● 08.20.16

● Links 20/8/2016: Android Domination, FSFE summit 2016

Posted in News Roundup at 11:25 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Microsoft has a new browser. It launched with Windows 10 and it’s called Edge. The company says it’s faster, more battery efficient and all-round better than Chrome or Firefox. You can even draw on websites with a stylus. Trouble is, not very many people are using it. So now Microsoft’s trying to bribe you to switch.

• The newly rebranded Microsoft Rewards – formerly Bing Rewards, which paid people for using Bing as their search engine (another product Microsoft says is better than a Google product but that very few people actually use) – will now pay you for using Edge, shopping at the Microsoft store, or using Bing.

• Users of Edge who sign up to Microsoft Rewards, which is currently US-only, are then awarded points simply for using the browser. Microsoft actively monitors whether you’re using Edge for up to 30 hours a month. It tracks mouse movements and other signs that you’re not trying to game the system, and you must also have Bing set as your default search engine.

Desktop

• Still, there was some issues. And I discovered that some very basic concepts are harder to understand than I thought. Double-click, a window, a folder, the desktop, the taskbar, the trayicon. I also discovered that some users were using a computer for ten years without even understanding the minimize function for a window ! The only way to switch between a web page and a word processor was to close one and then opening the other. It was seen as normal !

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has called on Microsoft to offer a “single unified screen” on which Windows 10 users can control how Windows 10 deals with their personal information and monitors their use of the OS.

• The organisation has listed the long list of nasty nagware tactics Microsoft used to get people running Windows 10, labelling some “questionable tactics to cause users to download a piece of software that many didn’t want.”

• It’s not keen on the nagware bundled alongside patches, suggesting that tactic reduced trust in patches and therefore potentially exposed users who don’t act promptly when important fixes arrive.

• It also rails against the telemetry Windows 10 collects and is especially harsh on Microsoft’s insistence that if business users send it less data, Windows Update will be less effective and PCs will be less secure.

• The Foundation says “this is a false choice that is entirely of Microsoft’s own creation.”

• “There’s no good reason why the types of data Microsoft collects at each telemetry level couldn’t be adjusted so that even at the lowest level of telemetry collection, users could still benefit from Windows Update and secure their machines from vulnerabilities, without having to send back things like app usage data or unique Ids like an IMEI number.”

• digiKam is the cornerstone of my photographic workflow. This powerful and versatile photo management application has all tools and features necessary for transferring, organizing, processing, and managing photos, RAW files, and videos. But even though digiKam can handle practically any photographic task you throw at it, there is still room for optimizing and improving parts of the Linux-based photographic workflow.

Kernel Space

• For me, I don’t just appreciate the Linux operating system but I also feel like it has become my life. Whenever I’m on a Linux based computer I feel like I’m at home. You can say it is a passion that has taken many years of cultivating to become integrated in my life the way it is today.

• In 2011 I was eager to purchase a brand new computer, but to my dismay the shop had only one computer that met my requirements. Although unbeknownst to me the computer had a specific operating system that I was unfamiliar with. The operating system was pre-installed with Linux, specifically openSuse. I was so hesitant to purchase the computer but proceeded anyway. I hoped to change the operating system once I got home, but I was unsure of what came over me to keep Linux. But to this day I feel I have yet to make a decision that would have a greater impact on my life then the day I decided to keep Linux.

• Open source projects are new to networking, but they’ve been cropping up all over the place in the last couple of years. And many of them are gravitating toward the Linux Foundation.

• Some of them were originally independent groups. The Open Network Operating System (ONOS) for example, was founded by On.lab. But in October, it became part of the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation was already hosting the OpenDaylight Project, which some considered a rival to ONOS. But the two groups seem to be happily coexisting under the same host.

• The Linux Foundation got its start in 2007 as a home for the development of Linux and its creator Linus Torvalds. In the last decade, the mission of the foundation has expanded beyond the confines of the Linux kernel. Although the Linux kernel still remains central, the foundation’s model of enabling open, collaborative software development has proven valuable to multiple groups. That’s where the Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects effort comes in, enabling groups of developers to bring software projects under the Linux Foundation umbrella. By being part of the foundation, software projects benefit from its infrastructure and expertise at helping to shepherd and grow open-source software development efforts in a vendor-neutral approach. A 2014 slideshow on eWEEK looked at 10 projects beyond Linux that the foundation now manages. So far in 2016, the Linux Foundation has announced at least seven new efforts that are now collaborative projects. eWEEK takes a look at some of the efforts the foundation is leading beyond just Linux.

• The Linux Foundation announced today that it is adding Platform for Network Data Analytics (PNDA) as a Linux Foundation project. PNDA provides users with an open source big data platform for network analytics.

• PNDA’s vision is to remove the complexity of combining multiple technologies into an end-to-end system, using open source technology to provide a big data analytics platform. It has a streamlined data pipeline to surface the right data at the right time.

• Earlier this year I heard from an Intel PR representative they had no plans for a Turbo Boost Max 3.0 Linux driver and immediately heard after that from a developer it was bollocks from the media department as usual. Today patches have emerged for supporting Turbo Boost Max 3.0 in the Linux kernel.

• Turbo Boost Max 3.0 is a feature to the Intel Broadwell-E CPUs and presumably more forthcoming high-end CPUs. Turbo Boost Max 3.0 is about boosting the frequency of a single CPU core when a single-threaded application is busy on the system occupied. TBM Tech 3.0 is in contrast to Turbo Boost 2.0 that boosts the frequency of all CPU cores when needed for short periods of time. But over the older Turbo Boost tech, TBM 3.0 can maintain its single-boosted-core frequency for a longer duration.

• The Linux Foundation’s new online Linux security training program will cover a broad range of topics, from application security to network security. The course is geared toward professionals who are already running Linux systems. IT security threats seem to be everywhere, but skilled IT security professionals do not seem to be nearly as pervasive. It’s a conundrum that the Linux Foundation wants to help alleviate with the introduction of a new online Linux skills training program.

• The online course, called Linux Security Fundamentals (LFS216), is an attempt to help individuals evaluate their own organizations’ security readiness. The course is not intended as an introduction for those who are new to Linux, but rather is targeted at those already running Linux systems.

Graphics Stack

• AMD this week open-sourced the Advanced Media Framework (AMF) as their replacement to the earlier AMD Media SDK. But before getting too excited about this latest AMD open-source project, there isn’t yet any Linux support.

• AMD’s AMF is self-described as, “a light-weight, portable multimedia framework that abstracts away most of the platform and API-specific details and allows for easy implementation of multimedia applications using a variety of technologies, such as DirectX 11, OpenGL, and OpenCL and facilitates an efficient interop between them.” Another description puts it as “The AMF SDK allows optimization of application performance by utilizing CPU, GPU compute shaders and hardware accelerators for media processing. These optimizations are applicable to a wide range of applications such as gaming or content creation. Programming of AMD Video Engines (UVD and VCE blocks) is also an important part of the functionality that AMF provides to developers.”

• Nvidia has released the beta driver 370.23, the good news for multi-GPU users is that it features initial support for PRIME Synchronization.

• One of the features missing from Linux 4.8 is any Southern Islands / GCN 1.0 support in the new AMDGPU kernel DRM driver. However, it looks like this support ported over from the mature Radeon DRM driver will happen for Linux 4.9.

• GOL user nauticalnexus has put up a Linux Kernel for Arch users that will allow you to use AMDGPU and AMDGPU PRO on older AMD cards.

• Note: I am not an Arch user, nor do I own any AMD card to test it myself. I have spoken to the author who put this Kernel up and they claim it’s pretty stable.

• After running many OpenGL and Vulkan NVIDIA vs. AMD Linux benchmarks earlier this week, here is a 16-way graphics card comparison when testing the AMD Radeon “Polaris” and NVIDIA GeForce “Pascal” GPUs, among others, on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and looking squarely at the OpenCL compute performance. Many OpenCL tests plus performance-per-Watt metrics too when using the latest NVIDIA proprietary Linux driver and AMDGPU-PRO.

Benchmarks

• The operating systems tested for this comparison included CentOS Linux 7, Clear Linux 9710, DragonFlyBSD 4.6.0, Fedora 24, FreeBSD 11.0-Beta 4, Manjaro 16.06.1, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS, and a daily snapshot of Ubuntu 16.10. For those wondering about OpenMandriva Lx 3.0, I’ll have tests of that Clang-compiled distribution later in the week. This BSD/Linux OS comparison grew out of curiosity sake when first seeking to test how well DragonFlyBSD 4.6 and FreeBSD 11 are performing.

Applications

• One perception that Linux can’t seem to shake off is that you can’t do anything without using the command line. A number of people in my circle have been using Linux effectively for years, and they’ve yet to crack open a terminal window.

• Having said that, working at the command line can make certain tasks faster and more efficient. If you’re using older hardware, command line tools are an excellent alternative to graphical applications since they don’t use too many resources.

• One of those tasks playing music. You can do that in a terminal. How? Here’s a look at three command line music players.

• Kdenlive 16.08.0 marks a milestone in the project’s history bringing it a step closer to becoming a full-fledged professional tool.

• If you’ve ever used the (frankly awesome) desktop e-mail app Geary, its maintainer has a question for you. He’s launched a poll asking for your feedback on whether the app should switch to instant search and away from the single-keystroke commands it currently uses. Not sure what either of those are? I’ll explain.

• Keysafe securely backs up a gpg secret key or other short secret to the cloud. But not yet. Today’s alpha release only supports storing the data locally, and I still need to finish tuning the argon2 hash difficulties with modern hardware. Other than that, I’m fairly happy with how it’s turned out.

• Keysafe is written in Haskell, and many of the data types in it keep track of the estimated CPU time needed to create, decrypt, and brute-force them. Running that through a AWS SPOT pricing cost model lets keysafe estimate how much an attacker would need to spend to crack your password.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

• Today, August 19, 2016, the Wine development team announced the release of Wine 1.9.17, a new milestone towards the next major stable branch of the open-source software that lets Linux users run Windows apps and games, Wine 2.0.

Games

• A new update to the Steam desktop client on Linux is rolling out. Though short on big new features there are some welcome fixes on offer.

• I’ve spent a few days adding support for upgrading the firmware of the various wireless 8Bitdo controllers into fwupd. In my opinion, the 8Bitdo hardware is very well made and reasonably priced, and also really good retro fun.

• The developer of ChromaGun sent in a copy of the game for me to test out and while I found the idea rather cool, shooting paint around to solve puzzles it does have major issues on Linux.

• I tried the game on last weeks livestream and while it was quite interesting to play, it repeatedly crashed to the desktop in a short amount of time. I waited a week after emailing the developer these issues to post this up, but after no reply sadly this is just how the game is.

• The very cool looking Motorsport Manager game where you run your own F1 team is now available to pre-purchase on Steam.

• You know how I personally feel about pre-orders by now, but some still like to do it. I do love seeing that little tux at the end of a video though, very nice to see.

• I’m very interested in the game myself, but I will be waiting either for a review copy or to see how it’s reviewed by others if I don’t get a key myself.

• Okhlos is another new released that was provided to me by GOG, I tried it properly tonight during the livestream and sadly it isn’t all that good. It wasn’t my first time playing it, as the developer sent me an early copy a while ago which I remember well.

• Essentially, you’re in control of a mob in ancient Greece with a twin-stick shooter feel to it. You control a single character with the WASD keys and the mob with the mouse. You’re able to recruit new members automatically by rolling your mob through them, and hold the left mouse button on enemies to watch hell unfold as your mob takes them down.

• Facebook is starting to take gaming far more seriously. Not content with funneling the likes of Candy Crush through its servers, the social network is now joining forces with the company behind the Unity game engine to create its own desktop gaming platform.

• Fear Equation looks really cool, its a blend of both horror and strategy and today it has a Linux version posted up.

• A very cool idea, can’t wait to try it! If you pick it up be sure to comment what you feel after playing it for a bit.

• Via multi-threading improvements to the game engine, Xenko is seeing a huge performance win with the Vulkan API.

• Xenko 1.7β added Vulkan support and with multi-threading work that’s ongoing, they’ve scored a big performance win. Their Vulkan performance with the Xenko Game Engine is around 6x faster with multi-threading compared to 3x with Direct3D and OpenGL.

• I do love that it’s being expanded again, but I hope they do better than the Snowfall expansion which disappointed me somewhat. Having the snow locked to a specific map was quite a letdown.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• On opensuse forums, I often see complaints about KDEwallet (or “kwallet” for short). It can be annoying at times. In this post, I’ll indicate ways of keeping it under control.

• While this is oriented toward opensuse, it should also apply to other distros with one caveat. In opensuse, some of the applications have their settings and configuration under the directory “$HOME/.kde4”. For other distros, it is more typical to use “$HOME/.kde” (without that final “4”). So just adjust my suggestions accordingly.

• KDE Applications 16.08 was released today as the newest bundle of KDE applications built atop KDE Frameworks 5.

• KDE Applications 16.08 features the KF5 ports of Kolourpaint, Cervisia, and KDiskFree. KDE’s Kontact suite has also been improved upon, Marble 2.0 was added, Ark archiving support can now handle ApplImage and more, the Konsole terminal has been improved, and much more.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• I’ve recently finished a makefile to make easy to create GTK+ applications as well as GTK+ libraries using Vala programing language.

• I’m on the schedule for LAS GNOME this September, to share our usability test results. Diana, Ciarrai and Renata have been working hard this summer in GNOME Outreachy, doing different usability tests. Our tests include a paper prototype test of the new Settings app, a traditional usability test of other areas of GNOME development, and a first experience test where people use GNOME for the first time. This promises to be interesting!

• I am delighted to have completed usability testing on 10 participants!

• Generally speaking, the testing process went really well. There are of course some downsides to it. I’ll go ahead and share an unordered list of some things that went right and some that went wrong:

• The last two weeks were pretty busy for me because I travelled to two of my most favourite conferences – Flock and GUADEC.

• Flock was held in Krakow this year, so the traveling was a sort of easy for me. Krakow is just 350 km from Brno which is about 3.5 hours by car. The conference was again organized in the hotel where almost everyone stayed. The same setup was already in Rochester last year and people appreciated it. It’s very convenient. You don’t have to travel to the venue, you can sneak out to have a nap, which is super useful if you’re fighting jet lag, and you can use hotel facilities such as a gym or swimming pool.

• At GUADEC Andre Klaper made a report of top most contributors to GNOME in the last year, and to my surprise I saw my name in the top 5 of patch reviewers. Did I really review so many patches?

• The GNOME 3.21.90 packages were released this week in preparation for next month’s GNOME 3.22 desktop release.

• GNOME Shell 3.21.90 features an improved on-screen keyboard for Wayland. Also various bugs were fixed as part of this update.

Distributions

Reviews

• This review will be a bit unconventional, probably because Arch Linux itself is a bit unconventional. Rather than having continued, numbered releases like most distros, Arch Linux follows the rolling-release model, meaning that you install Arch once and it updates forever (or at least, until you break something). There is no “Arch Linux 16.04 LTS”, there is simply Arch Linux. The philosophy of Arch, known as The Arch Way, focuses on simplicity and user centrality, rather than user friendliness.

New Releases

• The skilful team of developers and security professional behind the BlackArch Linux operating system have announced today, August 19, 2016, the general availability of a new ISO image.

Red Hat Family

Finance

Fedora

• Alfonso Savio is a man of many talents. Alfonso works for the National Cancer Institute of Naples and started using Linux in 2004 with Fedora Core 3. He’s a systems integrator, systems and network administrator, project and database manager, and software developer. However, his official title is ICT Manager of the Clinical Trials Unit.

• Alfonso’s team analyzes data from clinical trials to advance scientific research in the fight against cancer. The team comprises physicians and data managers. He is the sole person in his department using Linux for his primary desktop. Hence, he’s an open source trailblazer.

• If you’d like to get a bigger picture view, you can read a pre-conference interview with a few Flock speakers here or with Thomas Cameron here.

• I have a great news for those of you with a MacBook Pro 15″ 2015 (MacBook 11,4 and 11,5)!

• We are currently in a 4 week Modularity Sprint #10, the usual 2 week sprint got extended due to FLOCK and pre-FLOCK developer meetings.

• Red Hat’s cutting-edge test bed is moving from Xorg/X11 to Wayland its next release. This is a big step even for a distribution known for adopting early technology. In other news, Akshay Deep has announced Emoji support for LibreOffice and Robin Muilwijk discusses the various Web server choices for Linux deployments.

• The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee has decided that Fedora 25 will indeed ship the Wayland display server by default in place of the X.Org Server.

• While many were doubting whether Fedora Workstation with its GNOME-based desktop would be ready for a Wayland default on Fedora 25, FESCo has determined it’s feasible. This is great to see after Fedora Wayland didn’t end up making it the past few cycles it was proposed while for a long time now it’s been exposed as a non-default log-in option.

• Hi folks! We are having another ‘onboarding’ video call to help new Fedora QA recruits get started tomorrow. Sumantro will be leading the call, I’ll try and stop by if I can. To join the call, just keep this piratepad open. The call agenda is shown there and it will be used for notes when the call is happening, plus there’s a chat panel. Ten minutes before the call starts, Sumantro will post the URL for people to join. Then just join the call and follow along! Please make sure to mute yourself on the call when you’re not talking.

• Thanks everyone, and welcome to the group, new members!

Debian Family

• I’ve had the great opportunity to go to the Debian Conference 2016. I’ve been introduced to the debian community and debian developpers (“dd” in short :p). I was lucky to meet with great people like the president of the FSF, John Sulivan. You can have a look at my Debian conference report here.

• A new – and unplanned – release in quick succession. I have uploaded testing packages to experimental which incorporate tex4ht into the TeX Live packages, but somehow the tex4ht transitional updated slipped into sid, and made many packages uninstallable. Well, so after a bit more testing let’s ship the beast to sid, meaning that tex4ht will finally updated from the last 2009 version to what is the current status in TeX Live.

• I went to Defcon24 as Purism representative. It was (as usual) held in Las Vegas, the city of sin. In the same module as with DebConf, here we go with good, bad and ugly.

• Finally got some time to write this blog post. DebConf for me is always something special, a family gathering of weird combination of geeks (or is weird a default geek state?). To be honest, I finally can compare Debian as hacker conference to other so-called hacker conferences. With that hat on, I can say that Debian is by far the most organized and highest quality conference. Maybe I am biased, but I don’t care too much about that. I simply love Debian and that is no secret. So lets dive into my view on DebConf16 which was held in Cape Town, South Africa.

Devices/Embedded

• PJRC is Kickstartering two new models of its “Teensy” Arduino compatible, featuring a faster 180MHz Cortex-M4, more memory, more pins, and a second USB.

• In the world of Arduino compatibles, you can choose from bare-bones clones or value-added innovators that develop new software as well as hardware, and occasionally risk some compatibility in order to advance the capabilities of the entire Arduino platform. In the latter category is Teensy, a DIY breadboard-oriented Arduino project from Portland, Oregon based PJRC, led by Teensy inventor Paul Stoffregen, known for its superior USB-based keyboard/mouse, LED array, and audio support. The eight-year old company has now upgraded the Teensy board with a much faster MCU, more RAM and flash, many more I/O pins, and additional USB and CAN ports, making it one of the fastest Arduino clones around.

• This article focuses on the BeagleBone Black, the popular new member of the BeagleBoard family. If you’re familiar with the Arduino, the BeagleBone is much more complex; while the Arduino is a microcontroller, the BeagleBone is a full computer running Linux. If you need more than an Arduino can easily provide (more processing, Ethernet, WiFi), the BeagleBone may be a good choice.

Phones

Android

• Sony has a new Android Auto head unit – its first, actually – the catchily-named XAV-AX100. The main draw of the device seems to be the sound quality, with four “55-watt Dynamic Reality Amp 2″ amplifiers and Sony’s EXTRA BASS low-boost circuitry supposedly overcoming engine noise to deliver crystal clear sound.

• Users will be able to switch between Windows and Android when using the tablet, which has a 10.1-inch display, according to the company.

• Preorders open on Aug. 22 for the upcoming ConsoleTab tablet computer, a $349 device with a 10.1-inch touch-screen HD display, an Intel Atom processor, and the inclusion of both Windows 10 and Android operating systems.

• The new machine, which was announced at the Intel Developer Forum event in San Francisco this week, will allow users to choose between the two operating systems each time they use the machine, according to its maker, Console.

• A cunning Polish developer has hacked an Android food and drink rewards app to grant himself unlimited free beer.

• Kuba Gretzky detailed his excellent exploits in a blog post on Breakdev – though, to deter copycats, he didn’t name the rewards app or the precise location within Poland where it was operating.

• He did, however, name the makers of the tech used by the unnamed rewards app: beacon supplier Estimote.

• ANDROID users rejoice – your phones come with a range of unique features and functions that your fruit-flavoured rivals can only dream of. Here are Express.co.uk’s selection of the top unique Android options.

• Normally, “fair use” can be resorted to when the offender is able to show that a) the infringement benefited many, so was for common good; b) if the copyrighted material was a small part of the end product created, i.e., there was true originality/innovation in the product created that is distinguishable from the copyrighted material; c) if the infringement can cause material harm to the original work, for example by reducing its market value or impacting its ability to generate revenue.

• Google has just announced plans to gradually phase out support for Chrome apps on every platform except for Chrome OS. Starting later this year, new Chrome apps will be available only to Chrome OS users and won’t be accessible on Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Existing apps will remain available and can still be updated.) Then, sometime in the second half of 2017, the Chrome Web Store will no longer display Chrome apps at all on those operating systems. And come early 2018, you’ll no longer be able to load Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, or Linux at all. Extensions and themes are not at all affected by this change; in fact, they’ll soon be given a much larger focus in the Chrome Web Store.

• Sales of Windows smartphones plunged 76% in the second quarter, plummeting from 8.2 million in 2015 to less than 2 million this year, researcher Gartner said today.

• The dramatic decline was more fallout from Microsoft’s botched acquisition of Nokia’s handset business, the writing off of more than $10 billion and the subsequent decision to back out of the consumer smartphone market.

• According to Gartner, global sales of Windows-powered smartphones in the June quarter came to just under 2 million units. In a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) last month, Microsoft put its smartphone sales at around 1.2 million. The difference between Gartner’s and Microsoft’s numbers — about 750,000 smartphones — represented what the former believed other device makers sold during the quarter.

• The latest numbers from research firm Gartner reveal that the smartphone industry continues to be a virtual two-horse race between iOS and Android. The operating systems combined for a record 99.1% worldwide market share in the second calendar quarter of 2016, compared to 96.8% in the year-ago period.

• Google didn’t forget about the big-screen experience in Android 7.0, and two new features are here that are designed to enhance the experience on your Android-powered television.

• Android 7.0′s three multi-window modes can make sure you never miss a Pokémon — even when you have other things that need doing.

• Barnes and Noble’s color-screen NOOK tablets are really just repurposed Samsung Android devices. You know what? That is totally fine. Heck, B and N doesn’t even try to hide it. While the company could go the route of Amazon and produce its own hardware and operating system, many consumers don’t really want that. Without the Google Play Store, an Android tablet is largely a big disappointment.

• Today, Barnes and Noble announces the latest such NOOK Android tablet, which is based on the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab A. While not a top of the line tablet by any means, it is affordable, and overall, a damn good value. Existing NOOK tablet owners can even get a substantial discount when upgrading.

• Nokia is making its way back, initially announcing that it’s going to be embracing Android and producing a number of smartphones and tablets over the coming years in May, leaving us to consider what might be coming from Nokia in the future.

• Nokia’s story has more twists and turns than a mountain pass, with an equal number of ups and downs. The announcement that we’ll be seeing Nokia branded phones once again is certainly exciting, so we’ll be keeping our ear to the ground and reporting on all the different strands of this story.

• So the return of ‘proper’ Nokia, no longer part of Microsoft, and unbundled by the damage of Windows, is coming at us fast. News via Nokia’s Mike Wang, is that the first devices will be out in the fourth quarter of this year yes 2016. That usually means close to the end of the quarter, so expect shortly before Christmas. The first set will include both smartphone(s) and tablet(s). Total first Andorid based Nokia return devices is 3 or 4 this year, likely premium products. The rumors expect metal cases, waterproofing, larger than 5 inch screens for smartphones and cameras in the 22 mp sensor size. Designed by HMD and manufactured by Foxconn. Also related news, HMD has hired former Rovio exec, Pekka Rantala as its CMO. Rovio is obviously the creator of Angry Birds the most downloaded videogame of all time. Pekka is an ex Nokian returning to his roots.

• Oracle appears to have opened its campaign for a third trial over its claims its copyrighted Java core library code was ripped off in Google’s Android.

• In May this year, a jury ruled in favor of Google, saying that Google’s infringement of Oracle’s copyright was fair use. Now the database software giant’s lawyers are trying to get that result overturned.

Free Software/Open Source

• There are a number of choices available if you need a small, powerful but affordable mini desktop PC, from the $500 Mac Mini, to the cheaper Google Chromebox, or HP Pavillion Mini Desktop.

• But can more be done to keep these devices secure, not just from software exploits, but scenarios in which the attacker has gained physical access to the device?

• The makers of ORWL, a flying saucer-shaped mini desktop for the security-minded, think it can, providing you’re willing to fork out a relatively hefty $699.

• Nextgov’s meetup series Tech + Tequila has been an opportunity for government and private sector technologists to explore hot topics in federal IT together in a casual setting—with cocktails. Aug. 25 marks our sixth event, and we’ll be discussing artificial intelligence. Is there anything more top of mind than a robot uprising?

• In all seriousness, Tech + Tequila has tackled some awesome topics: data, cybersecurity and emerging tech. This ebook features two more recent Tech + Tequila themes: open source and the internet of things.

• On Aug. 8, the White House unveiled the final policy that requires agencies to share 20 percent of their custom-created source code. When the draft framework was announced back in March, some critics said it didn’t go far enough and argued for a more sweeping “open source by default” framework. Another dissenting voice said the policy would add “more layers of confusion.”

• AMADEUS, the leading provider of technology solutions for the global travel industry, has won the 2016 Red Hat Innovator of the Year award.

• This is in recognition of its innovative use of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as part of a new cloud services platform to help companies meet the increasingly complex demands of travelers.

• The time when developers and administrators can get by with only Microsoft in their bag of tricks is over. With Linux’s continuing dominance and growth in server space and with Redmond now embracing open source with actions as well as words, even those who develop exclusively for the Windows platform are almost certain to find times when they need to wrap their heads around an aspect of the Linux kernel or some open source application.

• If you’ve been following tech news, you know that across the board there is an increasing need for people with Linux skills, which has pushed the salaries available for those with certifiable Linux talents to record highs. This opens an opportunity in traditional Windows shops where fully certified Linux people might not be necessary, but where certified Windows people with good Linux skills have extra value.

• In other words, you can increase your value as an employee simply by honing your Linux and open source skills, without the need to necessarily shell out big bucks to Red Hat or the Linux Foundation for certification. There are plenty of educational opportunities available online, some free and others offered with a very low price tag.

• Representatives from open source companies Red Hat, Capgemini, MongoDB, Rackspace and Weaveworks weighed in on how open source infiltrated the enterprise, and why skills remains the biggest barrier to a successful open source strategy

• At a Rackspace hosted event in London this week titled Open Source is Eating the World (a play on venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s seminal Software is Eating the World essay from 2011) panelists generally agreed that open source has managed to infiltrate the enterprise, but talent remains the biggest barrier to a successful open source strategy.

• Like tens of millions of other websites, the campaign donation website for US presidential candidate Donald Trump relies on open-source software called jQuery. But it seems that the software is being used in a sloppy way, which could put Trump supporters at risk of identity theft or worse.

• Trump’s website uses a jQuery plug-in, or a bit of ready-made code, called jQuery Mask Plug-in to handle how donors fill in their name, address, and other information. The mask plug-in restricts the types of information users can enter in forms. This is useful because it increases the chances of accurate data being submitted for payment processing, and for the campaign’s records. It’s also free and available for download from GitHub, the popular platform for open-source software.

• Companies evaluating open source technology need to be careful that they get all the open source benefits. That’s sometimes tricky, which is why AT&T has defined “three key characteristics of open source software that we consider paramount,” says Greg Stiegler, AT&T assistant vice president of cloud.

• AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is a leader among big network operators making a big open source commitment, with involvement in multiple projects and aggressive code-sharing. Last month, it released its Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) for network management and orchestration (MANO) as open source. (See AT&T Offers ‘Mature’ ECOMP as Open Source MANO, AT&T Makes Case for Open Source Sharing and AT&T’s Chiosi: Unite on Open Source or Suffer.)

Events

• The Software Freedom Day countdown is ready for usage in English. We are therefore informing translators and also people willing to add a new language that translation can start right now. All the instructions are available on the wiki at this page.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• At Mozilla, there is momentum gathering around new open source projects and the Internet of Things (IoT). The company is hosting an IoT sprint development weekend this September. Mozilla’s Hive Chattanooga, in collaboration with The Company Lab, is hosting 48Hour Launch: Internet of Things (IoT) Edition, on September 9-11. 48Hour Launch is a weekend-long competition that challenges teams of entrepreneurs and specialists to spend 48 hours transforming a startup concept into a viable business model, prototype, policy proposal, or piece of curriculum.

• The experience culminates with a Demo Night, where participants debut their work for a chance to win cash prizes, free business services, and a free trip to MozFest in London.

Databases

• MariaDB Corp. has announced that release 2.0 of its MaxScale database proxy software is henceforth no longer open source. The organization has made it source-available under a proprietary license that promises each release will eventually become open source once it’s out of date.

• MaxScale is at the pinnacle of MariaDB Corp.’s monetization strategy — it’s the key to deploying MariaDB databases at scale. The thinking seems to be that making it mandatory to pay for a license will extract top dollar from deep-pocketed corporations that might otherwise try to use it free of charge. This seems odd for a company built on MariaDB, which was originally created to liberate MySQL from the clutches of Oracle.

CMS

• The Fidus Writer online editor is especially for academics who need to write papers in collaboration with other authors, and it includes special tools for managing citations, formulas, and bibliographies. If you’re writing an academic paper by yourself, you have a lot of choices for tools to edit your document. Some of them even take care of making your footnotes and bibliographies come out in the right format. But writing collaboratively is harder, for lots of reasons. You could use Google Docs, ownCloud, or even Dropbox to share the document, but then you lose useful citation-management tools.

• Enter Fidus Writer: Fidus Writer is a web-based collaborative writing tool made specifically for the needs of academic writers who need to use citations or formulas. The rules for citations are complicated, so Fidus Writer takes care of the format for you; you can choose from several citation formats, including APA, Chicago, or MLA. Version 3 of Fidus Writer was just released in June, and it is a clean, well-polished application.

• At my first look, Fidus Writer is impressive. The application is written mostly in Python and Node.js, and is licensed under the AGPL V3. I installed it on a Debian virtual machine running on my Windows PC. The installation instructions are geared toward Debian and its derivative distros, and uses apt to install software. I suspect someone clever who has a real desire to run it on RPM-based distros could make it work, as the list of packages needed is not overlarge.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Already a long time ago, we got bug reports from confused users who couldn’t use curl from their PowerShell prompts and it didn’t take long until we figured out that Microsoft had added aliases for both curl and wget. The alias had the shell instead invoke its own command called “Invoke-WebRequest” whenever curl or wget was entered. Invoke-WebRequest being PowerShell’s own version of a command line tool for fiddling with URLs.

• Sstudiomm, an Iranian architecture office founded by Hossein Naghavi, has developed a digital brick laying technique and an open-source DIY kit for architects interested in the system. The project, titled Negative Precision, is the outcome of Naghavi’s independent research into parametrically derived brick laying techniques. Using Kohler and Gramazio’s 2006 robotically programmed wall as a departure point, sstudiomm sought out alternative methods to reproduce the same effect with a limited budget, “in order to make the luxurious reachable for a greater group.”

Funding

• The Omega2 set out to produce an extremely cheap, extensible Linux computer designed for Internet of Things (IoT) projects with a Kickstarter campaign asking for only $15,000. Now, with only for days remaining in the campaign, the Omega2 team is set to receive over $450,000 in funding from over 11,000 backers. Developed by the Onion Corporation, the Omega2 promises to be an interesting entry for DIY (do it yourself) and commercial projects.

• Omega 2 is a Linux compute module designed specifically for building connected hardware applications. It combines, say its designers Onion, “the tiny form factor and power-efficiency of the Arduino, with the power and flexibilities of the Raspberry Pi.”

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The Libreboot project has done their first official release of this Coreboot binary-free downstream now being under the GNU project label.

• GNU Libreboot 20160818 is the new release. New board support for this de-blobbed version of Coreboot includes supporting the ASUS Chromebook C201, Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L, Intel D510MO, ASUS KCMA-D8, ASUS KFSN4-DRE, and ASUS KGPE-D16. Yep, all rather old motherboards (aside from the Chromebook C201) with sadly not much love these days from AMD and Intel around fully supporting modern chipsets by free software.

• Imagine a European Union that builds its IT infrastructure on Free Software. Imagine European Member States that exchange information in Open Standards and share their software. Imagine municipalities and city councils that benefit from decentralized and collaborative software under free licenses. Imagine no European is any longer forced to use non-Free Software.

Public Services/Government

• Île-de-France – the Paris Region – will publish as open source Babylone, its software solution to aggregate and manage information on elected officials. The region’s administration hopes other regions will reuse the software, and pool resources for updates and future versions.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Hardware/Modding

• Maker projects can be tough if you don’t have a good workspace. For a long time, mine was an ESD mat on the dining room table. But as my projects (and family) grew, I was under increased pressure to find somewhere else to work. Really, the 3D printer is what put my wife over the edge (and rightfully so).

Programming/Development

• In this video, web developers can learn how to get their hands dirty with the PHP dependency manager, Composer.

• Lever is yet another attempt at being a modern general purpose programming language that fits along the lines of Perl, Python, and Ruby. Lever has support for GUI/OpenGL applications and also aims to make it easy to interface with C libraries.

• A developer of the Lever programming language wrote in this morning to share this project. Lever aims to make it easy to interface with C libraries, provides OpenGL 4 support, support for modules, a built-in event loop with augmented concurrency, dynamic typing, partial Vulkan support, and what is described as a completely customizable syntax.

Standards/Consortia

• The Dutch government wants to make the use of open standards mandatory for public administrations, to provide business and citizens with easier access to eGovernment services. The government is developing a generic digital infrastructure, and its services and standards are to be used by all public administrations, writes Henk Kamp, the country’s Minister of Economic Affairs in a letter to Parliament.

Leftovers

• Separately, the company announced that it has bought a self-driving startup, Otto, and put its co-founder, Antohony Levandowski, in charge of Uber’s self-driving efforts.

• We’ve already noted that Tesla has Uber-like plans as well, but this could certainly get interesting. Lots of people (including us!) have speculated on what the world will look like as autonomous vehicles become more prominent, but it’s somewhat amazing how quickly this is happening.

• While it’s not a huge surprise that Uber may be leading the way, it does still raise some interesting questions. Obviously, lots of people say that Uber wants to do this so that it won’t have to pay drivers any more (though in these tests a human is still in the driver’s seat and, one assumes, getting paid). But part of the genius (or problem, depending on your point of view…) of Uber was that it was just a platform for drivers who brought their own cars. That is, Uber didn’t have to invest the capital in buying up cars. It just provided the platform, drivers brought their own cars, and Uber got a cut. If it’s moving to a world of driverless cars, then Uber is no longer the platform for drivers, it’s everything. It needs to make the investment and own the cars. That’s actually a pretty big shift.

• That’s not to say that it won’t work — and there’s an argument that Uber’s real power these days is in its operations software figuring out which cars should go where — but it is an interesting shift in the business. And given that, it’s also interesting to see how Tesla is entering the market from the other direction — a direction that is more like Uber’s original concept, where individuals own their own cars, but then lease them back to Tesla to act as for-hire cars for others. I guess it’s possible that Uber could do the same thing too, where any car owner could provide their vehicle back to Uber to earn money, but without having to drive it — just making it a productive resource.

• Who knows how this will turn out — and I’m sure some people will inevitably freak out when there’s a self-driving car accident — but the future is getting really interesting really fast.

• If you’re not already familiar with the concept of technical debt, it’s worth becoming familiar with it. I say this not only because it is a common industry term, but because it is an important concept.

Science

• A worldwide hunt for a “line in the rock” that shows the beginning of a new geological epoch defined by humanity’s extraordinary impact on planet Earth is expected to get underway in the next few weeks.

• The idea that we are now living in the Anthropocene epoch has been gaining ground in recent years.

• The surge in global temperatures by an average of one degree Celsius in little over a century, the burning of vast amounts of fossil fuels, the extinction of many animal species, the widespread use of nitrogen fertilisers, the deluge of plastic rubbish and a number of other factors have all caused changes that will remain visible in rocks for millions of years.

• Later this month, an expert working group – set up to investigate whether these changes are so significant that the 11,500-year-old Holocene epoch is now at an end – will present its latest findings to the 35th International Geological Congress (IGC) in South Africa.

• They then plan to search for what is known as a “golden spike” – a physical point in the geological record that shows where one epoch changed to another – which could win over any remaining doubters among the geology community.

• NASA has announced a million-dollar prize it will award to whomsoever can program a virtual robot to get stuff done ahead of a crewed mission to Mars.

Health/Nutrition

• The report feeds into a raging debate about whether to ban or restrict the widely used chemicals to help bee populations to recover. Many bee species are in decline around the world, although climate change, habitat loss, parasites and other insecticides besides neonicotinoids have all been linked to the problem, says Ben Woodcock, another ecologist at the CEH.

• Janine Jackson: “Obama Signs Bill Requiring Labeling of GMO Foods” was the headline in the Washington Post. But then why are many of the activists who’ve been fighting for the labeling of genetically engineered foods calling the legislation the DARK Act, for Denying Americans the Right to Know?s

Security

• USER ACCOUNT Control (UAC), the thing in Microsoft Windows that creates extra menus you wish would just sod off, can be bypassed, allowing hackers to gain registry access.

• Security researcher Matt Nelson has discovered that the flaw allows someone to start PowerShell, access the registry and then leave no trace.

• The workaround/feature/bug/massive security hole works on any version of Windows with UAC, which was introduced in Windows Vista and later softened in Windows 7 as it proved such a spectacular pain in the Vista.

• The technique uses no files, no injections and leaves no trace. It’s just pure direct access via a vulnerability. You could go off and do it to someone now.

• Don’t do that, though.

• Several stories and events recently that in some way relate to backdoors and golden keys and security. Or do they? In a couple cases, I think some of the facts were slightly colored to make for a more exciting narrative. Having decided that golden keys are shitty, that doesn’t imply that all that’s shit is golden. A few different perspectives here, because I think some of the initial hoopla obscured some lessons that even people who don’t like backdoors can learn from.

• Secure Boot

• Microsoft added a feature to Secure Boot, accidentally creating a bypass for older versions. A sweet demo scene release (plain text) compares this incident to the FBI’s requested golden keys. Fortunately, our good friends over at the Register dug into this claim and explained some of the nuance in their article, Bungling Microsoft singlehandedly proves that golden backdoor keys are a terrible idea. Ha, ha, I kid.

• Matthew Garrett also has some notes on Microsoft’s compromised Secure Boot implementation. He’s purportedly a Linux developer, but he doesn’t once in this post call Windows a steaming pile, so he’s probably a Microsoft shill in disguise.

• Returning to the big question, What does the MS Secure Boot Issue teach us about key escrow? Maybe not a whole lot. Some questions to consider are how thoroughly MS tried to guard the key and whether they actually lost the key or just signed the wrong thing.

• Relevant to the crypto backdoor discussion, are the actions taken here the same? In a key escrow scheme, are iPhones sending encrypted data to the FBI or is the FBI sending encrypted messages to iPhones? The direction of information flow probably has a profound effect on the chances of the wrong thing leaking out. Not to say I want anything flowing in either direction, but it does affect how analogous the situations are.

• A perhaps more important lesson, for all security or crypto practitioners, is just barely hinted at in mjg59’s post. Microsoft created a new message format, but signed it with a key trusted by systems that did not understand this format. Misinterpretation of data formats results in many vulnerabilities. Whenever it’s possible that a message may be incorrectly handled by existing systems, it’s vital to roll keys to prevent misinterpretation.

• So the good news is: our election system has many checks and balances so we don’t have to trust the hackable computers to tell us who won. The biggest weaknesses are DRE paperless touchscreen voting machines used in a few states, which are completely unacceptable; and possible problems with electronic pollbooks.

• In this article I’ve discussed paper trails: pollbooks, paper ballots, and per-precinct result printouts. Election officials must work hard to assure the security of the paper trail: chain of custody of ballot boxes once the polls close, for example. And they must use the paper trails to audit the election, to protect against hacked computers (and other kinds of fraud, bugs, and accidental mistakes). Many states have laws requiring (for example) random audits of paper ballots; more states need such laws, and in all states the spirit of the laws must be followed as well as the letter.

• Over at the Freedom to Tinker blog, Andrew Appel has a two-part series on security attacks and defenses for the upcoming elections in the US (though some of it will obviously be applicable elsewhere too). Part 1 looks at the voting and counting process with an eye toward ways to verify what the computers involved are reporting, but doing so without using the computers themselves (having and verifying the audit trail, essentially). Part 2 looks at the so-called cyberdefense teams and how their efforts are actually harming all of our security (voting and otherwise) by hoarding bugs rather than reporting them to get them fixed.

• Security has always weighed heavily on executives’ minds as the risk of using public cloud services. In surveys I am involved in designing, we find to this day that security is the number-one challenge or showstopper when it comes to moving things to the cloud.

• More than 70 percent of the 100 federal IT business decision-makers polled in Dell’s State of IT Trends 2016 Study said their agency is using old operating systems to run important mission applications. And a little more than half of respondents said their agency is using software or systems that are no longer vendor-supported, according to the report.

• The smart plug can act as a conduit not just for electricity — but for cyberattacks.

• “Kali Linux is known as the ‘go-to’ for black [hat] and white [hat] hackers alike,” Omri Moyal, VP Research at Israel-based cybersecurity firm Minerva Labs, was quoted as saying by Vocativ. “It is widely promoted and educated in underground forums and anonymous chat rooms, and the combination of its pre-installed, ready-to-use, powerful tools make it extremely dangerous in the wrong hands,” he adds. “As we have heard that ISIS are declaring that they will move to operate in the cyber domain, it is very natural that they will go to this tool.”

• What initially looked like a string of Drupal sites infected with ransomware (that didn’t work properly) now looks like a professional cybercrime operation that relies on a self-propagating Linux trojan to create a botnet with various capabilities.

Defence/Aggression

• New details of the $400 million U.S. payment to Iran earlier this year depict a tightly scripted exchange specifically timed to the release of several American prisoners held in Iran.

• As for the little boy in the propaganda picture, he does not seem to be badly injured. Let us not forget the tens of thousands of children that Washington’s wars and bombings of 7 Muslim countries have killed without any tears shed by CNN anchors, and let us not forget the 500,000 Iraqi children that the United Nations concluded died as a result of US sanctions against Iraq, children’s deaths that Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said were worth it.

• The turbulent months after the 9/11 attacks were notable for something that did not happen. Even though al-Qaeda had killed thousands of people and scored a direct hit on the Pentagon, hardly anyone in either political party blamed the Bush Administration for failing to defend the homeland. In the burst of patriotism that followed the assaults, President Bush and his aides essentially got a free pass from the voting public. This consensus held even after it emerged that government officials had fumbled numerous clues that might have prevented the attacks. (The Central Intelligence Agency knew two al-Qaeda operatives had entered the U.S. in 2000, but never told the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No one tracked their movements and phone calls, a notable lapse since both men ended up among the 19 hijackers.) Voters had no problem re-electing a president who did nothing after receiving an intelligence briefing weeks before 9/11 headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.”

• For fifteen years, and more if we go back to the Clinton regime’s destruction of Yugoslavia, the US has been engaged in wars on populations in seven—eight counting Yugoslavia/Serbia—countries, causing millions of deaths, disabled, and dislocated peoples. A police state has been created, the US Constitution stripped of its protective features, and massive crimes committed under both US and international law by three administrations. These crimes include torture, transparant false flag events, naked aggression (a war crime), spying without warrants, and murder of US citizens. Yet, the leftwing’s voice is barely heard.

• Clearly, my acquaintances are beginning to miss the challenge to explanations and the country’s direction that the left formerly provided. I know how they feel. We used to be pushed along by biases and stereotypical thinking, and the left was there to rattle our cage. Now we are pushed along by propaganda and there is no countervailing force except a few Internet voices.

• Official Washington loves to show heartbreaking images of wounded Syrian children with the implicit message that it’s time to invade Syria and impose “regime change” (rather than commit to peace talks), a dilemma addressed by Michael Brenner.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Air quality in Indonesia and peninsular Malaysia declined this week as prevailing southwesterly winds continued to blow smog over the water that separates the two countries.

• “Smoke from forest fires and peat in Riau has already crossed the Malacca Strait,” Indonesia’s disaster management agency chief Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said on Wednesday. “It’s still only a little but it should be addressed immediately.”

• Data from Malaysia’s Department of Environment showed air quality in Shah Alam, a city near Kuala Lumpur in Selangor state, declined to 85 on Wednesday. A level above 100 is classified as unhealthy. Only one of five areas in Singapore monitored by the city state’s National Environment Agency showed air quality in the “Moderate” range. The 24-hour Pollutant Standards Index was in the “Good” range on August 7.

• The number of fires and hotspots in the 2016 dry season has been lower than last year, when the extended drought wrought by an El Niño weather event deprived the region of the rain needed to suppress Indonesia’s annual fires. Prolonged periods with no rain have led to spikes in hotspots in recent months, including the last week.

• Not Peter Wadhams. The former director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and professor of ocean physics at Cambridge has spent his scientific life researching the ice world, or the cryosphere, and in just 30 years has seen unimaginable change.

• When in 1970 he joined the first of what would be more than 50 polar expeditions, the Arctic sea ice covered around 8m sq km at its September minimum. Today, it hovers at around 3.4m, and is declining by 13% a decade. In 30 years Wadhams has seen the Arctic ice thin by 40%, the world change colour at its top and bottom and the ice disappear in front of his eyes.

• In a new book, published just as July 2016 is confirmed by Nasa as the hottest month ever recorded, this most experienced and rational scientist states what so many other researchers privately fear but cannot publicly say – that the Arctic is approaching a death spiral which may see the entire remaining summer ice cover collapse in the near future.

Finance

• A homeless man can afford to buy an RV thanks to a popular blog post. A woman earns a year’s salary from a YouTube makeup tutorial. An African writer starts with three hours of electricity per day and ends with over $40,000 dollars.

• These are some of the striking and somewhat implausible-sounding stories to have emerged during the first fully operational month of Steemit, a forum-style platform that rewards community content and curation with cryptocurrency payouts, and where—for the moment at least—users who hit the goldmine of a viral post can see up to five-figure payouts. (Here I should include a journalistic disclosure: a post on the site in which I appealed for sources for this story earned a total value of over $800, of which I have currently withdrawn $100.)

• But as with any new cryptocurrency, there are key questions over stability, sustainability, and underlying motivation. As it stands, the bulk of the site is made up of quickly-written, poorly-researched content, some of which is remunerated into the thousands of dollars. At the same time, critics have raised concerns over both the distribution of the currency and the business model of the platform, questioning the huge sums accrued by early adopters and in some cases alleging a scam dependent on new investment to remain afloat.

• Bitcoin.org has warned users to be aware that the upcoming release of Bitcoin Core is likely to be targeted by state-sponsored cyberattackers.

• The group which manages Bitcoin Core, the client used to keep the virtual currency decentralized while at the same time aims to accept only valid transactions, warned this week that the organization has “reason to suspect” that the binaries used in the next release will become targets.

• The upcoming 0.13.0 release, dubbed Segwit, has undergone extensive testing and has been designed to improve transaction efficiency. The update also changes the rules of the Bitcoin system marginally by introducing new features which reduce problems associated with unwanted third-party transaction malleability and designing smart contracts which use the cryptocurrency.

• However, state-sponsored groups — which are often sophisticated and have high levels of government funding — may impede the release or threaten investors dabbling in the virtual currency, and Bitcoin.org says that any state-sponsored threats levied against the new release cannot be defended against without help.

• For the second year in a row, EFF and a coalition of virtual currency and consumer protection organizations have beaten back a California bill that would have created untenable burdens for the emerging cryptocurrency community.

• A considerable amount of research funding comes to the UK from the EU through the Horizon 2020 (H2020) scheme [1]. This programme is providing over 80 billion Euros in grants over the period 2014 to 2020 and is envisioned as a means to drive economic growth and create jobs within the EU’s member nations. The stated aim is to ensure Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.

• The chief beneficiaries of H2020 grants are research institutions (universities and independent research organisations) and the R&D arms of large companies [2], however there is a goal that 20% of the monies will go to small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

• Funding under H2020 is granted to projects each operated by a consortium of companies and organisations. A consortium puts together a detailed proposal describing what work they will do, what the outcomes will be, and how grant money would be spent. The proposals are assessed for the European Commission (EC) by panels of experts who determine the technical merit and value for money as well as considering the social and economic impact of the research. Other considerations also play a small part, such as the participation by SMEs, equality issues, and distribution of work across all EU countries. Competition is stiff, and many proposals are turned down.

• Tenants have sued a Lower Manhattan developer, saying their leases should have been rent-stabilized in exchange for the tax breaks their landlord received. State and local officials have now filed a brief supporting the tenants, whose case could affect thousands of rental units.

• Now we’re told we’re in a moment of reconsideration—of tough-on-crime policies, of the deregulation of banks and, perhaps, of the notion that depriving needy people of assistance would lead to their gainful employment and well-being. Our guest says a true reconsideration of the 1990s welfare overhaul would require a so-far invisible recentering of the people in its crosshairs: low-income women, particularly mothers raising children on their own.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The more web savvy among you may know that “Deez Nuts” was a popular web meme earlier in 2015, but it didn’t quite explain how it got into the poll. It turned out that a 15 year old kid named Brady Olson had filled out the necessary paperwork under the name Deez Nuts, and PPP had decided to toss it into their poll as a bit of fun. The attention paid to Deez Nuts as a political candidate resulted in a bunch of other silly names filling out the paperwork as well — including Butt Stuff, Mr. Not Sure and Sir TrippyCup aka Young Trippz aka The GOAT aka The Prophet aka Earl.

• Of course, after that initial flurry of attention, most people mostly forgot about Deez Nuts, the fake Presidential candidate…. until this week.

• You see, earlier this week PPP released a new poll showing that Green Party candidate Jill Stein was trailing Deez Nuts in Texas (also trailing, Harambe, the dead gorilla who is also now something of an internet meme).

• Ostenisbly, the rant serves to warn that if such tools get out, people might target banks and financial systems, specifically mentioning the hacks on SWIFT (not to mention suggesting that if the other claimed files get out someone might target finance).

• Along the way it includes a reference to elites having their top friends announcing “no law broken, no crime commit.” And right before it, this: “make promise future handjobs, (but no blowjobs).”

• Maybe I’m acutely sensitive to mentions of blowjobs, especially those received by Bill Clinton, for reasons that are obvious to most of you. But the reference to handjobs but no blowjobs in the immediate proximity of getting off of a crime followed closely by a reference to running for President seems like an oblique reference to the Clintons.

• If so, it would place this leak more closely in line with the structure of the other leaks targeting Hillary.

• That’s in no way dispositive, but the blowjobs references does merit mentioning.

• The mainstream U.S. news media insists that its bias against Donald Trump is an aberration justified by his extraordinary recklessness, but the truth is U.S. media bias has a long history, says longtime journalist Robert Parry.

• If limited liability companies like Children of Israel make political donations, and the LLC is treated as a partnership for tax purposes, federal regulations require the LLC to inform the recipients who the actual humans behind the company are. Then the recipients of the donations must disclose this in their filings with the Federal Election Commission. By May of this year, Fox and the RNC were doing that.

• But Children of Israel either failed to do so with its contributions to Pursuing American’s Greatness and Stand for Truth, or the two Super PACs simply chose to ignore it. According to Brendan Fisher, associate counsel of the political money watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, Fox and/or Children of Israel therefore violated prohibitions on “straw donor” contributions made in someone else’s name. (The CLC filed a complaint with the FEC against Children of Israel in March before Fox’s identity became known.)

• Ann Ravel, one of six members of the Federal Election Commission, called last week for the FEC to take a stand against foreign money in U.S. elections — and on Thursday, she appealed for public reaction.

• At issue are advisory opinions that gave a green light to domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations who wanted to make donations to U.S. political campaigns. In her proposal to rescind those opinions, Ravel cited The Intercept‘s recent reporting about American Pacific International Capital, a California corporation owned by Chinese citizens which — thanks to Citizens United and that FEC opinion — was able to give $1.3 million to the Jeb Bush Super PAC Right to Rise USA.

• CNN on Wednesday night held a town hall with presidential nominee Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka.

• During the event, the team made its pitch to voters, casting the Green Party ticket as an alternative option for those who don’t want to back either major party’s nominee. Stein said the Green Party is standing up for “everyday people and an America and a future that works for all of us.”

• Stein hit Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the event and said she would have trouble sleeping at night if either Clinton or Republican nominee Donald Trump were elected president.

• Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka took part in CNN’s first Green Party town hall Wednesday night, laying out their proposals to abolish all student debt, establish a single-payer healthcare system, create a foreign policy based on humanitarian values, and to establish a “Green New Deal” that would both create millions of jobs nationwide and help transition the country to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

• While polls show Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are among the least popular major-party candidates to ever run for the White House, it appears no third-party candidates will be invited to take part in the first presidential debate next month. The debates are organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties. Under the commission’s rules, candidates will only be invited if they are polling at 15 percent in five national surveys. Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein have both witnessed recent surges in support, but neither have crossed the 15 percent threshold. More than 12,000 people have signed a petition organized by RootsAction calling for a four-way presidential debate. We speak to Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein. Four years ago she was arrested outside a presidential debate protesting her exclusion from the event.

• The Green Party presidential nominee tells USA TODAY’s Capital Download that she will be at the first presidential debate at Hofstra University in less than six weeks. And she says she is “absolutely” ready to be arrested, as she was four years ago. Video by Jasper Colt, USA TODAY

• If the 2016 election is a grease-soaked dumpster fire, Donald Trump might be about to spray it with a hose full of cooking oil. Last month his campaign raised an astonishing $82 million, leaving him with $74 million on hand at the start of this month. We can safely assume a lot of that’s going toward red hats and Trump Steaks … but so far, none of it’s being spent on television ads. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, aka “Who?” have both spent, uh, infinity times more money on TV ads than Donald Trump has.

• Trump’s spent $0 on TV since the start of the general election campaign, compared to $52 million spent by the Clinton campaign. While Hillary’s people have already booked a full range of ads in battleground states through November, Trump still seems to be relying on all the “free” publicity he’s getting from media (like us!) since the start of the campaign. The only problem is, since the end of the primary, that coverage has taken a distinct turn from “Donald Trump might be a genius” …

• Thirteen years after country music blacklisted the top-selling female band in American history, the Dixie Chicks are returning to the town that made them famous.

• And when the trio performs Wednesday night at Nashville’s sold-out Bridgestone Arena, they’ll do so unapologetically — with a show featuring the same brand of biting political commentary that most country artists avoid at all costs, and that forced the Chicks into exile more than a decade ago.

• “They have a bitter feeling about Nashville,” said Paul Worley, record executive and the Dixie Chicks’ former producer. “People in the industry may have turned their back on them, but Nashville did not. And they are going to find out when they play here that Nashville has always been here for them and will always be here for them.”

• [...]

• Yet on Wednesday, if previous shows on the Dixie Chicks’ largely sold-out 55-city tour are any indication, they will perform in front of a giant image of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump — embellished with horns sprouting from his head and a devilish goatee scribbled on his chin.

• After the Republicans and Democrats finished their conventions in late July, the Green Party gathered this month to nominate Dr. Jill Stein for the presidency. Stein’s campaign — with her party on ballot lines in the majority of states, and her poll numbers surging ahead of Green numbers from recent presidential elections — has the potential to be a breakthrough bid for the Greens, and for a more robust democracy.

• Stein recognized the prospect in an optimistic yet urgent acceptance speech in which she spoke of “unstoppable momentum for transformational change.” The candidate who talks of ushering in a “Green New Deal” told the Green Party Convention that “we have an historic opportunity, an historic responsibility to be the agents of that change. As Martin Luther King said, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ I know that arc is bending in us, and through us. And we are actors in something much bigger than us as we struggle for justice, for peace, for community, for healing.”

• Give CNN just a little credit. On Wednesday night, the cable network hosted a Town Hall featuring Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka. In those 90 Prime Time minutes, Stein and Baraka presented a clearer picture of the realities and consequences of US foreign policy and militarism than we heard from Bernie Sanders in a year’s worth of speeches.

• Americans who tuned in heard some things that are rarely mentioned in the mainstream media: a sober critique of the US’s malign relationship to the government of Israel, forthright calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons, the end of killer drone strikes, the closure of all 800-plus overseas military bases and an end to interventionist wars. The entire Town Hall session was the political equivalent of George Carlin’s the seven things you can’t say on TV.

• Kaplan’s were among the emails released, but he didn’t lose his job in the immediate wave of housecleaning. And unlike the others who left, he’s not going far: Kaplan will be the DNC’s outside point person for events that involve President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as they raise money for the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and other candidates going into the final phase of the election.

• A DNC official confirmed the news, which was announced to senior staff Friday morning.

• “Jordan Kaplan has decided to return to his consulting business full time. He will continue to manage DNC finance events featuring the president and first lady,” the official said

• On Thursday, Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka joined Alan Colmes for a radio interview on Fox News’ “The Alan Colmes Show.” The Green Party ticket only recently began receiving mainstream media coverage, and Stein and Baraka explain many aspects of the Green Party ticket to potentially unfamiliar listeners.

• First, Colmes asks about the impact of the “Nader effect,” or the fear that voting for third-party candidates will split up the liberal vote and cause the Democratic Party to lose. “These are the most unpopular and disliked candidates in our history,” Stein responds. “People are saying ‘we’ve had enough of those guys.’ ”

• Stein is expected to draw a crowd as she appeals to one-time Bernie Sanders supporters in a state that overwhelmingly voted for the Vermont senator at the 2016 caucus. The latest poll shows Stein with 7 percent support in Colorado, far better than her showing in the 2012 election when she won just 0.3 percent, or 7,508 votes.

Censorship/Free Speech

• In February 2016, ten of the largest Arabic-speaking atheist groups, with a total of about 100,000 members, have been deactivated for the same reason: heavy reporting campaigns that are organized by “cyber jihadist” fundamentalist Islamic groups, especially for the removal of any anti-Islamic group or page. In such coordinated campaigns, very large numbers of people, and possibly automated scripts, simultaneously file reports falsely claiming that a page, group, or personal account has violated Community Standards.

• Gawker.com, the flagship blog of Gawker Media, will shut down Monday after 14 years of operation, a dramatic coda for a feisty newsroom unable to survive a $140 million judgment from an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit.

• The decision comes two days after Univision Communications agreed to buy Gawker Media’s assets — for its six other blogs — for $135 million in a bankruptcy auction held Tuesday. Univision won after outbidding a $131 million bid from digital publisher Ziff Davis.

• Gawker Media and its founder and CEO, Nick Denton, filed for bankruptcy protection after a Florida jury decided in March that Gawker.com violated Hulk Hogan’s privacy when it published a sex tape of the former pro wrestler having sex with the wife of a friend.

• A bankruptcy court in New York, which had to review any deals for Gawker’s assets, considered Univision’s bid at a hearing Thursday afternoon and gave its approval to proceed with the deal.

• “Sadly, neither I nor Gawker.com, the buccaneering flagship of the group I built with my colleagues, are coming along for this next stage,” Denton wrote in a note to staffers.

• The closure of Gawker.com, known for its snarky and pugnacious coverage of politicians, celebrities and media personalities, will be cheered by some of its critics as a satisfying comeuppance for a blog that not only didn’t pull punches but sometimes aimed below the belt. Others, including media advocates, interpret it as a chilling sign of the threat to the First Amendment posed by third-party-funded lawsuits.

• Gawker.com, facing a $140 million jury verdict for publishing a sex tape of Terry Bollea (better known as pro wrestling icon Hulk Hogan), is shuttering operations next week, according to a post on the site.

• “Nick Denton, the company’s outgoing CEO, informed current staffers of the site’s fate on Thursday afternoon, just hours before a bankruptcy court in Manhattan will decide whether to approve Univision’s bid for Gawker Media’s other assets,” the website said. “Staffers will soon be assigned to other editorial roles, either at one of the other six sites or elsewhere within Univision. Near-term plans for Gawker.com’s coverage, as well as the site’s archives, have not yet been finalized.”

• Univision acquired Gawker Media for $135 million on Tuesday. Gawker Media’s other holdings include Gizmodo, Deadspin, Jezebel, Lifehacker, Kotaku, and Jalopnik. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy two months ago and went up for sale following the jury’s verdict.

• Twitter said Thursday it has shut down 235,000 accounts linked to violent extremism in the last six months alone. That brings the total number of terminated Twitter accounts associated with terrorism to 360,000 since mid-2015.

• New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has signed bipartisan-backed legislation that will punish groups that endorse a boycott of Israel in protest of its violations of Palestinian human rights.

• Christie, who is one of the most outspoken supporters of far-right Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, signed the bill on Tuesday.

• It requires the New Jersey government to identify companies that support a boycott of Israel, raising fears that it would create a “blacklist” of institutions that back the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement.

• Under the new law, the State Investment Council, which manages more than $80 billion in pension assets, is legally obligated to divest from these blacklisted companies.

• A.J. Daulerio, the ex-Gawker editor who wrote the 2012 story that originally included an excerpt of the Hulk Hogan sex tape he and his employer were successfully sued over, lashed out at Peter Thiel on Thursday. Daulerio questioned the motives of going after his personal assets to satisfy a portion of the $140.1 million judgement in the case.

• “It’s ludicrous that a billionaire like Peter Thiel is spending his wealth on lawyers to freeze my $1,500 bank account and figure out the value of my rice cooker and old furniture,” Daulerio told FORBES in a statement. “If Mr. Thiel really believed in the First Amendment, he would not be funding lawyers to chase my meager assets and instead would try to justify the $115.1 million verdict in front of an appeals court. Instead, he’s using his fortune to hold me hostage to settle a decade-long grudge that has nothing to do with me or Hulk Hogan.”

• As FORBES first revealed in May, Thiel financed Hogan’s lawsuit as part of an effort to bring down the media company. Daulerio’s comments are his first public statements about case since the jury awarded its verdict in March.

• It feels a bit strange to say this now, but in the spring of 2014 there was no better place to work than Gawker. For a certain kind of person, at any rate — ambitious, rebellious, and eager for attention, all of which I was. Just over a decade old, Gawker still thought of itself as a pirate ship, but a very big pirate ship, ballasted by semi-respectable journalism, and much less prone to setting itself on fire than in its early days, when its writers had a tendency to make loud and famous enemies and when its staff was subjected to near-annual purges — unless they were able to dramatically quit first. It managed to be, in a way it never had been, the kind of place about which you could say, “I could see myself being here in ten years.” Which I did often enough for it to seem funny now, since I myself would end up dramatically quitting in the summer of 2015, a little more than a year after being promoted to editor-in-chief and a little less than a year before the company would declare bankruptcy and auction itself off to the highest bidder.

• For most of its 25 years, the Chinese history magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu has been loved by moderate liberals and detested with equal passion by devotees of Mao Zedong, who reviled it as a refuge for heretical criticisms of the Chinese leader and the Communist Party. But in a sign of how sharply ideological winds have turned under President Xi Jinping, officials who recently took control of the magazine have wooed Maoist and nationalist writers who long scorned the magazine. Several well-known hard-line polemicists attended a meeting with the new managers on Monday.

• One thing I think would benefit all publishers is to more closely moderate comments before they’re published. That’ll lead to better discussions and avoid the “garbage fire” of flame wars. Would a news organisation allow journalists to publish prior to proof reading and approval? Of course not. Why then would they allow comment to be approved based purely on a login?

• NPR has said it will use social media to engage with users instead of comments, but responding to a story on social media certainly isn’t the right place for anything other than a brief statement. It’s an instant reaction, rather than any analytical in-depth response.

• My perspective is: either do it properly (moderate), or close the comments. But remember, closing comments effectively diminishes the collaborative communication that the internet gifts us all.

• As seen during the media preview that in Jakarta on Thursday (18/08), “Headshot” features quick fighting and gun violence scenes which undoubtedly will raise the question about censorship. Directors Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto said censorship should not limit their creativity.

• Public and foreign diplomats are routinely told by the military regime that Thai media enjoys freedom to criticize. That’s only half true at best. The reality is that, two years after the 2014 coup, the selective pressures being applied on some media critical of the junta have just become more subtle and sophisticated, thus rather invisible.

• [...]

• Pravit RojanaphrukLast month, junta leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha used his absolute power under Article 44 of the provisional charter to empower the commission to censor any media deemed a threat to national security and shield it from legal consequences for doing so. According to an outstanding junta order from 2014, security threats include anything construed as defaming the monarchy, “insincere” criticism of the junta, or anything that might sway public opinion against it.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Cisco has already warned customers about two exploits found in the NSA-linked data recently dumped by hackers calling themselves The Shadow Brokers. Now, researchers have uncovered another attack included in the cache, which they claim allows the extraction of VPN passwords from certain Cisco products—meaning hackers could snoop on encrypted traffic.

• Security researcher Mustafa Al-Bassam first documented the hacking tool, which uses the codename BENIGNCERTAIN, in a blog post published Thursday. He coined the attack “PixPocket” after the hardware the tool targets: Cisco PIX, a popular, albeit now outdated, firewall and VPN appliance. Corporations or government departments might use these devices to allow only authorised users onto their network.

• I think the current mindset of these government agencies is foolish and puts not only our firms and customers at risk, but the nation itself. Let me explain.

• If the Shadow Brokers’ leak of NSA files is legit, as is now all but confirmed, they have offered a glimpse into how the intelligence agency exploited security systems created by American tech vendors.

• Last Friday, a mysterious group by the name of “The Shadow Brokers” dumped what appeared to be some of the National Security Agency’s hacking tools online. There was some speculation as to whether the tools were legitimate. According to The Intercept, these tools are mentioned in documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

• On Monday, a hacking group calling itself the “ShadowBrokers” announced an auction for what it claimed were “cyber weapons” made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA software, part of a powerful constellation of tools used to covertly infect computers worldwide.

• The provenance of the code has been a matter of heated debate this week among cybersecurity experts, and while it remains unclear how the software leaked, one thing is now beyond speculation: The malware is covered with the NSA’s virtual fingerprints and clearly originates from the agency.

• The evidence that ties the ShadowBrokers dump to the NSA comes in an agency manual for implanting malware, classified top secret, provided by Snowden, and not previously available to the public. The draft manual instructs NSA operators to track their use of one malware program using a specific 16-character string, “ace02468bdf13579.” That exact same string appears throughout the ShadowBrokers leak in code associated with the same program, SECONDDATE.

• Documents from the Edward Snowden archive prove that the malware and exploits dumped on the public internet on Monday originated from the NSA.

• Among the files leaked by whistleblower Snowden in 2013 is a draft NSA manual on how to redirect people’s web browsers using a man-in-the-middle tool called SECONDDATE. This piece of software meddles with connections in real-time so targets quietly download malware from NSA-controlled servers.

• The guide instructs snoops to track SECONDDATE deployments using a 16-character identification string: ace02468bdf13579.

• Earlier this week, hackers calling themselves the Shadow Brokers briefly leaked on GitHub an archive of code, claiming the tools were stolen from the Equation Group – which is understood to be a computer surveillance wing of the NSA. It was hard to tell at the time if the software collection was a carefully constructed spoof, or if it truly belonged to the US spying agency.

• On Friday, messages posted to Pastebin and Tumblr allege the recently leaked NSA files came from a contractor working a red team engagement for RedSeal, a company that offers a security analytics platform that can assess a given network’s resiliency to attack. In addition, the hackers claim the intention was to disclose the tools this year during DEF CON.

• Salted Hash reached out to the press team at DEF CON, as well as RedSeal.

• In a statement, RedSeal would only confirm they are an In-Q-Tel portfolio company. The company also denied any knowledge of red team assessments against their products by In-Q-Tel or contractors working with In-Q-Tel. The press department at DEF CON hadn’t responded to questions by the time this article went to print.

• Two contributors to Lawfare — offensive security expert Dave Aitel and former GCHQ information security expert Matt Tait — take on the government’s Vulnerability Equities Process (VEP), which is back in the news thanks to a group of hackers absconding with some NSA zero-days.

• The question is whether or not the VEP is being used properly. If the NSA discovered its exploits had been accessed by someone other than its own TAO (Tailored Access Operations) team, why did it choose to keep its exploits secret, rather than inform the developers affected? The vulnerabilities exposed so far seem to date as far back as 2013, but only now, after details have been exposed by the Shadow Brokers are companies like Cisco actually aware of these issues.

• According to Lawfare’s contributors, there are several reasons why the NSA would have kept quiet, even when confronted with evidence that these tools might be in the hands of criminals or antagonistic foreign powers. They claim the entire process — which is supposed to push the NSA, FBI, et al towards disclosure — is broken. But not for the reasons you might think.

• The Office of the Director of National Intelligence claimed last year that the NSA divulges 90% of the exploits it discovers. Nowhere in this statement were any details as to what the NSA considered to be an acceptable timeframe for disclosure. It’s always been assumed the NSA turns these exploits over to developers after they’re no longer useful. The Obama administration may have reiterated the presumption of openness when reacting to yet another Snowden leak, but also made it clear that national security concerns will always trump personal security concerns — even if the latter has the potential to affect more people.

• Thanks to the internet, more law enforcement agencies are exceeding jurisdictional limitations than ever before. The FBI’s Network Investigative Technique (NIT) — deployed during a child porn investigation to strip Tor users of their anonymity — travelled all over the United States and the world beyond. IP addresses and computer information harvested by the FBI were turned over to Europol and details obtained by Motherboard suggested at least 50 computers in Austria alone had been compromised by the FBI’s hacking.

• Rule 41 imposes jurisdictional limitations on the FBI’s hacking attempts — something the DOJ is trying (and succeeding, so far) to have changed. But the hacking goes both ways. Not only does the FBI go cruising past US borders while tracking down Tor users accessing seized child porn servers, but law enforcement agencies in other countries are doing the same thing — and raising the same questions.

• Bulk collection and analysis of data by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ is relevant and worthwhile for national security, according to an in-depth report by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC.

• Prime minister Theresa May has already used the report as proof that the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, despite widespread criticism, is necessary to boost the UK’s ability to fight crime and terrorism.

• The 192-page report was headed by Anderson and a team he chose free from government involvement. It did not look at the legal and privacy aspects of bulk data collection and analysis, only whether it served a purpose for the operations of the security agencies.

• A terrorist cell poised to attack Britain last year was foiled at the 11th hour after online spooks hacked their phones and emails, a dramatic new report has revealed.

• British spies at GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 have effectively been given the green light to continue their mass spying operations around the world after a fresh independent review into bulk surveillance powers found ‘no viable alternative’ to the current regime.

• Compiled by David Anderson QC, the hefty 200-plus page report was commissioned by Prime Minister Theresa May while in her previous role of home secretary.

• The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has decided a man whose communications were snagged by commercial spyware can sue the software’s maker for violating federal wiretap law.

• The plaintiff, Javier Luis, became involved in an online relationship with an unhappily married woman. Her husband, Joseph Zang, installed Awareness Technologies’ “WebWatcher” on his wife’s computer in order to keep tabs on her online communications. After discovering his communications had been intercepted, Luis sued the software’s maker (along with the husband, who has already settled with Luis and is no longer listed as a defendant).

• The Appeals Court doesn’t form an opinion on the strength of Luis’s claims — only noting that they’re strong enough to survive dismissal. Awareness Software will be able to more fully address the allegations in the lower court on remand, but for now, the Appeals Court finds [PDF] the software’s “contemporaneous interception” of electronic communications to be a potential violation of the Wiretap Act.

• Nobody knows who’s hiding behind the moniker of The Shadow Brokers, the mysterious group who earlier this week dumped a slew of hacking tools belonging to the NSA. Is it the Russian government? Is it actually a disgruntled rogue NSA insider?

• For now, there’s no hard evidence pointing in either direction. But The Shadow Brokers’ language in their rambling manifesto might give us some clues. In fact, the apparent broken English might just be a ruse, a trick to make us believe the author doesn’t speak the language, according to a linguistic analysis of it.

• “The author is a native English speaker trying to pass himself off as a foreigner,” Jeffrey Carr, CEO of cybersecurity company Taia Global, told Motherboard.

• First detected by Kaspersky Lab back in 2015, Equation Group is a threat actor believed to be working for the NSA. It has leveraged malware campaigns, watering holes, and compromised removable media to conduct cyber espionage against foreign targets presumably on behalf of the United States and Israel.

• The NSA’s exploit stash is allegedly for sale. As mentioned earlier this week, an individual or a group calling themselves Shadow Brokers claims to be auctioning off parts of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) toolkit, containing several zero days — including one in Cisco’s (a favorite NSA TAO target) Adaptive Security Appliance which allows for remote code execution.

• The thing about these vulnerabilities is that they aren’t new. The exploits being hawked by Shadow Brokers date back to 2013, suggesting the agency has been sitting on these exploits for awhile. The fact that companies affected by them don’t know about these flaws means the NSA hasn’t been passing on this information.

• Back in 2015, the NSA declared that it passed on information about vulnerabilities to affected companies “90% of the time.” Of course, this statement contained very few details about how long the NSA exploited vulnerabilities before allowing them to be patched.

• The White House told the NSA to make disclosure the preferred method of handling discovered vulnerabilities, but also gave it a sizable loophole to work with — “a clear national security or law enforcement need.”

• Cisco Systems is to cut about 5,500 jobs, representing nearly 7% of the US technology company’s global workforce.

• The world’s largest networking gear maker, based in San Jose, California, announced the cuts on Wednesday night as part of a transition from its hardware roots into a software-centric business.

• I am 36 years old and am not on Facebook. It’s not that I ever explicitly decided not to sign up, but at first it was easy to avoid. It seemed like another fad that would peak and then fade, like Myspace (remember that?). But Facebook didn’t fade — in fact, it’s become expected — and by not making a decision to join, I made my decision.

• The Facebook Era emerged slowly, at least for me. I grew up when the main function of home computers was for games and word processing, and I remember a line of kids my age snaking out of one neighbor’s dining room to take a turn on the family’s new machine. It was unbelievably exciting — for about a week, until we all became bored and went back outside to play Manhunt or Ghosts in the Graveyard.

• Twenty-five years later, I’m still outside looking for playmates, but the block is empty. Everyone is on Facebook.

• I don’t claim to be above technology: I have a smartphone and two Instagram accounts — one devoted to my collection of vinyl records. I truly do understand the appeal of social networking. It connects people who may otherwise not be connected, and there is a lot to appreciate about that. But I also have a deep affection for the face-to-face interaction.

• There are a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the shocking dump of a slew of hacking tools used by an NSA-linked group earlier this week. But perhaps the biggest one is: who’s behind the leak? Who is behind the mysterious moniker “The Shadow Brokers”?

• So far, there’s no clear evidence pointing in any direction, but given the timing of the leak, and the simple fact that very few would have the capabilities and the motives to hack and shame the NSA publicly, some posited The Shadow Brokers could be Russian.

• But there’s another possibility. An insider could have stolen them directly from the NSA, in a similar fashion to how former NSA contractor Edward Snowden stole an untold number of the spy agency’s top secret documents. And this theory is being pushed by someone who claims to be, himself, a former NSA insider.

• “My colleagues and I are fairly certain that this was no hack, or group for that matter,” the former NSA employee told Motherboard. “This ‘Shadow Brokers’ character is one guy, an insider employee.”

• WhatsApp, Skype and other online messaging services face an EU crackdown aimed at safeguarding users’ privacy, in a move that highlights the gulf between Europe and the US in regulating the internet.

• The European commission will publish a draft law on data privacy that aims to ensure instant message and internet-voice-call services face similar security and privacy rules to those governing SMS text messages, mobile calls and landline calls.

• Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green MEP and prominent campaigner on data privacy, said: “It was obvious that there needs to be an adjustment to the reality of today. We see telecoms providers being replaced and those companies who seek to replace them need to be treated in the same way,” he said.

• According to a draft policy paper seen by the Financial Times, the likes of WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, and Skype, owned by Microsoft, would have to abide by “security and confidentiality provisions”.

• Whatever else the release of the tools did (and I expect we’ll learn more as time goes on), it revealed that NSA has been exploiting vulnerabilities in America’s top firewall companies for years — and that whoever released these tools likely knew that, and could exploit that, for the last three years.

• That comes against the background of a debate over whether our Vulnerabilities Equities Process works as billed, with EFF saying we need a public discussion today, and former NSA and GCHQ hackers claim we ignorant laypeople can’t adequately assess strategy, even while appearing to presume US strategy should not account for the role of tech exports.

• We’re now at a point where the fears raised by a few Snowden documents — that the NSA is making tech companies unwitting (the presumed story, but one that should get more scrutiny) or witting partners in NSA’s spying — have born out. And NSA should be asked — and its oversight committees should be asking — what the decision-making process behind turning a key segment of our economy into the trojan horse of our spooks looks like.

• Mind you, I suspect the oversight committees already know a bit about this (and the Gang of Four might even know the extent to which this involves witting partnership, at least from some companies). Which is why we should have public hearings to learn what they know.

• Did California’s congressional representatives Dianne Feinstein, Adam Schiff, and Devin Nunes sign off on the exploitation of a bunch of CA tech companies? If they did, did they really think through the potential (and now somewhat realized) impact it would have on those companies and, with it, our economy, and with it the potential follow-on damage to clients of those firewall companies?

• POWERS that allow spy agencies to harvest bulk data were today given the go-ahead by the UK’s terror-law watchdog.

• In David Anderson QC’s report, published this morning, he said there was a “proven operational case” for most of the controversial methods of data collection.

• Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed the findings claiming it showed how the powers, which she is currently trying to cement in legislation, are of “crucial importance” to MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

• But critics raised concerns over whether the Government would follow all of the report’s recommendations, and raised the prospect of blocking them in the House of Lords if they are not happy.

• Mr Anderson was asked earlier this year to evaluate the case for the tactics, which are included in the landmark Investigatory Powers Bill.

• The bulk collection of personal data by British spy agencies is vital in preventing terrorist attacks, an independent review of draft security legislation has found.

• David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, concluded that laws giving MI5, MI6 and GCHQ the right to gather large volumes of data from members of the public had a “clear operational purpose”.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Politicians and campaigners will demand Theresa May vote against Saudi Arabia remaining on the UN Human Rights Council after a year which saw the country’s government savagely bomb Yemen, commit vast numbers of beheadings, a mass execution and detain activists.

• Their call, on World Humanitarian Day, comes ahead of a critical UN vote on whether Saudi Arabia retains its seat. Controversy over the matter has increased since the Saudi Ambassador was also given a key role on a panel related to the council.

• But despite the repeated and well publicised atrocities of the Middle Eastern state, UK ministers still refuse to say whether they will back the kingdom or not.

• Kimia Alizadeh Zenoorin made history yesterday, Aug. 18, as the first Iranian woman to ever win an Olympic medal. She took the bronze for Iran in taekwondo, beating Sweden’s Nikita Glasnovic.

• The neighborhood was one of the most diverse places in the city. My brother and I played with the lawyer’s kids across the street, and we swung on the swing of the photographer next door while he cleaned his classic Excalibur. The East Indian kids living opposite us were some of my best friends growing up. Their dad was a bank examiner and their mother was my brother’s English teacher. We hung out with the Latino family two doors down after their daughter Elizabeth’s Quinceanera. There were a few police officers’ families per block in the old neighborhood and a few judges and an alderman too. Most of them were Black.

• Officer Walmart to his colleagues in the Tulsa Police Department—operates for up to 10 hours a day out of the security office of a Walmart Supercenter in the city’s northeast corner. It’s a small, windowless space with six flatscreen monitors mounted on a pale blue cinder-block wall, and on this hot summer day, the room is packed. Four Walmart employees watch the monitors, which toggle among the dozens of cameras covering the store and parking lot, while doing paperwork and snacking on Cheez Whiz and Club Crackers. In a corner of the room, an off-duty sheriff’s officer, hired by Walmart, makes small talk with the employees.

• Defying a ban on political or “provocative” demonstrations by the European governing soccer body UEFA, hometown Scottish fans waved a sea of Palestinian flags at a playoff game between their Glasgow Celtics and Israel’s Hapoel Be’er-Sheva to express solidarity with Palestinians and opposition to the Israeli Occupation. The action by fans of the Celtic club, which grew from Irish Catholic working class communities and their fight against British colonialism in Northern Ireland, is the latest in a decades-long history of supporting Palestinian rights through groups like the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Committee, Celtic Fans for Palestine, No2BrandIsrael, and Palestine Alliance. The Alliance organized this week’s demonstration, distributing the flags and leaflets on the Nakba, urging Celtic fans to support the BDS movement, and arguing that “football, UEFA and Celtic are being used to whitewash Israel’s true nature and give this rogue state an air (of) acceptance it should not enjoy.”

• Despite near universal condemnation from Pakistan’s tech experts; despite the efforts of a determined coalition of activists, and despite numerous attempts by alarmed politicians to patch its many flaws, Pakistan’s Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill (PECB) last week passed into law. Its passage ends an eighteen month long battle between Pakistan’s government, who saw the bill as a flagship element of their anti-terrorism agenda, and the technologists and civil liberties groups who slammed the bill as an incoherent mix of anti-speech, anti-privacy and anti-Internet provisions.

• Actress Amber Heard announced yesterday she will give the American Civil Liberties Union half of her $7 million divorce settlement to support our work fighting violence against women. The other half of the settlement will be donated to the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

• When the only thing standing between law enforcement and a suspect they’re seeking is a person’s home, well… the home’s got to go.

• As seen previously here at Techdirt, police officers pretty much razed a residence to the ground searching for a shoplifting suspect. In another case, law enforcement spent nineteen hours engaged in a tense standoff with an empty residence before deciding to send in a battering ram.

• Another standoff — currently the center of a federal lawsuit — stands somewhere in between these two cases. The house wasn’t completely empty or completely destroyed. But that still doesn’t make the Caldwell (ID) police look any more heroic… or any less destructive.

• President Barack Obama’s recent release of 15 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay marked the largest single transfer yet. However, as the US loosens its clutches on some detainees, the CIA’s grip on keeping them silent remains tight as ever.

• From the Snowden Archives published by The Intercept come the internal newsletters of the NSA’s most important division, the Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID). These particular documents called ‘SIDtoday’ are internal newsletters given to the vast number of NSA employees as a way of communicating the perceived importance of their work and, no doubt, like many internal company newsletters to keep up employee morale. They provide an intriguing insight into their work from the perspective of those on the inside.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The U.S. will go ahead with its plan to hand over oversight of the internet’s domain name system functions to a multistakeholder body on Oct. 1, despite fierce opposition from some lawmakers and advocacy groups.

• The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), under contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce, operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) which enables the operation of the internet domain name system (DNS). These include responsibility for the coordination of the DNS root, IP addressing and other internet protocol resources.

• The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency within the Commerce Department, said in March 2014 that it planned to let its contract with ICANN expire on Sept. 30, 2015, passing the oversight of the functions to a global governance model. NTIA made it clear that it would not accept a plan from internet stakeholders that would replace its role by that of a government-led or intergovernmental organization or would in any way compromise the openness of the internet.

• The transfer was delayed to September as the internet community needed more time to finalize the plan for the transition. The new stewardship plan submitted by ICANN was approved by the NTIA in June.

• The US says it is ready to transfer its role in administering the internet’s naming system to a multiple stakeholder group on October 1.

• BT HAS STRUCK a deal with Nokia over the research and development of 5G technologies, with the two companies already collaborating to test Nokia’s latest 5G kit at BT Labs at Adastral Park in Martlesham, near Ipswich.

• The agreement between the two companies will also include the development of proof-of-concept trials around 5G technologies, and the development of standards and equipment that could be used for 5G networks.

Intellectual Monopolies

Trademarks

• In that connection, this Kat recently met an acquaintance, who has a long-time connection with the company. Over a cup of coffee, this Kat innocently asked: “So which HP company do you now work for. And who is running the company”? My acquaintance fumbled his response to both questions, before ultimately coming up with the correct answers. As Kat readers may be aware, the former Hewlett-Packard Company has split into two separate companies. The then existing company changed its name to HP Inc. and retained the company’s personal computer and legacy business (with its ticker remaining HPQ), while a new company was created, called Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (with its ticker symbol “HPE”) and consisting of four divisions—Enterprise Group, Services, and Software and Financial Services. In May 2016, it was announced that Hewlett Packard Enterprise would sell its Enterprise Services division to Computer Sciences Corporation. This transaction is to be completed by March 2017; in the meantime, it does not appear that a name has been chosen for this new company.

• The Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys has mapped out seven possible options to prevent the loss of registered rights in the UK when the country leaves the EU

Copyrights

• Okay. I’ve heard lots of crazy arguments from the record labels, but I may have found the craziest. We’ve discussed how ridiculous it is that the TPP includes a provision saying that every country that signs on must make sure the minimum copyright term is life plus 70 years. This will impact many of the countries that negotiated the agreement, which currently have terms set at life plus 50. This was a key point that the recording industry and Hollywood fought hard for. When even the Copyright Office recognizes that life plus 70 is too long in many cases, the legacy industries recognized that getting copyright term extension through Congress in the US might be difficult — so why not lock stuff in via international agreements?

• The attorneys who moved the song Happy Birthday into the public domain will receive $4.62 million in fees, according to a judge’s fee order (PDF) published Tuesday. The amount, which equals one-third of a $14 million settlement fund, was granted over objections by the defendant, Warner/Chappell.

• After various billing deductions, US District Judge George King found that a “lodestar” payment of about $3.85 million was appropriate. King then added a multiplier.

• “Given the unusually positive results achieved by the settlement, the highly complex nature of the action, the risk class counsel faced by taking this case on a contingency-fee basis, and the impressive skill and effort of counsel, we conclude that a 1.2 multiplier is warranted,” wrote King.

• Five lawyers billed the “vast majority” of the hours, charging rates that varied between $395 per hour and $820 per hour. The most work was done by Randall Newman, who billed 2,193 hours at $640 per hour. King found the rates were all reasonable given “the cases cited, the National Law Journal survey, and our own experience.”

• The audience was remarkably well-informed on whistleblower issues, with questions not only about high-profile folks like Ed Snowden and Chelsea Manning, but also important whistleblowers like Tom Drake, Bill Binney, John Kiriakou, and Jeff Sterling, who may not be as well known to many Americans.

• There was also among the people present an overt fear of the direction the United States continues to head, beyond the symptoms of Hillary and Trump. The endless wars of the Middle East progulated and/or encouraged and supported by the U.S., the global pestilence of the NSA, and the lashing out of America against Muslims and human rights were all of deep concern.

• Anti-piracy group BREIN has tracked down a prolific cyberlocker uploader who shared pirated music in a dedicated Facebook group. The man agreed to sign a €7,000 settlement and left the group, which shut down soon after. In addition, Facebook closed several other groups that were focused on sharing copyright infringing links.

• Kim Dotcom has made a surprise announcement relating to his under-development Megaupload 2.0 project. The entrepreneur informs TorrentFreak that John McAfee’s MGT Capital Investments offered to invest $30m plus stock into the business but it soon became clear that the aim was to drive up the stock price at MGT. Now, it appears, McAfee and Dotcom are at war.

• When last we left John Steele, one of the dynamic duo behind the massive copyright trolling scam once known as Prenda Law, he was being scolded by the 7th circuit appeals court (not the first appeals court to do so), for failing to abide by the court’s own advice to “stop digging.” But digging a deeper and deeper hole has always been in John Steele’s nature, it seems. As we’ve mentioned in the past, Steele reminded me of a guy I once knew, who incorrectly believed that he was clearly smarter than everyone else, and thus believed (incorrectly) that he could talk and lie his way out of any situation if he just kept smiling and talking. That generally doesn’t work too well in court — especially when you’re not actually that smart.

• In that July ruling, the court upheld most of the money Steele and Paul Hansmeier were told to pay, and scolded them for directly lying about their ability to pay. It referred to Steele’s “entire pattern of vexatious and obstructive conduct.” However, as we noted, Steele kinda sorta “won” on one point, though even that win was a loss. One of the arguments that Steele’s lawyer had made was that on the fine that the lower court gave him for contempt, the basis for that fine appeared to be under the standards for criminal contempt rather than civil contempt. Way back during oral arguments, the judges on the panel had asked Steele’s lawyer, somewhat incredulously, if he was actually asking the court to push this over to be a criminal case rather than a civil one, and Steele’s lawyer answered affirmatively.

• And so, the court notes that the contempt fine “falls on the criminal side of the line,” because “it was an unconditional fine that did not reflect actual costs caused by the attorneys’ conduct.” So it tossed out the $65,263 fine, but noted that criminal contempt charges might still be filed (out of the frying pan, into the fire). Oh, and of course, it left open the idea that the lower court might go back and actually justify civil contempt fines. And it appears that’s exactly what Judge David Herndon in the Southern District of Illinois has done. He’s ordered Steele to show cause for why he should not be fined, and then details the basis for such a fine.

• Piracy monetization firm Rightscorp continues to lose money. Revenue over the most recent quarter has dropped significantly compared to last year and the company is still miles away from turning a profit. Instead of generating more money from alleged pirates, Rightscorp must set aside $200,000 to settle accused file-sharers it allegedly harassed.

• This does not mean that there absolutely will be a third trial, but it’s at least more of a possibility than most observers thought possible. I honestly don’t see how Android on Chromebook really matters for the fair use analysis. Oracle argues that since most of the talk on the market impact was limited to phones and tablets, that may have impacted the jury, but that’s kind of laughable. The reality is that Oracle just wants another crack at a decision it disagrees with.

• We’ve been detailing the ridiculous lengths the IOC and other Olympics organizations go in bullying others with their super special intellectual property protections. It’s always quite stunning to watch an event supposedly about fostering international cooperation and sporting devolve into a mess of commercial protectionism, speech-stifling threats, and the kind of strong-arm tactics usually reserved for members of organized crime groups.

• But I will give these Olympic goons credit: they appear to consider their bullying a matter of principle, deciding not to go any easier on an entire group of Mexican government officials because one of them uploaded one video of one Mexican athlete to a social media account.

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