● 11.12.15

● Links 12/11/2015: Ubuntu Community Council Election, Fedora Goes for Wayland

Posted in News Roundup at 7:48 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• It might sound weird to hear yourself talk with your computer, but that’s exactly where we’re going, and Mycroft is going to help us get there.

Desktop

• Computers just keep getting more and more powerful as the years roll by, but at what point do Linux computers jump the shark in terms of hardware specs? A writer at Foss Force questions the constant focus on ever more powerful systems.

Server

• Now, Google has launched many enhancements to its container-focused cloud offerings designed to leverage new open source developments and boost the performance of its products in a hard fought cloud market. As of this week, Google Container Engine, which is based on the Kubernetes open source project that manages clusters and orchestrates Docker containers in Google’s cloud, now has the newest updates to Kubernetes.

• The key to running a profitable cloud business for Rackspace likely doesn’t rely on infrastructure but rather on support for multiple cloud infrastructures, including OpenStack.

Kernel Space

• It’s usually not worth mentioning Kconfig changes for each new Linux kernel release, but this time around there is actually new functionality to point out.

• With the Kconfig pull request for the Linux 4.4 kernel, running make xconfig to visually configure the kernel’s configuration options will now support using the Qt5 tool-kit.

• Last month Qualcomm announced they made big advancements with its server ecosystem by showing off a Server Development Platform with a 24-core ARMv8 SoC. This work is now being followed close behind with open-source enablement patches.

Graphics Stack

• NVIDIA’s embargo has just expired on the Jetson TX1: a 64-bit ARM development board that’s worth getting excited about for Linux enthusiasts, those wishing to build their own ARM-powered devices, or just wanting a powerful ARM Linux desktop. The Jetson TX1 powered by the Tegra X1 is shaping up to be a splendid device; NVIDIA is even comparing the performance of the JTX1 to that of an Intel Core i7 6700K in certain tasks.

• Mesa 11.0.5 is now available.

• The open-source Nouveau Gallium3D drivers have tacked on support for another OpenGL 4.4 extension.

• Thanks to the continued work by Ilia Mirkin, Mesa 11.1 will have support in the NV50 and NVC0 Gallium3D drivers for the ARB_clear_texture extension. This extension was only made available today to Gallium3D drivers while previously this extension was supported by the classic Intel driver. The commit landing the Nouveau support is here.

Benchmarks

• Mostly for reference purposes, I ran a variety of new and old OpenCL and CUDA open-source Linux benchmarks on ten different NVIDIA graphics cards. The cards included the entire range of GeForce GTX 900 “Maxwell” graphics cards as the latest-generation solutions along with several older GeForce GTX 600 and GTX 700 Kepler graphics cards. Tests were done from Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS on Linux 3.19 with CUDA 7.5 Tool-Kit and the NVIDIA 352.39 binary driver.

Applications

• As you may know, Mutate is an open-source Linux Launcher developed in Qt 5, similar to Mac’s Alfred. Among others, it allows the users to easily search for their favorite files and applications. If the string you type does not match any file, it has an option for searching that information on Google or other search engine. Also, the launcher can be configured via the preferences menu.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• I know, I know: You’re busy with Fallout 4 and feel like you don’t need to buy another game for the rest of the year. You’re probably right. But but but…Steam Sale.

• Valve officially released its first batch of Steam Machines yesterday, as well as the Steam Controller and Steam Link. It was a big day for Valve, though it seems to have come and gone with considerably less fanfare than when the initial spate of preorders showed up in October. Again, blame Fallout. And probably StarCraft II, while you’re at it.

• The one thing that made me really chuckle, was talk about performance. According to the Alienware rep there’s no performance “degradation” on SteamOS. We all know most ports perform worse than they do on Windows, so it’s marketing speak at its finest. Again, Vulkan is going to certainly help, as will Alienware/Valve and others talking directly to Nvidia/AMD/Intel to improve their drivers for OpenGL too.

• Road Redemption is the rather cool looking spiritual successor to Road Rash (an old love of mine), and it looks like it may come to Linux sometime soon.

• So yesterday, the 10th of November, was the official launch day of the Steam Machines. The hardware are meant to be dedicated game machines for the living room taking advantage of the Steam ecosystem, to take on the Xbox One and PS4.

• A Steam Machine is a PC for your living room. Play your games on your big screen TV while sitting comfortably on your sofa. Steam Machines run a Linux-based operating system called SteamOS and are controlled with a gamepad instead of a mouse and keyboard.

• Valve has officially launched its highly anticipated, Linux-powered Steam Machines gaming computers running the Debian-based SteamOS operating system in Big Picture mode, along with the Steam Link and Steam Controller devices.

• On November 11, Epic Games had the great pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability for download of its brand new Unreal Engine 4.10 game engine software.

• Valve has finally fixed one of the most annoying and ridiculous bugs that were present in the Steam client and implicitly on SteamOS.

• Steam Machines became available yesterday and folks are talking, including some from our own community. Elsewhere, Jon Gold ranks distributions on their newbie friendliness and Bruce Byfield discusses more on new user desktops. Ubuntu Community Council election approaches and Wayland is now default in Fedora Rawhide.

• This year has been particularly fruitful in its addition of ports from big names, but prior to the wave of ports that came recently, Linux and UNIX games were predominantly cloned or original games made by the community. Some of these sites are short on funding and require support to continue providing content. OpenGameArt’s founder, Bart Kelsey, has asked for funding to maintain the site in a campaign that is currently at 65 percent of it’s goal — and I urge you to support this and other projects connected with open source gaming.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Today KDE releases a bugfix update to Plasma 5, versioned 5.4.3. Plasma 5.4 was released in August with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

• My results show a speedup of between 2 and 2.5 times when querying screen information on X11 and on wayland, wayland being much faster here.

• Packages for the release of KDE’s Plasma 5.4.3, bugfix Release for November, are available for Kubuntu 15.10. You can get them from the Kubuntu Backports PPA.

• Well, that was fast! A few hours ago, Softpedia was the first to announce the release of KDE Plasma 5.4.3 desktop environment, which has apparently already landed in the Kubuntu Backports repository of Kubuntu 15.10.

• A few moments ago, KDE, through Jonathan Riddell, had the great pleasure of announcing the general availability of the third and last maintenance release of the KDE Plasma 5.4 desktop environment.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GNOME 3 has come a long way since 3.0. When you compare what we have now to that initial 3.0 release, the difference is quite huge. Though it might look similar, the experience of using it has improved dramatically. This improvement is a major achievement, and has only happened thanks to the tireless efforts of the GNOME community.

Distributions

• How do you choose a Linux desktop for beginners? The answer is more complicated than usually admitted. Besides ease of use, you should also think about first impressions, the quality of help, stability, and room to grow. These characteristics immediately eliminate distros like Gentoo or Slackware, but still leaves dozens of alternatives, none of which rate high in all these characteristics.

New Releases

• ClearOS 7.1.0 Final for all editions has arrived! ClearOS now comes in three different editions: Community, Home and Business. All editions can be installed from the same download ISO, but each edition provides a mix of apps, support and services to meet different needs. This release is the first in the ClearOS 7 series and provides major improvements and new features. ClearOS 7.1.0 introduces:

Arch Family

• Yes, it’s that time of the month again when we have the great pleasure of informing you about the immediate availability for download of a new installation media for the lightweight and acclaimed Arch Linux operating system.

• Coming from the developer who brought us the RaspEX and RaspAnd Live CDs, RaspArch aims to be a tool that lets anyone install the latest Arch Linux operating system on Raspberry Pi 2 single-board computers without too much hassle.

• The Manjaro development team, through Philip Müller, has announced the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the second Preview build for the upcoming Manjaro Linux 15.12 computer operating system.

Red Hat Family

• Some government and industry executives who presented at a Red Hat-sponsored forum Tuesday believe open source technology can drive ideas for development of other information technology platforms, Fedscoop reported Tuesday.

• Paul Smith, vice president and general manager of Red Hat’s public sector business, told audience at the company’s annual Government Symposium that many agencies are now turning to free source codes for innovation.

• MOST companies in Malaysia want to evolve and move their information technology (IT) towards becoming ‘frictionless,’ but do not know how to go about doing it, said a senior Red Hat Inc executive.

• But why has Poettering received so much hate? Why does a man who simply develops open source software have to tolerate this amount of anger? Well, the answer lies in the importance of his software. Systemd is the first thing launched by the Linux kernel on most distributions now, and it serves many roles. It starts system services, handles logins, executes tasks at specified intervals, and much more. It’s growing all the time, and becoming something of a “base system” for Linux – providing all the plumbing tools needed to boot and maintain a distro.

• Surely the ‘d’ in Systemd is a typo?

• No – it’s a form of Unix notation used to signify a daemon.

• For instance, the company announced the acquisition of software development and IT automation specialist Ansible near the middle of the month. That small but sensible tuck-in buy gives Red Hat another selling point for large-scale development and systems management clients.

• Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) has been assigned a consensus recommendation of “Buy” from the thirty-five analysts that are presently covering the company, AnalystRatingsNetwork.com reports. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have assigned a hold rating and twenty-six have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 12-month price objective among analysts that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $83.07.

• But the Microsoft deal may have marked a watershed moment for the company, shares of which have struggled to regain past glory. The transaction sent Red Hat shares to a new high above 80 — a level not seen since those halcyon days a decade and a half ago when it topped 150 — and seemingly into a new era of prosperity.

• Red Hat was conspicuous by its absence to the Azure party. Given that majority of the customers were running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for enterprise workloads, there was no direct migration path to Azure. Microsoft recommended CentOS and Oracle Linux – the two distributions that are highly compatible with RHEL – as alternatives. At the same time, RHEL was a first class citizen on Amazon EC2 allowing customers to bring their own license or pay by usage. Though it was possible to technically run RHEL on Azure, the customers didn’t prefer it due to lack of assurance from Red Hat. Microsoft approached Red Hat to bring RHEL to Azure, but it fell through due to the licensing and IP issues. The legal teams at both the ends could never come to a conclusion on the working model, which delayed the partnership by a few years.

Fedora

• Fedora 23 Security Lab is Spin of Fedora, a Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat.

• Fedora spins are editions of the popular Linux distribution that use desktop environments other than that used on the main Fedora edition. That main (Fedora) edition uses the GNOME 3 desktop in its default form.

• As the name suggests, the Fedora Security Lab Spin is expressly for designed for security purposes.

• Today we’re informing our readers about the fact that Fedora Project and Red Hat will terminate support of the Fedora 21 Linux operating system starting with December 1, 2015.

• Fedora 23 arrived a week later than originally planned, just like Fedora 22. While there are couple of Fedora spins, featuring popular desktop environments, for the past couple of days, I’ve been using the main release which is based on GNOME Shell (3.18).

• It’s true that GNOME 3.18 comes with many subtle refinements and features, but one of these features (a major one unfortunately) looked confusing to me, just like I find it difficult to cope with the default desktop layout of GNOME3, which is why I only use the ‘Classic Desktop Session’ as it resembles the old GNOME2 desktop (well, to a certain degree). Fedora 22 also had let go of one majorly useful utility (systemd’s ‘readahead’ component) and unfortunately, Fedora 23 too comes without it.

• After announcing the release of the Fedora 23 Server and Cloud editions for ARM 64-bit (AArch64) and POWER (PPC64/PPC64el) hardware architectures, Fedora Project is proud to present Fedora 23 Server for IBM System z 64-Bit.

• Fedora 23 Server for z Systems (i.e. the s390x architecture) is now released and available for download. This release provides the new features and updates in Fedora 23 Server, but built specifically for the s390x architecture.

• Fedora developer Ray Strode recently posted to the Fedora Developers list with the news that Wayland is now used by default when you log into GNOME with Fedora Workstation. Previously to try out Wayland with Workstation, there was an additional session in the login screen that allowed you to choose either login with Xorg or Wayland. This change is part of the much anticipated proposed Fedora 24 feature, Wayland by Default.

• As you may know, the Red Hat developers have announced Wayland seven years ago, Wayland 1.0 being 3 years old already. Recently, Red Hat’s Ray Strode has announced that Fedora Rawhide will be using Wayland by default, all the needed configurations being already done in GNOME-Session, GDM, GNOME-Shell and Mutter. But it can be easily disabled via the /etc/gdm/custom.conf configuration file.

Debian Family

• The Debian Live project is no more, and its leader announced that it had been absorbed by the debian-cd and the debian-installer teams, without his knowledge or approval.

• Debian Live has been part of the Debian family for the last 10 years, but yesterday Daniel Baumann announced the end of the project citing internal deception. The Fedora 24 release schedule was highlighted and several reviews brag on Linux capabilities. Finally today, the Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy have posted their opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

• If you are looking for a solid and stable operating system for your server or desktop, look no further Debian is your choice. Interesting fact about Debian is that it usually has 3 releases stable, testing and unstable. Eventually (after many tests) the “testing” release becomes stable and the “Unstable” becomes “testing”. This way Debian ensures its users receive a well tested, stable and reliable environment.

• Before even more of reality is spin-doctored into some distorted view of it, and before my past work is being discredited, I will take the high road and continue my work on Debian Live images on the outside.

Derivatives

• On November 8, the antiX development team announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta build of the upcoming antiX MX 15 GNU/Linux distribution.

• Based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 8.2 (Jessie) operating system and dubbed Fusion, antiX MX 15 Beta 1 is powered by Liquorix Linux 4.2 kernel for the 64-bit edition, as well as two stable Linux 3.16 kernels from Debian on the 32-bit flavor.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The unit features a quad-core ARM Cortex A-15 processor with an NVIDIA Keplar-based GPU and runs Canonical’s Ubuntu OS with support for CUDA, OpenCV and ROS. The best part is it is compatible with third-party sensors allowing developers to really expand a drone’s toolkit. The benefit of having such a powerful computer on board means you can collect and analyze data in one shot, rather than relaying the raw output down to your control hub.

• The Samsung ARTIK 5 and ARTIK 10 modules are not famous, but they are about to become famous. Canonical has big plans and wants to make snappy Ubuntu Core work on these platforms.

• Earlier today, November 11, Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak has sent an email to the Ubuntu Touch mailing list, informing everyone that the team is working around the clock to prepare the OTA-8 software update.

• [A]ll Ubuntu members are electing a new Community Council in the next two weeks. I started setting up the election in CIVS and will invite all eligible voters to it in a bit, so you all should receive an email about it.

• 2842789Let’s bring some change to the Community Council. A few of those running for Community Council have been on the council for years and not given up their seat to allow new ideas and fresh leadership to come to the council.

• DJI Innovations, the world’s largest consumer drone maker, recently introduced the Manifold, an embedded computer for drones that runs on Ubuntu Linux. The Manifold uses Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) Tegra K1 quad-core processor, which has 192 GPU cores, for real-time mapping, data analysis, and image recognition. The Manifold costs $499 and is compatible with the $3,299 Matrice 100 drone. This isn’t the first time Nvidia has used a Tegra K1 to guide a drone — at CES 2015 it did a similar demo with a drone from DJI’s rival Parrot.

• Barry Kauler, the father of Puppy Linux, one of the smallest and most lightweight GNU/Linux distributions ever created, on which numerous distros are based, has announced that Quirky Linux entered the “Werewolf” series of development.

• Didier Roche, the lead developer and creator of Ubuntu Make, has announced the immediate availability for download of Ubuntu Make 15.11.1 for all supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf).

Devices/Embedded

• Nvidia is hoping to attract machine learning developers with the Jetson TX1, an ARM-based development board powered by the top-end Tegra X1 SoC. The company claims that in certain deep learning tasks that rely on dynamic input and computations—autonomous drones, facial recognition and behavioural analysis, and computer vision—the Jetson TX1 will beat out an Intel Core i7 6700K Skylake CPU in performance.

• Nvidia has launched an AI and robotics oriented “Jetson TX1” module and development kit, based on an Nvidia Tegra X1 SoC running Linux.

• For its encore to the popular Jetson TK1 hacker and prototyping SBC based on the Cortex-A15 Tegra K1 SoC, Nvidia’s Jetson TX1 has moved to the 64-bit, Cortex-A57 Tegra X1 SoC. Nvidia has also split the product into separately available computer-on-module and COM/carrier development board products.

Phones

Android

• I recently upgraded my 2013 Nexus 7 to Marshmallow with an over-the-air (OTA) upgrade. While Google has no plans for a Nexus 7 2012 OTA upgrade, you can, contrary to most accounts, manually update the 2012 model to Android 6 (a.k.a. Marshmallow) using the nakasi and nakasig builds.

• Whether you call it by its official title – Android Marshmallow – or opt for Android M, the latest version of Google’s mobile OS represents a huge upgrade.

• Android Lollipop was good, but Android M boasts a range of additional features, such as the intelligent Now on Tap and battery-saver Doze, that make it an even better operating system than its predecessor.

• The European Commission has reportedly widened the scope of its investigation into Google’s alleged anti-competitive Android operating system tactics in the 28-member-state bloc.

• According to Bloomberg, officials at the antitrust wing of the European Commission have fired off missives to companies seeking their views on whether Google Maps has superseded navigation services, such as TomTom and Nokia Oyj’s HERE product.

• The company’s Android software runs more smartphones than any of its rivals, appearing on eight out of 10 smartphones sold worldwide between April and June, according to IDC.

• Android Wear, along with the Android Wear app, is quite new to the wearable tech space. Since its launch in March last year, Android Wear app has seen a few updates. The latest version is Android Wear 1.4 released by Google last week.

• Starting from its operating system, then its processor to device design, Google now wants to handle everything on its own. In an attempt to make Android more competitive with Apple, which has complete control over its software and hardware for iOS devices, the internet giant is again debating the idea of building an Android phone, unlike the Nexus models, which are co-developed by its manufacturing partners.

• Recent reports revealed that giant social media company Facebook has been asking and urging its staff to ditch their iPhone devices and shift towards using Android smartphones. The recent policy comes after reports of Android’s dominance in the market.

• In the fourth part of our Android History series, we’ll track the progress of Android through its most transformative period yet — a year that saw the rise of Samsung through major launches like the Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note, as well as huge changes to the core of the platform. Read on to discover the year that transformed Android beyond recognition.

• BlackBerry CEO John Chen hinted there was more to come following the Priv’s release, and CrackBerry is giving us our first glimpse. According to the website, BlackBerry has a second Android phone in the works, and it look a lot like a traditional BlackBerry device. A slider this is not, but for fans of hardware keyboards, Blackberry’s rumored “Vienna” might be the kind of old-school longtime fans have been waiting for.

Free Software/Open Source

• I’ve been using open source for a while—seven years, to be exact. That may not seem like a long time, but when you’re 16, that’s almost half your life. My open source story is that of discovery, education, and mentoring opportunities. I’ve been extremely lucky.

• I got started with open source in fifth grade over Christmas break. My Dad showed me how to write bash scripts on Linux in what we called “Daddy’s Computer Camp.” That February, I made my Dad a Valentine’s Day robot that had bash code on the front.

• Using open source tools, developing using Agile and DevOps techniques, and not signing contracts worth over £100 million were three of the core principles of building the NHS Spine 2 system – the digital backbone of the NHS which was migrated on to open source system last year.

• Hadoop is not the end-all, be-all of Big Data. There are lots of other Big Data platforms and tools, many of which are open source.

• When Hewlett-Packard (back in the days when it was one company) acquired open source cloud infrastructure vendor Eucalyptus a year or two ago, many were left scratching their heads about what exactly HP planned to do with the company. Subsequent events have proved that confusion justified since Eucalyptus has gone nowhere and HP has had a lurching series of pivots around its cloud strategy. Indeed, the only logical thing about the deal was that HP would get the services of a very seasoned executive in Marten Mickos. Prior to joining HP, Mickos was CEO of Eucalyptus and before that CEO of MySQL, the open source database company.

• SAP has been boasting about its “revolutionary” big data platform, SAP HANA, for years. While its claims have always been a bit suspect, recent revelations that HANA is riddled with critical security flaws only reinforce the mantra that, when it comes to big data infrastructure, open source is best.

• Marten Mickos is the newly announced CEO of bug bounty platform HackerOne. Marten, a Finnish native, is a proven CEO; he led the iconic open source database company MySQL, and later worked for Sun Microsystems after their acquisition of that company.

• He then led cloud software company Eucalyptus Systems, which was acquired by HP. He has also served on the board of Nokia & has been spearheading the online School of Herring, which focuses on leadership.

• Coreboot developers are taking to their Git tree and dropping support for old motherboards and chipsets.

• Yesterday saw the removal in Git of many Tyan motherboards as well as some from IWILL and Newisys and IBM.

• Whether you’re a potential employee or a potential employer, the thing that matters most is that you find the right fit: the right job offer, location, compensation and the right co-workers. Hired is looking to fill the specialty-job niche by pre-screening both parties before the resumes start circulating and the interviews begin.

• Admit it, if you’re an employer, to grow your business you need talent. To that end, Hired delivers a curated pool of responsive candidates so less time is spent sourcing and more time devoted to interviewing and hiring.

• Midokura wins this month’s Network Innovation Award for MidoNet Community Edition, an open source version of its flagship product.

• We are firmly committed to advancing free software, libre innovation, and open source hardware. A LulzBot 3D printer was the first hardware product and only 3D printer to meet the Open Source Hardware Association definition and earn the Free Software Foundation’s Respects Your Freedom certification.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Mozilla launched Firefox OS 2.5 Developer Preview earlier today, and is now offering the operating system as an app on Android. The experimental app replaces several elements of the Android homescreen with Firefox’s web-based offering, and even comes with a set of system apps for phone calls, messages, emails, and even an app store. Think of it as a launcher with a set of bundled apps.

• The wait is over one of the biggest Firefox OS updates in the operating systems history is here. As you have read or heard over the past few months, Mozilla is stepping up it efforts with Firefox OS, traveling on this path Mozilla has announced Firefox OS 2.5 Developer Preview for Android devices.

• Mozilla Festival 2015 was a productive and dynamic event celebrating the world’s most valuable public resource — the open Web. MozFest is also a gathering place for Mozilla community members from around the world and brings together makers, designers, builders, coders and creative folks to showcase their ideas of how the Web can enable the sort of innovative tinkering you might do (or want to do) in your own garage.

SaaS/Big Data

• The Swift storage project holds a unique place in the OpenStack big tent, as one of the two original projects (the other being Nova compute) for the open source cloud platform. SwiftStack is one of the leading contributors to the Swift project and also has its own commercially supported SwiftStack Object Storage enterprise product, which was recently updated to version 3.0.

BSD

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The four essential freedoms provide the criteria for whether a particular piece of code is free/libre (i.e., respects its users’ freedom). How should we apply them to judge whether a software package, an operating system, a computer, or a web page is fit to recommend?

• Whether a program is free affects first of all our decisions about our private activities: to maintain our freedom, we need to reject the programs that would take it away. However, it also affects what we should say to others and do with others.

• A nonfree program is an injustice. To distribute a nonfree program, to recommend a nonfree program to other people, or more generally steer them into a course that leads to using nonfree software, means leading them to give up their freedom. To be sure, leading people to use nonfree software is not the same as installing nonfree software in their computers, but we should not lead people in the wrong direction.

• At a deeper level, we must not present a nonfree program as a solution because that would grant it legitimacy. Non-free software is a problem; to present it as a solution denies the existence of the problem.

• Software Defined Radio (SDR)–the ability to process radio signals using software instead of electronics–is undeniably fascinating. However, there is a big gap from being able to use off-the-shelf SDR software and writing your own. After all, SDRs require lots of digital signal processing (DSP) at high speeds.

• Not many people could build a modern PC from scratch, but nearly anyone can get a motherboard, some I/O cards, a power supply, and a case and put together a custom system. That’s the idea behind GNU Radio and SDR. GNU Radio provides a wealth of Python functions that you can use to create sophisticated SDR application (or, indeed, any DSP application).

• If Python is still not up your alley (or even if it is), there’s an even easier way to use GNU Radio: The GNU Radio Companion (GRC). This is a mostly graphical approach, allowing you to thread together modules graphically and build simple GUIs to control you new radio.

• Version 2.1 of the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) is now available. GSL provides a large collection of routines for numerical computing in C.

• This release is primarily for fixing a few bugs present in the recent 2.0 release, but also provides a brand new module for solving large linear least squares problems.

• GNU Guix is committed to improving the freedom and autonomy of computer users. This obviously manifests in the fact that GuixSD is a fully free distro, and this is what GNU stands for. All the packages in Guix are built from source, including things like firmware where there is an unfortunate tendency to use pre-built binaries; that way, users can know what software they run. On the technical side, Guix also tries hard to empower users by making the whole system as hackable as possible, in a uniform way—making Freedom #1 practical, à la Emacs.

• Guix provides pre-compiled binaries of software packages as a service to its users—these are substitutes for local builds. This is a convenient way to save time, but it could become a threat to users if they cannot establish that those substitutes are authentic—that their Corresponding Source really is what it claims to be.

Project Releases

• After a long time (dwm 6.0 was released on 2011-12-19) it is time for a new dwm release. Thanks goes out to all the people involved at making the software better in various ways!

Public Services/Government

• Open source software has at last arrived in the government space, said industry executives and federal IT officials at the 2015 Red Hat Government Symposium Tuesday.

• Just 10 years ago, many agencies needed special permission to procure open source software — referring to code that’s freely available, and that users can change and improve on — said Paul Smith, vice president and general manager for public sector operations at Red Hat.

• Computer Sciences Corp. has received a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program certification for the company’s ARCWRX cloud computing technology.

• CSC said Tuesday this is the second FedRAMP certification for the platform-as-a-service ARCWRX, which is based on Red Hat’s OpenShift and resides on CSC’s ARC-P platform.

Licensing

• The revelation of this clause has confused our community, as it appears as if this provision, once adopted, might impact or restrict the international operation of copyleft licenses. Below we explain that, while everyone should reject and oppose this provision — and the rest of TPP — this provision has no dramatic impact on copyleft licensing.

• First, as others have pointed out, Party is a defined term that refers specifically to government entities that sign the treaty. As such, the provision would only constrain the behavior of governments themselves. There are some obviously bad outcomes of this provision when those governmental entities interfere with public safety and ethical distribution of software, but we believe this provision will not interfere with international enforcement of copyleft.

• Copyleft licenses use copyright as a mechanism to keep software free. The central GPL mechanism that copyright holders exercise to ensure software freedom is termination of permission to copy, modify and distribute the software (per GPLv2§4 and GPLv3§8). Under GPL’s termination provisions, non-compliance results in an automatic termination of all copyright permissions. In practice, distributors can chose — either they can provide the source code or cease distribution. Once permissions terminate, any distribution of the GPL’d software infringes copyrights. Accordingly, in an enforcement action, there is no need to specifically compel a government to ask for disclosure of source code.

• For example, imagine if a non-US entity ships a GPL-violating, Linux-based product into the USA, and after many friendly attempts to achieve compliance, the violating company refuses to comply. Conservancy can sue the company in US federal court, and seek injunction for distribution of the foreign product in the USA, since the product infringes copyright by violating the license. The detailed reasons for that infringement (i.e., failure to disclose source code) is somewhat irrelevant to the central issue; the Court can grant injunction (i.e., an order to prevent the company from distributing the infringing product) based simply on the violator’s lost permissions under the existing copyright license. The Court could even order the cease of import of the infringing products.

• In our view, the violator would be unaffected under the above TPP provision, since the Court did not specifically compel release of the source code, but rather simply ruled that the product generally infringed copyrights, and their distribution rights had fully terminated upon infringement. In other words, the fact that the violator lost copyright permissions and can seek to restore them via source code disclosure is not dispositive to the underlying infringement claim.

• While TPP thus does not impact copyright holders’ ability to enforce the GPL, there are nevertheless plenty of reasons to oppose TPP. Conservancy therefore joins the FSF, EFF, and other organizations in encouraging everyone to oppose TPP.

Openness/Sharing

• News outlet Quartz is developing a searchable database of compiled map data from all over the world, and a tool to help journalists visualise this data.

• The database, called Mapquery, received $35,000 (£22,900) from the Knight Foundation Prototype Fund on 3 November.

• Keith Collins, project lead, said Mapquery will aim to make the research stage in the creation of maps easier and more accessible, by creating a system for finding, merging and refining geographic data.

• Finkler is active in PHP, Python, and JavaScript communities and had developed a popular Twitter client for the WebOS platform. He has plenty of open source knowledge, but his only expierience with mental illness was personal. So he began presenting at conferences, sharing his experience. After each talk, people would share their own issues with him.

Standards/Consortia

• For organizations like the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, patient safety and quality of care are paramount, thus, having the ability to seamlessly share medical data with each other, as well as with other providers, is critical. Consider for a moment, a service person’s transition from active duty to veteran status. Patient records and critical medical history details must transition smoothly to ensure the patient receives appropriate, complete care at the right time.

Leftovers

• Interfaces with completely flat visual design do not use any realistic or three-dimensional visual effects. As a consequence, they do away with the heavy-handed visual cues that have been traditionally used to communicate clickability to users.

• The popularity of ultraflat interfaces has declined since its heyday of 2013, and more websites are adopting more moderate, flat 2.0 designs — in which interfaces make use of subtle effects to create the impression of a slightly layered three-dimensional space. Despite this return to moderation, we’re starting to see the long-term impact of the widespread usage of weak clickability cues encouraged by the popularity of flat design.

• Suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter has been hospitalised after being placed under medical observation for stress, but he is expecting to leave the facility early next week, his spokesman said Wednesday.

• Guess who’s not coming to dinner — or even breakfast or lunch?

• Ahead of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s landmark European trip kicking off this weekend, French officials reportedly nixed plans for a formal meal in Paris with President François Hollande following a dispute over the menu. The Iranians, according to France’s RTL Radio, insisted on a wine-free meal with halal meat — a request based on Islamic codes that amounted to culinary sacrilege in France, a nation that puts the secular ideals of the Republic above all else.

• Once upon a time, Apple was known for designing easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products. It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and have the power to reverse that action—to undo it—if the result is not what was intended.

• No more. Now, although the products are indeed even more beautiful than before, that beauty has come at a great price. Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist.

Health/Nutrition

• Scientist Dr Shiva Ayyadurai has challenged Monsanto to prove him wrong on research that shows genetically modified (GM) soy to be dangerous.

Security

• Passwords are crap. Nobody picks good ones, when they do they re-use them across sites, and if you use even a trustworthy password manager, they’ll get hacked too. But you know what’s worse than a password? A fingerprint. Fingerprints have enough problems with them that they should never be used anywhere a password would be.

• Passwords are supposed to be secret, like the name of your childhood pet. In contrast, you carry your fingers around with you out in the open nearly everywhere you go. Passwords also need to be revocable. In the case that your password does get revealed, it’s great to be able to simply pick another one. You don’t want to have to revoke your fingers. Finally, and this is the kicker, you want your password to be hashable, in order to protect the password database itself from theft.

• Cymmetria Inc., an Israeli start-up whose software lures hackers into cyber traps within organizations’ networks has raised around $9 million, the latest sign that investors are flocking to one of cyber-security’s hottest trends: deceiving hackers and catching them red handed.

• The Tel Aviv-based cyber-security firm makes decoy servers which simulate an organization’s real networks without jeopardizing operations or giving away real data.

• So, yes, Linux “could match this API on seccomp”. It’d just take some extensions to libseccomp to implement pledge(), as I described at the top. With OpenBSD doing a bunch of analysis work on common programs, it’d be excellent to see this usable on Linux too. So far on Linux, only a few programs (e.g. Chrome, vsftpd) have bothered to do this using seccomp, and it could be argued that this is ultimately due to how fine grained it is.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Asked about their view of the Trident nuclear missile system, Britain’s armed forces chiefs have always insisted that they cannot comment because it was a “political” matter, not at all a “military” one.

• General Sir Nicholas Houghton, chief of the defence staff, has now abandoned such caution, breaking a taboo by expressing a view that has huge constitutional implications. Britain’s most senior military officer has taken sides on an issue that is the subject of a highly charged political debate, and one in which tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money are at stake.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• The most obvious damage is to the forest where the fires are occurring. Indonesia’s tropical forests represent some of the most diverse habitats on the planet. The current fire outbreak adds to decades of existing deforestation by palm oil, timber and other agribusiness operators, further imperilling endangered species such as the orangutan.

• The human cost is stark; 19 people have died and an estimated 500,000 cases of respiratory tract infections have been reported since the start of the fires. It’s estimated that the fires could cause more than 100,000 premature deaths in the region.

• Financial damage to the region’s economy is still being counted, but the Indonesian government’s own estimates suggest it could be as high as $47bn, a huge blow to the country’s economy. A World Bank study (pdf) on forest fires last year in Riau province estimated that they caused $935m of losses relating to lost agricultural productivity and trade.

• Tellingly, the lands just outside that sanctuary—still smoking from recent fires—were recently planted with new oil palms.

• Indonesia has been aflame for a couple months now. That happens every fall—the country’s fire season is severe—but this time around, things are the worst they’ve been in almost two decades. This year’s crazy-strong El Niño has desiccated the region’s peat beds, while palm oil plantations exacerbate the problem by cutting down trees and draining the normally soggy land.

• All that dry stuff adds up to create a big, flaming environmental catastrophe. By some estimates, the inferno this year has released more than 1.5 billion tons of emissions, larger than the annual fossil fuel output of Japan.

• During the Pleistocene “ice age,” this measurement (or its glacial air bubble proxy) varied between 180 and 280 ppm. It was at about 280 ppm prior to the Industrial Revolution. Since then, we’ve been taking carbon out of the ground, where it was sequestered hundreds of millions of years ago, and setting it on fire. The “free” energy we got from this chemical reaction has powered tremendous advancements in well-being of most humans living in industrialized societies. But the oxidation of carbon results in carbon dioxide, and though plants suck some of it up again, and the oceans absorb about a third of it, most continues to hang out in the atmosphere. Over the past two centuries, it has been piling up like dishes in a dormitory sink. This waste gas is a problem, for it’s selectively opaque to light – visible light is unfiltered by CO2, but CO2 blocks infrared wavelengths, the kind any object sitting in the sun emits long after the sun has set. That means our atmosphere retains more of the heat that would otherwise get bled off into space. Energy comes in more or less constantly from the sun, but less and less of it is making it back out.

• The fires that blazed in Indonesia’s rainforests in 1982 and 1983 came as a shock. The logging industry had embarked on a decades-long pillaging of the country’s woodlands, opening up the canopy and drying out the carbon-rich peat soils. Preceded by an unusually long El Niño-related dry season, the forest fires lasted for months, sending vast clouds of smoke across Southeast Asia.

Finance

• U.S. authorities today announced multiple indictments and arrests in connection with separate hacking incidents that resulted in the theft of more than 100 million customer records from some of the nation’s biggest financial institutions and brokerage firms, including JP Morgan Chase, E*Trade and Scottrade.

• The world’s biggest shopping day is happening right now, and you probably don’t even know it.

• In China, it’s already November 11, or 11/11, and the massive e-commerce event known as “Singles Day” is well under way. Launched by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2009, the idea is that for a full 24 hours, shoppers who are unmarried and unattached should go online and splurge on a nice gift for themselves.

• How big a deal is Singles Day? This year, during Alibaba’s four-hour television event the night ahead of Singles Day (yes, this year they celebrated “Singles Day’s Eve”), Alibaba trotted out a parade of Chinese pop celebrities and movie stars. James Bond (er, Daniel Craig) appeared onstage with Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma. Kevin Spacey made an appearance via video in his House of Cards persona, President Frank Underwood.

• Hundreds of fast food workers are striking nationwide Tuesday, joining other workers in pressing for a more livable wage.

• Billed as the largest rally to date, there are 270 demonstrations scheduled nationwide. Workers have gone on strike nationwide repeatedly in the last few years demanding higher pay. According to organizers, more than 60 million Americans are paid less than $15 per hour.

• When independent traders in a small Welsh town discovered the loopholes used by multinational giants to avoid paying UK tax, they didn’t just get mad.

• Now local businesses in Crickhowell are turning the tables on the likes of Google and Starbucks by employing the same accountancy practices used by the world’s biggest companies, to move their entire town “offshore”.

• It’s like the crucial moment in Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American. The US agent stares at the blood on his shoes, unable to make the connection between the explosion he commissioned and the bodies scattered across the public square in Saigon. In leaked correspondence with the Conservative leader of Oxfordshire county council (which covers his own constituency), David Cameron expresses his horror at the cuts being made to local services. This is the point at which you realise that he has no conception of what he has done.

• The letters were sent in September, but came to light only on Friday, when they were revealed by the Oxford Mail. The national media has been remarkably slow to pick the story up, given the insight it offers into the prime minister’s detachment from the consequences of his actions.

• Federal law allows for-profit colleges to access more federal funding by enrolling large numbers of military veterans, despite evidence that many of these schools do not prepare their students for the job market. In recent years, predatory recruitment of service members by several for-profit college chains has been exposed by congressional and media investigations, yet the Wall Street Journal editorial board continues to defend the schools’ recruiting practices and advocates for fewer student protections at for-profit institutions. In honor of Veterans Day, here are some of the Journal’s most misleading and inflammatory arguments defending failing for-profits that take advantage of veterans.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The Washington Post, like all major publications, reports on Uber quite a bit. In fact, it’s done so about a dozen times in the past week alone. But unlike every other publication, its corporate interest in the mobile phone-based car service company is more than journalistic in nature.

• The Post‘s sole owner, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is a major shareholder in Uber. In 2011, Bezos and two other investors, Menlo Ventures and Goldman Sachs, collectively invested $32 million in the then-fledging startup. Because Uber is a private company, it’s impossible to know the exact current value of Bezos’ investment, but assuming the three investors contributed evenly, the last valuation of the company would put his stake in Uber at roughly $1.5 billion. To put that in perspective, it’s approximately six times what Bezos paid for the Post in 2013.

• While the Post occasionally mentions this glaring conflict when covering Uber, a large majority of its Uber-related articles make no mention of the boss’s stake. It’s unclear what criteria the Post uses to either disclose or not disclose the conflict of interest. (An email to the Post requesting an explanation went unanswered.)

• Readers who followed Netanyahu’s advice to turn to Google, then, would be much better informed of the reality of Israel’s settlement policy than those who simply read the New York Times parroting his claims.

Censorship

• The whistleblowing non-profit WikiLeaks has a new target. It isn’t a corrupt government or an incompetent military, but “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces” and “microaggressions.” WikiLeaks argued on its official Twitter account that the rising popularity of these terms is thanks to what it calls “generation trauma”—and that it’s harming free speech.

• As the article explains, online music companies are expected to bear all the costs of setting up censorship departments and training staff to vet all the songs, and will be punished if they fail to implement the new policy properly. At least some will have had practice, since a similar approach has been applied to online posts for some time.

• A Scottish cinema has become embroiled in a freedom of speech row after it pulled the screening of a film about the life of the Prophet Mohamed after fewer than 100 complaints.

• The Grosvenor Cinema was due to screen the Oscar-nominated 1977 film The Message on Sunday on behalf of the Islamic Society of Britain (ISB). But it pulled the screening after an anonymous petition with 94 signatories – largely from Scotland but also from people registered in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia – criticised the film as being “inappropriate and disrespectful” to Islam.

• We explain how to ensure your website is not adversely affected by Google algorithm updates. How to SEO your website and stay off Google’s blacklist: how to get lots of traffic from search. Here are our essential SEO tips.

Privacy

• A pleasant surprise from the European parliament at the end of October: delegates managed to narrowly pass a resolution calling on EU member states to recognize Edward Snowden as a whistleblower and an international human rights defender. The resolution calls on member states to guarantee Snowden protection from prosecution, extradition and transfer to third states, i.e. the United States.

• This is a major step, even if the resolution does not have any binding power. It has echoes of Snowden’s situation in summer 2013 as he desperately sent out asylum requests to states in Europe and elsewhere from within the transit zone at Moscow airport – to no avail. In the two years since then, discussions have been ongoing in Germany on whether or not Snowden could at the very least safely enter and leave Germany to give testimony to the NSA inquiry committee. But the German government made it clear that the political will for this is lacking. Similar reactions came from the governments in Switzerland and Sweden when the question of asylum was up for discussion there.

• Theresa May, with the general air of a hawk that had a This Morning makeover, has launched the new investigatory powers bill. No more drunken Googling: all it takes is a misspelled search for “bong-making” and suddenly you’ll be in an orange jumpsuit getting beaten with a pillowcase full of bibles. Also, pay attention when searching for a child’s prom.

• This law will create lots of new jobs, as the person charged with reading all our communications (who will see more unsolicited erections than customer services at Skype) will regularly feed their screaming face into a meatgrinder.

• Theresa May’s proposed surveillance and spying laws are “worse than scary”, the United Nations’ privacy chief has said.

• Joseph Cannataci, the UN’s special rapporteur on privacy, said the draft Investigatory Powers Bill heralded a “golden age of surveillance” unlike any that had come before.

• The draft law, published by the Home Secretary earlier this month, would require internet companies to hand over any and all of their users’ communications as required by authorities.

• Last summer, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, a surveillance reform that prohibits the government from collecting telephone metadata in bulk, but the NSA was able to get the program extended a few more months, until November 29, 2015, the last day that type of surveillance will be legal.

• Judge Leon already ruled that this program violated the Fourth Amendment in December of 2013, a decision he echoed and reiterated on Monday. The Judge also complained about the slowness with which this legal process moved.

• “I assumed the appeal would proceed expeditiously,” Judge Leon wrote in his decision. “For reasons unknown to me, it did not.”

• A Belgian court yesterday gave Facebook 48 hours to stop tracking Internet users who do not have a Facebook account. If the US company refuses to comply, it faces fines of up to €250,000 (£177,000 or ~$267,500) per day.

• “Today the judge… ordered the social network Facebook to stop tracking and registering Internet usage by people who surf the Internet in Belgium, in the 48 hours which follow this statement,” the Belgian court said according to AFP.

• The judgment is a result of Belgium’s independent Privacy Commission taking Facebook to court for failing to comply with the country’s privacy laws, as Ars reported back in June. The Privacy Commission wanted Facebook to implement a number of changes to its operations, including refraining from “systematically placing long-life and unique identifier cookies with non-users of Facebook.” The commission always wanted Facebook to stop collecting and using user data through the use of cookies and social plug-ins unless it obtained an unambiguous and specific consent through an opt-in.

• Facebook has said that it will appeal the ruling, claiming that since their european headquarters are situated in Ireland, they should only be bound by the Irish Data Protection Regulator.

• Ever since a Carnegie Mellon talk on cracking the anonymity software Tor was abruptly pulled from the schedule of the Black Hat hacker conference last year, the security community has been left to wonder whether the research was silently handed over to law enforcement agencies seeking to uncloak the internet’s anonymous users. Now the non-profit Tor Project itself says that it believes the FBI did use Carnegie Mellon’s attack technique—and paid them handsomely for the privilege.

• The Tor Project has learned more about last year’s attack by Carnegie Mellon researchers on the hidden service subsystem. Apparently these researchers were paid by the FBI to attack hidden services users in a broad sweep, and then sift through their data to find people whom they could accuse of crimes.

• Federal drug agents have built a massive wiretapping operation in the Los Angeles suburbs, secretly intercepting tens of thousands of Americans’ phone calls and text messages to monitor drug traffickers across the United States despite objections from Justice Department lawyers who fear the practice may not be legal.

• Nearly all of that surveillance was authorized by a single state court judge in Riverside County, who last year signed off on almost five times as many wiretaps as any other judge in the United States. The judge’s orders allowed investigators — usually from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — to intercept more than 2 million conversations involving 44,000 people, federal court records show.

• This is hardly a surprise, but the DC Appeals Court has issued a stay on Judge Richard Leon’s ruling from earlier this week that the NSA’s bulk phone record collection program was unconstitutional. This is the same appeals court that overturned Leon’s earlier ruling finding the program unconstitutional. This time, as we noted, Judge Leon refused to grant the government a stay, noting that the DC Circuit had taken its sweet time in actually issuing a ruling on the appeal — and the program is set to end in a couple weeks anyway. Also, Leon didn’t order the entire program shut down, but just that the NSA stop keeping the records of the plaintiffs who were customers of Verizon Business Network Services (J.J. Little and J.J. Little & Associates).

• Consumers’ broadband bills will have to go up if the investigatory powers bill is passed due to the “massive cost” of implementation, MPs have been warned.

• Internet service providers (ISP) told a Commons select committee that the legislation, commonly known as the snooper’s charter, does not properly acknowledge the “sheer quantity” of data generated by a typical internet user, nor the basic difficulty of distinguishing between content and metadata.

• AN ENORMOUS CACHE of phone records obtained by The Intercept reveals a major breach of security at Securus Technologies, a leading provider of phone services inside the nation’s prisons and jails. The materials — leaked via SecureDrop by an anonymous hacker who believes that Securus is violating the constitutional rights of inmates — comprise over 70 million records of phone calls, placed by prisoners to at least 37 states, in addition to links to downloadable recordings of the calls. The calls span a nearly two-and-a-half year period, beginning in December 2011 and ending in the spring of 2014.

Civil Rights

• A year ago, we were writing a ton on the famed Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report. This report, which Committee staffers spent years on, cost $40 million, and clocked in at nearly 7,000 pages of detailed analysis of the US’s hugely questionable (both morally and legally) torture program in the wake of 9/11. After much fighting, the Senate finally released a heavily redacted executive summary, but since then there have been some questions about what happens with the full report. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was (believe it or not!) the driving force behind the report, had copies of the full report delivered to the Defense Department, the CIA, the State Department and the Justice Department. However, there has been a lot of confusion over whether or not anyone actually read it. The DOJ clearly announced that officials had read the whole thing… but later claimed that no one had even opened the report. Obviously, the DOJ lied with one of those statements.

• Video has emerged that shows three officers tasing a man 20 times in half an hour while he was shackled.

• Linwood Lambert of South Boston, Virginia, was taken into custody shortly before 5am on May 4, 2013, when police responded to a noise complaint and found him acting in a paranoid and delusional way in his room at a Super 8 motel.

• The officers had no reason to arrest Lambert and decided to handcuff him and take him to hospital.

• But along the way he grew agitated and, as they pulled up to the ER entrance, he kicked out the back window of the squad car and ran towards the hospital door.

• That is when the officers began tasing Lambert, who immediately fell straight to the ground. He was unable to break his fall due to wearing handcuffs.

• The three officers told Lambert, 46, they were arresting him and drove him from the hospital to the police station.

• He was unconscious by the time they arrived at the station, and pronounced dead by the time he arrived back at the hospital he had just left.

• The head of Indonesia’s anti-drugs agency has proposed building a prison island guarded by crocodiles to house death-row drug convicts.

• Budi Waseso said crocodiles often made better guards than humans – because they could not be bribed.

• How do you get Snowden, Manning and the Washington Navy Yard spree shooter in the same category? By treating leaks to the press and a sawed-off shotgun as the same thing: all “weapons.” It’s a peculiar stance for a TV news magazine that prides itself on its tradition of investigative reporting to take—that getting information out to the public is a form of violence.

• It’s also odd for journalists to describe Manning, because she was convicted under the Espionage Act, as a “convicted spy.” The law forbids giving “an unauthorized person…any classified information,” language that was not meant to give the United States an Official Secrets Act, but which has been treated as such by the Obama administration. Regardless of whether this is legal or constitutional, the Act doesn’t change the meaning of the word “spy”; presumably when 60 Minutes reporters get classified information from government officials, they don’t say to their sources, “Thanks for spying for us.”

Internet/Net Neutrality

• You’ll probably see countless reports suggesting that T-Mobile’s move is sure to “invite scrutiny by the FCC,” but that’s highly unlikely. T-Mobile’s done a fantastic job of selling a potentially problematic precedent as consumer empowerment. Meanwhile, the FCC has made it abundantly clear it sees usage caps and zero rating as creative pricing experimentation, in the process opening the door wide to a lopsided vision of the Internet many will naively be cheering for.

• Last summer I noted that Comcast’s PR department pretty consistently now sends me snotty e-mail “corrections.” Not about any of the thousands of articles Techdirt or I have written about the company’s abysmal customer service, punitive usage caps, ridiculously high prices, or obnoxiously anti-competitive behavior mind you, but to scold me for one and only one thing: calling the company’s top lobbyist a lobbyist.

Intellectual Monopolies

• A federal appeals court panel today struck down an International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling in a patent case that attempted to block electronic transmissions of digital data from overseas.

• The ITC’s authority to prevent importation of “articles” applies only to material things, not digital transmissions, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled. (Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge posted the ruling’s text.)

• Indeed while patents are a great thing, it does cost money to obtain them — and applicants should not rely on the EPO to remedy their self-imposed inconveniences. The EPC does not contain “poor law” provisions such as financial subsidies or leniencies for parties with a tight budget, contrary to some countries’ national patent laws. Accordingly, applicants that operate on a tight budget must carefully consider if they are really and truly prepared to cover the costs entailed in EPC proceedings — or whether they should rather accept any concessions that might be available under national patent laws. As Merpel notes, if they can’t even afford the cost of dealing with the EPO in examination proceedings, and possibly in post-grant opposition proceedings, there’s probably little chance of them being to afford the cost of litigating these patents nationally or, as will soon be likely, before the Unified Patent Court, wherever that litigation might be.

Copyrights

• Blizzard Entertainment is taking a stand against popular cheating bots for World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 and Heroes of the Storm. The game company is suing the alleged operator(s) of a series of popular bots for copyright infringement and accuses them of ruining the gaming experience for legitimate players.

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