● 11.29.16

● Links 29/11/2016: Core Apps Hackfest, MuckRock Goes FOSS

Posted in News Roundup at 3:38 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• In many ways, the Linux desktop is as close as I can get to the perfect computing experience. Don’t misunderstand, there are missing components that affect me on a daily basis. But for the most part it’s as good as I can make it.

• This article will address a negative aspect of something that usually provides me with a great deal of satisfaction – Linux. Despite my preference for the platform, today’s distros are by no means perfect.

• You may have often heard abut both Unix and Linux operating systems. In today’s world Linux is more famous than Unix but Unix has its own users. While Linux is an open source, free to use operating system widely used for computer hardware and software, game development, tablet PCS, mainframes, Unix is a proprietary operating system commonly used in internet servers, workstations and PCs by Solaris, Intel, HP etc. Unix is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, developed in the 1970s at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others.

• Roughly one year ago, I made a series of predictions about what would happen in the Linux world during 2016. Let’s take a look at just how wrong I was.

• I purchased The Linux Bible from a local bookstore, so my first distribution was Yggdrasil. Although the last official release of Yggdrasil was in 1995, it was a popular option early on and ended up being the first Linux distribution available as a live CD. I’ve used Linux as my main operating system ever since. I like to tinker and understand how things work, so the fact that I could get an operating system that allowed me not only to see how things worked, but also to modify how things worked, enthralled me.

Desktop

• The makers of a popular Raspberry Pi challenger, the $20 Pine A64, have returned with two sub-$100 Linux laptops, called Pinebooks.

• The Pine A64 stood out among developer boards because it was cheap and relatively powerful, helping its maker raise $1.7m on Kickstarter last year with just a $30,000 target.

• We do have plenty of low-cost laptops in the market, most of them come powered by Windows and can be had in the sub $200 price range. On the other hand, we also have the premium range of laptops that cost above $1000. PineBook is an ultra affordable 64-bit ARM-based Open Source Laptop that comes with a tempting price point of $89 for the 11-inch variant and $99 for the 14-inch variant. The notebook is powered by the Quad-Core Allwinner ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit processor which is also used in the PINE A64 Single Board Computer.

Server

• “TCP: Treason uncloaked!” Abhishek Chauhan, VP and CTO at Citrix, launched his LinuxCon North America keynote with a trip down memory lane, when this was an actual Linux kernel log message. What is the significance of this silly message? Chauhan says that when this message was changed to something more benign, back around 2008, he knew it was a sign that Linux was becoming a serious contender. In 2016 Linux turned 25, so he was right.

• The new Vapor Edge platform is a combination of OpenDCRE, Vapor Core and Vapor Compass. The Vapor Edge can run on Vapor’s Chamber server or on standard x86 servers as well.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• In addition to the big Mesa shader cache patch series hitting the mailing list over night, Ian Romanick at Intel sent out another big patch series: his revised work on ARB_gpu_shader_int64 support.

• Intel had already sent in two feature pull requests of new features/changes improvements to their DRM driver for Linux 4.10 (pull requests one and two) while now another feature pull has been submitted and there’s also expected to be a last-minute fourth pull request.

• Intel’s high-performance Clear Linux distribution is now auto-updating by default, including for packages like Mesa and the X.Org Server.

• I pushed the patch to require resolution today, expect this to hit the general public with libinput 1.6. If your graphics tablet does not provide axis resolution we will need to add a hwdb entry. Please file a bug in systemd and CC me on it (@whot).

• Last week marked the release of libSoftFloat 1.0, the library working to implement double-precision operations in pure GLSL 1.30 via bit twiddling operations and integer math. This is the most hopeful effort yet for getting OpenGL FP64 support exposed for older GPUs that lack native support.

• LibSoftFloat started as a Google Summer of Code 2016 project under the X.Org Foundation umbrella for providing a “soft” FP64 implementation for older GPUs, such as the Radeon HD 5000/6000 series that with R600 Gallium3D don’t currently expose OpenGL 4.0 due to lacking FP64 support while the proprietary drivers have long provided such emulated support.

Benchmarks

• The latest target of our Linux benchmarking at Phoronix are running various performance benchmarks under different Docker operating system images. The images used for benchmarking were the latest of Ubuntu, Clear Linux, CentOS, Debian, and Alpine while comparing the benchmark results to running on the bare metal host.

• These Docker images were all tested on the same system: Core i7 6800K, MSI X99A WORKSTATION motherboard, 16GB of DDR4 system memory, 120GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X graphics.

• Last week I published some fresh Vulkan vs. OpenGL benchmarks of AMD/NVIDIA GPUs in AMDGPU-PRO vs. NVIDIA On Linux With OpenGL and Vulkan, but for those wanting some fresh Intel OpenGL vs. Vulkan Linux numbers, I have some fresh data to share this evening.

Applications

• Today, November 28, 2016, the developers behind the HP Linux Imaging and Printing (HPLIP) software, an open source print, scan and fax driver solution for HP printers and scanners on Linux-based operating systems, announced the release of HPLIP 3.16.11.

• Git-cinnabar is a git remote helper to interact with mercurial repositories. It allows to clone, pull and push from/to mercurial remote repositories, using git.

Proprietary

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Hello and welcome. Today we are talking about Linux gaming. Thanks to Valve, things are a lot better than it used to be, and Steam has very big collection of games that work on SteamOS or any other Linux distribution that has Steam installed. So we are going to use Ubuntu 16.04 to install and review free steam games for Linux. Free as in beer, they are not open source.

• The developers of ‘A Little Less Desperation’ [Official Site] emailed in to let me know that their sci-fi comedy point & click game will be heading to Linux. It’s currently on Kickstarter with a few days left and it’s fully funded. It even has a demo!

• Right now, they have €9,816 pledged of the €9,000 goal which is fantastic to see. It’s pleasing to see that point & click adventure games are still coming along.

• A good time to remind you that we have a GamingOnLinux Steam Group with 1,892 members, be sure to join it if you want to find people to play with.

• The enhanced remake of this indie game will be getting a Linux release on launch. Players will be able to explore a mysterious world where their actions have consequences and multiple endings abound.

• Tower Unite is an interesting MMO, it’s a community-based virtual world full of other games to play online. An interesting concept, sounds a bit like Second Life to me.

• Announced on Steam, the developers note the issues it currently has and how to get around them on Linux. I like this fully open approach as it tells me they have actually tested it quite a bit to know the ins and outs of the Linux version.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• For the past three days I have been to the Core Apps Hackfest in Berlin. It’s been nice and cozy! Kinvolk has some nice facilities that we could borrow and it’s been productive for me even if I missed the first day as anticipated.

• The GNOME Core Apps Hackfest just finished, I’m happy to say that it was a success!

• Many people from different backgrounds were able to come, either from the community or from companies like Red Hat, Endless, Kinvolk, etc. all of us involved in different parts of the GNOME project.

Distributions

Arch Family

• There are so many distros popping out of everywhere. But for most distros out there, they use Debian or Fedora as Base. And In Recent times, we see Arch being the new alternative to those two ages old distros.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

• openSUSE is a community distribution which shares code and infrastructure with SUSE Linux Enterprise. The openSUSE distribution is available in two editions. The first is a stable, point release edition with a conservative base called Leap. The second edition is an experimental rolling release called Tumbleweed. The openSUSE project recently released a new update to the Leap edition, launching openSUSE 42.2 Leap in mid-November. Leap editions receive approximately three years of security updates and minor point releases are published about once per year. The new 42.2 release includes a long term support kernel (Linux 4.4) and KDE’s Plasma 5.8 desktop which is also supposed to receive long term support from its upstream project.

• openSUSE 42.2 is available primarily for 64-bit x86 computers. There are ARM ports available, but they need to be tracked down through the project’s wiki and are not available through the main Download page. The new release is available in two builds, a 4.1GB DVD and a 95MB net-install disc. I opted to download the larger of the two ISO files for my trial.

Red Hat Family

• Open leaders understand the way these interconnected relationships make their businesses hum. And they recognize the importance of focusing on those relationships to ensure they’re healthy, productive—and, above all, balanced.

Finance

Fedora

• We have Fedora 25 released a few days back. Along with various editions, we also have the Atomic edition out. This release is special for few points, one of them is being the first release from the Atomic Working Group. The another major point is a release where Cloud Base image, and the Atomic image + Vagrant boxes were fully tested by Autocloud project in the whole release cycle.

• One of the pieces of Fedora 25 that most intrigues me is the Wayland display server. Nearly all Linux desktops rely on the X Window System protocol defined almost thirty years ago. X has kept up with interesting trends since then–higher-performance graphics, 3-D, video effects, multiple human languages, touch screens, very large and very small displays, and so on–with increasing difficulty. Wayland is a reworked foundation that will better support the visual effects of the next decade or two.

• The first day of FUDCon was probably one of the best FUDCon days I have seen, so many attendees were reached only in Beijing. In both cases FUDCon was co-hosting with another event, Gnome Asia in Beijing and here in Phnom Penh it was a Barcamp. Well organized and with a lot of other people exposing their open source projects and products.

• While the first day was a great success, the second day didn’t have the same number of attendees and interest. Unfortunately it was sunday and although the rain season was over, it was raining in the morning.

• The last weekend of October was perfect timing for the annual Python community gathering in Brno, Czech Republic for PyCon CZ. Organized by a wonderful group of people from the PyCon CZ community, it is the second PyCon in the Czech Republic to gather Pythonistas from the whole country and abroad, share knowledge, learn and chat over a cup of coffee. And of course Fedora was there to make sure that everyone knows how Fedora loves Python.

Debian Family

• Welcome to this year’s fourth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community.

Derivatives

• Today in Linux news the Devuan project is two years old while the world waits for its inaugural release. Jesse Smith was happy with openSUSE 42.2 saying, “openSUSE succeeded in providing a stable, responsive environment.” Elsewhere, KDE and NTP are fundraising and OMG!Ubuntu! looked at the difference 10 years can make in a distribution’s ranking. Canonical said today that Mir isn’t only for Unity and a newly funded sci-fi game looks promising indeed.

• systemd-less Devuan may have turned two recently, but the project has yet to release 1.0. As Phoronix.com’s Michael Larabel noted a beta was released in April but the project has been a bit quiet since. Larabel also said that systemd “hate” has calmed down this year, implying interest has probably waned in a systemd-free alternative. I think folks might still be interested in testing a release if and when a stable version is announced.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Today we have some great news for our Ubuntu Linux readers, as Canonical recently published the release schedule for the upcoming Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system.

• In the mood to read a quick round-up of a some popular desktop Linux apps that are now available to install as Snappy apps?

• Me too, so I wrote one.

• For the purposes of this post (read: cos i’m lazy) you won’t find apps that are not intended to be distributed widely listed (i.e. apps which require an argument to be passed to install them, like Dekko, LibreOffice, and others).

• If you’re on a metered internet connection (or subsisting on a slow one) installing apps as Snaps probably isn’t the most effective use of your bandwidth. Until Snap frameworks (or whatever Canonical calls Snap dependencies) arrive most Snaps that you install are bundled with everything needed to run.

• Similar to past Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) releases, Ubuntu 16.04.2 and beyond will feature hardware enablement kernels back-ported from newer Ubuntu releases in order to allow new hardware to work on these older LTS releases, but now the Xenial Xerus is switching to a concept of a “rolling HWE kernel.”

• Canonical’s Leann Ogasawara describes the rolling HWE kernel as, “The biggest change is that we are moving to what we refer to as a “rolling HWE kernel” model. Essentially, consumers of an HWE kernel will automatically be upgraded to the next HWE kernel offered in subsequent point releases until reaching the final HWE Kernel offered in 16.04.5.” So it’s really not like a true rolling Linux kernel, just that you will automatically be upgraded to future HWE kernels with future LTS point releases. It’s documented more at this Wiki page.

Devices/Embedded

• Sixfab has launched an open source “Raspberry Pi IoT Shield Family” of RPi communications shields, including GPS, XBee, GPRS, 3G, and 4G add-ons.

• Sixfab, which is known for its Arduino-compatible Tinylab maker boards and kits, several of which integrate ESP8266 wireless SoCs, has now turned to the Raspberry Pi shield market with its Raspberry Pi IoT Shield Family. The Turkish-born, Syracuse, N.Y.-based company has gone to Kickstarter to sell the GPS, XBee, GSM/GPRS, 3G, and 4G/LTE shields separately at up to half-off prices ranging from $19 to $99, with shipments due in March. Sixfab needs about $8,000 in the next 18 days to meet its $50,000 goal.

• With more than 10 million units sold, the Raspberry Pi is a massive success. At this year’s All Things Open, community manager Ben Nuttall gave a five-minute lightning talk introducing the educational charity behind the popular mini computer.

• Eric Anholt at Broadcom has been focusing his latest VC4 driver efforts on performance tuning.

• This guide, co-authored by Ebn Upton the designer of the Raspberry Pi, helps you understand the components of this innovative and widely used computer, showing how it works and how to access all of its hardware and software capabilities. It explains what each and every hardware component does, how they relate to one another, and how they correspond to the components of other computing systems.

Phones

• The future for one of the few remaining alternative mobile OS platforms, Jolla’s Sailfish OS, looks to be taking clearer shape. Today the Finnish company which develops and maintains the core code, with the aim of licensing it to others, announced Sailfish has achieved domestic certification in Russia for government and corporate use.

• In recent years the Russian government has made moves to encourage the development of alternatives to the duopoly of US-dominated smartphone platforms, Android and Apple’s iOS — flagging Sailfish as one possibility, along with Tizen. Although Sailfish looks to have won out as the preferred Android alternative for Russia at this point.

Tizen

• Dumadu Games Pvt Ltd have added another game to the Tizen Store named Basketball 3D. I think there is no need to put what Basketball is and how to play it. Dumadu Games have also made the games Pool 3D, Pocket Bowling 3D HD, Impossible Escape 3D and Tennis Pro 3D.

Android

• After a couple of months of hesitation, I finally purchased a used Google Pixel XL. It’s a fabulous device, but using it also showed me the LG V20 may be one of the most underrated phones of 2016.

• On the first day after a long Thanksgiving weekend, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied, without stating any particular reasons, a petition filed by Samsung earlier this month for a further rehearing en banc in an Apple v. Samsung matter that relates to the second California litigation between these companies. In a way, that “further” rehearing would actually have been the first “genuine” rehearing since the decision by a majority of the circuit judges in early October to overturn a panel decision in Samsung’s favor had come down without any opportunity for further briefing, let alone a literal “hearing.”

• Looking at the storage encryption Google has implemented in Android Nougat (7.0) through the metaphor of the glass that’s either half full or half empty, cryptography expert Matthew Green sees Google’s glass as all but drained.

• In a blog post last week, Green, assistant professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said that optimists may feel that Android is moving in the right direction and that its “half-baked” implementation of file-based encryption is better than its implementation of full-disk encryption. Then he noted that such people “probably also think clowns are nice.”

• Google and Bertelsmann have launched a new digital skills program which will offer 10,000 scholarships for Android developers in the European Union.

• The so-called “digital divide,” the separation between those who have access to computers and the Internet and those that do not without difficulty, is estimated to cost the UK alone £63 billion a year in lost economic revenue.

• Throughout 2015 cheap Android smartphones were released by the dozens. This year there are more choices than ever before. Devices like the Moto G, ZTE Axon 7, OnePlus 3 and others. Cheap phones that can easily rival the best of the best. With that in mind, these are some of the absolute best cheap Android smartphones you can buy right now. Including the new OnePlus 3T.

• Those who don’t need a high-end Android phone, want to sign a 2-year contract, or pay over $600 for a smartphone have other options. And if you’re one of the millions looking for a cheaper route you’ll be happy to know plenty of great phones won’t break the bank.

• Google will offer up to 10,000 scholarships to individuals in the European Union interested in acquiring Android application development skills.

• Up to 9,000 of the scholarships will be reserved for an Android Basics course designed for individuals with no previous programming skills. The remaining 1,000 scholarships have been earmarked for a new Associate Android Developer Fast Track program for developers with at least one year of Java programming experience.

• Google will deliver the Android scholarship program in collaboration with Bertelsmann, a global media and education services giant and e-learning company Udacity.

• Matt Brittin, Google’s vice president of sales and operations for Northern and Central Europe, described the initiative as a response to a worsening digital skills shortage in Europe.

Free Software/Open Source

• Since MuckRock’s founding, one of our goals has been to help as many people as possible take advantage of their right to public records. Today, we’re pleased to announce that MuckRock is going open source so that others can join us in that mission in new ways.

• With fake news seemingly everywhere and government secrecy becoming the norm, public records are more important than ever. To help, I’m pleased to share that FOIA Machine is joining MuckRock. The two sites will continue to operate independently to offer easy, accessible tools to help reporters, researchers, and the general public file, track, and share their public records requests.

• MuckRock, the nonprofit dedicated to transparency and open government, announced Tuesday that it’s adding FOIA Machine to its organization. MuckRock, which helps reporters file freedom of information requests and other services for a fee, will maintain a FOIA Machine site separately and keep it free.

• Obviously data-driven investment managers are not going to divulge the secret signals that form the basis of their alpha strategies. But when something is not part of your main business it can help to open source the code, which can then be improved.

• These days open sourcing software is a trend that even large hedge funds such as AHL and AQR in the US taking part in.

• When it comes to formal-but-not-formal rules, baseball is king. Don’t talk about a no-hitter in progress, don’t steal a base in a blowout and so on, all getting into the minutiae of the game. But baseball isn’t alone in the world of invisible manuals; the technology industry has their own set of these hidden guidelines. Open source in particular—the transparent world of collaborative code that has birthed such IT miracles as Linux and GNU—follows a strong set of unwritten rules that allow communities to coexist, projects to evolve, and innovation to flourish.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Plone advocate and LibreOffice developer Andreas Mantke reports on the upcoming availability of a brand new LibreOffice extensions and templates website, and the migration of the content from the current website to the new one.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Fifteen civil society representatives in Spain have sent a letter to the Spanish government requesting more transparency and communication during the creation process of the country’s third National Action Plan.

• Earlier this month, the OGP Steering Committee sent a letter to the Spanish government, saying it had failed to meet its commitments to the OGP. “At this moment, the government is preparing the third Action Plan of Spain and we are concerned about the delay in the elaboration, as well as the lack of communication and information about it,” they wrote.

• Sacramento State University’s Hornets Policy and Politics Alumni (HPPA) Chapter is hosting its “What’s Possible: Open-Source Governance” event Dec. 13 to showcase how data and technology can improve government services and facilitate “new kinds” of civic engagement.

Open Hardware/Modding

• I was intrigued to read on Hackaday about the Daisy kite-based power generator invented by Scottish inventor Roderick Read — and even more intrigued to read that the inventor is a member of the Open Source Hardware Association.

Programming/Development

• During the Dev Sprint, Farhaan and Vivek were sprinting on Fedora Infrastructure projects primarily helping people contribute to Pagure.

• Other projects/orgs like SciPy, Red Hat team, FOSSAsia, Junction etc were also sprinting.

• The Dev Sprint turned out to have a good participation and couple of PRs were sent out by the participations. More than that, it’s more about participants getting to know about on how to contribute.

• I’ve used the term Feature Factory at a couple conference talks over the past two years. I started using the term when a software developer friend complained that he was “just sitting in the factory, cranking out features, and sending them down the line.”

• If you’re a developer, it’s a great idea to keep up with news out of GitLab. For example, GitLab recently published a survey results illustrating how developers work, with a focus on development tools, and the results show that open source is making a huge impact.

• “Modern developers prefer open source for work and for personal projects,” notes the new 2016 Global Development Report — How Developers Work. “Ninety-eight percent of developers say they use open source tools, and 75 percent say at least half of their tools are open source.”

Leftovers

Science

• There is growing anxiety within tech companies about the lack of skilled professionals to keep up with demand. There’s also a realization that one of the largest untapped resources is women. A keynote at the recent Embedded Linux Conference Europe in Berlin described a potential solution to the challenge called Greenlight for Girls, a non-profit organization with a mission to provide girls around the world with the opportunity to love STEM.

Health/Nutrition

• It’s not surprising that during rivalry week between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University, offensive and vulgar things are exchanged by the two fan bases.

• Usually, the insults are directed at the teams, players and schools involved in the rivalry.

• Flint, Michigan is still struggling more than a year in a half after dangerous lead levels were found in the water. Dr. Hanna-Attisha was one of the first to raise concerns about children’s health. NPR’s Scott Simon asks the pediatrician for an update.

• Hospitals have been told to discharge thousands of patients and pass some scheduled surgery to private organisations to reduce pressure ahead of a potential winter crisis, it was reported.

• Leaked memos also revealed that managers have been banned from declaring black alerts, the highest level, when hospital services are unable to cope with demand, the Daily Telegraph said.

• The newspaper claimed instructions were sent by NHS England and the regulator NHS Improvement last month to reduce the levels of bed occupancy in hospitals, which are the most crowded they have ever been ahead of winter.

• In the three months to the end of September, 89.1% of acute and general beds were full, compared with 87% last year, prompting the order for hospital trusts to take the drastic measures.

• A widely representative World Health Organization technical working group has recommended new terminology for substandard or falsified medicines, after years of sharp disagreement among WHO members that led to the tongue-twister: “substandard/spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit” medical products. The working group recommends a simpler formula: kick out intellectual property rights by dropping the term “counterfeit” and just call the products “substandard and falsified.”

• The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) today announced the postponement of the assumption of duties of the person appointed to become the new director of the FAO liaison office in Geneva. The postponement comes after the government of Peru raised concerns that FAO’s appointment of former Peruvian first lady Nadine Heredia Alarcón interferes with a government investigation of corruption and money-laundering against her.

Security

• That was the message on San Francisco Muni station computer screens across the city, giving passengers free rides all day on Saturday.

• This weekend, San Francisco’s public transit riders got what seemed like a Black Friday surprise: The system wouldn’t take their money. Not that Muni’s bosses didn’t want to, or suddenly forgot about their agency’s budget shortfalls.

• Nope—someone had attacked and locked the computer system through which riders pay their fares. Payment machines told riders, “You Hacked. ALL data encrypted,” and the culprit allegedly demanded a 100 Bitcoin ransom (about $73,000).

• The agency acknowledged the attack, which also disrupted its email system, and a representative said the agency refused to pay off the attacker. Unable to collect fares, Muni opened the gates and kept trains running, so people could at least get where they were going. By Monday morning, everything was back to normal.

• Online criminals—at least some of them wielding the notorious Mirai malware that transforms Internet-of-things devices into powerful denial-of-service cannons—have begun exploiting a critical flaw that may be present in millions of home routers.

• No matter what your Linux, you need to protect it with an iptable-based firewall.

• Yes! You’ve just set up your first Linux server and you’re ready to rock and roll! Right? Uh, no.

• By default, your Linux box is not secure against attackers. Oh sure, it’s more secure than Windows XP, but that’s not saying much.

• Five or so years ago, Intel rolled out something horrible. Intel’s Management Engine (ME) is a completely separate computing environment running on Intel chipsets that has access to everything. The ME has network access, access to the host operating system, memory, and cryptography engine. The ME can be used remotely even if the PC is powered off. If that sounds scary, it gets even worse: no one knows what the ME is doing, and we can’t even look at the code. When — not ‘if’ — the ME is finally cracked open, every computer running on a recent Intel chip will have a huge security and privacy issue. Intel’s Management Engine is the single most dangerous piece of computer hardware ever created.

• The attacker who infected servers and desktop computers at the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Agency (SFMTA) with ransomware on November 25 apparently gained access to the agency’s network by way of a known vulnerability in an Oracle WebLogic server. That vulnerability is similar to the one used to hack a Maryland hospital network’s systems in April and infect multiple hospitals with crypto-ransomware. And evidence suggests that SFMTA wasn’t specifically targeted by the attackers; the agency just came up as a target of opportunity through a vulnerability scan.

• In an e-mail to Ars, SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said that on November 25, “we became aware of a potential security issue with our computer systems, including e-mail.” The ransomware “encrypted some systems mainly affecting computer workstations,” he said, “as well as access to various systems. However, the SFMTA network was not breached from the outside, nor did hackers gain entry through our firewalls. Muni operations and safety were not affected. Our customer payment systems were not hacked. Also, despite media reports, no data was accessed from any of our servers.”

• Researchers develop such attack codes for aiding Linux security’s onward movement. A demonstration of the way an attack code is possible to write towards effectively exploiting just any flaw, the above kinds emphasize that Linux vendors require vigorously enhancing the safety mechanism on Linux instead of just reacting when attacks occur.

Defence/Aggression

• WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange today said the CIA was responsible for paving the way for ISIS as the whistle blowing organisation released more than half a million formerly confidential US diplomatic cables dating back to 1979.

• One in four jihadists who returned to Germany after going to fight with terror groups in Syria or northern Iraq cooperate with authorities, according to a new government report seen by Die Welt and reported on Monday. The report was conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), domestic security agency the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), and the Hessian Information and Competence Centre against Extremism (HKE).

• The 61-page report showed that in recent years, around 850 people have left Germany to fight in Syria and Iraq. The study reviewed the actions of 784 people between the ages of 13 and 62 who had joined Isis, Jabhat al-Nusra or Junud al-Sham.

• The escalating American military engagement in Somalia has led the Obama administration to expand the legal scope of the war against Al Qaeda, a move that will strengthen President-elect Donald J. Trump’s authority to combat thousands of Islamist fighters in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation.

• The administration has decided to deem the Shabab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia, to be part of the armed conflict that Congress authorized against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to senior American officials. The move is intended to shore up the legal basis for an intensifying campaign of airstrikes and other counterterrorism operations, carried out largely in support of African Union and Somali government forces.

• Anybody who, like myself, has devoted much of their life to African development, is bound to have acquired a bias towards Fidel Castro. Cuba played a crucial role in sustaining the liberation struggles throughout Southern Africa. If Castro had done nothing else, he would deserve warm remembrance for that. But much less well-known in Europe is Cuba’s extraordinary contribution to healthcare throughout Africa. Ghanaian, Togolese and Beninois villages and hospitals had excellent Cuban doctors, and I know part-Cuban families in each of those countries as a result. I am sure it was widespread across much of Africa, I just highlight that for which I can personally vouch. That a tiny island, itself a victim of colonialism and slavery, should be able to make a contribution to African healthcare that can without a stretch be mentioned in the same sentence as the aid efforts of the major western powers, is an incredible achievement.

• It was of course the export of Cuba’s tremendous domestic achievement in healthcare and education, and some of the attempts these last 24 hours to belittle that have been pathetic.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• I have been quite amused to receive some – well actually rather a lot of – rather aggressive tweets and other social media messages from people who believe Julian Assange is dead, and are therefore outraged I had supper with him on Friday. This seems to me the ultimate in concern trolling – to pretend to adore someone so much that you are angry and upset to find the object of your adoration has not been killed or kidnapped. There are youtube videos alleging that Julian is dead which together have attracted millions of viewers. It is a peculiar kind of cargo-cult.

• [...]

• I have been visiting Julian since before Jane from Idaho heard of him, and the purpose of visiting him is not to provide comfort to Jane from Idaho. If my word does that, fine. If she does not want to take my word, also fine. But if people could at least research who John Pilger, Yanis Varoufakis and myself are before deciding we are a CIA plot, that would be helpful. Stopping the aggressive and insulting tweets would be nice too.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Berner (Centre), the Minister of Transport and Communications, believes a variety of measures, such as tax incentives, are needed to raise the number of electric vehicles on Finland’s roads to 250,000 by 2030.

• Finland is intent on raising the number of electric and natural gas vehicles on its roads to 250,000 and 50,000 respectively by 2030, Anne Berner (Centre), the Minister of Transport and Communications, revealed in news conference on Thursday.

• With the country currently having fewer than one thousand registered electric vehicles, measures such as tax incentives will be required to achieve this objective, she acknowledged.

• Sorry, New York Times–when more than 470 people have been arrested opposing the pipeline since August, that’s not the news. Nor did the print edition headline—“16 Arrested at North Dakota Pipeline Protest as Tensions Continue”—add anything.

• No, the news in the story came in the second paragraph, where reporter Jonah Engel Bromwich wrote that “officials also defended their use of fire hoses against protesters the night before, despite the below-freezing weather.”

Finance

• The President of the European Council has suggested Brexiteer MPs are putting forward an argument that “has nothing to do with reality” as he blamed Britain for the “anxiety” affecting EU nationals in the UK.

• Donald Tusk’s intervention comes after his office received a letter, organised by Conservative MP Michael Tomlinson and signed by 80 MPs, criticising Brussels’ refusal to allow formal talks on the issue.

• But in a blunt response, Mr Tusk said: “It’s a very interesting argument, the only problem being that it has nothing to do with reality”

• Financial institutions, overcoming some initial trepidation about privacy, are increasingly gauging consumers’ creditworthiness by using phone-company data on mobile calling patterns and locations.

• The practice is tantalizing for lenders because it could help them reach some of the 2 billion people who don’t have bank accounts. On the other hand, some of the phone data could open up the risk of being used to discriminate against potential borrowers.

• Phone carriers and banks have gained confidence in using mobile data for lending after seeing startups show preliminary success with the method in the past few years. Selling such data could become a more than $1 billion-a-year business for U.S. phone companies over the next decade, according to Crone Consulting LLC.

• “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production,” Adam Smith confidently announced in The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Smith’s quote is famous, but in reality this was one of the few times he explicitly addressed the topic. Consumption is conspicuous by its absence in The Wealth of Nations, and neither Smith nor his immediate pupils treated it as a separate branch of political economy.

• It was in an earlier work, 1759’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Smith put his finger on the social and psychological impulses that push people to accumulate objects and gadgets. People, he observed, were stuffing their pockets with “little conveniences,” and then buying coats with more pockets to carry even more. By themselves, tweezer cases, elaborate snuff boxes, and other “baubles” might not have much use. But, Smith pointed out, what mattered was that people looked at them as “means of happiness.” It was in people’s imagination that these objects became part of a harmonious system and made the pleasures of wealth “grand and beautiful and noble.”

• Measuring the after-tax income of German households in terms of Gini coefficients, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation released a report on Monday which showed that German income inequality reached a peak of 28.8 in 2013.

• A Gini coefficient of zero represents absolute equality, while 100 represents absolute inequality.

• Today, on 25 November 2016, German blog Netzpolitik.org in association with Greenpeace published new leaked documents concerning the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), a “trade” agreement that is currently being negotiated between 23 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), including the European Union.

• The reports are rolling in: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead. If you read the obituaries, most news outlets seem to agree that the cause of death was simple: the election of Donald Trump, who railed against the deal during his campaign. But the pundits have the story wrong.

• The real story is that an unprecedented, international uprising of people from across the political spectrum took on some of the most powerful institutions in the world, and won.

• Fair Traders who are celebrating the defeat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may see their hard work undone if the talks towards the proposed Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) continue under a Trump administration.

• Many Democrats who minimized the importance of the negative impacts of corporate trade deals on working class Americans have now paid the price in the recent elections. As my colleagues at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have pointed out, racists and xenophobes were always going to vote for Trump but the key voters the Democrats were counting on that they lost were largely working class voters, many of them union members, in states hit hard by trade deals (supported by both parties) that put working class people in competition with lower-income manufacturing workers in other countries while preserving protections for intellectual property-holders and high income professions.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Mr. Petraeus, a retired general and former C.I.A. director, spent an hour with Mr. Trump at his offices in Trump Tower in Manhattan and told reporters afterward that the president-elect had given him a tutorial on world affairs.

• “He basically walked us around the world,” Mr. Petraeus said. “Showed a great grasp of a variety of the challenges that are out there and some of the opportunities as well. Very good conversation, and we’ll see where it goes from here.” In a Twitter post 15 minutes later, Mr. Trump said, “Just met with General Petraeus — was very impressed!”

• I would argue that the most important undercovered story of the Trump transition period is the fact that Trump is the least popular president-elect in modern history (Daily News, 11/17/16). This information has tremendous import both for the strength of Trump’s brand of far-right politics and for the potential for public mobilization to block his most damaging policies—if the public is aware of it, that is.

• The Hamilton audience booing Pence—though far from a random sample—is, in fact, a manifestation of the majority opinion in the United States. Coverage of the controversy would have done well to make that clear.

• The scandals that the blogosphere scolds think we should have been paying more attention to are indeed important—but not because Trump will ever be held directly accountable for them, or even because they will have a direct impact on the lives of people. Instead, they’re important because they illustrate the unprecedented corruption of the Trump regime, and this should lead to even greater unpopularity for Trump. In other words, stories like the Trump University settlement are important because they may lead to more stories like the Hamilton confrontation.

• The Senate Killed A Third Of Our Government, And We Re-Elected Them For It

• Constitutional lawyers and White House ethics counsellors from Democratic and Republican administrations have warned Donald Trump his presidency might be blocked by the electoral college if he does not give up ownership of at least some of his business empire.

• “The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before,” Donald Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday, and his election victory buzz does indeed seem to have been good for business.

• Since the surprise outcome of the 8 November vote, foreign diplomats have been flocking to the newest Trump hotel in Washington to hear sales pitches about the business and vie to book their delegations into its rooms overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue for the inauguration on 20 January.

• Michigan could come roaring back into the national presidential spotlight this week as Green Party candidate Jill Stein prepares to demand a statewide recount that Republican President-elect Donald Trump is denouncing.

• Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers meets at 2 p.m. Monday to vote on certifying election results in all 83 counties that show Trump narrowly prevailed over Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes.

• That action will start a 48-hour clock for Stein to exercise her right to request and pay for a hand recount of 4.8 million votes cast in the contentious Nov. 8 election.

• President-elect Donald Trump would have the right to object to a recount requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, with the Board of State Canvassers deciding the issue, an election official said Monday.

• But Chris Thomas, director of the Bureau of Elections, said Monday he doesn’t think Trump could argue there should be no recount at all, provided Stein pays the required fee and raises the prospect of a mistaken count or fraud. Instead, Instead, Trump could argue about what form the recount should take, Thomas said. Attorneys representing Trump said Monday they favor a machine recount, which they said would be more efficient than a hand recount, which Stein is expected to request.

• Almost three weeks after Election Day, Wisconsin is getting ready to recount its votes, and Pennsylvania and Michigan may soon follow suit. Green Party candidate Jill Stein has raised over $6 million to fund the effort, saying fears of a hacked election couldn’t be dismissed in light of earlier hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign staff. Hillary Clinton’s team signed on to the recount campaign over the weekend, citing similar concerns.

• Many are still skeptical. Although Trump won Wisconsin by just over 25,000 votes, there’s still no technical evidence of vote-tampering and the results are generally consistent with polling and demographic data. As a result, it’s extremely unlikely that a few hacked precincts could have tipped the scales. At the same time, even the suggestion of an audit has set off political chaos, as President-elect Trump responded with unfounded allegations that millions of votes had been cast illegally.

• Please don’t read this unless you are feeling strong. This is a list of 13 major crises that, I believe, confront us. There may be more. Please feel free to add to it or to knock it down. I’m sorry to say that it’s not happy reading.

• America, you are losing it. Seriously, you have got to chill.

• I know your candidate lost to Trump — only by the electoral vote! — and I know this came as a surprise. I know you feel the apocalypse is upon us. Maybe it is, but writing things like the following is not going to help. It may even cause reasonable people to think you are insane and want to run away from the politics you think you are supporting. It may even make you sound like the people you Hate, the people you feared would not support the results of the election, the conspiracy theorists and closed-minded, the uneducated.

• As for why Hillary Clinton lost, here’s New York Times columnist Paul Krugman saying “So it looks more and more as if we had an election swung, in effect, by a faction of our own security sector in alliance with Putin.” Krugman is actually saying his educated brain is telling him Clinton lost because the FBI colluded with Vladimir Putin to throw the election to Trump for reasons not specified by Krugman.

• Media ignore Clinton’s weaknesses and Trump’s strengths for 18 months to epically blow election predictions.

• No calls for recounts.

• Clinton concedes.

• No calls for recounts.

• Despite over 200 years of the electoral college system, and this being the fifth presidential election where the winner did not receive the majority of the popular vote, Clinton supporters begin bleating about her winning the popular vote so, whatever, she should become president. Many seem surprised to learn of this “electoral” system;

• No calls for recounts.

• Clinton supporters hold street protests.

• No calls for recounts.

• Effort made to talk electors out of voting for Trump fails to gain traction.

• No calls for recounts.

• Two weeks after the election in the midst of the Trump transition OMG the Russians hacked the election Putin is controlling America with RT.com thought waves and fake news so we gotta recount it but only so faith in American democracy is restored.

• In the wake of a disastrous Election Day, does the Democratic Party need to present economic policies that have more to offer the majority of voters? Don’t bother, argues New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (11/25/16).

• Krugman begins by acknowledging what some have denied—that class played some role in what happened on November 8: “What put Donald Trump in striking distance was overwhelming support from whites without college degrees,” he writes. “So what can Democrats do to win back at least some of those voters?”

• Euphemism isn’t journalism, but conflating the two can be irresistible for mainline journalists when candor might seem overly intrepid. Two months before Inauguration Day, a straw in the US media wind pointed toward evasive fog around the incoming president when PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff convened a roundtable segment (11/21/16) with program regulars Tamara Keith of NPR and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.

• From the outset, the journalists emphasized that the new president won’t be “traditional.” Walter said: “We have to stop treating Donald Trump like this is just a traditional, normal political candidate who’s now going to be a traditional, normal president.”

• Moments later Keith, a White House correspondent for NPR, was explaining that Trump “has not related to the press or the public in a traditional way ever. And he’s had an incredible skill at distracting, at creating—there was this movie Up and there was a dog who gets distracted, and, squirrel, squirrel. That’s what happens.”

Censorship/Free Speech

• Russia has been working on incorporating elements of China’s Great Firewall into the “Red Web”, the country’s system of internet filtering and control, after unprecedented cyber collaboration between the countries.

• A decision earlier this month to block the networking site LinkedIn in Russia is the most visible in a series of measures to bring the internet under greater state control.

• Legislation was announced this month that gives the Kremlin primacy over cyberspace – the exchange points, domain names and cross-border fibre-optic cables that make up the architecture of the internet.

• A university has pledged to end its culture of censorship and no-platforming, and has instead pledged to defend free speech.

• Cardiff University in Wales has said it will no longer ban events by controversial speakers, declaring “censorship is not the answer”.

• The decision was made by the Cardiff University Students’ Union at their annual conference last week, where they passed a motion called “Challenge, Don’t Censor”.

Privacy/Surveillance

• The FBI, National Security Agency and CIA are likely to gain expanded surveillance powers under President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, a prospect that has privacy advocates and some lawmakers trying to mobilize opposition.

• Trump’s first two choices to head law enforcement and intelligence agencies — Republican Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Republican Representative Mike Pompeo for director of the Central Intelligence Agency — are leading advocates for domestic government spying at levels not seen since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Hatice Kamer, (who also goes by the name Khajijan Farqin), a freelance reporter working for the Voice of America’s Kurdish service, has been released after being detained by Turkish authorities in Diyarbakir.

• Details of her arrest Saturday were relayed by a family friend, who said the reasons for Kamer’s detention remain unclear. Her family has said that because of a state of emergency declared in the area, even her attorney was not able to contact her.

• Turkish authorities detained two reporters working for foreign news organizations in southeast Turkey, the latest journalists taken into custody as part of the government’s sweeping crackdown following a failed coup in July.

• BBC Turkish correspondent Hatice Kamer was detained Saturday in the town of Sirvan while covering a recent copper mine collapse that killed at least 11 workers, the broadcaster said. Voice of America said its freelance reporter, Khajijan Farqin, was detained the same day in Diyarbakir.

• The infamous Norway-based fundamentalist preacher Najmuddin Ahmad Faraj, better known as Mullah Krekar, lost his appeal to the Supreme Court on Wednesday and now faces extradition to Italy where he faces terror charges. Krekar had appealed against earlier decisions by the Oslo District Court and the Borgarting Court of Appeal, but Norway’s highest court upheld the decisions on Wednesday and cleared the way for Krekar’s extradition.

• The 60-year-old Islamist can now be sent to Italy to stand trial on charges that he led the Rawti Shax, a network that has planned to carry out attacks in the West.

• A third figure who helped run a Trojan Horse school, Mohammed Ashraf, has become secretary of a local constituency Labour Party. He has applied to be a Labour council candidate at the next local elections, but claimed last night he had dropped the application. Ashraf was a governor at Golden Hillock School, which banned the teaching of some subjects and segregated boys and girls. He was later removed from the…

• Rabat – Moroccan women launched a petition on Friday calling for Morocco’s government and the High Authority for Audio-visual Communication, known better as HACA, to penalize National television service, 2M, for broadcasting “tutorial instructions for females to hide bruises of domestic violence,” on its morning show “Sabahiyates,” on Wednesday.

• Amid the heated scandal that the show stirred on social media, Moroccan women took to change.org to create a petition calling for all Moroccans to sign it as a moving step toward denouncing the “standardization of violence against women.”

• There’s been a recent wave of press for a certain unnamed Nazi Dork who threw a gathering in Washington, DC, for his Nazi friends this past week, attempting to use the Trump victory to raise the profile of himself and his Nazi “think tank.” The man who coined the term “alt right”—which has become a popular euphemism for those unwilling to use “white supremacist” or “neo-Nazi”—has of late received fairly softball interviews in Mother Jones (10/27/16), the LA Times (11/19/16) and, most recently, the Washington Post (11/22/16)

• His Nazi get-together got endless coverage, from the New York Times to The Atlantic to USA Today to CNN. The actual event itself, according to the Post, had a Nazi attendee–to–reporter ratio of 6 to 1. The Nazi Dork’s goal was to exploit and feed off the Trump campaign and subsequent victory, and he did it with tremendous success, thanks in part to a shiny-object obsessed media.

• The balance between covering hate and promoting it is a difficult one, and one that we shouldn’t dismiss out of hand. But after a week of wall-to-wall coverage, most of which one could imagine the Nazi Dork and his Nazi friends reading and posting to Facebook with a smirk, the balance has come down heavily on the side of fascist agitprop.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Net neutrality should not even be a debate. Any market actor who abuses their customers and trust to the level of not respecting net neutrality, on a functioning market, will be dropped like a bad habit. Therefore, the mere existence of a net neutrality debate is a symptom of something much worse: the existence of gatekeepers. That’s the underlying problem that needs to be solved.

• Let’s pick a western Internet country ranked roughly in the middle of the pack. In this particular country, Internet connectivity is seen as a random utility, delivered the last mile by the municipal energy infrastructure. When signing up for an ISP, every household has 10-15 operators to choose from, at 100/100 Mbit speeds (or higher), unmetered, for about $27 per month. This is what happens when gatekeepers aren’t involved.

• Actually, let’s back up a bit here. The energy infrastructure provider could have been acting as an Internet gatekeeper, as it technically controls the only pipe to the homes, but has no strategic interest in doing so. This nuance is absolutely crucial: unlike telco and cable industries, the energy companies are not under existential threat by the Internet.

• Mark Zuckerberg — Facebook’s CEO — is probably the most powerful person alive today. He may even be the most powerful person ever.

• Traditionally, the president of the United States has been considered the most powerful person on Earth. After all, President Obama controls the most powerful military on the planet, and has considerable influence over the $18 trillion US economy.

• [...]

• Mark Zuckerberg has none of these limitations. His power flows from Facebook, the seventh largest corporation on the planet by market capitalization, of which he owns 18% of the stock and controls 60% of the voting rights.

• At 32 years of age, he could remain the CEO of Facebook for another 50 years.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Caribbean nation Antigua & Barbuda has declared that it will exercise an option granted it by a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel to lift protection on US intellectual property rights starting in 2017 if the US does not finally change a law blocking the island nation’s online gambling services or compensate it.

• According to a WTO release circulated today, Antigua & Barbuda said the 12-year case has dragged on too long and its losses have totalled some US$ 250 million, causing harm to the country’s small economy.

Copyrights

• Last week following his release from prison, UK-based copyright troll partner Robert Croucher said that he’d become involved in a private funding initiative for the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. Speaking with TorrentFreak, PIPCU have confirmed that while they have met with Croucher, they don’t anticipate doing business with him.

• Copyright holders asked Google to remove more than 1,000,000,000 allegedly infringing links from its search engine over the past twelve months. A new record, in line with the continued rise of takedown requests and the increase in pressure on Google to do more to tackle piracy.

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

----------

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