● 12.29.15

● Links 29/12/2015: SparkyLinux 4.2, Ian Murdock’s Rants

Posted in News Roundup at 7:25 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Shifting between different Operating Systems to manage work and college is a pain in the ass. Did you ever wish that you had an Operating System that runs on your browser, so that you didn’t need to plug in a USB and wait for it load? Then try OS.js- a javascript based minimal operating system. You can use it on any platform that supports a browser.

Desktop

• How many times have you heard the famous “20XX is going to be the year of Linux desktop” sentence? What does it mean? When will it happen? Well, it already happened. You missed it.

• Okay, let’s break it down into simplest steps possible. First of all, what is a “Linux operating system”?

• Linux operating system is a combination of five layers:

• Linux kernel Some mid-level tools User interface Some mid-level tools Some apps

• Surprisingly, over 170 distributions are still on the waiting list; and quite a handful of these are even dating back to as far as five years ago, interestingly enough, some of these distros have actually gained a reasonable traction. Which proves that a distro is not necessarily bad or unworthy if it doesn’t get or hasn’t gotten the approval of Distrowatch.

• The big story today was the confirmation of hidden features in North Korea’s Red Star OS, based on Red Hat/Fedora. It was a top headline on most websites many with plays on the words Open Source and oppressive. In more local circles the release of the first stable Solus OS excited the community and the first reviewer asked where’s vi.

• System76, a US company that builds computers, laptops, and servers, has just announced that some of their products now have a $50 discount, or more, and free shipping.

• System76 is one of the companies that ship their products only with Linux distributions, in this case, Ubuntu. They have a close relationship with Canonical, and they have made a name for themselves in the community with their really good products.

• When you think of a gaming PC, two things probably come to mind — Microsoft Windows and desktop computers. In other words, gamers don’t typically target laptops for playing their favorite games, and even when some do, they will likely aim for Windows 7, 8, or 10. Thanks to Steam, however, Linux-based operating systems are a legitimate option for gaming.

• If you want a Linux-based gaming laptop, your choices are slim. Yes, you can buy a Windows laptop and replace the operating system with Ubuntu or another OS, but that isn’t the best experience. Ideally, you want a machine that was designed and sold with Linux in mind. Enter the Ubuntu-powered System76 Oryx Pro. This beast of a gaming laptop can be configured with some jaw-dropping specs. The one I have been testing features an Intel Skylake Core i7 processor, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, NVMe SSD and NVIDIA graphics, including G-SYNC. Are you salivating yet? Read on for more specs and my impressions.

• During the last few months information about one of North Koreas operating systems was leaked. It is a Linux based OS that tries to simulate the look and feel of a Mac. Some of it’s features have already been discussed on various blog posts and news articles. We thought we would take a short look at the OS. This blog post contains some of the results.

Kernel Space

• The Linux Foundation wants to extend this project past theory and into the realm practical corporate and developer solutions.

• The Linux Foundation’s Training Scholarship Program has awarded 34 scholarships totaling more than $100,000 in free training to students and professionals during the past five years. In this series, we share the stories of recent scholarship recipients with the hope of inspiring others.

• For this installment of the series, we talked with RJ Murdok, who is 15 years old and received a Teens in Training scholarship. He is currently in high school in the United States and started studying Linux in 2012. RJ, who is legally blind, says he spends a lot of time contributing bug reports to Bugzilla when he’s not in school. One day, he would like to convert industries and schools over to Linux as well as teach a computer science class at a university.

• Together with twenty other corporations, The Linux Foundation has announced a research effort to unify and further develop blockchain technology, the core of many of today’s cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.

• At the start of 2014, in a New York Times article, Marc Andreessen, one of Silicon Valley’s top investors, listed Bitcoin and its underlying technology, its blockchain, as one the top three inventions of all time, after personal computers in 1975, and the Internet in 1993.

• Eric sent in his BCM2835/BCM2836 changes for pulling into the ARM -Next code for Linux 4.5, but it’s coming rather late in the cycle, so it’s not immediately clear right now whether this code will be accepted. Eric Anholt has been working for Broadcom on the Raspberry Pi / VC4 driver while recently he took over role as the Raspberry Pi kernel maintainer too.

Graphics Stack

• Back on Christmas was news of patches for implementing tessellation shader support for Intel Ivy Bridge and Haswell graphics hardware after support had already landed for Broadwell and newer within the Mesa driver. Support for those older generations is now present in Mesa.

• As of this afternoon, Kenneth Graunke’s work for implementing GL_ARB_tessellation_shader support for Ivy Bridge and Haswell is now within Mesa Git master. This makes tessellation support implemented for all hardware capable of doing so — Sandy Bridge and older are not.

• In 2015 we saw Canonical continue to invest in Mir and see it mature greatly not only for Ubuntu Phone devices but on the desktop as well in prepping it for the Unity 8 converged experience hopefully for Ubuntu 16.10. Mir this year picked up libinput input support by default, rendering improvements, better performance, and many other features. Outside of Unity 8 though, I haven’t seen any other open-source desktop environments experimenting with Mir.

Benchmarks

• If you happened to receive some new computer hardware this Christmas or are weighing a possible upgrade with Skylake PCs becoming more common and AMD Zen coming out next year, you might as well benchmark your system against our vast collection of other systems to see how the performance stacks up.

Applications

• The development team behind the Audacious open source audio player software have announced the availability of the first maintenance release for the Audacious 3.7 series.

• My goal is to put together an event based business process package that is configurable, knows where I and my technicians are, knows where the customers are, can nag us to do the things that really need to be done, can be set up by a smart business operator to gather data at the moment in time when it is easy and likely to be done.

• Yesterday we have released CafeOBJ 1.5.5 with a long list of changes, and many more internal changes. Documentation pages have been updated with the latest reference manual (PDF, Html) as well as some new docs on CITP (in Japanese for now) and tutorials.

• A new release of BH is now on CRAN. BH provides a large part of the Boost C++ libraries as a set of template headers for use by R, possibly with Rcpp as well as other packages.

Proprietary

• As you may know, Vivaldi is a Chromium-based open-source internet browser, built by the Opera founder. It did not reach a stable version yet, but it is already usable.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• While we sadly haven’t seen many games powered by the Unigine Engine, they seem to be doing great in the professional space with providing immersive, real-time 3D experiences for several different industries — including VR environments. Unigine 2 shipped this year with a ton of improvements to their engine and they continue to lead on the realistic 3D front, but they’re working on even more features for 2016.

• As you may know, Battle for Wesnoth is an open source turn-based strategy game, running on Linux. The player trains soldiers, to create an undefeatable army, in order to fight agains orcs, undead, bandits and win, in the Kingdom of Wesnoth.

• We talk a lot about first sale rights and resale rights at Techdirt, but of particular frustration to me is the strange capitulation to companies that sell digital copies of software. This isn’t a strictly American problem, though here in the States there has been a near total abandonment of the consumer’s rights when it comes to electronically delivered entertainment, be it eBooks, music, movies or games. The “you’re licensing the game you paid for, not buying it” line is, on its face, ridiculous, amounting to a situation where Game “X” bought on a disc can be resold, but Game “X” bought and delivered on the internet cannot. Why a delivery method would alter the right to resale a bought product because a EULA says so is a concept that simply escapes me.

• The latest Steam Winter Sale is still in effect, and it will last until January 4. Let’s take a look at what the Linux users have been buying these past few days.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• The developers of the lightweight and modern Enlightenment desktop environment announced on December 28, 2015, the immediate availability for download of the second point release in the Enlightenment 0.20 series.

• According to the release notes, which we’ve attached at the end of the article for reference, Enlightenment 0.20.2 is here to fix over 10 issues that were either discovered by the Enlightenment’s developers or reported by users since the previous maintenance release, Enlightenment 0.20.1.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Five years ago, the Free Software Foundation announced The Unarchiver as a free tool to extract RARv3 archives. In that blog post, you can notice how the FSF hoped that existing GUI extraction tools like Ark would integrate support for The Unarchiver. That’s because The Unarchiver‘s GUI is only available on Mac OS, while on Linux there are only the CLI frontends (which are lsar to list an archive and unar to unpack an archive).

• I’m just using Dolphin for demonstration purposes, I’m not saying that Dolphin is crashy – Dolphin is awesome!

• Hello. I’m Divit, a 15 year old KDE contributor. I was introduced to KDE through Google Code-in. For those of you who don’t know, Google Code-in is a contest introducing 13-17 year old pre-university students to open source software development. It is somehow similar to Google Summer of Code. This post is related to one of my Google code-in task and in this post, I’ll be telling about the KDE application- cantor and my experience with KDE so far in this competition.

• Today, December 29, 2015, the developers of the Chakra GNU/Linux operating system have published the distribution’s plans for 2016, along with their best wishes to the community.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• WebKitGTK+ WSA-2015-0002 was made public today as a security advisory with more than 100 vulnerabilities being mentioned.

• The developers of the WebKitGTK+ open source WebKit rendering engine used in the popular GNOME desktop environment reported that the software has been hit hard by over 130 security vulnerabilities, urging all users to update as soon as possible.

Distributions

Reviews

• An interesting new distro, but it’s newness is showing. However Solus might be worth watching as it matures.

• I love how Manjaro developers have presented the KDE Plasma 5.5 desktop. It’s a beautiful looking, responsive, power efficient, and a stable desktop. I’m also okay with it using a bit of memory as well. But you know, I can’t wait for 50+ seconds for an operating system to boot (again, part of that has to be blamed upon systemd developers) and 12.6 seconds of shutdown times is also a bit high for my taste, it just ain’t my cup of tea. I like lean & fast operating systems. But hey, that’s just me. And these days, one doesn’t get to see blisteringly fast booting KDE distributions either (in my short experience).

• And, in my opinion, I’m still of the belief that GNOME developers are more insightful at seeing solutions from a technological point of view compared to the KDE developers, and I think this is the precise origin of this lag in performance of KDE, when the two desktop environments are compared.

• Take MySQL as an example. Some KDE programs use it as their database handler. But the problem is, in its very essence, MySQL is designed to handle large number of data and thus is not optimized to have a small footprint. The now outdated search index service of KDE 4 known as Nepomuk required MySQL as a dependency. Thankfully, the new one in Plasma 5 called Baloo, according to its official page has a database engine of its own which has a small footprint. So it’s apparent that after a while KDE saw the mistake and corrected it.

New Releases

• On the heels of our first release of Solus, I want to take a moment to discuss with the community our plans for beyond 1.0 and up to 2.0.

Screenshots/Screencasts

Arch Family

• The Manjaro developers have just issued the first update for Manjaro 15.12 (Capella), bringing a few important changes and improvements.

• The Manjaro developers have been quick to improve upon the recently released version 15.12 of the operating system, and it looks like they have been working right through Christmas. It’s only been a few days since the official launch of the OS, so it’s really nice to see that they want to provide proper support.

Red Hat Family

• This year Ubuntu switched over to using systemd in place of Upstart, other distributions have also decided to take advantage of systemd, this project hosted its first conference, and the systemd feature-set continued to expand.

• Systemd in 2015 gained its own UEFI boot-loader, picked up more networking features, added fsck support, came up with its own su-like command, added more feature integration with Btrfs, and many other features came about while others were refined.

• White’s overarching theme is “muted” tech spending in 2016, but a continuation of “secular trends,” including big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, mobile, open source software, and the rise of software in importance generally.

Fedora

• We recently interviewed Kevin Fenzi on how he uses Fedora. This is part of a series on the Fedora Magazine where we profile Fedora users and how they use Fedora to get things done. If you are interested in being interviewed for a further installment of this series, you can contact us on the feedback form.

• Maybe you know about Sonic Pi, the system to learn programming playing with music. Now I want to give it a try in my system (Fedora 23) and my sysadmin-TOC syndrome obligues me first to package it into RPM. Now I have good and bad news. The good news are I have a testing release of Sonic Pi for Fedora 23. It includes a desktop file too. The bad news are… it doesn’t work yet. Sonic Pi uses jackd while a common Fedora Workstation uses pulseaudio and both try to manage the sound device by themselves.

• With the releases this year of Fedora 22 and Fedora 23, Fedora stakeholders should be proud of themselves with the quality of Fedora releases/support continuing to go up while driving a lot of new innovation and success into Linux. About the only gripe I have with the latest Fedora releases is that they no longer ship with any fun codenames to talk about…

Debian Family

• Debian developer and Ubuntu member Julian Andres Klode wrote an interesting blog post a couple of days ago, where he talks about an upcoming feature of the APT package manager.

• On December 28, 2015, Debian developer John Paul Adrian Glaubitz had the great pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the first network install ISO image for the SPARC64 hardware architecture.

• The Twitter account of Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian, is now full of tweets reporting police abuse and a possible suicide attempt.

• Ian Murdock is one of the key figures in the Linux community, but the recent reports that have been posted on this Twitter account got people really worried. At this point, it’s not clear whether these posts are real or if something actually happened with Ian, but the outlook is not good.

• LXQt is a Qt lightweight desktop – the Qt port of LXDE. Packages exist in Debian – albeit without a top level metapackage or task package to make installing it easier. So I wrote up a simple-ish vmdebootstrap call.

• He has since declared that he won’t take that drastic step and over the course of many tweets, he has released some of the details which prompted these tweets. Apparently, he was attacked by the police for “knowing” on his neighbor’s door. We’re not sure exactly what he means by that, though it could be an auto-correct for “knocking.”

Derivatives

• The developers of the Debian-based Parsix GNU/Linux computer operating system have announced the general availability of a new Linux kernel version for all of its supported OSes.

• Just a few minutes ago, December 29, the developers of the Debian-based SparkyLinux operating system were more than proud to announce the release of the GameOver, Multimedia and Rescue editions for SparkyLinux 4.2.

• Just a few minutes ago, December 29, the developers of the Debian-based SparkyLinux operating system were more than proud to announce the release of the GameOver, Multimedia and Rescue editions for SparkyLinux 4.2.

• Along with the announcements for the SparkyLinux 4.2 GameOver and SparkyLinux 4.2 Rescue operating systems, the SparkyLinux devs had the great pleasure of introducing the first SparkyLinux Multimedia Edition.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu and other popular distributions offer their users a great user experience, great support and frequent updates. Recently there have been reports circulating that Ubuntu has a far greater user base than originally thought. When you combine these things together, it seems like Ubuntu (and distros based on it) are at the top of their game. On the surface I’d agree with this. However, there are some critical areas and missed opportunities that continue to be glossed over. In this article, I’ll share areas where I think Ubuntu and related distros went wrong.

• As announced last year, starting January 2015 I’ve benefited from a “Flash Grant” kindly awarded to me by the Shuttleworth Foundation. This post reports publicly about how I’ve used the money to promote Free Software via my own activism, over the period January-December 2015.

Flavours and Variants

• This is the BETA release for Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” Xfce Edition.

• I am going to start this review with the new features in Linux Mint 17.3 so that those of you who are already well aware of Linux Mint and what it offers can skip the rest of the review.

• The second part of the review will look at it more in depth, highlighting the features and the applications provided with Linux Mint.

Devices/Embedded

• LG is preparing to unveil the latest webOS 3.0 Smart TV at the CES 2016 event, promising to bring a host of advanced new features. These will allow consumers to quickly and easily find and switch between the company’s expanded content options.

• This is a vast improvement over having the exposed Raspberry Pi Zero just laying on my desk, but it is still not the ideal configuration I have in mind.

• One more thing before I go. I also just picked up my first “genuine” Raspberry Pi Case for my Pi 2, and it really is very nice. Clean, secure and simple to assemble/install. The top pops off to make space for a HAT if necessary. Very nice.

• Google Glass is not dead. A brand new model of Google’s face computer has popped up on the FCC website (first spotted by 9to5Google), complete with rather high-res images of the device.

• The pictures show a Google Glass unit with the FCCID “A4R­-GG1″ that looks a lot like the existing Glass design. The biggest change seems to be that the device can now fold up, just like a regular pair of glasses, which will make it much easier to store when you aren’t wearing it. The Glass prism looks longer than the first version of the device, which presumably offers a larger picture.

• In general, the case looks smoother and rounder than the previous version of Google Glass. The “Glass” part also seems to be completely independent of the glasses that hold it on your face—the FCC never shows a wearable version with a second side.

• In part one of this series, I described how community-backed embedded boards, home automation, and Internet of Things devices had supplanted mobile projects as the main focal points for open development. In this post, we look at some other areas where Linux and Android are either thriving (media players, TVs, drones, robots), struggling (games), or are well poised for future success (3D printers, augmented reality, wearables, and automotive).

Phones

Android

• A Kickstarter project called Console OS has exploited open source software licenses in a really nasty — but totally legal — manner by redistributing Android-x86 code in a way that amounts to “stealing,” according to the lead developer of the latter project.

• Telefonica one of the first Firefox OS partners ditches the operating system for an Android based customized operating system, Cyanogen OS. In an update to its Open Agenda with Firefox OS Telefonica blamed its departure on the inability of Mozilla to provide better user experience which lead to suspension of Firefox OS distribution.

• Android users are clearly still in love with large-screened phablet devices. A report by an analytics company indicates that half of the Android phones bought for Christmas were phablets.

• Google is replacing the Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in Android with OpenJDK, the open source version of Oracle’s Java Development Kit (JDK). The news first came by a “mysterious Android codebase commit” from last month submitted to Hacker News. Google confirmed to VentureBeat that Android N will rely solely on OpenJDK, rather Android’s own version of the Java APIs.

• While not without its issues, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 excels in key areas where its competitors do not, including its premium build quality, exceptional battery life, and the availability of a fast and accurate fingerprint reader, all for an impressive sub-$200 price point.

• Android is a flexible, mostly open source platform that has dominance in the smartphone world. We have competitors, sure; Apple’s iPhone is the next largest competitor, then we have a number of niche offerings and in here we find Microsoft Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10, Symbian and Tizen OS. As it happens, these niche operating systems do still have millions of users, but in terms of scale they remain small players. Now; one of the fundamental reasons as to why Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems have worked so well is because of the availability of third party applications. There are millions available for both platform, but there are also differences – apparently, you’ll find the quality applications across in the Apple store and the Google Play Store has the inferior quality of applications. Depending on the device(s) you are using, there’s either relatively little difference in application quality but one golden rule is the larger the device, the relatively poorer the Android application experience is.

• I’m starting to think that this mobile ecosystem that we play in every day has matured. I say that because I haven’t dramatically changed the way I use my phone from 2014 to 2015. I still use many of the same apps as I did last year (most can be found in this list), though some have improved greatly and a few have been replaced. I don’t know that that’s a bad thing, I think it just shows that it’s become harder and harder to standout with new apps or services. Or maybe people aren’t even attempting to make new products or services because the standard options are so good? Whatever the case may be, I do feel as though I’m more efficient than ever and am also able to accomplish more with the apps I continue to use on a regular basis. So that’s a good thing.

• According to a new report by analytics firm, Flurry, more Android phablets were activated than any other sized Google-powered smartphones. In fact, if the companies app-tracking tools are accurate, half of all Android activations over the holidays were large-screened mobiles…

• Suretap, a consortium formed by Rogers, Bell and Telus, have begun testing mobile payments on Montreal’s public transit network.

• “We want to make it simple for customers to get access to our installations and to our network and this is another way,” said STM chairman Philippe Schnobb.

• In the new year, a few hundred employees will test the new payment system, which will allow commuters to pay fares with their smartphone.

• Schnobb said there’s no timeline right now for mobile payments being available to STM riders.

• Oppo isn’t a particularly well-known name in many Western markets, and that’s hardly surprising considering the Chinese company hasn’t been around for as long as the bigger players. What it is known for is offering ‘bang for your buck’, and its latest R7s model is no different.

• Priced at $399, it sits as a midway point in Oppo’s range – between the R7 and the R7 Plus – and goes up against similarly priced devices like the OnePlus 2, HTC One A9, and Nexus 5x, to name just a few.

• These days you do not have to spend much to get a good smartphone. Using a Xiaomi Mi4c as my daily driver for the past couple of weeks has made it clear that you can get an impressive handset for just around $200. It is the sort of smartphone that makes you believe that you can have your cake and eat it too — its specs read like those of some flagships while its price is similar to that of more affordable mid-rangers.

• I highly recommend using a password manager on your mobile device. You have to do as much as you can to keep sensitive data from prying eyes. If you must carry passwords with you, an app like Keeper is a must have.

Free Software/Open Source

• 2015 was a year of many new open source projects hitting the scene with a splash. From enterprise solutions to home brewed open source concoctions, many of the projects released as open source software this year have made a huge impact on the world of computing in a very short amount of time. While flash stardom isn’t always the best predictor of longevity, we think these 10 projects just might have come onto the scene with enough momentum to continue their success in the new year.

• The toolchain, or “flow” as the FPGA kids like to call it, consists of three parts: Project IceStorm, a low-level tool that can build the bitstreams that flip individual bits inside the FPGA, Arachne-pnr, a place-and-route tool that turns a symbolic netlist into the physical stuff that IceStorm needs, and Yosys which synthesizes Verilog code into the netlists needed by Arachne. [Clifford] developed both IceStorm and Yosys, so he knows what he’s talking about.

• What is the role of programmers in software development? The question is never far away in free and open source software (FOSS). Last month, however, the issues surrounding the question were emphasized by Robert C. Martin’s attempt to write a programmer’s oath that states best practices and the resulting discussion.

• No, not because second-tier developers wrote it. You probably have great developers. Instead, the real problem is that your developers are stuck building new code on top of old code. Over and over and over again.

• Ironically, this is a sign of success. But, it also creates problems.

• As professor Zeynep Tufekci describes it, “We are building skyscraper favelas in code—in earthquake zones.” While she’s referring to the security vulnerabilities inherent in such code development, the problem is actually broader.

• Security professionals are increasingly acknowledging an uncomfortable truth: No network is secure from a sufficiently skilled and determined attacker. So while every effort should be made to prevent intruders getting on to the corporate network, it’s important that you can quickly spot an intrusion and minimize the damage that can result.

• Anton Chuvakin, a security expert at Gartner, points out that if hackers are made to work hard to find what they are after, intrusion prevention and detection systems have a far greater chance of spotting them before they can do too much damage.

SaaS/Big Data

• Version 1.4 of the Mesosphere Datacenter Operating System (DCOS) is now generally available, featuring user interface updates, support for Marathon 0.13.0 and Chronos, and the Mesos 0.25.0 kernel.

• One look around the airport waiting lounge or family living room will tell you everything you need to know about where the cloud is headed. Christmas carols drift on by thanks to Pandora, gifts come without having to stand in line at the mall, and those holiday snaps of the family will be stored on someone else’s server.

• In the next 12 months, software running on clouds will rule our world more than ever—but unfortunately not many of those clouds are powered by OpenStack.

• While we rightly raise a glass to celebrate the substantial gains OpenStack has achieved in 2015, it’s time to recognize the vast potential to gain new ground in 2016. So, let’s put those New Year’s resolutions to good use by rallying application developers to the cause. To win them over, we must make OpenStack a more inviting and immediately valuable solution to serve their needs.

• Docker sparked the trend in software containers less than two years ago. And since its modest presentation at PyCon in 2013, the startup has vaulted to a value of nearly one billion dollars, drawn 2,500 attendees to DockerCon, and its namesake technology has become a marketable skill to have, entering Hacker News’ top 20 most frequently requested job skills.

• Kylin. Meanwhile, the foundation has also just announced that Apache Kylin, an open source big data project born at eBay, has graduated to Top-Level status. Kylin is an open source Distributed Analytics Engine designed to provide an SQL interface and multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP) on Apache Hadoop, supporting extremely large datasets. It is widely used at eBay and at a few other organizations.

• “Apache Kylin’s incubation journey has demonstrated the value of Open Source governance at ASF and the power of building an open-source community and ecosystem around the project,” said Luke Han, Vice President of Apache Kylin. “Our community is engaging the world’s biggest local developer community in alignment with the Apache Way.”

• Looking back at 2015, there have been many projects created by the Docker community that have advanced the developer experience. Although choosing among all the great contributions is hard, here are 10 “cool tools” that you should be using if you are looking for ways to expand your knowledge and use of Docker.

• In April, Docker announced a $95 million series D round of funding. This is one of many events over the past year that has demonstrated how the industry has shifted towards the use of Linux containers (LXC) to deploy online services. Even giant cloud services companies, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Redhat, IBM and VMware, are pushing towards containerization. With the market leaning in the direction of containers, let’s take a deeper look at what they are, their history and current developments.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• We install Linux on every one of our Reglue computers. Included in that installation is the entire suite of LibreOffice. Unfortunately, a number of Reglue Kids began complaining about homework assignments being rejected. Most times they were scolded and told to re-submit the assignment in the proper format…you know, that well known proprietary one. Sometimes students were given a lower grade for not following the submission instructions.

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

• More than 3,400 developers have contributed to the long list of open source projects Facebook has launched, and the majority of them are not Facebook employees.

BSD

• DragonFlyBSD’s Francois Tigeot has done some more great work in allowing their open-source Intel graphics driver to be more featureful and comparable to the Linux i915 kernel DRM driver for which it is based.

• While DragonFly’s i915 DRM driver started out as woefully outdated compared to the upstream Linux kernel code, the work done by Tigeot and others is quite close to re-basing against the latest mainline code. With patches published recently, the DragonFlyBSD driver would now be comparable to what’s in the Linux 4.0 kernel.

Public Services/Government

• To facilitate this, the team launched a new website — Micropurchase.18F.gov — as place to post new projects for registered users to peruse and bid on.

• “Our goal is to enable parts of our own agency and the rest of the federal government to use this platform to ask the developer community to create open source code for their project,” 18F said in an email to companies that expressed interest in the original micro-purchase pilot. “We anticipate posting auctions for micro-purchase tasks throughout 2016.”

• The X-road update is financed in part by the European Regional Development Fund. Estonia’s secure document exchange system is developed as open source.

Licensing

• In August of 2012, the Licensing & Compliance Lab kicked off a series of interviews with developers of free software. With 2015 in the rear-view mirror, we take a moment to look back on the series and highlight these great projects once again.

• In August of 2012, the Licensing & Compliance Lab kicked off a series of interviews with developers of free software. These interviews were a chance to highlight cool free software projects, especially those using copyleft licenses, and learn more about why they are dedicated to free software. What started as a single interview has grown into a regular feature of the Licensing & Compliance Lab blog. With 2015 in the rear-view mirror, we take a moment to look back on the series and highlight these great projects once again.

Openness/Sharing

• RISC-V is on the march as an open source alternative to ARM and Mips. Fifteen sponsors, including a handful of high tech giants, are queuing up to be the first members of its new trade group which will host next week its third workshop for the processor core.

• RISC V is the latest evolution of the original RISC core developed more than 25 years ago by Berkeley’s David Patterson and Stanford’s John Hennessey. In August 2014, Patterson and colleagues launched an open source effort around the core as an enabler for a new class of processors and SoCs with small teams and volumes that can’t afford licensed cores or get the attention of their vendors.

• While this post does not cover the details of stock analysis, it does propose a way to solve the hard problem of real-time data analysis at scale, using open source tools in a highly scalable and extensible reference architecture. The architecture below is focused on financial trading, but it also applies to real-time use cases across virtually every industry. More information on the architecture covered in this article is also available online via The Linux Foundation, Slideshare, YouTube, and Pivotal Open Source Hub, where the components in this architecture can be downloaded.

Leftovers

Science

• Scientists from Dublin and Belfast have looked deep into Ireland’s early history to discover a still-familiar pattern of migration: of stone age settlers with origins in the Fertile Crescent, and bronze age economic migrants who began a journey somewhere in eastern Europe.

• The evidence has lain for more than 5,000 years in the bones of a woman farmer unearthed from a tomb in Ballynahatty, near Belfast, and in the remains of three men who lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and were buried on Rathlin Island in County Antrim.

• Scientists at Trinity College Dublin used a technique called whole-genome analysis to “read” not the unique characteristics of each individual, but a wider a history of ancestral migration and settlement in the DNA from all four bodies.

Health/Nutrition

• “The aerial spraying of herbicides and germination inhibitors was conducted in the area along the border fence last week in order to enable optimal and continuous security operations,” an IDF Spokesperson told +972 on Sunday.

• Palestinian Agricultural Ministry officials told Ma’an news that farmers said Israeli planes had been spraying their agricultural lands adjacent to the border fence for several days straight. Spinach, pea, parsley and bean crops were reportedly destroyed around the al-Qarrara area in eastern Khan Younis and the Wadi al-Salqa area in central Gaza, according to the report.

• The military spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about the destruction of agricultural crops.

• Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, an expert on the risk assessment of pesticides and genetically modified crops, worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research for more than a decade. But when his findings on the ill effects of systemic pesticides and RNAi (a biological process in which RNA molecules inhibit gene expression) on pollinators began to gain traction and visibility, the harassment and punishments did as well.

• Scientist Jonathan Lundgren believes the USDA retaliated against him because of his research on neonicotinoid insecticides and potential effects on bees and butterflies.

• Neonicotinoids are among the most widely used pesticides. Some research shows they harm bees and butterflies, but the chemical industry disputes much of the research.

Security

• Can we build trustworthy client systems on x86 hardware? What are the main challenges? What can we do about them, realistically? Is there anything we can?

• One of the excellent features of new Windows devices is that disk encryption is built-in and turned on by default, protecting your data in case your device is lost or stolen. But what is less well-known is that, if you are like most users and login to Windows 10 using your Microsoft account, your computer automatically uploaded a copy of your recovery key – which can be used to unlock your encrypted disk – to Microsoft’s servers, probably without your knowledge and without an option to opt-out.

• During the “crypto wars” of the nineties, the National Security Agency developed an encryption backdoor technology – endorsed and promoted by the Clinton administration – called the Clipper chip, which they hoped telecom companies would use to sell backdoored crypto phones. Essentially, every phone with a Clipper chip would come with an encryption key, but the government would also get a copy of that key – this is known as key escrow – with the promise to only use it in response to a valid warrant. But due to public outcry and the availability of encryption tools like PGP, which the government didn’t control, the Clipper chip program ceased to be relevant by 1996. (Today, most phone calls still aren’t encrypted. You can use the free, open source, backdoorless Signal app to make encrypted calls.)

• Some 12,000 hackers are challenging the power of Google, Facebook and Youtube to filter information and shape users’ view of the world. One of them demonstrated how to hack into VW’s cheating software.

• Austin-based Chris Vickery – who earlier this month found records on 3.3 million Hello Kitty users splashed online – says the wide-open system contains the full names, dates of birth, home addresses, and phone numbers of voters, as well as their likely political affiliation and which elections they have voted in since 2000.

• Smart TVs are opening a new window of attack for cybercriminals, as their security defenses often lag far behind those of smartphones and desktop computers.

• Smart TVs are opening a new window of attack for cybercriminals, as the security defenses of the devices often lag far behind those of smartphones and desktop computers.

• Running mobile operating systems such as Android, smart TVs present a soft target due to how to manufacturers are emphasizing convenience for users over security, a trade-off that could have severe consequences.

• After I read many articles I got this infos about Nemesis Bootkit Malware: – suspected to originate from Russia; – infect PCs by loading before Windows starts – has ability to modify the legitimate volume boot record; – seam to be like another Windows rootkit named Alureon; – intercepts several system interrupts to pass boot process; – can steal payment data from anyone’s not just targeting financial institutions and retailers; – this malware hides between partitions and is also almost impossible to remove;

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• A Syrian opposition film-maker was gunned down in broad daylight in the Turkish city of Gazientep on Sunday, apparently by Isil supporters.

• Friends said that Naji Jerf, 38, was shot twice in the head after being approached by an unknown car outside of a local restaurant.

• ncumbent National Security Advisor, had once said that the spark which Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose created within the Indian Army forced Britishers to quit India in 1947.

• In a video posted on Youtube, Doval has given a detailed explanation of the main reason as to why the mighty British Empire which, won the Second World War in 1945, decided to quit India in a hurry.

• On August 22, 1945, Tokyo Radio announced the ‘death’ of Netaji in an air crash in Formosa (now Taiwan) on August 18, 1945, en route to Japan.

• But the crash theory has been rejected by scores of Netaji’s followers and admirers and several claims of the revolutionary leader resurfacing continue to intrigue and divide Indians over the years.

• The Obama administration is waging war all over the world – without congressional authorization

Transparency Reporting

• Documents released by the NSA and FBI are often delivered in unsearchable PDFs, made from what look like 7th-generation copies created by a faulty mimeograph and forced through a malfunctioning scanner during an earthquake. This makes it much harder for researchers, journalists and activists to perform keyword searches of released documents, much less accurately track redaction inconsistencies or evolving legal arguments. This is deliberate.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• A brutal sell-off in oil prices has forced Saudi Arabia’s government to post the largest budget deficit in its history, as the state’s revenues have crumbled.

• The country’s deficit rose to 367bn riyals (£66bn), after government spending rose 13pc above officials’ plans in the wake of declining oil prices and a war with Yemen. A Saudi official said that the deficit was “considered an acceptable figure” under the circumstances.

• Stock markets reacted positively to the government’s spending plans, as investors had feared far worse news was to come, anticipating an overshoot well in excess of 13pc. The total deficit stood at 16pc of the economy’s size, while analysts had expected a gap of 20pc. The Tadawul All Share Index made a daily gain of 0.7pc.

• The past four years of punishing drought have badly hurt California’s forests. Rain was scarce, the days were too hot, and this year’s wildfire season was the worst anyone has seen in years, burning up nearly 10 million acres across the West. For the first time, a team of researchers has measured the severity of the blow the drought dealt the trees, uncovering potential future destruction in the process. The resulting paper, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a rich visual testament to just how much California needs its trees and how close the state is to losing 58 million of them.

• Throughout the world, the name Fukushima has become synonymous with nuclear disaster and running for the hills. Yet, Fukushima may be one of the least understood disasters in modern times, as nobody knows how to fix neither the problem nor the true dimension of the damage. Thus, Fukushima is in uncharted territory, a total nuclear meltdown that dances to its own rhythm. Similar to an overly concerned parent, TEPCO merely monitors but makes big mistakes along the way.

Finance

• When President Obama announced the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, on February 18, 2009, in Mesa, Arizona, he promised it would assist 3 to 4 million homeowners to modify their loans to avoid foreclosure. Almost seven years later, less than 1 million have received ongoing assistance; nearly 1 in 3 re-defaulted after receiving inadequate modifications; and 6 million families lost their homes over the same time period.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Michael Moore’s new film, “Where to Invade Next,” is sure to generate Oscar buzz. It is already on the short list of 15 documentaries from which the final five nominations will be announced on Jan. 14. But rather than wonder whether Moore will score a second Oscar (his first was for “Bowling for Columbine” in 2002), the question to ask is whether this film can spark a political revolution just in time for the 2016 election.

• “Where to Invade Next” has a wide release set for Feb. 12, which is also Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and the week of the New Hampshire primary. Coincidence? Definitely not.

Censorship

• Having witnessed the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) getting embroiled in one controversy after the other through the past few months, the government is now considering taking a re-look at the body so as to make it “controversy free”.

• “School newspapers provide students with a powerful voice and a positive learning experience, and we are committed to providing journalism opportunities to our students,” CPS spokesman Michael Passman said. “Steinmetz High School will continue to offer journalism courses for the foreseeable future, and the Steinmetz Star will remain in operation as an online publication that will continue to serve as a valuable learning opportunity for students.”

• But the Shenderovich case may provide the Putin regime with an object lesson because it is obvious that the Kremlin took this action because of Shenderovich’s criticism of Putin himself (openrussia.org/post/view/11565/) and because it is obvious that taking down the interview in one place won’t block the spread of the text.

• A Chinese publisher has pulled a translation of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore’s poems after it sparked controversy for racy content.

• The translation of works from one of India’s most famous poets was by Chinese novelist Feng Tang.

• His publisher said on Monday that it was removing the work from sale following the “huge debate” in China’s literary and translation circles.

• Mr Feng has defended his translation, saying a previous version lacked style.

• Tagore, known as the Bard of Bengal and seen as a literary god in India, was the first non-European to win the Nobel prize for literature.

• First of all, censoring ISIS in this way is simply not feasible. We can very well demand that mainstream newspapers and TV news stations limit their coverage of these issues, but that would leave the entire field of discussion to the unregulated areas of the internet, the “blogosphere” and social media. ISIS would still dominate in these areas, except now we will have removed from the discourse those outlets that would be most capable to hold the ISIS narrative to scrutiny.

• Last week brought a positively Orwellian moment to the debate about Internet freedom.

• Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke at a state-organised internet conference in Wuzhen, in Zhejiang province, where he was once party secretary. Xi declared, “As in the real world, freedom and order are both necessary in cyberspace.” He said, “Freedom is what order is meant for, and order is the guarantee of freedom.”

• These slogans are more than just propaganda from the leader of a country with the world’s largest internet censorship operation. Behind them lurks a dangerous ambition.

• China’s President Xi Jinping invoked “cyber sovereignty” to describe his country’s right to create its national cyber policy while giving the opening speech at the second World Internet Conference, held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang, on December 16.

• “We should respect the right of individual countries to independently choose their own path of cyber development, model of cyber regulation, and participate in international cyberspace governance on an equal footing,” said President Xi. “No country should pursue cyber hegemony, interfere in other countries’ internal affairs or engage in, connive at or support cyber activities that undermine other countries’ national security.”

• 2015 has been an eventful year for freedom of speech. In January, #JeSuisCharlie was a global trend championing freedom of expression, lack of censorship, and the right to offend. Yet, as the year draws to a close, it seems the Facebook generation is becoming more and more suppressed.

• Once upon a time, universities were bastions of free speech, where world leaders would debate with fresh-faced 18-year-olds who were determined to save the planet. Once, just about anything could be discussed in the name of free speech. But, this year, there have been countless examples of speakers being banned, societies being stopped, and student media being censored, all in the name of “protecting students.”

• The Committee to Protect Journalists says 2015 was one of the deadliest years on record for members of the press worldwide, with 69 journalists killed on-assignment. According to the CPJ, 2015 was the sixth year out of the last ten (and eighth since 1992) in which more than 60 journalists were killed in the line of duty—a figure that includes those targeted for their profession as well as those killed in combat, crossfire or while covering other assignments deemed dangerous.

• It was cowardly, disrespectful, and it isolated Aaron again in death. He was The Boy, a tragic waste, not a murdered comrade or a martyr. Saying he was misguided served as an excuse for not being at his side.

• With all of the news about the holidays, one story you might have missed yesterday is that China passed with little fanfare its new antiterrorism law that bears substantial resemblance to proposals currently under review in the US and UK that would require backdoors or other weakened measures to allow encrypted communications to be secretly monitored by governments.

• The Chinese law requires that “telecommunications and Internet service providers should provide technical interfaces and technical support and assistance in terms of decryption and other techniques to the public and national security agencies in the lawful conduct of terrorism prevention and investigation.” It is remarkably similar to the wording of a UK proposal that would require companies to offer the government “permanent interception capabilities … [including] the ability to remove any encryption” and similar to calls by US intelligence officials for the ability to decrypt civilian communication.

• On the surface such proposals seem highly desirable: the ability to monitor and disrupt terrorist and criminal communications in order to protect life and ensure national security. The problem, as I pointed out last week, is that there is no universal definition of “terrorism” or “national security threats.” In fact, one of the focal points of the Chinese online censorship apparatus is the removal of material relating to protests and mass organization, which the government views as a threat to the stability and well-being of the nation.

• [...]

• North Korea is one of the few countries to take this model of a safe and secure internet to its logical conclusion, creating its own walled-off private version of the internet where only a small number of approved websites are accessible. The government even created its own operating system called Red Star OS, designed for total government surveillance. Yesterday two German researchers offered the latest in-depth look at the functioning of this operating system custom built for the world of a surveillance state.

• In 2006 – years before ISIS replaced Al Qaeda as the New and Unprecedentedly Evil Villain – Newt Gingrich gave a speech in New Hampshire in which, as he put it afterward, he “called for a serious debate about the First Amendment and how terrorists are abusing our rights–using them as they once used passenger jets–to threaten and kill Americans.”

• China’s biggest microblogging site, Weibo, is not unfamiliar to foreign head of states. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, UK prime minister David Cameron, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro—all have opened accounts on the site and have interacted with readers in Chinese. But China’s own leaders are more reluctant to engage with online audiences.

• Chinese president Xi Jinping’s limited number of social media contributions include a selfie with Cameron and Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero during Xi’s state visit to the UK in October, while Chinese premier Li Keqiang indulged Modi in a joint selfie, said to be Li’s first, at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven in May. Neither of these were posted by the Chinese leaders on Weibo. Instead, they surfaced on Twitter—a social media platform blocked by China’s elaborate censorship machine.

• But finally, on Dec. 25, during his visit to the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army Daily—a mouthpiece newspaper of the Communist Party and the army—Xi crafted his first post on Weibo. It’s the first Weibo message from any of China’s senior officials, as far as we can tell. Xi wrote the message personally, according to state media.

• Every New Year Thailand’s top political journalists traditionally come up with satirical nicknames for the government and senior ministers. But this year they will forego the pleasure, having decided the junta is no laughing matter.

• The occasion is usually a rare moment of light relief for reporters covering the febrile world of Thai politics, in a country which has witnessed a string of military coups, violent street protests and toppled governments – and where defamation is a criminal offence.

• Are easily-offended students and their allies within the university bureaucracy ushering in a new era of censorship on American college campuses? Even President Obama is worried that excessive political correctness is stifling legitimate debate at universities.

• Ahmed Abu al-Hamza, “Software” as he was known by his friends, stood behind the camera on November 6 as a gunman explained how rebel forces took Tel Sukayk, a strategic hilltop north of Hama, from government forces. Suddenly the camera’s sound recorder picked up the faint thud of a mortar shell firing in the distance. A few seconds of confusion then turned to horror as the shell exploded right in front of the camera, killing Abu al-Hamza and the rebel fighter and injuring several others.

• Censorship, though, is not an effective way of fixing a social problem.

• The Mexican way of death is unique, issuing from a symbiosis of indigenous beliefs and practices with Catholic rituals. To celebrate the return of the souls of the dead every November, Mexicans set up altars laden with the departed’s favorite food and drink and sugar skulls emblazoned with that person’s name, while images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints flank a photo of the deceased. Marigolds festoon the altars and the graves where relatives gather to share a meal and news of the past year with the visiting spirits.

• [...]

• Journalists are not only pursued by organized crime in all its forms, but also by local, state and federal governments, police forces, the military, and even by people whose job it is to impart justice. Not only must the federal government guarantee the safety of journalists, it must also resolve pending cases and punish the criminals, even if they work in government. Otherwise, as time passes most of the cases become enveloped in a tangle of conflicting lines of investigation where the real one is lost or the victim is morphed into the guilty party. A journalist friend recently told me about how when dealing with a notorious political crime, officials often present a new line of inquiry every once in a while which leads the investigation further away from reality, until it reaches a point where nobody knows anything for sure, a kind of legal shell game with the truth.

• Earlier in December, file-sharing site the Pirate Bay went down due to a problem regarding the registration of the thepiratebay.org domain — a seemingly innocuous hitch. But then, a week later, thepiratebay.com and several other of the site’s domain properties, including piratebrowser.com, piratebrowser.net, and piratebrowser.org — which link to the Pirate Bay’s TOR-based anti-censorship tool — also went down, suspended for similar violations of ICANN registration policy. And though thepiratebay.org was quickly restored after a transfer from EuroDNS to a new registrar, the other domains remain suspended.

• “Why do I see beheadings and bestiality on YouTube, but the story of an aged Holocaust survivor must be removed? Is there an agenda going on? If so, what is it?” she asked. “This ministry is being targeted for some unexplainable reason. Is it because we tap in Michele Bachmann regularly? I do not hear of other ministries undergoing this kind of an exam and retribution.”

• Earlier this month, six weeks after receiving a “Warning Letter” for hanging a Palestinian flag out his dormitory window, George Washington University (GWU) student Ramie Abounaja obtained a formal apology from university president Steven Knapp for the attack on his free speech rights. The apology came after an implied threat of legal action against the university.

• Every year brings new examples of ruthless college administrators trampling the free expression rights of students and faculty, and 2015 was no different. Here are eight of the most notable campus censors I wrote about this year.

• Multicultural student groups are calling for more inclusion at AU after a rash of anonymous social media posts and posters targeting minorities have appeared on and around campus.

• Yik Yak is a smartphone application that allows smartphone users to make posts anonymously and view posts made by those within close proximity to them. Racist posts on the platform prompted University forums last year and inspired an Undergraduate Senate discussion about race, the Eagle previously reported. In recent months, users have continued to write discriminatory comments in the the app around campus.

• Beijing-based filmmaker Fan Popo, whose gay rights documentary was removed from Chinese video streaming websites, has claimed victory in a lawsuit over government censorship despite the courts ruling that regulators were not to blame.

• In its verdict released last week, Beijing’s No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court found censors had not ordered his documentary “Mama Rainbow” to be taken down from prominent streaming websites Youku, Tudou and 56.com.

• Turkey welcomes private investors in the field of art and culture, but many artists feel oppressed by their government. Beyond censorship and commercial speculation, an alternative art scene offers some hope.

Privacy

• For the first time, UK intelligence agency GCHQ has admitted that it does hack into computers and devices to install malware to spy on people both in the UK and abroad. The admission was made before the UK’s independent Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is hearing complaints by human rights advocacy group Privacy International and seven internet service providers (ISPs) that GCHQ and the Foreign Office broke privacy laws to illegally hack into phones, computers and networks around the world.

• A new anti-terror law in China gives the government the explicit power to demand technology firms decrypt electronic messages stored on their servers, sparking concern – and confusion – from foreign companies.

• The law as enacted, however, falls short of a draft bill which would have required computer companies to explicitly install “backdoors” on their devices, allowing the Chinese government privileged access to the users’ communications.

• On today’s special episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker interviews National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney. Before the earth shaking revelations by figures such as Chelsey Manning and Edward Snowden, there were NSA agents turned critics such as Binney. We ask Binney what led to his decision to leave the NSA less than two months after 9/11, how he views recent changes to the bulk collection of citizens’ data, if terror attacks could have been thwarted, and why the spying apparatus in the U.S continues to grow.

• ITU members have approved the first ITU standard on Big Data. The international standard details the requirements, capabilities and use cases of cloud-based Big Data as well a high-level ‘system context’ view and its relationships with other entities. The Big Data paradigm provides an effective, scalable solution to deal with growing volumes of data and uncover patterns or other information capable of making data manageable and profitable.

• All the DHS wanted was a warrantless “peek” at the contents of a seized iPhone. The phone, one of three seized from a person suspected of drug trafficking, was examined by the DHS, with the warrant arriving a month later. Now, all of the evidence obtained from the phone is being tossed out.

• In the order granting the suppression of evidence obtained from the phone, Judge Sterling Johnson points out that the government revised its story several times during oral testimony.

• Theresa May, the UK Home Secretary who seems like a comic book version of a government authoritarian, is leading the charge in the UK for its new Snooper’s Charter, officially called the “Investigatory Powers Bill,” that is filled with all kinds of nasty stuff for making it easier for the government to spy on everyone. Among the many problematic elements is the demand for basically everyone’s metadata. May dismissed the concerns about this by saying it’s nothing more than “an itemised phone bill.” Given that, Member of Parliament Keith Vaz noted to May that people might be interested to see May’s itemized phone bill.

• President Obama vowed in 2013 to cut back on spying on U.S. allies. But in the interests of negotiating his Iran nuclear deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, he made an exception in the case of Israel and thereby also caught communications of U.S. Congress members in that dragnet.

Civil Rights

• Good news (of sorts) on the asset forfeiture front: the same budget bill that delivered us into the hands of CISA also helped “rob” the nation’s highwaymen of $1.2 billion in equitable sharing funds.

• In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun. The family was then held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.

• Italy’s president has shaved two years off the sentence of a former CIA base chief convicted in absentia in the 2003 extraordinary rendition abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect.

• With the decree, announced Wednesday night by the presidential palace, President Sergio Mattarella reduced to seven from nine years Robert Seldon Lady’s sentence. Mattarella also wiped out the three-year sentence handed down by a Milan court to another US defendant convicted in absentia, Betnie Medero.

• Italy has partially pardoned the former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady who was convicted for his role in the kidnapping of an Egyptian Muslim cleric under the U.S. “extraordinary rendition” programme.

• Another U.S. citizen found guilty in the case, Betnie Medero, was also granted a pardon by Italian President Sergio Mattarella, his office said in a statement.

• The longest running director of the CIA (1952-1961), Dulles helped coordinate extremely bloody coups throughout the world. Not surprisingly, he comes off as a nasty piece of work. He and his brother John Foster Dulles both worked with the prestigious Wall Street firm Sullivan and Cromwell, which made a fortune representing cartels that were part of the Nazi war machine (John Foster Dulles went on to become Eisenhower’s Secretary of State). The Dulles brothers were quite cozy with Nazi higher ups in the ’30s and remained staunch apologists for Hitler well into the the ’40s.

• The director of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) Mohamed Atta said his agency maintains “good ties” with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

• “I’m saying when you say a man has killed reporters, I’d like you to prove it”, Trump argued. But, in all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. In response, Trump said he appreciated “when people call you brilliant” and that “it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russian Federation”.

• McCain’s comments come after Putin complimented Trump last week, and Trump responded it was an “honor” to receive the compliment. “Not a bad thing”, Trump said. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports Russian journalists experience intimidation and censorship.

• “I think I’ll win the Hispanic vote”, Trump told reporters after touring the bridge.

• Sergei Guriev, Russia’s most prominent free market economist, left Moscow in 2013 for Paris, in fear of his liberty. He had publicly supported dissidents, criticized the administration’s policies, was an active and committed liberal, in politics as in economics. He produced, earlier this year, a 21st century equivalent of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince”: a blueprint of how the modern autocrat rules, and remains.

• Unlike the Florentine, though, Guriev isn’t recommending a course of action, he’s describing it; and he doesn’t believe it will be good for the state, but ruinous. If, in this and other writings and interviews, he’s right about the nature of Russia’s governance, his country is in for a bad crash. And when Russia in its present condition crashes, the world will shake.

• The Public Opinion Foundation conducted a survey this month asking Russians two questions: “What was the main event of the year in Russia?” and “What was the main global event of the year?”

• Noteworthy is that fully 40 percent of the respondents had trouble answering either question. And the most brutal political murder in modern Russia — the assassination of my father — did not even figure in the responses. State-controlled television hardly mentions it, with the exception of the first few days after the killing, when commentators spoke of him in contemptuous tones.

• In 2015, Fox News’ three primetime hosts engaged in a smear campaign against the Black Lives Matter movement, fearmongering about the alleged threat they pose to law and order and hyping racist canards aimed at discrediting the movement’s calls for justice.

• The Black Lives Matter movement — which emerged after the 2013 shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin — became a regular news fixture in 2015 following the high-profile deaths of several unarmed black civilians at the hands of police officers. The movement brought national attention to the issues of police brutality and racial disparities in criminal justice. One group associated with the movement introduced a set of concrete policy solutions, and the movement as a whole became a politically relevant force amid the 2016 presidential race.

• “The kind of incidents that have ignited protests…represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings”: That sure sounds like an attempt to play down the number, doesn’t it? Particularly since the write-up never presents the raw number for fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans in 2015—which is 37—or the more comprehensive number of all unarmed civilians shot and killed: 90. Those numbers can be found on a graphic that accompanied the story in the paper’s print edition, and in an interactive feature online–but are nowhere to be found in the Post‘s own article on its project. (“Just 9 percent of shootings involved an unarmed victim,” a sidebar accompanying the graphic began—that word “just” indicating that we should read that as “not so many.”)

• And the Post‘s “meanwhile,” juxtaposed against “incidents that have ignited protests,” implies that the categories that follow would not inspire protest: those killed “wielding weapons,” who were “suicidal or mentally troubled,” or who “ran when officers told them to halt.”

• Egypt’s censorship authority raided and searched on Tuesday afternoon Merit Publishing house in downtown Cairo without providing any reason, owner Mohamed Hashem wrote on his Facebook page.

• Staff member Mohamed Zein, 23, was arrested during the raid then released a few hours later.

• Egyptian authorities have raided two pillars of the independent arts and culture scene in Cairo over the past 48 hours.

• The last time we took notice of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), it was to inform you that the unpopular, expensive, and ineffectual outfit had decided it could force travelers on domestic airline flights to go through full-body scanners. Previously, TSA had allowed folks to submit instead to a full-body pat-down.

• For the residents of Alaska, California, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, Minnesota and Washington (along with American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands), this means their ID cards are perfectly legal within those states, but only as long as they stay in those states. (And, apparently, never need to enter a government building — like, say, to acquire a new, compliant ID card).

• In one of the darkest chapters in medical ethics, the United States government ran an experiment from the 1930s to the 1970s in which it withheld treatment and medical information from rural African-American men suffering from syphilis. The public uproar generated by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study eventually resulted in regulations restricting government-supported research testing on humans. These regulations are called the “Common Rule,” and they are right now up for their first full update.

• The Common Rule, also known as the “Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects,” is supposed to affirmatively protect us from the abuses of the future. However, the proposed regulation is lousy with loopholes, including ones that could exempt tracking online behavior and experiments related to intelligence activities.

• Today we filed a lawsuit challenging Dignity Health’s use of religious directives to deny basic reproductive health care to its patients. Filed on behalf of patient Rebecca Chamorro and Physicians for Reproductive Health, the suit argues that withholding pregnancy-related care for reasons other than medical considerations is illegal in California.

• Months after the Herald-Tribune exposed the North Port Police Department for routinely commanding their K-9 dogs to attack people without provocation, the department has done nothing to address the problem. In fact, it defends its officers even in the most egregious cases, including the mutilation of unarmed juveniles.

• In Part 2 of our look at the life and work of Haskell Wexler, we air clips from “Rebel Citizen,” a new documentary about his life, and speak to the film’s director, Pamela Yates. Wexler is perhaps best known for his 1969 film, “Medium Cool,” which captures the upheaval surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He won two Academy Awards for cinematography in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Bound for Glory,” about folk singer Woody Guthrie. His documentaries tackled political issues including the Southern Freedom Riders of the 1960s, the U.S. government’s destabilization of Nicaragua, U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and torture under the U.S.-backed junta in Brazil.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Local independent councillor in Cornwall Andrew Wallis reports that the High Court delivered a judgement today in favour of the council’s action to end its outsourcing relationship with BT early.

• A few more households may be all a small town fiber network in Massachusetts needs to beat Google Fiber at its own game. The catch is that it’s a really small town, even by Google Fiber standards.

• Leverett, Massachusetts, home to some 1,876 residents as of the 2010 census, and on April 7 2015 opened up LeverettNet, the town’s local fiber provider, to much fanfare.

• We’ve talked a lot about Comcast here at Techdirt, mostly because between the company’s broadband cash-grab caps, its great big middle finger to the concept of net neutrality, and its (haha) customer service, there’s just a never ending wealth of stories to write up and Mike only lets us out of the dungeon for porridge after we write enough posts. And, as we bring 2015 to a close, it’s kind of fun to remember that Comcast wanted to be an even bigger corporate thing with its intended merger with Time Warner Cable.

• Maybe some data is old or controversial, but regularity is clear. Why IPv6 is better than IPv4 and influential to modern Internet? Go to the next chapter.

Intellectual Monopolies

• For the first time ever, this month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is being awarded to a design patent. Microsoft recently sued Corel for, among other things, infringing its patent on a slider, D554,140, claiming that Corel Home Office has infringed Microsoft’s design.

Trademarks

• In our recent discussion about the delightfully vulgar filing by the Washington Redskins in an effort to point out the arbitrary application of morality by the government to trademark law, the point in the filing was driven home by just how many similarly vulgar and offensive terms the USPTO has been happy to sanctify with a valid trademark. Perhaps some of you out there thought that this was a uniquely American problem, something resulting from our overabundance of political correctness. It’s not. A case in Canada over the trademark application for “Lucky Bastard Vodka” shows this quite well. It also shows the inherent problem in trying to have a government institution apply morality to business in this way.

• A Saskatoon company’s attempt to trademark its flagship vodka has turned into a four-year battle with the federal government over the definition of “bastard.”

• In 2011, LB Distillers applied to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) to register “Lucky Bastard vodka” as a trademark. About eight months later, the agency responsible for trademarks, patents and copyright replied.

• “The examiner came back and said it was immoral, scandalous and obscene, and that the general population of Canada would agree that it was an immoral name,” LB Distillers co-owner Cary Bowman said.

Copyrights

• The phrase “Internet of Things” suggests connection. The problem is there’s nothing financially motivating about interconnectedness. Manufacturers of connected devices would prefer homogeneity, which leads to actions like Philips’ which recently pushed a firmware update that locked competitors’ bulbs out of its Hue “smart” lighting fixtures. Sure, it rolled back the update and (mostly) allowed owners to use bulbs they had already purchased, but it was also suggested in the same quasi-apology that the company would rather limit the options available to its purchasers in the future, funneling them through its “friends of Hue” program.

• Here’s the stupidest thing on piracy you’re going to read today. Or this month. Maybe even this whole holiday season. Rudy Shur, of Square One Publishers, has a problem with piracy, which he thinks is actually a problem with Google.

• I can see why 50 Cent and his lawyers might feel this lawsuit is a good idea: 50 Cent is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings. On top of that, the rapper owes $7 million to the plaintiff in a sex tape lawsuit — one that also involves rival rap star, Rick Ross. (The woman in the sex tape is the mother of one of Ross’ children. 50 Cent can be heard taunting Ross in the recording.) 50 Cent is also engaged in a $75 million lawsuit against his former legal team, so there’s bills to be paid there as well.

• 50 Cent’s lawsuit takes aim at the rap industry’s standard operating procedure: mixtapes. Rick Ross rapped over 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” in his latest mixtape, much as thousands of rappers have rapped over the beats of others on mixtapes since the early days of the genre. It’s an accepted — if quasi-illegal — practice. Everyone raps over everyone else’s beats on mixtapes, almost all of which are given away as promotional tools.

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