● 09.02.15

● Links 2/9/2015: Chromebooks and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 6:27 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• 2000+ people have already watched Tim’s video and that is potentially 2000 people that might not use Linux based on invalid arguments.

• Hopefully a few more people will read this article and therefore redress the balance somewhat.

• Before I go I wanted to mention that Tim has produced his own counter argument called “5 Reasons To Use Linux”. The points in that video state that Linux is multikernel, is open source, has support for many different hardware devices such as the Raspberry PI, has lots of distros (which kind of counters against point 5 in the reasons not to use Linux) and finally it is free.

• ONE OF THE CITY COUNCILLORS behind the alleged “Bring Back Windows” letter to Munich City officials has told The INQUIRER that she has no desire to see the city migrate back to Microsoft.

• Munich spurned Windows for its own version of Linux, known as Limux, and recent reports suggested it is once again getting high-level calls to trash the experiment and get back to the old days.

• The story, which has been circulating for the past week or so, is based on a memo sent by two councillors from the city which appeared to request consideration of a return to Windows.

Desktop

• Want to learn about open source programming and get a free Chromebook? The Linux Foundation is sponsoring an opportunity to do both by enrolling in one of its training courses this month.

• Now there are concrete numbers to show that Chromebooks are in fact beating the sales of Windows notebooks. Microsoft fans may not accept it, but Microsoft knows how credible a threat Chrome OS is: That is why they ran an anti-Chromebook ad campaign, and why, we presume, they have created strategies to counter Chromebooks. You don’t come up with such plans to mute a non existing threat.

• The non-profit organization called The Linux Foundation has announced that they are offering free Chromebooks to all students who enroll in their Linux training program during the month of September 2015.

• Asus’s new Chromebook Flip isn’t the first touchscreen Chromebook we’ve fondled here at The Register. That accolade belongs to the Lenovo N20p. But since the N20p has been discontinued in the UK, Asus needn’t worry about its new convertible being overshadowed by it.

• “Everyone has their Chrome OS.” That’s a theory a co-worker and I came up with, hypothesizing that everyone has that niche piece of technology that they unabashedly love. For my co-worker, that’s Windows Phone, but for me, my “Chrome OS” is, in fact, Chrome OS. Despite all the jeers and sneers I get on a weekly basis, I wanted to prove just how useful Chrome OS actually is. For all the naysayers who claim you can’t do work on a Chromebook, I’m here to tell you that you can – to a point. Here’s what happened when I spent a month using only Chrome OS.

• I have to confess: I sort of hate laptops. It’s a thing with me. I have so many customisations and tweaks on my Windows desktop that using a laptop either feels like a crippled experience, or a hassle managing two separate computers. I also don’t tend to buy expensive laptops because I don’t use them often enough to make the price tag worth it. It’s safe to say that my experience will not reflect everyone’s needs.

Server

• Google decided to put its container project Kubernetes [ku-ber-net-ease] out in the wild because “there is power in open source”, its co-founder tells ComputerworldUK.

• The project, which aims to simplify containers for organisations looking for faster app launch and scale-out, began as a “grand experiment”, Kubernetes’ co-founder Craig McLuckie reveals. During the build, he discovered that if Google built a cloud platform in the open, “it would be better across any measurable dimension.”

• For this, GENCI will have access to some of the most advanced high performance computing technologies from the rapidly expanding OpenPower ecosystem, which includes a wide range of computing solutions that use IBM’s licensable and open POWER processor technology. OpenPower is supported by more than 140 OpenPower Foundation members and thousand of developers worldwide.

Kernel Space

• Ingo Molnar sent in his several Git pull requests today for the code he maintains within the Linux kernel.

• Of Molnar’s pull requests, the x86/boot changes caught my attention. He mentions “more boot time optimizations.”

• Jiri Kosina sent in his pull requests for code he maintains within the mainline Linux kernel, with one of the notable subsystems being the HID updates.

• Most notable to the HID feature updates for Linux 4.3 are yet more Wacom driver improvements, which are a mention for almost every kernel cycle. Wacom highlights for Linux 4.3 include support for the Express Key Remote and various bug-fixes and feature work.

• While yesterday it looked like the EXT3 driver would be removed in Linux 4.3 as the pull request was sent in and there were no objections brought up last month when it was proposed, Linus Torvalds has taken issue with removing the driver.

• The IBM s390 architecture will gain fake NUMA support with the upcoming Linux 4.3 for providing faster performance under some workloads.

• Martin Schwidefsky sent in the s390 patches for Linux 4.3 and there he mentioned the main highlight being this “fake NUMA” (Non-Unified Memory Architecture) support. “The big one is support for fake NUMA, splitting a really large machine in more manageable piece improves performance in some cases, e.g. for a KVM host.”

• I’ve released bmusb, a free driver for the Intensity Shuttle, a $199 HDMI/component/S-video/composite capture card.

• Now we come to the systemd controversy. It started as a replacement for something called init. A running Linux system has about 20 different programs running in userspace. When the system boots up, it has only one, a program called “init”. This program then launches all the remaining userspace programs.

Applications

• Fixing a broken Linux System can be a cumbersome job if you don’t have the idea of what exactly is going on. What most of us do when we gets a broken Linux system? Most of us searches the forum and/or google about the problem. While we hate troubles, how about installing a ‘Trouble Maker‘ application, which essentially creates troubles, gives you hard time and want you to fix broken system.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Guild Software has announced the release of a new maintenance version of its popular Vendetta Online 3D space combat MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) for GNU/Linux, Android, Mac OS X, iOS, and Microsoft Windows OSes.

• As part of an ongoing series of asking you stuff, today I ask “What was your favourite Linux game release from August?”.

• Personally, I’m seriously torn on this, as we had quite a number of great releases, but I think it’s going to have to be Company of Heroes 2. The game has hooked me in with the interesting cut-scenes, and the great gameplay.

• Recently, we accepted an article that quoted Obsidian Entertainment saying Linux wasn’t worth it. That same developer now has nicer comments about it all.

• In this interview, Eager, a product engineer at Tumblr, discusses his contribution to the EarthBound community, his decision to open source it, and his favorite EarthBound moments.

• However, as shared last week, Arma 3′s Linux future isn’t entirely clear. The beta is now public, but based on sales and other factors will determine whether it will be maintained for the longhaul and graduate from beta.

• The Unreal Engine 4.9 game engine update brings significant improvements to mobile Android/iOS support, Steam VR and Gear VR support updates, experimental DirectX 12 support, editor improvements, and a wide range of renderer advancements to boost the visuals.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Aside from “every frame being perfect” with Wayland among its many advantages over X11, another benefit will be for greater power-savings in properly implemented software when a display is turned-off/sleeping.

Distributions

New Releases

• The developers of the Ubuntu-based Netrunner Linux distribution have announced the immediate availability for download of the second point release of their LTS (Long-Term Support) version of Netrunner 14.

Screenshots/Screencasts

Gentoo Family

• Tomasz Jokiel from the Porteus Linux project announced earlier the release and immediate availability for download of the Porteus Kiosk 3.5.0 operating system based on Gentoo Linux, after being in development for approximately three months.

Arch Family

• The first day of a month is an important day for all Arch Linux users, as a new ISO image is being generated with all the updated packages released during the month that passed.

Red Hat Family

• Today, we are pleased to announce the beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, the latest version of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 beta includes a number of new features and enhancements – furthering Red Hat’s mission to redefine the enterprise operating system – while continuing to provide the stability, reliability, and security required to meet both the demands of the modern datacenter and next-generation IT requirements. A focus on security, manageability and system administration, as well as a continued emphasis on the functionality to build and deploy Linux containers, helps Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 beta provide enterprises a trusted path towards the future of information technology.

• Red Hat is out today with a beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7), providing users with an early preview of new features set to become generally available later this year.

Fedora

• While Major thought he was just being humble, he was actually putting himself in a situation where he wasn’t getting the job done.

• Impostor syndrome boils down to a one-line definition: an inability to recognize your competence.

Debian Family

Derivatives

• After announcing the release of the DebEX KDE Linux distribution and the availability of a custom Linux 4.2 kernel for Ubuntu- and Debian-based operating systems, Arne Exton is now happy to inform us about the immediate availability for download of the GNOME edition of his DebEX Linux distribution.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• I personally recommend Ubuntu 15.04 but you may choose some other enterprise distro such as RHEL 7.1 or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

• That’s okay, but if you follow my recommendation and choose Vivid Vervet instead, the discussion above would help you.

• Since last December we’ve been receiving emails from a company working on an Ubuntu Tablet inspired by the failed Ubuntu Edge campaign. That company is apparently going to start accepting pre-orders for their device soon with hopes of shipping this unofficial Ubuntu Tablet in January.

• The last we heard of this Ubuntu tablet was earlier in the year when they shared with us their Intel specifications on this tablet and in March had shared expected pricing on the tablet with hopes of shipping the device later this calendar year. Last week I received an unsolicited email from Mark Jun of MJ Technology.

• Cristian Parrino, the former Vice President of Mobile at Canonical where he was the team leader for the Ubuntu Phone project, has left the company.

• In a post dated yesterday, Cristian writes that it’s “the end of a cycle. The beginning of a new one.”

• The Ubuntu Kernel Team at Canonical had their regular meeting on September 1, announcing the rebasing of Ubuntu 15.10′s development kernel packages, the master-next branch, on the recently released Linux 4.2 kernel.

Flavours and Variants

• Linux-based operating systems are like those friends you make in high school–you know the type: reserved, quirky and not quite like the rest of the pack. But intelligent and the kind that, once you get to know them, will stand by you through thick and thin.

• Ok, that may be a stretch, but you get the idea. Linux comprises but a fraction of a percent of operating systems deployed, and with reason–it’s traditionally been difficult to set up and use. Which is why it used to appeal only to users with a higher level of computer proficiency: basically geeks. But while this was the case back in the day, plenty has changed–today installing and using it is very comparable to the Windows experience.

• The lead developer and creator of the Linux Mint and Cinnamon projects, Clement Lefebvre, announced earlier today, September 2, that the upcoming Cinnamon 2.8 desktop environment will offer a visual workspace switcher applet.

• The developers of the Ubuntu-based Pinguy OS Linux distribution have announced a few hours ago the immediate availability for download of the Pinguy OS 14.04.3 Mini operating system.

Devices/Embedded

• F&S announced a COM that runs Linux on Freescale’s Cortex-A7 based i.MX6 UltraLite SoC, and offers dual Ethernet, WiFi, and an industrial temperature range.

• Since May, when Freescale unveiled its new, Cortex-A7 based i.MX6 UltraLite SoC, we’ve seen several announcements of computer-on-module products that incorporate the new, more power-efficient processor. These include two products from TechNexion — an EDM form-factor COM and a module fits in an Intel Edison socket — plus an SODIMM-style COM from iWave Systems. Now, F&S Elektronik Systeme has announced that it is adding an i.MX6 UltraLite-based “efus-A7UL” module to its “efus” COM family.

• After reporting last week news about the Ubuntu MATE 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) operating system running on the Banana Pi BPI-M1 SBC (Single-board computer) device, we’re informing you today that Snappy Ubuntu Core runs on Banana Pi BPI-M2.

Phones

Tizen

• Samsung unveiled its Tizen Linux-based Gear S2 smartwatch, which it teased a few weeks ago at the recent Galaxy Note 5 and Edge S6+ launch. The round-faced watch boasts up to three days battery life and features a rotating bezel to augment the touchscreen UI. It will also be available in a slightly thicker 3G model with up to two hours of life that supports voice calls, according to a report from The Verge.

Android

• IT has spent lot of time and money in the last five years to secure mobile apps, considering technologies such as mobile application management servers, app wrapping, app containers, thin-client-style Web apps, and even mobile virtualization.

• But IT has spent very little effort on actual mobile apps. As a result, mobile devices continue to be largely user-driven, email-oriented devices that IT simultaneously fears for spurious security reasons and considers a poor substitute for a real PC. It doesn’t have to be this way.

• If you’re looking for the absolute best value Android smartphone out there: Yep. Yep, you should. The only hesitation you should feel in your heart is that Google will most likely be announcing two Nexus smartphones possibly by the end of the month. A Google Phone means two devices very similar to the Moto X, definitely getting upcoming Marshmallow update first, and ones that could even be a part of Google’s new Project Fi wireless service.

• But what Nexus most likely won’t have is a look tailored specifically to you and legitimately useful Moto apps you’ll want to use. Pull the trigger or wait—it’s a win-win.

• Lenovo says improvements have also been made to the projector inside, which has gotten brighter and can now beam out a 70-inch picture — and you can point it at either the wall or your ceiling this time. Sound quality is also a major focus, as the Yoga 3 Tab Pro has four front-facing speakers and what Lenovo describes as “virtualized Dolby Atmos” for an experience the company says can replicate surround sound. Such claims rarely pan out, but if you need to throw on a Netflix movie for a small room or restless kids (like say, when Netflix gets first dibs on Disney films next year), it might work out just fine.

Free Software/Open Source

• There are several reasons. If you have an idea for a utility or framework or whatever, and you would like the support of an entire community of developers, open source is a great way to go. If you want your code “out there” so it can be reviewed and critiqued (which will improve your skills), open source is a good solution. If you are just out of school and want to establish yourself and show off your coding skills, start an open source project. Finally, if you’re altruistic and just want to help the software community at large, yes, please, start an open source project.

• Version 2.0 of CloudRouter , an open source router designed for the cloud, is actually two versions, one based on CentOS Linux, for network operators looking for a stable version with long support cycle, and another based on Fedora for rapid iteration of new features, Jay Turner, CloudRouter project lead and senior director of DevOps at IIX , tells Light Reading.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 45 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Mozilla and Media

• The founding members are Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix. The goal is to “create a new, open royalty-free video codec specification based on the contributions of members, along with binding specifications for media format, content encryption and adaptive streaming.” The word open is used many times in the announcement, but only once with source. Is “open” the same thing as “open source?” Roy Schestowitz at Tuxmachines.org doesn’t think so. He organized the news of the AOM under the title “OpenWashing (Fake FOSS).”

• [...]

• It is difficult to trust some of these players, but Mozilla’s David Bryant today wrote that the work will be released under a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GNU GPL.

• As of today, just after Microsoft announced its membership in the Open Media Alliance, they also quietly changed the internal development status of Vorbis, Opus, WebM and VP9 to indicate they intend to ship all of the above in the new Windows Edge browser. Cue spooky X-files theme music.

• Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox Web browser, may declare in its mission statement that “the Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible,” but it’s going to have a hard time realizing that vision with less than 1 percent of the mobile market share globally.

• For now, though, the Alliance is still just starting up.

SaaS/Big Data

• Being a company with a core value to “Embrace Open Source,” when it came to launching a public cloud service it made sense to want that offering grounded upon powerful, versatile open source software that could deliver scalability, resiliency, and security. Because of that, it was an easy choice to base it upon OpenStack’s open source platform – and here’s why.

• More businesses may be trialling Hadoop within their organisations to gain insight into unstructured data, but it is the ability to cut storage costs that will drive mainstream enterprise adoption, according to WANdisco’s CEO.

• David Richards, the chief exec of the company which is co-headquartered between Silicon Valley and Sheffield, says that fast-growing data demands mean that those who do not adopt open source tools such as Hadoop are at a competitive disadvantage.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Ever since the LibreOffice open-source office suite was forked from the Oracle OpenOffice suite in 2010, its community of developers has been working to improve it. The latest evolution of LibreOffice, version 5.0.1, came out Aug. 27 and provides users with new features and improved performance. LibreOffice bundles multiple components as part of the suite, including the Writer Document, Calc Spreadsheet, Impress Presentation, Draw, Math Formula and Base Database applications. Being able to import and export in multiple formats has always been an important element of LibreOffice’s interoperability capabilities. In LibreOffice 5.0.1, Writer now has improved Apple Pages document import capabilities. For PDF export, the ability to time-stamp a document is now enabled. Manipulating images is now improved across the suite, with the ability to crop an image with a mouse. The Calc spreadsheet now benefits from improved formula handling as well as new conditional formatting capabilities. LibreOffice is typically available as the default office suite in many Linux distributions and is also freely available for Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows applications. Here, eWEEK takes a look at key features of LibreOffice 5.0.1.

Education

• So for this issue that coincides with pupils around the country heading back to school, we’re supplying our own guide to help you and your children get a head start with coding in Python, using the Pi at school, choosing the best languages for the jobs you want to do and taking a first step into developing web applications.

Funding

• Last month we looked at the argument that the open source business model is flawed because selling maintenance and support subscriptions doesn’t provide companies with enough revenue to differentiate their products from the underlying open source software or to compete with the sales and marketing efforts of proprietary software companies. The argument was advanced by Peter Levine, a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz.

• At the recent Open Daylight Summit, Margaret Chiosi, the Distinguished Network Architect said, “We don’t need money. We need participants. We need people to work on use cases and bust things out.” In other words, the open source community is at a point where it needs involvement more than dollars.

• Open source increasingly depends on end-users who will create code, contribute documentation, and innovate to make open source projects relevant and useful. In order for open source to continue its upwards trajectory, fully engaged end-users that together create a vibrant and active community are necessary.

BSD

• LLVM 3.7 along with sub-projects like Clang 3.7.0 have been officially released this afternoon.

• Hans Wennborg announced 3.7.0 a few minutes ago on the mailing list. “This release contains the work of the LLVM community over the past six months: full OpenMP 3.1 support (behind a flag), the On Request Compilation (ORC) JIT API, a new backend for Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF), Control Flow Integrity checking, as well as improved optimizations, new Clang warnings, many bug fixes, and more.”

Programming

• A web developer from South Africa said a bug in a tool for using Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE with code-sharing site GitHub inadvertently exposed his sensitive data – and the error cost him more than $6,500 (£4,250) in just a few hours.

• Carlo van Wyk of Cape Town–based Humankode said he used the GitHub Extension for Visual Studio 2015 to commit one of his local Git code repositories to a private repository on GitHub.

• Unfortunately, however – and unknown to van Wyk at the time – a bug in the extension caused his code to be committed to a public GitHub repository, rather than a private one as he intended.

Standards/Consortia

• VP9, and its planned successor, VP10, is an open-source technology that, like its competitors, compresses online video so that it takes up less capacity on IP networks, making delivery easier and more reliable. Article

Leftovers

Science

• There will be blood in September — literally, according to the Internet postings of end-times believers.

• The night of September 27-28 will bring a “blood moon.” To skywatchers, it simply refers to the copper color the moon takes on during an eclipse, but to some Christian ministers, the fourth and final eclipse in a tetrad — four consecutive total lunar eclipses, each separated by six lunar months — fulfills biblical prophecy of the apocalypse. (The first three in the series took place April 15, 2014; October 8, 2014; and April 4, 2015.)

• In promotion for his 2013 book “Four Blood Moons,” Christian minister John Hagee claimed that the tetrad was a sign of the end.

• “The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015,” he said.

• Something stinks about Europe’s trash. A two-year investigation into Europe’s electronic waste found that most of it is stolen, mismanaged, illegally traded, or just plain thrown away.

• The European Union has guidelines on how to correctly dispose of unwanted electronics, like IT equipment, household appliances, or medical devices. But, according to a report published Sunday by the United Nations University and INTERPOL, only 35 per cent of electronic waste was disposed of correctly in 2012.

Security

• Manuel Blum, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who won the Turing Award in 1995, has been working on what he calls “human computable” passwords that are not only relatively secure but also don’t require us to memorize a different one for each site. Instead, we learn ahead of time an algorithm and a personal, private key, and we use them with the website’s name to create and re-create our own unique passwords on the fly for any website at any time.

• A car manufacturer recalled more than a million cars following security concerns about car hacking, as the National Insurance Crime Bureau issued an alert about a “mystery device” being used to break into vehicles by defeating the electronic locking system of later-model cars.

• So-called connected car “convenience technology” could put consumers at risk.

• “Right now, what has happened is the digital key fob has become a way for someone to steal your car,” NICB investigator James “Herb” Price said.

• We recently ran a sponsored series from Fox Technologies on Linux.com. We want to thank the company for its support and for sharing useful information for SysAdmins and developers alike. Fox Technologies is continuing the conversation with a free webinar September 17 that will address security considerations in moving from VMs to containers. More information about this webinar is below.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• A man convicted of a gruesome crime involving a dog is back in jail Tuesday morning.

• Joel Clark was convicted of torturing or mutilating an animal, for baking a dog in an oven.

• Just last week, a judge sentenced him to home detention at Good News Ministries and community service with an animal rescue. Clark was not allowed to have direct contact with the animals.

• Citigroup has published an analysis of the costs of various energy sources called “Energy Darwinism II.” It concludes that if all the costs of generation are included (known as the levelized cost of energy), renewables turn out to be cheaper than fossil fuels and a “benefit rather than a cost to society,” RenewEconomy reports.

• “Capital costs are often cited by the promoters of fossil fuels as evidence that coal and gas are, and will, remain cheaper than renewable energy sources such as wind and gas. But this focuses on the short-term only — a trap repeated by opponents of climate action and clean energy, who focus on the upfront costs of policies.

• Actually, fuel costs can “account for 80 per cent of the cost of gas-fired generation, and more than half the cost of coal,” RenewEconomy says.

• Three senior scientists who collectively produced two decades of government research on controlling badgers to reduce bovine TB are among a group of eminent experts to call for an immediate halt to the badger cull. The intervention comes as figures reveal the government has spent nearly £7,000 killing each badger so far.

• Professor Lord Krebs, Professor John Bourne and Professor Ranald Munro write of their disappointment that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has extended the controversial cull to Dorset and called on it to immediately reconsider its decision to continue culling badgers.

• On Sunday, the New York Times maintained a long, proud tradition of uncritically repeating official claims that the US—despite having twice the population, eight times the military budget and a nominal economy almost ten times as large—is “lagging behind” Russia on a key military strategic objective…

• [...]

• So here we have it: Pro-NATO think tanks and military brass feed a narrative to the Times, the Times prints it with little skepticism, then these very same forces turn around and use this reporting to justify its military buildup. The crucial question as to whether or not America is objectively “lagging behind” is never really approached critically.

• More importantly, the normative question as to whether the US has any intrinsic obligation or right to maintain parity with Russia in the Arctic is never brought up. The assumption is just taken for granted, and once it is, US military officials and their friendly establishment press are off to the races debating how—not if—they can amass more military brass in another corner of the globe.

• [...]

• This is nothing new, of course. Ominous warnings about “gaps” with the Russians are a decades-long tradition in US and Western media. Over the past few years alone, the US has “lagged behind” the dreaded Russians in the following departments:

• Cyber security

• Online and traditional propaganda

• Space race

• “Military tactics”

• Nuclear technology

• Now let’s remember: Russia’s military budget is one-eighth the size of the US’s—and 1/14th as large as NATO’s cumulative $1 trillion in annual military spending. But we’ve been here before. During the Cold War, the public was constantly told the US was “lagging behind” Russia in developing enough nuclear weapons.

• 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.

Finance

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has drafted a bill that aims to eliminate the US dollar and the euro from trade between CIS countries.

• This means the creation of a single financial market between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

• It’s always dangerous when followers of an insular cult gain positions of power. Unfortunately, that appears to be the case with the Washington Post editorial board and the Federal Reserve Board cultists.

• The Federal Reserve Board cultists adhere to a bizarre belief that the 19 members (12 voting) of the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) live in a rarified space where the narrow economic concerns of specific interest groups don’t impinge on their thinking. According to the cultists, when the Fed sits down to decide on its interest rate policy, they are acting solely for the good of the country.

• Those of us who live in the reality-based community know that the Fed is hugely responsive to the interests of the financial sector. There are many reasons for this. First, the 12 Fed district banks are largely controlled by the banks within the district, which directly appoint one-third of the bank’s directors. The presidents of these banks occupy 12 of the 19 seats (five of the voting seats) on the FOMC.

Censorship

• Editors point to a spike in hate speech and insults in recent weeks, particularly related to immigration and asylum-seeker issues.

• [...]

• Two of Finland’s largest media sites on Tuesday decided to curtail or halt public comment on their websites.

• A lawyer representing two Vice News journalists and their assistant on Tuesday denounced a Turkish court’s decision to arrest them on terror-related charges, calling it a government attempt to deter foreign media from reporting on the conflict with Kurdish rebels.

• The arrests have prompted strong protests from media rights advocates, the U.S. and the European Union.

Privacy

• An Australian reporter for the ABC, Will Ockenden published a bunch of his metadata, and asked people to derive various elements of his life. They did pretty well, even though they were amateurs, which should give you some idea what professionals can do.

• In the digital age, how much of your life is actually private? To find out, ABC reporter Will Ockenden got access to his metadata. This is what that data looks like.

• Yes, the WSJ has a right to see these files… but not until the DOJ decides these investigations are really and truly over — a determination that has yet to be reached for files zooming past the half-decade mark.

• The oral arguments delivered in June provide a little more insight into the DOJ’s thought processes — mainly that it should be the sole arbiter of document releases. The DOJ went past the constraints of its earlier argument — that “open” investigations are not subject to “common law access” — by claiming that documents used in the course of investigations, even closed ones, are not public records.

• After searching through the Ashley Madison database and private email last week, I reported that there might be roughly 12,000 real women active on Ashley Madison. Now, after looking at the company’s source code, it’s clear that I arrived at that low number based in part on a misunderstanding of the evidence. Equally clear is new evidence that Ashley Madison created more than 70,000 female bots to send male users millions of fake messages, hoping to create the illusion of a vast playland of available women.

Civil Rights

• The closure of the station appeared prompted in part by pressure from other European Union nations trying to cope with the influx of thousands of migrants flowing through Hungary. Europe has been overwhelmed by a surge of migrants, with over 332,000 arriving so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.

• Over 100,000 Irish Water protesters turned up on Saturday for another massive show of opposition towards the unfair second tax on the nation’s water supply. The high numbers were a definite message to the unpopular Fine Gael and Labour government. The movement which is made up of many parts, will not be going anywhere until they end their plan to continue with a tax that is one too many under the austerity policy.

• A FORMER US SECRET SERVICE AGENT HAD ADMITTED to charges relating to the theft of digital currency collected during the investigations into the Silk Road and its criminal activities.

• The Silk Road is, or was, an online bazaar for the sort of things that can be bought in the real world. It was smashed apart by hard working agents in a successful effort that was later revealed to be tarnished.

• Unfortunately two lone, former secret service workers have put their hands up to the theft of bitcoins gathered during the raids, and admitted that this was the wrong thing to do.

• Over the weekend, Spencer Ackerman published a fairly incredible story about a newly appointed West Point professor, William Bradford, who had written a paper, published in the National Security Law Journal, entitled Trahison Des Professeurs, in which he argues (among other things) that US academics who oppose current US anti-terror policy should themselves be targets for killing as a “fifth column.”

• Dr. Peter Moskos: “There’s Not A Result Of Cops Getting Killed From Black Lives Matter … There Are Fewer Cops Shot This Year Than Last Year. Are You Willing To Give Black Lives Matter Credit For That?”

• The government is coming under increasing pressure to take in more refugees from the war in Syria, with former foreign secretary David Miliband saying on Wednesday that not welcoming more refugees would be “an abandonment of the UK’s humanitarian traditions” of the 1930s and ’40s.

• However, David Cameron has said there is little point taking in “more and more” refugees, adding that it’s more important to bring “peace and stability” to the areas refugees are coming from. So far, 216 people have been accepted under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, with a further 2,000 asylum applications from Syrians in the 12 months before June.

DRM

• Fans of movies like The Hunger Games and World War Z are waking up to bad news this morning after Netflix revealed in a Sunday evening blog post that it will not renew its contract with Epix, the premium cable channel whose deal with Netflix put those movies (and plenty of others) on the streaming service.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• The recent leak of the intellectual property chapter of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, currently entering its 7th year of negotiation, shows that New Zealand’s negotiators are doing a good job holding the line against more restrictive copyright laws. Things like allowing righsholders to veto parallel imports, mandatory statutory damages and requiring consent for transient automatic copying of files as they transfer across the internet, which would have taken an axe to our copyright law, now all appear to be off the table. Unfortunately, longer copyright terms and criminalisation of technological protection measures are still there, so not all is won.

• I’ve written before though about some of the things that aren’t even in TPP and which are needed to level the playing field, particularly with the US. One of those things is fair use, a US law defence, which creates a broad and flexible exception to the exclusive rights a rightsholder would otherwise have. So, for example, US cases have held 2 Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman, even though it was for commercial gain, was fair use. Links and thumbnails created by search engines have also been held to be fair use. Google also claims that its scanning of tens of millions of books without permission, is fair use. Timeshifting TV programmes for later viewing is fair use. The US Supreme Court has sent Google and Oracle back to the Federal Court in San Francisco to decide if Google’s use of Oracle owned java APIs is fair use. The list goes on. Of course, for a rightsholder, a successful fair use defence can put a big hole in its exclusive rights – that’s why Oracle is fighting so hard in its API case.

• Australia National University’s Dr. George Barker suggested that New Zealand could do well by strengthening its copyright legislation. He warned against the fair dealing exceptions that have crept into the law and asked, “Why not have copyright law like property law—i.e. it lasts forever?”

• That is a good question. And it is an important one as New Zealand and other countries consider extending the term of copyright under the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Current New Zealand law maintains copyright in written and artistic works for 50 years after the death of the writer. Copyright in film and sound recordings is shorter, lasting 50 years from the works being first made available. While the text of the TPP is not yet public, it appears that the agreement would extend copyright’s duration to 70 years from the death of the creator.

• The U.S. Government says it’s in no way responsible for the fate of Megaupload’s servers, which were raided and seized as part of the criminal proceedings against the file-sharing site. The authorities reject the proposal that they should buy the servers to preserve user data and other evidence.

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