● 09.08.15

● Links 8/9/2015: Peppermint 6, elementary OS 0.3.1

Posted in News Roundup at 5:27 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Working from the Terminal is really fun. Today, we’ll list really funny Linux commands which will bring smile on your face.

Desktop

• When you train with The Linux Foundation you’re already getting the best Linux training available. And now, to make our courses even more valuable, we are including a free Chromebook with the purchase of any Linux Foundation training course in the month of September.

• “We want students of Linux to experience a Linux desktop and Chromebooks are a great way to do that – either through Google’s Linux-based OS or by installing one of the many Linux distros available. We hope this offer can provide the freedom Linux developers and IT professionals value and spark new ideas and discoveries as they embark on our Linux training program.”

• In the few times I’ve looked at the Librem 13 crowd-funding campaign, it didn’t look like it would make its crowd-funded goal of $250k… Even with the campaign being extended on Crowd Supply. However, in the past few days it shot up sharply towards its goal.

• It turns out that it looks like the Librem 13 is being self-funded by Todd Weaver, the CEO of Purism, in order to meet their goal with the crowd-funded campaign ending on 17 September.

• Chromebooks have been burning up the sales charts at Amazon, and one redditor recently had a question about which model to buy. He wanted to know if the Asus Flip or Acer 11.6 was a better value and a better bet to run Linux. It’s a tough question since both laptops are rated 4.5 stars by Amazon customers, and there are pluses and minuses to each model.

• New reports claim that Xiaomi is developing its first laptop running on the Linux operating system and will be released in the second quarter of 2016.

• After making a big impact with its affordable range of powerful smartphones, Xiaomi, aka China’s Apple, is now reportedly entering the laptop market. According to Bloomberg, Xiaomi is in talks with Samsung for the supply of memory chips, which will be used to power its first laptop expected to be launched in early 2016.

Kernel Space

• Sasha Levin, the maintainer of the Linux 3.18 LTS kernel series, is happy to announce the immediate availability for download and update of the twenty-first maintenance release of the long-term supported Linux 3.18 kernel.

• Overall it seems the file-system driver updates for the Linux 4.3 kernel aren’t too exciting with the work mostly consisting of bug fixes — XFS isn’t any different.

• The Btrfs, EXT4, and F2FS file-system updates have largely been made up of bug fixes and that is the case too with the new XFS pull.

• The platform drivers pull for Linux x4.3 has big improvements to the Toshiba ACPI driver. Some of the Toshiba ACPI work includes adding a new /dev/toshiba_acpi device, transflective backlight updates, a set_fan_status function, and various other changes.

• Just over three years ago was a call by an open-source developer to deprecate the Linux kernel’s FBDEV drivers. While more companies these days are investing more into DRM drivers, FBDEV drivers are still maintained by the latest Linux kernel releases.

• The subject of process management, supervision and init(8) for Unix-like systems is one plagued by a large degree of ahistoricity and “pop culture” explanations. This leads to a lot of confusion and misunderstanding surrounding feature sets and how one formulates the problems surrounding reliable process management on Unix in general, making it a ripe topic for demagogues of all persuasions.

Graphics Stack

• Emil Velikov from the Mesa development team has had the pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability for download of the sixth maintenance version of the Mesa 3D Graphical Library 10.6.

• Nvidia has updated the Legacy branch of the Linux drivers and developers have fixed quite a few issues. This is a driver aimed at older hardware, so if you just got your shiny and new Titan video card, this driver will be of no use to you.

• Intel’s xf86-video-intel 3.0 display driver has now been in development for two years, but it doesn’t look like they are in a rush to release it before Wayland takes over the Linux desktop.

• This week marks two years since the first xf86-video-intel 3.0 development release with the leading changes being defaulting to SNA acceleration by default rather than UXA and enabling XMir support, but that compatibility with Ubuntu’s next-gen display server was later dropped.

• The DRM changes landed in Linux 4.3 already and we’ve written about the prominent changes for these kernel graphics drivers for the next Linux kernel release.

Applications

• The MPV movie player based on the MPlayer and mplayer2 open-source projects that supports a wide variety of video and audio file formats, as well as subtitle types and video codecs, has reached version 0.10.0.

• QEMU is the software that creates virtual hardware which guest operating systems run on top of. All (well, almost all — see note below[*]) the hardware that a guest OS has access to is actually written to some specifications in software — i.e. no physical hardware is involved. For the QEMU/KVM hypervisor, most of these devices are written in the QEMU source repository. A few devices are part of the KVM code in the Linux kernel. QEMU also handles a lot of host-specific stuff, like storage and networking for the virtual machines.

• Just a quick quick post to announce that I’ve set up a COPR repository where I host software used in neuroscience research.

Proprietary

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Looks like Saints Row 2 will be getting the Linux treatment too. We are truly blessed with games recently!

• Company of Heroes 2 is a real-time strategy game originally developed by Relic Entertainment and ported to Linux by Feral Interactive. Now, the studio that also took care of the porting process has announced that some DLCs for the game are also available for Linux players.

• A developer named Yanick Bourbeau wrote a post on Gamasutra about developing on Linux, and it’s a nice read. It’s not the most in-depth piece around, but it’s a positive one I felt the need to highlight.

• We announced a while back that the Mad Max game from Avalanche Studios is coming to Linux and we based that on information on an official press release. For some reason, the SteamOS platform disappeared a few months ago from all communiques, and there is no information as to why.

• Arma 3′s performance using Virtual Programming’s eON tech is rather amazing.

• Guild Software has announced a new maintenance release of their popular and cross-platform Vendetta Online 3D space combat MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) title.

• The developer of Battle Worlds: Kronos and the highly rated The Book of Unwritten Tales games, KING Art Games, launched a Kickstarter campaign last week, and have now promised a Linux version of the upcoming game.

• The developers of the open-source and cross-platform Unvanquished FPS (First-Person Shooter) game have announced the immediate availability for download of a new Alpha build.

• The latest monthly update to the Unvanquished open-source first person shooter game is now available.

• Unvanquished 0.43 boasts some new high resolution textures, mapping updates, some engine API updates are in the works, and other changes have landed over the past month. There are also bug-fixes to some high profile issues that were affecting gamers of this open-source, cross-platform title.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Pier Luigi Fiorini, the creator and lead developer of the independent and open-source SDDM (Simple Desktop Display Manager) login manager software used on numerous desktop environments, including KDE, LXDE, and Hawaii, has announced the release of version 0.12.0.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The digiKam Team is proud to announce the release of digiKam Software Collection 4.13.0. This release is the result of another huge bugs triage on KDE bugzilla where more than 30 files have been closed. Thanks to Maik Qualmann who maintain KDE4 version while KF5 port and GSoC 2015 projects are in progress. Both are planed to be completed while sprint 2016.

• This does not seem like much, but, trust me, it is.

• The KActivitiesStats library now supports mixing contacts (documents, etc.) that are linked to the current activity (aka favourites, or pinning), with the recently or frequently contacted ones.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• A new development release of the Nautilus (Files) file manager has been published as part of the second Beta milestone towards the upcoming and anticipated GNOME 3.18 desktop environment.

Distributions

• OpenELEC, an embedded operating system built specifically to run the famous KODI (former XBMC) media player hub, has been upgraded once more and it’s now at version 6.0 Beta 5 and is now ready for download and testing.

Reviews

• Austrumi is a Linux distribution that is based on Slackware and developed by a small team from the Latgale region of Latvia, a small ex-USSR Baltic state.

• openSUSE announced the second milestone for the Leap 42.1 developmental cycle so I decided to give her a test run. I wasn’t the only one putting openSUSE through its paces this weekend though. Jamie Watson tested a recent Tumbleweed snapshot on yet another new Acer netbook and Neil Rickert tested both.

• As my search for a Mint replacement continues, openSUSE Leap 42.1 reached Milestone 2 and thought I’d give it a whirl. I downloaded the install DVD and designated a pre-used partition for the install and formatted with ext4. I didn’t test any of the higher functions like encryption or LVM, and left the default KDE desktop as my choice. I didn’t bother selecting packages and just installed the default selections. That was 4 gigs. I had it put the boot files on both the MBR and the install partition and it didn’t balk. This is the first time in a long time I have a pretty Bootloader screen. It identified and listed all my Linux installs, even those I wish it wouldn’t.

New Releases

• The Solus operating system is on track of an October 1 release, and it looks like the fundraiser was also a success.

• On September 7, we were informed by the developers of the recently introduced Apricity OS GNU/Linux distribution that a new Beta build was made available for download and testing.

• We’re happy to introduce you today to a new Live DVD ISO image from the well-known Linux AIO project, which contains the basic, freely distributed editions of the popular Zorin OS GNU/Linux distribution.

Screenshots/Screencasts

Arch Family

• Octopi v0.8 is about to be released. It will feature a lot of bugfixes and new additions.

• The Manjaro Linux development team, through Philip Müller, has had the great pleasure of announcing earlier today, September 7, the general availability of a new stable update for the Manjaro Linux operating system.

• The Manjaro Linux Team has announced earlier that the next major version of the Octopi GUI (Graphical User Interface) package manager software, version 0.8, is around the corner and a release is imminent.

Red Hat Family

• Avnet will expand its decade-long partnership with Red Hat to provide the Netherlands with a range of open source offerings.

• The distie giant will offer Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux and Enterprise Virtualisation solutions, alongside its JBoss Middleware offering.

• Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) has received a consensus recommendation of “Buy” from the thirty-two brokerages that are presently covering the firm, Analyst Ratings Net reports. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation, six have issued a hold recommendation and twenty-three have assigned a buy recommendation to the company. The average 12 month target price among analysts that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $81.67.

Debian Family

• Piwik told me that people are still sharing my post about the state of GNOME-Software and update notifications in Debian Jessie.

• So I thought it might be useful to publish a small update on that matter:

• If you are using GNOME or KDE Plasma with Debian 8 (Jessie), everything is fine – you will receive update notifications through the GNOME-Shell/via g-s-d or Apper respectively. You can perform updates on GNOME with GNOME-PackageKit and with Apper on KDE Plasma.

• Debian’s Jérémy Bobbio came with the proposal of introducing reproducible builds for all of the software packages (over 22,000) available in the software repositories of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system to get a verifiable path from source to binary.

• Shortly after introducing the second point release of the Debian GNU/Linux 8 “Jessie” operating system, the Debian Project had the great pleasure of informing its users about the immediate availability for download of a new maintenance release for their stable, long-term supported Debian GNU/Linux 7 OS.

• Unfortunately this weekend, with the 8.2 release, things broke in a significant way – The cron deamon was left in a broken state, such that all cronjobs failed to execute.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• We’ve been toying with the idea of a tablet powered by the Ubuntu Linux operating system from Canonical for quite some time now, as there have been a few attempts from various tech companies to create such a device, some of which proved to be a hoax.

• Ubuntu is now the most used Linux operating system out there, both for desktops and in the cloud, and there are some good reasons why that is true. We’ll go through a few of those reasons.

• Amidst all the news about Ubuntu Touch, Snappy, and other various products, we finally get to see something about the progress made by developers with X applications running natively in Mir and Unity 8.

• As reported late last month, the Aquaris E4.5 and Aquaris E5 are two phones based on the Linux Ubuntu operating system. These are now available for purchase via online retailer Snapdeal.

• Ubuntu, a popular alternative operating system traditionally used on desktop, laptops and server, debuted for smartphones last year. The Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition is based on a 4.5 inch screen with a 540×960 resolution, and runs a MediaTek Quad-core Cortex A7 processor with 8GB of internal memory and 1GB of RAM. It also features a 5 megapixel front camera and 8 megapixel rear camera having autofocus, dual flash and Full HD video recording capability. It is powered by a 2,150mAH Li-Po battery.

• Erle Robotics has launched an Indiegogo campaign for what it claims is the “first smart robotic spider powered by Snappy Ubuntu Core,” which is a “transactionally updated Ubuntu for clouds and devices.” The six-legged robot weighs just over 2 kilograms (4.4lbs) and has 45 minutes of autonomy, according to the company.

• Indiegogo options include a basic kit for about £250 ($400), and an assembled version for around £420 ($640). If the main Indiegogo goal of $50,000 (about £33,000) is exceeded, the stretch goals include a free Android app to replace the simple wireless gamepad that is included with the system ($100,000 pledged), and the addition of a 5-megapixel camera to all models if $150,000 is pledged. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a stretch goal to add two extra legs.

• Canonical posted a video today showing the state of running a Unity 8 session with Mir while supporting legacy X11 applications that lack a Mir back-end.

• Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu will not drop deb packages in favor of snappy ones, the Snappy Ubuntu Core being a container full of DEBs.

Flavours and Variants

• Team Peppermint are pleased to announce a respin of our latest operating system Peppermint 6 with full UEFI / GPT / Secureboot support (64bit edition only), and a new version of Ice (our in house Site Specific Browser framework) that now supports the Firefox web browser as well as Chromium / Chrome.

• We’ve fixed a few minor bugs, and tweaked the Peppermix-Dark theme a little in line with user feedback

• The BQ Aquaris E4.5 and E5 Ubuntu editions have finally arrived in India via the Snapdeal and users should get some personalized scopes and various other localized content.

• elementary OS was officially updated to version 0.3.1 a few days ago, and it looks like the project has settled in a status quo, which brings good news and bad news. Stability is always something to be desired, but the project is no longer exciting.

• I have recently installed elementary OS and it took quite a lot to get it to work, which is not encouraging. It’s a common “nomodeset” problem, but I managed to get passed it. New Linux users might not be able to do that. In any case, I’m currently reviewing the new version, and I’ve noticed that it sort of lost some of its appeal.

• Mark Greaves from the Peppermint project has had the great pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability for download of the first respin of the Ubuntu-based Peppermint OS 6 Linux distribution.

Devices/Embedded

• In the end we chose an industrial-quality display from our friends at Inelco Hunter based in the UK, who were able to create something very special:

• RGB 800×480 display @60fps

• 24-bit colour

• FT5406 10 point capacitive touchscreen

• 70 degree viewing angle

• Metal-backed display with mounting holes for the Pi

Phones

Android

• When dialing 911 the situation isn’t always calm and it can be difficult to comprehend everything happening at the time due to high-stress levels. That’s why the newly enabled feature in the preview is so important. When users call 911 (or whatever their emergency number is in the country or region they reside) the screen will now display an overview of Google Maps with the name listed for the emergency service center they’re connected with during a call, and the information on the map is the current location of the caller so they can more easily give those specific details to the emergency dispatch person on the line with them, which could end up helping those who are dispatched out to that location to possibly get there quicker.

• The convenience and versatility offered by mobile devices and the ubiquity of connectivity has caused a shift in the way we live and work. Gone are the solitary cubicles and stodgy desktops of yore, replaced by the mobile workforce user.

• The Sunchip CX-S500 is a very tiny Android powered mediaplayer, about the size of a small smartphone charger.

• There are a lot of quite awesome and intriguing icon packs for Android – normally, a handful of noteworthy ones appear on Google Play each and every day. However, keeping tabs on all of these is quite a cumbersome task, even for those who are into such things. This is why we regularly show you the icon packs that have recently made their way to the Play Store and deserve your attention.

• HTC has silently launched new smartphone in its Desire-series in China, named HTC Desire 728 Dual SIM. The smartphone is up for pre-orders and is expected to start shipping by mid-September. The firm has not yet revealed the price of the dual-SIM handset.

• The HTC Desire 728 Dual SIM runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with HTC Sense and features a 5.5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) IPS display like the Desire 820G+ Dual SIM, which was launched in July. It packs the same 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, but a 5-megapixel secondary front-facing camera instead of an 8-megapixel one. Also, the handset is powered by a slightly less powerful octa-core MediaTek MT6753 SoC (clocked at 1.3GHz) and 2GB of RAM.

• Kali Linux is one the best love operating system of white hat hackers, security researchers and pentesters. It offers advanced penetration testing tool and its ease of use means that it should be a part of every security professional’s toolbox.

• Penetration testing involves using a variety of tools and techniques to test the limits of security policies and procedures. Now a days more and more apps are available on Android operating system for smartphones and tablets so it becomes worthwhile to have Kali Linux on your smartphone as well.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Jolla is currently taking preorders for it’s next limited production run for delivery to EU, Norway, Switzerland, United States, Canada, Australia, India and Hong Kong, and are expected to ship at the end of October. The 32 GB version is selling for €267.00 (about $298 US), with the 64 GB version going for €299.00 (about $334.00 US).

Free Software/Open Source

SaaS/Big Data

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Developers are preparing a LibreOffice viewer for the Ubuntu phones, and it looks like it’s coming along just nicely. It’s still early work, but its makers are already reporting great progress and really good performance.

• Pesaro is a town of about 100 thousands people on the northern adriatic coast of Italy. Its Public Administration has been facing lots of critics from Free/Open Source software supporters because, in the last five years, it changed twice the same, important part of its ICT infrastructure. Both those changes bring consequences and open issues, both for the critics and for Pesaro, that have had little or no coverage at all so far, especially outside Italy (1). Before talking about them, however, it is necessary to summarize what happened.

BSD

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• A few weeks ago, Manolis Ragkousis announced the completion of the GSoC project whose purpose was to port Guix to the Hurd. The system distribution, GuixSD, cannot run GNU/Hurd yet, but the package manager itself can both cross-compile from GNU/Linux to GNU/Hurd and build natively on GNU/Hurd. The work of Manolis is being gradually merged in the main branch.

• More recently, Mark H Weaver posted a series of patches porting GuixSD to MIPS (Lemote Yeeloong), making it the first GuixSD port to non-Intel-compatible hardware (the package manager itself has supported mips64el for two years already.) By removing several platform-specific assumptions, this work paves the way for future ports.

Public Services/Government

• The city of Munich is a major contributor to free and open source projects, sending bugfixes to upstream developers, making available software solutions and sharing best practices and technical information. In August, Munich IT staff members shared the city’s accomplishments with the community of Debian developers, one of the main free software distributions.

• Munich may have put out the fire but they still are far from optimal in IT. There’s no reason at all they have to support 20-year-old computers. Such things can be replaced rather readily in today’s market with savings in energy-consumption, size, space, noise, dust,… Why spend a lot on labour to maintain obsolete technology far past its “best before” date? It’s not as if they are just getting full value out of previous expenditures nor keeping junk out of the landfill. Ten years’ support does that very well. Twenty years is just silly. 20 years ago, I was using a ‘486, for pity’s sake.

Openness/Sharing

Open Data

• Are we on the cusp of seeing dramatic changes in the way governments operate by publishing and consuming open data? Mark Headd, Developer Evangelism at Accela seems to think so. He’ll be leading a panel discussion at the All Things Open conference in October about open data and wants to explore just that—how open data is changing government, both institutionally and operationally.

Open Access/Content

• Not-for-profit organization Pratham Books launches an open source digital platform on Tuesday to help spread literacy among children on World Literacy Day.

Open Hardware

• While 3D printing businesses are crucial within the community, few initiatives have been as meaningful or as life-giving as the RepRap movement for making 3D printing available at every making level. That’s why we are always very supportive of new RepRap(-based) initiatives, and a very promising one has just caught our eye. Called the Fusion 3D printer, this is a very promising machine designed through RepRap principles to be portable, open source, excellent in performance and affordable. While a Kickstarter campaign for this interesting machine is forthcoming, you can already order this 3D printer as a kit for just $249.

• Kano is a handsomely-designed modular kit of parts that assembles into a computer, and its office, while not a computer, is also assembled from a handsomely designed modular kits of parts.

Programming

• C is everywhere and in everything. C powers the Mars Curiosity rover, every computer operating system, every mobile OS, the Java Virtual Machine, Google Chrome, ATM machines, the computers in your car, the computers in your robot surgeon, the computers that designed the robot surgeon, the computers that designed those computers, and, eventually, C powers itself as its own implementation language.

Leftovers

• The launch of the iPhone 6s, fourth generation Apple TV and iPad Pro is impending…

• [...]

• Apple knows it can’t rely on the annual iPhone hype-release cycle forever.

Health/Nutrition

• Glance at a lawn in East Porterville, California, and you’ll instantly know something about the people who live in the house attached to it.

• If a lawn is green, the home has running water. If it’s brown, or if the yard contains plastic water tanks or crates of bottled water, then the well has gone dry.

Security

• The Linux Foundation’s recently published security checklist may draw more attention to best practices for protecting Linux workstations, even if IT pros do not embrace all of its recommendations.

• There’s a critical shortage of IT security experts in Australia to meet an otherwise welcome increase in the demand for ICT executives after months of employment uncertainty for the country’s tech executives.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Given the disgraceful Sun front page and middle spread urging war on Syria, and the all-out propaganda on Sky News, it is important to understand why Murdoch is pushing so hard for war. I therefore reproduce my article from February 2013. It is important to note that the links are to industry publications: this is very genuine, hard information.

• DAVID CAMERON revealed yesterday that the RAF carried out a secret drone strike in Syria which killed two British citizens fighting for Islamic State (Isis).

• The Prime Minister insisted the strike was “necessary and proportionate” to stop attacks being planned on Britain.

• But campaigners described it as a an “extrajudicial killing” that “violated” the will of Parliament.

Finance

• In the past I sold a few personal items on eBay that were paid for with PayPal. On those occasions I had immediate access to the money I received.

• However, in recent weeks I have sold some other items, also paid for with PayPal, but was able to access the money only after 21 days, even though PayPal deducted its fees immediately. Have things changed?

• About a decade ago, home prices exploded to bizarro levels, then millions of families got behind on their mortgage payments. A financial crisis spiraled out from there, almost destroying the world. Things have improved a bit since then, but it still sucks for lots of people. If you can’t make your payments, the bank squares the debt by seizing your home, and you’re left out in the cold. In the modern world, it’s one of the worst things that can happen to you that doesn’t involve a somber doctor asking you to please sit down.

• That’s where Evelyn comes in. As part of her real estate job, she works with banks to handle foreclosures, evictions, and lockouts. We asked her what it’s like watching this tragedy unfold again and again.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• After exceeding his $1 million crowd-funding goal, Harvard Law School professor Larry Lessig announced today on “This Week” that he is running for president.

• “I think I’m running to get people to acknowledge the elephant in the room,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We have to recognize — we have a government that does not work. The stalemate, partisan platform of American politics in Washington right now doesn’t work.”

• To many of us who have been in conflict zones without a sanitised cordon around us, and actually seen the effects close-up (and that excludes almost all of the political class), it is astonishing that the neo-cons constantly seek to promote war, any war. They just cannot sit comfortably unless we are blowing somebody, somewhere, limb from limb.

• Little Aylan Kurdi and his family were fleeing Kobani, a town the US Air Force have been bombing relentlessly for weeks. Bombs are entirely agnostic over who they kill, and have not made life notably better for the population.

• Yet the news media are now insistently beating the drum for British bombing in Syria.

Censorship

• Despite scaling dizzy heights in recent months, the record for DMCA notices being sent to Google’s search engine has been smashed again. In a single week Google just processed a mind-boggling 13.68 million URLs, or to put it another way, almost 23 copyright complaints every second. So what’s behind the massive surge?

• The Norwegian Pirate Party has made a big statement by launching a free DNS service which allows Internet users to bypass the local Pirate Bay blockade. The party advocates a free and open Internet for everyone and believes that the recent website blockades set a dangerous precedent.

• Following a court-ordered block of The Pirate Bay and a number of other file-sharing websites in Norway, the Norwegian Pirate Party (Piratpartiet Norge) has now set up free, uncensored DNS servers that anyone can use to bypass the block. While the DNS servers are based in Norway, anyone can use them: if your ISP is blocking access to certain sites via DNS blackholing/blocking, using the Piratpartiet’s DNS servers should enable access.

Privacy

• With dozens of cases under his belt Oregon lawyer Carl Crowell can be considered an expert when it comes to suing BitTorrent pirates. However, a recent claim that pirates can’t be anonymous online conflicts with day-to-day reality.

Civil Rights

• A former Geelong Grammar headmaster paid a teacher to retire early, in order to avoid a formal complaint about sexual abuse, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse has heard.

• The former headmaster, Nicholas Sampson, is now the principal of elite New South Wales school, Cranbrook School.

• Former teacher Jonathan Harvey was jailed in 2007 for 10 months, with another 22 months suspended, after pleading guilty to abusing a former student, known as BLF, between 1976 and 1978.

• In his testimony to the royal commission on Monday, Harvey claimed the elite school’s then-headmaster Nicholas Sampson suggested that he retire early, after hearing of his misconduct relating to a student.

• Saljanin appears to have stopped at home in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he left the large, rented Penske truck in a parking lot overnight. When he came back the next day, he told police, the truck was gone. Of course, he told the authorities, he had no idea who could have done such a thing, nor did anyone else know that he was making the delivery.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Reddit user demian87 recently posted a letter from Comcast notifying him or her of a new Comcast internet access pricing plan being trialed in Fort Lauderdale, the Keys, and Miami, Florida. According to this letter, Comcast will set a limit beginning on October 1 of 300 GB per household per month. Customers who exceed this limit will have to pay $10 for every additional 50 GB needed after that, or sign up for an unlimited data plan for an additional $30 per month.

• Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas confirmed that the letter is authentic, along with the company’s new unlimited pricing plan. Douglas explained that “the company has trialed three other pricing plans since 2012 when Comcast had a static limit of 250 GB per month.”

• In a related development reported by the New York Times, Comcast will campaign to win over the quintessential cord-cutter class with new TV services designed to entice them into subscribing to its internet access service. Comcast will begin offering a $15-a-month TV service called Stream that includes broadcast networks and HBO for its internet customers. The new service will be available in Boston, Chicago, and Seattle later this year and across the company’s coverage areas in the United States in 2016.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• As summer is sadly approaching its end, there may be nonetheless some reasons not to feel completely blue, one of these being that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has just resumed its activity.

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