● 01.11.16

● Links 11/1/2016: Red Hat Upgraded, Tails 1.8.2

Posted in News Roundup at 12:43 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Linux and Wikipedia (as well as other, less known achievements) show unambiguously that the idea of requiring any kind of payment for great tools, culture, or knowledge to come into being is an utter falsehood. It may be true in some cases. But the cases where it hasn’t been true have all shown that the basic premise, that the copyright monopoly is any kind of necessary, is the purest oxen fecalia.

• And these projects, free in all aspects as they are, now underpin the Android operating system which powers three billion smartphones and well over half of the world’s servers in various incarnations of the GNU/Linux operating system. They support every lower- and higher-level education on the planet.

• According to the copyright industry, these projects do not and cannot exist, as the authors weren’t paid.

• In this article, I am going to focus on the hardware, software, and configuration issues that we need to resolve to set up a Linux-based music server as part of the home music system. Specifically, I’ll look at the Raspberry Pi, Cubox-i, and Fit-PC as options for hosting your digital home music system.

• Some of the material in this article can equally be applied to my previous article on the Linux laptop as a high-quality music player.

• The Ford Motor Company has for some time now been developing its open source Smart Device Link (SDL) middleware framework.

• The firm is now enjoying support from rival automotive manufacturer Toyota for this still-emerging technology.

• We’re past the point of predictions for 2016, so let’s talk about the one thing I really want to happen in the Linux world this year: desktop Linux on tablets.

Desktop

• Mycroft for desktop is one of the most anticipated pieces of technology in 2016, and its makers have decided to make the wait even more unbearable with a new video announcement.

Kernel Space

• Nothing untoward happened this week, so Linux-4.4 is out in all the usual places.

• The changes since rc8 aren’t big. There’s about one third arch updates, one third drivers, and one third “misc” (mainly some core kernel and networking), But it’s all small. Notable might be unbreaking the x86-32 “sysenter” ABI, when somebody (*cough*android-x86*cough*) misused it by not using the vdso and instead using the instruction directly.

• Full shortlog appended for people who care or are just curious.

• And with this, the merge window for 4.5 is obv

• Version 4.4 of the Linux kernel has been finalised and released into the wild.

• Emperor Penguin Linus Torvalds announced the release on Sunday evening, US time.

• What’s new this time around? Support for GPUs seem the headline item, with plenty of new drivers and hooks for AMD kit. Perhaps most notable is the adoption of the Virgil 3D project which makes it possible to parcel up virtual GPUs. With virtual Linux desktops now on offer from Citrix and VMware, those who want to deliver virtual desktops with workstation-esque graphics capabilities have their on-ramp to Penguin heaven.

• Raspberry Pi owners also have better graphics to look forward to, thanks to a new Pi KMS driver that will be updated with acceleration code in future releases.

• Today, January 10, 2016, will enter in the Linux history books as the day when the Linux kernel 4.4 LTS (Long-Term Support) has been officially released by Linus Torvalds and his team of hard working kernel developers.

• While it was looking like Nouveau might not have any big updates for Linux 4.5, a last-minute pull request was honored for DRM-Next that will provide some new/improved functionality to this open-source NVIDIA Linux kernel driver.

• David Airlie pulled the Nouveau DRM feature update into DRM-Next last night for the Nouveau DRM driver. This pull includes some fixes/improvements for the NVIDIA Tegra K1′s GK20A graphics processor, better support for high frequency HDMI modes, the Nouveau pstate control interfaces were moved from sysfs to debugfs, there is now support for PCI Express link speed changes, and various other fixes.

• With the Linux 4.5 merge window’s hwmon subsystem pull request is an update for new AMD Family 15h processors to support power monitoring.

• With the hwmon update, the Family 15h Model 70h-7fh processors now support monitoring their power usage (in Watts) via the fam15h_power driver. I haven’t been able to find any concrete information for what APU/CPUs technically cover this Family 15h 70h series, but anticipate it being either the rumored desktop Carrizo APUs or Zen. If anyone knows for sure, please let us know in the forums.

• Following yesterday’s tests of the Liquorix 4.3 kernel, a Phoronix reader pointed out another customized kernel I previously hadn’t heard of: XanMod.

• XanMod is a Linux-based kernel with custom modifications aiming to “take full advantage in high-performance workstations, gaming desktops, media centers and others.” XanMod is primarily geared for Debian/Ubuntu systems but obviously could work elsewhere.

• After 8 release candidates, the Linus Torvalds officially released the Linux 4.4 kernel on January 10, marking the first new Linux release of 2016. The first kernel release of 2016 is coming faster in the new year than 2015, with the first kernel release of 2015 not out until February 9.

• “Nothing untoward happened this week, so Linux-4.4 is out in all the usual places,” Linus Torvalds wrote in in his release announcement.

• Last week Torvalds explained that having an 8th release candidate for a Linux kernel release is typically a cause for concern to deal with unresolved issues, but that wasn’t the case with Linux 4.4 rc8.

• The latest Linux-libre kernel is now available for those wanting a fully de-blobbed Linux kernel that doesn’t support drivers depending upon proprietary firmware/microcode or other non-free code.

• Alexandre Oliva announced the GNU Linux-libre 4.4-gnu kernel a short time ago, derived from last night’s release of the Linux 4.4 kernel.

• The release has gone ahead as planned, despite some problems in mid-December. Linux kernel releases are based around a schedule rather than any specific features, but that hasn’t stopped a number of big additions to the code base provided by the community.

Graphics Stack

• With the recent news of X.Org possibly losing its valuable domain, many have commented in our forums and elsewhere how this could have possibly happened… However, in reality, it is sadly not much of a surprise.

• The X.Org domain issue is not new and they ran into a similar set of challenges ten years ago when having to renew the domain. However, there have also been other fumbles too, which doesn’t make it all that surprising.

• Airbus A320 has two sidesticks, with no force feedback, and no physical link. So you are trying to recover from stall, you are pushing the sidestick fully and your first officer pulls the stick fully — result is you remain stalled. You don’t even know your first officer fights with you… That’s what happened to PK-AXC, report is here. (How did they get to stall? Computers spuriously adjusted their rudder trim when they lost power. No, you should not reset flight computers like that.)

Applications

• A new year, a new release – v8.8.0. Only ten days since 8.7.0, but a lot of users are hitting a regression in 8.7.0 that makes mkvmerge crash. The user-visible result is that the GUI (wrongfully) claims that the mkvmerge executable couldn’t be found. The underlying cause is a bug in the TrueHD detection code wrongfully thinking a file is indeed a TrueHD file while it actually isn’t – e.g. it’s happened with MPEG 2 video files, DTS files, h.264/AVC files etc.

• What a surprise waking up to find that at long-last the OpenShot 2.0 beta is now available to early-backers of this open-source video editor’s Kickstarter project.

• It was just a few days ago mentioning it was one of the letdowns of 2015 — and non-linear Linux video editors in general. Fortunately, there’s some progress to report already for 2016 with the release of their long-awaited beta.

• The third update in the 0.12.* series of Rcpp arrived on the CRAN network for GNU R earlier today, and has been pushed to Debian. It follows the 0.12.0 release from late July, the 0.12.1 release in September, and the 0.12.2 release in November making it the seventh release at the steady bi-montly release frequency. This release is somewhat more of a maintenance release addressing a number of small bugs and nuisances without adding any new features.

• MKVToolNix 8.8.0 has been released today, January 10, and it comes after only one week from the release of MKVToolNix 8.7.0, as Moritz Bunkus announced earlier on the project’s website.

• I have to admit that before Google Code-In 2015 I had never heard of Wikitolearn although I had used plasma and other KDE software and also read planetkde. In order to create “a free and user-friendly computing experience” it makes sense to also support projects aiming to create free content. Latex2MediaWiki is used to convert latex documents to the MediaWiki format which is used to contribute to Wikitolearn. However, it is not limited to Wikitolearn as Wikipedia and its sister projects also use MediaWiki.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Windlands looks like one of the more unique indie games I’ve seen recently, and the idea of bouncing around with a grappling hook sounds fun.

• I’m a big fan of the Homeworld series and since the game is being developed with Unity I really hope it comes to Linux in the near future. Homeworld: DoK is due to be released this 20th January.

• SpeedRunners, a competitive action-platform runner which was originally going to be out for Linux before Christmas has been delayed. It now has no ETA.

• Feral Interactive announced today that Medieval II: Total War™ Collection will be released on Steam for both Mac and Linux on January 14th. Developed by Creative Assembly and published by SEGA for Windows in 2006, Medieval II: Total War has received a wealth of critical praise since for its historical reach and immersive gameplay.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• KDE Frameworks 5.18.0 was released this weekend with the latest add-on components for complementing Qt 5.

Distributions

• A few minutes ago, January 10, 2016, Josh Strobl from the Solus Project published the seventeen installation of the weekly “This Week in Solus” newsletter, informing users of the Solus Linux operating system about the latest developments.

New Releases

• A few minutes ago, January 10, we received an email from Zbigniew Konojacki, the creator of the 4MLinux project, where he informs us about the immediate availability for download of the Beta release of the upcoming 4MLinux 16.0 operating system.

• The Solus 1.0 operating system seems to have had a pretty good start, but developers have some really interesting plans for the 2.0 branch.

• One of the biggest problems, with any Linux distribution, is the number of problems at any given time. There are no perfect OSes, and they all have known issues. It might be something hardware related, or it may be something related directly to the Linux distro, but there is always something. In fact, most projects also list the known issues, not just features and changes.

Arch Family

• This past weekend, Ringo de Kroon, the maintainer of the Cinnamon desktop environment for Manjaro Linux, as well as the Manjaro Linux Cinnamon Community Edition, released for testing the first development build from the upcoming Manjaro Linux Cinnamon 16.01 series.

• The Manjaro Linux community was proud to announce the availability of the first RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Manjaro Linux GNOME 16.01 Community Edition operating system.

• We reported earlier the release of the Manjaro Linux Cinnamon 16.01 distribution, which also entered development, both being based on the newly released Manjaro Linux 16.01 Dev series about which we wrote last week. As expected, Manjaro Linux GNOME 16.01 Release Candidate 1 inherits all of Manjaro Linux 16.01′s GNU/Linux technologies, despite the fact that the maintainer didn’t reveal any juicy details about the features implemented.

Ballnux/SUSE

• Earlier today, January 10, 2016, Dominique Leuenberger from the openSUSE Project had the great pleasure of publishing details about the latest snapshots released in the last weeks for the Tumbleweed branch of the openSUSE Linux operating system.

Red Hat Family

• Wall Street research analysts are predicting that Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) will post earnings per share of $0.31 when the firm next issues their quarterly results. According to the latest information, the firm should release the report on or around 2016-03-23. This is according to data compliled by Zack’s Research. Analysts and investors will be paying close attention to how the actual numbers compare with the estimates. A large surprise factor in either direction typically can lead to a significant swing in the stock price in the hours and days after the report. For the most recent quarter Red Hat, Inc. recorded a surprise factor of 3.33% as the actual EPS number was $0.01 off from the consensus estimate.

• Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)‘s stock had its “buy” rating reaffirmed by investment analysts at SunTrust in a research note issued to investors on Monday, Analyst Ratings Net reports. They currently have a $73.00 target price on the open-source software company’s stock. SunTrust’s price target suggests a potential downside of 7.77% from the company’s previous close.

Fedora

• By now most Fedora email lists have been migrated to Mailman3. One little (but killer) new feature that I recently discovered was that Mailman3 includes the RFC 5064 Archived-At header in the emails.

• This is a feature I have wanted for a really long time; to be able to find an email in your Inbox and copy and paste a link to anyone without having to find the message in the online archive is going to save a lot of time and decrease some latency when chatting on IRC or some other form of real time communication.

Debian Family

• The fifth alpha release of the Debian Installer being prepared for the 9.0 “Stretch” release is now available.

• Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 5 for its i386 configuration now uses the i686 kernel rather than i586, has initial debian-installer support for SPARC64, support for NVMe devices, various ARM device updates, accessibility support for all desktops, the Linux 4.3 kernel is now used, and a variety of other changes made to this Stretch Installer.

• The Debian Installer team, through Cyril Brulebois, has been proud to announce earlier, January 10, that the fifth Alpha release of the upcoming installer for Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 “Stretch” is now available for testing.

• The cause of Murdock’s death is still unclear, but tweets from his now deleted Twitter account stated his intention to take his own life. Reports have since surfaced that Ian Murdock had been involved in a police investigation, and that he had also been charged with assaulting an officer.

• Shortly after the death of Debian founder Ian Murdock, Bruce Perens, who succeeded Murdock as Debian Project Leader in 1996 and was also Murdock’s employer for a period of time, claimed very publicly that Murdock died of mental illness, although no evidence has been provided. Without referencing Murdock or Perens, another prominent Debian Developer, Daniel Pocock, has asserted that discussion about who has or had a mental illness is a step too far.

Derivatives

• Tails, a live operating system that aims to preserve users’ privacy and that helps people use the Internet anonymously, has been upgraded to version 18.2 and is now ready for download.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu Linux has more than one billion users — or at least people who “benefit” from it, whether they know it or not — according to a recent statement from a Canonical executive about how many people actually run its open source operating system.

• Dustin Kirkland, who works on Ubuntu Product and Strategy for Canonical, said in a blog post that “more people use Ubuntu than anyone actually knows.” That language seems to be an admission that Canonical actually has relatively little idea how many people run Ubuntu, and Kirkland offered few hard statistics.

Flavours and Variants

• Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” Xfce arrived with its KDE counterpart and it’s the last one in the 17.x branch of the famous operating system.

• Linux Mint is one of the most popular Linux distributions. It’s known for its simplicity, stability and ease of use. Linux Mint recently released Linux Mint 17.3 ‘Rosa’ with many improvements, new features and updated software that make it more stable and reliable. In this article you’ll know what’s new in this release and how you can get it.

• Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” KDE was released over the weekend, and it brings a ton of updates and various other changes for the operating system. We now take a closer look at the OS in a quick screenshot tour.

• Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” KDE is still based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, which means that it still uses the old KDE SC implementation, and it’s one of the few distros that still do. This was to be expected and the new Linux Mint 18.x that will launch in a few months’ time will get the latest one, but for the time being, we can get to enjoy and say goodbye to the old KDE.

Devices/Embedded

• It looks like 2016 will be the year of single-board computers, as more and more companies build all sorts of awesome boards inspired in some way by the Raspberry Pi movement

• This is a minor release of AltOS, including support for our new TeleMega v2.0 board, a small selection of bug fixes and a major update of the documentation

Phones

Tizen

• In all honesty, this year at CES had a lot of things happening in wearable electronics but surprisingly Smartwatches weren’t the reason for it (except for Huawei and Fitbit). One of the many reasons to why consumers aren’t jumping onto the smartwatch bandwagon has to deal with the lack of a robust method to chat/text from that tiny little screen of a smartwatch. Efforts are certainly being made by developers and brands to address this issue, T9 keyboards or saved cards are some of them. The Gear S2 until now could only be used to reply to notifications using a T9 keyboard. But what if you wanted to start a conversation? Enter the good old XDA community.

Android

• Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is known for its Apple-inspired range of devices. The company has released some impressive Android-powered devices in the past at affordable prices in China and other developing markets like India. Redmi 3, company’s latest release, has just been launched in the Chinese market with a $107 price tag and improvements like massive 4,100mAh battery and metallic body.

• Well, folks, just a few months back, we were introduced to a brand new way we can interact with our smartphones. We are talking about pressure-sensitive screens and Apple’s iPhone 6s, of course. Yes, technically, Huawei announced the Mate S with a Force Touch variant a week before Apple announced the 3D Touch-toting iPhones, but Huawei took its time before actually making the Force Touch Mate S available to the market.

• The Pixel C is Google’s first own-brand tablet, designed and made via China by Google and is the best Android tablet available at the moment.

• The Pixel C joins the Chromebook Pixel – the first piece of hardware designed solely by Google – but instead of running Chrome OS the Pixel C runs the latest version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, making it the first tablet to do so.

• It is no secret that Nokia — despite selling its phone business to Microsoft — continues to harbour hopes of selling smartphones again. And 2016 is the year when Nokia the former phone giant re-enters the smartphone market, using Google’s Android operating system. Now image of a phone leaked on a French website hints that the Nokia’s first proper Android phone is coming soon.

• The phone, which seems to have a metal body with rubber lines similar to what we see on the iPhone, seems to be amid-size phone. It sure has an attractive design, similar to the iPhone 6S and the HTC A9.

• Company agrees to develop data transfer tool under pressure from European telecoms, report says

• Last week we published an article regarding the ongoing feud between the Android-x86 and Console OS projects, and it looks like there is an intense debate in the community. Since we already know what the Android-x86 leader thinks, we also had a talk with the CEO of Console OS Inc. to get his side of the story.

Free Software/Open Source

• He’s the Pharaoh of community management, but what led him to switch from Ubuntu to the millionaire philanthropic prize fund, XPRIZE?

• It’s round two in the fight between open source and commercial software, and open source is punching well above its weight

• The Open Source Initiative® (OSI) is pleased to announce the Affiliate Membership of KAIYUANSHE (http://www.kaiyuanshe.cn/), a Chinese alliance of open source software companies, communities and individuals. Like OSI, KAIYUANSHE works to promote open source software adoption and development as well as connect organizations participating in, and contributing to, open source software around the world. KAIYUANSHE which roughly translates as “open source alliance,” is comprised of 50 organizations, such as Microsoft, CSDN, GitCafe, GNOME.Asia, Ubuntu Kylin, Canonical, OSChina, Firefox, and others.

• At the 2016 Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 14x), long-time tech writer and editor Bob Reselman will give a talk called The 7 Rules for Creating World Class Technical Documentation, v.2016, which is based on an article he wrote more than six years ago. In this interview, he offers an update to the rules, and talks about how attitudes toward project documentation are changing.

• Open source has won — as a cauldron for innovation as well as a frictionless means of software distribution. So why are we still messing with obscure licensing minutiae?

• Email security is of paramount concern in any organization. A significant percentage of malware is delivered via email, on the premise that an unsuspecting user will open the message, allowing the malware payload onto the user’s machine. From there, malware can worm its way into the network and wreak various kinds of havoc, often undetected, sometimes for months or even years. We decided to review four open source products to see if they could deliver enterprise-grade security. The four products were CipherMail, MailScanner Scrollout F1 and hMailServer.

Events

• Hello On behalf of OpenStack India Online, I would like to wish you very Happy New Year 2016!

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Canonical has announced that the latest Firefox 43.0.4 version has been made available in the repositories for the users of Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

SaaS/Big Data

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Toyota’s decision to use software from Ford—rather than rival products from Google or Apple—as a gateway into its cars’ cybernetic guts marks a new phase in the auto industry’s battle with the Silicon Valley tech giants.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Dear all

• After one year of work, I am very happy and proud to announce the release of GNU Health 3.0 series !

• Following is a brief summary of the release highlights…

Leftovers

• David Bowie, a music legend who used daringly androgynous displays of sexuality and glittering costumes to frame legendary rock hits “Ziggy Stardust” and “Space Oddity”, has died of cancer.

Hardware

• This world has seen a lot of advancements in terms of TV designing and the introduction of newer generations of TV. From flat-screen to curved screen, HD to UHD and much more. Recently at CES 2016, Panasonic unveiled its transparent TV screen also being called as invisible TV. The TV screen was a thin LCD panel with adjustable dimensions. The adjustable dimensions make it easier for the user to hang the TV across two living room shelves.

Health/Nutrition

• Here’s what the Obama Administration’s new food rules will mean for the nation’s cafeterias.

• In a recent Forbes column, I described the limitations of the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, a spending rider aimed at preventing the Justice Department from interfering with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws. A trial that continues today at the federal courthouse in Tacoma illustrates one of those limitations: U.S. attorneys may claim the medical marijuana suppliers they choose to prosecute are not complying with state law, and that claim can be difficult to refute when the law is hazy, as it is in Washington.

• Harry’s cancer was caught early, and it progressed slowly. By 2007, however, it had taken over his body. When my wife saw him in early 2008, she remarked that he looked like someone in a lot of pain but trying not to show it—despite the fact that he was taking oxycodone, a powerful opiate.

• During a career that lasted more than three decades, he had watched all too many of his patients struggle with their final months, and this experience had persuaded him that he would take his own life if he found himself dying of an agonizing and clearly terminal illness. Now he was. Finally, on the evening of January 29, he stumbled and fell during the night, and decided his time had come: He was afraid if he delayed any longer he’d become physically unable to remain in control of his own destiny.

Security

• The network equipment company says it’s “dropping” NSA-developed code after the revelation of a backdoor into their network device software. Does anyone believe all covert access by NSA has now been eliminated, though, if Juniper’s source code isn’t open?

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• France24 Arabic reports that the Syrian government agreed Thursday to allow humanitarian aid into Madaya and two other besieged towns near the Lebanese border northwest of Damascus. The step was praised by the United Nations.

• The siege of Madaya, pop 40,000, has been going on for two years. It and Zabadani are Sunni Arab population areas that joined the rebellion against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. However, as the struggle turned into civil war, the fighters were radicalized. The towns became divided into quarters, some of which supported the Nusra Front (Syrian al-Qaeda) while others supported the Syrian Freemen (Ahrar al-Sham). The two hard line Salafi jihadi groups have a visceral hate for Shiites. Fear that they would make incursions into Lebanon brought Hizbullah across the border to join the siege. The location of the towns also makes them a threat to the capital.

• After seven years of mass murder, dirty tricks destroying countless lives and destabilizing many peaceful lands, thousands of extrajudicial killings conducted by young thugs from basement computer-games rooms at CIA, and unblinking acceptance of such brutal savageries as we’ve seen from Israel or Saudi Arabia or Turkey, his tears truly mean nothing, except perhaps somewhere in the back of his own dark and terrible mind.

• Indeed, the War Party dominates the three major media outlets in the English-speaking print world, and on television as well. As far as the former is concerned, the War Street Journal is dominated by the neocons. At the New York Times, liberal internationalists – Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, and Roger Cohen – reign unchallenged. The Washington Post is the worst: there the editorial director, Fred Hiatt, is an unabashed warmonger, with the rest of the crew – Charles Krauthammer, Robert Kagan, Jackson Diehl, Marc Thiessen, Michael Gerson, Jennifer Rubin – dyed-in-the-wool neocons.

• Torturers, rapists, murderers: for more than a decade as I researched my history of the Vietnam War, Kill Anything That Moves, I spent a good deal of time talking to them, thinking about them, reading about them, writing about them. They all had much in common. At a relatively young age, these men had traveled thousands of miles to kill people they didn’t know on the say-so of men they didn’t know, and for a mere pittance — all of it done in the name of America.

• I also spent time talking to another group of men, a much larger contingent who stood by and watched as those beside them tortured or raped or murdered. Some heartily endorsed these acts, some seemed ambivalent about them, some were appalled by them, but none did much of anything about them.

• The US war in Afghanistan has lasted 14 years and four months and is expected to continue for more years. The cost to US taxpayers so far is over $1 trillion, according to the Financial Times, and the final cost will be much higher. The only American victory in this war will be that of the US armaments industry.

• In his last year in office, President Obama must right two wrongs that would help salvage his legacy: close the US military prison and announce the willingness to close the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo and return the land to the Cuban people.

• Erdogan believes that he can ride the tiger of the anti-Kurdish war.

• Last fall, Dutch pranksters put a cover from a Quran over a Bible and then asked passersby to read aloud homophobic, violent or sexist passages that violate modern moral sensibilities. The texts shocked people who had never immersed themselves in the Iron Age world of the Bible writers, a world in which daughters can be sold as sexual slaves and most of us deserve the death penalty: you included.

• By one count, the Quran has only 532 cruel or violent passages, while the Bible has 1,321. Christians respond that the Bible is longer and so the cruel, violent passages make up a smaller percent of the whole.

• ISIS terrorists claim that their scripts for jihad, executions, sexual slavery and theocracy come straight from the Quran, and they cite chapter and verse to back up their claim. But Christians who find ISIS horrifying might be even more horrified to learn that similar scripts can be found in their own Good Book, including endorsements of terrorism that rival the most vile atrocities committed in the name of Allah.

• British defence exports to Saudi Arabia are set to come under parliamentary scrutiny this month with the revival of a cross-party committee on international arms sales.

• The Committee on Arms Exports Controls has lain dormant since the general election, but MPs have told House of Commons clerks to set it up again in the wake of the executions in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.

• Saudi has been a lucrative market for the UK – BAE Systems courted controversy with the £10bn sale of Typhoon jets to the repressive state.

• A new statement from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported a Saudi rocket strike, likely an airstrike, hit one of their hospitals in the Yemeni capital city of Sanaa, killing four people and wounding 10 others, including three MSF staff members.

• British security services unsuccessfully tried to recruit terror suspect Abu Rumaysah, dubbed the ‘new Jihadi John,’ before he skipped bail and fled to Syria to join Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) with his pregnant wife and four children.

• Officers from MI5 approached Rumaysah, a Muslim-convert born Siddhartha Dhar to a Hindu family in London, on two separate occasions, the Sunday Times reports.

• A security source told the paper MI5 officers offered Rumaysah a role as an agent, and told him he would likely be killed if he went to Syria.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Going green by switching to renewable sources of electricity could be good business for the US, according to new research.

• A report by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California says that cutting greenhouse gas emissions meant that the US as a whole was $2.2 billion better off in 2013.

Finance

• In the New York Times today, Judith Shulevitz makes an argument in favor of a Universal Basic Income. She puckishly frames this as “reparations” for the work that stay-at-home mothers do without compensation—work necessary to keep the human race going and which the rest of us free-ride on. But if that’s the case, why propose a UBI for everyone, even men and childless women?

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• A Mexican law enforcement official confirmed on Saturday that Penn’s interview with Guzmán led them directly to El Chapo’s compound.

• Hollywood actor met Mexican kingpin, now sought by US for extradition, while he was on the run following prison escape.

• What curious grammar describing Penn’s source’s remarkable knowledge. “A source familiar with the cartel informed me on October 3rd that the initial siege had begun.” Did his source inform him on October 3rd, as this passage literally claims? (The second facilitator in the story, whom Penn calls El Alto, stuck around after they emerged from the jungle on October 3.) The muddled structure of this passage would certainly allow for that, or it might mean his source informed him that on October 3 the siege began.

• Curiously, when Penn provided his bona fides to Chapo — which for the cartel boss, largely rested on the actor’s relationship with Hugo Chávez — he didn’t mention that he had a relationship with people who would be privy to otherwise unavailable information about what really went down in October, though he did admit he has “many relationships inside the United States government.”

• Vulgar, crude, racist and ultra-sexist though he is, Donald Trump can still see how awful the American mainstream media is.

• I think one of the main reasons for Donald Trump’s popularity is that he says what’s on his mind and he means what he says, something rather rare amongst American politicians, or politicians perhaps anywhere in the world. The American public is sick and tired of the phony, hypocritical answers given by office-holders of all kinds.

• When I read that Trump had said that Sen. John McCain was not a hero because McCain had been captured in Vietnam, I had to pause for reflection. Wow! Next the man will be saying that not every American soldier who was in the military in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq was a shining hero worthy of constant media honor and adulation.

• When Trump was interviewed by ABC-TV host George Stephanopoulos, former aide to President Bill Clinton, he was asked: “When you were pressed about [Russian president Vladimir Putin’s] killing of journalists, you said, ‘I think our country does plenty of killing too.’ What were you thinking about there? What killing sanctioned by the U.S. government is like killing journalists?”

• In Iowa, Clinton has 48 percent, compared to 45 percent for Sanders.

• The Vermont senator recently pointed to how Hillary Clinton’s relationship with Wall Street becomes clear when you look at how much she’s charged for speeches to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and big banks. As an Intercept article puts it in a headline, her fees for just 12 speeches amounted to “more than most of us earn in a lifetime.”

• You feel your whiteness properly at the American border. Most of the time being white is an absence of problems. The police don’t bother you so you don’t notice the police not bothering you. You get the job so you don’t notice not getting it. Your children are not confused with criminals. I live in downtown Toronto, in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in one of the most open cities in the world, where multiculturalism is the dominant civic value and the inert virtue of tolerance is the most prominent inheritance of the British empire, so if you squint you can pretend the ancient categories are dissipating into a haze of enlightenment and intermarriage.

• It’s a cliché to say that democratic states can’t function properly without an informed electorate. But it’s absolutely true. And this is why, heading into the 2016 election year, I’m nervous about the future. With Donald Trump leading the Republican presidential contenders, even many Republican die-hards are shaking in their boots.

• But Trump isn’t the cause, just the symptom. The deeper cause is a strain of anti-intellectualism that runs through the roots of American culture. And while this strain is found on both sides of the political spectrum (see some liberals on vaccines and chemtrails), it’s mostly concentrated among religious conservatives on the political right. For those who espouse anti-intellectualism, conspiracy theories have the same clout as legitimate science, the opinions of non-experts are just as credible as those of the experts, and ideology takes precedence over the cold hard facts.

• But the truth, more than half a dozen sources close to Adelson say, is more complicated. The casino owner, who together with his wife spent nearly $100 million in the 2012 campaign cycle, is still weighing his options.

• It’s more than good ole American anti-intellectualism — we celebrate our ignorance and wear it as a badge of pride.

• Carter’s actions consistently prioritized economic and security interests over humanitarian concerns.

• The argument over whether the BBC ‘orchestrated’ the resignation of a Labour shadow minister for political effect is more than it seems.

• It’s a storm in a tea-cup, they say. It’s just a bunch of barmy Corbynistas blaming the failures of their hero on some massive right-wing media conspiracy. Move on. Grow up. This is how the media work.

• The ‘on air’ resignation of a relatively unknown shadow business minister, Stephen Doughty, on the BBC’s Daily Politics last Tuesday may not rate very highly on the political agenda, but the brief searchlight it shone into the nation’s public broadcaster at a time of parliamentary turmoil and institutional crisis is instructive.

• First full disclosure: I know and like the BBC’s Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, who replaced Nick Robinson after the general election. I think Andrew Neil does an admirable job as an impartial questioner and presenter, making both the BBC’s Daily and Sunday Politics programmes entertaining and informative to watch. (It should also go without saying I do not support any ludicrous petitions demanding that either of them resign.)

Censorship

• Americans’ characteristic hypocrisy is their affectation of class-dissolving camaraderie. The idea is that although, of course, there are inequalities, the sheer dynamism of “free” markets makes those distinctions more fluid and more subject to individual initiative and other virtues. So, while some will rise and others will fall, there will be no caste lines that determine who they will be, and no state socialism to impose equality. The Buckley Program thus tends to dampen free speech and dialogue while claiming to defend it.

• Page One, a Singapore bookshop chain with branches in Hong Kong and China, has decided to stop selling controversial books about Chinese politics following the disappearance last week of a fifth Hong Kong bookseller widely believed to have been illegally arrested and transferred to mainland China, the Guardian reports. Citing an unnamed Hong Kong publishing source, the British newspaper says the suspected detentions since October of the five booksellers, all of whom work for the Mighty Current publishing house, was designed to prevent the publication of a book about the personal life of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The disappearance on New Year’s Eve of Lee Bo, a British passport holder, prompted British foreign secretary Philip Hammond to say on Wednesday China would be guilty of an “egregious breach” of Hong Kong’s autonomy if it were confirmed it was responsible for the disappearances.

• One of Hong Kong’s leading international bookshop chains has removed politically sensitive books from its shelves in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of five of the city’s booksellers, stoking fears over mounting self-censorship in the former British colony.

• The disappearance of five individuals connected with the “Mighty Current” publishing house has brought into question the future of Hong Kong’s relationship with China.

• It has been the most serious awakening for the Hong Kong community since last year’s “Umbrella movement” that opposed planned electoral reforms in the neighboring SAR.

• A protester at a march on Sunday calling for the release of missing booksellers from Hong Kong’s Mighty Current publishing house that is known for publishing books critical of Beijing. Thousands marched through central Hong Kong demanding the release of five missing persons, who are feared to have been detained by authorities in mainland China. Beijing has, meanwhile, formally arrested four labour activists who helped workers fight for their rights. The Communist Party has stepped up a crackdown on activists pressing for change within the system.— PHOTO: AFP

• Thousands of people took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday in a reprise of anti-China protests of over a year ago, demanding to know the whereabouts of five missing people linked to a local publisher of books critical of Beijing’s leadership.

• Even after five of Lee Bo’s publishing partners went missing this fall, the bookseller thought he was safe in Hong Kong. Activists say China’s security agencies are extending their reach.

• Thousands of people in Hong Kong have attended a protest rally following the disappearance of five booksellers from a shop known for selling works critical of China.

• Chanting “say no to political kidnapping”, the protesters marched to the offices of Beijing’s representative in Hong Kong.

• Thousands of protesters marched through central Hong Kong Sunday, demanding the release of five missing booksellers who are feared to have been detained by authorities in mainland China.

• The five are from Hong Kong’s Mighty Current publishing house, known for books critical of Beijing.

• The Golden Globes were full of unsavory jokes. Or at least that’s what you can assume based on the very many muted moments in the telecast. Some home viewers had it up to here with the perceived censorship when host Ricky Gervais and a few presenters were muted.

• If Ricky Gervais is having another beer, then so am I. The Golden Globes were on last night and that meant, like it or not, he was, too.

• Mr Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng, Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), has said the Content Standard Regulation (Legislative Instrument LI 2224) is not intended to promote censorship adding the country will never return to the days of censorship.

• Netflix’s expansion to Indonesia has agitated the Indonesian Censorship Agency (LSF). LSF Chairman Ahmad Yani Basuki, together with the agency’s members, held a meeting last Saturday to discuss the online streaming service. “Last Saturday we watched the movies [available on Netflix],” Ahmad said on Monday, January 11, 2016.

• During the meeting, Ahmad said that some of the movies provided by Netflix are not appropriate for Indonesian viewers. “There are some movies that we have forbid from being screened in the cinemas,” Ahmad said, without mentioning the titles.

Privacy

• Juniper revealed last month that it had found two flaws in its ScreenOS operating system and patched them, but now it plans to patch one of them again to make the security of the operating system stronger, according to a Juniper blog.

• As you may have heard, on Friday, a group of top White House officials, including Homeland Security director Jeh Johnson, FBI Director James Comey and NSA boss Admiral Michael Rogers, all came out to Silicon Valley to meet with tech execs to talk about how to “disrupt” groups like ISIS. On the tech side, a bunch of top execs came, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince. The White House released a basic agenda publicly, though there was also apparently a more thorough briefing document that ran about 7 pages.

• Journalists covering the National Security Agency know that getting documents from it using the Freedom of Information Act can be a long and arduous process. But I never expected the agency to tell me to wait four years to get some basic information … about a children’s coloring book.

• The NSA’s Crypto Cat and her friends are a set of trademark-registered kids’ characters who have appeared for more than a decade in promotional materials like coloring books that the NSA uses it to encourage kids to grow up to be spies.

• Motherboard’s Jason Koebler filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency to find out “how much money the NSA spent designing, printing, and distributing a physical hard copy of the coloring book.” The request went in in April 2015; in December 2015, the agency responded with a note informing Koebler that it would take between three and four years before they could answer his question.

• The NYPD considers itself to be the finest police force in the nation, if not the world. But its track record says otherwise. It lost a lawsuit over its “stop and frisk” program, thanks to its unconstitutionality and appearance of racial bias. It is currently in the middle of a lawsuit related to illegal summons quotas — one in which it destroyed documents it was ordered to preserve. And now, it has just lost another lawsuit related to its biased policing.

• The NYPD’s pervasive surveillance of the city’s Muslim population violated civil liberties on a massive scale. Despite being given an incredible amount of leeway to pursue its counter-terrorist activities, the so-called “Demographics Unit” did useless things like pressure informants into making stuff up to justify surveillance efforts and designate entire mosques as terrorist entities. What it didn’t do, however, is generate any useful intelligence.

• So how exactly is the US government collecting all that information? The CIA uses its private venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, a tax-exempt, 501(c)3 corporation to funnel investment in high-tech startups. One such investment, Palantir, is a privately held data collection firm estimated to be worth 20 billion dollars. Palantir’s primary focus is data mining and data analysis contracts with the private sector as well as the US government and foreign intelligence agencies.

• Peter Foster, the Bishop of Chester asked Binney why exactly he thought the UK and GCHQ had taken such a similar approach to the NSA. Binney placed the blame squarely on the contractors who built Prism, the NSA’s bulk collection programme: “There was an awful lot of money behind the scenes which contractors wanted to feed on. So they were lobbying for this approach because it cost so much more money.” Binney called the relationship between the NSA and their contractors ‘incestuous’ with former NSA employees constantly moving through a revolving door which keeps the governments’ and contractors’ interests aligned. He went so far as to accuse these two bodies of, “trading the security of the people of the United States and of the free world for money.”

• What you’re saying unencrypted today can and will come back to hunt you in twenty years by a different government with different values. Once you realize this, do you really still have freedom of speech?

• The U.S. police, when they arrest someone, is supposed to read somebody their rights in a trained phrase that includes the passage “anything you say can and will be used against you”. This phrase has gained worldwide knowledge through the dissemination of Hollywood culture, so I’ll be using it for the sake of argument.

• The book and movie 1984 were seminal in that they portrayed – or tried to portray – the effects of being under constant surveillance, where anything you said in your daily life could and would be used against you. What happens when you may be watched at any time, maybe you are, maybe you’re not, and there’s no way to tell.

Civil Rights

• We are building a movement anchored on the belief that culture and economy should honour and value all human life equally. As we continue to draw national attention to cases of trafficked domestic workers, we hope to expand the number of survivor leaders and affiliates anchoring the Beyond Survival campaign and push for comprehensive federal legislation to address the trafficking of domestic workers.

• Domestic workers who have survived human trafficking are more than victims. Women like Karmo, Jing, and Shanti live at the edge of our globalised economy and at the centre of our future. Their experiences tell a critical story of our world’s new economic reality: extreme global inequality and unprecedented migration across borders, with women of colour in some of the most vulnerable positions. As organisers and activists, their voices and leadership in news headlines and public policy can transform the cycles of victimisation and hold our institutions accountable. Governments and policymakers alike need to recognise survivors, and work together in a movement to end human trafficking.

• According to the New York Times, the governor announced on Sunday his intention to use $7.5 million in criminal forfeiture funds — along with another $7.5 million in private matching funds — to pay for a new program that offers an “integrated curriculum” to about 1,000 inmates statewide over the next five years. Cuomo made his announcement while speaking from the pulpit of Mount Neboh Baptist Church, a predominantly black congregation in Harlem, New York.

• Some of the claims he makes are not readily fact-checkable. For example, it’s true the military budget has decreased under Obama (partly because he pulled troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq) and that Obama has vowed to veto bills that strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood – but the two points aren’t comparable. The Israel-Iran comparison doesn’t make much sense; virtually no foreign government is off limits for the National Security Agency’s surveillance — including Israel and Iran — and security and military ties between Israel and the United States have grown closer than ever during the Obama administration.

• Instead, we will focus on two claims that stood out as the most curious: that Obama released terrorists from Guantanamo who are “plotting to attack” America, and that Obama’s plan after the shooting at San Bernardino was to “take away our guns.”

• What evidence supports these claims?

• Eight protesters wearing cement-sleeves were arrested on Friday outside a New York City immigration court for blocking a busy intersection, as part of a protest against recent raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

• “In light of the national news that immigrant communities are again being terrorized, with people being woken up in the middle of the night and families being torn apart in states across the country, we felt it was imperative that, here in New York City, we have an action and call attention to this,” said Nastaran Mohit, an organizer with the pro-immigrant rights coalition ICE-Free NYC. “This is a crisis, and it demands action.”

• The first week of the new year brought hope and cheer for some. But for many Southern immigrant communities, it brought fear.

• News of the Department of Homeland Security’s plans to conduct immigrant deportation raids at the outset of 2016 circulated just before the Christmas holiday, and the first raids got underway this past weekend. They are part of the Obama administration’s efforts to stem a wave of women and children who have arrived in the U.S. since 2014, many fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and other Latin American countries. Officials said the raids target those whose asylum claims have been denied and who now face deportation orders.

• War is trauma. And it is the lack of mental health care that accompanies it.

• War is rape. And the silence and suffering that surrounds this stigmatized act.

• War is the acknowledgement that soldiers are worthy of reparations when they’re injured but that civilians who have been sexually violated or born children out of these acts—such as a whole generation of kids now living in Rwanda—are not. It took 20 years to bring reparations to any victims of wartime rape in Bosnia, and it’s worth noting that the men who’ve been ordered to pay say they can’t afford the $15,000.

• Trump and Clinton, along with fellow candidate Bernie Sanders, refuse to admit what they know: Our most basic civil and political rights have been taken from us, the corporate oligarchy will remain entrenched in power no matter who wins the presidency, and elections are a carnival act. The downward spiral of lost jobs and declining incomes, of shredded civil liberties, of endless war, is unstoppable as long as we use the traditional mechanisms of reform, including elections, to try to cope with the existential threat we face. A vote for Clinton, in essence, is a vote for Trump or someone as bad as Trump. Right-wing populism, here and in Europe, is not the product of an individual but the disenfranchisement, rage and despair stemming from the damage caused by globalization. And until we wrest back control of our destiny by breaking corporate power, demagogues like Trump, and his repugnant doppelgangers in Europe, will proliferate.

• I still think Mike Polk Jr. deserves the key to the city for putting Cleveland on the map with his “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video” and “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video, 2nd Attempt.” I get the appeal of “Rust Belt Chic” and the self-deprecating humor of living in “The Mistake by the Lake,” telling stories about the Cuyahoga River catching fire reveling in the defiant blue-collar anthem “Cleveland Rocks” by Ian Hunter.

• But more and more it seems to me that joking about this shit is missing the point—and often it’s a deliberate missing of the point, joking about the stuff it’s fun and safe to joke about so we don’t confront the stuff that isn’t.

• See if you can make a joke out of this: A police officer (who came to work for the city of Cleveland after leaving the Cleveland suburb Independence after a “dismal” performance in firearms qualification training) shot and killed a 12-year-old boy holding a pellet gun two seconds after pulling up in his squad car. The grand jury declined to indict, saying Officer Loehmann was not guilty, and that his actions didn’t even merit a trial.

• In this sense, contemplating the corpses of black victims of state-sanctioned violence becomes a lesson in not just localized corruption or individual cop racism, but in the very nature of the American political-economic system. The site of “the thing” stumbled upon becomes a privileged site of study, the particular horror from which the general history can be extrapolated. It is the singular site from which son Samori can and must begin to grasp the nature of American society.

• Merkel’s open-door refugee policy has blown open with the revelation of the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults, feeding opposition to migrants and widening the risks the chancellor faces at the start of 2016. With the number of women filing complaints soaring to more than 500 and the police seeking suspects, the latest stage in the crisis is still unfolding.

• A newly discovered video purportedly shows James Dudley Barker facedown with his hands behind him near the intersection of I Street and Second Avenue when a Salt Lake City police officer shoots him three times in the back.

• Officer Matthew Taylor was exonerated in the shooting after his body camera caught Barker swinging a snow shovel at the lawman. The body cam then stopped working. Police said a scuffle had ensued and Taylor, injured and fearing for his life, shot Barker.

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s beautiful and inspiring memoir is titled Infidel. Born in Somalia, she escaped to the Netherlands from an arranged marriage; became a member of parliament; worked with Theo Van Gogh on a film critical of Islam; he was murdered by a Muslim fanatic; and she wound up in America, at a think tank. Along the way she freed herself from religion.

• Hirsi Ali had lived in Kenya and Saudi Arabia as well as Somalia, her father usually absent on revolutionary organizing. As a young woman she tried to be the perfect Muslim. But the Koran’s fulsome verbiage about Allah’s justness jarred with how unjustly she saw women treated.

• A 26-year-old hacker, Onur Kopçak, from Turkey, was sentenced to 135 years in prison on Sunday for stealing 11 people’s credit card information. This new prison sentence is served on top of his previous 199-year sentence from 2013. As a result, Kopçak will now serve a record 334 years in prison.

• This new sentence hs been approved by Mersin third Criminal Court of General Jurisdiction where he was accused of selling the stolen credit card records to other cyber criminals. He is already convicted for running a phishing scam that used fake bank websites to steal online banking credentials of 43 bank customers.

• Police say Laquinton Banks stole more than $1,600 from motorists who didn’t speak English.

• In a nutshell, as prominent San Francisco historian and veteran community activist Calvin Welch described to me, the city’s vast construction boom is designed to increase the value of property and to boost the profits of private developers instead of improving the lives of people and communities, especially those living on the sidelines of this great prosperous city.

• It is easy to understand that people are inclined to favor local human rights groups when they or their communities benefit directly from such activities. But human rights activities are often directed at minorities and marginalized populations—homosexuals in a conservative culture, an ethnic minority, refugees or immigrants, criminals, or an enemy in a conflict. Majority groups may find it hard to relate to those populations, driving negative attitudes towards both the organizations and even human rights as a principle. Whatever the reason, it is not uncommon to see human rights groups disliked or even vilified at home.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• The FCC is required by Congress to annually “determine whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion,” something the FCC’s latest broadband status report (pdf) suggests we’re still doing a relatively crappy job at.

• According to the FCC, 34 million Americans, or roughly 10% of the country, “still lack access to fixed broadband at the FCC’s benchmark speed of 25 Mbps for downloads, 3 Mbps for uploads.” Two thirds of the country still lacks the choice of more than one broadband provider at speeds of 25 Mbps, and 41% of schools have yet to hit the FCC’s goals of providing speeds of 100 Mbps to students. The FCC also notes the United States is 16th out of the top 34 developed countries when it comes to uniform broadband penetration, thanks in large part to our size.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Last year was a memorable one for the global economy. Not only was overall performance disappointing, but profound changes – both for better and for worse – occurred in the global economic system.

• The most-read stories of 2015 on the Intellectual Property Watch website fairly reflected the trends of the year, with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, India’s evolving intellectual property rights policies, European Patent Office patents on conventional vegetables, biologics, 3D printing, and some pop culture issues leading the way.

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