● 02.03.16

● Links 3/2/2016: Dell GNU/Linux Laptop, Wine 1.8.1

Posted in News Roundup at 12:37 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• For Linux lovers, there is nothing better than getting a Linux running device. And if you’re the Linux fan, what better opportunity to plant the seed of Linux in your valentine’s heart? Here are 14 cool Linux-based devices that I would want to receive — and I bet you will too.

• One was Linux on the Desktop (LOTD). Around the turn of the Millennium, I predicted big successes for LOTD and Linux on the Laptop (LOTL)—and continued to do the same, annually, until I gave up.

Desktop

• The Windows vs Linux fight has been going on ever since Linus Torvalds build the first version in collaboration with the University of Helsinki in October 1991. And every time, Microsoft launches a Windows version this question gets shriller. The same has happened now when Microsoft released the latest Windows 10 operating system.

• Linux enthusiasts rejoice: Super-thin “Project Sputnik” XPS 13 laptops from Dell with Ubuntu and Intel Skylake chips should be just around the corner.

• Dell’s Project Sputnik laptops have attained something of a cult status with a segment of Linux users since their introduction in 2012. The XPS 13 Developer Edition will be the only dedicated, thin-and-light Linux laptop with Skylake from the top-five PC makers.

• The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is a very successful laptop that tends to sell really well. Only a limited number of units are made each year, and they also ship with Ubuntu.

• Here’s a friendly warning from El Reg: don’t wipe the wrong directory from your Linux system, or you may end up bricking the computer. This has happened to people, we’re told.

• The directory in question is /sys/firmware/efi/efivars which is a special filesystem that presents the configuration settings for the computer’s underlying UEFI firmware to the user. These configuration variables are used to control the way the motherboard firmware starts up the system and boots your operating system. Changing the files in this directory therefore changes these respective variables in the firmware.

• I’ve learned a lot from my time at Kramden, but what I love most is that the computers we refurbish go to underprivileged kids who would not otherwise be able to afford a computer of their own. I’ve realized that not all children have the resources they need to learn about technology, which will limit their future potential, but with Kramden’s refurbished computers, more kids will get access to computers in their homes.

Server

• As it did through the entirety of 2015, Linux has once again dominated as the most commonly used operating system amongst the top ten hosting company websites. The only two companies in January’s table not using Linux to host their websites are Swishmail (FreeBSD) and EveryCity (SmartOS).

Kernel Space

• After informing us about the availability of Linux kernel 4.4.1 LTS, Linux kernel 4.1.17 LTS, Linux kernel 3.10.96 LTS, and Linux kernel 3.14.60 LTS, kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has now published details about the fifth maintenance release in the Linux 4.3 kernel series.

• Looking at the appended shortlog, we can’t help but notice that Linux kernel 4.3.5 is the biggest in the series, changing a total of 172 files, with 1,622 insertions and 722 deletions. Improvements include dozens of fixes for the ARM64 (AArch64), PowerPC (PPC), and x86 hardware architectures, but also for the MIPS, ARM, and MN10300 ones.

Graphics Stack

• A very interesting report published by the New Citavia Blog confirms a codename we heard quite a long time ago: Zeppelin. To those who aren’t familiar with the name, Zeppelin is an MCM (Multi Chip Module) which will utilize AMD’s own custom interconnect to combine 32 Zen cores. Not much is known about this processor although it has popped up in various leaks over the course of the past few months.

• Today in Linux news Netcraft reported that Linux is still the dominate operating system on the Internet. Linux powered eight out of the top 10 hosting sites in January 2016. Some hardware geeks learned of a new AMD processor from our kernel changelogs and Dell teased their new Linux laptop. This year’s linux.conf.au is in full swing and I love Free Software Day is quickly approaching.

• Marek Olšák’s latest Mesa patch series is hooking up support for the vendor-based OpenGL memory information reporting extensions to the Mesa and Gallium3D drivers.

• With yesterday having started to run some fresh basic OpenCL benchmarks on the open-source Radeon driver given the interesting remarks by some super-computing researchers about having more hope for the open-source drivers than the proprietary Catalyst, here are some results comparing the latest open-source AMD Radeon Linux driver code to the proprietary driver.

• The AMDGPU DRM driver support for Iceland (Topaz) graphics processors is now considered stable with the experimental flag set to be removed.

• Last year AMD marked the Iceland support as experimental due to not having tested the new GPUs much and some bugs were coming in regarding the AMDGPU DRM driver’s support for the mobile GPUs.

Applications

• Michael Cornelison informs us about the general availability of the February maintenance release of his open source image editor software Fotoxx for all GNU/Linux operating systems.

• BitTorrent continues to support its file sharing and syncing application with the recent release of Sync 2.3.1. The 2.3.x update contains a number of bug fixes for stability, but the important news is the added support for encrypted folders and finally allowing selective file syncing on Linux systems. Additionally, the company put out a short brief on the information they collect and how they are securing your files synced by Sync which is available as a PDF.

• It was around New Year’s 2012, I stumbled into a position where we basically had to create a digital signage solution for a company that was acquired. Between just before Christmas, when the deal closed, and the first of January, roughly, we ended up having a digital signage network and no software. So that’s really how the very first version of Screenly came to be, the POC [proof of concept] – that ended up being a very rough-around-the-edges kind of solution where it just wrapped around a lot of tools like rsync, bash and a lot of baked-in Linux tools.

Proprietary

• UDP introduces advancements such as data protection for Linux environments, instant VM recovery and instant Bare Metal recovery, unified installation and enhancements for third party integration.

• The Vivaldi team, through Ruarí Ødegaard, announced on February 2 the release and immediate availability for download and testing of a new snapshot build of the upcoming proprietary and cross-platform web browser.

• A new Opera stable release is now out, and the developers have introduced a number of new features that are going to be enjoyed by the community.

• The Opera project continues to improve the browser, and they have released quite a few versions since in 2016, covering all the available branches. Today’s release is in the stable branch, and that means that it’s time to see what’s new in the latest Opera 35.

Instructionals/Technical

• The seasonal package by Christoph Sax brings a very featureful and expressive interface for working with seasonal data to the R environment. It uses the standard tool of the trade: X-13ARIMA-SEATS. This powerful program is provided by the statisticians of the US Census Bureau based on their earlier work (named X-11 and X-12-ARIMA) as well as the TRAMO/SEATS program by the Bank of Spain. X-13ARIMA-SEATS is probably the best known tool for de-seasonalization of timeseries, and used by statistical offices around the world.

• Sadly, it also has a steep learning curve. One interacts with a basic command-line tool which users have to download, install and properly reference (by environment variables or related means). Each model specification has to be prepared in a special ‘spec’ file that uses its own, cumbersome syntax.

Wine or Emulation

• The Wine maintenance release 1.8.1 is now available.

• Wine 1.8.1 was released this morning as the first stable point release to Wine 1.8.

• Wine 1.8.1 features “various bug fixes” and “small translation updates” compared to the mid-December release of Wine 1.8.0.

Games

• Sadly, there were no post-holiday gains for Linux with the survey results for January pulling back by 0.01%. Valve’s reported Steam Linux gaming market-share for the past month is reported at a mere 0.95%.

• The number of Linux users on Steam continues to hover just below 1%, but we now know that about 40% of these people are using Ubuntu for gaming.

• Since nothing of worthy of attention is happening with the Steam for Linux use, we might as well look at other interesting statistics provided by Valve, but before we do that, we need to explain why it is difficult to trust them.

• After finishing the Talos Principle I immediately started to play the extension Road to Gehenna, but was derailed near completion by the incredible Portal Stories: Mel. Now that I finally managed to escape from the test chambers my attention returned to the Road to Gehenna. As with the pair Portal 2 and Portal Stories: Mel, the challenges are going up considerably from the original Talos Principle to the Road to Gehenna. Checking the hours of game play it took me about 24h through all the riddles in Road to Gehenna, but I have to admit, I had some riddles where I needed to cheat.

• Over the years, the highly successful Crusader Kings II has gotten a plethora of expansions which is a testament to its enduring popularity. With the last release in July of last year we were overdue for another expansion that adds more to the ambitious sandbox. In this case, Conclave seems to provide some of what fans have hoped for for years, namely more in-depth education options for your children and more intrigue with a more fleshed-out council and favors system. If a more dynamic mercenary system and combat mechanic changes don’t sound appealing to you, then you obviously haven’t spent hundreds of hours with the game like the average player does.

• American Truck Simulator is the latest driving and management simulator from SCS Software, and it’s great to see it have not only an early release, but a same day release for Linux.

• Tomb Raider is the reboot of the franchise that was released back in 2013. It was developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix, and from the looks of it, a Linux version might be in the works.

• SNOW is a new free-to-play open world winter game that’s developed and published by Poppermost Productions. The developers have also added Linux support in their latest patch.

• If you forget what you’re supposed to do to solve one of the more complex puzzles, there’s an in-game journal which helps you keep track of the hints. There’s also a map, which marks your location and acts as the interface for the aforementioned hints. I kept wishing that I could use this map to fast-travel between locations, but unfortunately you’re stuck with having to walk back and forth quite a bit while playing. This is likely in part due to the complexity that comes from being able to morph between forms which can only travel to parts of the map, and because you have to visit each animal’s shrine to be able to switch forms.

• The cogs are rolling, and XCOM 2 is extremely close to release. So close in fact that we finally have the XCOM 2 system requirements for Linux players. This is confirmed by 2K directly, but Feral have yet to confirm it directly.

• Earth 2160 is a game from quite a few years ago now, but it’s a classic strategy game. Looks like someone has begun bringing it over to Linux too.

• In a recent announcement, the developers of “Superhot” first-person shooter video game have revealed that the game – which has received support and funds from Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign – will be launched this month. While the “time only moves when you do” mechanic gives SUPERHOT the complexion of a puzzle game, it’s the frenzied, John Woo-inspired combat that’s center stage in the new trailer.

• Today, February 2, Valve has posted news on a new stable update for its Steam Client software, which users should receive right now on their PCs via the built-in update utility.

• From the looks of it, the Steam Client February 2 update is a big one, bringing all the features and fixes that Valve bragged about for a couple of months during the Beta phase of the software, with the exception of the Steam Client January 2 tiny release that updated the Steam Subscriber Agreement for 2016.

• Guild Software, the developers of the popular and cross-platform Vendetta Online MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), have recently announced the release of the Vendetta Online 1.8.368 update.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Google Code In is our annual project to give tasks to school pupils to contribute to KDE projects. One task this year is to write a Dot article and top Code In student Stanford L has interviewed WikiToLearn contributor and Sysadmin Luca Toma.

• After a lengthy public spat with Canonical and the Ubuntu Community Council, Kubuntu founder Jonathan Riddell stepped down as release manager for that “flavor” of Ubuntu. He’s now back with a new project named KDE Neon, which provides stable Ubuntu systems with the latest KDE software.

Distributions

• Linux distros can be used for a lot of things, from games to education, but when it comes to security, there’s a whole mini-universe available.

• Not only can you find distros made to protect your privacy, making sure you leave no trace as you move around the web, but also those that help you test your network and system security.

Reviews

• It is with so much regret that we announce today the end of the development for yet another GNU/Linux operating system, as the developers of Qimo, the popular distribution for kids, closed shop at the end of January 2016.

New Releases

• 4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki informs us about the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta build of the upcoming 4MRecover 16.0 Live CD.

Screenshots/Screencasts

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

• The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the February 2016 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.

Arch Family

• I’m happy to announce our sixth update of Manjaro 15.12 (Capella)!

• Firefox 44.0 is out now. Also Pale-Moon 26.0 Plasma 5.5.4 and VirtualBox 5.0.14 hit our repositories. Additionally we updated python, haskell, spl/zfs, lightdm, deepin and fixed an issue with our new notification improvement for pamac.

• Today, Manjaro project leader Philip Müller has announced the general availability of the sixth update for the stable Manjaro Linux 15.12 (Capella) series of operating systems.

• The February 2 update for Manjaro Linux 15.12 is here to mainly patch a zero-day vulnerability in the Linux kernel packages that the distro currently supports. Among them are Linux 3.10.96, Linux 3.12.53 LTS, Linux 3.13.11.33, Linux 3.14.60 LTS, Linux 3.16.7.23, Linux 3.18.26 LTS, Linux 3.19.8.13, Linux 4.1.16 LTS, Linux 4.2.8.2, Linux 4.3.4, Linux 4.4.0, and Linux 4.5 RC1.

• It’s the first day of February, so guess what? A new ISO image for the powerful and highly customizable Arch Linux operating system is now available for download via the official channels.

• Arch Linux 2016.02.01 was released just a couple of hours ago for those of you who would like to deploy the independent Linux kernel-based operating system on new machines.

Ballnux/SUSE

• A wave of new survey results is coming in, and the numbers make a clear case that the open cloud is going to remain one of the biggest tech stories of 2016. Not all of the results are totally rosy, though. There is brand new evidence that a lack of workers with OpenStack skills may be holding the cloud platform back, especially at enterprises. SUSE LLC’s survey on OpenStack adoption trends reports that over eighty percent of enterprises are either planning to, or have already, implemented OpenStack as a cloud computing solution within their organizations. That means the need and desire is there. However, more than half of all organizations that have tried to deploy OpenStack say they’ve failed to do so due to a lack of skills.

• Another three weeks period and another report from the YaST Team (if you don’t know what we are talking about, see highlights of sprint 13 and the presentation post). This was actually a very productive sprint although, as usual, not all changes have such an obvious impact on final users, at least in the short term.

• The campaign is over; the votes are counted and three members of the openSUSE community will lead the overall project on the openSUSE Board.

• Tomáš Chvátal, Gertjan Lettink, and Bryan Lunduke take the helm with the existing board members of Michal Hrušecký, Kostas Koudaras and chairman Richard Brown.

Red Hat Family

• The first is something I attempted with my team at Delta Air Lines. We wanted to increase engagement—to more tightly connect associates to the organization’s mission so they felt like they were playing an active and important role in furthering it (a crucial component of open organizations). So we initiated an ongoing survey of everyone in the company. It asked people to respond to the following statement: “I know the company’s strategy, and I know what my department can do to make it successful.” And by tracking the results by area, we made managers—and their managers’ managers—responsible for their teams’ responses. Hierarchies excel at driving specific metrics to further their own interests, so we leveraged Delta’s hierarchy to point attention to the critical issue of engagement, and we utilized our bureaucracy’s strengths to really measure how effective everyone had become at generating that engagement around the company’s mission. While we didn’t take it quite this far at Delta, imagine what would happen if your response to that prompt determined the size of your manager’s bonus?

Fedora

• Among development tasks, one of my least favorite is benchmarking and I tend to procrastinate on it (by writing blog posts, for example). Allow me to enumerate some reasons why I hate doing benchmarking.

Debian Family

Derivatives

• Tails—an acronym for The Amnesic Incognito Live System—first rose to notoriety in 2013 as the Linux distribution used by U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden. Since the debut of Tails 1.0 on April 29, 2014, there haven’t been any major new releases of the Linux distribution—until Jan. 26, when Tails 2.0 debuted. Tails is a desktop Linux distribution whose goal is to help users stay private on the Internet, by way of multiple tools, including the use of Tor, The Onion Router network. With Tails 2.0, the big change comes by way of rebasing the distribution on the Debian 8.0 (code-named Jessie) Linux operating system, which provides new software packages. Users also will immediately notice that Tails 2.0 now makes use of the GNOME Shell desktop user interface, providing both a top-down menu and an activities window for desktop navigation. While Tails 2.0 boasts a new look, it is also now losing one of its past capabilities, which is the ability to look like a Windows desktop in what is known as Windows Camouflage mode. In this slide show, eWEEK examines key features of the Tails 2.0 release.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical, the company behind the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu Linux, has published multiple Ubuntu Security Notices to inform users about major kernel updates for all of its supported Ubuntu OSes.

• Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak has just sent his daily report to inform us all about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch developers in preparation for the OTA-9.5 hotfix update for Ubuntu Phone devices.

• The latest Ubuntu convergence news is here, and we’ve just learned that you can now use the screen of an Ubuntu Phone device as a touchpad when mirroring it to an external monitor (wired or wireless).

• Canonical pushed the latest Linux kernel 4.4 LTS into the repositories just last week, and now the latest Ubuntu builds are also integrating it.

• The Ubuntu developers promised users that they would be able to move the launcher to the Unity bottom for the screen, and we now get to see what it looks like.

• Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, the world’s most popular free operating system, announced just a few minutes ago on their Twitter, Google+ and Facebook accounts that they’re running a new user research study.

Flavours and Variants

• The development team of the Lubuntu-based LXLE Linux distribution have announced the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the upcoming LXLE 14.04.4 release.

• Yes, I’m serious. I use all the above desktops — yes I’m a Windows 7 and 10 user as well as a Linux guy — and for people I think Mint 17.3 makes a great desktop.

• I’ve been using Mint as my main Linux desktop for years now. Unlike some desktops I could name — cough, Windows 8, cough — Linux Mint has never had a flop. Every year that goes by, this operating system keeps getting better. The other desktops? Not so much.

• Let’s take a closer look.at Windows 7 vs. Linux Mint 17.3

Devices/Embedded

• This guide will show you how to set up the Raspberry PI Zero. The Raspberry PI Zero is an amazing little single card computer which retails for about the same price as a couple of pints of beer.

• Avalue unveiled 5.25- and 3.5-inch SBCs, plus a COM Express Type 6 Basic module, based on Intel’s 6th Generation “Skylake” Core processors.

• Avalue’s 5.25-inch EBM-SKLU SBC, 3.5-inch ECM-SKLH SBC, and ESM-SKLH COM Express Type 6 Basic module continue the gradual shift among embedded vendors to Intel’s latest 14nm Skylake platform. So far we’ve mostly seen COM Express modules, which is typical for new Intel chip releases, but there have also been a smattering of Mini-ITX SBCs, and even an Advantech 3.5-inch SBC called the MIO-5272. The EBM-SKLU, however, is the first 6th Generation Core SBC we’ve seen with the legacy 5.25-inch format.

Phones

• It’s that time again: broken promises from a hardware startup of questionable competence! The Turing phone was announced in 2015, but its launch was delayed back in December to “no later than the end of Q1″ this year according to Turing CEO Steve “SYL” Chao. Turing is now, of course, reneging on that promise, stating that the phone will instead ship in April this year. It’s only a month’s difference, but when you go around committing to statements like that, it’s probably wise to know you’ll be able to make good on them. In a phone interview with Mr. Chao last week, I actually specifically asked about this promise and was told that in regard to the Turing phone shipping – and he stated this quite confidently – that the “end of March will not be a problem.” Well, the end of March is officially a problem now, but that’s really not the big news from Turing today, because who would honestly be surprised with a delay at this point?

Android

• One of Google’s latest slogans created to showcase the essence of Android in a nutshell spells: “Be together, not the same.” It is both a testament to the company’s general embracement of diversity and arguably one of the most precise ways to describe the OS as a whole. Fans, however, have long had trouble trying to identify the ‘ultimate’ Android device, despite the sea of devices whose supposed heterogeneity should guarantee a perfect match for everyone.

• In an endless fight among the various OEMs to come out at the top of the critics’ — as well as the fans’ — rankings, one trend has notoriously stood out. People love Android devices because of the software (specifically its flexibility), and in spite of the countless efforts made by manufacturers to tweak and enhance the OS in order to make it better, the pure, unadulterated experience offered by Google has long been preferred by virtually every enthusiast.

• This year at CES we got to see wacky ideas about the Internet of Things, like Samsung’s new refrigerator with a gigantic touchscreen, so there’s a lot to be desired in the wild new era of smart-objects. That’s why this elegant mirror from Google software engineer Max Braun is so exciting — it looks like something you’d actually want in your home right now.

• Braun posted the results of his project on Medium, and the photos look almost unreal. It shares the same information you can glance at on an Android phone — the weather, the time, and a glance at the top headlines — but somehow it makes even more sense on a bathroom mirror. It’s the kind of sleek near-future sci-fi of Ex Machina and Gorilla Glass concept videos, where every translucent surface in your world seamlessly springs to life with information from the cloud.

• We don’t yet know much about Android N (after all, we’re still a few months away from the next I/O) but we do know that Google works quite closely with several major OEMs to ensure that the OEMs can get the update incorporated into their own devices as fast as they possibly can.

• Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) makes massive strides in polishing the dull sheen left behind by Android 5.0 (Lollipop). In fact, Marshmallow is the best incarnation of Android yet.

• Here’s a look at what Marshmallow has to offer. We’ll update this guide as new information about Marshmallow becomes available.

• If you’re an Android user seeking the absolute best experience for your device, you might be inclined to toy around with your home screen. Why? Because there could be aspects of the default you find inefficient or that don’t offer you enough power and control. If you want more from your Android device, you’re in luck… even on the home screen front. The Google Play Store offers a number of solid home screen replacements, each offering a different approach and in some cases, a wildly different feature set.

• Aaeon’s rugged “RTC-600A” handheld runs Android on a TI OMAP4470, and provides a 5.7-inch screen, 8-hour battery, and wireless, sensor, and scanner features.

• Aaeon calls the RTC-600A a “rugged tablet handheld,” but it’s a pipsqueak compared to Aaeon’s ruggedized, 10.1-inch RTC-900R. The RTC-600A features phablet-like diagonal screen dimensions of 5.7 inches, but the more notable dimension is its 22mm thickness. Aaeon has made use of the extra space to add physical buttons along the sides of the device to augment the capacitive touchscreen without sacrificing screen space to a QWERTY keyboard.

• Softpedia has been informed today, February 2, 2016, by Linux developer Arne Exton about the availability of the January 2016 build of his commercial AndEX Live CD Android-x86-based operating system.

Free Software/Open Source

• The Internet is a big, scary place, and so we must protect our small business networks with strong, reliable firewalls. Firewalls can range from a simple gadget that keeps bad data packets out of networks to sophisticated multi-function gateways.

• Open source operating systems like Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD include tons of built-in networking and security features. That makes them natural platforms for building security products, and most commercial firewalls are built on one of them. You have a multitude of choice: from tiny embedded systems for broadband wireless routers, to giant enterprise firewalls with all the bells-and-whistles—from free community support to paid commercial support.

• The time is once more upon us to elect board members for the Open Source Initiative. This organisation is led by its members, and as such your participation both as a voter, or as a candidate, is essential to our continued success in protecting and promoting open source software, development and communities, and championing software freedom in society through education, collaboration, and infrastructure. If you are not already a member, consider changing that now so you can participate in our upcoming elections!

• One of the best practices for secure development is dynamic analysis. Among the various dynamic analysis techniques, fuzzing has been highly popular since its invention and a multitude of fuzzing tools of varying sophistication have been developed. It can be enormously fun to take the latest fuzzing tool and see just how many ways you can crash your favorite application. But what if you are a developer of a large project which does not lend itself to being fuzzed easily? How should you approach dynamic analysis in this case?

• The Apache Software Foundation is out with some news and metrics on its size and reach, and it’s clear that the organization has advanced open source in enormous ways. In fact, this site runs on Apache tools.

• While not everyone realizes it, The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an all-volunteer effort, and it incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, including Cordova, Flex, Lucene/Solr, Maven, OpenOffice, Tomcat, and the flagship Apache HTTP Server. Here are more details.

• Google has open-sourced another internal software project. This one, called Seesaw, is a load-balancing platform that is based on Linux. It’s now available under an Apache 2.0 license.

• Although the general perception of open source has definitely advanced since Microsoft’s “un-American” comments, the best companies are not open sourcing things for the altruism. There are real, strategic reasons hidden behind the warm and fuzzy glow of open source.

• [...]

• To counter all that, Microsoft has to provide a better open source option so that people pick the product because it has the best features. They may or may not decide to run it on Azure, but it reduces the chances that Google’s platform will become the default choice.

Events

• DevConf.cz (Developer Conference) is a free annual conference for all Linux and JBoss Community Developers, Admins and Linux users organized by Red Hat Czech Republic in cooperation with the Fedora and JBoss communities.

• 2016 started off with a bang. Linux dominated CES, where many Linux-based products were showcased. The first month of the year also brought us one of the largest community-driven open source events of North America — the Southern California Linux Expo, aka SCaLE.

• In the Free Software society we exchange a lot of criticism. We write bug reports, tell others how they can improve the software, ask them for new features, and generally are not shy about criticising others. There is nothing wrong about that. It helps us to constantly improve. But sometimes we forget to show the hardworking people behind the software our appreciation. We should not underestimate the power of a simple “thank you” to motivate Free Software contributors in their important work for society. The 14th of February (a Sunday this year) is the ideal day to do that.

• TECH experts from big guns including Google, IBM, ­Hewlett-Packard and Intel are among almost 600 delegates from 22 countries in Geelong for a major conference.

• But organisers say the event could be even bigger if the city had a purpose-built convention centre.

• The Linux Conference, which began on Monday and winds up on Friday, focuses on free and open source technologies and is the biggest of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region.

• Conference second-in-command Kathy Reid said the event would provide “technically in-depth” talks from world experts.

• Making software-defined networking (SDN) scalable, deploying SDN-friendly containers, SDN’s role in IoT and lots more are on the list of topics that speakers will explore at next month’s Open Networking Summit, which promotes open source SDN technologies.

• The summit, sponsored by the Linux Foundation, will take place in Santa Clara from March 14-17. The Linux Foundation on Tuesday released the first list of speakers and topics. The complete program will be available next week.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• The Google Chrome developers have released a new Beta version of their Internet browser, and they’ve added a lot of changes and improvements, including smooth scrolling.

SaaS/Big Data

• As open source-centric cloud deployments have proliferated, so have concerns about the security of those deployments. Have you heard of the cloud access security broker (CASB) space? If not, we covered it here. Keeping cloud deployments and tasks secure is a big deal at many organizations, and CipherCloud, which focuses on data protection, and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) have formed a Cloud Security Open API Working Group to jointly define protocols and best practices for implementing cloud data security.

• In the beginning, we used tar.bz2. As ownCloud gained Windows Server support, we added zip. Once we dropped Windows support, we could have killed the zip files. But we had reasons not to: tar is, sadly, not perfect.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The first major LibreOffice update for the 5.x branch is around the corner, and it should land very soon, especially now that the third RC for LibreOffice 5.1 is available for download and testing.

CMS

• WordPress 4.4.2 is now available. This is a security release for all previous versions and we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.

• WordPress versions 4.4.1 and earlier are affected by two security issues: a possible XSS for certain local URIs, reported by Ronni Skansing; and an open redirection attack, reported by Shailesh Suthar.

Education

• Never has there been a better time to use technology for good. On Monday, UNICEF announced the inception of its Innovation Fund, the purpose of which will be to invest in open source technology startups. Targeted at young companies seeking to improve the lives of children across the world, the UNICEF Innovation Fund has already raised $9 million that will be used to assist innovators in developing countries a pool of financial resources that will help them take their projects to the next level.

Healthcare

• The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia already had an understanding of its frontline health workers capacity and ability thanks to the implementation of IntraHealth’s iHRIS, a simple, easy-to-use, open source software system that supplies health-sector leaders with information to track, manage, and plan with the health workforce. And thanks to UNICEF’s RapidPro, an open source SMS platform that allows anyone to build interactive messaging systems using an easy visual interface, Liberia has been able to reach health workers using basic talk and text mobile phones. The Liberian MOHSW was now able to use a new product, mHero, created during an interoperability hackathon sponsored by Intrahealth and UNICEF. Other participants in mHero development include USAID, K4Health, ThoughtWorks, and Jembi Health Systems.

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

• In one of the last installments of our series marking the upcoming Container World (February 16 – 18, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, USA), BCN talks to Deepak Singh, General Manager of Amazon EC2 Container Service, AWS

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• A package is more than a binary – make it observable

Public Services/Government

• The French Parliament has last week approved a first draft law for a Digital Republic, which encourages the use of free software by the country’s public administrations. The Assembly (France’s lower house) rejected calls by proponents to make free software mandatory. However, the draft Digital Law does consider source code of software developed by or for public administrations to be public information, which should be made available on request.

• For the second time in just three months, the European Parliament has called on the European Commission to to increase the share of free and open source software. On 19 January, in a so-called own-initiative report, the EP also urged the EC to use this type of software to promote reuse in and between public administrations as a solution to increase interoperability.

• ‘Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund’ (German Federal Pension Insurance) the largest of the country’s 16 pension insurers, is increasing its use of open source solutions. The fund uses Linux servers and Apache solutions on its x86 and mainframe computers. The pension insurer last week published a call for tender, seeking assistance for its Linux and Apache-based services and for other open source solutions it has in use.

• While the idea of making FLOSS mandatory went down the drain in France, it’s huge progress that the idea was even conceived and considered. Likely the only reason that requirement was rejected was the fear that certain applications would not be available as FLOSS. It’s time the tail quit wagging the dog.

Licensing

• I am sure that this will have raised the question: “Should I use Linux?”

• Linux is a mature operating system that is proven as a viable operating system and can be very reliable. This is also true for your embedded system. So the answer is a positive “maybe”.

Openness/Sharing

• Authorship has always been a divisive issue in design fields. In architecture the ownership, or at least attribution of the brilliant idea, has long been bound up in the personality cults of prolific marketers. Through the modern movement, architects like Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright epitomized the heroic, iconographic, and hetero-patriarchal, persona of the architect in charge. They were regarded, and still are by many, as singular geniuses to whom exclusive authorship is easily attributed.

Programming

• GitHub has become a major resource for many developers, but is it a good idea for them to be so dependent on one site? A Linux redditor recently asked the question “what would you do if GitHub shut down tomorrow?” and got some interesting answers from his fellow redditors.

• Apart from learning the basic skills like HTML and CSS, the road to becoming a successful web developer needs some extra skills. These qualities set you apart from the others and make you a hot commodity among the big companies looking for ninja developers.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

• There is an increasing shortage of medicines in the world, in particular in developing countries, but not only there, World Health Organization members said in last week’s Executive Board meeting. Discussions are ongoing on potential solutions and the agenda item referring to the issue was left open, to be brought to the World Health Assembly in May.

• A few days ago, the French Ministry of Health sought the commitment of pharmaceutical companies to address the shortage of vaccines in the country.

• The 138th WHO Executive Board (EB) meeting took place from 25-30 January.

Security

• I deal with compromises often enough of PHP-based websites that I wish to improve hardening.

• One obvious way to improve things is to not serve PHP files which are writeable by the webserver-user. This would ensure that things like wp-content/uploads didn’t get served as PHP if a compromise wrote valid PHP there.

• Kaspersky Lab has once again found a nasty little piece of malware that started out in Linux and made the jump to Windows. These cross-platform backdoors spy on the user and are by no means the first backdoor virus of this kind.

• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent about $6 billion on a firewall named EINSTEIN intrusion detection system. Officially known as the National Cybersecurity Protection System, the firewall is being developed with an intention to protect the U.S. government agencies against the malicious cyber attacks.

• OpenSSL, the open source encryption toolkit that made headlines in 2014 for the Heartbleed security bug, has been hit by another serious vulnerability. This time, however, the real-world damage seems minimal.

• The project disclosed the bug, which results from a new method for generating numbers used for key exchanges, on Jan. 28. It assigned the bug a high severity level, presumably since the flaw could be exploited in order to decrypt data that is encrypted using OpenSSL, the protocol widely used for encrypting information transmitted to and from HTTPS-protected websites.

Transparency Reporting

• Last Thursday, the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary reported the proposed Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) out of Committee (see video here). This means that, following a mark-up session, the bill (with amendments) was approved. It will now go to full Senate consideration. For background on the DTSA see the AmeriKat’s previous reports here.

• The 63-page opinion dives deep into the FOIA exemption weeds. Moss does grant the FBI a few of its motions for summary judgment, but on the whole, he finds the FBI’s responses (or lack thereof) to several disputed FOIA requests to be unjustified.

• The documents sought by Shapiro and his co-plaintiffs (Jeffrey Stein, Truthout, National Security Counselors) deal with the FBI’s FOIA response procedures. These include “search slips,” which detail the FBI’s efforts to locate requested documents, case evaluations (which can give FOIA requesters some insight on the application of exemptions and search efforts made by individual staffers) and other processing notes. The FBI refused to part with any of these background documents if they pertained to other denied FOIA requests.

• The UN is expected to announce its decision on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s release on Friday. The whistleblower website has tweeted that the UN’s WGAD body will announce the immediate release of Mr. Assange. It should be noted that the WikiLeaks founder is currently living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• As that makes clear, the tribunal seems to have based its decision in part on the fact that a previous Ecuadorean administration had agreed with the oil company that the contaminated land in question had been cleaned up sufficiently. The country’s current president claims that was because of corruption at the time. So the tangled mess of this case now involves issues of the validity of that previous agreement, and what impact it has on the responsibility of Chevron.

• I kind of figured a lot of people would disagree with my post yesterday, in which I noted that the underlying idea behind what the Fine Brothers were trying to do in helping to support fans in making their own versions of the various “React” programs was actually a good idea. The point was that the idea behind it was actually pretty good. A big brand/entertainment property encouraging fans to make their own versions of their program, helping them with additional support, promoting those fan videos and helping them make money — in exchange for a cut of the revenue — remains a cool idea. Unfortunately, the idea came from a company that had a really bad history of overly aggressive behavior in taking down content, deleting negative comments and ridiculously and petulantly claiming that anything remotely similar to what they did was somehow unfair. The examples of them whining about Buzzfeed and Ellen having similar segments was particularly galling. On top of that, the trademarking of various terms, including the very generic “React” really pushed things in the wrong direction.

Finance

• After negotiating sprawling antitrust probes, the Silicon Valley-based firm now faces a fast-spreading legal and political brushfire over its tax affairs that adds to existing disputes over competition and privacy, and has the potential to dwarf its previous problems in the European Union.

• The European Union aims to bring free trade negotiations with the United States towards a close by the summer, a necessary step if a deal is to be clinched before a change of president in the United States.

• The two sides are trying to agree on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a free trade deal that could deliver economic benefits of more than $100 billion for both economies, each searching for growth in the face of a Chinese economic slowdown.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• I can therefore sympathise with Jeremy Corbyn, who is reported to be shying away from meetings with the few major donors the Labour party has left. Truth is, these meetings are not always much fun. You can feel a bit of a show pony as you conduct a one-man/woman charm offensive, and quite often they can feel like a bad date.

• There are no doubt a number of reasons for the Labour Party’s defeat in the general election in May 2015, but one major theme has been the idea that Labour could not be trusted with the economy.

• Everyone knows that Labour urgently needs to figure out its business strategy to rescue it from even more years of fighting from the sidelines while the Conservative government presses ahead with its ideology in full force.

• Despite some by-now familiar imagery—Bernie Sanders is a “self-described democratic socialist” who has been “traveling the country venting his outrage”—the Washington Post’s post-Iowa rundown (2/2/16) is in some ways an uncomplicated report on a Sanders showing that was “surprising” to a press corps intent on dismissing him into invisibility.

• But even in a piece that seems to straightforwardly chart Sanders’ success in galvanizing new voters and laud his “political skills”—turning what looked like a sleepwalk into “a real race”—political reporter Karen Tumulty still manages to side-eye the candidate with the thumbnail description that his Iowa showing indicates that “Republicans are not the only voters looking for qualities beyond experience and electability.”

• It isn’t just that—once more with feeling—Sanders has experience, and it should be voters, not media, who decide who’s electable. The Post is displaying a double standard that allows them to sometimes celebrate political “outsiders”—when they rail against earmarks and the like—while reserving the right to dismiss them when they pose substantive challenge to neoliberal orthodoxy.

• The Iowa caucus ended in a virtual tie between Hillary Clinton and rival Bernie Sanders. Watch the full speech Senator Bernie Sanders gave after the election results came in.

Censorship

• Even though it is nothing new under the sun to be contacted by random users on Reddit regarding a product or service they want to promote, things tend to get out of hand sometimes. Take the Ethereum “marketing campaign”, for example, which is deliberately targeting users active on any of the Bitcoin subreddits.

• While it is hard to say what this flood of messages is trying to achieve, it is clear that someone is behind all of these efforts. Unlike what some people might think, these efforts do not seem to be created by the Ethereum team themselves, but rather resemble the efforts of one or a select few community members taking a slightly too aggressive approach to things.

• October was a busy and controversial month for Indonesian literature dealing with the history of the 1965–66 mass killings in Indonesia. First, there was the Frankfurt Book Fair where Indonesia was the focus country then, two weeks after that, the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) was held in Bali. In Frankfurt, the Indonesian delegation, sponsored by the Ministry of Education and Culture, held discussions with writers who have written about the mass killings; in Ubud, UWRF planned to feature events on the same topic but cancelled them after receiving warnings from the local police.

• Enfield school officials Tuesday received a letter from a New York-based anti-censorship organization, offering suggestions concerning the recent flak over cancellation of a planned theatre production.

• A key member of the junta-appointed National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA) is working with other government agencies on a carrot-and-stick plan to oblige global cyber giants to quickly remove content deemed offensive and illegal under Thai law from their platforms.

• The military regime has stepped up its campaign to squeeze information, providers and readers on the internet. It has made public its plans to do this and made it clear it will carry on attempts to convince foreign firms to delete information, reveal identities and transfer control of at least some discussions to the government. The known foreign targets of this pressure are Google, Facebook and Line.

• The government has received court orders to remove content that it considered damaging to the country and its monarchy.

• When St. Joseph native Walter Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News, he signed off each broadcast with “And that’s the way it is.”

• He was called the most trusted man in the nation. So when on Feb. 27, 1968, Cronkite said the Vietnam War could only end in a negotiated peace without victory, it was painful to hear and sobering to think about.

• ISLAMABAD: If the year 2014 was the most deadly year in Pakistan’s history with 14 journalists and media assistants killed that year, the year 2015 has proved to be the year that saw a dramatic rise in censorship with both journalists and media houses facing potent crackdown on dissent and freedom of expression not seen before under civilian rule, revealed annual report by Freedom Network – an independent Pakistani media and civil liberties watchdog.

• When Louise Richardson became the first female vice chancellor of Oxford University she made headline news for her defence of universities as places where all ideas can be freely debated. Yet her comments, and later those of Oxford’s chancellor, Lord Patten, were newsworthy only because so few people from within the academy have had the nerve to tackle censorious students head on.

• Some academics no doubt see student politics as simply none of their business. Others agree with the students’ demands and espoused political causes to the extent that they lead by example in promoting censorship as the best way to deal with views considered objectionable.

• Despite paying lip service to academic freedom, there is one issue above all others that many scholars think justifies restricting free speech. The campaign to boycott Israeli universities and scholars is the legitimate face of censorship on campus and it is often led by academics.

• It seems that would be enough to implement the “Nakba Law”, also known as the “Loyalty Law”, and fine one of two of the best theaters in Israel. If that happens, there is no doubt that “Animal Farm” will be a hit, just like “Borderlife”, Dorit Rabinyan’s innocent book, became a bestseller thanks to a stupid remark by the Ministry of Education.

• The court held that pursuant to the employment contract and another agreement signed between the plaintiff and the author, the Beijing Youth Daily owned the copyright in the work, including the rights of communication through an information network. The defendant’s arguments that copyright did not subsist in the article and that the copyright was jointly owned by the plaintiff and the interviewee, as well as its fair use defence, were all rejected by the court. Sina was ordered to remove the article from its website and pay compensation to the plaintiff.

Privacy

• A Congressional committee has begun to investigate the potential impact of a Juniper Networks firewall security flaw discovered in December on government systems—even as some researchers suggest the hole may be the unintended consequence of a National Security Agency backdoor into the systems.

• Seven months after a bitterly divisive showdown resulted in important limits on the National Security Agency’s powers, Congress is taking its first tentative step towards reopening the surveillance debate.

• While the fight last year focused on the NSA’s mass collection of phone records, the spotlight this time will be on the agency’s Internet-surveillance programs.

• The House Judiciary Committee will hold a classified hearing Tuesday to examine Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the NSA to spy on emails, Facebook messages, Web-browsing histories, and other electronic data. The hearing is the beginning of the committee’s debate over reauthorizing the section, which is set to expire at the end of next year.

• Back in October, we noted that it was a really big deal that the European Court of Justice had said that the EU/US Safe Harbor framework violated data protection rules, because it had become clear that the NSA was scooping up lots of the data. The issue, if you’re not aware of it, is that under the safe harbor framework, US internet companies could have European customers and users, with their information and data stored on US servers. Without the safe harbor framework, there are at least some cases where many companies would be forced to set up separate data centers in Europe, and make sure European information is kept there.

• The misuse of DMCA notices to remove unwanted information from the web has been well-documented here. The “right to be forgotten” has sort of codified this behavior, but only applies to citizens of certain countries.

• James Kutsukos would like something removed — a search warrant application hosted by the ACLU, which details a US Postal Service investigation which culminated in his being convicted for marijuana distribution.

• Following the decision of the European Court of Justice to overturn the EU/US “Safe Harbor” Agreement last year, EU/US negotiations have been ongoing to reach a new deal, which would facilitate transfer of data across the Atlantic. Having failed to reach an agreement before 1 February, the European Commission today announced plans to back down from defending the European Court’s ruling and to accept a new badly flawed arrangement.

• A day after the European Commission announced an agreement with US authorities for a “Privacy Shield” as a follow-up mechanism for the invalidated Safe Harbour Agreement, the Article 29 Working Party of European Union data protection officers said they need to see the written text before making their final assessment.

• Boing Boing is proud to publish two original documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, in connection with “Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Extraordinary Rendition,” a short story written for Laura Poitras’s Astro Noise exhibition, which runs at NYC’s Whitney Museum of Modern Art from Feb 5 to May 1, 2016.

Civil Rights

• Back in November, Congresswoman Katherine Clark introduced an anti-swatting bill. As you probably already know, swatting is when someone calls in a fake report to police about an ongoing incident at someone’s home — usually something like an “active shooter” or hostage taking or something similar — in the interest of having police departments overreact and send out a SWAT team to deal with the situation, such as by raiding the home. The bill looks to make it a felony to use the phone system to “transmit false information with the intent to cause an emergency law enforcement response.” While I’m not aware of anyone (so far) getting killed by a swatting, it seems like it’s only a matter of time.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• BT’s broadband network appears to be coming back online after suffering nationwide problems in the UK.

• Down detector, a website that monitors internet failures, reported thousands of cases including parts of Scotland, London, Birmingham and Sheffield.

• It began trending on social media with customers reporting issues.

• UK telco BT is suffering a major broadband outage: it appears the comms giant is caught up in a near-nationwide blackout, with more than 12,000 reports of service problems on Down Detector.

• The web connectivity monitor has been flooded with complaints from vast parts of the UK, from London and Birmingham to Manchester and Glasgow.

• One Reg reader wrote in to say: “We’re a [managed service provider] and most of our clients just fell off our monitoring platform! Service status has dozen of exchanges as being impacted. Total disaster for us!”

• Another wrote: “BT Infinity is experiencing a massive outage at the moment. Connections are still established but no data is arriving from BT.”

• BT has blamed a faulty router for knocking its network offline yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of customers without the internet.

• The telecoms giant apologised for the failure, which began at around 2pm yesterday afternoon. Customers across the country were unable to get online, with reports of the outage affecting London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Glasgow.

• In a statement yesterday evening, it said: “BT is confident that services have been fully restored following an outage that affected several hundred thousand customers earlier today.

• “A faulty router was to blame for the outage and we apologise to those customers who were affected.”

• Earlier this week, BT posted its best quarter results in seven years. Profit before tax soared by 24 per cent to £862m on revenue up three per cent to £4.6bn compared with the same three months last year.

• In mid-January, Netflix announced a ban on the use of proxies, unblockers, and virtual private networks (VPNs)—all technical work-arounds to view movies and TV programs unavailable in the subscriber’s country. This announcement coincided with the company’s global service launch into more than 130 new markets.

• While the public successfully forced the FCC to adopt net neutrality rules last year, one glaring omission may be coming back to haunt consumers and the commission alike. The FCC’s open Internet rules contain three “bright-line” restrictions: no blocking, no throttling apps or traffic, and no “paid prioritization” of apps or content. Unlike neutrality rules in Japan, The Netherlands, Slovenia, and Chile however, the FCC refused to outright ban zero rating (exempting content from usage caps), instead opting to determine on a “case-by-case basis” if a carrier is violating the “general conduct” portion of the rules.

• As we worried last year, this opened the door to ISPs trampling all over net neutrality — just so long as they were marginally clever about it. And that’s exactly what has happened, with AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and T-Mobile all running rough shod over net neutrality with varying degrees of obnoxiousness and success.

• The exhaustion of the free pool of IPv4 address space has created a need to move to IPv6 to enable the continued expansion of the Internet and the billions of devices it connects. One key element of enabling IPv6 is making sure that it runs on consumer edge (CE) routers. That’s where the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) aims to help with its IPv6 Ready CE Router Logo program.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Live by the copyright, die by the copyright, as I’ve said before. See, copyright protectionism is sort of like taking a moral stand: when someone asserts the importance of their copyright, they assert it for all copyrights. For most of us, this is not a problem, because we don’t spend a great deal of time bashing others over the head with the copyright cudgel. But when you’re Hasbro? Especially considering all of the many various actions taken by the company to shut down anything having to do with its My Little Pony property? Well, then it would be nice if the company might at least make sure it wasn’t committing copyright infringement in selling that property as well.

Trademarks

• The US primary season leading up to the 2016 presidential election is well underway. Political candidates and their supporters have been quietly filing trademark applications with an eye on commercial opportunities. However, as several applicants have been reminded, US trademarks that invoke the name of a living individual cannot be registered without that individual’s written consent.

• Games manufacturer Ravensburger holds a trademark registration for MEMORY in the Benelux, and has used it for a memory game since 1961.

Copyrights

• We’ve discussed for years now how Hulu is hamstrung by the fact that it’s owned by the traditional cable and broadcast industry. Owners 21st Century Fox, Disney and Comcast/NBC have gone out of their way to ensure the service is never too disruptive — lest it hurt the traditional cable cash cow. And that’s been the cable industry’s mantra for years now — crow ceaselessly about how you’re “innovating,” while simultaneously trying not to innovate too much, lest your customers realize your legacy TV service is absurdly expensive, inflexible, and outdated.

• You may have heard that, in early December, amid great fanfare, President Obama replaced the terrible No Child Left Behind law and replaced it with the “Every Student Succeeds Act” which, among other things, gave more power to the states when it came to educational standards, moving them away from the federal government. There’s actually a lot of good things in ESSA (mainly getting away from the really horrible parts of NCLB), but there were plenty of little “gifts” to various lobbyists. And, apparently, that includes Hollywood’s lobbyists.

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