is planning to implement Whatsapp and Dropbox services straight into the OS, which would be at a much deeper level than just having the apps installed.

• TAIPEI: INTEL HAS ANNOUNCED an update to its Internet of Things (IoT) Gateway product family, which it says will help developers create and deploy more innovative and cost-effective IoT solutions for a more diverse range of markets, such as smart cities and the infrastructure that supports them.

• Nekhelesh Ramananthan, a renown Ubuntu Touch developer, has published some details about a developer contest with a brand-new Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition smartphone as a prize.

• Canonical are in talks with big services like Whatsapp, Dropbox to help integrate these services within the system rather than with dedicated apps. This reduces the porting costs in bringing these services to UT.

Flavours and Variants

• Clement Lefebvre has taken to the Linux Mint Segfault blog to announce the release of Cinnamon 2.6 (but you won’t get it if you don’t move to the next Linux Mint release.) The biggest part of the release has to be the optimisations made to the system to increase boot times for some users and that reduce the CPU usage by up to a staggering 40%.

Devices/Embedded

• TechNexion expanded its EDM computer-on-module line with models based on new Freescale i.MX6 SoCs, including one with the new, IoT-oriented i.MX6 UltraLite.

• TechNexion’s new EDM1-CF-IMX6UL, EDM1-CF-IMX6SX, and EDM1-CF-LS1021A COMs are implemented on the company’s ARM- and x86-compatible, SODIMM style “EDM” form factor, which uses a 314-pin MXM edge connector for plugging into carrier boards. All three modules conform to EDM’s smallest, 82 x 60mm EDM1 format, and use the standard’s Type 1 signal assignment option.

Phones

Tizen

• This could be Interesting. According to Samsung Insiders, the Samsung Z2 that we previously mentioned will now not ship, but instead the next Tizen based Samsung Smartphone will be the Samsung Z3. This device will be based on similar specifications as the Android Samsung Galaxy Core Prime, which is a quad core 4G LTE handset running a 1.2Ghz processor. One of the major differences between both handsets is that the Galaxy Prime Core has a 4.5-inch display and the Z3 will have a 5-inch display.

• Samsung SUHD TV are slowly spreading out all over the globe, and now they have reached the shores of Malaysia. The Samsung 2015 Line-up boasts nano-crystal technology and a SUHD re-mastering picture quality engine that delivers advances in contrast, brightness, colour reproduction and details.

Android

• While many OEM-specific UI layers and custom ROMs have offered it for quite some time, stock Android has never featured a “default app” management interface for some reason. This doesn’t really make much sense, considering Google introduced this whole default app thing to Android and it remains one of the OS’s nicest features.

• It’s taken awhile, but with Samsung and HTC both introducing theme support in their latest flagship devices, this whole “theme thing” could be finally catching on. In case you needed further proof, look no further than to Google who has apparently added limited support for themes in Android M. This is RRO (Runtime Resource Overlay), the same software Sony uses to theme up ROMs in their Xperia devices which has since been merged with AOSP.

• Following its release on iOS back in March, Periscope – the live video broadcast app – is now available for Android users. Owned by Twitter, this new form of social media looks set to take on the likes of Meerkat and bring live streaming into the mainstream. In this feature we’ll explain what Periscope is, how to use it, and why you’d want to.

• Samsung, HTC and LG have all added theme support in their latest flagship devices and it seems that themes could be catching on, with Google adding limited support for themes in its latest Android M OS. The theme engine uses the same Runtime Resource Overlay (RRO) that Sony uses to theme its ROMs in Sony Xperia handsets and has since been merged with AOSP.

• In the wearables war between Apple and Android, the Cupertino giant is winning when it comes to the most product shipped. But Android Wear’s ability to work independently of a smartphone give it a huge advantage.

• Late last week, I fired my up Mac’s Terminal, pecked out a few half-remembered commands, looked them up, typed them out more slowly and that was that. After a few moments of silent finger-crossing, I was the proud owner of a Nexus 6 running the Android M Developer Preview. I then did something I didn’t really expect to: I turned off my iPhone and made the snap decision to use Android M — unfinished as it is — as my main squeeze until Google I/O came to an end. The show’s long over by now, but I’ve still (mostly) left my iPhone off to see how this highly incomplete version of Android stands up in day-to day-use. And you know what? For something that’s very clearly a preview, it doesn’t make for a bad daily driver.

• Samsung is gearing up for another big Lollipop release ahead of the Android M release later this year. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Android 5.1.1 update is confirmed and there’s a chance that we’re just a few days away from its arrival.

Free Software/Open Source

• SoureForge has sworn off its ways of wrapping “unmaintained” code from open source projects in installers that offer bundled commercial products in the wake of objections raised by some open source communities. But one policy remains in effect—the takeover of project pages SourceForge’s staff decides are inactive, and assignment of ownership of those projects to staff accounts. One of the latest projects grabbed in this way is the Nmap security auditing tool.

• Hi Folks! You may have already read the recent news about Sourceforge.net hijacking the GIMP project account to distribute adware/malware. Previously GIMP used this Sourceforge account to distribute their Windows installer, but they quit after Sourceforge started tricking users with fake download buttons which lead to malware rather than GIMP. Then Sourceforge took over GIMP’s account and began distributing a trojan installer which tries to trick users into installing various malware and adware before actually installing GIMP.

• The state of affairs of enterprise IT is changing quickly. Open source will become a much higher percentage of every IT organization’s environment, given its advantages in terms of cost, control, and innovation. Likewise, open source skills will soon become a critical requirement, both for using open source wisely, but also in attracting the kind of talent necessary to compete in a Third Platform world.

• Actually, the very term “open source” suggests a more relaxed view on software sharing, having displaced its GPL-wielding free software cousins years back. Whereas a free sourceror wouldn’t be caught dead using anything other than (GNU) Linux, open sourcerors are happy to use whatever works.

Events

• That said, the next stop on the Magical Linux-y Tour will be in North Carolina — you’ll see the link in the upper right of this page — the SouthEast LinuxFest, known more commonly by its acronym SELF (FOSS Force is a Supporting Sponsor), takes place next weekend in Charlotte. For three days, June 12-14 to be precise, Jeremy Sands and the rest of the crew at SELF bring Linux, BSD and FOSS to what has lately become my favorite geographical location, by name: the GNU/South.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• The Rust programming language is an ambitious project in many ways. With the release of Rust 1.0 on May 15, one might ask, “What’s next?” Many words have been written about the technical aspects of how the Rust language achieves its goals of memory safety without garbage collection, but less has been discussed about the project itself and how it is structured. Open source projects are more than just code, and Rust is no exception.

SaaS/Big Data

• Piston gives Cisco more muscle around distributed systems and automated deployment, in addition to adding another level of infrastructure to the Cisco OpenStack private cloud.

• Datameer, which is billed as a big data insights platform for rapid data discovery, has announced new data governance capabilities for its native Hadoop environment. We’ve been reporting on indications that many enterprises are finding Hadoop, well, very hard to deploy and manage. Datameer acknowledges that Hadoop is complex to deploy and use effectively, and notes that “analysts and administrators alike need an easier way to navigate data pipelines that have been developed by multiple departments and participants, and involve multiple data sources.”

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The Document Foundation today released their annual report outlining their work for the year 2014. It was another banner year for the free office suite from donations to bugs fixed to community outreach. Every year TDF and LibreOffice continue to break previous records. TDF thanked everyone who contributed to their success including those with financial support.

• Next to Linux or Android, LibreOffice is one of the most active FLOSS projects in the world. Arguably, it is one of the keys to liberating the desktop from Wintel as the office suite is one of Wintel’s key lock-ins for business. With moves to create a web-based version and one for Android/Linux, the future is bright however IT diversifies. Anyone considering the cost of IT should look at the office suite. Almost everyone uses one.

CMS

• You can’t talk about open source content management systems without talking about WordPress, the most popular CMS on the planet.

• WordPress powers some of the largest websites in the world including CNN, Time magazine and Ted. According to W3tech, WordPress powers 23 percent of the top 10 million websites in the world.

Business

• It’s available as a free download from O’Reilly

Semi-Open Source

Public Services/Government

• Industry bodies US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry have urged the government to reconsider its push for open source software that will cut the cost of licensing from big companies such as Cisco, IBM and Oracle.

Openness/Sharing

• Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have decided to cooperate on their open government strategies and implementations. To begin with, they will share their national OGP work and jointly promote open data.

• The concept was an interactive video included in an HTML canvas. People could upload a photograph and an address (using OpenStreetMap assets), to show their support to Mozilla, and their image would show embedded during video viewing on the right coordinates in the drawn world map. The actual page which won is still up, with the interactive video version.

• [...]

• This all coupled with more GIMP, Blender, Ardour, Synfig, etc. improvements, we should soon be able to have a very powerful ecosystem on GNU/Linux for any kind of movie making and animation.

Open Data

• The University established a new data science major, which will be subsumed under LSA’s Statistics Department and the College of Engineering’s Division of Computer Science and Engineering. The new major will be available in Fall 2015 to both LSA and Engineering students.

Open Access/Content

• EL said that downloads of its ELA curriculum recently reached 3.2 million, an increase of 50 percent since last August. The organization will also deliver professional development to 600 teachers and administrators throughout the district, starting this summer.

Open Hardware

• I recall a senior medical doctor once saying that being a practitioner nowadays is much more difficult than ever before, because when people get diagnosed, they go home to search the web, and often come back with tough questions. Open hardware for physiological computing isn’t making it any easier, but it seems like that’s not a bad thing.

Leftovers

• It’s not the first time the two companies have collaborated on infotainment. Back in 2011, Ford and Toyota inked a deal that saw them work together on next-gen standards for dashboard tech, including making it not only smarter but safer to use on the move.

• Announced back in December, SYNC 3 sees Ford step away from the Microsoft system of older SYNC versions and instead use a QNX-based platform.

Hardware

• The chip designer also reportedly is looking to buy another security technology vendor to bulk up its expertise in the Internet of things.

Security

• In yet another testament of the awful state of home router security, a group of security researchers uncovered more than 60 vulnerabilities in 22 router models from different vendors, most of which were distributed by ISPs to customers.

• It notes that Western Digital hard drives are cloud-enabled now and are transferring data to insecure cloud servers, and it cites the fact that a survey of more than 500 IT and security professionals found that 23 percent of respondents have no mitigating control over users connecting unauthorized devices to networks.

Transparency Reporting

• That means that as well as offering the US marginal economic benefits at best, TPP might also damage its chances of engaging meaningfully with China. Sadly, it’s probably too much to hope that US politicians will pay much attention to either point once the next round of Congressional haggling over TPA starts again.

Finance

• There are two problems with this complaint. First, it is factually wrong, or at least misleading. The weak price performance of lower-cost homes depends very much on the time window being considered. If homeowners bought near the peak of the bubble, which disproportionately affected lower-income neighborhoods, then their prices would still be depressed; however, if they bought before the bubble, they would be doing quite well.

• When eBay cuts PayPal loose this summer, users of the new digital money giant will find they’ve agreed to new terms of service that take effect July 1. Those terms include PayPal giving itself the right to robocall or robo-text members at any phone number the firm can find, for just about any reason — from debt collecting to advertisements to opinion polling.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will address the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in San Diego this July.

• Today putative liberal and mustachioed wonker Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 6/3/15) did what he does best: take something vaguely topical and use it as a hook to promote whatever topic he and his billionaire friends want to propagandize that week.

• Whether it’s advocating collective punishment of Ukrainians to push his CEO friend’s “Green Energy” IPO during its quiet period, or unironically floating the idea of arming ISIS to demagogue Iran, it’s a tried and true formula for America’s most tedious Important Person.

Censorship

• Hoping to find out more about the secret Internet censorship plans Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood was pushing, Google is now taking the MPAA to court. After several subpoenas remained largely unanswered, the search giant is now asking a New York federal court to ensure that the MPAA other parties hand over the requested information.

Privacy

• The US has dramatically limited the powers of its spy agencies, just as the UK gears up to hugely increase what its own can do.

• The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act last night, placing new restrictions and oversight on the way that the country’s National Security Agency can spy on citizens, in what was hailed as a victory for privacy campaigners and a direct result of the Snowden leaks.

• But in the UK, lawmakers are getting ready to pass into law the “Snoopers’ Charter” — which among other things imposes that internet service providers must store information on their users so that intelligence agencies can access them. After the majority Conservative government was elected, the Draft Communications Bill could include even more powers, with David Cameron having threatened to ban or reduce the encryption that is used to keep data secure.

• The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act today by 67-32, marking the first time in over thirty years that both houses of Congress have approved a bill placing real restrictions and oversight on the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers. The weakening amendments to the legislation proposed by NSA defender Senate Majority Mitch McConnell were defeated, and we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law. Technology users everywhere should celebrate, knowing that the NSA will be a little more hampered in its surveillance overreach, and both the NSA and the FISA court will be more transparent and accountable than it was before the USA Freedom Act.

• Mozilla recently announced it’s support for the USA Freedom Act alongside allies like the EFF, but the EFF also ended up withdrawing its support because of deficiencies in the legislation and a recent opinion from an appeals court.

• I think Mozilla should have withdrawn its support on this still flawed bill because while it did push forward some important reforms it still extended flawed sections of the law that infringe on individual’s civil liberties such as Section 206 “Roving Wiretap” authority program. This program essentially allows the FBI access to any phone line, mobile communications or even internet connections a suspect may be using without ever having to provide a name to anyone. This is clearly not good legislation because it allows overreach and lacks a requirement that communications or accounts being tapped are tied to the subject. While this is just one example there are many other provisions that allow intelligence and law enforcement agencies to continue their spying, just not as broadly as before.

Civil Rights

• Coulson lied about phone hacking in the Sheridan trial. Coulson has form. “Lord” David Burn also has form. He was part of the Megrahi “defence” team of advocates who failed to ask a score of glaringly obvious questions about the holes in the prosecution case and payment of witnesses in the fit-up of the century. The Scottish legal establishment is a sewer.

• President Obama has confidence in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) despite the ease with which undercover agents were able to smuggle explosives into airports, the White House said Tuesday.

• “The president does continue to have confidence that the officers of the TSA do very important work that continues to protect the American people,” press secretary Josh Earnest said.

• President Obama’s argument that Democrats should trust his vision on trade is falling flat on Capitol Hill.

• Democrats — even some of Obama’s closest allies — say it’s not enough for the president to pronounce his trade agenda the most progressive in history.

• The lawmakers want assurances that the agreements under negotiation, particularly a huge deal being finalized with Pacific Rim nations, will protect U.S. jobs — assurances many say they simply haven’t gotten.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• The Council of the European Union has been blocking for weeks the principle of Net Neutrality and its entrenching in the legislation. As the European Parliament refuses for now to give in to pressure from Member States and the powerful telecom lobbies, the negotiations held last night, which brought together delegations from the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission, were therefore unsuccessful. The EU Parliament must keep on refusing any agreement that would undermine a thorough protection of the Net neutrality principle.

DRM

• Jason Scott knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the preservation of digital software. At the Internet Archive, he’s collected thousands of classic games, pieces of software, and bits of digital ephemera. His sole goal is making those things widely available through the magic of browser-based emulation.

• Compared to other types of archaeology, this kind of preservation is still relatively easy for now. While the magnetic and optical disks and ROM cartridges that hold classic games and software will eventually be rendered unusable by time, it’s currently pretty simple to copy their digital bits to a form that can be preserved and emulated well into the future.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Kim Dotcom has booked a significant victory in his battle against U.S. efforts to seize assets worth millions of dollars. In a decision handed down this morning, Justice Ellis granted Dotcom interim relief from having a $67m forfeiture ordered recognized in New Zealand. Dotcom informs TF that the victory gives his legal team new momentum.

• Following a European trend, the Russian telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor has ordered local ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. Without a separate court order, two domain names of the popular torrent site have been added to the national blocklist.

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