● 01.20.17

● Links 20/1/2017: Docker 1.13, Linux 4.4.44 LTS

Posted in News Roundup at 8:12 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• I started my Linux journey with Gnome, as it was the default desktop environment in RHL. I took some time to find out about KDE. I guess I found out accidentally during re-installation. It used to be fun to have a desktop that looks different, behaves differently than the normal. During the earlier years in college while I was trying to find out more about Linux, using KDE marked me as a Linux expert. I was powered with the right syntax of mount command to mount the windows partitions and the xmms-mp3 rpm. I spent most of my time in the terminal.

Server

• There’s a palpable sense of excitement in the application development world around container technology. Containers bring a new level of agility and speed to app development, giving developers the ability to break large monolithic apps into small, manageable microservices that can talk to one another, be more easily tested and deployed, and operate more efficiently as a full application. However, containers also demand a new architecture for the application services managing these microservices and apps, particularly in regards to service discovery — locating and consuming the services of those microservices.

• Finally, one of the biggest trends for 2017 will not be just a focus on engaging and implementing some of these DevOps best practices into your enterprise, but a sweeping adoption of the DevOps/agile culture. This is because one of the most important – if not the absolute most key –tenets to a successful DevOps organization is culture. The enterprises that most espouse the shared responsibility, the empowered autonomous teams, the can-do attitudes, and the continuous learning environment in which DevOps thrives will see the biggest benefits.

• Today we’re releasing Docker 1.13 with lots of new features, improvements and fixes to help Docker users with New Year’s resolutions to build more and better container apps. Docker 1.13 builds on and improves Docker swarm mode introduced in Docker 1.12 and has lots of other fixes. Read on for Docker 1.13 highlights.

• Docker announced today the general availability of Docker 1.13, the third major update of the open-source application container engine for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

• Docker 1.13 has been in development for the past couple of months, during which it received no less than seven RC (Release Candidate) versions that implemented numerous improvements for the new Swarm Mode introduced in Docker 1.12, a few security features, as well as a new Remote API (version 1.25) and Client.

• The Docker 1.13 release introduces multiple new commands including prune and squash, which can help containers to use disk space more efficiently.

• Docker officially announced its 1.13 release on Jan. 19, with new capabilities to help build, manage and secure containers.

• Docker-style containers are so hot they’ve broken the scale ETR uses to measure CIO intent to purchase enterprise technology, registering “the strongest buying intention score ever recorded in [its] six-year history.”

• While that data is more than a year old, more recent analyses peg Docker adoption up by a factor of 2.6 in 2016 over 2015, yielding a market worth $762 million in 2016, projected to bloat to $2.7 billion by 2020, according to 451 Research.

• In Ho’s own words, “Serverless computing is the code execution model that the cloud provider abstracts the complexity of managing individual servers.” This basically means the provider worries about the servers. You just run your code on them.

Kernel Space

• It’s interesting, to consider what constitutes a power user of an operating system. For most people in the wider world a power user is someone who knows their way around Windows and Microsoft Office a lot, and can help them get their print jobs to come out right. For those of us in our community, and in particular Linux users though it’s a more difficult thing to nail down. If you’re a LibreOffice power user like your Windows counterpart, you’ve only really scratched the surface. Even if you’ve made your Raspberry Pi do all sorts of tricks in Python from the command line, or spent a career shepherding websites onto virtual Linux machines loaded with Apache and MySQL, are you then a power user compared to the person who knows their way around the system at the lower level and has an understanding of the kernel? Probably not. It’s like climbing a mountain with false summits, there are so many layers to power usership.

• So while some of you readers will be au fait with your OS at its very lowest level, most of us will be somewhere intermediate. We’ll know our way around our OS in terms of the things we do with it, and while those things might be quite advanced we’ll rely on our distribution packager to take care of the vast majority of the hard work.

• In this presentation, kernel hacker Jan Lübbe will explain why apparently reasonable approaches to long-term maintenance fail and how to establish a sustainable workflow instead.

• Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman confirmed today, January 19, 2017, in a short message, on his Google+ page, that the Linux 4.9 branch is now marked as “longterm,” or as some of you know as LTS (Long-Term Support).

• The story behind Linux kernel 4.9 becoming the next long-term supported series dates from way before it’s launch last month, on December 11, when Linus Torvalds officially announced the new branch. It all started back on August 12, 2016, when Greg Kroah-Hartman dropped a quick Google+ post to say “4.9 == next LTS kernel.”

• First let’s look at how the kernel community works, and how a change gets merged into Linus Torvalds’ repository. Changes are submitted as patches to mailing list, then get some review and eventually get applied by a maintainer to that maintainer’s git tree. Each maintainer then sends pull request, often directly to Linus. With a few big subsystems (networking, graphics and ARM-SoC are the major ones) there’s a second or third level of sub-maintainers in. 80% of the patches get merged this way, only 20% are committed by a maintainer directly.

• Most maintainers are just that, a single person, and often responsible for a bunch of different areas in the kernel with corresponding different git branches and repositories. To my knowledge there are only three subsystems that have embraced group maintainership models of different kinds: TIP (x86 and core kernel), ARM-SoC and the graphics subsystem (DRM).

• A new maintenance update of the Linux 4.9 kernel series was announced today by renowned Linux kernel maintainer and developer Greg Kroah-Hartman, versioned 4.9.5.

• Coming only five days after the previous point release, Linux kernel 4.9.5 appears to be a big milestone that changes a total of 132 files, with 1515 insertions and 821 deletions. There are numerous improvements implemented in this fifth Linux 4.9 maintenance update, but first we’d like to remind you that Greg Kroah-Hartman recently marked this kernel branch as long-term supported (LTS), yet this is not apparent from kernel.org.

• After informing us about the availability of the fifth maintenance update of the Linux 4.9 kernel series, which has recently become a long-term supported branch, Greg Kroah-Hartman is today announcing the availability of Linux 4.4.44 LTS.

• If you’re reading our regular reports on the Linux kernel, you should be aware of the fact that the Linux 4.4 kernel branch is a long-term support (LTS) one that should get security patches for one more year, until February 2018. This branch is currently available in several popular GNU/Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Alpine Linux, and Arch Linux, and Linux 4.4.44 LTS is now the most advanced release.

Graphics Stack

• David Airlie has published a set of 31 patches for testing that provide initial support for geometry shaders within the RADV Radeon Vulkan driver.

• While RadeonSI has long supported geometry shaders, it’s been a bigger work item bringing it to this open-source Radeon Vulkan driver within Mesa. The patches are enough for Vulkan geometry shaders to get working on RADV, but Airlie explains that the support isn’t gold: “This is a first pass at geometry shader support on radv, all the code should be here in reviewable pieces, it seems to mostly pass CTS tests but triggers some llvm 3.9 bugs around kill, and there might still be a GPU hang in here, but this should still be a good place to start reviewing.”

• This release fixes the slow touchpad acceleration on touchpads with less than 1000dpi, a missing call to normalized the deltas was the source of the issue.

• Libinput 1.6.0 was announced a short time ago on wayland-devel.

• Collabora’s Emil Velikov announced today, January 19, 2017, the availability of the first of many Release Candidate (RC) development versions of the upcoming and highly anticipated Mesa 17.0.0 3D Graphics Library.

• Mesa 17 is shaping up to be a huge milestone that should dramatically improve the performance of the bundled open-source graphics drivers for Intel, AMD Radeon, Nvidia graphics cards on a Linux-based operating system. Just the other day it enabled OpenGL 4.5 support for Intel Haswell GPUs, which is already a big achievement.

• Alex Deucher has sent in another batch of fixes for the Radeon and AMDGPU DRM drivers for the Linux 4.10 kernel.

• These fixes include support for a few peculiar Southern Islands graphics processors in AMDGPU and Radeon drivers. The affected SI GPUs now supported are those needing the “si58″ memory controller microcode. Unfortunately, haven’t been able to find much other details on the particular SI chips affected.

• With Mesa 17.0 up to its release candidates and being under a feature freeze, I explored this morning how the size of the changes for Mesa 17.0 compare to earlier Mesa milestones.

• Mesa 17.0 ships with many exciting end-user changes such as OpenGL 4.5 for RadeonSI, OpenGL 4.5 for Haswell, many RADV and ANV Vulkan driver improvements, improved OpenGL 4.x Nouveau support, and many other features I’ll recap shortly in a Mesa 17.0 feature overview article.

• Dave Airlie sent in a massive patch-set of 31 patches for ‘radv’, the open source AMD Vulkan driver, to support geometry shaders.

• Libdrm has some new patches this morning from a NVIDIA developer.

• Thierry Reding of NVIDIA landed xf86drm USB support so that DRM/KMS devices hosted via USB can be detected via Mesa’s DRM device infrastructure.

• Mesa 13.0.3 will shortly be available to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users to install, without needing to add any additional PPAs.

Benchmarks

• For those curious about the current Kabylake graphics performance between Windows 10 and Linux, here are some OpenGL benchmark results under each operating system. Windows 10 Pro x64 was tested and the Linux distributions for comparison were Ubuntu 16.10, Clear Linux, Antergos, Fedora 25 Xfce, and openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Applications

• I don’t listen to the radio that often, but when I do it’s certainly not in the traditional way. Like many, I listen to internet radio on my PC using a Linux radio app. A small selection of such players are available.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Total War: WARHAMMER [Official Site] has plenty of larger-than-life units in its battles. There’s massive beasts, demons and even steam-powered tanks that can change the tide of battle. In a class above all that, unique leaders can possibly change the tide of whole battles. Following that tradition, Grombrindal joins the other Legendary Lords, such as Karl Franz of The Empire, and can lead the Dwarfen faction and fight under its banner. This DLC adds special quest lines exclusive to the character as well as unique gear and abilities that he can use in-game.

• It launches April 11th and it’s confirmed to be launching with Linux support.

• Albion Online, the Linux-supported MMO has another blog post and video detailing changes coming to this interesting MMO.

• My kids love to play games! Tablets, phones, PCs, you name it. However, I don’t like for them to connect to remote online servers, chat with strangers, or possibly encounter any kind of advertising. I’ve also been reluctant to pay for games when there are free alternatives available. So, I decided to see if I could make the kids happy with a Minecraft-like game while also leveraging a pi board running Linux.

• SteamOS isn’t being left out in the cold like some would believe, as it too today got a big update with new shiny stuff.

• This is the big one. Steam have released a major update of the Steam client which not only adds in some big new features, it also drastically improves the Linux client.

• At the beginning of 2017 Valve released a Steam client beta with noteworthy Linux improvements. With today’s Steam stable client update, all of those changes are included.

• The big winner with this stable client update is improved interaction between the Steam runtime and host distribution libraries. This should let those using open-source graphics drivers on modern distributions work nicely with Steam without needing to remove any files or set extra environment variables. The old behavior can be restored though for older Linux distributions or if encountering any problems.

• Imperium Galactica II: Alliances [GOG, Steam] just released for Linux & SteamOS and it looks like it’s a native version.

• Note: My friends at GOG sent over a copy, so big thanks to them.

• There’s no sign of DOSBox or Wine and I had no idea this game had ever been ported to Linux. Pretty awesome really for a game like this to get a proper Linux build when it gets a new release.

• The problem here, for me, is that they later did a revamp of the title called Carmageddon: Max Damage. This was to fix some problems, boost sales again and port it to consoles.

• Carmageddon: Max Damage also never made it to Linux.

• Fun fact, they actually released a trailer where they just run over a ton of penguins, make from that what you will:

• Not saying this was trolling the entire Linux gaming community, but it sure felt like it after their previous trolling attempts directed at our official Twitter account.

• Today Valve announced the availability of a new stable update of the Steam Client for all supported platforms, including the company’s SteamOS operating system for Steam Machines, as well as GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.

• Bringing all the new features during the Beta stages of development, the new Steam Client update improves the interaction between the Steam runtime and your GNU/Linux distribution’s libraries. This is a huge and long-anticipated milestone for the Steam Client, which, unfortunately, did not work out-of-the-box on all Linux-based operating systems.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• I’m happy that with Qt 5.8.0 we’ll have Qt Speech added as a new tech preview module. It took a while to get it in shape since the poor thing sometimes did not get the attention it deserved. We had trouble with some Android builds before that backend received proper care. Luckily there’s always the great Qt community to help out.

• With Qt 5.8 that’s due to be released next week there is the new Qt Speech as a “tech preview” of text-to-speech for this tool-kit.

• With each passing year, the Linux desktop ecosystem shifts and morphs from one darling to the next. Although it’s sometimes challenging to tell, from month to month, which desktop will reign as the fan favorite, there are always signs that a particular desktop is going to rise in market share.

• Three trends I always examine are evolution, usability, and modernity. I prefer my desktops to have evolved along with the needs of current trends and users, to be easily used, and have a modern design aesthetic. Bonus points are generally awarded for a high range of flexibility.

• Currently, the Linux desktop environment is dominated by Cinnamon, Xfce, GNOME, and Ubuntu Unity. Of those four, I believe only one will see a sharp rise in market share in 2017. Which one? Let’s dive in and see which five desktops, I think will climb the rank and file.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• The fourth snapshot of GNOME 3.23 is now available!

• Probably one of the most important features of this release is the inclusion of a pre-release of GTK+4 for the first time.

• The latest development release is now available of the work leading up to the GNOME 3.24 desktop in March.

• GNOME 3.23.4 is today’s new development. Core changes to GNOME 3.23.4 include memory leak fixes for EOG, Epiphany browser improvements, GJS now supports JavaScript ES6 Promises, GNOME Calendar now supports online calendars being downloaded offline and synchronized, Librsvg begins making use of Rust, Mutter Wayland fixes, and various other fixes throughout the core GNOME components.

• A revamped version of the Cinnamon Spices website is now live, showcasing the latest and most popular add-ons for the Linux Mint desktop.

• You folks must think that I’m obsessed with Emoji, but you’d be …No, you’d be absolutely right about that. Actually, I don’t overuse the popular pictorial glyphs that dominate daily communication. But I do appreciate being able to find the one I want to use in a timely manner.

Distributions

• Let’s assume that the developer soon will issue an updated or fixed version so the Network Manager will work outside a Virtual Machine window. That will give FastComputerLinux a shot at being more useful to those who want a good out-of-the-box simple OS solution.

• I am not sure that this distro’s name is an indication of speedy performance. I tested it on several machines looking for speed.

• As expected, the live session DVD was very sluggish. It was much peppier on the VM. I was expecting a little bit better speed performance on my test gear with a hard drive installation.

• Read more

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat is announcing the general availability of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.4, the next major release of the company’s container application platform.

Finance

Fedora

• It’s been a month since Flatpak 0.8 major release hit the streets for GNU/Linux distribution that want to offer their users fast and easy access to various third-party apps that aren’t available in the official repositories of the respective OS.

• This is an update from Fedora Atomic Working Group based on the IRC meeting on 2017-01-17. 14 people participated in the meeting, the full log of the meeting can be found here.

• RPM of PHP version 7.1.1 are available in remi-php71 repository for Fedora 23-25 and Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS).

• RPM of PHP version 7.0.15 are available in remi repository for Fedora 25 and in remi-php70 repository for Fedora 22-24 and Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS).

Debian Family

• What is Linux? Blogger Locutus posted a series of articles going over the structure of Linux. From the kernel, modules, directories, to files he explained the “anatomy of Linux.” David Both plugged Cinnamon over at OpenSource.com saying KDE Plasma was too unstable to use. He narrowed down his decision to 10 reasons. Michael Stapelberg blogged about the new Debian manpages, or “modernized.” The now static site is said to be “blazingly fast.” Derrik Diener highlighted the best distros to watch in 2017 and Bruce Byfield opined on the security lacking in Linux installers. He said with the growing concern over security, installers need to take a step back from easy and put some security features back.

Derivatives

• The developers of the Robolinux GNU/Linux distribution have announced today, January 18, 2017, the release and immediate availability of a new stable update based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 8 “Jessie” operating system series.

• Still offering a free installer, the Robolinux 8.7.1 “Raptor” edition is now available for download with the usual Cinnamon, MATE 3D, Xfce 3D, and LXDE flavors. It’s based on the recently released Debian GNU/Linux 8.7.1 “Jessie” operating system, which means that it ships with its newest Linux 3.16 kernel and over 170 bug fixes and security patches. The GRUB bootloader and login screens have been refreshed too.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• It’s time to update your Ubuntu Linux operating system if you have a Nvidia graphics card running the Nvidia Legacy 340 or 304 binary X.Org drivers provided on the official software repositories.

Flavours and Variants

• After informing Softpedia about the availability of the Linux AIO Ubuntu 16.10 and Linux AIO Ubuntu 14.04.5 Live DVDs, Željko Popivoda from the Linux AIO team is announcing the initial release of Linux AIO Ubuntu Mixture 2017.01.

• What’s Linux AIO Ubuntu Mixture 2017.01, you may wonder? Well, let us tell you that it’s something special, something that you’ve never experienced before. If until now Linux AIO provided the community with unique Live ISO images containing the essential flavors of a single GNU/Linux distribution, this changes today.

Devices/Embedded

• The good old days when security breaches only happened to Windows folk are fading fast. Malware hackers and denial of service specialists are increasingly targeting out of date embedded Linux devices, and fixing Linux security vulnerabilities was the topic of several presentations at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE) in October.

• One of the best attended was “Long-Term Maintenance, or How to (Mis-)Manage Embedded Systems for 10+ Years” by Pengutronix kernel hacker Jan Lübbe. After summarizing the growing security threats in embedded Linux, Lübbe laid out a plan to keep long-life devices secure and fully functional. “We need to move to newer, more stable kernels and do continuous maintenance to fix critical vulnerabilities,” said Lübbe. “We need to do the upstreaming and automate processes, and put in place a sustainable workflow. We don’t have any more excuses for leaving systems in the field with outdated software.”

• HARDWARE – Our friends and Linux-friendly PC vendor, CompuLab, have announced a new “IPC” line-up of their small form factor computers now with Intel Kabylake processors.

• In the past on Phoronix we tested CompuLab’s Intense-PC (IPC) and then the IPC2 with Haswell processors, among other innovative PCs from CompuLab. Now they are rolling out the IPC3 with Intel’s latest Kabylake processors.

• Compulab launched a rugged “IPC3” mini-PC that runs Linux on dual-core, 7th Gen Core i7/i5 CPUs, and also debuted three GbE-equipped FACE expansion modules.

• Compulab has opened pre-orders starting at $693 for the first mini-PCs we’ve seen to offer the latest, 14nm-fabricated 7th Generation Intel Core “Kaby Lake” processors. The passively cooled, 190 x 160 x 40mm IPC3 (Intense PC 3), which is available in up to industrial temperature ranges, follows two generations of similarly sized IPC2 mini-PCs. There’s the still available, 4th Gen “Haswell” based IPC2 from 2014 and the apparently discontinued 5th Gen “Broadwell” equipped IPC2 from 2015.

• Compulab is an Israeli company that makes small, fanless computers for home or commercial use. The company’s latest mini PC aimed at enterprise/industrial usage is called the IPC3, and it has a die-cast aluminum case with built-in heat sinks for passive cooling and measures about 7.4″ x 6.3″ x 1.6″.

• IonSign’s “Gluon GMU491 Cloud Gateway” runs Debian on a TI Sitara SoC and aggregates multiple sensor and Modbus inputs for Azure and AWS.

• Finland-based IonSign has begun shipping an IoT gateway billed as a “complete industrial grade production unit for data collection and edge computing.” The Debian Linux based Gluon GMU491 Cloud Gateway is designed for collecting sensor, meter, fieldbus, or automation system data and packaging it for direct delivery to commercial cloud platforms.

• Asus has launched a RPi-like “Tinker Board” that runs Debian and Kodi on a quad-core 1.8GHz -A17 RK3288, and offers 2GB RAM, GbE, 4K video, and 40-pin GPIO.

• The rumored Asus Tinker Board is finally for sale at Farnell in the UK, with a footprint, layout, and features that are very close to that of the Raspberry Pi, including the much copied 40-pin expansion connector and a Debian Linux image. The quad-core SoC and onboard wireless further reminds one of the Raspberry Pi 3.

• If you still think laptops are generic and the only difference between them are their price-tags, Dell invites you to think again. The latest Dell XPS 13 developer editon is everything a programmer could want from a high-end laptop.

• Computers have been shrinking for years, and the revolution has only accelerated in recent times. As chipmakers focus on creating processors that sip power without sacrificing performance, thermal concerns have largely been alleviated in modern CPUs. Because of that, today’s pint-sized PCs offer enough performance to play HD video and satisfy Office jockeys, the opposite of the janky, compromised experience of yesteryear’s microcomputers.

• From PCs-on-a-stick to discreet boxes no larger than a deck of cards, let’s take a look at the wide range of computers available that can fit in the palm of your hand—starting with the one that brought teeny-tiny PCs to public attention.

Phones

Tizen

• WatchMaker, a popular Android and Android Wear watchface platform, has some good news for our readers. They are currently in the process of expanding their supported platforms and will be targeting Tizen and its latest wearable smartwatches, the Samsung Gear S2 and Gear S3.

Android

• Earlier today, Android Police spotted a new feature getting rolled out to some Android devices called “Instant Tethering.” The idea cribs from one of the best features that Mac and iPhone users enjoy: instead of pulling your phone out and manually turning on tethering, you can just turn it on directly from the device that needs internet. On the Mac, you just click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar and select your iPhone. On Android, it seems like it can pop up a request if you aren’t online.

• Donald Trump has given up his beloved Android phone ahead of today’s inauguration, the Associated Press reports, though it is unclear what type of device he will use in the White House. According to The New York Times, Trump is now using a more secure, encrypted handset that was approved by the Secret Service. He also has a different phone number, the Times reports, citing people close to the president-elect.

• Trump doesn’t use email, but he does use his Android phone to tweet. He’s also been very accessible throughout the presidential campaign and transition, taking calls from reporters, politicians, and world leaders. Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister of Australia, called Trump to congratulate him on his electoral victory after getting his cellphone number from professional golfer Greg Norman.

• There are new smartphones hitting the market constantly, but which is the best to pick up when you’re trying to save a buck or two? We’ve seen some great launches this summer and we’re only expecting more over the coming months, but for now, let’s go over the best affordable Android smartphones you can go pick up today…

Free Software/Open Source

• ExecutiveBiz recently caught up with ISS Federal Systems Vice President Rob Rogers for this interview to discuss ongoing data-related trends in government and where he sees agencies prioritizing efforts in that arena, plus his ideas for how the government should approach open source methodology.

• [...]

• We have seen a significant shift in the past five years around agencies adopting and embracing open source methods. For one, open source technology is the primary catalyst behind some of the most significant progress related to the evolution of “big data” and analytic capabilities, which is used pervasively in the intelligence community.

• Certain agencies have contributed major projects to the open source community, which further solidifies their position on supporting open source. One notable example is NSA’s contribution of NiFi and Accumulo to the Apache Software Foundation in 2014. If these types of actions are an indicator of the direction that the IC agencies are heading in their support of open source, then the future is bright.

• On January 17, the governmental and industrial representatives from China and 25 other countries gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the Davos Forum.

• According to the latest update provided by Tai Cloud Corporation to EconoTimes, Jamie Elizabeth Smith, the former spokesperson and special assistant of the U.S. president Obama, announced that the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) is formally established. The first national team members include senior executives of World Bank Mariana Dahan, former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former Prime Minister of Haidi Laurent Lamont, former Economy Minister of Ukraine Aivaras Abromavičius.

• Last week Intel unveiled BigDL, a Spark-powered framework for distributed deep learning, available as an open source project. With most major IT vendors releasing machine learning frameworks, why not the CPU giant, too?

• What matters most about Intel’s project may not be what it offers people building deep learning solutions on Spark clusters, but what it says about Intel’s ambitions to promote hardware that competes with GPUs for those applications.

• Open source software is a great enabler for technology innovation. Diversity unlocks innovation and drives market growth. Open source and diversity seem like the ultimate winning combination, yet ironically open source communities are among the least diverse tech communities. This is especially true when it comes to inherent diversity: traits such as gender, age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

• You might first think about open source in the context of outstanding tools for lean startup companies, but open source also finds a welcome home in behemoth, established companies, such as Walmart. In this O’Reilly OSCON video interview with Walmart Lab’s Alex Grigoryan, learn how Walmart both benefits from and contributes back to open source. The key takeaway? Open source allows you to reuse software components in labor saving ways.

• Librecore is a new project aiming to be a new Coreboot downstream with a focus remaining on providing fully-free system firmware. Separately, Minifree/Libreboot has been accused (and admitted by Leah Rowe) to not paying a vendor for a completed contract.

• Librecore was formed due to “[Libreboot lead developer Leah Rowe] alienating large portions of the community, plus the stagnant and hard to use libreboot firmware and build system.” With Librecore, they are aiming to use industry-standard tools and build environments. Another different design decision is pursuing Petitboot as the payload for a more modern and useful interface over GRUB as a payload.

• Open source software may still be a new model for the telecommunications industry, but it’s rapidly gaining traction as operators look to mimic computing world.

• While the open source community has quickly gaining ground in the computing space, the traditional telecommunications industry has a history of hardening its siloed approach to networking technology. This was especially apparent at a time when most mobile telecom networks were 2G-based, with 3G technology just coming online in more advanced markets.

• If you’ve been following the work we’re doing around open source at Rogue Wave Software, you’ve probably heard us say that open source software (OSS) has “crossed the chasm” or is “eating the enterprise.” Although the open source enterprise landscape is still truly nascent, there is no question that open source development principles and the products themselves have “won.” That begs the question: “Now what do we do?”

• You’re leveraging free software, perhaps even without knowing it! Your developers are seeking out open source libraries to meet your business demands before writing the code themselves. You’re using an open source application server, middleware solution, or operating system instead of an expensive and locked-in commercial alternative. You’ve shortened your development cycles, you’re releasing things faster, and you’ve gained a competitive edge by embracing community developed solutions in your enterprise.

• Google’s Tilt Brush is capable of some pretty impressive results. But what if those 3D paintings and projects you made while strapped into virtual reality could escape into the real world?

Events

• For those that were interested in Linux.Conf.Au 2017 in Hobart, Tasmania, the videos are now available online.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• Chrome/Chromium users on x86 dealing with H.264 encoding from the browser should notice faster performance coming down the pipe.

Mozilla

SaaS/Back End

• While not everyone in the U.S. is familiar with it, EIT Digital is a leading European open innovation organization, and it has just launched a new innovation program called HopsWorks to work on a next-generation Hadoop open-source software framework for distributed storage and processing of very large data sets.

• The idea is to leverage Hadoop’s Big Data strengths in a new type of software framework, and a whole new startup comany will be created to take it to market.

• Dr. Jim Dowling, Senior Researcher at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS Swedish ICT) and the leader of EIT Digital HopsWorks Innovation Activity, said: “Hadoop is an open-source software framework for storing data and running applications on clusters of commodity hardware. Our product, dubbed ‘Hops’, will provide the first truly multi-tenant, elastic Hadoop distribution service with unified batch and streaming.”

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Rumors have been flying since at least December that Oracle is on the verge of shutting down its Solaris Unix operating system, as well as discontinuing its SPARC server line. Well, at long last Oracle has spoken (excuse the redundancy), and as with most rumors, these had a smidgen of truth, but missed the mark.

Education

• I’m CEO of Moodle, a learning management system. It’s a piece of software that is like an operating system for education. You can add and remove tools, and you can build an environment for learning. The teacher usually controls it. The students are usually going through activities set by the teacher, although that’s not always the case. It doesn’t just have to be like that. It’s ultimately a place where you’ll collaborate and work together and learn from each other.

• I started off making up this job because I was solving problems, bit by bit. There’s a lot of things involved in that, but ultimately, it’s glueing together a lot of different skills that I learned from a lot of different people, and solving problems in a bigger way.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

Licensing/Legal

• Through the glazed-over eyes of friends and family, past that painful look of well-intended but feigned interest, I can clearly see a fundamental lack of understanding about this free software I’m constantly going on about.

• Open source software (OSS) is ubiquitous in software development today, enabling technical innovation, productivity gains, and touching everything from big data and cloud to mobile and embedded. Control modules on the market today commonly include OSS components such as real-time operating systems, libraries, data interfaces, firmware, and display software.

• Companies or organizations that don’t have a strong open source compliance program often suffer from errors and limitations in processes throughout the software development cycle that can lead to open source compliance failures.

• The previous article in this series covered common intellectual property failures. This time, we’ll discuss the four common open source license compliance failures and how to avoid them.

Programming/Development

• The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is entering its “stage four” development for GCC 7 with the stable GCC 7.1 release expected in March or April.

• Richard Biener announced today that GCC 7 is under stage four, meaning only regression and documentation fixes will be permitted until the GCC 7.1.0 stable release happens (yep, as per their peculiar versioning system, GCC 7.1 is the first stable release in the GCC 7 series).

• So many free and open source software projects were started to solve a problem, and people began to contribute to them because they too wanted a fix to what they encountered. End users of the project find it useful for their needs, and the project grows. And that shared purpose and focus attracts people to a project’s community.

• This is first security bugfix release for Weblate. This has to come at some point, fortunately the issue is not really severe. But Weblate got it’s first CVE ID today, so it’s time to address it in a bugfix release.

Leftovers

Science

• Questions about how we approach our new robotic friends once the artificial intelligence revolution really kicks off are not new, nor are calls for developing some sort of legal framework that will govern how humanity and robots ought to interact with one another. For the better part of this decade, in fact, there have been some advocating that robots and AI be granted certain rights along the lines of what humanity, or at least animals, enjoy. And, while some of its ideas haven’t been stellar, such as a call for robots to be afforded copyright for anything they might create, the EU has been talking for some time about developing policy around the rights and obligations of artificial intelligence and its creators.

• With AI being something of a hot topic, as predictions of its eventual widespread emergence mount, it seems EU MEPs are attempting to get out ahead of the revolution.

Health/Nutrition

• ProPublica and the Virginian-Pilot filed a lawsuit today in federal court against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, accusing the agency of stonewalling requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

• The lawsuit, ProPublica’s second against the VA in two months, seeks a preliminary injunction compelling the government to immediately release correspondence about Agent Orange, an herbicide used to kill vegetation during the Vietnam War, including documents sent to and received by Dr. David Shulkin, the VA’s undersecretary for health. Shulkin has been nominated to be VA secretary by President-elect Donald Trump.

• ProPublica and the Pilot have been reporting about Agent Orange for 18 months, documenting ongoing effects on veterans and their families. The FOIA requests at issue in today’s lawsuit date back to May and September 2015.

• The $3 pill known as BiDil was already a difficult sell when a Georgia-based pharmaceutical company bought the marketing rights a few years ago. A treatment for African Americans suffering from heart failure, BiDil had never really caught on, forcing the drug company that developed it to take a buyout offer. One strike against the drug was a 2009 study that raised questions about its safety and effectiveness.

• So last summer, the new owner of the drug, Arbor Pharmaceuticals LLC of Atlanta, sought to get the study taken down from a government website. For help, the company turned to the office of a congressman to whom the CEO had given the maximum $2,700 campaign donation — Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican nominated by Donald Trump to become head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Security

• “Black Duck’s Open Source Security Audit Report found that, on average, vulnerabilities in open source components used in commercial application were over 5 years old,” Pittenger said. “The Linux kernel vulnerability discovered 8/16 (CVE-2016-5195) had been in the Linux code base since 2012. Most organizations don’t know about the open source vulnerabilities in their code because they don’t track the open source components they use, and don’t actively monitor open source vulnerability information.”

• SECURITY BLOGGER BRIAN KREBS has suggested that “Anna Senpai”, the reprobate behind the Mirai Internet-of-shonky-Things (IoT) botnet, is a student studying at Rutgers University in the US.

• Krebs made his disclosure after conducting an in-depth investigation and finding out that Mirai had been developed and deployed over the past three years or so – it didn’t suddenly emerge last year.

• Krebs believes that Mirai has been used a number of times in connection with what looks suspiciously likes an online protection racket: companies running, for example, Minecraft servers being offered distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, on the one hand, just before being taken offline in massive DDoS attacks on the other.

• STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING, unless you don’t have a Gmail account. Carry on if that is the case.

• If you do use Gmail you apparently really, really, need to be aware of a crafty phishing scam that will have you hooked, lined, sinkered, gutted, covered in batter and served with curry sauce before you have a chance to realise that anything is happening.

• The scam that has everyone in a lather uses a deceptive URL, and quite a sneaky one. People probably won’t even notice it because, for the most part, it looks fine. It is only once it is clicked and the bastard gateway is broken through that the phishing and the stealing begins.

• The ability to run an application sandboxed is a very important feature of flatpak. However, its is not the only reason you might want to use flatpak. In fact, since currently very few applications work in a fully sandboxed environment, most of the apps you’d run are not sandboxed.

Defence/Aggression

• The federal government’s frantic response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, sparked renewed debate Wednesday at the Supreme Court, as justices considered whether top officials in the George W. Bush administration could be held responsible for abuses against Muslim immigrants and others rounded up after the attacks.

• Conservatives on the court, citing the extraordinary peril of that time, appeared willing to give the officials legal protection from lawsuits arising from the detention policies they approved after the attacks.

• But some of the more liberal justices did not appear so forgiving.

• Even in a time of national emergency, government officials sometimes “can go too far,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said. “And if they have gone too far, it is our job to say that.”

• President Barack Obama has pulled back the curtain on aspects of the U.S. drone killing program, but as he prepared to leave office this week his administration made a legal move to prevent a judge from pulling the curtain back even further.

• Last July, a federal judge in New York issued a 191-page legal opinion resolving an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit demanding dozens of Justice Department, Defense Department and CIA documents relating to the use of armed drones to kill individuals abroad. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon’s ruling appears to have largely favored the government’s right to keep the records under wraps.

• However, McMahon seemed to accept the ACLU’s arguments for disclosure in a few areas and she accused the government of “chutzpah” over some of its contentions. Because the government declared much of her opinion “top secret,” it’s difficult to assess.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Not only is the use of private email accounts to route around public records requests a common practice, it’s also an accepted practice. Politicians aren’t going to sell out their own in the name of transparency, so there’s likely as many private email accounts handling official business as there are government employees. Everyone from former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to Gen. Colin Powell has used private email accounts to handle government communications they’d rather not be made public.

• The same goes for Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. For years, journalists and government transparency groups have been trying (and suing) to get the mayor to turn over city-related emails contained in his personal accounts. To date, the city of Chicago hasn’t budged.

• But we’re living in a “new” era of Chicago-brand transparency — the aftermath of the city’s concerted cover-up of police recordings of the Laquan McDonald shooting. The mayor pledged the city would be more open and forthcoming in the future — not a difficult promise to make considering there was nowhere to go but up.

• WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up at Ecuador’s London embassy since 2012, said on Thursday he stood by his offer to be extradited to the United States providing his rights were protected.

• Assange said last week he would accept extradition if former military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning were freed and on Wednesday U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence, meaning she will be released in May.

Finance

• In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg (who insists that privacy is dead) bought 100 acres of land around his vacation home in Hawaii to ensure that no one could get close enough to spy on him.

• The Zuckerberg estate on Kauai North Shore engulfs several smaller pieces of land deeded in the 1800s — kuleana lands that were granted to native Hawaiians. The owners of this land are entitled to easements through Zuckerberg’s property, so they can reach their own.

• Zuckerberg has filed “quiet” lawsuits to force the owners of more than 100 of these parcels to sell to him. His lawyer says it’s the easiest way to figure out who has title to these family lands so he can make them an offer. Hey, when I want to find out who someone is, I always sue ‘em.

• Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly suing Hawaiian families who have ancestral rights to land within his $100 million (£81.2 million) property in a bid to force them to sell their plots.

• The Facebook founder has launched the legal action in an attempt to make his 700-acre beachfront estate on the Island of Kuai more private.

• Under legislation dating back to 1850 known as the Kuleana Act, almost a dozen native families currently have the right to live on small sections of land within the billionaire’s property on the island, according to the Honolulu Star Advertiser.

• Treasury-secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin came to the Senate Finance Committee hearing room prepared to fight a war about foreclosures issued by OneWest Bank when he served as CEO. His only weapons were half-truths and outright lies. But you go to war with what you have.

• A funny thing happened on his way to the hearing room, however. Democrats got distracted by information uncovered by their staff that Mnuchin left off his financial disclosure, that he was director of investment funds incorporated in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Anguilla. Mnuchin called it an oversight, and that the forms are hard work. To quote Cristina Clifford, a OneWest homeowner subject to wrongful foreclosure, “Paperwork can be hard. It’s really hard when someone like Steve Mnuchin is foreclosing on your home. OneWest repeatedly lost my paperwork, and they foreclosed on me anyway.”

• But instead of taking up this line of argument, Democratic committee members pummeled him over the tax haven, asking again and again about why he would have to incorporate the fund overseas and whether he personally benefited from tax evasion.

• Mnuchin’s answer on this was a little weak. He admitted that he didn’t have an office, employees, or customers in these tax havens, but he seemingly argued that he incorporated in the Caymans only to benefit other groups like nonprofits and pension funds, as if that makes it all better. But it got bogged down into an arcane discussion of hedge-fund rules and tax law, when there were literally thousands of human stories, of people who lost everything they had at the hands of Steve Mnuchin’s bank, waiting to be discussed. Too few Democrats took the opportunity. And this is a familiar pattern, because of the troubling failures of the Obama administration to deal with foreclosures. Yesterday’s unofficial forum with foreclosure victims was the first appearance of homeowners on the Hill in years.

• Treasury Secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin kicked off his confirmation hearing Thursday with a defiant opening statement, mostly defending his record as CEO of OneWest Bank. He cast himself as a tireless savior for homeowners after scooping up failed lender IndyMac. “It has been said that I ran a ‘foreclosure machine,’” he said. “I ran a loan modification machine.”

• But in stark contrast to his fuzzy statistics about attempted loan modifications, the victims of OneWest’s foreclosure practices have been real and ubiquitous.

• A TV advertising campaign that’s been running in Nevada, Arizona, and Iowa features Lisa Fraser, a widow who says OneWest “lied to us and took our home” of 25 years, right after her husband’s funeral.

• Incoming President Donald Trump’s business deals span the globe. Trump-branded skyscrapers, golf courses and hotels stretch from Dubai to Azerbaijan to the Philippines.

• Government ethics experts have strongly criticized Trump’s refusal to divest ownership of any of his businesses. But they point to his ongoing foreign deals with those connected to power as the most troubling.

• “These foreign deals are fertile ground for corruption,” Norman Eisen, the White House chief ethics lawyer under President Obama, told ProPublica. “When there’s a pre-existing relationship, there can be wink, wink, nod, nod, or even a private whisper that turns into a quid pro quo.”

• “He has to get rid of his foreign deals,” said Matthew T. Sanderson, an attorney at Caplin & Drysdale who has served as legal counsel on three Republican presidential campaigns.

• President Barack Obama will leave the federal government approximately $9,335,000,000,000 deeper in debt than it was when he took office eight years ago, according to data released today by the U.S. Treasury.

• The increased debt incurred under Obama equals approximately $75,129 for every person in the United States who had a full-time job in December.

• The $9,334,590,089,060.56 that the debt had increased under Obama as of the close of business on Wednesday is far more debt than was accumulated by any previous president. It equals nearly twice as much as the $4,889,100,310,609.44 in additional debt that piled up during the eight years George W. Bush served as president.

• There’s plenty of sound logic to be found in this analysis. However, if we have learned anything over the last few months, it is that old-fashioned logic is relatively unimportant in the new political landscape. Since it looks like moves to renegotiate NAFTA are going to be made quickly, we should find out soon enough what the Trump administration’s new line on ISDS will be.

• Two Chinese investors are buying the owner of PCWorld magazine and the IDC market research outfit – International Data Group (IDG) – but IDC’s high-performance computing research businesses are not included in the sale.

• The two Chinese investors are China Oceanwide Holdings Group Co, Ltd and the confusingly named IDG Capital. They were apparently bidding separately several months ago, but joined forces under the encouragement of Goldman Sachs, IGC’s banker.

• They are paying a sum estimated between $500m and $1bn. The American Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has cleared the sale, which should complete by April.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• You may have paused over it at the airport and wondered if it might be worth a guilty read on a long flight. After all, it has sold over 5m copies and spent 186 weeks in the New York Times bestseller list. Maybe you then thought better of it, suspecting there is something a little bit overly needy about people who go in for self-help books. Wise choice; it’s a terrible book. Nonetheless, if you want to understand the psychology of Donald Trump, it might be worth steeling yourself for an hour. For Normal Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking was one of the formative influences on the young Trump. And Peale’s philosophy of positive thinking explains much about the internal workings of Trump’s maddening self-belief.

• Norman Vincent Peale was for over half a century the minister of Marble Collegiate church on New York’s Fifth Avenue, and he made it one of the most influential pulpits in the country, railing against communism and un-American activities. It was to there in the 1960s that Fred C Trump took his family, moving over from the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, where they lived, drawn by Peale’s theology of how to be winner. Donald Trump says he attended Marble church for decades and that he was much influenced by Peale’s sermons. Norman Peale married Donald to his first wife, Ivana, at Marble in 1977.

• Documentary director Michael Moore held a massive protest Thursday night outside Trump’s New York City International Hotel featuring speeches from public figures including actors Robert De Niro and Mark Ruffalo.

• The protest started at 6 p.m. with De Niro poking fun at Trump by reading imagined tweets from the president-elect. It was followed by speeches from Moore, Alec Baldwin, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, Ruffalo and the Rev. Al Sharpton, and others.

• Donald Trump’s inauguration team wanted to show off the U.S. military during inauguration weekend and even suggested including tanks and missile launchers in his inaugural parade, The Huffington Post reported Thursday.

• “They were legit thinking Red Square/North Korea-style parade,” an inauguration team source told The Huffington Post, referring to massive military parades in Moscow and Pyongyang that are often interpreted as displays of aggression.

• According to the report, the military shot down the request because of concerns about how it would look to have tanks and missile launchers in the parade, as well as the possible damage the tanks, which can weigh over 100,000 pounds, would do to the roads.

• “I could absolutely see structural support being a reason [not to use tanks],” a Department of Defense official told The Huffington Post. “D.C. is built on a swamp to begin with.”

• We do know, however, what a Trump Presidency will mean for the campaign to end violence against women and girls – and it’s not positive.

• The most powerful man in the world has repeatedly and deliberately demeaned women. “When you’re a star” he said, “they let you do it. You can do anything …Grab them by the p***y … You can do anything.” He has gloated about sexual assault and argued that objectifying 50 per cent of the human race is exactly what the other 50 per cent do privately. even if they pretend otherwise in public.

• Trump’s election campaign and professional track record are distinguished by sexism and misogyny. There is very little he could say or do now to reverse the damage he has already caused, the consequences of which resonate beyond the US and beyond women and girls.

• The link in that passage goes back to the Times‘ 2001 coverage of the inauguration—coverage that was critiqued by FAIR at the time under the headline “Ignoring Reality at the Inauguration”…

• Corporate interests that were largely reluctant to embrace Donald Trump during the presidential campaign last year are finally opening their checkbooks to underwrite the festivities sweeping Washington, D.C., to welcome his incoming administration.

• Firms with a great deal riding on the major policy agenda items of the next four years have lined up to sponsor the endless parade of hors d’oeuvres and open bars at parties across the city.

• Topping the list are firms with interests in pharmaceuticals, oil, and defense contracting — highly regulated industries that have much at stake with ongoing policy discussions over drug pricing, environmental regulations, and the defense sequester.

• Several events list ride-sharing companies Lyft or Uber as special transportation partners. Both firms face regulatory hurdles to accessing municipal markets and in terms of gaining approval for the next generation self-driving car technologies.

• Cam Harris, a recent college graduate hoping to build a career as a political consultant, received an unwelcome email from a New York Times reporter this month. As the reporter, Scott Shane, recounted on the front page of Thursday’s Times, he had discovered that Harris was the publisher of a fake news site dedicated to smearing Hillary Clinton.

• So Harris did what came naturally. He started to spin. First, he admitted that he had written the hoax news articles casting Clinton as a criminal on his site, ChristianTimesNewspaper.com. Eight of his stories attracted enough attention on social networks to merit debunking by Snopes, the fact-checking site, and one of them, published a month before the election, attracted six million readers with the headline, “BREAKING: ‘Tens of thousands’ of fraudulent Clinton votes found in Ohio warehouse.”

• But when he was asked about his motives for posting elaborate disinformation about Clinton online over the course of 11 months, Harris was a little more economical with the truth. Even though he had attacked Clinton relentlessly on Twitter during the campaign, and voted for Donald Trump, Harris told The Times that his goals were purely financial. He had focused on potentially damaging fabrications about Clinton, he claimed, simply because those pieces generated more clicks and so more ad revenue than attacks on Trump.

• Any time a new administration comes into office, there will be some complaining about the new president’s cabinet picks. But we’re seeing something extraordinary happening now. Donald Trump’s cabinet brings with it a combination of ethical problems, inexperience, hostility to the missions of the departments its members are being called to lead, and plain old ignorance that is simply unprecedented.

• This is shaping up to be nothing less than the worst cabinet in American history.

• With Donald Trump taking over the presidency Friday morning, a different type of transition has also taken place: a digital transition.

• A novel approach was taken with respect to the Twitter accounts of the president, vice-president and first lady: the accounts were both retained and cloned to new accounts – if you followed @POTUS, you will continue to do so but will also be added as a follower to @POTUS44 (Obama was the 44th president of the United States). The same goes with @VP and @FLOTUS.

• On the bus, in the morning darkness, Steph and Brandi put on their makeup, using a phone as a mirror.

• Stephanie Friess and Brandi Tillman have been friends since high school, and now they were on their way from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington to celebrate the man who had given them a brand new country.

• On election night, Steph stayed up past 3am to see Trump’s victory being announced. The next morning, remembering the night before while driving her car, the 24-year-old felt jubilant to be living in Trump’s America.

• The two women made matching Trump caps – blue and black – decorated with sequins and the slogan “Adorable Deplorable” in honor of the inauguration. Hillary Clinton had tried to attack Trump for lifting up the most “deplorable” among his followers: “the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic – you name it”. Trump’s followers had proudly reclaimed the term, and now Brandi and Steph bedazzled it.

• Donald Trump’s scathing criticism of Army Sgt Bowe Bergdahl will prevent the soldier from getting a fair trial on charges he endangered comrades by walking off his post in Afghanistan, Bergdahl’s attorneys said on Friday.

• In a motion filed shortly after Trump was sworn in, defense lawyers asked a military judge to dismiss the charges against Bergdahl and argued the Republican violated his due process rights and military law against unlawful command influence.

• Trump’s negative comments about Bergdahl, including calling him a traitor, take on new importance now that he is commander-in-chief. Defense attorneys argue that potential military jurors may feel obligated to agree with their new leader. They prepared a video exhibit of Trump’s criticism.

• Passwords used by Donald Trump’s incoming cybersecurity advisor Rudy Giuliani and 13 other top staffers have been leaked in mass hacks, according to a Channel 4 investigation.

• Giuliani, incoming national security advisor Lt Gen Michael Flynn and various cabinet members of Trump’s administration had their details included in website mega breaches… like millions upon millions of others. This doesn’t mean that we (or they) have been hacked and there’s no indication that it’s their current credentials that have been compromised. They may have changed their passwords since, for instance, the LinkedIn breach.

• “The passwords of the appointees were hacked in mass breaches of websites like LinkedIn, MySpace, and others between 2012 and 2016,” as Channel 4 puts it.

• An appearance of someone’s records in Have I Been Pwned? should not imply that they have been hacked, contrary to Channel 4′s breathless headline.

• Nigel Farage has been hired as a commentator for American TV network Fox News, the broadcaster has announced.

• The former UKIP leader will provide political analysis for the main channel, and the Fox Business Network’s daytime and primetime programmes.

• Today, as of noon, the president of the United States is a man who boasted of sexually assaulting women. The nation’s leader is a purveyor of fake news and conspiracy theories who led the racist birther campaign. The commander in chief in charge of the US nuclear arsenal is a fellow who was unfamiliar with the nuclear triad but who is obsessed with revenge. The head of the federal government is a businessman who vowed to “drain the swamp” but who has taken office loaded with troubling conflicts of interest and flouting multiple ethics norms. The defender of the Constitution is a record-setting prevaricator and fabulist who has repeatedly attacked journalists who challenge his false assertions. The guy who oversees national law enforcement is a dishonest developer who was sued for racially based housing discrimination and who lied about his mob ties. The person in charge of US national security is a foreign policy novice who has called for enhancing relations with a foreign power that covertly worked to subvert American democracy in order to benefit him and whose associates are under investigation by agencies he now oversees for possible contacts with that foreign power. The most powerful man in the world is a thin-skinned, arrogant, name-calling, bullying, narcissistic hotelier.

• There was no recognition, and probably beneath it no awareness, that America’s security and prosperity have rested all these years on the liberal international order, which our wiser leaders created in the wake of World War II and which Trump now deprecates.

• Quite apart from the ignorance of history and economics that leads him to say, and probably believe, that protectionism will make America stronger and richer, this speech is likely to set off a cascade of consequences around the world. (Give the new president this: He penned a truly historic inaugural address—just not in the way that word is usually meant.)

Censorship/Free Speech

• The Republic of Kazakhstan’s harassing U.S. court case that it used to target the independent newspaper Respublika, and other fierce critics of the ruling regime, has finally come to an end. Kazakhstan employed the deeply flawed U.S. hacking statute called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to mount a two-year campaign of harassment, censorship, and retaliation against the publication in courts around the world. The clock ran out on Kazakhstan’s lawsuit and the government finally dismissed it, but not before real damage was done to the free speech rights of the newspaper, which was forced to shut down, and other parties.

• The harassment of Respublika is a cautionary tale about how the CFAA can be used by an oppressive foreign government to enter the U.S. court system by claiming it was hacked by an unknown party, and then use the U.S. case to get court orders here and abroad to intimidate enemies and dissidents without ever having to name a defendant.

• The Jordanian government arrested [Al Jazeera report] eight activists last week, charging them with “insulting the King” and “incitement to spread chaos to undermine the political regime of Jordan using social media” as late as Tuesday. Those arrested include retired, top military and intelligence officials. Lawyers say that they have been unable to reach their clients, who will be held for at least two more weeks. The activists criticized corruption investigations, security flaws, and government leaders.

• We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy.

• This week has been Copyright Week, put together each year by the EFF and others, giving lots of people and organizations a chance to weigh in on a variety of copyright issues. Each day has its own theme, and in the past, I’ve tried to participate each day — as (not surprisingly) I have thoughts about each of the topics. This year, unfortunately, I’ve been a bit busier than usual, meaning I haven’t had as much time to write. But, still, if you check out the Copyright Week site, you can see lots of great articles by others on various topics. This being the last day of Copyright Week, it hits on a topic that I think is the most important of all: copyright and free speech. Last fall, I gave a talk at Wikimedia in which I noted that copyright has a serious free speech problem, and we’re never going to fix what ails copyright until we address that simple fact.

• What’s most striking to me is how many people try to completely deny that copyright could ever be used to stifle free expression. It seems intellectually dishonest to make such a claim. There are tons and tons of examples of copyright being used to stifle different forms of expression — from blocking derivative works to sending bogus takedowns and more. Copyright can be and is frequently used to stifle expression. That should be a concern.

• Here is an interview I did on RT yesterday about the censorship of the channel’s Facebook page ahead of the presidential inauguration today.

• That censorship has since been lifted. In solidarity I shall be watching the inauguration ceremony on RT – but not via the odious Facebook!

• California has filed its opposition to IMDb’s attempt to stop a controversial new law over the display of an actor’s age. The state tells a California federal judge that the statute is more about contracts than speech.

• California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the law in September after Hollywood’s biggest actors’ guild lobbied for the change. SAG-AFTRA aimed to combat age discrimination by forcing certain websites to remove age information upon request.

• In November, IMDb filed suit and demanded an injunction on enforcement. The Amazon.com subsidiary argues the law is “unconstitutionally over-inclusive because it requires IMDb to censor the factual age-related information of producers, directors, casting agents, and myriad other entertainment professionals, many of whom face no realistic risk of age discrimination from the publication of their ages on IMDb.”

• However, the proposed increase in data tariffs, spells trouble for Zimbabwe’s digital democracy.

• Data prices in Zimbabwe were already very high, the third highest mobile data prices in Africa as of September 2016.

• As unreasonable as these prices were, citizens still heavily relied on the internet for information and communication. More than 80% of the country’s population is connected on a mobile platform, with mobile data usage increasing by 27,4% last year.

Privacy/Surveillance

• BRITS DON’T TRUST incoming US president Donald Trump to be able to resist using state surveillance powers, handily expanded by outoing President Obama, for personal gain.

• That’s according to a survey by Privacy International, which seems to suggest that Brits will be up all night with worry over what, exactly, Trump will do after he’s sworn in.

• According to the survey, four-fifths expect Trump to use his surveillance powers in some way for personal gain, while half claimed that they have “no trust” in Trump only using the US government’s surveillance and information-gathering powers for “legitimate purposes”.

• There’s been a sudden wave of people concerned about the Meitu selfie app’s use of unique phone IDs. Here’s what we know: the app will transmit your phone’s IMEI (a unique per-phone identifier that can’t be altered under normal circumstances) to servers in China. It’s able to obtain this value because it asks for a permission called READ_PHONE_STATE, which (if granted) means that the app can obtain various bits of information about your phone including those unique IDs and whether you’re currently on a call.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Hijab, burqas and other religious symbols have been a controversial subject. Last year a Canadian Superior Court justice ruled that a decision to deny a woman’s case in court because she refused to remove her hijab went against [JURIST report] the fundamental principles of Canadian law. In 2013 a Quebec official proposed a bill [JURIST report] banning religious headwear for public workers. Belgium officially banned [JURIST report] burqas in July 2011. France’s ban on burqas took effect [JURIST report] in April 2011. Some commentators have suggested that the rationales behind the European burqa bans are weak [JURIST op-ed] and that the true purpose of the bills is societal discomfort.

• A judge has bluntly rejected the Obama administration’s effort to avoid giving the court an unabridged copy of the Senate report on CIA war-on-terror interrogation tactics — a compendium better known as the “torture report.”

• In late December, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth granted a request from lawyers for Guantánamo prisoner and alleged Al Qaeda mastermind Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri to have the highly classified report preserved in court files.

• Earlier this month, the Justice Department asked Lamberth to reconsider, noting that President Barack Obama decided to make the report part of his presidential records and that a military judge ordered the Defense Department to preserve a copy of the review.

• Turkey’s parliament approved the first seven articles in a second round of voting overnight on a constitutional bill that will extend President Tayyip Erdogan’s powers, keeping the reform on course for a spring referendum.

• The two largest opposition parties in parliament say the 18-article bill, which could enable Erdogan to rule until 2029, will fuel authoritarianism in the NATO member and European Union candidate country.

• The ruling AK Party, backed by the nationalist MHP, says it will bring the strong executive leadership needed to prevent a return to the fragile coalition governments of the past.

• A video appearing to show police cornering a mentally ill and blind man before he was shot dead has been released by the victim’s family.

• The CCTV footage purportedly shows James Hall surrounded by heavily armed officers in a petrol station and then collapsing to the ground as he is gunned down.

• The clip was released after his family announced it was suing the police department in California for using “excessive force”.

• “James was not observed by family, friends, or those who knew him as having violent tendencies because of his mental illness,’ said attorney Ben Meiselas, of Geragos & Geragos in Los Angeles.

• On his last day in office, President Obama repeated an eight-year request to Congress: Close the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

• “There is simply no justification beyond politics for the Congress’ insistence on keeping the facility open,” Obama wrote in a letter to Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan that was released by the White House on Thursday. “Members of Congress who obstruct efforts to close the facility, given the stakes involved for our security, have abdicated their responsibility to the American people.”

• As one of his final acts, President Barack Obama responded to widespread public outcry and commuted the bulk of Chelsea Manning’s prison sentence. Instead of serving 35 years in a military prison, she will be released on May 17, after nearly seven years behind bars, including months in conditions that the United Nations considers to be torture.

• Pardons and commutations are often controversial. But on balance, this decision should be seen as major victory for free speech and human rights—a move that will make all of us safer, and strengthen our democracy.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Netflix has long been an outspoken supporter of net neutrality rules, but the streaming video provider says it is now so popular with consumers that it wouldn’t be harmed if the rules were repealed.

• The potential of reversing net neutrality rules increased the moment Donald Trump became president-elect, as Republicans in the Federal Communications Commission and Congress want to get rid of the rules. But in a letter to shareholders yesterday, Netflix reassured investors that this won’t affect the company’s financial performance or service quality.

• “Weakening of US net neutrality laws, should that occur, is unlikely to materially affect our domestic margins or service quality because we are now popular enough with consumers to keep our relationships with ISPs stable,” Netflix wrote.

• The FCC’s rules prohibit ISPs from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment. Because of the rules, small video providers that aren’t as popular as Netflix don’t have to worry about being blocked or throttled by ISPs or having to pay ISPs for faster access to customers. ISPs would prefer that customers subscribe to the ISPs’ own video services, and thus have incentive to shut out competitors who need access to their broadband networks.

• Back in 2011 AT&T and Verizon killed off their unlimited wireless data plans, instead replacing them with usage caps and steep (up to $15 per gigabyte) over fees. And while these companies grandfathered the existing unlimited data users at the time, they’ve spent the lion’s share of the last six years waging a not-so-subtle war on these users in an attempt to get them to switch to metered plans. This ranged from AT&T’s decision to block Facetime completely for users on unlimited plans, to covertly throttling these users only after a few gigabytes of usage, then lying about it. Repeatedly.

• Of course AT&T has also used vanilla rate hikes on these unlimited data plans to drive users to metered options.

• As many expected, Donald Trump has chosen former Verizon lawyer and current FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai to head the FCC, according to a report by Politico. According to two anonymous insiders “familiar with the decision,” Pai, who met with Trump on Monday, should be formally announced as FCC boss in short order. Pai recently proclaimed that net neutrality’s “days are numbered” under Trump, while stating that the reformed FCC would be taking a “weed whacker” to “unnecessary regulations” like the FCC’s net neutrality rules and its new consumer broadband privacy protections.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Let’s start this off by stipulating that the Red Cross is an organization well known for doing very real humanitarian work. While some have raised questions as to exactly how ethically it spends donor money, the organization is still on the front lines in helping those suffering from natural and man-made disasters. All that being said, the Red Cross has also shown itself to wander over the line of sense when it comes to both video games and policing some of its iconography. Recall that the Red Cross insisted, for instance, that games that allowed players to commit what would constitute war crimes also be required to include virtual punishments for those actions. On policing the use of its icons, the organization has suggested in the past that the use of its red cross symbol on theatre costumes constitutes a violation of The Geneva Conventions.

• These two realms in which the Red Cross likes to play crazy have now converged, with Mark Morris and Chris Delay, makers of the notorious video game Prison Architects, having received notice that the game’s inclusion of an ambulance emblazoned with a red cross constituted a violation of The Geneva Conventions.

Trademarks

• A little over a year ago, we wrote about an appeals court ruling saying that the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) could not reject a trademark based on the fact that it was “disparaging” towards an individual or group. The case focused around whether or not a Portland band named “The Slants” could trademark its name. The band, which is fronted by an Asian American named Simon Tam, had its trademark rejected by the PTO on the claim that it was disparaging to Asians.

• As I noted at the time, I had struggled with my own opinion on this question as well — initially arguing that this shouldn’t be a First Amendment issue, because refusing to grant a trademark registration in no way interfered with anyone’s freedom of expression. Instead, it did the opposite, and made it clear that anyone could make use of the content without restriction or fear of infringing on someone’s registered mark (though, a common law trademark may still be an issue). Over time, and after lots of discussions with lots of people on all sides of this issue, I eventually came down on the other side. The key issue was not whether or not speech was blocked, but rather that there’s a law that determines something based on the content of speech, and it’s that point that makes it a First Amendment issue.

Copyrights

• It never fails (although the proposed solution often does): when faced with the struggles of operating news organizations in the internet era, far too many industry leaders suggest someone else should pay for their failing business models.

• The favorite target is Google. Google has somehow destroyed the profitability of news media companies by creating an incredibly successful search engine. Even though its search engine directs users to news agencies’ websites, there are those in the industry that believe incoming traffic isn’t enough to offset their perception that the search engine somehow piggybacks off their success, rather than the other way around.

• So-called “Google taxes” have been passed into law in countries around the world. In every case, they’ve been a disaster. In Spain, new agencies begged to have the law rolled back after losing traffic from Google searches. Having seen what didn’t work in Spain, Austrian lawmakers floated the same idea, proposing a tax on SINGLE WORDS in search results. The latest bad idea is an EU-wide “snippet tax,” because it worked so well in Spain, Spanish newspapers begged the EU to step in and block Google from killing its news article search results in Spain in response to the proposed tax.

• As the Guardian reports, the legal action has been brought by the widow of Borges, María Kodama. Theoretically the case could lead to a six-year jail sentence for Katchadjian, although nobody seriously expects him to end up in prison if he loses. Kodama’s lawyer is unimpressed with the argument that “The Fattened Aleph” is just another of Katchadjian’s literary experiments. Previously, the author rewrote an epic 19th-century poem about gauchos called “Martín Fierro,” by placing the poem’s lines in alphabetical order. “Martín Fierro” is also the name of a 1920s Argentinian literary magazine that published work by Borges, amongst others.

• Five years ago this week, Americans opened their internet browsers and saw darkness.

• Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and other major websites had banded together and gone dark to make a then-obscure piece of legislation infamous. Wikipedia shut down completely for 24 hours and a black band masked the Google logo.

• These internet giants and other online sites joined millions of Americans in protesting the 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) legislation in a historic grassroots movement. More than four million people signed Google’s online petition linked to the blacked-out homepage. Eight million people looked up how to contact their representative when prompted to by Wikipedia. Tumblr alone produced 87,000 calls to representatives. The vast numbers led most congressional sponsors to rescind their support of the bill.

• SOPA and PIPA were well intended but ill-advised attempts on the part of Congress to protect the American copyright industry. But the legislation was so broad that it had the potential to harm or eradicate entire websites or online services, instead of specifically targeting individuals who uploaded illegal content.

• The New York Times called the SOPA/PIPA protests a “coming of age for the tech industry,” and at CTA, we were proud to help lead this vital growth. It was a bipartisan and cross industry effort: venture capitalists and law professors, computer scientists and human rights advocates, progressives and tea partiers teamed together to fight the bills. Still, the bills progressed through Congress and appeared to have the momentum necessary to become law.

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