● 02.27.16

● Links 27/2/2016: New ROSA, Ireland National Library Goes FOSS

Posted in News Roundup at 7:57 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• There are four main astronomy packages for the Linux user. Only one of them is Linux-specific, but all work well with every distribution I’ve tried. There is a lot of overlap between the four programs, but each has its own unique twist as well.

• Anna Eilering worked as a chef before becoming a software developer two years ago.

• “I make four times the amount of money I made as a chef,” Eilering said.

• She also has healthcare and other benefits as an employee at Rackspace in San Antonio. But it took her almost ten years working as a chef before she decided to go back to school and get a degree in computer science.

• Alvarado was one of about 100 women attending an informational session about Linux for Ladies, an IT job training bootcamp within Open Cloud Academy. The workforce development classes are backed by Rackspace Hosting Inc. (NYSE: RAX) and supported by Project QUEST, a local non-profit. But there are only 20 slots open.

Desktop

• Linux workstations are like recumbent bicycles. Most people agree they’re the most efficient and ideal solution, but the only people you ever see using them are tinkerers and bearded wizards.

Server

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Today, NVIDIA has made available a new version of its Vulkan GeForce Graphics driver, namely 356.43 beta, which adds support for 64-bit vertex attribute formats, and removes Fermi based GPU enumeration in vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices.

Benchmarks

• For those looking at upgrading a server or workstation to an Intel Xeon E3 v5 “Skylake” processor, here is a nine-way benchmark comparison of these processors compared to older Haswell Xeons as well as an AMD FX processor for reference. The benchmarks today were done under Ubuntu Linux and besides looking at raw performance we also have test results for the CPU thermal performance, system power consumption, performance-per-Watt, and performance-per-dollar metrics with a total of 14 AMD/Intel processors.

Applications

• The famous Calibre eBook reader, converter, and editor has received a new update and is now ready for download.

• The latest Calibre iteration is not an impressive one as it doesn’t really bring anything of major importance, but it’s here nonetheless. As usual, there are a couple of new features and just a few fixes, but as new releases go, this won’t impress a lot of people.

• To address that issue, CloudBees today unfurled an implementation of the open source Jenkins CI platform, dubbed CloudBees Jenkins Platform – Private SaaS Edition, specifically designed to manage instances of the OpenStack private cloud computing environment on the Amazon Web Sevices (AWS) public cloud.

• Founder, maintainer, and CTO of ownCloud, Frank Karlitschek, was happy to inform the world that the upcoming ownCloud 9.0 self-hosting cloud server will implement a free and secure WebRTC teleconferencing system based on Spreed.

• As usual, we were very curious to find out what’s the fuss all about, and to our surprise, we found out that Spreed will, in fact, bring private and secure video calls to ownCloud 9.0, which should hit the streets in a few weeks from today, based on Spreedbox.

Proprietary

• Well, according to this page the party is over. Seems he’s still under the impression Microsoft gives two rips about Linux users or their non-enterprise customers. Fun fact, Microsoft doesn’t care. Don’t get me wrong, I think Skype’s download page still making reference to Ubuntu 12.04 is quite disappointing too. But I’ve long since shrugged and moved on with my life. Today, I’ll show you what I use instead.

• The new security platform for Linux servers from SentinelOne claims best-in-class detection, prevention and remediation against sophisticated malware and exploit-based attacks

• Endpoint security business SentinelOne, is extending its security products to Linux servers for data centres and cloud servers, with a real-time security protection powered by machine learning and intelligent automation.

• Matrox Imaging has announced a major update to Linux support with its core vision software product, Matrox Imaging Library, including 2D and 3D vision enhancements and new productivity tools.

• A new Opera Beta update has been released and it looks like the developers are putting the final touches on this branch.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• It’s going to be tough to beat XCOM 2 for my top spot in games released this year!

• The game, as of the day this article was written, holds “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam, so you may want to give it a chance and spend at least a few minutes playing it. You don’t have to pay anything, you simply download it (only 8 MB) and load it in mere seconds. It’s very easy to learn but a bit tricky to master.

• Today I am taking a look at SUPERHOT, a game that I’ve been hyped about ever since I first heard about it. The idea is awesome, but does it work well?

• Valve has just pushed a new Beta build of its awesome SteamOS gaming distribution of GNU/Linux based on Debian to the brewmaster_beta channel for public testing.

• Epistory’s atmospheric adventure will come to Windows, Mac and Linux on March 30, 2016 when Fishing Cactus releases the game onto Steam.

• Yes, there’s yet another Steam Beta Client available for those who live on the bleeding-edge and have switched to the Beta channel of Valve’s acclaimed gaming distribution platform.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• The hardware platforms are multiplying, and the demarcation line is no longer all that well defined. There used to be some very clear architectures, and open source projects, including GNOME, knew very well how to better support them.

• Now a new family of devices based on ARM hardware is becoming more and more popular, not to mention powerful. Making sure that the software is optimized for specific hardware is important, but GNOME needs help from the community.

Distributions

• If you’ve ever had to configure an SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) kernel security module without the guidance of an administrator, you’ll understand why this recent interview with David Mirza Ahmad in Motherboard is interesting.

Reviews

• RebeccaBlackOS offers an interesting window into where the Linux desktop might be headed. The developers behind the scenes working on Wayland seem to be making far better progress than the developers working on the Wayland fork Mir. Ubuntu designers have not yet been able to get Mir working with any desktop environment. The last few Ubuntu releases have bypassed the planned Mir debute.

• RBOS gives you enough stability to play around with a variety of user interfaces. It’s encouraging that KDE and Gnome 3 shells work so well already on Wayland. The Enlightenment desktop is one of the newest innovations available on several Linux distros, so it should continue to attract interest running so well on Wayland.

• We reported earlier on the release of the February Beta of Apricity OS, an Arch Linux-based operating system for computers and laptops, and now we’re back with an exclusive first look at the new Apricity OS Cinnamon Edition.

New Releases

• Softpedia has been informed earlier by Apricity OS maintainer Alex Gajewski about the immediate availability for download of a new Beta build of the gorgeous Linux kernel-based operating system.

Screenshots/Screencasts

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

• As always, the distro presents a vast collection of games and emulators and the Steam platform package along with standard suite of audio and video communications software including the newest version of Skype. All modern video formats are supported. The distribution includes the fresh LibreOffice version. This distribution contains GNOME 3.16 with new user friendly notifications and system tray. In this distro we change old standard theme ROSA Elementary to new Korora for GNOME Shell and EvoPop for Gtk+. Also we change old icons. In LibreOffice we began to use new gray icons too.

• The Russian developers behind the ROSA project have had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the ROSA Desktop Fresh GNOME R7 GNU/Linux operating system.

Ballnux/SUSE

• With Tumbleweed back up and running, Dominique Leuenberger is back with another weekly update while Neil Rickert test drove new Argon and Krypton. Tecmint.com said ReacOS is the “perfect Windows alternative” and LinuxInsider.com said RebeccaBlackOS is a “class act.” Fedora’s Matthew Miller spoke to PCWorld’s Chris Hoffman about what’s brewing at the blue hat and Riccardo Padovani video interviewed Mark Shuttleworth in tonight’s Linux news.

• We know you have missed the usual summary from the YaST trenches. But don’t panic, here you got it! As usual, we will only cover some highlights, saving you from the gory details of the not so exciting regular bugfixing.

• Ever since the launch of Argon and Krypton, the openSUSE community KDE team didn’t really stand still: a number of changes (and potentially nice additions) have been brewing this week. This post recapitulates the most important one.

• A recent announcement from openSUSE listed new live media (iso files) for Argon and Krypton. Argon is based on Leap 42.1, while Krypton is based on Tumbleweed.

• The openSUSE team maintains development repositories, in addition to the standard repos for the distributions. The development repos are where they build new or updated versions of the software for testing prior to adding that software to the standard repos. Both Argon and Krypton include some of these development repos.

• We’re back on a weekly report – after all, there were some snapshots now. But first, at this place, a big THANK YOU to SUSE for the new openQA worker machine. It’s a pleasure to watch it run through a full openQA run of a snapshot in just about three hours.

Red Hat Family

• Today, February 27, 2016, the maintainers of the CentOS 7 Linux operating system were more than happy to announce the immediate availability for download of updated CentOS Linux 7 rolling ISO images.

• Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Red Hat and author of the popular management book from Harvard Business Review Press, The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance, will be the opening keynote for the inaugural Open Summit, a forum for college and university leaders, taking place May 23rd, 2016 at New York University’s Washington Square Campus.

• The Open Summit will explore the rapidly expanding domain of open educational initiatives, and assess their impact across the campus and curriculum. The event will bring together a broad base of educational stakeholders to share best practices in open education, common understanding of open approaches, and strategic directions, in order to better facilitate communication and synchronization across the emerging open landscape.

• At Evanta’s recent CIO Executive Summit in Washington, D.C., two Enterprisers took the stage to discuss how CIOs can influence the future of business at the “tipping point” of technology and innovation today.

• David Bray, Harvard Visiting Executive In-Residence and CIO of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, and Lee Congdon, CIO of Red Hat, led an interactive session that covered a variety of dimensions – from the need to evolve faster to keep up with competitive pressures, to the consumerization of technology and how organizations can adapt to a future in which they have less control.

Fedora

• Fedora shook things up at the end of 2014, releasing Fedora 21 based on the “Fedora.next” initiative, which saw the project refocus itself into three distinct products for Workstation, Cloud, and Server. I recently spoke to Fedora project leader Matthew Miller to see how Fedora’s been doing since then and what’s in store for Fedora in 2016.

Debian Family

• Debian developers and maintainers have just realized that they were shipping the ISO of the distribution with the a pre-compiled non-free Nvidia kernel module, which technically should be a violation of the Linux kernel.

• Intel demoed at the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona an Android phone that turns into a desktop once it’s connected via HDMI to a monitor.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Linux kernel regressions in Ubuntu don’t happen all the time, but from time to time Canonical manages to introduce a small issue when it updates the kernel package of one of its supported Ubuntu OSes, which is quickly fixed.

• Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak published more details about the features that will be implemented in the upcoming OTA-10 software update for Ubuntu Phone and Tablet devices.

• We are one more step close to the final release of Ubuntu 16.04 ‘Xenial Xerus’ by the release of 16.04 Beta 1. Ubuntu flavors has taken part in this Beta release. But as we know Ubuntu only takes part in Beta 2 release that is set to come on 24, March. All Ubuntu flavors give information of what’s going to be in the final release by the Beta releases.

• Majority of the phones at Mobile World Congress 2016 used Android and a few had Windows mobile 10. But if you want to be really different, Ubuntu was showing its highest end Meizu MX5 Pro Ubuntu phone.

• The phone physically looks just like the Meizu MX5 Pro which was powered with FlyMe – Android-based operating system. Once you turn it on, you see a clear difference. It took us only seconds to find apps, launch a browser and open up Fudzilla.com.

• David Planella, the Ubuntu Community Team Manager, published recently a summary report of the work done by the Ubuntu community during the last two weeks.

• As this year began, we spotted a lot of action from telecom players and the open source community surrounding Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technology. For example, Red Hat and NEC Corporation said that they formed a partnership to develop NFV features in the OpenStack cloud computing platform, with the goal of delivering carrier-grade solutions based on Red Hat’s OpenStack build.

• Now, Canonical is starting a new interoperability lab to allow telecom players to validate the capabilities of virtual network function appliances ahead of deployments in production environments. The lab could help streamline the adoption of virtual network function tech in the telecom industry.

• It’s really a two horse race on the mobile front, as Android and iOS duke it out in most markets around the world.

• It’s such a duopoly that Windows Phone and BlackBerry’s marketshares are measured in single digits in many regions.

• Still, that hasn’t stopped more entrants from joining the fray, such as Canonical’s Ubuntu OS.

• Hello all,

• this week I joined the Mobile World Congress thanks to Canonical support which invited me. The week itself it has been awesome, but the most awesome thing happened today: thanks to Chimera Revo’s support (a big hug goes to Simone and Luca who supported and endured me all week long) I had a talk with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, about Ubuntu and its future.

• ZFS will come pre-installed on Ubuntu 16.04, a move that the Software Freedom Conservancy says violates the GNU GPL license.

Flavours and Variants

• The Xubuntu team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 16.04 LTS Beta 1. This is the first beta towards the final release in April.

• The first beta release also marks the end of the period to land new features in the form of Ubuntu Feature Freeze. This means any new updates to packages should be bug fixes only, the Xubuntu team is committed to fixing as many of the bugs as possible before the final release.

• The maintainers of the Xubuntu Linux operating system released a first Beta build of the upcoming Xubuntu 16.04 as part of this Thursday’s Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) Beta 1 release for opt-in flavors.

Devices/Embedded

• The first photos of the Raspberry Pi 3 single-board computer (SBC) have been leaked earlier in a recent FCC (Federal Communications Commission) filing by Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd (a.k.a. Raspberry Pi Foundation).

• A Raspberry Pi 3 with WiFi and Bluetooth LE has been spotted on an FCC site. Meanwhile, a MagPi cover advert says the Pi 3 advances to a 1.2GHz 64-bit SoC.

• The Register spotted a Raspberry Pi 3 design on the FCC wireless test database. The documentation indicates a “Raspberry Pi 3” with 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 LE radios, all freshly approved for stateside usage. Meanwhile, a Reddit post that was picked up by CNXSoft cites an advertisement showing the cover of the next issue of MagPi Magazine announcing the Pi 3 with WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 1.2GHz, 64-bit processor.

• Interactions with the physical world can be tricky – even dangerous! Let’s say you have an Internet of Things (IoT) application controlling a chemical process – perhaps exotic chemicals for an aerospace mission. The IoT devices include sensors for temperature, pressure, flow rate, and tank levels and actuators for pumps, heaters and valves – including a dump valve ready to vent high pressure. In this situation it’s likely you would have analysis and reporting software running, be receiving sensor readings, and have control of the various pumps, heaters and valves. With IoT, computing can be pushed to the edge via gateways and controllers often running sophisticated applications.

• The Linux Foundation is a non-profit organization that sponsors the work of Linus Torvalds. Supporting companies include HP, IBM, Intel, and a host of other large corporations. The foundation hosts several Linux-related projects. This month they announced Zephyr, an RTOS aimed at the Internet of Things.

• More details and the first pictures of the upcoming Raspberry Pi 3 single board computer has been revealed.

Phones

Tizen

• Whoops! Looks like there was a Tizen Software Development Kit (SDK) update and it slipped past our radar. The actual update was Tizen SDK 2.4 Rev 3, which is an updated set of tools for developing Tizen Web and Native applications. You get access to an Integrated Development Environment, Emulator, toolchain, sample code, and documentation.

Android

• Microsoft has officially scrapped its Android to Windows 10 bridge, codenamed Astoria, but is forging ahead with its Objective C Windows compiler and tools for porting iOS applications.

• The Android announcement was expected, as the project was apparently abandoned some months back, but the new post from Windows Developer Platform VP Kevin Gallo adds some background.

• The Samsung is going on sale for $800 in March, and while Sony and LG are yet to announce their prices, you can expect them to be in that ballpark.

• It’s safe to say that all three phones currently represent the best of what Android has to offer. It also wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say each of the phones would come out favorably in a head-to-head against the best of what Apple has to offer—the five-month-old iPhone 6S.

• Each has its individual merits, though in terms of both outstanding specs and originality it’s hard to look past the LG G5. Smartphones these days are getting more and more the same—you only have to look at the Samsung Galaxy S7 alongside the iPhone 6S to see this. To bring modularity to the mainstream is a bold step but one that has paid off, particularly when you consider the potential for new modules to be added in the future.

• The past week brought us several major announcements for the Android universe. Startups and tech giants came to Barcelona’s MWC 2016 show to announce new products that will shape our mobile future for the next 12 months. But at the time, several Android rumors emerged to offer us a sneak peek at what’s to come in the near future. In this post, we’ll go over some of the hottest ones.

Free Software/Open Source

• Mirantis, the pure-play OpenStack company, has announced that it is a founding member of Open Source MANO (OSM), a community focused on delivering Open Source Management and Orchestration (MANO) aligned with ETSI NFV Information Models.

• The European Telecommunications Standards Institute this week said it have begun work on using open source software for management and orchestration of network functions virtualization in connection with its NFV Industry Specification Group.

• The OSI was invited to provide commentary on New York City Council’s consideration of the Free and Open Source Software Act and the Civic Commons Act, both proposed by Council Member Ben Kallos. These bills would increase the use of free and open source software by New York City departments and agencies.

• On February 23rd, 2016 OSI Board Director Paul Tagliamonte, speaking on the OSI’s behalf, presented the following testimony to the City Council. We would very much like to thank the New York City Council, the Contracts Committee, and New York City Council Member Ben Kallos for the opportunity to speak.

• On a recent article on Forbes, technology journalist Adrian Bridgwater pointed out what the term “free” truly means when it comes to open source software. “Free” here does not mean a lack of monetary value. It means that users have the liberty to run, change, distribute and copy the software as they wish. It is not like “free beer”; it’s more like “free speech”. The true value of free software then, lies not on any price but in the liberty; in the way open source software can continuously develop through the unrestrained contributions of the community.

• Microsoft’s Windows dominance in the Desktop PC space has been a thing for decades now and the 30years old OS — although has made some significant strides in the industry — is undoubted a monopoly. Thank God for options like OSX and Linux Desktop of course, we would all have been choking on – and continue to choke on whatever the Redmond company decides to throw at our faces.

Events

• I ♥ APIs Europe 2016 is an event dedicated to APIs and digital business strategy for developers, IT experts, and business strategists.

• T-DOSE is a free and yearly event held in The Netherlands to promote use and development of Open Source Software. During this event Open Source projects, developers and visitors can exchange ideas and knowledge. This years event will be held at the Fontys University of Applied Science in Eindhoven.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Mozilla platform engineer Chris Lord is trying to make the case for developers to put greater focus on making Mozilla’s Gecko layout engine more embed-able friendly so that it can be more easily deployed for new use-cases.

SaaS/Big Data

• It’s hard to believe that the OpenStack cloud computing story is only a few years old. Back in 2010, Rackspace and NASA announced an effort to create a sophisticated open source cloud computing infrastructure that could compete with proprietary offerings. Since then, OpenStack has won over countless tech titans that are backing it, and it even has its own foundation.

• But many organizations are struggling with launching and maintaining OpenStack deployments. In fact, hardly any skillset is more valued than OpenStack skills in this job market. If you’re looking for free resources and tutorials for mastering OpenStack, this post has our latest, updated guides.

Databases

• I love high-level, dynamically typed languages, such as Python, Ruby and JavaScript. They’re easy—and even fun—to use. They let me express myself richly, and they lend themselves to code that easily can be reused and maintained. It’s no surprise that interest in such languages is on the rise, especially when creating Web applications.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Developer Caolán McNamara who has been doing much of the GTK3 integration work for LibreOffice was also responsible for this week’s improvements. LibreOffice is finally now making use of the GTK themeing APIs to draw elements like they do in GTK+ rather than LibreOffice drawing everything itself, which results in a better looking office suite integrated with your desktop.

Healthcare

• Healthcare organisations in Ramsay, Wye Valley and Blackpool areas expected to adopt non-proprietary solutions as Github-hosted code is further updated

• Ramsay Health Care, Wye Valley NHS Trust and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are set to go live with open source electronic patient record (EPR) solutions during 2016, building on ongoing work by Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.

• After first uploading EPR code on the web-based hosting service Github in June 2014, supplier IMS Maxims has sought to provide the open source software free to NHS and wider healthcare organisations.

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

• The company announced Feb. 24 it made available – through an open source GitHub repository – Web design templates that meet draft standards laid out by the U.S. Digital Services and 18F in September 2015.

Public Services/Government

• The National Library of Ireland is using free and open source software where possible. The public institute also encourages code contributions of IT staff members to open source software development projects.

Openness/Sharing

• Agriculture is the backbone of human civilisation, but it’s about to snap under our weight. The world is on the brink of a food crisis in which our current industrial models of agriculture will not support the projected population of nine billion by the year 2050. Our best hope for farming in the future lies with advances in technology: sensors, big data and networks. These advances will move us into an agricultural revolution that will feed more people, feed them more effectively and feed them sustainably.

• He said he is skeptical that there is any value in keeping most data private. The Sunlight Foundation, among others, has pushed for organizations to set the default to open. And this belief that information is a public good, and that making that data available is a public service, seems particularly relevant to anyone working to address global poverty, he said.

Open Access/Content

• The Beaverton school district is among 31 districts nationwide, and the only one in Oregon, hailed Friday by the U.S. Department of Education for their commitment to replace at least one textbook with openly-licensed educational resources within the next year.

• Acting U.S. Secretary of Education John King said the use of open-source teaching material is important because it helps give all teachers and students access to tools, content and expertise.

• His department is trying to use the hashtag #GoOpen to promote the trend.

Open Hardware

• As the world of 3D printing technology evolves faster than most can keep up with, the impacts it offers to humans in need are powerful, life-changing, and deeply inspiring. The days of having a prosthetic and feeling ashamed or embarrassed are quickly fading as these medical devices are becoming both a triumph in themselves and for those wearing them—and often, showing them off.

• Lylo is open-source so you can modify it, improve it, and profit if you like.

• If you’ve ever worked with FPGAs, you’ve dealt with the massive IDEs provided by the vendors. Xilinx’s ISE takes about 6 gigabytes, and Altera’s Quartus clocks in at over 10 gigs. That’s a lot of downloading proprietary software just to make an LED blink.

Programming

• Recently, Anthony Ferrara opened an RFC for PHP internals to adopt and enforce a code of conduct. Even leaving aside for the moment whether this is an appropriate use of the RFC system, the RFC generated a lot of discussion on the mailing list, in which I participated at great length, and for which I was hailed as abusive by at least one person in favor of the RFC (a great example of a kafkatrap).

• To restate what I said on the mailing list, my position on the RFC is not merely “opposed”, but “reject entirely as unsalvageable” (though I did make some attempts at salvage in case it goes through). I continue to stand by everything I said there, and in other channels, regarding the proposed Code of Conduct.

• Andi Gutmans, co-founder of Zend and its CEO for many of those years is leaving the company, just a few short months after it was acquired by Rogue Wave.

• [...]

• While Gutmans is now leaving the Zend/Rogue Wave fold, he has publicly pledged not to leave PHP.

• Junio Hamano released Git 2.8 Release Candidate 0 on Friday for showcasing the newest features and improvements for this distributed version control system.

• RedMonk has just published its list of the top 21 programming languages of 2016 Q1. This list is based on the collective performance of the languages on GitHub and Stack Overflow. It has once again confirmed that JavaScript continues to run the web, followed by Java at the second position.

Leftovers

• We recently noted how Indiana was just the latest state to try and pass auto industry-backed bills banning Tesla’s direct-to-consumer sales model. Under the latest GM-backed bill, Tesla’s dealer license would have expired in 2018, forcing the company to embrace the traditional franchise dealership model — or stop selling cars in the state entirely. Telsa had been reaching out for the last few weeks to Tesla fans in the state, quite-correctly highlighting how GM was buying protectionist law instead of competing.

Hardware

• You already know you need to back up your small business data regularly, but you may get stuck figuring out the best way to manage the process. Fortunately, you don’t need to spend a scary amount of money to buy and set up a reliable data backup system.

Security

• HP finds that 50% of malware involves That Other OS, you know, the one that drove me to GNU/Linux fifteen years ago when I was teaching in the North and could not keep TOOS running for more than a few hours on students’ PCs.

• Anyone who downloaded Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition last Saturday has more than likely been compromised by hackers.

• The news about the Linux Mint site getting hacked has caused many Linux users to question the quality of the distribution. One user on LWN.net took the Linux Mint developers to task for a number of things that he felt made the distribution a bad choice for desktop users.

• I recently switched back to using Linux Mint (17.3 KDE) after over a year using Windows 10. I am used to this particular Linux distribution and have strongly preferred it ever since I began using it back in 2008. I am not a power user, but also not a total newcomer to using Linux. I am 51 and have been using Linux for about 14 years now. Recent events involving Mint have prompted me to think about why I use it, about some of the criticism it has gotten, and whether or not it is time to move on to a different Linux distribution full-time at home.

• Short answer: Not yet. But it’s something I will consider carefully for the future.

• Last Saturday (2/20/16) the website at Linux Mint was hacked and the download page for the default installation ISO was redirected to point to a malicious specially crafted ISO that included a backdoor. This has been fixed (initially by taking down the page), but meanwhile it turned out that the forum’s database had also been stolen at some point in January and fairly substantial private information from users was obtained (and later apparently offered for sale.) My installation was on February 2nd, so I am fine (and I use KDE, which wasn’t even the edition the crackers had changed). The forum password (for me only) was just a long complex one that Mint had sent me as a reset from a year ago, which I never changed. So I got really lucky – I don’t have to change any other passwords because that one was unique to the Mint forums.

• Last week, a Google engineer discovered a bug and critical vulnerability in the GNU C library (glibc) used by most Linux desktop and server distributions to support a variety of system calls. A number of distributions have already released patches for the vulnerability. If you have yet to patch and reboot your Linux systems, Pen Test Partners has made the following cheat sheet to make the process easier.

• Today in Linux news James Sanders took Linux Mint and other distributions to task for lack of security, saying some can’t even be classified distributions.

• Cross-site scripting, also known as XSS, allows the attacker to inject malicious client-side scripts into a website, which are later executed by the victims while browsing the website. There are different cross-site scripting variants, all of which can be used to craft different types of attacks.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Radioactive material has leaked into the groundwater below a nuclear power plant north of New York City, prompting a state investigation on Saturday and condemnation from governor Andrew Cuomo.

• Cuomo ordered an investigation into “alarming levels of radioactivity” found at three monitoring wells at the Indian Point energy center in Buchanan, New York, about 40 miles north of Manhattan.

• Nuclear fission reactors are expensive to build and decommission so it’s natural to keep them running as long as possible to optimize the economic benefit. The licence for the old Indian Point reactor in New York state has been extended and while there have been occasional problems, the reactor was considered reliable. News that a leak of tritium in the ground water has been discovered is a whole new ball-game however. Tritium is a short-lived radioisotope of hydrogen so it’s possible the contamination may not leave the site in dangerous concentrations.

Finance

• By July trade negotiators from the United States and the European Union want to present a draft text that only has brackets for the “most sensitive issues” in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This was announced by Ignacio Bercero, chief negotiator for the European Union, and his US counterpart Dan Mullaney during a press conference today after this week’s 12th round of TTIP negotiations in Brussels.

Censorship

• It should have been a regular live broadcast of a Putri Indonesia pageant show, but those who tuned in were surprised when private station Indosiar decided to completely blur the torsos of contestants who wore the body-hugging Javanese kebaya dress.

• But many considered that local television stations had gone too far when one of them blurred a scene from a popular cartoon show, simply because one of its characters wears a short skirt, and questions began to be raised about why the local channels were taking that conservative turn.

• Conversations That Matter features former B.C. premier and free speech advocate Ujjal Dosanjh. He argues that people in power in Canada are self-censoring and in doing so are preventing open and honest discourse about issues that form the fabric of Canadian society. Dosanjh has been attacked and beaten for saying what he thinks and continues to do so because he maintains if we cower from vigorous debate then we deprive ourselves.

• Tunisian actor, Majd Mastoura has accused Wataniya TV of censoring part of his acceptance speech following his win at the Berlinale Film Festival in Germany.

• During an emotional speech, Mastoura paid tribute to the martyrs of the Tunisian Revolution. However, during its showing upon the national channel, the actor’s closing remarks were cut from the broadcast of his award.

• Political censorship or coincidence? Activists on Friday were in full pitchfork mode after Twitter users alleged the social media site removed #WhichHillary from its trending topics in an apparent kowtow to the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign. The collective uproar managed to inspire another Clinton-themed hashtag, #WhichHillaryCensored.

• Hillary Clinton is facing one of her biggest rivals online today: Hillary Clinton. A hashtag mocking the candidate for her flip-flops over the years rocketed to the the top of Twitter’s trending list Thursday—driven not by Republicans but supporters of her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.

• Beijing has further tightened its muzzle on mainland China’s internet after a senior media content watchdog official demanded all online programmes be censored as strictly as those of traditional television programmes.

• The move comes days after widespread audience dissatisfaction when popular shows, made and aired by Chinese video streaming sites, were removed or suspended until they had been censored to the satisfaction of the media content regulator.

• I have no idea why, but there seems to be a sudden influx of stories concerning Facebook patrolling its site and taking down content over rather puritanical standards of offense and vulgarity. The most recent examples of this have concerned a couple of pieces of artwork that the Facebook Decency Office deemed to be to risque, despite the fact that neither of the art pieces could reasonably be described as particularly pornographic. The most recent example of this kind of censorious brigade is less to do with scary, scary sex, and more to do with parody content that some might find vulgar.

Privacy

• Back on February 15 when we ran an article calling for a ban on advertisers’ practice of tracking users who just happen to drive by an ad, much less click on it, we ran a poll to find out what you think. Actually, we were pretty sure we already knew what you thought. You tell us everyday, either in the comments section to our articles or by blocking ads here on FOSS Force. The poll was mainly to put some numbers to what we already knew.

• A Washington spy court’s “secret, ex parte proceedings” do not provide the oversight required to restrain the National Security Agency’s Upstream program, a privacy group argued in a court filing Thursday.

• A spy accused of rape by two women is still working at the heart of ­Britain’s security services after police ignored their claims.

• The spook’s first alleged victim, who met him through a dating website, today say detectives TWICE failed to act over her accusations – even after the second woman, who worked with him at the top secret GCHQ base, had come forward.

• The classical music star hailed workers at Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, England as “heroes”, before singing songs from her repertoire including Habanera from the opera Carmen.

• The Obama administration will soon allow the National Security Agency to share certain bulk collections of communications and satellite transmissions with other government intelligence agencies. This information includes phone calls and emails from foreigners within the U.S., as well as exchanges that involve or are about Americans collected by the NSA’s foreign intelligence programs.

• The New York Times is reporting that Obama administration officials are close to agreeing on new rules that would allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to share surveillance information more freely with other federal agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, without scrubbing Americans’ identifying information first.

• In 2008, President George W. Bush put forth an executive order that said such a change to the rules governing sharing between agencies could occur when procedures had been put in place. When the Obama administration took over, it started “quietly developing a framework” to carry out the proposed change in 2009, according to the Times.

• For the past decade, the NSA has collected massive amounts of phone metadata, e-mail, and other information from a variety of sources—sometimes directly from the companies that make such communication possible, sometimes through overseas taps on lines that connect to data centers outside of the US. Currently when an agency wants information on a foreign citizen, it requests that data from the NSA, and the NSA theoretically scrubs it of any incidental references to American citizens who are not being targeted. This process is known as “minimization.”

• The new spyware Trojan virus recently approved by Germany’s Interior Ministry may actually steal personal photos and notes stored on Germans’ phones and laptops.

• The German government’s new computer virus intended for spying in criminal cases has drawn scrutiny because of its potentially unlimited abilities.

• The Obama administration is planning to allow the National Security Agency to share more of the raw information it acquires through wiretapping with other intelligence agencies.

• The rule change, which would allow intelligence agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency to access the unedited contents of phone calls and emails without having the information filtered by the NSA, was first reported by the New York Times Friday.

Civil Rights

• Foreign reporters pay refugees 20 euros to act as if they have drowned, said Bishop of Kos and Nisyros Nathanael.

• The unusual testimony was made during a radio interview on Alpha 98.9 on Wednesday. Bishop Nathanael said that, “I witnessed with my own eyes foreign television reporters paying people (refugees) 20 euros to play victims of drowning.”

• In an interview with the BBC, ex-CIA boss Michael Hayden warned against the dangers of having, Republican front-runner, Donald Trump as President of the United States of America.

• Former CIA and National Security Agency Director Gen. Michael Hayden says the rhetoric from the GOP candidates in the presidential race is scary — and he suspects the rest of the world is concerned, too.

• Hayden was responding Thursday to a question from CNN’s Michael Holmes about the rhetoric on the campaign trail, with Holmes mentioning Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s promise of carpet bombing ISIS and GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s praise for waterboarding and harsher interrogation techniques as well as a proposed temporary ban on foreign Muslims.

• The NYPD is more in its element when it’s creating terrorism/dissent-focused task forces or shipping its officers halfway around the word to get in the way of local investigators. What it’s less interested in doing is ensuring its officers live up to the Constitutional expectations of Judge Shira Scheindlin’s order from nearly three years ago.

• According to a news report today, the Conservative government has “shelved” the proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a “British Bill of Rights”.

• This is not a surprise. It was never going to be an easy task.

• In the last week or so, the proposals – as well as a daft and dappy “Sovereignty Bill” proposal – have been nothing other than tokens in a political game between the Prime Minister and other Conservative politicians about supporting and opposing Brexit. But the tokens turned out to have no value and no purchase in this game.

• Last May this blog set out the “seven hurdles” for repeal of the Human Rights Act. These hurdles included the facts that the Good Friday Agreement requires the European Convention on Human Rights to have local effect in Northern Ireland and that Scotland would have a veto on the replacement legislation.

• A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism in hundreds of social media posts.

• The report carried in Al-Watan says the 28-year-old man admitted to being an atheist and refused to repent, saying that what he wrote reflected his own beliefs and that he had the right to express them. The report did not name the man.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• We recently noted how the city of Louisville had voted 23-0 to let Google Fiber bring ultra-fast broadband competition to the city. As part of the vote, the city revamped its utility pole-attachment rules, which previously forced competitors through a six-month bureaucratic process to connect to the poles, an estimated 40% of which are owned by AT&T. The new policy streamlines that down to one month, letting competitors like Google Fiber move hardware already attached to the poles, while holding them financially accountable for any potential damages.

• It has already been a year since the FCC voted to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under the telecom act. And despite the countless calories spent by the telecom industry and its various mouthpieces claiming Title II and net neutrality would demolish all Internet investment and innovation as we know it, you may have noticed that things by and large did not implode. In fact, while the FCC has been snoozing on things like zero rating and usage caps, the mere threat of rules helped the Internet by putting an end to the interconnection shenanigans causing Netflix performance degradation.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Have you heard? Today is the anniversary of “the dress.” You know the one. It was all over the internet exactly a year ago. White and gold or blue and black. It was a phenomenon. And, yes, I know a bunch of you are snidely mocking it as you read this, but shut up. It was a fun way to kill an afternoon a year ago and it made a bunch of people happy, so don’t be “that person.” A year ago, we wrote a short piece about it, noting that you had fair use to thank for it, because the dress was being shared widely, and that was possible due to fair use. And the timing was great, because it was fair use week — as it is again.

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