● 08.29.15

● Links 29/8/2015: NetworkManager 1.0.6, Systemd Merges “su” Command Replacement

Posted in News Roundup at 7:12 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Kernel Space

Benchmarks

• Liam has done his initial port reports and such so it’s my turn to feed you some information. I’m once again putting my GTX 760 against the R7 370 to see what kind of performance we can expect from Company of Heroes 2.

Applications

• Lubomir Rintel informs users about the release and immediate availability for download of the sixth maintenance version of the open-source NetworkManager network connection management utility for GNU/Linux operating systems.

• As we all know, there are is no doubt that Linux has tremendous support for Virtualization. There are so many virtualization softwares available including VMWare, VirtualBox, OpenVZ, XEN, KVM, Docker and the list goes. These software are mainly for intermediate and advanced Linux users. If you’re a beginner and having very little knowledge in Virtualization, then it is bit difficult to use the above mentioned tools. You may, probably, need an Intermediate or an expert user’s help. I bet you what? you don’t need anyone help. Yes. Meet Gnome Boxes, a beginner friendly, lightweight, graphical tool that makes virtualization lot easier.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Developed by Relic Entertainment and previously published by SEGA for PC, Company of Heroes 2 is also available now for Mac and Linux via Steam, with the Mac App Store version to follow shortly afterwards, Feral Interactive announced.

• Carmageddon: Reincarnation is a game developed by the same team that made the first title all the way back in 1997. They have already released the game on Windows, and they plan to make it available for Linux users as well.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The K Desktop Environment (KDE) is one of the earliest Linux desktop environments, dating all the way back to 1996, predating even the popular GNOME desktop environment, which was started in 1999. On Aug. 25, the core KDE desktop, Plasma, got an incremental update to version 5.4 that builds on the innovations that the first Plasma 5 release introduced in July. Among the many changes that users will notice with Plasma 5.4 are more than 1,400 new icons for all KDE applications, providing a more streamlined, modern look and feel to the desktop. Also new to Plasma 5.4 is an optional Application Dashboard that provides a different way to open up applications. Finding an application, or anything else on the KDE desktop, is also improved by way of enhanced search history in the integrated KRunner search tool that is part of the desktop. Plus, the 5.4 update now provides initial support for the Wayland display server that is intended to be a replacement for the decade-old X-Window server. KDE as a desktop environment is available on multiple Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE. In this slide show, eWEEK examines some of the key features of the KDE Plasma 5.4 desktop.

• To start with, KDE sprints are intensive sessions centered around coding. They take place in person over several days, during which time skillful developers eat, drink and sleep code. There are breaks to refresh and gain perspective, but mostly sprints involve hard, focused work. All of this developer time and effort is unpaid. However travel expenses for some developers are covered by KDE. KDE is a frugal organization with comparatively low administrative costs, and only one paid person who works part time. So the money donated for sprints goes to cover actual expenses. Who gets the money? Almost all of it goes to transportation companies.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Tarballs are due on 2015-08-31 before 23:59 UTC for the GNOME 3.17.91 beta release, which will be delivered on Wednesday. Modules which were proposed for inclusion should try to follow the unstable schedule so everyone can test them. Please make sure that your tarballs will be uploaded before Monday 23:59 UTC: tarballs uploaded later than that will probably be too late to get in 3.17.91. If you are not able to make a tarball before this deadline or if you think you’ll be late, please send a mail to the release team and we’ll find someone to roll the tarball for you!

• Allan Day, a GNOME UX designer working for Red Hat and renowned GNOME developer/contributor, opened an interesting discussion on the official GNOME mailing list, about possible codenames for upcoming releases of the acclaimed desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems.

Distributions

New Releases

• 4MParted, a Linux distribution based on the 4MLinux and GParted, is now at version 13.1 Beta and is ready for download and testing.

Red Hat Family

• One of the S&P 500’s big winners for Wednesday August 26 was Red Hat Inc. (RHT) as the company’s stock climbed 5.93% to $73.05 on volume of 2.2 million shares.

• Hong-Kong based cloud service provider ReadySpace announced Thursday that it has joined the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider program. The new Red Hat partner program, launched in July, allows ReadySpace to deliver solutions based on Red Hat’s open source technologies.

• ReadySpace CEO David Loke said customers building on open source software and Linux servers had been asking for Red Hat solutions by name to run critical workloads in private and hybrid environments. The company will now offer private cloud build-outs, Linux infrastructure and PaaS solutions based on Red Hat.

Fedora

• One of the newest features outlined by Christian that is in Fedora 23 is the ability to properly use two or more monitors with vastly different DPIs. This means that if you have a High DPI monitor and a standard DPI monitor the window and text sizes will no longer be tiny (or large) on one monitor and not the other. When dragging windows between the monitors the window will automatically scale to work with the DPI of the screen they are on.

• Fedora Project, through Christian Schaller, was proud to report on the progress made for the next-generation Wayland display server that it might be used by default on the upcoming major release of the Fedora Linux operating system, Fedora 23.

• When it boots, you’ll be able to select Fedora 23’s Alpha release from the menus. The Workstation, Atomic, and Server images are available.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The first beta of the Wily Werewolf (to become 15.10) has now been released!

• This beta features images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Xubuntu and the Ubuntu Cloud images.

• Pre-releases of the Wily Werewolf are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu flavor developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting and fixing bugs as we work towards getting this release ready.

• Ubuntu continues to grow in popularity, not only with mainstream consumers, but also with Fortune 500 companies. Moreover, government and top notch education entities across the globe have realized they can save millions of USD, and invest funds more prudently for social programmes.

• We’ve recently written how Canonical is making Unity 8 act and looks like a proper Linux desktop, and developers have been quick to show us the progress.

• Ubuntu Touch is actually a Linux distribution and it’s easy to forget that sometimes. This means that most of the stuff you can do in the OS can be done from the terminal, including dialing a number, for example.

• In conclusion there is nothing which restricts people making derivatives of Ubuntu except the trademark, and removing branding is easy. (Even that is unnecessary unless you’re trading which most derivatives don’t, but it’s a sign of good faith to remove it anyway.)

• Which is why Mark Shuttleworth says “you are fully entitled and encouraged to redistribute .debs and .iso’s”. Lovely.

• Let’s have a pop quiz.

• The most popular desktop operating system is… Windows. Right.

• The most popular mobile operating system is… Android! Correct.

• And, the most popular operating system on the public cloud is… Ubuntu Linux.

• I use two desktop operating systems regularly — Windows 10 and Ubuntu. The former is on my main PC, while the latter came pre-installed on a laptop. I’ve always liked Ubuntu, but never enough to make it my primary OS. Because I spend my days writing about Windows it’s kind of a no brainer that I should immerse myself in Microsoft’s operating system.

• Canonical, through Martin Wimpress, announced just a few minutes ago the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta builds for opt-in flavors of the forthcoming Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system.

• Although it isn’t official, Ubuntu Core–the tiny Internet of Things version of Ubuntu–now runs on the Raspberry Pi 2. There are prebuilt binaries as well as instructions for how to roll your own, if you prefer. You can even access GPIO

• The makers of Mycroft, a device based on Raspberry Pi 2 that is governed by an AI and is capable of making your house a smart one, have just announced that they plan to release the voice recognition software to help users control their desktops.

• We wrote numerous articles related to the GPS Navigation app available for Canonical’s Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system, but the next release promises to bring even more features, as well as a major facelift.

• Canonical have announced that the latest Firefox 40.0.3 version has been made available in the repositories for the users of Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

• A second Hackathon has just been completed in China, and developers from all over the country came ready to play with Ubuntu and all sorts of gadgets.

• Recently there has been a flurry of concerns relating to the IP policy at Canonical. I have not wanted to throw my hat into the ring, but I figured I would share a few simple thoughts.

• In a recent posting, Canonical has tried new methods to appeal to Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) and cost conscious home users that they should switch to Ubuntu in lieu of Windows 10.

Flavours and Variants

• Canonical has announced the release of the first Beta build for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) opt-in flavors, which include the well-known Xubuntu distribution built around the lightweight Xfce desktop environment.

• The first Beta of Wily (to become 15.10) has now been released!

• As part of the release of Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) Beta 1 for opt-in flavors, the Ubuntu Kylin team had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta build of the upcoming Ubuntu Kylin 15.10 distro.

• The development team of the Lubuntu Linux operating system were among the last to announce the release of the first Beta build of the Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) release for opt-in flavors.

Devices/Embedded

• Advantech’s COM-like “MIO-3260″ Pico-ITX SBC runs Linux on a Bay Trail SoC and offers a PCIe/mSATA slot, MI/O expansion, and optional -40 to 85°C operation.

• This development board merges three different worlds: pure OS, microcontroller, and FPGA. For the first time, the best of these three technologies can be found in a single board, and can work together for an improved programming experience.

Phones

Tizen

• Unity, a development platform for creating multiplatform 3D and 2D games, has today finally been released for Linux as a 951Mb .deb file download. This is an Experimental Build, with future support not yet guaranteed and very much depends on user adoption and feedback.

Android

• After many delays, all four major mobile Linux alternatives to Android have finally arrived on smartphones. Mozilla’s Firefox OS was first out of the gate two years ago, followed by Jolla’s Sailfish OS, and this year they were joined by the first Ubuntu and Tizen phones. Yet, a fifth open source mobile Linux platform may have already eclipsed them all. The CyanogenMod flavor of Android is rapidly expanding from its role as the most popular alternative mobile phone mod for flashing onto Android phones to being a much sought after pre-installed OS.

• It’s been a little over a year since we the first crop of Android Wear smartwatches popped up around the time of Google I/O 2014. While many of us are expecting followups to some these devices by now (Samsung’s got a new Tizen powered smartwatch with a round face ready to go) it almost feels like we’re waiting on something. It could be that Android Wear’s biggest OEMs — Motorola, LG, ASUS, and Huawei — are planning to introduce their new round of smartwatches during this year’s IFA 2015.

• Samsung’s new smartphones and tablets might not offer enough to entice current iPhone and iPad users to switch, but they keep Samsung at the head of the class among Android gadget makers.

• The new Galaxy devices come weeks before comparable updates from Apple are expected. In a sense, if Samsung can’t beat the competition in sales, it can at least beat it to store shelves.

• Google has transformed Android search for apps and now displays the results in a pictorial, grid-like fashion. For instance, searching for “music apps” (either in Now or a browser) brings up the above grid, and clicking on a given app will take you straight to Google Play, as you’d expect. The feature, spotted by Android Police, appears to have rolled out over the last few days. Regular search results are still displayed below, but the grid images take up the entire first page, in much the same way as Google’s Knowledge Graph. It only works on Android, so far — doing a similar search on iOS yields a regular app list with the option to install.

• YouTube isn’t the only one to introduce a live-streaming app this week. Just days after YouTube Gaming was outed, Japan’s DeNA — a prolific producer of games itself — has entered the scene with its own take, called Mirrativ.

• The Huawei Watch, another nice-looking, round Android Wear smartwatch, is now up for preorder at Amazon. Pricing starts at $349 for a stainless steel model with black leather strap and goes all the way up to $799 for a gold-plated stainless steel watch with matching gold-plated steel band. That’s soundly Apple Watch territory, so it’ll be interesting to see what type of demand exists for an ultra-premium Android Wear device. Amazon says the Huawei Watch will begin shipping September 2nd.

Free Software/Open Source

• But most kanban board tools are multi-purpose, and you can also use them to track next actions, someday/maybe lists, or even just what groceries you need to pick up. The killer feature of almost all of them is the ability to share your boards with a team, allowing group collaboration and keeping everyone on the same page. When looking for an open source tool to fit my needs, I came across five great options and wanted to share a little bit from my experience with each.

• Amongst the top IT trends of the moment is the development of Linux Containers. Financial and technical investors, Linuxsoftware programmers and customers believe that Linux Containers will transform the way organisations manage their Linux environments from deployment to maintenance. A recent survey by Red Hat and Techvalidate says that 56% of the respondents plan to use Linux containers as vehicles for rolling out web and eCommerce over the next two years. The respondents included a number of Fortune 500 companies and public sector organisations. Any development in the world of e-Commerce is definitely worth taking a look.

• Among the benefits of OSS is that it is hardly ever a standalone product. Most OSS is built on other open-source projects. Because of the way it is licensed, these enhancements are then passed back to the open-source community, so the software constantly evolves.

• So, if such open-source technology is readily available, and has proved its scalability in webscale businesses, why reinvent the wheel?

• Open source is certainly more accepted in the enterprise, said Tony Lock, distinguished analyst at Freeform Dynamics. “It is suitable for all businesses, not just for webscale businesses.”

• Data backup is an essential, yet often neglected, part of running a successful small business.

• Your business is vulnerable to unstable power grids, hackers, failing hardware, new employees, and big-thumbed interns. The loss of your business contacts, contracts, employee data, tax and regulation compliance documents, work projects, images, and video could result in a costly disaster.

• The FCC has gotten behind a new platform that helps the deaf talk to each other over video link. The idea of Accessible Communications for Everyone, or ACE as it’s being called, is that it lets all kinds of different apps talk to each other. It’s kind of how you can email anyone without worrying what app they use, only for video, and text and audio, all together.

Events

• It’s NodeConf EU time again — the third annual gathering of what is hoped to be 400 of the top influencers in Node.js at Waterford Castle from September 6th to 9th.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• Google has announced that, beginning September 1, Chrome will no longer auto-play Flash-based ads in the company’s popular AdWords program

Mozilla

• Just a few minutes ago, Mozilla pushed the third hotfix update to its popular, open-source, and cross-platform Mozilla Firefox 40.0 web browser for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

SaaS/Big Data

• …the new owner just got itself a bunch of ex-NSA guys…

• Hortonworks, the big data company built on Hadoop, bought early-stage startup Onyara today. The company, which launched at the end of last year, has its roots in the NSA — yes that NSA.

• Hortonworks, a publicly traded company selling a commercial distribution of the Hadoop open-source big data software, announced today that it has acquired Onyara, an early-stage startup whose employees developed Apache NiFi, a piece of open-source software that was first used inside the National Security Agency (NSA).

• Whenever the Apache Software Foundation graduates an open source project to become a Top Level Project, it tends to bode well for the project. Just look at what’s happened with Apache Spark, for example.

• Now, the Foundation (ASF), which is the steward for and incubates more than 350 Open Source projects, has announced that Apache Lens, an open source Big Data and analytics tool, has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP).

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The Document Foundation has just revealed that LibreOffice 5.0.1 has been released, making this the first maintenance version for the new generation of the famous office suite.

• The Document Foundation today announced the first update to the milestone LibreOffice 5.0 released a few weeks ago. This is a bug fix release bringing over 75 commits since version 5.0 was unveiled August 5. It is recommended that those using the 5.0 branch upgrade their LibO installs with today’s update.

CMS

• From a consumer perspective, I’d like open source to be ubiquitous to the point of invisibility. Using recent Ubuntu distros, I’m always shocked at how professional the environment feels. Just five years ago, you’d need to hunt down drivers and do a bunch of fiddling to get basic things like a sound card working. Now there are so many pushbutton ways to deploy open source tech, from OSes to CMS distros on Pantheon to buying an Android-powered mobile phone.

• We’re not quite to the point where CMS users can feel like open source is transparent; there’s still a huge investment in vendors to give you the expertise to manage your Drupal or WordPress site, for example. But we’re closer than we were a decade ago, and that’s pretty exciting.

Business

Openwashing

• Salesforce’s splashy new UI, the Lightning Experience, is more than a pretty face. It was built with Aura, the company’s open source UI framework, available for use independent from Salesforce’s services.

• With Lightning — and Aura — Salesforce emphasizes how users can design applications that not only look great, but plug into more than Salesforce. Where, then, does Salesforce’s open source offering end with Aura, and where do its own services begin?

• Last year, when Infosys hired Abdul Razack to own the company’s platform division, he came with a mandate to use open source first. Eleven months on and Infosys Information Platform (IIP) is flourishing with 120 projects on the go, some proofs of concept, many moving to production, but with open source at their heart in most situations.

Funding

• Intel is investing $60 million in UAV firm Yuneec, whose prosumer “Typhoon” drones use Android-based controllers.

• Intel Corp. CEO Brian Krzanich and Yuneec International CEO Tian Yu took to YouTube to announce an Intel investment of more than $60 million in the Hong Kong based company to help develop drone technology. No more details were provided except for Krzanich’s claim that “We’ve got drones on our road map that are going to truly change the world and revolutionize the industry.” One possibility is that Intel plans to equip the drones with its RealSense 3D cameras (see farther below).

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Join the FSF and friends every Friday to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones.

Public Services/Government

• Earlier this year, Croatian political party Sustainable Development of Croatia (ORaH) published a new policy that encourages the government to pursue open source solutions, addresses the dangers of vendor lock-in, and insists on open document standards. Best of all, they did it the open source way.

Licensing

• But “free as in beer” isn’t really the point – huge numbers of corporate open-source users opt for paid commercial versions of open-source projects, for simplicity and support. And then there are all those various licenses that protect the openness of the software – GPL, Apache, Eclipse. But the good news is that, with very few exceptions, there aren’t many legal issues for the average company to worry about.

Openness/Sharing

• Estonia will be promoting its eResidency for online business in the United States. The country’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Information System Authority (RIA) want to launch a media campaign, hoping to reach potential users such as business developers and software developers.

• Portugal’s Agency for Administrative Modernisation (AMA) this summer added another 103 Espaços do Cidadão (Citizen Spots, or Citizen Places), where citizens can access eGoverment services using computer facilities managed by AMA and local public administrations. These access points offer users access to over 170 eGoverment services. Users will be assisted by local staff members, when needed.

Open Data

• Dutch government data should be made available for free to the public as much as possible. “Public agencies should change their attitude towards the publishing of open data,” the Dutch Minister of the Interior, Ronald Plasterk said. “They are often not aware of the value of the data they collect. Publishing should become a basic principle.”

Open Hardware

• Dr. Karu Sankaralingam, who led the team’s effort at the University of Wisconsin, where the project is based, says that building an open source or any other hardware project is bound to incur legal wrangling, in part because the IP almost has to be reused in one form or another. Generally, he says that for open source hardware projects like this one, the best defense is to use anything existing as a base but focus innovation on building on top of that. He says that to date, AMD has not been involved in the project beyond a few individuals offering some insight on various architectural elements. In other words, if the team is able to roll this beyond research and into any kind of volume, AMD will likely have words.

Leftovers

• Impossible to prepare for; unrelated to the job: jobseekers are facing tougher and weirder questions than ever in job interviews.

• Employers are turning to tricky questions to quickly sort through high numbers of candidates, so that only the very best shine through, according to Joe Wiggins, spokesman for Glassdoor in the UK.

• “Often it is to see how you react under pressure,” Wiggins said. “It’s to see what happens when the rug is pulled from under you – how do you prepare for the completely unexpected?”

Science

• Psychology has long been the butt of jokes about its deep insight into the human mind – especially from the “hard” sciences such as physics – and now a study has revealed that much of its published research really is psycho-babble.

Hardware

• LG just announced the “Rolly,” a Bluetooth keyboard that folds up along the four rows of keys to create a wand-like device that can be tossed in a purse or pocket. LG is hardly the first electronics company to introduce a foldable, ultra-portable wireless keyboard — or even the first to introduce a gadget called the Rolly — but it might be the first to market either as a stick for your pocket.

Security

• This report describes an elaborate phishing campaign against targets in Iran’s diaspora, and at least one Western activist. The ongoing attacks attempt to circumvent the extra protections conferred by two-factor authentication in Gmail, and rely heavily on phone-call based phishing and “real time” login attempts by the attackers. Most of the attacks begin with a phone call from a UK phone number, with attackers speaking in either English or Farsi.

• The attacks point to extensive knowledge of the targets’ activities, and share infrastructure and tactics with campaigns previously linked to Iranian threat actors. We have documented a growing number of these attacks, and have received reports that we cannot confirm of targets and victims of highly similar attacks, including in Iran. The report includes extra detail to help potential targets recognize similar attacks. The report closes with some security suggestions, highlighting the importance of two-factor authentication.

• FireEye mobile researchers discovered a security vulnerability that allowed an iOS application to continue to run, for an unlimited amount of time, even if the application was terminated by the user and not visible in the task switcher. This flaw allowed any iOS application to bypass Apple background restrictions. We call this vulnerability Ins0mnia.

• It’s easy to laugh-and-point at Samsung over its latest smart-thing disaster: after all, it should have already learned its lesson from the Smart TV debacle, right?

• Except, of course, that wherever you see “Smart Home”, “Internet of Things”, “cloud” and “connected” in the same press release, there’s a security debacle coming. It might be Nest, WeMo, security systems, or home gateways – but it’s all the same.

• PayPal has patched a security vulnerability which could have been used by hackers to steal users’ login details, as well as to access unencrypted credit card information. A cross site scripting bug was discovered by Egyptian ‘vulnerabilities hunter’ Ebrahim Hegazy — ironically on PayPal’s Secure Payments subdomain.

• Grsecurity has existed for over 14 years now. During this time it has been the premier solution for hardening Linux against security exploits and served as a role model for many mainstream commercial applications elsewhere. All modern OSes took our lead and implemented to varying degrees a number of security defenses we pioneered; some have even been burned into silicon in newer processors. Over the past decade, these defenses (a small portion of those we’ve created and have yet to release) have single-handedly caused the greatest increase in security for users worldwide.

• Finland confirmed on Thursday it has detained a Russian citizen, Maxim Senakh, at the request of U.S. federal authorities on computer fraud charges, in a move that Russia calls illegal.

• Finnish authorities have confirmed the detention of Maxim Senakh, a Russian citizen accused of committing malware crimes in the US. The Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed concern and called on Finland to respect international law.

• Eighty-one percent of healthcare executives say their organizations have been compromised by at least one malware, botnet or other kind of cyberattack during the past two years, according to a survey by KPMG.

• The KPMG report also states that only half of those executives feel that they are adequately prepared to prevent future attacks. The attacks place sensitive patient data at risk of exposure, KPMG said.

• The 2015 KPMG Healthcare Cybersecurity Survey polled 223 CIOs, CTOs, chief security officers and chief compliance officers at healthcare providers and health plans.

• The top election official in Kansas has asked a Sedgwick County judge to block the release of voting machine tapes sought by a Wichita mathematician who is researching statistical anomalies favoring Republicans in counts coming from large precincts in the November 2014 general election.

• nsenter is a program that allows you to run program with namespaces of other processes

• Iceland aims to shore up the security of its ICT infrastructure by raising awareness and increasing resilience. And next to updating its legislation, Iceland will also bolster the police’s capabilities to tackle cybercrime.

• Open-source developers, however, can take steps to help catch these vulnerabilities before software is released. Secure development practices can catch many issues before they become full-blown problems. But, how can you tell which open-source projects are following these practices? The Core Infrastructure Initiative has launched a new “Best Practice Badge Program” this week to provide a solution by awarding digital badges to open-source projects that are developed using secure development practices.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• First, the disastrous failures of US policy in Afghanistan and Iraq have led to an unprecedented programme of declassification of documents (some with significant redactions) as part of the cathartic process of trying to understand how so many mistakes were made before and after 9/11.

• Second, the cache of cables dumped by WikiLeaks, coupled with further revelations from material leaked by Edward Snowden, has provided an exceptional level of insight into the workings of the intelligence agencies over the past three decades, together with priceless new information about the decision-making processes and about operational activities.

• And third, there has been a cache of materials found locally following the military interventions of the past 12 years – such as audio tapes recovered from the presidential palace in Baghdad in 2003 that recorded thousands of hours of meetings, discussions and even phone calls made by Saddam Hussein and his inner circle, or boxes of cassettes that belonged to Osama bin Laden that were retrieved from a compound in Kandahar two year earlier.

• This treasure trove allows us to understand the failures, incompetence and poor planning that accompanied the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in astonishing detail, but also to frame these within the context of a wider region – and a wider period. These two countries form part of a belt that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas, linking East and West, and that for millennia has served as the world’s central nervous system. Trade, commodities, people, even disease, spread through the webs of networks that connect these locations to each other and ultimately connect the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North Africa to the Pacific coast of China and South-east Asia.

Transparency Reporting

• Sweden will begin talks with Ecuador about Julian Assange on Monday, after Stockholm moved to break the deadlock over five-year-old rape allegations against him.

• Sweden initially rejected a demand by Ecuador that the two countries establish a formal agreement on judicial cooperation before Swedish prosecutors could interrogate the WikiLeaks founder in Ecuador’s embassy in London, saying it did not negotiate bilateral treaties.

• One day, a monk and two novices found a heavy stone in their path. “We will throw it away,” said the novices. But before they could do so, the monk took his ax and cleaved the stone in half. After seeking his approval, the novices then threw the halves away. “Why did you cleave the stone only to have us throw it away?” they asked. The monk pointed to the distance the half stones had traveled. Growing excited, one of the novices took the monk’s ax and rushed to where one half of the stone had landed. Cleaving it, he threw the quarter, whereupon the other novice grabbed the ax from him and rushed after it. He too cleaved the stone fragment and threw it afield. The novices continued on in this fashion, laughing and gasping, until the halves were so small they traveled not at all and drifted into their eyes like dust. The novices blinked in bewilderment. “Every stone has its size,” said the monk.

• At the time of writing, WikiLeaks has published 2,325,961 diplomatic cables and other US State Department records, comprising some two billion words. This stupendous and seemingly insurmountable body of internal state literature, which if printed would amount to some 30,000 volumes, represents something new. Like the State Department, it cannot be grasped without breaking it open and considering its parts. But to randomly pick up isolated diplomatic records that intersect with known entities and disputes, as some daily newspapers have done, is to miss “the empire” for its cables.

• At the time of writing, WikiLeaks has published 2,325,961 diplomatic cables and other US State Department records, comprising some two billion words. This stupendous and seemingly insurmountable body of internal state literature, which if printed would amount to some 30,000 volumes, represents something new.

• Like the State Department, it cannot be grasped without breaking it open and considering its parts. But to randomly pick up isolated diplomatic records that intersect with known entities and disputes, as some daily newspapers have done, is to miss “the empire” for its cables.

• Each corpus has its size.

• To obtain the right level of abstraction, one which considers the relationships between most of the cables for a region or country rather than considering cables in isolation, a more scholarly approach is needed. This approach is so natural that it seems odd that it has not been tried before.

• The study of empires has long been the study of their communications. Carved into stone or inked into parchment, empires from Babylon to the Ming dynasty left records of the organizational center communicating with its peripheries.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Naomi Klein, the Canadian author, film-maker and social activist, will arrive in Australia this month for a series of events.

• The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Wednesday ruled against India over its national solar energy program in a case brought by the U.S. government, sparking outrage from labor and environmental advocates.

• As power demands grow in India, the country’s government put forth a plan to create 100,000 megawatts of energy from solar cells and modules, and included incentives to domestic manufacturers to use locally-developed equipment.

• It’s hard to imagine Wall Street bankers worrying about what One Direction heartthrob Harry Styles thinks. But, it turns out at least some of them do.

• Bankers at Credit Suisse on Thursday warned that Styles had sparked a surge in negative sentiment towards SeaWorld, the controversial aquatic theme park, which is already suffering a collapse in profits.

• “Does anybody like dolphins?” Styles asked his fans during a concert in San Diego, home to one of SeaWorld’s biggest parks, last month. Following a roar from the crowd, he told them: “Don’t go to SeaWorld.” Styles’s comments were captured by hundreds of people, including Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams, and spread across social media.

Finance

• More than 4,000 people died within six weeks of being found “fit for work”, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has revealed.

• Figures released today show that between December 2011 to February 2014, 4,010 people died after being told they should find work following a “Work Capability Assessment”.

• Of that figure, 1,360 died after losing an appeal against the decision.

• Labour branded the figures a “wake-up call” for the Government, who has faced criticism for the way the assessment tests are carried out.

• European Commission officials have held hundreds of meetings with lobbyists to discuss the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty – yet only around one in ten is with public interest groups.

• The world’s biggest companies in finance, technology, pharma, tobacco and telecoms are dominating discussions with the EU executive body’s trade department responsible for the proposed EU-US free trade treaty, which could become the biggest such deal ever made.

• Jeb Bush is visiting the Hamptons today on a lucrative fundraising tour, hitting up multi-billionaires like hedge fund manager Julian Robertson to support his 2016 campaign.

• According to invitations obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, the events over the next few days include a coffee reception in the morning, and a brunch at 11, and an evening reception. The fundraisers in the wealthy New York beach community are officially organized by Bush’s 2016 campaign–even though many of the hosts and attendees have already reached the legal maximum on contributions to Bush’s primary election effort.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is considering bringing corporate charges against Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper publisher over phone hacking, it has emerged.

• The Metropolitan police handed over a file of evidence on News International – now renamed News UK – to the CPS for consideration after an investigation that stretches back to 2011, when the News of the World was closed at the height of the scandal.

• “We have received a full file of evidence for consideration of corporate liability charges relating to the Operation Weeting phone-hacking investigation,” a spokeswoman confirmed.

• The file was transferred on 23 July and reignites the controversy for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, News UK’s parent company, which believed it had been through the worst and come out the other side after an eight-month trial of former News of the World journalists that concluded in June 2014.

• Would that even that degree of critical consideration would be granted to the anniversary of another disaster for low-income communities of color: the move to “end welfare as we know it,” signed into law in August 1996 by Bill Clinton. If you don’t remember the media stampede — Black women having babies for government checks! Pregnant teenagers draining public resources! — that’s partly because elite media, having championed hard for the dismantling of the safety net, were markedly less interested in tracking the human fallout.

Censorship

• So, just last month, we wrote about United Airlines idiotic inflight video system that forces you to install DRM on your own devices to watch a movie. And, now, it appears that the company is filtering out all sorts of news sites. The EFF’s Nate Cardozo was on a flight yesterday when he started noticing that he couldn’t get to certain tech websites, including Ars Technica and The Verge — instead receiving messages they were blocked due to United’s “access policy.” The same was true for political news site Daily Kos. Eventually he even realized that United also blocks the NY Times (via his phone after the laptop battery ran out).

• In this week’s installment of “Unnecessary Censorship,” Jimmy Kimmel Live uses its well-placed [bleeps] to make Trump’s bragging, Ted Cruz’s thoughts on political correctness, the Jeb Bush campaign’s plans, and a fan of President Obama all sound more vulgar than they were. In this week’s installment of “Unnecessary Censorship,” Jimmy Kimmel Live uses its well-placed [bleeps] to make Trump’s bragging, Ted Cruz’s thoughts on political correctness, the Jeb Bush campaign’s plans, and a fan of President Obama all sound more vulgar than they were.

• In the clip, the presidential candidate speaks to a crowd of his supporters, bragging about having a huge … something. Being bleeped twice makes whatever Trump is saying sound worse, and yet, oddly believable!

• He’s already talked with Tor developers about Marionette’s open-source code.

• The edition had sparked controversy as it included a salacious account of a consensual sexual encounter between Syracuse University professor William J. Peace with a nurse in the 1970s, when he was an 18-year-old hospital patient.

• A Northwestern University professor has resigned her position at the Feinberg School of Medicine after, she said, her complaints of academic censorship were ignored.

• Alice Dreger, who worked part time as a clinical medical humanities and bioethics professor, initially complained in 2014 that the school dean removed a risque article from a website for the bioethics journal Atrium because of fear it would harm the school’s image.

• …Japan’s method of handling violent video game content can be quite perplexing at times.

• …mentions of the country’s economic weakness were pretty much absent from major Chinese media reports.

• A number of services used to get around Chinese internet restrictions have been taken down or disrupted in the run up to a major parade in Beijing next week to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war.

• Popular virtual private network (VPN) provider Astrill warned users on Wednesday that they may suffer service outages between now and the parade on September 3.

• VPNs allow users to tunnel their internet traffic through an uncensored server, bypassing the so-called Great Firewall (GFW).

• Last month we reported that the Malaysian government had censored the website of the Sarawak Report, which first broke news of the corruption allegations. A few days later, the government also suspended the publication licenses of two print publications that ran the same exposé.

• The humble kiss has figured in its fair share of censorship debates over time. These debates have usually centred on whether the kiss should be represented at all, as well as a monitoring of the content and duration of the amorous scene.

• South Korea has the world’s fastest internet with connectivity clocked at 25.3MBps by Akamai Technologies last year. That’s over two times better than the 11.5MBps measured in the United States. Such a wired environment, coupled with wide internet use, seem optimal grounds to foster free, creative discussions among peers in a democracy.

• GitHub has fallen prey to a DDoS attack this week, allegedly perpetrated by Chinese actors, in response to tools available on the site that would help users circumvent censorship.

• On Tuesday the site found that it was under attack from malicious sources, following a similar tirade against the site in March of this year. This time, though, the attacks have been much more intense.

• Political correctness has made us more wary of one another.

• Azize Tan has stepped down after nine years following protests over censorship at the latest edition in April, which led to the cancellation of the festival’s competitions and closing ceremony.

• The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a recent wave of newspaper censorship in Egypt. Three privately owned newspapers were prevented from going to print or into circulation because of content critical of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, according to news reports.

• The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned Tuesday the recent wave of newspaper censorship in Egypt, citing the new anti-terrorism law as the pretext for this phenomenon.

• Over the past two weeks, three newspapers were subjected to censorship, due to the presence of content critical of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

• A Sout Al-Omma newspaper issue was confiscated on 14 August for containing reports on the health condition of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s mother, as well as reports on a corrupt network of Mubarak-era figures.

• The book shows that differing opinions — and even vastly differing ways of thinking — exist and should be considered.

• Many of the responses to the article focus on the authors’ status as “rich, white-skinned and well-established men, who work at the moment in business-type jobs,” (though a lawyer working at a non-profit and a career academic might take issue with a few of those descriptors). Some accuse Lukianoff and Haidt of “hysteria,” “scaremongering,” and wanting to “silence discussions.” Others offered some nuance by conceding that trigger warnings “run the risk of students avoiding or disengaging the material out of fear of being triggered,” but think the threat to free expression in higher education is over-hyped.

• University of Maryland researchers developed P2P Alibi Routing to allows users to choose where they do NOT want their packets to go, thereby avoiding ‘censorship of Internet traffic and suspicious boomerang routing.’

• One year ago UK police noisily took down Immunicity, a site dedicated to providing access to blocked websites. To mark this anniversary a new platform titled Hydra Proxy has launched with the aim of providing a takedown resistant service for all. TorrentFreak caught up with its founder to learn more.

• Censorship often occurs because of power abuse, personal prejudice and ideological differences.

Privacy

• I was in the midst of a career transition. I had spent three years working as a management consultant and then at a startup, but I wanted to become a computer engineer. I was earning a Master’s in computer science through Georgia Tech’s online program. I knew that I was slowly developing the skills that I would need in an engineering role, but I still lacked the confidence to apply for a full-time software role.

• One morning, while working on a project, I Googled “python lambda function list comprehension.” The familiar blue links appeared, and I started to look for the most relevant one.

• Just three in every 10,000 Ashley Madison members are real women, it has been revealed, as the huge scale of fake female accounts on the infidelity website was exposed.

• Despite the website claiming 5.5 million of its 37 million customer accounts are “female” there was “a good chance” just 12,000 users actually are according to an analysis of the leaked data by the Editor-in-Chief of technology website Gizmodo.

• Here’s a big problem with secret spying programs in the US: To dismantle them with a lawsuit, someone has to prove that their privacy rights were infringed. And that proof is almost always a secret.

• That’s the Catch-22 that an appeals court served up Friday to plaintiffs who for the last two years have been attacking the NSA’s metadata collection program authorized under section 215 of the Patriot Act. The plaintiffs are led by constitutional lawyer and conservative activist Larry Klayman, who had sued the Obama administration for violating his fourth amendment privacy rights. In 2013, a lower court granted his a request for an injunction to stop the NSA’s spying on his data. But the Obama administration appealed that ruling, and an appellate court has now thrown out that injunction based on a familiar and vexing problem for those who sue the government’s secret spying apparatus: The plaintiffs couldn’t sufficiently prove that the NSA secretly spied on them.

• On Friday, an appeals court overturned a U.S. District Court decision last May that had declared that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records was beyond the authorization of the law. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit kicked the matter back to the lower court for additional deliberation.

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s opinion today in Klayman v. Obama is highly disappointing and, worse, based on a mistaken concern about the underlying facts. The court said that since the plaintiffs’ phone service was provided by one subsidiary of Verizon—Verizon Wireless—rather than another—Verizon Business—they couldn’t prove that they had standing to sue. The court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to give the Klayman plaintiffs an opportunity to prove that their records were in fact collected. The appeals court did not rule one way or the other of the constitutionality of the mass collection program.

• Authorities in the UK and Germany are cracking down on intelligence activities as public opinion swings against mass surveillance, coupled with heavy criticism from human rights groups and setbacks at the European Court of Human Rights.

• Media reports on Thursday alleged that German spies traded access to information about the country to the US National Security Agency (NSA) in exchange for surveillance software.

• Behind the public admonishment of the National Security Agency’s spying techniques, Germany has been secretly in cahoots with the intelligence agency. The country’s national intelligence agency, Office for the Protection of the Constitution, arranged to share surveillance data with the NSA in exchange for high-powered spyware that excavated citizens’ chat and browser histories, and webcam photos, according to a German media report.

• In order to obtain a copy of the NSA’s main XKeyscore software, whose existence was first revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency agreed to hand over metadata of German citizens it spies on. According to documents seen by the German newspaper Die Zeit, after 18 months of negotiations, the US and Germany signed an agreement in April 2013 that would allow the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamtes für Verfassungsschutz—BfV) to obtain a copy of the NSA’s most important program and to adopt it for the analysis of data gathered in Germany.

• The exposure of an intelligence-sharing agreement between the US National Security Agency (NSA) and German spy agency the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) shows that German spooks traded domestic data in exchange for the use of the XKeyscore spying programme.

• Documents analysed by German publication Die Zeit revealed a secret deal set up with the NSA that allowed the use of XKeyscore to rapidly analyse the huge amounts of metadata collected by the German agency on the condition that no data on US citizens was kept.

• The BfV, unlike the Bundesnachrichtendienst foreign intelligence agency, does not carry out so-called dragnet surveillance, instead having to go through parliament to get permission to collect metadata on individual citizens.

• SHARE TWEET STUMBLE

• The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV — Germany’s domestic spy agency) coveted access to Xkeyscore, the NSA’s flagship tool for searching and analyzing mass-surveillance data, so they secretly, illegally traded access to Germans’ data with the NSA for it.

• In internal memos, the German spy agency said the deal had “far-reaching legal implications” — which is spookese for “we are totally breaking the law here.” The German Data Commissioner was not informed about the arrangement.

• The NSA whistleblower claimed that the German intelligence spyware scandal illustrated how the US “collect it all” domestic surveillance philosophy that infected other democracies around the world.

• The need to find a balance between privacy and security has become a truism in American media and political rhetoric. Surveillance makes us safer, we’re told, and too much concern with keeping personal lives private would reduce protection against terrorism. Such pie-chart depictions of privacy and security might seem logical, but they’re badly flawed.

• When people talk about the US National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA), the talk usually centers on privacy, with good reason. Still, it’s not the only subject worth discussing. The volume of data collected by the NSA and the associated costs make it the ultimate in Big Data case studies. What can it tell us about data and business? What can it tell us about business risk and the potential benefits and consequences of Big Data investments?

• The agency’s exact budget is a government secret, but estimates put it around $10 billion per year. Although not all of that is devoted to surveillance, it’s reasonable to conclude that something in the ballpark of $5 billion goes to fund NSA data gathering each year. This may not be the clear-cut biggest Big Data application (Google’s revenue was $66 billion last year, for example), but it’s substantial, focused and paid for by the public. We ought to discuss what we’re getting for the money.

• After blowing the whistle on the NSA for wasteful spending and civil rights violations, the plaintiffs say they were threatened with prison time, subjected to illegal searches and seizures and had raids conducted on their homes.

• Five whistleblowers are suing the Justice Department, National Security Agency, FBI and their former directors for violating their constitutional and civil rights after they complained about government waste and fraud through proper channels.

• According to the complaint, filed in Washington, DC’s federal district court, all five were subjected to illegal searches and seizures, raids on their homes and places of business, false imprisonment, and cancellation of their security clearances after they complained about government waste and fraud at the NSA.

• Four of the five whistleblowers worked at the National Security Agency: Thomas Drake, Ed Loomis, J. Kirk Wiebe and William Binney. The fifth, Diane Roark, worked at the Department of Energy. They are seeking some $100 million in damages.

• President Barack Obama has apologized to Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after WikiLeaks claimed the US had spied on Japanese politicians. Abe said the allegations “could shake our relationship of trust.”

• US President Barack Obama has apologised to Japan over revelations from WikiLeaks that the US National Security Agency (NSA) undertook systematic mass surveillance of Japanese government officials and major companies. In a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Obama expressed regret for causing concern but failed to confirm whether or not the spying claims were true.

• The disclosure follows similar WikiLeaks revelations of US spying on Brazil, France and Germany. Yet while the previous exposés triggered widespread indignation and anger in those countries, Japan’s reaction has been muted by comparison.

• From the first time I fired a .22 rifle at camp the summer after second grade, to my first read-in and access to classified information, and then to advanced weapons training and combat deployments with various NAVSOF elements, there was never a doubt that I was being entrusted with weapons that, when used improperly or negligently, could severely wound or kill the innocent.

• Why is this ironic? Because the NSA and other spy agencies want to break that encryption that protects your communications and are unhappy when online services and products can protect the user’s privacy with built-in encryption. The NSA also wants quantum computers of its own.

• According to a report in the International Business Times, experts at the NSA are “deeply” worried that quantum computers will be able to break encryption if used by the hackers of the future.

• The incubator’s current class of 9 startups includes entrepreneurs that are working on technology for everything from cybersecurity to healthcare data—with the common theme being a connection to government-regulated industries. The CIC has the capacity to house 10-12 teams, but the location also allows for “planned” expansion.

• Does the phrase “XKeyscore” mean anything to you? If your answer is “huh?” then Daniel McCarney has a site you can visit.

• McCarney, a security engineer and hacker, set up join.xkeyscore.club over the weekend as a reminder of the National Security Agency’s XKeyscore tool. Internally the NSA said the program, which Glenn Greenwald reported first reported on for The Guardian back in 2013, gave analysts access to “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet.”

Civil Rights

• The Associated Press filed a lawsuit (PDF) this morning, demanding the FBI hand over information about its use of fake news stories. The case stems from a 2007 incident regarding a bomb threat at a school. The FBI created a fake news story with an Associated Press byline, then e-mailed it to a suspect to plant malware on his computer.

• The AP sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI last year seeking documents related to the 2014 sting. It also seeks to know how many times the FBI has used such a ruse since 2000. The FBI responded to the AP saying it could take two years or more to gather the information requested. Unsatisfied with the response, the Associated Press has taken the matter to court.

• Last fall, we wrote about how the FBI had set up a fake AP news story in order to implant malware during an investigation. This came out deep in a document that had been released via a FOIA request by EFF, and first noticed by Chris Soghoian of the ACLU. The documents showed the FBI discussing how to install some malware, called a CIPAV (for Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier) by creating a fake news story…

• For carriage of the gun, she was delivered to Rikers Island and charged with attempted criminal possession of a weapon and eventually posted a bail bond of $10,000. Appearing in court in Queens, she was told by a judge, she said, “‘This ain’t Texas; we don’t carry guns here.’”

• As of September 4, online identity theft will be illegal in Finland. Many people may soon find that even creating a fake social media profile can be considered a misdemeanour.

• North Dakota police will be free to fire ‘less than lethal’ weapons from the air thanks to the influence of Big Drone.

• It is now legal for law enforcement in North Dakota to fly drones armed with everything from Tasers to tear gas thanks to a last-minute push by a pro-police lobbyist.

• With all the concern over the militarization of police in the past year, no one noticed that the state became the first in the union to allow police to equip drones with “less than lethal” weapons. House Bill 1328 wasn’t drafted that way, but then a lobbyist representing law enforcement—tight with a booming drone industry—got his hands on it.

• The bill’s stated intent was to require police to obtain a search warrant from a judge in order to use a drone to search for criminal evidence. In fact, the original draft of Representative Rick Becker’s bill would have banned all weapons on police drones.

• Hollywood has a lot to answer for. Thanks to the hit TV show 24 and movies like Zero Dark Thirty, we think we know what terrorist interrogations look like: After being roughed up and threatened, the suspect breaks down and reveals all. Mass murder is thwarted. Osama Bin Laden is shot.

• The end, we tell ourselves, justifies the ugly means.

• Even after the abuses committed at CIA “black sites” were laid bare last year by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, most Americans stuck to this view. Some 59% believed the CIA’s harsh interrogation methods were justified, in a December 2014 poll run for the Washington Post and ABC News.

• The conduct of the political class is utterly shameless. Meantime they indulge their fantasies of stripping workers of all protection and of stopping aid to the needy, and while the politicians gorge and gorge, the poor are quietly being slipped away to die.

• I am worried that the continued delay in the publication of Chilcot’s report is giving rise to expectations that it will be forthright and damning of Blair and his supporters. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even though Blair plunged us into an illegal war with dreadful long-term consequences, the report has always been designed to be a typical Whitehall fudge. Mistakes made – errors of judgement – all in good faith – lessons learned. You don’t have to wait for it, that is it.

• The Chilcot team was handpicked by Gordon Brown – himself up to his neck in guilt for the illegal invasion – and three of the five had been aggressive proponents of the war. The remaining two, Chilcot and Baroness Prasad, are “sound” for the Establishment. Let me remind you of my analysis of the committee members in 2009. Sir Lawrence Freedman was an active propagandist for the invasion while Sir Martin Gilbert (died while contributing to the committee) was so enamoured of the invasion he compared Bush and Blair to Roosevelt and Churchill. Rod Lyne was actively involved in selling the WMD lies and arguably in danger of war crime accusation himself.

• Americans love, above all, a narrative. Preferably a moral one, marked by a clear good and evil. For many so-called “school reformers,” the tragedy of Katrina, which marks its ten-year anniversary today, provided that narrative. Its stark before-and-after provided a clear A/B test as to the righteousness of their cause. Before was a “broken school system,” and after is a glossy, privatized education system.

• We’ll set aside the fact that this is largely a fantasy. Torture the data enough, and the “New Orleans miracle” can be teased out if one wants it enough. Despite studies and reporting showing otherwise, for the sake of this piece it doesn’t actually matter if radical post-Katrina New Orleans school reform was a “success,” a failure or somewhere in between. What is important is that so many corporatists think this “miracle” was not just an incidental positive but was, all things considered, worth it. Worth the 1,800 people killed and the 100,000 African-Americans permanently ejected from the city.

• The most popular examination of this pathology is, of course, from Naomi Klein, who coined the idea of the ”shock doctrine” in her 2007 book of the same name. In it, she explores how Katrina and other manmade and non-manmade disasters are exploited to rush through a radical right wing corporate agenda.

• Ten years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, environmental justice advocates feel the time is long overdue for the media to start connecting the dots between climate change and social justice.

• There may be no clearer example of this intersection than in the impact and aftermath of 2005′s Hurricane Katrina. Between the devastating effects of the storm itself, and the decade-long effort to restore destroyed communities afterwards, the region’s African-American population has demonstrably suffered the most.

• The government’s proposed citizenship stripping laws are about a lot more than taking citizenship off people who try to blow up a train. In fact, they may well rip away the rights of a vast range of people for a staggering number of reasons.

• We’ve gone though the expert responses to the bill – currently before a parliamentary inquiry – and picked out the best ways to see your citizenship disappear if you are a dual national.

• If you’re going to end up banished from Australia, you may as well have some fun doing it.

• Before we go on we should note that it’s not exactly clear how many dual nationals there are in Australia but if you’re one of them, this could soon apply to you. We’re looking at you, John Pilger… Germaine Greer, et al.

• At the talk titled The Future of One-Party Rule in Singapore, Dr Chee spoke about the implications of one-party rule in the past, present and future and how the next general election will influence democratic politics in Singapore. Students and faculty posed questions after Dr Chee gave brief opening remarks, leading to a lively discussion in an already overflowing room of more than 100 members of the Yale-NUS community.

• [...]

• I am frustrated at how a country this economically advanced can be so socially backward, but to think about it, it is not surprising at all. With all that has been going down in recent years (e.g. Amos Yee, the National Library Board penguin saga), the world is looking at us. What Singapore needs right now is for people in power to put their foot down and say, “Hey, this is wrong, and I’m going to fight for what is right.” Unfortunately, at the end of the day, elections are a race for votes, and few are willing to risk losing votes this way. After all, the less people you piss off, the higher the chances you have at winning. We need social change, and we need it now. Yet how can we ever have real change if advocating for it only puts people off or gets you shut down?

Intellectual Monopolies

Trademarks

• Regardless of spelling, Armor&Glory’s market impact appears minimal. According to the story, “it has so far made less than $100,000 in revenue since 2013 — about 0.003 percent of Under Armour’s sales just last year. The company’s online store sells $20 shorts and $25 shirts designed largely for a core Christian audience, with slogans like “Be spiritually attractive” and ‘Put on God’s armor and receive His glory.’”.

Copyrights

• Following news this week that a man is facing a custodial sentence after potentially defrauding the movie industry out of £120m, FACT Director General Kieron Sharp has been confronted with an uncomfortable truth. According to listeners contacting the BBC, the public has little sympathy with Hollywood.

• Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm was released from a Danish prison yesterday, only to be immediately re-arrested by police. The Swede is now expected to be extradited back to his home country where he will be returned to prison, but not before appearing in court today to appeal the decision.

• The CCIA, which represents global tech firms including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, has published an extensive research paper on the future of copyright in the digital landscape. One of the main suggestions is to extent current copyright law, so that senders of wrongful DMCA takedown notices face serious legal consequences.

• Facebook says it will give video creators and publishers a way to remove copyrighted videos that have been uploaded to its popular social network without the proper permission.

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