● 05.22.16

● Links 22/5/2016: Systemd 230, Debian Installer Alpha 6

Posted in News Roundup at 10:50 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• I completely get where you’re coming from. Like you, I still buy from Amazon Music even though many folks have suggested using Google Play Music instead. Don’t get me wrong, I use the Streaming service for music from Google. But since I find myself being gifted with Amazon gift cards with each holiday, my musical purchases remain with Amazon.

• Softpedia has been informed by Dylan Callahan from the Chromium OS for All SBCs projects about the availability for purchase of a portable desktop computer called Fancy.

• Fancy has been designed with a single goal in mind, to offer Linux, Chromium OS/Chrome OS, and Android enthusiasts one of the fanciest, yet portable and quite powerful desktop computer that comes in a small form factor (the size of a regular cable modem or wireless router) and it’s easy to carry anywhere you want.

• You can buy an HP Chromebook at around £199 in the UK. Or you can get a HP traditional laptop, with dvd burner and 500gb HD for £60 more….if you were really daft you could install ChromeOS on that and have a better spec’d machine with 50x more storage capacity.

• Chromebooks as a general rule may be cheaper, but I don’t think they are better value.

• Macbooks may be sleek and sexy, but they’re not moving as fast as the competition any more. They’ve been surpassed by Chromebooks for the first time ever.

• Two Soylentils wrote with a caution about a new strategy in Microsoft’s playbook to get people to upgrade to Windows 10.

Kernel Space

• Greg Kroah-Hartman has sent in his various pull requests for the Linux 4.7 kernel merge window.

• The most interesting of these pull requests by Greg KH on Friday night was arguably of the staging area. The other pull requests were the usual churn unless impacted by one of the individual drivers improved upon or added to USB, char/misc, TTY/serial, etc.

• This is a recap of weird things that could happen with the newer Linux Filesystems. Ubuntu 16.04 and Debian Linux ship both ZFS (OpenZFS) and BTRFS so it’s normal to think about it, but like many “new” Linux technologies (e.g Wayland), none agree when it’s the right moment to jump on them.

• As we approach the PulseAudio 9.0 release, I thought it would be a good time to talk about one of the things I had a chance to work on, that landed in this cycle.

Graphics Stack

• After the success of the first version, FireRays is moving to another major milestone. We are open sourcing the entire library which allows complete integration and contribution from the entire developer community to bring improvements in the rendering world. In fact FireRays 2.0 brings support for Windows, OSX, Linux, AMD, NV, Intel GPUs and CPUs with many back-ends.

Applications

• A new version 1.7.1 “Spring 2016” of G’MIC (GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing), the open-source framework for image processing, has been released recently (26 April 2016). This is a great opportunity to summarize some of the latest advances and features over the last 5 months.

• Filesystem/Volume encryption has become paramount to the masses in the IT industry due to the varying advantages it presents including protection of sensitive data, military-grade encryption standards, password keys to prevent unwanted access, and an encrypted file/drive only the encryption software can access among others.

• A few days back, we briefly reviewed Truecrypt as a secure software encryption tool.

• Geary Email client is my by same developers who created Shotwell application, it is lightweight and open source email reader alternative to Thunderbird and others. Geary works with most popular webmail services, including Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook, as well as providing IMAP and SMTP support which means you can setup manual IMAP mail service for other providers. Basically it is inspired from webmail client like Gmail, it organizes mails into ‘conversations’ rather than threads. Conversation styles threading keeps things tidy and neat – quite useful on mailing lists.

• Mattermost 3.0 offers a long awaited features: multi-team accounts, Japanese language translation, and full width display, plus upgrades to apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Linux and Mac, emojis, and we have new integrations for Outlook, Ruby & Rust.

• Skype is a very well known voice over IP service that is as well cross-platform, the client on Linux however, it is rather unpleasant to use and mostly buggy with way fewer features than its counterparts on other platforms.

• Previously I covered Ring which is a secure cross-platform alternative to Skype, but then there are even more functional optional softwares to Skype that are rather uncommon and I ‘ll be featuring just three of them (which i term as the best) on this list.

• The internet is by far a well-rounded source to get information on just about anything you might be needing info on. The internet is, however, extremely broad and doesn’t in fact, give you specifics on some info you might be searching for.

• This is where Wikipedia comes in. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that is ultimately a part of the internet but it narrows down your search to exactly what it is that you may be searching for and this is why it’s used by millions around the world.

• The Inverse team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of SOGo v3.1.0. This is a major release of SOGo which focuses on important new features and improved stability over previous versions.

• Alternative Toobar is a plugin that enhances the Rhythmbox play controls and interface, including optional headerbars for GNOME-based desktops.

• Screenkey itself can’t be used to create screencasts, its use is to display your keystrokes on the screen. To record your Linux desktop, I recommend SimpleScreenRecorder.

• File compression is a routine task for most of the Administrators and normal users, to save disk space and to move data from one location to another safer location, this compression utility is used. from historical point of view tar utility was developed to get sequential data backup and it was stored in magnetic tape drives. To send data via internet the compression utility play an important role, it can hold multiple files together and will reduce the overall file size, this can save both the time and internet bandwidth, Linux comes with very quick and effective tools which can reduce file sizes from 40 to 80 percent. In this article we will discuss top 15 utilities in Linux available for users.

Proprietary

• Three years ago, when a user would attempt to download the Google Drive client from their Linux computer, Google would bring them to the appropriate download page, which of course landed them on a page with a message read: “Not (yet) supported for Linux.” What’s the deal with Google not developing a sync client for Linux users, seeing as to how they build a lot of their things using Linux? There’s one simple answer to that, unfortunately. Windows is mainstream, so a lot of their focus is put towards what a majority of people use. The bigger the market, the more money in their pockets. But don’t fear, change is near!

Instructionals/Technical

• In the devops space it is hard to deny that docker is currently the hot tool that everyone is talking about. In this article, I will give a quick introduction to what docker is, why it is useful, and a quick real life example of what it takes to deploy a python web application with a redis database, served in isolated docker containers.

• While investigating some test failures on a project involving ImageMagick (a parser for the metadata that ImageMagick extracts out of documents), I noticed different versions of ImageMagick were producing outputs in different formats. Not only the formats were differing but also some of the data was missing, or the values were different.

Games

• I’m using ARCH Linux on PS4 running 1.76 fw.

• Hopefully they will gradually introduce support for more cards, as that’s quite a limited selection right now. Still, Vulkan is young and not many games support it yet so they can actually afford to take a little time with it to get it right.

• Back when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were announced in 2013, I recall there was much talk about the “end of console gaming” because both consoles had x86 architecture. In effect, that makes them barely different than most modern PCs. This knowledge hasn’t caused the great, total shift to PC gaming that forum prophets foretold at the time, of course, but a recent video showing a PS4 running Linux Steam games reveals just how closely the device is related to ordinary PCs.

• The Mims Beginning is a very promising strategy god-like game that has supported Linux for quite some time. It’s really pleasing to see it have a final release.

• I remember trying out a much earlier version of the game and it looks like the developers have really polished it up since then. The reviews on Steam are certainly painting a decent picture for it.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The latest updates for KDE’s Plasma, Applications and Frameworks series are now available to all Chakra users, together with other package updates.

• Plasma 5.6.4 includes a month’s worth of bugfixes and new translations, with the changes being related to the plasma desktop and workspace, kwin, kscreen and networkmanager, among others.

• Breeze icons are very simple SVG files, especially the ones used for actions that are mostly monochromatic are very simple, and that’s part of their appeal. Since some time, Plasma themes that are SVG files as well have the capability of being colored with system themes. So, why not doing this for every icon as well?

• KRunner is one of the rare areas of Plasma that have been mostly stagnating since 4.x, and is one of the rare parts of Plasma that are still known to crash. At least, the UI has improved in the last few releases thanks to Kai who rightfully became the new KRunner maintainer.

• In 3 days, the initial deadline for Google Summer of Code starts, but for a lot of student’s, the GSoC started days ago.

• Hello everybody, I am Akshat Tandon and I am a computer science undergraduate at IIIT­-H, India. I have been selected in GSoC and this summer I will be working on Marble to improve its vector tiling and rendering capabilities.

• Let’s start this post by watching two videos I have finally got KStars Lite working on Android.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• After quite a lot of positive feedback from my last post I’ll write some more about custom plugins. Next up is returning custom applications into the installed list. The use case here is a proprietary software distribution method that installs custom files into your home directory, but you can use your imagination for how this could be useful.

• GNOME Games 3.21.2 was released this weekend as the newest version of this GNOME desktop application for managing your video games collection.

• New support found in this GNOME Games development snapshot leading up to GNOME 3.22 is support for Atari 2600 and 7800 games. Via new plugins, those having Atari 2600/7800 emulated games on your Linux desktop can now browse your collection of titles via this software.

• Hello everybody! My name’s Rares Visalom and I’m a second year Computer Science student at “Politehnica” University of Bucharest, currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

• This summer I have the opportunity to contribute to GNOME as a GSoC 2016 student. First of all I’d like to congratulate all the other students that were accepted. I’m sure all of us will give our best in order to actively contribute to the open source community.

• One of the most intuitive ways to interact with an application is reproducing what we do in real life. Applications try to shorten the learning curve by using metaphores of real world objects.

• We all know what GNOME Calendar is: a virtual calendar application. As such, using real-life calendars as a reference for it’s UI is mostly a good thing, except that we’d probably have an annoying time moving events around. In this regard, technology can improve what we do.

Distributions

• 4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki informs Softpedia today, May 21, 2016, about the launch of an updated version of his open-source, standalone Antivirus Live CD project.

Reviews

• Today in Linux news Bodhi 3.2.1 was released May 13 and today Christine Hall shared her experiences with it. Elsewhere, Jack Wallen gave Open Sourcers permission to use Close software and Bruce Byfield posted 7 tips to help newcomers choose a Linux desktop. Fedora kernel developer Laura Abbott today said that she’ll be blogging about Rawhide so folks can “see how the sausage is made” and OpenSource.com began a poll asking, “Why do you use Linux?”

• Before you read this conclusion, please do me a favor. Please read my review of Vivid, then go back up, find the links to the Werewolf review and the best distro of 2015 summary, and then read those, too. Then, come back to this piece here. Now, please try to explain, in human lingo, how it is possible than only one year apart, we get such a huge, drastic difference in the distro behavior.

• Xubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus is meant to be the rock-solid LTS, beautiful and elegant and majestic. It is none of that. There are so many bugs and problems it really turns me off the whole Linux thing. I feel like an idiot for doing these reviews, for wasting hundreds and thousands of hours of my life trying to promote a cause and technology that ultimately just ends up failing randomly, because people can’t be bothered to invest time in proper QA rather than pointless, arbitrary release dates and silly changes that serve no purpose.

• Not good. Not good at all. Realtek issues, mouse going away after waking from sleep, login niggles, package management woes, sucky Bluetooth stack, Thunar hiccups, Samba crap. This is just a short list of everything that’s wrong with Xenial, and then, to make it even worse, the Unity and the Xfce versions can’t really agree on the suck list. They all have their own unique problems, and there’s no consistency. I’m just pissed off. April 2016 was meant to be a happy, cheerful month. Now, I’m facing total destruction and distros that barely work. And yes, please, skip to the very end, and tell me how it’s all my fault. Anyhow, Xubuntu Xerus gets only 3/10. Do not upgrade for now.

Screenshots/Screencasts

Arch Family

• Esclapion, the maintainer of the Manjaro-LXQt community edition of the well-known, Arch Linux-based Manjaro Linux operating system, announced today the release of Manjaro Linux LXQt “Ice” 16.05.

• Linux 4.6 was released on 15th May by Linus Torvalds and the wait to enjoy the update is over. Few distros has adopted the change. According to Arch Linux developer Tobias Powalowski, Linux kernel 4.6 has entered the testing repository in Arch Linux which is on 9th position on popularity whereas Debian-based SparkyLinux has also landed in the operating system’s ‘unstable’ repository. The developers have also provided installation instruction for SparkyLinux which is ready to use, out of the box operating system.

• Arch Linux is a lightweight, flexible and independently developed general purpose GNU/Linux distribution. And if there is a unique and special distribution of Linux, then it has got to be Arch Linux. Experienced users can build their very own Arch Linux system from the ground up.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

• This week we finally could add the long awaited Qt 5.6 to Tumbleweed. It was blocked for a long time as it exposed a bug in, what showed, icewm (the window manager used during installation). This bug though is so deeply nested in the architecture of icewm, that in the end, it was decided to workaround the bug with a ‘fix’ in YaST directly.

Slackware Family

• While everyone is waiting for the 14.2 release of our beloved Slackware Linux distribution, those pesky developers keep releasing their own software. So this was the week where KDE Frameworks, Plasma and Applications all had newer versions than I have in my repository. Guess what – I have prepared a new set of Plasma5 packages for the month of May so that I am ready for a new Live ISO… next Slackware release or not.

• Yesterday on the final day of my short holiday (of sorts) I prepped and released version 1.0.0 of my “liveslak” project. It is stable and the bugs that were reported (plus some more) have been taken care of.

• The “1.0.0” marker is not the end of its development of course. It means that I consider the project production-ready. It will be used to create Live Editions of Slackware 14.2 (64bit and 32bit) when that is released. There’s still some more ideas for liveslak that I want to implement and those will become available as 1.x releases.

Red Hat Family

• Systemd 230 is the new release available and it comes with a number of new features. Systemd 230 comes with DNSSEC turned on by default in systemd-resolved, there are a number of systemd-logind enhancements, LDDP support has been extended, journalctl has seen various improvements, various compatibility libraries were removed, and systemd-bus-proxyd was removed since KDBUS is “unlikely to be merged into the kernel in its current form.”

• I’ve been considering moving this blog from Digital Ocean to Amazon Web Services for a while now but finally bit the bullet after a recent DDOS attack on my backend database. This was caused by a misconfiguration on my part, I remembered wrong and thought that I had disabled all remote connections during the mysql_secure_installation process but it actually only restricts remote access to the root account: (Setting local-only access is done with a ‘bind-address=127.0.0.1’ in the my.cnf file by the way). So is that Digital Ocean’s fault? No, absolutely not but it made me paranoid enough to want a firewall on top of my MySQL restrictions to make sure that no other service was allowing outside connections. This could easily be done on the server side but then I’d have to manage firewalls on every instance I stand up and I have plans to.. well I should keep my world domination plans to myself but suffice it to say I wanted a higher level firewall. Digital Ocean offers nothing of the sort, every droplet is wide open unless you change it on the server side. Amazon on the other hand offers security groups, allowing you to create multiple firewall schemes at the network level for different types of servers and manage them with a nice interface.

Finance

• The stock of Red Hat Incorporated (NYSE:RHT) registered a decrease of 17.34% in short interest. RHT’s total short interest was 4.69 million shares in May as published by FINRA. Its down 17.34% from 5.67 million shares, reported previously. With 1.21 million shares average volume, it will take short sellers 4 days to cover their RHT’s short positions. The stock increased 1.01% or $0.73 on May 20, hitting $73.17. Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) has declined 5.83% since October 15, 2015 and is downtrending. It has underperformed by 8.13% the S&P500.

Fedora

• April/May started the cycle of planning for the next year here in Red Hat. This means it’s time to write goals. Goals are supposed to be SMART. This is easier for some parts of my job than others. One of my primary responsibilities is making Fedora releases. While discussing my goals, it was pointed out that just saying “Did I make releases?” doesn’t fully capture what I do. Scripts can make releases. I can’t yet replace myself with a script so this job must involve not being useless.

• Those old Fedoras were so nice, BTW. Funnily enough, that VM with 1 CPU and 1.5 GB starts quicker than the host laptop with the benefit of SystemD and its ability to run tasks in parallel. Of course, the handing of WiFi in Fedora 20+ is light years ahead of nm-applet in Fedora 10. There was some less noticeable progress elsewhere as well. But in the same time, the bloat was phenomenal.

Debian Family

• Huh, where do I start. I started working for a great CEO and great company known as Purism. What is so great about it? First of all, CEO (Todd Weaver), is incredible passionate about Free software. Yes, you read it correctly. Free software. Not Open Source definition, but Free software definition. I want to repeat this like a mantra. In Purism we try to integrate high-end hardware with Free software. Not only that, we want our hardware to be Free as much as possible. No, we want to make it entirely Free but at the moment we don’t achieve that. So instead going the way of using older hardware (as Ministry of Freedom does, and kudos to them for making such option available), we sacrifice this bit for the momentum we hope to gain – that brings growth and growth brings us much better position when we sit at negotiation table with hardware producers. If negotiations even fail, with growth we will have enough chances to heavily invest in things such as openRISC or freeing cellular modules. We want to provide in future entirely Free hardware&software device that has integrated security and privacy focus while it is easy to use and convenient as any other mainstream OS. And we choose to currently sacrifice few things to stay in loop.

• I’m going to be one of the Outreachy interns working on Reproducible Builds for the summer of 2016. My project is to create a tool, tentatively named reprotest, to make the process of verifying that a build is reproducible easier.

• This is my 6th month working on Debian LTS, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian. This is my largest month so far, for which I had requested 20 hours of work.

• The sixth alpha release of the Debian Installer for the upcoming “Stretch” release is now available.

• The Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 6 release has various bug fixes, now uses the Linux 4.5 kernel rather than 4.3, fixes various partitioning issues, udev support is now present in wget, various installer enhancements, and much more.

• The team behind the Debian Installer open-source project have announced earlier, May 21, 2016, the release and general availability of the sixth Alpha build of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch.”

• As you might be aware of, Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” is the next major version of the award-winning and highly acclaimed Debian GNU/Linux operating system, which is currently being developed under the Debian Testing umbrella, and the Debian Installer team is working very hard to bring in new features and technologies.

Derivatives

• A team of developers made good on their threats to fork Debian Linux late last year, after the community’s leadership voted to replace sysvinit with systemd, making systemd the default init boot process.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Using Ubuntu 16.04 and want to install the official Telegram Linux app?

• Don’t run off to the official website to get the official binary: there’s now a Telegram app snap package available on Ubuntu 16.04.

• At first, the Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition — often called the Ubuntu tablet — resembles most modern tablets, with a hard plastic case that folds into a stand, limited multi-tasking from an overview screen, and some ability to act like a workstation or laptop. However, even a tentative exploration reveals that the Ubuntu Edition is much more, due mostly to its operating system and the Unity interface, which comes of age at last on this tablet.

• If you are trying to focus on your work and don’t want to disable notifications completely then here is a tool called “NoNotifications” for you, which works in Ubuntu Unity. It is just a simple panel indicator which allows you to disable notification temporarily. This tool should be enhanced to offer more features like mobile OS’s already have, to completely disable everything Like: tones, alerts, notifications, and so, and schedule a time to activate/deactivate could be a plus for this small application.

• NoNotifications is a simple indicator for Ubuntu (Unity 7) that allows you to temporarily suppress NotifyOSD notifications. The tool is useful for presentations, when working, and so on, to prevent unwanted notifications from getting in your way or distracting you.

• Back in the hippie days there was a lot of talk about plastic people, which would be fake people. Back in those days, plastic people were to be avoided, as was plastic anything.

• How times have changed. These days we embrace a plastic world. As example, we replace carefully hand crafted wristwatches made to last a lifetime with electronic rhinestone wearables that will be obsolete in a year or two because they tell us how fast and how seldom we walk.

• You see, by the ’60s definition, plastic didn’t need to be made of plastic to be plastic. You dig?

• [...]

• Swapnil Bhartiya at CIO found BQ’s hardware to be more than up to the task and also thought that nearly all aspects of the Ubuntu Touch with convergence to be beyond super fantastic. Gesture swiping is amazing, Scopes are the best thing since sliced bread, and using convergence to run in full blown desktop mode is “one of it’s greatest features.” The App Store, which he calls the “most exciting part of this Ubuntu tablet,” disappoints him because despite having tons of cool apps he’s never seen offered for phones before, it doesn’t have a few things he likes.

• “After using the tablet for a while,” he opines, “I had to face the harsh reality that as much as wanted to like the tablet, the lack of what I consider essential native apps will prevent me from using it as my primary, or even as a secondary, device.”

• The only apps he mentions that he would like but which are MIA? “[N]one of the streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime are available on the device.”

• Maybe he should just buy himself a TV.

• [...]

• In case you missed it, the conference live streamed Corey Doctorow’s Thursday morning keynote address, called “Open, Closed, and Demon Haunted: An Internet of Things That Act Like Inkjet Printers,” along with all other keynotes throughout the event. Included below is a short snippet of the talk that’s available on YouTube. Doctorow’s complete talk is available online, but requires the opening of an account with O’Reilly in order to view it.

Flavours and Variants

• Cinnamon 3.0 is the latest release of Cinnamon Desktop Environment and it will become as default desktop for upcoming Linux Mint 18 codenamed “sarah”.

Devices/Embedded

• An extremely simple new way to setup Raspberry Pi Zero as a USB virtual network gadget, allowing SSH, SFTP, VNC etc over a single USB cable. All without need of a keyboard, mouse, screen etc to setup!

• We are pleased to announce that Mycroft Core 0.6 Alpha is available for download today. Mycroft Core is a lightweight, portable piece of software written in Python. You can run it on anything from a Raspberry Pi to a gaming rig. Mycroft Core includes Adapt, Mimic, OpenSTT, and multiple open APIs to create an experience that allows users to interact with their technology using the most natural form of human communication – speech.

• This software is the core from which our community will soon develop a host of new skills. We’ve released it because we want you to build on top of it. It contains an awesome skills framework that allows you to do things like control your Phillips Hue lights or add new voice commands to your Team Fortress avatar (both of these are real examples).

• Arduino Srl and ST unveiled a graphically-rich Arduino STAR Otto SBC based on the 32-bit STM32F469 MCU, and featuring WiFi, MIPI-DSI, audio, and cam links.

• At the Bay Area Maker Faire this week, Arduino Srl and STMicroelectronics (ST) announced a jointly developed, high-end Arduino board. Only a few months ago we would be raving about the Arduino STAR Otto’s WiFi connection, enabled here via an ESP8266 WiFi Module, but this has recently become almost a given on the latest Arduino boards. The STAR Otto does break new ground, however, in Arduino graphics and multimedia capability.

Phones

Android

• Apple came in third with shipments of 1.5 million Watches and Garmin took fourth place with shipments of 900,000 sports wearables. Samsung and BBK, another Chinese maker of watches for children with tracking capabilities, tied for fifth place after each shipped an estimated 700,000 units.

• It’s really happening. Android apps are coming to Chrome OS. And it’s not just a small subset of apps; the entire Google Play Store is coming to Chrome OS. More than 1.5 million apps will come to a platform that before today was “just a browser,” and Android and Chrome OS take yet another step closer together.

• Ah, that was fabulous news to discover when returning online after two days out of coverage. All readers of this blog already knew what I just discovered.. And let me say that essentially all you ever wanted to know about how will this new Nokia deal work, and the sensible analysis about it, is already on this blog, but written by my readers in the comments section (thank you!). I don’t really need to write my own analysis, I could just quote my regular readers.

• Google has revealed that its Project Ara modular phone is almost ready. With some major compromises on the modularity front, Google will be shipping the Developer Edition of Ara in Q4 2016. The final consumer version of the phone will arrive next year.

• But if I’m totally honest, I’m sort of bored. And this isn’t limited to just Android. Nearly ten years into modern mobile operating systems, we’ve kind of reached a plateau.

• You probably won’t win any awards by guessing that the next version of Android coming after “N” will be Android “O.” Still, while the odds favor it, there is no guarantee that Google will continue to use the same naming scheme for the Android open source OS that it has employed since deciding that Android 1.5 would be “Cupcake.” Since then, there have been 11 consecutive builds (including Android N) that have followed the same rules.

• For the past two years, smartwatches have been all over the place. As the relatively new category has developed, we have seen countless ideas on what smartwatches should be and how they should work. Despite some success from the Apple Watch and to a smaller extent, Pebble and Samsung, smartwatches have yet to really catch on in the mainstream, with many critics and users complaining that they are too complicated and too duplicative of the smartphones they already own.

• We’ve spent a lot of time this past year wondering if and when Google would bite the bullet and just build its own Android phone for consumers to take on the iPhone directly — there have been hints and leaks, but nothing real. And in true Google fashion, the reveal was nothing like what we expected — the company announced today that it’s moving the ambitious Project Ara modular smartphone team out of the ATAP research lab and into its own proper unit within Google, under new hardware chief (and former Motorola president) Rick Osterloh. And a consumer Ara phone is coming in 2017 as well, which marks the first time Google has ever built its own phone hardware — the company’s Nexus phones have been built by partners like Huawei, LG, and HTC.

• Why Cupertino should take a hint from Google’s latest updates to Android N and Android Wear.

• For those that want to see what’s new in Google’s recently announced and updated Android N software, you can see the changes in our Android N vs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow walkthrough below. This is a comparison of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow vs the Android N Developer preview 3 on a Nexus 6, and a Nexus 6P. This week at Google IO the company released the third preview, a stable version, and even more features have been confirmed.

• Chrome OS sits at a strange intersection of technology. It’s an alloy of Web and desktop, which does it little service for power users. The addition of Android apps for Chrome OS will help, and the sleeper hit may be gaming.

• Hey! You — yes, you! Didja hear? It’s actually happening! For realsies: The long-discussed Android-Chrome OS merger is officially underway!

• Hang on — I should clarify. This isn’t the outright combining of Android and Chrome OS that people have been predicting for ages, with ever-increasing fervor in the months leading up to this week’s Google I/O developers’ conference. This is the far more nuanced aligning of the two platforms that those of us watching things closely have been seeing take shape for years now.

• And with a couple key announcements fresh off the Google I/O skillet, the effort is catapulting forward faster than ever.

Free Software/Open Source

• On the ownCloud blog, Jos shared today that the ownCloud community has hit an impressive milestone!

• The project I started 6 years ago just got a contribution from the 1000th volunteer who considered ownCloud worth the time and effort to contribute code to! Only a year ago, we were so proud having hit over 550 contributors at our 5 year anniversary. It is stunning how fast ownCloud has continued to grow.

• Sumana Harihareswara and Maria Naggaga gave back-to-back talks at OSCON 2016 on how we can build our open source communities in such a way that contributors feel safe and loved.

• First, recognize that people participate in open source for many reasons. Some of us are lucky enough to get paid to work on it, others are doing it for a school project, and others are doing it just for fun or for the passion of the project. Start by looking at your project as an outsider and try to think about what they might find discouraging or not helpful. There are things in our projects that can be alienating. Evaluate these weird things in your projects and decide if you want to make changes or not.

Events

• Between 11-13 May 2016, Zacharias Mitzelos and I had been to Zagreb, Croatia for the 23rd DORS/CLUC. We were joined by Elio Qoshi, Jona Azizaj from Albania and Gergely Rakosi from Hungary.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Canonical recently pushed the first point release of the Mozilla Firefox 46.0 web browser to the stable channels for all supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, along with Mozilla Thunderbird 38.8.0.

• Mozilla Firefox 46.0.1 is a small bug fix update to the acclaimed and widely used open-source and cross-platform web browser, patching various security issues discovered by Mozilla’s skillful developers or reported by users since the release of Mozilla Firefox 46.0.

• Lately, we have seen a lot of people struggling with CSS, from beginners to seasoned developers. Some of them don’t like the way it works, and wonder if replacing CSS with a different language would be better—CSS processors emerged from this thinking. Some use CSS frameworks in the hopes that they will have to write less code (we have seen in a previous article why this is usually not the case). Some are starting to ditch CSS altogether and use JavaScript to apply styles.

SaaS/Back End

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

Licensing/Legal

• The Free Software Legal & Licensing Workshop (LLW) is a three-day event held every year for legal professionals (and aficionados) who work in the realm of free and open-source software (FOSS). It is organized by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and, this year, the event was held in Barcelona (Spain), April 13-15. The topics covered during the event ranged from determining what constitutes authorship, how to attribute it, and what is copyrightable, to the complexity of licenses and how to make them more accessible for potential licensees lacking in legal background. In addition, license enforcement and compliance were discussed, with a particular focus on how the GPL and related licenses have done in court.

• According to the organizers, there were approximately 90 attendees, 70% of whom were legal professionals and 30% technical professionals linked in some way to legal matters in their communities or companies. Attendees came from legal firms, traditionally open-source companies and communities, such as the Linux Foundation, Red Hat, and Debian, tech companies with some open-source products (Intel and others), and companies that are using open-source software embedded in their products. Discussions were held under the Chatham House Rule, which means that names and affiliations of participants are only available for those who have explicitly agreed.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Markup formats can inspire just as much devotion and loathing as programming languages. TeX versus HTML, DocBook versus Mallard—the list is probably endless. But the “lightweight” markup formats (Markdown, reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, and so on) are the subject of particular scrutiny. Users almost always write them by hand, not in a dedicated tool, and the formats are becoming ever more widespread: as input formats in web applications and as the preferred document format on sites like GitHub. But these lightweight formats, Markdown in particular, have developed a reputation for compatibility problems in recent years—see the CommonMark effort for one of several attempts to impose order on the chaos. Thus, when version 6.0 of ReText, a GUI editor for Markdown and reStructuredText documents, was released recently, I was curious enough to take a look.

• This is a story of what I have lived or witnessed a few times so far. A story of an organization that used to consume, develop and ship proprietary software for many years. At some point in time, management took the decision of using Open Source. Like in most cases, the decision was forced by its customers, providers, competitors… and by numbers.

• [...]

• This organization gained control over its production and, by consuming Open Source, it could focus many resources in differentiation, without changing the structure, development and delivery processes. At some point, it was shipping products that involved a significant percentage of generic software taken “from internet”.

• It became an Open Source producer.

• You can recognise such organizations they frequently create a specific group, usually linked to R&D, in change of brining all the innovation that is happening “in the Open Source community” into the organization.

• Little by little this organisation realised that giving fast and satisfactory answers, to its customer demands became more and more expensive. They got stuck in what rapidly became an old kernel or tool chain version…. Bringing innovation from “the community” required back-porting, solving complex integration issues, incompatibilities with what your provider brings, what your customer wants.

• It’s been almost five years since we heard that “software is eating the world.” The number of SaaS applications has exploded and there is a rising wave of software innovation in the area of APIs that provide critical connective tissue and increasingly important functionality. There has been a proliferation of third-party API companies, which is fundamentally changing the dynamics of how software is created and brought to market.

• The application programming interface (API) has been a key part of software development for decades as a way to develop for a specific platform, such as Microsoft Windows. More recently, newer platform providers, from Salesforce to Facebook and Google, have offered APIs that help the developer and have, in effect, created a developer dependency on these platforms.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The year 2016 is quickly shaping up to be one of the hottest years on record for 3D printing innovations. Although there is still a lot of hype surrounding 3D printing and how it may or may not be the next industrial revolution, one thing is for certain: the cost of printing will continue to drop while the quality of 3D prints continues to rise.

• This development can be traced to advanced 3D printing technologies becoming accessible due to the expiration of key patents on pre-existing industrial printing processes.

• Electrospinning is a fascinating process where a high voltage potential is applied between a conductive emitter nozzle and a collector screen. A polymer solution is then slowly dispensed from the nozzle. The repulsion of negative charges in the solution forces fine fibers emanate from the liquid. Those fibers are then rapidly accelerated towards the collector screen by the electric field while being stretched and thinned down to a few hundred nanometers in diameter. The large surface area of the fine fibers lets them dry during their flight towards the collector screen, where they build up to a fine, fabric-like material. We’ve noticed that electrospinning is hoped to enable fully automated manufacturing of wearable textiles in the future.

Programming/Development

• Below are the key changes that will be introduced (or removed) in PHP 7.1. For a full list, and to see which changes are being discussed, check out the official PHP RFC.

• PHP 7.1 is coming later this year as the first significant update to last year’s PHP 7 release that delivered huge speed improvements.

• We’ve already been looking forward to new features with PHP 7.1 and in not looking at the 7.1 work in a few months, more improvements have materialized.

• The following projects have been selected to participate to SOCIS 2016.

• Instruction for students: you can apply now, but you must first contact the mentor of the project of your choice and discuss the contents.

Leftovers

• Here at the F-35 integrated test force, pilots spend their days simulating real missions to prepare the jets to one day operate on the battlefield.

• Defense News got a glimpse into the day-to-day life of an F-35 test pilot during a May 4 visit to Edwards Air Force Base. We followed Maj. Raven LeClair, assistant director of operations for the 461st flight test squadron, as he zipped up his flight suit, climbed into the cockpit, taxied to the runway and finally took off into the clear, desert sky.

• Our announcement got a lot of attention—much more than we were expecting. Throughout the week, our friends, fellow media workers, and coworkers at VICE have been asking us how the experiment is going.

• The short answer is, the experiment went well. We are learning what Slack is essential for, and in what ways it has been serving as a bandaid for what could be a more robust editorial structure.

Science

• The Egyptian military has released images of items found during the search in the Mediterranean Sea for missing Egypt Air flight MS804.

• They include life vests, parts of seats and objects clearly marked EgyptAir.

• The Airbus A320 was en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard when it vanished from radar early on Thursday.

• I think it could be months or years before the cause will be known unless explosive residue is discovered on the stuff already recovered.

Hardware

• Please sign below, allowing Purism to provide this petition to our Intel Partner Account Manager that users want an “ME-less” CPU. “ME-less” is a defined term from within Intel created when discussing with Purism the need to have a CPU without the Management Engine (ME).

• For Q1 2016 we are reporting on 61,590 operational hard drives used to store encrypted customer data in our data center. There are 9.5% more hard drives in this review versus our last review when we evaluated 56,224 drives. In Q1 2016, the hard drives in our data center, past and present, totaled over one billion hours in operation to date. That’s nearly 42 million days or 114,155 years worth of spinning hard drives. Let’s take a look at what these hard drives have been up to.

Health/Nutrition

• Anti-corporate activists, organic farmers, Indigenous peoples, environmental groups and others took the streets across six continents and over 400 cities on Saturday in a global grassroots march against bioengineering giant Monsanto.

• “The fight against corporate control of our food is global,” a food sovereignty campaigner with UK-based nonprofit Global Justice Now rallied the crowd marching in London.

• The medicinal properties of cannabidiol (better known as CBD), a compound found in the Cannabis sativa L. plant species, are quickly drawing the attention of scientists, plant-medicine lovers, dietary-supplement companies, venture capitalists, professional athletes and Big Pharma — not to mention people living with serious, chronic medical conditions. Insiders predict the burgeoning market will be as profitable as the NFL.

• In states that allow it, veterans are a major step closer to being able to obtain medical marijuana.

• On Thursday, both chambers of Congress approved measures prohibiting the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from enforcing a policy prohibiting government doctors from prescribing medical marijuana to veterans. That essentially means doctors will now be able to recommend medical marijuana to veterans in the 24 states (plus D.C.) where it’s legal.

• The city of Long Beach filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Co. Thursday, claiming the manufacturer’s long-banned cancer-producing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are responsible for the contamination of the city’s storm water, port waters, and other bodies of water.

• Millions of tons of tiny debris from plastic bags, bottles and clothes in the world’s oceans present a serious threat to human health and marine ecosystems.

• This is the stark warning issued by the United Nations in a report on the most dangerous environmental problems facing the world today.

• Global plastic production has increased dramatically in recent years. Between 2004 and 2014, the amount of plastic produced rose by 38 per cent, the report said.

• William J. Hager, 86, said he had run out of options.

• His wife, Carolyn Hager, 78, had been ill for the last 15 of the more than 50 years they were married. The cost of her medications had become so burdensome that they could no longer afford it, he said. So on Monday morning while she was sleeping, he shot her in the head, he told the deputy who came to their Florida home.

• The killing in Port St. Lucie and Mr. Hager’s explanation were detailed in an arrest affidavit and by local news media. Mr. Hager was arrested and charged with first-degree premeditated murder. But the case appeared to also highlight the difficulties faced by older people who are retired or on fixed incomes and struggle to pay for their medicine when they are ill or in pain.

• At the sheriff’s office, Mr. Hager told deputies that his wife had a “lot of illnesses and other ailments which required numerous medications,” which he “could no longer afford,” the affidavit said.

• According to a study by the AARP, an advocacy group for people over 50, specialty drugs that treat complex, chronic conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis come with huge price tags.

Security

• On May 15, CoreOS was informed of a vulnerability in the alpha version of CoreOS Linux. Within 8 hours of this notification, over 99% of affected systems had been automatically patched. Though this issue was limited to an alpha version, we hold all of our releases to the same security standards, and we immediately responded, reported, and corrected the issue. This post describes the nature of the vulnerability, our response, and our plans to avoid similar issues in the future.

• There’s a new hardware company on the scene called Purism, and the name is a significant clue as to what the company is all about: pure software. At its heart, Purism is dedicated to providing computer hardware driven entirely by open source software so that users can “trust, but verify.” Purism is putting itself in direct opposition to what it considers “surveillance capitalism.”

• I spoke with CEO Todd Weaver at Pepcom, and it was one of the most significant conversations I’ve had with a tech exec in a long time. I was already on board with Mr. Weaver’s general message when he laid that phrase on me, “surveillance capitalism.” That’s when he really had me hooked.

Defence/Aggression

• The decision by President Obama, egged on by his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to depose Libya’s long-time leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, led to near-complete chaos inside a country that had been otherwise stable since the 1960s.

• Now come reports that Netanyahu is offering the Defense Ministry to former Moldovan nightclub bouncer (and resident of a West Bank settlement) Avigdor Lieberman. This will bring into the ruling coalition Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, which even within the Israeli context is usually described as “hard right.”

• Bringing Lieberman into the government is indicative not only of the overall orientation of that government but also of some larger disturbing trends in Israeli attitudes that the government has fomented more than it has discouraged.

• If Lieberman is made defense minister he would replace Moshe Ya’alon, who in recent days has backed the Israeli military in prosecuting (though only for manslaughter, not the murder that occurred) an Israeli soldier who was caught on videotape shooting in the head, at close range, a Palestinian man who was wounded and lying on the ground, already subdued and obviously not a threat. Lieberman has joined other hardliners in expressing support for the soldier. (Netanyahu has visited the soldier’s family to express sympathy.)

• Last year, the United States spent more than $596 billion on the military, a total greater than the next six countries in the world combined. But the Republican-controlled Congress is looking to increase that number for next year.

• On Wednesday, the House passed its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), allowing for $602 billion to be spent on the country’s defense in 2017, but the way the money is budgeted could mean that total military spending could actually end up being far higher.

• Under the bill, $18 billion would be moved from the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), which is currently used primarily to fund operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, to the general budget to be used for additional troops and equipment. As Politico reported, this would likely leave enough money for such operations only through April, forcing the next president to request additional funding. Thus, the House bill would effectively increase the total military expenditure for next year.

• This rationalization perpetuates one of the great frauds of the war in the Pacific. As described in John Dower’s excellent War Without Mercy, by the spring of 1945 the Japanese military had been demolished. The disparities in the casualties figures between the Japanese and the Americans are striking. From 1937 to 1945, the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy suffered 1,740,955 military deaths in combat. Dower estimates that another 300,000 died from disease and starvation. In addition, another 395,000 Japanese civilians died as a result of Allied saturation bombing that began in March 1945. The total dead: more than 2.7 million. By contrast, American military deaths totaled 100,997.

• If we continue down the road toward a totalitarian society, propaganda may become even more pervasive. With the population unendingly surveilled, relentlessly entrapped, enslaved by debt, permanently profiled and all-too-frequently imprisoned, elites will go about their exploitation with calm impunity as ordinary citizens internalize the dictates of power. The question is whether the flashpoints of unrest seemingly everywhere in the world will coalesce into a popular front that can stem the tide of empire. We have little time left before state repression, blood-soaked bombing campaigns, and ecological ruin overcome us. It’s either a Green New Deal or Mad Max. The choice is ours.

• The apparent death of Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor on Saturday won’t have an immediate impact on the military operations of the insurgent group, which has been expanding in recent months, analysts and Afghan government officials said.

• To return all military grade weapons to the Department of Defense “Excess Military Equipment Program” AKA the 1033 Program that is arming police departments all over the U.S. In particular, they returned 1 Tank, a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle, 3 grenade launchers (“37 mm less less-lethal launch platforms” and 61 M-16 rifles).

• Venezuela is nearing collapse It can turn violent soon. Last week Nicolás Maduro decreed a state of emergency and suspended constitutional rights. He fears “the Empire” is set to strike soon. This measure comes abruptly as the opposition demands Venezuelan Electoral Panel to ratify the 1.8 million signatures collected in just a few hours as a first step to constitutionally call for a referendum to remove him from power. And he is looking for ways to delay this process.

• An article in Counterpunch written by Eric Draitser characterized the referendum as a coup orchestrated by the opposition to oust Maduro and destroy the legacy of Chávez’ revolution. It further argues that Venezuela’s economic predicament—already a humanitarian crisis—is the product of a plot of the Venezuelan right-wing elites that control the National Assembly and the U.S. imperial interests, comparing the current crisis in Venezuela with the overthrow of Allende in the seventies by Nixon, Kissinger, the CIA and the Chilean elites.

• Turkey’s incoming prime minister said on Sunday his top priority was to deliver a new constitution to create an executive presidency, giving President Tayyip Erdogan the broad powers he has long sought.

• As delegates from the ruling AK Party unanimously elected Transport Minister Binali Yildirim as their new party leader, and therefore the next premier, Yildirim left no doubt that he would prioritize the policies closest to Erdogan’s heart.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• The tussle between Singapore and Indonesia over last year’s crippling haze escalated with Jakarta saying it will halt cooperation with Singapore on environment, forestry and haze-related issues.

• Indonesia’s environment and forestry minister also said Jakarta will undertake a unilateral review of several agreements with Singapore on collaboration on haze related matters.

• One of Antarctica’s great glaciers could become unstable if global warming continues at the present pace. As warm seas wash the ice shelf, the land-based mass of ice could begin to retreat, cross a critical threshold in the present century and then withdraw 300 kilometres inland.

• In the course of doing so it would spill tremendous quantities of water into the oceans: enough to raise global sea levels by 2.9 metres and threaten cities that are home to billions.

• Oil and gas companies are spending heavily to crush three Colorado ballot initiatives that would limit fracking. And some of the state’s most powerful Democrats are helping them.

• The stakes are particularly high for several Colorado communities that have voted to limit or ban oil and gas development locally. Those limits were nullified in two cities by state Supreme Court decisions earlier this month. So the ballot initiatives may be their last best chance to slow development whose speed has surprised even cities that initially supported oil and gas projects.

• Last week a damaged pipeline at a Royal Dutch Shell deepwater production field about 100 miles off the Louisiana coast spilled what’s been officially estimated at 90,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before the leak was stopped.

• Coming out of last December’s landmark climate negotiations in Paris, the question is no longer if societies will shift toward renewables, but when and how. For all the limitations of the deal—that it is largely unenforceable, contains only passing reference to human and indigenous rights, and treats historical polluters with kid gloves—its clearest and most redeeming feature is that it signals an end to the fossil fuel era.

• Last week, Portugal set a record for renewable energy use. Through a combination of hydroelectric, solar, and wind power, electricity use in the country was completely covered for four consecutive days.

• The news was reported by the Portuguese Renewable Energy Association (APREN) in collaboration with ZERO System Sustainable Land Association. According to their measurements, from 6:45 a.m. on Saturday, May 7 to approximately 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday, May 11, Portugal was able to rely entirely on renewables for an impressive 107 hours, the longest the country has ever been able to go.

• As he appears in new documentary The Divide, the great intellectual explains why Brexit is unimportant, why Trump’s climate change denial is catastrophic – and why revolution is easier than you think

• Tokyo-based photographer Danilo Dungo uses drones to take stunning pictures of Japanese cherry blossoms. Every spring, he goes to the Inokashira Park to admire the blossoms, and while regular photography capture the park’s beauty, the drones reveal something else altogether.

• When seen from a great height, the lake Inokashira Park lake appears to be entirely covered in blossoms! Resembling pollen in a river stream, the blossoms turn the lake a surreal pink, a view unseen by most before the drone age. Be sure to check out Dungo’s other photographs at the National Geographic link below!

Finance

• Today the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) released a study on the potential impacts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as required by law. The report projects that the controversial trade deal would result in a decline in U.S. manufacturing due in part to an increase in manufactured imports in some sectors from Vietnam and Malaysia, where production spurs far more climate pollution than in the U.S. It also notes the controversy surrounding the TPP’s conservation provisions, which are too weak to actually curb environmental abuses in TPP countries. The report further acknowledges broad concern that the TPP would empower polluters to sue the U.S. government in private tribunals over climate and environmental protections.

• Hillary Clinton is dishing out details on how her potential administration would function—and apparently, it includes a lot of help from her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

• Less than one day after his speech at the annual National Rifle Association (NRA) convention, Donald Trump tweeted that a Hillary Clinton presidency would not only eliminate people’s gun rights but strip Clinton of her armed security team as well.

• From Indianapolis to Philadelphia, there were new, younger voices joining the usual chant on the Verizon strike picket lines on Saturday: “What do we want? A contract! When do we want it? Now!”

• Children of striking workers joined their parents for 25 nationwide “Family Day” protests organized by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), one of the unions behind the strike.

• As discussions continue to take place between the Greek government and the country’s lenders, Greece’s economic crisis is showing no signs of abating. Meanwhile, new cuts to pensions, wages and social services are currently on the table. Unemployment remains at record levels, while large-scale privatizations of profitable publicly owned assets are moving forward to appease the demands of Greece’s lenders.

• The attempt to privatize Social Security and Medicare are but two of a growing number of campaigns underway to privatize key aspects of public or social life. These efforts range from local water services, schools and healthcare insurance as well as prisons and the military. And this says nothing about the effort by private corporations to control the postal service and the telecommunications superhighway. With privatization comes increased cost, the deterioration of quality, the increased power of the 1 percent and America’s deepening social crisis.

• In this post, I pointed out that we are going to see an empirical test of Piketty’s theory of rising wealth inequality. The theory itself is not well understood, and Piketty has revisited it since the publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and published an economist’s dream of a paper in full mathematical glory here. The American Economics Association devoted space in its journal to arguments about the theory, giving Piketty an opportunity to discuss his theory in what I think is a very readable paper, and one worth the time.

• He starts by saying that the relation between r, the rate of return to capital, and g, the rate of growth in the overall economy, are not predictive. They cannot be used to forecast the future, and are not even the most important factor in rising wealth inequality. The crucial factors are institutional changes and political shocks. Neither can the relation tell us anything about the decrease in the labor share of national income. He points to supply and demand for skills and education in this paper, as he does in his book, but this is a at best an incomplete explanation, owing more to the neoliberal view that the problems of workers are their fault than to a clear understanding of social processes in the US. A better explanation lies in tax law changes, changes in labor law and enforcement of labor law, rancid decisions from the Supreme Court, failure to update minimum wage and related laws, and government support for outsourcing and globalization.

• Last month, Amazon announced that it’s turning an old hotel it bought in downtown Seattle into a temporary shelter for homeless people.

• Chomsky spoke at the New York Public Library last month about why the financial sector is basically tax-funded.

• Gold certificates were used as paper currency in the United States from 1882 to 1933. These certificates were freely convertible into gold coins.Wikicommons. Public domain. Polanyi, however, brought a new angle of vision to this question. He had watched closely the process by which the Labour Government in England in 1931 and the Popular Front government in France in 1936 were effectively forced to abandon their radical reform agendas by international economic pressures.

• The Central States Pension Fund has no new plan to avoid insolvency, fund director Thomas Nyhan said this week. Without government funding, the fund will run out of money in 10 years, he said.

• At that time, pension benefits for about 407,000 people could be reduced to “virtually nothing,” he told workers and retirees in a letter sent Friday.

• In a last-ditch effort, the Central States Pension Plan sought government approval to partially reduce the pensions of 115,000 retirees and the future benefits for 155,000 current workers. The proposed cuts were steep, as much as 60% for some, but it wasn’t enough. Earlier this month, the Treasury Department rejected the plan because it found that it would not actually head off insolvency.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• To paraphrase the words of that Scottish master Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice, men — and women — go often astray, or “gang aft agley,” as they say in the Highlands. No one knows this better than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

• Twice now, the flight of her presidential aspirations has been forced to circle the airport as other contenders put up an unexpected fight: In 2008, Barack Obama emerged to grab the Democratic nomination away and this year, although all signs point to her finally grabbing the brass ring, unexpected and powerful progressive resistance came from the mighty wind of the Bernie Sanders campaign.

• Certainly, Hillary Clinton is angered by all of this, but the one seemingly more aggrieved — if public comments and private actions are any indication — is Democratic National Committee chair and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Hillary surrogate who takes umbrage like ordinary folks pop their vitamins in the morning.

• As we recently wrote, “… She embodies the tactics that have eroded the ability of Democrats to once again be the party of the working class. As Democratic National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates for Big Money, brought lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the moving parts of the revolving door that twirls between government service and cushy jobs in the world of corporate influence.”

• I’ve written before about how the Hillary Democrats are running against hope, and how the Sanders campaign have outed them as frank corporate shills and enemies of even mild social democracy. But now even nominal liberals, or progressives, or whatever we’re calling them these days have gotten in on the act. Not content with merely saying “No!” to new programs like single-payer health insurance and free college, they’re highlighting the worst aspects of the New Deal in an effort to…well, what exactly? Promote Hillary? Fight Trump? It’s hard to tell.

• Donald Trump’s nationalism echoes that of Europe’s rising right-wing parties and movements — but is far more dangerous.

• It’s the encompassing paradigm we are in, one that has made us vulnerable to the demagoguery of Donald Trump.

• Hey, remember what I said about the coming civil war in the Democratic Party, and how it wouldn’t necessarily be a whole lot more polite than the Republican version? Well, everybody who spouts opinions for a living loves to say “I told you so,” but in this case I can’t claim that: Neither I nor anyone else thought it would get here quite this quickly. After the ugly, angry chaos of the Nevada state convention last weekend and Bernie Sanders’ big victory in the Oregon primary on Tuesday — to go with a virtual tie in Kentucky, where Hillary Clinton won by fewer than 2,000 votes — Democrats now face the possibility of a highly contentious convention in Philadelphia this summer, where the outcome may not be in doubt but the mood will hardly be harmonious.

• Donald Trump’s campaign is truly testing the limits of the old saying “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Unless one operates under the assumption that a hate-filled platform fueled by bigotry, xenophobia and sexism is what the world needs right now. In which case, the Trump cloud appearing on the horizon is seen by some as an invitation to open their arms in exaltation, awaiting the inevitable Trumpian shower to follow.

• For “House of Cards” fans who can’t get enough of fictional President Frank Underwood and his First Lady Claire, it must be tempting to view Bill and Hillary Clinton as their real-life political doppelgangers. Certainly there’s fertile ground for those seeking parallels between the main protagonists of this quintessential political soap opera, and our more flesh and blood “heroes.” Like their imaginary foils, the Clintons’ moral compass is functionally impaired, so much so one suspects the HoC scriptwriters modeled their lead characters on the Democratic Party’s resident “royal couple.”

• It is sad comedy to view working class individuals lather themselves up about Mexicans (when in fact more Mexicans are leaving this nation than entering these days) and steam up over Black Lives Matter (cause White Lives Matter, too, they bellow….the best response to this I’ve seen is….just because you say “Save the Rainforest” doesn’t mean you believe “Fuck the Tundra”)…..and these people don hats that say “Make America Great Again”, as if there was a magical time and place with greatness falling from the heavens on the white and shining American hordes. Okay, maybe that sort of happened, but there were quite a few “others” who did not receive such blessings. Some even received blessings like genocide and slavery, but those are pesky details, “Make America Great Again!” Sometimes these people seem just lost, not evil (but plenty are bile dripping Evilsaurus Rexes to be sure). The billionaire knows these people are disgruntled souls to actively mine–lots of rancor, insecurity and lust for authoritarianism under that crust and mantle. The hats sell for $25.00 on the official Trump site, or about 3 ½ times the Federal Minimum Wage, so what a bargain.

• More specifically, Nader states the goals for day two on Breaking Through the Media: “Leading authors, documentary filmmakers, journalists, cartoonists, new media content producers and other creative advocates will gather to discuss tactics to reform our communications landscape, and open the airwaves and internet up to serious and compelling content. Together we will launch a new organization – ‘Voices’ – a full-spectrum advocacy group to champion an open, democratic communication commons.”

• Context is important. When Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist, he is referring to democratic socialism as practiced in Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Norway and many other countries in Western Europe; in other words, capitalism with a safety net. Sanders is essentially a capitalist who rejects the type of crony capitalism and ruthless corporatism that is killing America’s middle class. By European standards, Sanders is a mainstream liberal, which is a far cry from orthodox Marxist-Leninism as practiced in the old Soviet Union. And compared to some of the left-wing parties that have been gaining momentum in parts of Europe (such as Podemos in Spain or Syreeza in Greece), Sanders is not that far to the left. Rather, the political discourse in the U.S. moved so far to the right in the 1980s and ’90s that openly embracing socialism on any level was considered toxic.

• Through most of the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has been seen as the Democratic contender who appeals to Democrats. Bernie Sanders might attract independents in open-primary states, and political newcomers in most states, but Clinton, we’ve been told, is the candidate of the party faithful. That did not turn out to be the case in rural Kentucky, however.

• In what has been characterized as the most consistently Democratic county in the United States—Elliott County in eastern Kentucky—Sanders was an easy winner Tuesday night. The strength Sanders showed in the historically Democratic counties of eastern Kentucky helped him to hold Clinton to a virtual tie in the Bluegrass State. With 99 percent of the ballots counted Wednesday morning, Clinton was clinging to a 1,923 lead out of more than 400,000 votes cast statewide and the candidates split the elected delegates 28-27. On a night when Sanders easily won Oregon, Clinton had hoped for a big win in Kentucky, a state where she beat Barack Obama by a 65-30 margin in 2008.

• The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee should apologize to Bernie Sanders for her handling of the primary fight with Hillary Clinton, says Nina Turner, the Ohio state lawmaker and high-profile Sanders surrogate.

• In an interview with The Hill, Turner stopped just short of calling for Wasserman Schultz to resign, but said that at a minimum there should be an apology.

• “My husband told me I needed to be ready to answer this question,” Turner said. “It’s hard for me to say because I try not to judge people based on one snapshot of their lives or their career, but she should certainly apologize to Sen. Sanders for her words and deeds in making this an unfair fight.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The open Internet is under attack by lawyers and lobbyists hoping to promote their own narrow interests under the guise of reform.

• Similar “reform” efforts gave us the controversial SOPA and PIPA legislation that died four years ago in the face of massive protests by Internet users. Those threats to free speech have since been recycled into backroom-negotiated trade deals and court cases.

• After years of rotating domain names, The Pirate Bay is now back at its original .ORG domain. The notorious torrent site started redirecting users after a Swedish court ruling put its .SE domain at risk. Today we take a look at the rather impressive domain shuffle the site went through.

• This week’s episode of Family Guy included a clip from 1980s Nintendo video game Double Dribble showing a glitch to get a free 3-point goal. Fox obtained the clip from YouTube where it had been sitting since it was first uploaded in 2009. Shortly after, Fox told YouTube the game footage infringed its copyrights. YouTube took it down.

• Conservative activist Lauren Souther claimed on Friday that Facebook deleted one of her posts because it didn’t “follow the Facebook Community Standards.”

• Ironically, the post was about Facebook allegedly “censoring” one of her conservative friends.

• “As I suspected my friend who res Disdain for Plebs has been banned on all his accounts that run the page AND Facebook deleted his post calling them out for censoring conservatives. This is utterly insane,” she wrote in the offending post.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Information governance essentially describes an end-to-end approach to managing, protecting and extracting the maximum value of enterprise data, typically stored as business records or documents. To accomplish this, CIOs, IT managers and business leaders use a wide range of technologies, management tools and policies to ensure that information is not only routed, stored and used appropriately, but that it doesn’t wind up in the wrong hands causing regulatory compliance and privacy headaches.

• TorrZan is a new service that allows Telegram users to download torrents through their favorite instant messaging application. The Telegram bot can find files on popular torrent sites and downloads them securely through its service. When the transfers are complete, users can download or play the files directly through the instant messaging service.

• Given that social media is a mixed bag for a radio presenter, I’m not sure why GCHQ joined Twitter this week.

• Microsoft says that it will be using the Consolidated United Nations Security Council Sanctions List to determine whether something is terrorist or not; content posted by or in support of the individuals and groups on that list will be prohibited.

• Other than the company’s notoriously lax attitude about background checks, allegations of drivers kidnapping and raping riders, and that, um, interesting new logo, the worst thing about Uber is surge pricing. And, not surprisingly, the company has figured out exactly when you are more likely to pay double or triple the cost of your ride: when your phone battery is low.

• Uber is built on the scourge of surge. When demand is high, the company charges two, three, even NINE-POINT-NINE times as much as normal for a ride. Riders hate it… but not so much that they stop riding. “Dynamic pricing” has helped the company to grow into one of the largest ride-booking services in the world. What’s the psychology behind it? Shankar sits down with Uber’s Head of Economic Research Keith Chen to talk about when we’re most likely pay for surge, when we hate it the most, and why monkeys would probably act and feel the same way.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was last week expelled from North Korea and forced to apologise for his reporting. He was held incommunicado for 10 hours and interrogated. Here he gives his first account of what happened.

• After a week in North Korea I was more than ready to go home. The trip, to cover a visit to Pyongyang by a delegation of three Nobel laureates, had been exhausting and stressful.

• I couldn’t move anywhere in Pyongyang without a team of five minders following my every step. At night the BBC team was confined to an overheated villa in a guarded compound. We’d fallen out with pretty much everyone. Our North Korean minders were now openly hostile.

• Ted Nugent was reelected to the National Rifle Association’s board of directors just weeks after he promoted a fake video of Hillary Clinton being shot and during a year in which he caused a national controversy for promoting anti-Semitic material.

• An Afghan man detained for 14 years in Guantánamo—without ever being convicted of a crime—was on Friday recommended by the Pentagon for release.

• The man, known as Obaidullah, was arrested and detained in 2002, when he was about 19, but the U.S. government failed to successfully prosecute him for any crimes, AP reported. Charges were eventually made against him in 2008, but were dismissed in 2011.

• “This young man should have been released years ago,” Marine Maj. Derek Poteet, who has represented him since 2010, told the Miami Herald. “He was taken from his bed at his home peacefully without resistance. He was subjected to real abuse at Bagram.”

• Obaidullah was allegedly arrested by U.S. special forces in 2002 because unarmed land mines were discovered buried near his house. The U.S. government did not formally bring charges against him until 2008.

• In the following months, his investigation into the killing and disappearance of hundreds of men, women and children in the department of North Santander by the paramilitary group Frente Fronteras (linked to the AUC, Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia) resulted in dozens of threats against him and his family.

• The latest thematic report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concerning Colombia makes for shocking though quite important reading. [1] In short, it details human rights abuses on a massive scale, and lays the blame for these abuses chiefly upon the right-wing paramilitaries aligned with the Colombian State. Citing Colombia’s Center for Historical Memory, the IACHR concludes that Colombia, with its over 6 million internally displaced persons, is indeed “a displaced nation.”

• A Staten Island woman who supports Senator Bernie Sanders said she received death threats after photos of her wearing a cap with the message “America Was Never Great” were posted widely on social media.

• The woman, Krystal Lake, 22, said Thursday that she had ordered the custom-made hat online with the phrase, a play on the slogan “Make America Great Again,” popularized by the campaign of Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

• Ms. Lake said she had gotten tired of hearing Mr. Trump’s slogan from his supporters and thought America “was never great.” She said that Mr. Trump’s slogan did not make room for bigger aspirations beyond the past and that he was dismissive of groups that did not fit his ideal demographic.

• It should be remembered that Joseph Stalin, with Lenin’s approval, robbed banks to finance the Bolshevik party. Chavist politicians have also robbed banks: their own. This may seem relatively lacking in glory, but at least most of the time it is also in the service of political ends.

• Contrary to popular belief, there has been a steady increase in under-reported forms of protests since the military coup. The regime has also moved from one security blunder to the next. From the increasingly sophisticated insurgency in Sinai, the bomb on a Russian airliner, and the murder of Mexican tourists by the Egyptian military in the western desert, the tourism industry is crashing.

• Shortly after an unarmed black woman was fatally shot by police in San Francisco, Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned at the urging of Mayor Ed Lee. The move comes days after Lee defended the chief’s leadership, despite a string of department scandals and months of protests calling for Suhr’s departure.

• A federal judge with a history of anti-immigrant sentiment ordered the federal government to turn over the names, addresses and “all available contact information” of over 100,000 immigrants living within the United States. He does so in a strange order that quotes extensively from movie scripts and that alleges a conspiracy of attorneys “somewhere in the halls of the Justice Department whose identities are unknown to this Court.”

• It appears to be, as several immigration advocates noted shortly after the order was handed down, an effort to intimidate immigrants who benefit from certain Obama administration programs from participating in those programs, lest their personal information be turned over to people who wish them harm. As Greisa Martinez, Advocacy Director for United We Dream, said in a statement, the judge is “asking for the personal information of young people just to whip up fear” — fear, no doubt, of what could happen if anti-immigrant state officials got their hands on this information. Or if the information became public.

• The small Apy Ka’y community of around 150 Guarani Indians has lived in squalor by the side of Highway BR 463 in southern Brazil since 2009. Since then, they have been forced out three times by unknown gunmen, had their makeshift camp burned down twice by arsonists and three young people from the group have killed themselves.

• Each time they were intimidated they returned and reoccupied their last patch of land but last month a Brazilian judge ordered the Apy Ka’y community to permanently move off the land that was theirs for hundreds of years but was seized without compensation by wealthy plantation owners in the 1970s.

• “It will be a death sentence,” says anthropologist and community leader Tonico Benites Guarani who estimates that 1,000, mostly young, Guarani, have killed themselves in the last 10 years throughout Brazil – hundreds of times more than the average Brazilian suicide rate, and unequalled among all other indigenous peoples in Latin America.

• As former Utah senator Bob Bennett lay dying this spring, the staunchly conservative lawmaker voiced a final, unexpected wish: he wanted to apologize to Muslims for Donald Trump.

• “Are there any Muslims in the hospital?” the Republican asked his wife and son, according to the Daily Beast. “I’d love to go up to every single one of them to thank them for being in this country, and apologize to them on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump.”

• Every Friday, just yards from a statue of Bill Clinton with arm aloft in a cheery wave, hundreds of young bearded men make a show of kneeling to pray on the sidewalk outside an improvised mosque in a former furniture store.

• The mosque is one of scores built here with Saudi government money and blamed for spreading Wahhabism — the conservative ideology dominant in Saudi Arabia — in the 17 years since an American-led intervention wrested tiny Kosovo from Serbian oppression.

• Since then — much of that time under the watch of American officials — Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.

• Kosovo now finds itself, like the rest of Europe, fending off the threat of radical Islam. Over the last two years, the police have identified 314 Kosovars — including two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children — who have gone abroad to join the Islamic State, the highest number per capita in Europe.

• They were radicalized and recruited, Kosovo investigators say, by a corps of extremist clerics and secretive associations funded by Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab gulf states using an obscure, labyrinthine network of donations from charities, private individuals and government ministries.

• During a casual conversation inside a store on a swanky shopping street located a short distance from London’s fabled Kensington Palace a twenty-something retail clerk said she feels a strange sense of discomfort that she’s never felt before in London, the city where this native of Algeria has lived most of her life.

• She traces this alienating discomfort to the sharp increase in Islamophobia.

• Islamophobia is generally defined as dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims.

• This London resident is an identifiable target for Islamophobia because she wears a modest headscarf that is traditional in her culture and religion – Islam. (She does not wear a full-face covering burka.)

• For her and others, Islamophobia ranges from disdainful stares and caustic comments to physical assaults. A few assaults have ended in fatalities. And then there are British government policies like ‘Prevent’ – the professed counter-terrorism program that seemingly is targeted solely at Muslims. Prevent enlists citizens to report actions and attitudes deemed suspicious.

• A local police force has come under fire for building a fictitious crime scene from sand, featuring a naked dead woman.

• The peculiar sandcastle, surrounded by police tape and even featuring a green beach spade sticking out of her back, won the Cornwall Beach Games competition.

• That said, representative democracy must itself be more open to a more balanced selection of representatives (in terms of generations and gender), while the various implementation mechanisms must facilitate genuine debate on issues and challenges that are impossible to face in isolation. These are all huge changes, but constitute only the beginning, a beginning that might suffice in restoring self-confidence, prompting the first steps towards major transformation, by way of the required social and ecological transition.

• The swift rise, and swift crumbling, of the Occupy movement brings to the surface the question of organization. Demonstrating our anger, and doing so with thousands of others in the streets, gives us energy and brings issues to wider audiences.

• As all too many rape victims discover when they speak out, many react by just wishing the victim would shut up and go away.

• Most rapists attack someone they know, which means that holding them accountable means tearing apart whatever community — school, work, friend group — that the accused and accuser belong in. Often, it feels just easier to pressure the accuser to shut up and go away so everything can return to normal, even though that often requires ignoring that there’s a sexual predator in your midst.

• In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch turned up alarming evidence that, in the military, forces that want to shut accusers up and make them go away have found a disturbingly potent weapon: Misogynist stereotypes. By leaning on prejudiced beliefs that women, especially outspoken women, are either dishonest or crazy, the military was able to get rid of women who came forward with rape accusations.

• Many lawmakers appear ready to begin unwinding the system that’s left millions of Americans rotting in prison and blocked those who do make it out from the economic opportunities they need to rejoin polite society. But one Republican lawmaker rejects the idea that America has a mass incarceration problem at all.

• “The claim that too many criminals are being jailed, that there is over-incarceration, ignores an unfortunate fact,” Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said Thursday at the right-wing Hudson Institute. “For the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted, and jailed.”

• On Thursday, the U.S. House approved a measure to ban most displays of the Confederate flag in national cemeteries.

• The final tally was 265-159, but a majority of Republicans opposed the measure, with 158 voting nay and 84 voting in favor. Before the vote, a staffer working on behalf of one of the Republicans who voted against restricting the Confederate flag, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), distributed an email comparing those who support the measure to ISIS.

• “You know who else supports destroying history so that they can advance their own agenda? ISIL. Don’t be like ISIL. I urge you to vote NO,” Westmoreland’s legislative director, Pete Sanborn, wrote, signing the email, “Yours in freedom from the PC police.”

• There is nothing new about people being transgender or using the restrooms they choose. They have been doing so for years. In contrast, black people risk death constantly just because they exist in this society. Driving, walking, riding a bicycle, being in a public space at the wrong moment, or even calling the police for assistance can get them killed. Yet Obama’s FBI doesn’t even maintain a record of killings committed by the police.

• Black people unilaterally surrendered their history of fighting for justice ever since Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses in 2008. From the moment it became clear that he could become president there was no amount of contempt or indifference from him that would dissuade millions of people from giving him unquestioned support.

• Torture is a war crime under international law and is prosecutable under federal law. The Senate Torture Report contains evidence of crimes. Destroying, disappearing, or continuing to hide the report undermines the rule of law and denies the American people their right to know when the government engages in criminal conduct.

• The CIA’s lawlessness cannot be allowed to subvert justice and erase history. Unless the report is preserved and made public it could be lost forever.

• I’m staring at that separation of politics and life, Obama’s saying “In politics and in life.” But politics IS life, or it at least is where decisions about people’s lives are legislated.

• “Ignorance is not a virtue.” No, it’s not. Yet Obama, this nation’s daddy, decides when we’re better off unaware. As a candidate for president, he promised transparency, but his tenure has been the least transparent in American history.

• The strength of r-evolutions like #NuitDebout or 15M lies in:

• (1) decentralization and a distributed leadership according to expertise, not according to media visibility; these new ways of organising will overcome the limits of the horizontal governance of assemblies and will transform into networks.

• (2) Our abilities, well above those of the institutions and political parties, to resolve specific problems with specific solutions that are derived from the specific experiences and expertise of each of us, and not from ideologies. It’s about collaboration between people with different skills and abilities, not about merging under a single banner or a unique trade mark. The strength of a federation based on diversity.

• (3) Shared responsibility: we want grown-up, adult societies that don’t need a parental figure whose proclamations are fanatically observed, or in the same vein, a leader for whom we are the critical current, and who we legitimise ‘democratically’ through our disagreements.

• What would you do if a bunch of politicians ousted your democratically elected president and installed one of their own?

• And I say the following not only as a non-Catholic and non-Christian, but as a non-theist. Who is the American public more apt to listen to? The Pope and Jesus? Or Wal-Mart executives?

• For Native American leaders who have been fighting for the Washington team to change its name — and making strides, at least on the local level — this poll felt like a slap in the face.

• “This is just an investment in white supremacy, plain and simple,” Dr. Adrienne Keene wrote on her website, Native Appropriations. “It is an attempt to justify racism, justify the continued marginalization of Native peoples, justify divide-and-conquer techniques that are pitting Native people against one another. It devalues Native voices, stories, and experiences.”

• Joel Barkin, a spokesman for the Oneida Nation and the Change The Mascot campaign, agreed.

• Jonathan Sorensen, a 25-year-old University of New Mexico student, died at the K-Mart location at Carlisle and Indian School Road after he was held down by three loss prevention employees who suspected him of shoplifting.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The data includes 86,114 Internet service complaints filed since October 31, 2014 against home Internet and cellular ISPs. Net neutrality has been the most common type of complaint since the rules went into effect and is near the top of the list even when counting the first seven months of the data set in which net neutrality complaints weren’t yet being accepted. In the full data set, billing complaints led the way at 22,989—with 16,393 since June 12. The other top categories for the entire period since late 2014 were service availability with 14,251 complaints, speed with 11,200 complaints, and privacy with 7,968 privacy complaints.

Intellectual Monopolies

Trademarks

• Deborah Cohn has been busy since starting as INTA’s Senior Director of Government Relations in March last year. “We are trying and succeeding in raising the visibility of trademark issues and INTA on Capitol Hill,” the former Commissioner for Trademarks for the USPTO says of her role.

Copyrights

• For the first time Swedish Internet service provider Bahnhof has shared details on the nature of police requests for subscriber identities. The data reveals that with 27.5% “file-sharing” is by far the largest category. The ISP, however, doesn’t see piracy as a serious crime and has refused to hand over any subscriber data.

• For the past week or so, Google — which, uh, I imagine you’re familiar with — and Oracle, an enormous but less flashy technology company, have been sparring in court over Google’s use of a version of Java, the programming language owned by Oracle, in its Android operating system. At the heart of the matter is the question of whether or not the Java API could be copyrighted, and whether Google’s use of it was exempt under fair use. In short, Oracle wants to know if it can get some cash because Google used a program it created.

• What’s at stake in Google and Oracle’s copyright dispute over Java isn’t really about the future of open source, as Quentin Hardy seems to argue, but rather about the future of software licensing, period. A pro-Oracle verdict essentially dumps us back into the software Stone Age, an era of arcane software licensing designed to mimic the pre-digital world of physical goods.

• Oracle alleges that Google violated its copyright when it put pieces of the crucial Java technology into the Android operating system, which now ships on 80% of smartphones sold. Google’s defense hinges on “fair use,” the idea that it was legally allowed to use Java as it did.

• UK music industry group BPI is not happy with YouTube and other streaming sites that can feature their music for just a few pennies. According to the major labels, EU legislation needs an overhaul to deter piracy and make sure that labels and artists are properly compensated for their work.

• The Commission’s public consultation on whether to grant additional rights to press publishers is aimed at audiences beyond the publishers themselves, to include a wide range of stakeholders – including end users, consumers, and citizens. In this third post of our series on the consultation, we highlight what the introduction of an additional right for publishers would mean for end-users of news and online information, as well as content creators. We encourage everyone to make their views known to the Commission by answering the consultation questionnaire by 15 June.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.