● 01.30.17

● Links 30/1/2017: Zemlin Does Politics, Ubuntu and Fedora Need Wallpapers

Posted in News Roundup at 7:54 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• This is the second in my series on finding an alternative to Mac OS X. Part 1 was about evaluating 13 alternative operating systems and then choosing one to use full time. The selected OS was elementary OS. The motivation for this change is to get access to better hardware since Apple is neglecting the Mac lineup.

• If video is more your style I gave a short (10 min) talk at work on my adventures with Linux that covers the core content of this post.

• Four years after the introduction of Office 365 for consumers, Microsoft last week said subscriptions to the productivity software had reached nearly 25 million.

• Subscribers, however, were harder to find last year than in 2015, according to the numbers Microsoft reported: Additions to Office 365′s rolls were down 62% in 2016 compared to the year before.

• During an earnings call with Wall Street analysts last week, CEO Satya Nadella touted revenue increases for the Office products aimed at consumers — which include Office 365 — and of the latter said that the company had, “continued to see an increase in … subscriber base.”

• That it did.

Server

• That’s changed: Oracle’s new cloud licensing policy [PDF] says an AWS vCPU is now treated as a full core if hyperthreading is not enabled. A user renting two AWS vCPUS therefore needs to pay full freight for both, effectively doubling the number of Oracle licences required to run Big Red inside AWS. And therefore doubling the cost as well.

Kernel Space

• So this week seemed very calm, and rc6 looked like it was going to be a nice tiny release. Just like I want it.

• … and then Friday happened, and the small and calm release candidate somehow blew up to not be all that small after all.

• Oh well. It’s not like this is a new pattern – people end up pushing me their work for the week on Friday, and that’s been going on for a few years by now, and I’ve mentioned it before. It was just even more noticeable than usual.

• I became interested in Linux a few years ago, when I realized how easy it was to use a different OS that required less resources and the best of all, was available for free. I downloaded a CentOS image and created my very first machine. Staring at the terminal, I thought, “Now what?”. It was hard at the beginning, coming from a stylish GUI interface and then facing a terminal. I started to read lot of Linux books, followed step-by-step tutorials, and of course not giving up. Within a month, I created multiple Linux servers like Apache server, NFS, Mail and Proxy server, started to participate in several local Linux conferences, and made good connections which helped me to understand the benefits of using Linux for everything.

• The Linux operating system underlies nearly every piece of technology in modern life, from phones to satellites to web searches to your car. For the Linux Foundation, openness is both a part of our core principles and also a matter of practicality. Linux, the largest cooperatively developed software project in history, is created by thousands of people from around the world and made available to anyone to use for free. The Linux Foundation also hosts dozens of other open source projects covering security, networking, cloud, automotive, blockchain and other areas. Last year, the Linux Foundation hosted over 20,000 people from 85 countries at more than 150 events. Open source is a fundamentally global activity but America has always served as the hub for innovation and collaboration. Linux’s creator, Linux Foundation Fellow Linus Torvalds, immigrated to America from Finland and became a citizen. The Administration’s policy on immigration restrictions is antithetical to the values of openness and community that have enabled open source to succeed. I oppose the immigration ban.

• I don’t particularly agree with Zemlin’s leadership of the Linux Foundation. I regret that he’s basically abandoned the desktop to That Other Operating System. It’s just silly that an OS that thrives in every other realm is allowed to whither on the desktop.

• Some groups involved in SDN and NFV joined the chorus of tech companies that oppose President Trump’s ban on immigrants from primarily Muslim countries.

• Donald Trump started delivering on his campaign promises last week. Perhaps the most striking move was an executive order temporarily banning visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.

• When the news of the executive order broke, many open source companies and projects came out with statements opposing it.

Graphics Stack

• After announcing in December 2016 that Mesa 12.0.4 backport was available for testing on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Canonical’s Timo Aaltonen is now reporting on the upcoming availability of the Mesa 12.0.6, the last update in the series.

• It would appear that Mesa 12.0.6 3D Graphics Library, which was announced last week by Collabora’s Emil Velikov, has already hit the xenial-proposed and yakkety-proposed channels of the Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating systems.

• While many Phoronix readers cringe when hearing “Imagination Tech” or “PowerVR” due to past Linux driver issues and the lack of a full-featured open-source driver, one of their developers is now requesting commit rights to Mesa.

• Going back 2+ years we’ve heard of ImgTech trying to become more open-source friendly and they were looking to hire open-source developers for working on a graphics stack. That job description back in 2015 included mentions of Mesa, Wayland and DRI/DRM. We haven’t seen too many open-source contributions out of Imagination yet for Linux graphics and no long-awaited open driver, but perhaps 2017 is the year that will change?

• Mesa is progressing nicely as usual and I’ve been keeping an eye on the mailing list for anything interesting. It seems Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Tomb Raider have both seen some more performance tuning.

• Note: All of these are now in Mesa-git.

• The RADV Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver has seen some code land in Mesa Git while other patches are being staged on Mesa-dev as January comes to an end.

• Hitting Mesa Git is RADV’s support for VK_KHR_maintenance1 as introduced by Vulkan 1.0.39. RADV’s support for this extension was done by Valve’s Andres Rodriguez. He posted the code a few days ago while this morning the work is now in Mesa 17.1-devel.

• For older Intel i915~i945 graphics hardware, the Linux Mesa driver has exposed OpenGL 2.1 support while under Windows these ~12+ year old integrated graphics have only exposed OpenGL 1.4. Mesa now though might withdraw its OpenGL 2 support by default for older hardware on the i915 driver.

• Back in 2013 was this change to Mesa for always enabling at least OpenGL 2.0 when using the i915 driver. The argument for it was “There’s no point in shipping a non-GL2 driver today.”

• Samuel Pitoiset, former Nouveau contributor who is now working for Valve on AMD open-source Linux driver optimizations, landed some improvements this morning in Mesa Git.

• In order to read events and modify devices, libinput needs a file descriptor to the /dev/input/event node. But those files are only accessible by the root user. If libinput were to open these directly, we would force any process that uses libinput to have sufficient privileges to open those files. But these days everyone tries to reduce a processes privileges wherever possible, so libinput simply delegates opening and closing the file descriptors to the caller.

Benchmarks

• Following last week’s AMDGPU-PRO 16.60 hybrid driver release I delivered some early AMDGPU-PRO vs. AMDGPU+RadeonSI benchmark results using the newest driver code. After a few more days of testing, in this article is a larger OpenGL and Vulkan comparison when testing AMDGPU-PRO 16.60 and AMDGPU+RadeonSI of Mesa 17.1 + Linux 4.10 on various Radeon GPUs. On the NVIDIA side are fresh GeForce tests with the company’s newest 378.09 beta driver.

• If you have been curious how well Intel’s new Core i7 7700K “Kabylake” processor performs under Linux, I received this CPU a few days ago and have begun putting it through its paces. Here are my initial i7-7700K Linux benchmarks compared to various other Intel CPUs running Clear Linux.

Applications

Proprietary

Instructionals/Technical

• ​Java is somewhat one of the most important applications on your system and not having java can bring nightmares. It is suggested to users that after installing the operating system on your computer you should install java on it.

Games

• Guild Software is announcing today the availability of a new update of their popular, multiplatform massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), versioned 1.8.407.

• While Vendetta Online 1.8.407 is the latest stable release of the game, the release notes also include information about the changes that landed in Vendetta Online 1.8.406. New features include increased mine timeout lifespans and maximum count per sector or user, and a brand-new gamepad configuration menu for the Android platform.

• Coming hot on the heels of the major Wine 2.0 release, Wine Staging 2.0 is now available for download with a bunch of improvements on its own end, allowing you to run some of the latest Windows games and applications.

• Apart from all the new features and enhancements implemented in Wine 2.0, Wine Staging 2.0 adds support for several new windowscodecs image formats, better support for semi-transparent layered windows, improved emulation of deferred rendering contexts, and some other, smaller bug fixes and under-the-hood changes.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• I’ve just release GNOME Keysign 0.8. It’s an exciting step towards a more mature codebase with less cruft and pieces of code moved to places where they should be more discoverable. To get the app, we have a tarball as usual, or an experimental flatpak (see below). Also notice that the repository has changed. The new URL should be more discoverable and cause less confusion. I will take down the old URL soon. Also note that this release will not be compatible with older releases. So you cannot find older clients on the network. Given that we’re still

• I keep forgetting about blogging about the progress we’re making with GNOME Keysign. Since last time I reported several new cool developments happened. This 0.7 release fixes a few bugs and should increase compatibility with recent gpg versions.

• Flatpak developer Alex Larsson is announcing the release of the second bugfix and security update to the Flatpak 0.8 stable series, an open-source project that provides a Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework, formerly XDG-App.

• Flatpak 0.8.2 is a security fix release that needs to be installed on your computer immediately, as it addresses a critical bug where various of the bind-mounts the framework implements on your system could have been modified. These include system fonts, extensions, machine-id, localtime, and resolv.conf.

• My flatpak presentation at devconf.cz ran into some technical difficulties when the beamer system failed halfway through. I couldn’t show the second half of my slides, and had to improvise a bit. If you were in the room, I hope it wasn’t too incomprehensible.

• GNOME has a lot of existing code, but let’s face it, it has also a lot of bugs (just look at bugzilla, but the code also contains a lot of not-yet-reported bugs). For a piece of software to be successful, I’m convinced that it has to be stable, mostly bug-free. Stability is not the only property of a successful software, but without it it has way less chance to be successful in the long run (after the hype wave is gone and the harsh reality resurfaces).

Distributions

• Arch Linux wins the qualifying round for the second year, followed by Linux Mint. In addition, eight distros qualified by write-in votes to be included in our final round. Now it’s time to get out the vote in the all-important final round to determine the Best Linux Distro according to our readers.

Reviews

• The Internet can seem a scary place, full of organizations monitoring our every on-line move and waves of attackers trying to gain access to our systems. A number of projects have been created with the aim of making Linux distributions safer and protecting our privacy. Tails, for example, routes Internet connections through the Tor anonymizing network to make it more difficult to track its users. The Qubes OS project isolates tasks, helping the user to essentially compartmentalize their applications and data.

• Another Linux distribution which tries to protect the user and their files is Subgraph OS. The Subgraph distribution is based on Debian and includes several security features to keep the operating system locked down and our on-line browsing anonymous.

Arch Family

• A new set of installation mediums of the open-source, Arch Linux-based BlackArch penetration testing and ethical hacking GNU/Linux distribution arrived on January 28, 2017.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

• In the previous three posts about this ASUS notebook, I have configured Windows 10 Home, installed openSUSE Tumbleweed, Manjaro and Debian GNU/Linux, and installed Fedora, Linux Mint and Ubuntu.

• This time I am going to install the last two Linux distributions I am interested in: KaOS and openSUSE Leap. So far my experience with this inexpensive laptop has been very good. I hope that it continues that way.

Red Hat Family

• CentOS developer and maintainer Johnny Hughes is today, January 30, 2017, announcing the immediate availability of the latest CentOS 7.3 (1611) GNU/Linux operating system for the 32-bit (i386) hardware architecture.

• If some of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions have started dropping support for 32-bit (i686/x86) installations or plan to do so in the near future, many are still installable on older computers from 10 years go.

• CentOS 7.3 (1611) is the latest addition to the list of 32-bit supported Linux-based operating systems, thanks to a group of hard working people from the CentOS AltArch SIG initiative trying to create alternative architecture support for CentOS Linux.

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Monash University, one of Australia’s most prestigious research universities, has implemented a massive multi-petabyte deployment on Red Hat Ceph Storage.

Finance

Fedora

• Each release, the Fedora Design team works with the community on a set of 16 additional wallpapers. Users can install and use these to supplement the standard wallpaper. Submissions are now open for the Fedora 26 Supplemental Wallpapers, and will remain open until March 22, 2017

Debian Family

• America was founded by immigrants. Everybody knows the story about American Indians, the originals of the land were over-powered by the European settlers. So any claim, then and now that immigration did not help United States is just a lie.

• [...]

• One important decision that would be taken today is where people would stay during debconf.

• As every responsible maintainer should know, having an updated debian/copyright file is very important but can also take a significant amount of work. A lot of copy & pasting, a lot of manual corrections, and a lot of opportunity for human errors.

• Following up on Steve McIntyre’s writeup of the Debian Cloud Sprint that took place in Seattle this past November, I’m pleased to announce the availability of preliminary Debian stretch AMIs for Amazon EC2. Pre-generated images are available in all public AWS regions, or you can use FAI with the fai-cloud-images configuration tree to generate your own images.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• We’ve been informed recently by one of our readers about the fact that Canonical’s engineers are planning to release a new OTA (Over-the-Air) update for Ubuntu Phones and Tablets, dubbed OTA-15.

• That’s good news for those who purchased an Ubuntu-powered device recently because Canonical still has time to fix some bugs here and there, and maybe add a few new features to the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system, which is currently in the transition to the current LTS (Long Term Support) version of Ubuntu Linux.

• Some KDE developers are embracing Ubuntu’s Snap packaging technology and are beginning to offer KDE Applications via the Ubuntu Snap Store.

• Ubuntu is a testament to the power of sharing, and we use the default selection of desktop wallpapers in each release as a way to celebrate the larger Free Culture movement. Talented artists across the globe create media and release it under licenses that don’t simply allow, but cheerfully encourage sharing and adaptation. This cycle’s Free Culture Showcase for Ubuntu 17.04 is now underway!

• Ubuntu member Nathan Haines is informing Softpedia about a new installation of the Free Culture Showcase movement, this time for the upcoming Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system.

• Yes, you’re reading it right, a new Ubuntu 17.04 wallpaper contest is upon us, and it’s time to go out and take the best photographs for inclusion in the next major release of one of the world’s most popular free operating systems, Ubuntu Linux.

• Canonical has released the second and only Alpha for Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus. The testing snapshots are available for download for Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu GNOME, and Ubuntu Budgie. Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus Alpha 2 images are based on Linux kernel 4.9. The final version of Ubuntu 17.04 will ship on April 13, 2017.

Flavours and Variants

• Clement Lefebvre announced the releases of Linux Mint 18.1 KDE and Xfce following earlier releases of MATE and Cinnamon versions. Mint 18.1 is a long term supported release meaning it will get security updates until 2021. Jeff Hoogland announced an update to Bodhi Linux 4.0.0, dubbed 4.1.0. This release brings all the security and bug updates since the 4.0.0 release as well as a new dark theme for the native Moksha desktop. The Fridge announced 17.04 Alpha 2 as the community wallpaper drive got underway and a new KDE laptop has surfaced.

• The Linux Mint team has just released the long term support release Linux Mint 18.1 as a KDE and Xfce edition to the public.

• The new version of Linux Mint brings software updates and refinements mostly. First, some information on Linux Mint 18.1 being a long term support release.

• The Mint team will support Linux Mint 18.1 with security updates until 2021. Future versions of Linux Mint will use the same base package as Linux Mint 18.1 until 2018. This ensures that it is easy to update to new versions.

Devices/Embedded

• As open source-powered hardware like Arduino and Raspberry Pi becomes more and more mainstream, its cost keeps dropping, which opens the door to new and innovative IoT and STEM applications. As someone who’s passionate about both, I’m always on the lookout for new innovations that can be applied in industry, the classroom, and my daughter’s robotics team. When I heard about the Orange Pi as being a “Raspberry Pi killer,” I paused to take notice.

• Despite the sour sounding name, the Orange Pi Zero intrigued me. I recently got my hands on one and in this article share my first impressions. Spoiler alert: I was very impressed.

Phones

Tizen

• Enjoy the Tizen OS phones first home screen launcher. Hope the developers will also provide many more later on. But, this is not any home screen launcher, it’s an app launcher. After you close the app the launcher will also close.

Android

• Next week Google is due to release Android Wear 2.0, finally bringing its wearable OS to the masses after several months of delays, but it won’t be the most exciting release of the day. Also rumored to be unveiled on Feb. 9 is Google’s first foray into wearable hardware, in the form of a watch co-developed with LG. We may have just gotten our first clear look at the device (and its price).

• Android’s designed largely for mobile users, but since it has Linux at its core, it can work with a desktop environment as well. If you’ve ever wanted a Linux-style GNU workspace for Android, this guide from XDA can show you how.

• The guide at the link below walks you through all the steps to install GNU on any Android device. While you probably don’t want to do this on the phone you use every day, you can repurpose old devices to get a lot of use out of them. If you want to turn an old phone into a low-powered media server or transform a tablet into a fully-fledged laptop, a proper Linux install can help.

• Long ago, in a post titled “Why It’s Doubtful That Google Would Merge Chrome OS and Android,” I disagreed with a story The Wall Street Journal posted suggesting that Chrome OS might disappear as a standalone entity and merge with Android. Soon after that, a Google for Work blog post titled “Chrome OS Is Here to Stay” stated that “…while we’ve been working on ways to bring together the best of both [Android and Chrome] operating systems, there’s no plan to phase out Chrome OS.”

• Now, we’re finally seeing something that many people have been waiting for: the ability to run Android apps on Chromebooks. In fact, The Chromium Blog gets very specific about ways to get Android apps running on Chromebooks. Here is more.

• Arne Exton is informing us about the immediate availability for purchase of a new build of his RaspAnd operating system for Raspberry Pi single-board computers (SBCs), now based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat.

Free Software/Open Source

• As we’ve been reporting, artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning remain red hot open source technology categories. A whole slew of applications for the artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning spaces were open sourced last year, and as this year ramps up, Intel is the latest organization to open source a key deep learning tool.

• The company has open sourced BigDL, a distributed deep learning library that runs on Apache Spark. It harnesses Spark clusters to run deep learning algorithms and simplifies the data loading from big datasets stored in Hadoop.

Events

• Savoir-faire Linux is a Montreal-based Free/Open-Source Software company with offices in Quebec City, Toronto, Paris and Lyon. It offers Linux and Free Software integration solutions in order to provide performance, flexibility and independence for its clients. The company actively contributes to many free software projects, and provide mirrors of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux and others.

• The future of IoT will be connected by tiny, resource-constrained edge devices, says Senior Software Engineer at the Intel Open Source Technology Center. And, the IoTivity-Constrained project is a small-footprint implementation of the Open Connectivity Foundation’s (OCF) standards that’s designed to run on just such devices.

• In his upcoming talk at Embedded Linux Conference + OpenIoT Summit, Kishen, who is lead developer and maintainer of the IoTivity-Constrained project, will present the project’s architecture, features, and uses. We spoke with Kishen to get a preview of his talk and more information about this lightweight, customizable framework for IoT.

• Do you know that wonderful feeling when a tiny little idea becomes a reality? That’s what this year’s WOOTConf at linux.conf.au 2017 was for me.

• It was a full day jam-packed with amazing, deeply technical talks from ten wonderful speakers.

• This time I have no talk (I somehow failed to submit anything in time), but still I’m there to meet people and listen to some talks. As I’ve agreed to help Software Freedom Conservancy on stand (in the H building), it’s quite likely that you will find me there. You will also have unique chance to grab phpMyAdmin stickers at this stand.

• On Friday I attended the second BelFOSS conference. I’d spoken about my involvement with Debian at the conference last year, which seemed to be well received. This year I’d planned to just be a normal attendee, but ended up roped in at a late stage to be part of a panel discussing various licensing issues. I had a thoroughly enjoyable day – there were many great speakers, and plenty of opportunity for interesting chats with other attendees.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• Google developers have been investing in improvements to their rendering pipeline of Chrome in order to yield better performance, lower input latency, smoother scrolling, and more.

Mozilla

• The Tor Project announced earlier this week the release of Tor Browser 6.5 as the newest stable version of the open-source and hardened web browser that utilizes the latest Tor technologies to keep your online presence anonymous at all times.

SaaS/Back End

• Credit card giant American Express has joined the Linux Foundation-led open-source cross-industry blockchain working group, the Hyperledger Project.

• In yet another noted example of the traditional financial services industry turning to Fintech’s poster child in blockchain technology, American Express has joined the Hyperledger Project as a ‘Premier’ member.

• American Express Co. is elbowing its way into the crowded blockchain party.

• The biggest credit-card issuer by purchases has signed on to the Hyperledger Project, a industry group of more than 100 members developing blockchain technology for corporate use. The digital ledger known for underpinning bitcoin has potential to reshape the global financial system and other industries.

• American Express will contribute code and engineers to Hyperledger, which was started by the Linux Foundation in 2015 and now counts companies like International Business Machines Corp., Airbus Group SE and JPMorgan Chase & Co. as members. Many banks had previously joined a consortium called R3 CEV to explore ways to speed financial transactions using blockchain, but that group has lost members and last year formally joined Hyperledger.

• Individual Directors elected on Friday, January 13, are:

• Tim Bell, CERN Russell Bryant, Red Hat Steven Dake, Cisco Systems ChangBo Guo, EasyStack Kavit Munshi, Aptira Allison Randal, HPE Egle Sigler, Rackspace Shane Wang, Intel

• Gold Directors elected on Wednesday, January 4, are:

• Robert Esker, NetApp Kenji Kaneshige, Fujitsu Anni Lai, Huawei Junwei Liu, China Mobile Christopher Price, Ericsson Boris Renski, Mirantis Lew Tucker, Cisco Systems Joseph Wang, InwinStack

• Platinum Directors appointments are:

• Mark Baker, Canonical Alan Clark, SUSE Eileen Evans, HPE Toby Ford, AT&T Mark McLoughlin, Red Hat Todd Moore, IBM Imad Sousou, Intel Brian Stein, Rackspace

• The hardest part of pivoting your career is proving that you are qualified in your new focus area. To land your first OpenStack job, you’ll want to prove you have a functional understanding of OpenStack basics, can navigate the resources to solve problems and have recognized competency in your focus area.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice 5.3 is expected to be released this week as the latest feature update to this cross-platform, open-source office suite. Here’s a quick feature overview look for those interested in LibreOffice 5.3.

• LibreOffice 5.3 will include many user-interface UI/UX improvements and the initial work on the MUFFIN project.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

BSD

• This PREALPHA4 release is ready for testing new feature and debugging of GhostBSD 11.0, MATE and XFCE are available with i386 and amd64 architectures.

Public Services/Government

• The IT department at the French National Assembly should improve its support for Linux, says National Assembly Deputy Sergio Coronado. In a letter to the Assembly’s president, he objects to the lack of software updates and absence of technical support for deputies that use Linux on their computers.

Licensing/Legal

• What happens when codes are released under an open source license? Has the developer in effect written off his right to the code? Can a developer of open source software enforce his rights, or has he released his code to the world free of charge?

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

• You’re the world’s most powerful man, moving into the world’s most famous address. Your staff includes five full-time chefs, which is four more than most cafes. So what’s top of president Donald Trump’s shopping list? Lay’s potato chips and Doritos, that’s what.

• Ah, crisps! Just the ticket for powering through a day of dubious decision-making and 3am tweets, no? Jo Travers, a dietitian and author of The Low-Fad Diet, is unconvinced. She is particularly worried about the impact of Trump’s diet (heavy on the fast food, easy on the veg) on his ability to think straight.

• In the letter, the groups detail the example of the Gates Foundation, which is seeking to be admitted as an external actor in “official relations” with the WHO and as a non-voting member of the World Health Assembly. The Gates Foundation is the largest non-governmental donor of the WHO.

• For nearly 30 years, the United Nations World Health Organization has been referring to poor-quality and fake medicines as counterfeit. But that is about to change.

• The new words approved by the WHO Executive Board on 27 January are “substandard and falsified,” which captures whether the drug is made with substandard ingredients or is represented as something it is not. The word ‘counterfeit’ would now be restored in practical terms to meaning a trademark violation, as it is defined under World Trade Organization rules on intellectual property.

• Cancer is spreading. According to the World Health Organization, the number of new cases of cancer is projected to increase to 21.6 million annually by 2030. The WHO Executive Board this week is considering a draft resolution for actions by the WHO member states and the secretariat. The resolution is being discussed and amended as issues such as the affordability and the accessibility of new cancer medicines, in particular in developing countries, are highlighted by many.

Security

• Several readers have called attention to warnings coming out of Canada about a supposedly new form of card skimming called “shimming” that targets chip-based credit and debit cards. Shimming attacks are not new (KrebsOnSecurity first wrote about them in August 2015), but they are likely to become more common as a greater number of banks in the United States shift to issuing chip-based cards. Here’s a brief primer on shimming attacks, and why they succeed.

• A senior editor at the American technology news website Cnet has slammed Microsoft over what he calls the most “frustrating” thing about Windows 10: the update process that happens automatically and cannot be stopped by users.

• Sean Hollister wrote about issues that he had faced and also problems encountered by a large number of Windows 10 users, all of whom had lost work or been forced to interrupt their schedules due to a Windows 10 update.

• Donald Trump is a big fan of the phones in the White House. “These are the most beautiful phones I’ve ever used in my life,” he told the New York Times in an interview this week. It’s not their aesthetics he’s drawn to, but the security built into the system that ensures no one is tapping his calls.

• Once compromised, the phone becomes a bug—even more catastrophic than Great Seal—able to record everything around it and transmit the information once it reattaches to the network. And to be clear even a brand new, fully updated Android or iPhone is insufficient: The President of the United States is worth a great many multiples of expensive zero-day exploits.

• Let’s start with AV. A long time ago everyone installed an antivirus application. It’s just what you did, sort of like taking your vitamins. Most people can’t say why, they just know if they didn’t do this everyone would think they’re weird. Here’s the question for you to think about though: How many times did your AV actually catch something? I bet the answer is very very low, like number of times you’ve seen bigfoot low. And how many times have you seen AV not stop malware? Probably more times than you’ve seen bigfoot. Today malware is big business, they likely outspend the AV companies on R&D. You probably have some control in that phone book sized policy guide that says you need AV. That control is quite literally wasting your time and money. It would be in your best interest to get it changed.

• Usability vs security is one of my favorite topics these days. Security lost. It’s not that usability won, it’s that there was never really a battle. Many of us security types don’t realize that though. We believe that there is some eternal struggle between security and usability where we will make reasonable and sound tradeoffs between improving the security of a system and adding a text field here and an extra button there. What really happened was the designers asked to use the bathroom and snuck out through the window. We’re waiting for them to come back and discuss where to add in all our great ideas on security.

• Verifying Software Freedom with Reproducible Builds will be presented by Vagrant Cascadian at Libreplanet2017 in Boston, March 25th-26th.

• Linux operating system was once known to be the most secure OS in the world, but things have changed since security researchers have found malware like Mirai and Bashlite infecting Linux-devices turning them into DDoS botnets. Now, another malware has been discovered targeting Linux.

• Regardless of how monumental a task digital security can seem, you can lay a strong foundation when you get started. Remember that being secure is an ongoing process, rather than a state of being. Keep the tools you use up to date and periodically check your habits and tools to ensure your security is the best it can be. Security doesn’t have to be overly complex if you take it one step at a time.

• In part 1 of this series, we discussed the seven different types of hackers who may compromise your Linux system. White hat and black hat hackers, script kiddies, hacktivists, nation states, organized crime, and bots are all angling for a piece of your system for their own nefarious/various reasons.

• The OpenSSL Project has addressed some moderate-severity security flaws, and administrators should be particularly diligent about applying the patches since there are still 200,000 systems vulnerable to the Heartbleed flaw.

• Privacy has become an important issue for many users as corporations and governments stop at nothing to gather personal information. But Linux users do have some choices when it comes to distributions that help protect their privacy and security.

• Starting with OpenSSH 7.2, a new “restrict” option for authorized_keys lines has become available. It sets all available restrictions that the current OpenSSH version can do (like no-agent-forwarding, no-x11-forwarding etc). One can individually turn on those features again by corresponding new options.

Defence/Aggression

• The shooting at a Quebec mosque during Sunday night prays which reportedly killed five people was a “terrorist attack on Muslims”, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

• “We condemn this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge,” Trudeau said in a statement.

• Five people were killed after gunmen opened fire in a Quebec City mosque, the mosque’s president told reporters on Sunday. A witness told Reuters that up to three gunmen fired on about 40 people inside the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center.

• Jihadist groups on Sunday celebrated the Trump administration’s ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, saying the new policy validates their claim that the United States is at war with Islam.

• Comments posted to pro-Islamic State social media accounts predicted that President Trump’s executive order would persuade American Muslims to side with the extremists. One posting hailed the U.S. president as “the best caller to Islam,” while others predicted that Trump would soon launch a new war in the Middle East.

• “[Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi has the right to come out and inform Trump that banning Muslims from entering America is a ‘blessed ban,’” said one posting to a pro-Islamic State channel on Telegram, a social-media platform. The writer compared the executive order to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Islamic militant leaders at the time hailed as a “blessed invasion” that ignited anti-Western fervor across the Islamic world.

• One American commando was killed and three others were wounded in a fierce firefight early Sunday with Qaeda militants in central Yemen, the military said on Sunday. It was the first counterterrorism operation authorized by President Trump since he took office, and the commando was the first United States service member to die in the yearslong shadow war against Al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate.

• Members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 carried out the surprise dawn attack, and the military said that about 14 Qaeda fighters were killed during a nearly hourlong battle. A Qaeda leader — a brother-in-law of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric and top Qaeda leader in Yemen, who died in a drone strike in 2011 — was believed to have been killed.

• After initially denying that there were any civilian casualties, American officials said they were assessing reports that women and children had died in the attack.

• I was outraged by the ban on refugees from war-torn countries in the Middle East. I’ve covered refugees fleeing war in Iraq and Syria over the last two years, meeting families on the road in Greece, Serbia and Macedonia, speaking to poor people in Turkey and Jordan and discussing the hopes and fears of people displaced in Iraq. If you want to ban “terrorists,” these are the last people to hit with a refugee ban. Instead the government should be using the best intelligence possible to find people being radicalized, some of whom have lived in the US their whole lives or who come from countries not affected by the ban, such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

• President Trump defended his executive order restricting the entry into the U.S. of people from seven Muslim-dominated countries, saying the move was not about religion but about keeping the country safe, but administration officials appeared to backtrack on the scope of the order, even as demonstrators gathered across the U.S. to protest.

• Massive crowds packed Boston’s Copley Square, Battery Park in New York City and outside the White House, and public areas in other cities, with demonstrations also held at airports from coast to coast to protest the order, which suspended immigration from countries with ties to terror — Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran and Libya — for 90 days. The order also indefinitely suspends Syrian refugees from entering the U.S.

• President Donald Trump granted controversial adviser Steve Bannon a regular seat at meetings of the National Security Council on Saturday, in a presidential memorandum that brought the former Breitbart publisher into some of the most sensitive meetings at the highest levels of government.

• [...]

• In an interview with the New York Times this week, Bannon called the press “the opposition party” and said it should “keep its mouth shut”. He has previously described himself as “a Leninist” and an “economic nationalist”.

• The order lacks any logic. It invokes the attacks of Sept. 11 as a rationale, while exempting the countries of origin of all the hijackers who carried out that plot and also, perhaps not coincidentally, several countries where the Trump family does business. The document does not explicitly mention any religion, yet it sets a blatantly unconstitutional standard by excluding Muslims while giving government officials the discretion to admit people of other faiths.

• Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has warned Muslim clerics in the country to stop using the mosques as a cover up to preach disunity and inciting one another that could lead to disorder and insecurity in the country.

• Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who gave the warning in his sermon after commissioning the ultra modern mosque of the Federal University of Technology Minna, Niger state yesterday, said rather than incite people through preachings, the clerics should focus more on uniting the people of the country and preach against incessant killings of one another which he said is ungodly.

• Philippine soldiers killed 15 militants and seriously wounded their leader, believed to be the Islamic State’s representative in the country, following air and artillery strikes in a southern province, a senior military official said on Sunday.

• Isnilon Hapilon, also known as Abu Abdullah and a leader of the Philippine militant group Abu Sayyaf, might die as he needed immediate medical treatment, military chief General Eduardo Ano told reporters, citing intelligence and communications intercepts.

• “He needs blood transfusion. Without proper medical treatment, he may die,” Ano said.

• A 17-YEAR-OLD girl was found with her hands bound behind her back and a single bullet wound to the back of the head in bushes near her home at Calvary Trace, Arima shortly after 11 am yesterday.

• The victim was identified as Celine Thomas. Her boyfriend Carlyle Hamilton, 33, was hours earlier shot and critically wounded.

• According to reports, Hamilton was at home at 9.30 pm on Thursday when he was attacked by gunmen as he turned and ran out of the house, gunshots were fired and Hamilton was struck several times. He sought assistance from neighbours and was taken to hospital where he was treated and warded in stable condition.

• At 11 am yesterday, residents of Calvary Trace found Thomas’ body with her hands bound and a bullet wound to the back of her head. Officers of the Arima police as well as homicide officers were called to the scene and the body ordered removed to the Forensic Science Centre.

• This woman is exactly the sort of immigrant we want here. As for her legal status, a friend of hers, Shivakumar Chinnam, writes in the comments below her Facebook post, “She is on student visa. Finished her Phd recently.”

• I would guess that the American company she works for has applied for and probably gotten a work visa for her.

• Also, for anyone who knows the slightest thing about Islam, it is plain that she is the opposite of a radical Islamist.

• While the media attention has been focused on the death of one US serviceman who was killed during a raid in Yemen, one of the most tragic casualties of the assault ordered by President Donald Trump was an eight-year-old girl.

• The raid took place over the weekend, as US forces attempted a “site exploitation” attack that attempted to gather intelligence on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the extremist group behind several high-profile terror attacks, including the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in two years ago.

• Though the United States hailed the operation as a success, reports from Yemen would seem to indicate that the price paid by Yemeni civilians and non-combatants was extraordinarily high.

• In 2010, President Obama directed the CIA to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime, and the agency successfully carried out that order a year later with a September, 2011 drone strike. While that assassination created widespread debate – the once-again-beloved ACLU sued Obama to restrain him from the assassination on the ground of due process and then, when that suit was dismissed, sued Obama again after the killing was carried out – another drone-killing carried out shortly thereafter was perhaps even more significant yet generated relatively little attention.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Just as President Trump takes power promising to ramp up oil and gas production, a sudden resignation in a key agency threatens to put such projects on hold across the United States.

• On Thursday, Norman Bay, one of just three current members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), said he would resign effective Feb. 3, even though his term isn’t up until next year. His announcement came shortly after Trump decided Bay’s fellow commissioner, Cheryl LaFleur, would serve as the Commission’s new chair.

• Protesters continue to camp in North Dakota, near the site of the contentious pipeline project that President Trump is pushing to finish.

• The order to speed up both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines is drawing both praise and controversy.

• In downtown Tulsa, a rally against the pipeline was held Saturday afternoon.

• Between 150 and 200 people were at the rally for about two hours at John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park protesting.

• Longtime activist Winona LaDuke says the actions to ignore the wishes of water protectors at Standing Rock in North Dakota seek to dehumanize American Indians.

• The American Psychological Association weighed in this past week after President Trump’s issuance of a presidential memorandum regarding construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline with this statement:

• “The American Psychological Association is concerned by President Trump’s apparent attempt to clear the way for the Dakota Access Pipeline to move forward as originally planned, which threatens the welfare of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

• When you consider what a feat it is to willfully ignore mounting scientific evidence that global warming is affecting the world, climate change deniers are almost admirable. We say “almost,” because as we continue to argue over whether turning our planet into a colossal dutch oven by spewing toxic chemicals into the air is bad, climate change is slowly compiling a kaleidoscope of unexpected ways to make all of our lives a living hell.

• Most scientists studying global warming compare today’s temperatures to those of the late 19th century because that is as far back as quality temperature observations go. But a new study makes the case for a better comparison period, one that includes the warming that had already resulted by the middle of the 1800s and shows how close the world already is to breaching international warming targets.

• Under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to keep global temperature rise “well below” 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels and limit it to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above that mark in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But the agreement left undefined exactly what period is considered “pre-industrial.”

• Most climate scientists use the second half of the 19th century as a stand-in for pre-industrial times, because of the lack of widespread temperature observations before that point. But as the Industrial Revolution was already underway by then, it is likely that there was already some human-caused warming by that point. A study published in Nature last year found a small, but detectable increase in global temperatures as far back as the 1830s for some parts of the world.

• A former climate change adviser to Donald Trump has said the US President will pull America out of the landmark Paris agreement and an executive order on the issue could come within “days”.

• Myron Ebell, who took charge of Mr Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, said the President was determined to undo policies pushed by Barack Obama to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.

• He said the US would “clearly change its course on climate policy” under the new administration and claimed Mr Trump was “pretty clear that the problem or the crisis has been overblown and overstated”.

Finance

• In 2011, unemployment was at a near crisis level. The jobless rate was stuck around 9 percent nationally, an unusually high number due to the continuing effects of the financial crash.

• House Democrats were aghast. “With almost five unemployed Americans for every job opening, too many people remain jobless because of a lack of work, not a lack of wanting to work,” said Congressman Lloyd Doggett, D-Tex. So in early November 2011, they introduced a bill to reauthorize Federal unemployment benefits, an insurance program designed to aide those looking for work.

• Behind closed doors at the Federal Reserve however, the conversation struck a different tone.

• The Federal Reserve’s mandate is to promote “maximum employment,” which essentially means: print enough money so that everyone who wants one has a job. Yet according to transcripts released this month after the traditional five-year waiting period, Federal Reserve officials in November 2011 were debating whether unemployment was caused by bad work ethics and drug use – rather than by the greatest financial crisis in 80 years. This debate then factored into the argument over setting monetary policy.

• At a news conference last week, now-President Donald Trump said he and his daughter, Ivanka, had signed paperwork relinquishing control of all Trump-branded companies. Next to him were stacks of papers in manila envelopes — documents he said transferred “complete and total control” of his businesses to his two sons and another longtime employee.

• Sheri Dillon, the Trump attorney who presented the plan, said that Trump “has relinquished leadership and management of the Trump Organization.” Everything would be placed in a family trust by Jan. 20, she said.

• What anti-establishment voters, and those who consciously withheld their votes, got right in the recent election is that the illusion of choice provided by the major Parties is anti-politics. Liberals, as guardians of the status quo, are class warriors on the side of economic mal-distribution and the immiseration of the laboring classes and poor for the benefit of the rich. The ease with which the misdirection of ‘deplorables’ was sold illustrates the conundrum confronting any actual Left political movement.

• The potentially disastrous cost of leaving the EU has been laid bare in a sobering report.

• The Cities Outlook 2017 report reveals 59% of all exports from Sunderland, the first place to declare its backing of Brexit, go to EU countries – the ninth highest figure out of 62 UK cities.

• Sunderland is also one of only seven cities which are heavily reliant on a specific industry for the majority of their exports – car-making at its Nissan plant.

• Instead of focusing on pushing his stimulus plans through Congress, as investors had hoped, Trump is instead acting first on polarizing issues like the ban on travelers from seven majority-Muslim nations. The White House has also taken an aggressive stance on trade, raising concerns on Wall Street over the risk of a trade war.

• In other words, investors want tax cuts and spades in the ground, not deeply divisive travel bans.

• After a weekend of confusion and protests over the Trump travel ban, the Dow dropped more than 200 points on Monday.

• The European Commission has launched a consultation on an investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) variant: a multilateral investment court. 1 In an email the commission confirms the consultation has a narrow scope. The commission does not want feedback on the system as a whole. This way the system’s social and environmental impacts will go unmentioned in the consultation results.

• This is irresponsible, as the system as a whole will strengthen investments vis-à-vis democracy and fundamental rights. This undermines our values and ability to respond to crises, including climate change.

• Mankind faces its biggest challenge ever: climate change. For the commission it’s business as usual. Give multinationals their own court and keep the social and environmental impacts out of sight.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Austria’s new president has called for a tolerant and diverse nation, free of ideological and racial hatred, in an inauguration speech on Thursday that embraced the ideal of a united Europe.

• Alexander Van der Bellen outlined a markedly different vision from that offered during campaigning by his rightwing rival Norbert Hofer, the populist he defeated last month after an unprecedented repeat vote.

• Hofer had campaigned on a law and order platform in line with his Freedom Party’s (FPÖ) opposition to Muslim immigration, focus on Austrians first and depiction of the EU as an out-of-touch institution damaging the sovereignty of national states.

• No, journalism is far from dead — as anybody who has followed the investigative reporting of The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold, for one, can attest — but it sure has taken a number of body blows. And some are self-inflicted.

• One of the worst: the sharp drop in public trust. Now, with a media-bashing president presenting a threat to press freedom, we need to get it back.

• While the American public’s attention was focused on the thousands of families whose lives were disrupted and even put at risk by Trump’s ban on Muslims entering the USA, the US Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were removed from the list of permanent attendees in the President’s National Security Council. They were replaced with white nationalist Trump advisor Steve Bannon.

• Trump announced the changes shortly after speaking with Putin for an hour.

• Presidential press spokesman Sean Spicer downplayed Bannon’s lack of expertise, describing the avowed racist as “a former naval officer.” Bannon left the Navy in 1983. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Bannon is replacing, is an active-service four-star general.

• Last Monday, according to the Times, President Donald Trump, meeting in the White House with congressional leaders, told a story about voting fraud that he had supposedly heard from Bernhard Langer, the German professional golfer. (Langer soon issued a statement repudiating Trump’s account.) Throughout the week, the President repeated his calumny that he lost the popular vote only because millions of “illegals” voted for Hillary Clinton. Trump’s obsession with this subject may arise from his pathological need to tally every score in his own favor, but he surely knows that his propaganda also advances the Republican Party’s efforts to extend barriers to legitimate voting by Latinos and African-Americans, through voter-I.D. requirements and other state laws. Diverse studies have turned up no evidence of significant fraud in recent elections. On Wednesday, Trump nonetheless vowed to sign an executive order commissioning a federal investigation.

• The major news organizations are still reckoning with how to report on the President’s lies. Many newspapers and networks now forthrightly point out false statements by Trump and his spokespeople. Such fact checking is essential, but it is also a task of the President’s making, one full of traps. Trump and his aides provoke conflict with the media to fire up supporters and renew the narrative of a people’s champion at war with the bicoastal establishment.

• Uber found itself at the center of a storm created by the travel ban imposed by President Donald Trump’s executive order, as angry customers accused the company of attempting to profit from a taxi driver work stoppage.

• In response to a growing controversy, Uber announced it would create a $3 million defense fund to help cover the legal expenses associated with the executive order. It was unclear, however, if the move would be sufficient to quell the firestorm surrounding one of Silicon Valley’s darlings and a fixture in countless mobile devices.

• Thousands of Uber customers are deleting the app and posting the evidence to social media after drivers tried to do business at JFK airport during a taxi strike.

• The NY Taxi Workers Alliance called for all drivers to avoid JFK Airport on Saturday in order to facilitate protests against President Donald Trump’s executive order barring travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.

• Uber pushed back against President Trump’s immigration ban, after taking serious heat on social media for its initial response.

• CEO Travis Kalanick tweeted Sunday afternoon that Trump’s travel ban from seven Muslim-majority countries “is against everything Uber stands for.” He said the ban affects thousands of Uber drivers.

• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is making his way around the US after promising to meet with people in each state before the end of the year. This nationwide tour has a very similar feel to that of someone who’s running for office. So, is Zuck going to throw his hat in the ring for 2020? Maybe not, but there are some interesting signs he might make a run.

• The US embassy has appeared to contradict the Government’s claim that British citizens will be mostly exempt from Donald Trump’s travel ban on Muslim majority countries.

• Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Sunday night that he had received assurances from the US that the “Muslim ban” would only apply to UK dual nationals travelling from the listed countries to the US.

• If you are a US citizen and want to do something similar, here are some links to where you can find who represents you in the Senate and the House. (Note that to find your House representative, you need to enter your address or your extended 5+4 zip code, because of congressional district gerrymandering. Both of your state’s senators represent the whole state at large, so contact both of them.)

• Donald Trump has been president of the United States for 10 days. Many were prepared to give Mr Trump a chance. But even they must conclude he has been in office 10 days too long. Americans did a dreadful thing by electing Mr Trump. But the reality of it is only beginning to hit home. It is not his words that matter, awful though they are on subjects such as torture, but his actions. These raise urgent questions about whether America can afford to have such a president governing in such a way for four years — and how things may realistically change.

• Later today I will be joining thousands of people at a demonstration outside of Parliament.

• On this cold, grey night we will stand together in solidarity with Muslims across the world who are bearing the brunt of Trump’s bigotry. We will condemn the British Government’s appallingly meek response to the US president’s barbarism. And we will demand something better.

• Let’s be clear about what is happening right now, and Britain’s role in it. A US President is banning people coming to his country because of their religion. Those fleeing persecution and violence – often because of conflicts the West has been involved in – are being denied a safe haven. The world’s greatest power is gripped by the politics of fear and division – and risks sliding into an even darker place.

• Team Trump told Theresa May when she was in the White House that they were about to ban refugees from coming to the US, using an Executive Order. The US administration team don’t appear to have gone into detail about what exactly they planned for dual nationals. It’s not clear whether they listed Muslim countries from which visitors would be banned.

• What is clear is that there was enough of a sniff of a major switch in US policy flagged up in the White House to suggest you really ought to have an opinion on it.

• Thousands of people have joined protests in London and in cities around the UK against a controversial travel ban on seven mainly Muslim countries imposed by US President Donald Trump.

• The ban bars citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

• MPs are holding an emergency debate on the immigration measures.

• A petition calling for Prime Minister Theresa May to cancel Mr Trump’s planned state visit to the UK has been signed more than 1.4 million times.

• Leftists looking to take over the Democratic Party will confront even more roadblocks than in the past.

• [...]

• Reforming, realigning, or refashioning the Democratic Party into a vehicle for social democracy is one of the oldest, oft-repeated, and frustratingly unsuccessful strategies of the US left.

• The Populists tried it in the 1890s, only to be absorbed and disarmed. The new industrial unions of the CIO attempted it beginning in 1936, just as the New Deal began to retreat. The Democratic Socialists, led by Michael Harrington, pursued the realignment strategy in the 1970s at the very moment the “party of the people” began its trek to the neoliberal right. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition launched two highly visible runs for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s even as Democratic National Committee (DNC) chief Charles Manatt recruited big business and its money. Then came Bill Clinton.

• Could it be different this time around?

• Amid reports that Trump elevated his chief strategist Steve Bannon to the National Security Council, who also had a hand in his executive orders banning immigration from several Muslim countries and refugees, I wanted to share some analysis of Breitbart, the right wing nationalist site he headed for a number of years.

• The point is to engage with the ideas of the movement behind the president, because this is not simply narcissistic and erratic behavior.

• Over the past month I spent some time doing close readings of Breitbart articles published during and after the campaign, and came away with an over-arching conclusion: for Bannon and Trump’s core group of supporters, the president’s victory was a rejection of multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and globalization and the triumph of white, Christian populist nationalism.

• Trump’s executive orders should be interpreted as the outgrowth of a coherent ideological framework and set of ideas about American democracy.

• President Trump’s executive order banning travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries is being rightly challenged in the courts for, among other things, its unconstitutional interference with free exercise of religion and denial of due process. Overlooked in the furor is another troubling aspect of the situation: President Trump omitted from his ban a number of other predominantly Muslim nations where his company has done business. This adds further illegitimacy to one of the most arbitrary executive actions in our recent history, and raises significant constitutional questions.

• The seven countries whose citizens are subject to the ban are relatively poor. Some, such as Syria, are torn by civil war; others are only now emerging from war. One thing these countries have in common is that they are places where the Trump organization does little to no business.

• By contrast, other neighboring Muslim countries are not on the list, even though some of their citizens pose just as great a risk — if not greater — of exporting terrorism to the United States. Among them are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. A vast majority of people living in these countries, like the people living in the seven subject to the immigration ban, are peaceful and law abiding. But these three countries have exported terror to the United States in the past. They accounted for 18 of the 19 terrorists who perpetrated the Sept. 11 attack on American soil (an attack which was directed by another Saudi, Osama Bin Laden, with the assistance of an Egyptian, Ayman al-Zawahri).

• There are so many reasons to detest the Donald Trump administration’s executive order on “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” that it’s hard to know where to start.

• Others have already argued eloquently about its cruelty in singling out the most vulnerable in society; its strategic folly in insulting countries and individuals the United States needs to help it fight terrorism (the ostensible purpose of the order in the first place); its cynical incoherence in using the September 11 attacks as a rationale and then exempting the attackers’ countries of origin; its ham-handed implementation and ever-shifting explanations for how, and to whom, it applies; and, thankfully, its legal vulnerability on a slew of soon-to-be-litigated grounds, including that it may violate the Establishment and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

• Government failures come in two basic forms. The first kind is not achieving the intended result—say job training that leads to no jobs or a Marine recruiting campaign that gets few takers. The second kind is doing damage that wouldn’t have been done otherwise. It’s roughly the difference between a cigar that fails to light and one that explodes.

• Over the last few months, we’ve had a very, very small, but still vocal group of folks in our comments who have gotten angry every time we’ve been critical of Donald Trump — even when we were making nearly identical complaints about him as we did about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. That group of people probably won’t like this post very much, though I do hope they’ll read it with open minds. We’re not a political blog. We cover technology and innovation, as well as the legal, economic and policy issues related to those things. Over the years, that’s included issues related to civil liberties and civil rights. We don’t see these things as being separate. They are all connected and intertwined. We’ve even spent plenty of time discussing immigration, though focusing on high tech and entrepreneur immigration.

• But I don’t think there’s any need for me to try to justify why I’m making this post on Techdirt today. This is about humanity. And if you want to complain in the comments that you don’t want to read this on a “tech” site, well, then maybe take a second and think about what this says about you. Basically my entire family came to America between around 1890 and 1920 — most of them escaping religious persecution elsewhere. My great grandmother had to hide in the bottom of a boat to escape from where she lived. Many came through Ellis Island, and were welcomed into America. My grandfathers built up businesses here. One fought bravely against Nazis (literally) in World War II for the US in Europe and North Africa, and came back to the US and built a company that (among other things) was a huge supplier for the Boy Scouts of America. While they may have struggled at times, my family came to America and was embraced by America, thrived in America and has always loved America. My wife is an immigrant. Her family moved here when she was young to give her and her siblings a better life. And that’s what they found. America embraced them and they embraced America back. They’re all US citizens.

• All weekend long, I’ve been reading all sorts of accounts about President Trump’s executive order. Some of it has been thoughtful. Some of it has been hysterical. Some of it has been painful. Some of it has been ridiculous.

• But it all comes back to one thing: this is about our humanity.

• The “excuses” that some have been spewing for the executive order make no sense. They say this is about “safety,” yet there is no evidence that the people being kept out were a risk to our safety. As many have noted, not a single terrorist attack has come from people from those countries. They say this is about “extreme vetting” but ignore that refugees already go through a ridiculously long and thorough “extreme vetting” process that can take years. They say that this is just an “inconvenience” to a “small group” of people, ignoring that they are basically upending the lives of entire families — families including those with permanent resident status, who have been valuable, contributing members to our country for years and years and years.

• This is madness.

• Rachel Martin talks to ex-NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden about the reorganization of the White House National Security Council. Political adviser Steve Bannon has a permanent seat at the table.

• When President Trump signed an executive order Friday temporarily preventing citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S., a group of nonimmigrants was swept up in the ensuing chaos over who the ban would apply to: college students. Two undergraduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where spring semester classes don’t begin until next week, are among those who have been prevented from entering the U.S, according to the university. Although a federal court order from Massachusetts appears to allow the students temporary entry to the U.S., at the time of publication, MIT said it was still working to bring the two students back.

• Over 100 former officials who served under past presidents of both parties signed a letter calling on the current heads of multiple government agencies to urge President Donald Trump to “revisit and rescind” his recent executive order on immigration and refugees.

• The signatories wrote that a “blanket ban” on visitors from certain countries is “counterproductive from a security standpoint, and beneath the dignity of our great nation.”

• Signatories include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served in President Bill Clinton’s administration, and President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice. Richard Clarke, who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, also signed the document.

• The letter, obtained by Politico, is addressed to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and acting Secretary of State Thomas Shannon.

• An alarming uptick in hate crimes against Asian-Americans has led one nonprofit to take action.

• Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ), a civil and human rights nonprofit, recently launched StandAgainstHatred.org, a website to track Anti-Asian hate crimes.

• The group felt compelled to do so after not only seeing a disturbing amount of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant crimes, but also a huge jump in anti-Chinese hate as well. And the rise of this violence towards Asian-Americans is something the group wants to call attention to, stating that awareness is lacking.

• The Trump administration has insisted since Sunday that the president’s executive order banning travel to the United States from seven predominately Islamic countries “is not a Muslim ban.” But as Mother Jones first reported in a series of investigations starting last summer, the two top Trump advisers who reportedly crafted the immigration crackdown—Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller—have a long history of promoting Islamophobia, courting anti-Muslim extremists, and boosting white nationalists.

• For nearly a year before stepping down as the CEO of Breitbart News to lead the Trump campaign, Bannon hosted a SiriusXM radio show, Breitbart News Daily, where he conducted dozens of interviews with leading anti-Muslim extremists. Steeped in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories, the interviews paint a dark and paranoid picture of America’s 3.3 million Muslims and the world’s second-largest faith. Bannon often bookended the exchanges with full-throated praise for his guests, describing them as “top experts” and urging his listeners to click on their websites and support them.

• Former White House science adviser John Holdren has condemned US President Donald Trump’s decision to temporarily ban all refugees and citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States.

• Holdren, who served eight years under President Barack Obama, told Nature on 30 January that the ban is “perverse” and “an abomination, and a terrible, terrible idea”. The executive order enacted on 27 January will not increase the country’s security, he adds, and may damage it by sending an offensive message to Muslims, who make up a quarter of the world population.

• “If the ban is maintained, it will damage a wide array of collaborations in science and technology around the world,” says Holdren, who led the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2009 until earlier this month. “A more prosperous world is a more stable world, and it’s clear that innovations in science and technology drive economic growth.”

• “I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right,” Ms. Yates wrote in a letter to Justice Department lawyers. “At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful.”

• The decision is largely symbolic — Mr. Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is likely to be confirmed soon — but it highlights the deep divide at the Justice Department and elsewhere in the government over Mr. Trump’s order.

• Escalating a running feud with Donald Trump, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday criticized the president’s order barring citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, calling aspects of its implementation “crazy.”

• “I think that the real problem is that it was vetted badly,” Schwarzenegger, a Republican and immigrant from Austria, told Extra. “I know what he’s trying to accomplish, and his fear about having people come in from other places and cause harm to the country and all of that stuff. But there is another way of going about it to do it the right way and to accomplish still all the same goals. And so I think that they were hasty with it.”

Censorship/Free Speech

• Shiva Ayyadurai says he invented email and will sue the pants off anyone who says he didn’t. He’s already picked up a fat $750,000 settlement check from Gawker, which decided to settle because another lawsuit by Hulk Hogan had already put the site out of business. There is currently a suit pending against Techdirt, a site that mainly reports on threats to free speech. Now he’s going after social media, by sending a demand to a node of Diaspora to remove three posts by Roy Schestowitz, publisher of the popular FOSS site Tux Machines and the iconoclastic blog Techrights.

• Beverly Hills based Charles Harder, who represented Hulk Hogan in the sex tape case that cost Gawker $31 million and put it out of business, is Ayyadurai’s lawyer.

• [...]

• There’s little doubt as to why the pod administrator suggested taking the posts offline. Not only is Diaspora, as a whole, a project that struggles financially, each pod is independent, financially and otherwise, from the rest of the network — and Harder’s email did contain a threat of legal action.

• The guy who made himself famous for claiming he created EMAIL, Shiva Ayyadurai, has taken to suing various web sites, social media sites, and bloggers to shut down any contrary talk on the matter. On the surface the business model looks like it might be that of a classic copyright troll. However, given the targets and the backer, could it be the ultimate goal is simply to close down the coverage in general?

• Given our contemporary political culture, it is perhaps too much to expect the Indian political class to come out with a full-throated condemnation of the violent attack on film director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Yet, illusions and hopes have a way of persisting, even when they fly in the face of reality.

• A leader of the ruling junta said Monday that it will push ahead with new regulations decried by journalists as an attempt to gain control of the media.

• The law, which would for the first time require all media professionals to obtain licenses, is being deliberated by junta lawmakers under the claim it would instill responsibility and ethics among reporters. Thirty Thai media associations gathered Sunday to announce their opposition to the bill, which stopped short of criticizing the junta for introducing it.

Privacy/Surveillance

• A former senior lawyer for the National Security Agency has called plans to force visitors to the US to turn over contacts lists, browsing histories, and social media data “tremendously intrusive” and “grossly overbroad.”

• April Doss, former associate general counsel for intelligence law at the National Security Agency, argued in a phone call that such a move would almost certainly be unlawful.

• A former senior lawyer for the National Security Agency (NSA) described the Trump administration’s proposal to begin demanding to review the browsing and contact data stored on the mobile phones of people visiting the United States as “tremendously intrusive” and “grossly overbroad,” as well as probably unlawful.

• We’ve become accustomed to the NSA’s infamous Glomar responses. The agency is fond of telling FOIA requesters that it’s not saying it has the sought-after documents on hand, but it’s also not not saying that either. It’s the public records Schrödinger’s box, where requested documents lie in a dual state of existence and nonexistence, supposedly because any hint either way would rend the national security fabric in twain.

• Brendan O’Connor of Gizmodo reports that a January 17th response to his FOIA request contains some new additions to the NSA’s usual Glomar.

• A year ago, Techdirt wrote about the melodramatically-named “Privacy Shield.” Under EU data protection laws, the transfer of EU citizens’ personal data is only legal if the destination country meets certain basic conditions for data protection. Signing up to Privacy Shield is designed to allow US companies to meet that requirement. The earlier framework, called “Safe Harbor,” was thrown out by the EU’s highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), largely because of NSA spying on data flows. Privacy Shield was hurriedly cobbled together because, without it, the vast flows of data across the Atlantic that occur all the time would be much harder to square with EU laws.

• However, since the NSA has not stopped spying on data flows, some in the EU feel that Privacy Shield offers as little protection for personal data as Safe Harbor. This led the Irish civil liberties group Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) last October to ask the EU’s General Court — one of the more obscure courts of the CJEU — to annul the Privacy Shield framework, arguing that it too lacks adequate privacy protections.

• So much of what we’re going to be doing with the Privacy Commission is policy. At the end of the day, like with a stingray, Hailstorm, cell-site simulator stuff, it’s going to be developing a policy that works for the Privacy Commission, and the City of Oakland as a community and the Oakland Police Department as an organization. That’s how I got involved.

• What happened early on with the stingray, as an example, is that it became pretty abundant that one of the big outcomes was going to be a policy. And just so you’re familiar, there was legislation that was passed.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Amid the outcry against President Donald Trump’s immigration ban on seven Muslim countries (US refugee ban: Trump decried for ‘stomping on’ American values, theguardian.com, 28 January), typically no mention is being made of the fact that the United States is a major participant in the terrible wars in five of them: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. As such, potent issues of religious discrimination and humanitarianism aside, the US has a major responsibility to ameliorate the effects of the wars on civilians by taking in refugees from those countries, obviously with careful vetting of each applicant. It is also interesting that Saudi Arabia, the source of much Islamist extremism, is not included in the list of “banned” countries.

• Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says the Turnbull government will support Donald Trump’s “strong immigration and border protection policies”, as the leaders of Britain and Germany criticise an executive order banning entry to the United States for refugees and citizens from a range of majority Muslim countries.

• An Obama-appointed federal judge in Brooklyn granted a temporary, emergency, national stay Saturday evening blocking Trump’s grotesque effort to ban Muslim refugees after the American Civil Liberties Union – God love ‘em – filed a class action lawsuit amidst widespread outrage and massive airport protests. While the order stems from the case of two Iraqis detained at JFK Airport, it will be applied nationally to up to 200 people already detained and any more visa-holders arriving in the U.S.; those still abroad will remain in legal limbo until a Feb. 21 hearing. With immigration lawyers still admirably flocking to airports to offer help, the ACLU announced the victory on Twitter with the concise, “We won.” From one supporter – and, implicitly, millions of us – “You are heroes.” Live video from the ACLU and others outside the court, with more details to come on what remains a developing story.

• Amid the chaos and confusion of President Donald Trump’s new executive order on immigration and refugees, sources tell CNN that White House policy director Stephen Miller spoke with officials of the State Department, Customs and Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security and others to tell them that the President is deeply committed to the executive order and the public is firmly behind it — urging them not to get distracted by what he described as hysterical voices on TV.

• IBM, Red Hat, Google, Apple and other tech giants expressed dismay over an executive order on immigration from President Donald Trump that bars nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

• Raleigh-based Red Hat, which has operations around the world, noted that the company is “looking carefully” at the order and added: “From what we see so far, we are concerned that the changes are inconsistent with Red Hat’s values, including diversity.”

• Red Hat, which was among the biggest opponents of North Carolina’s controversial “bathroom bill” HB2, pointed out that the company “is strong because of the thousands of diverse voices that comprise our company. Our continued work to advance the technology industry depends greatly on our ability to attract the best and brightest talent from around the world.”

• During a Colorado Springs rally on Oct. 18, 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump announced, “The time for congressional term limits has finally arrived.” For many, it was one of Trump’s more moderate proclamations. Term limits don’t sound like such a bad idea.

• But it’s possible this comment signaled support for a broader, more partisan agenda. Term limits are a central demand for a growing movement of states-rights activists focused on weakening the federal government—and they are dangerously close to convening the first state constitutional convention in U.S. history.

• [...]

• If the convention gets triggered, state legislators from across the country will convene to propose amendments, which would then need ratification by three-fourths (38) of the states, either through the state legislatures, with governors having power to break a tie, or through state ratification conventions.

• Protesters at the Denver airport over the weekend were told by police that it was illegal to exercise “free speech without a permit.”

• Denverite reported that over 200 people gathered at the Denver International Airport on Friday to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.

• In video posted to YouTube, Police Commander Tony Lopez can be seen advising demonstrators that they are in violation of the law.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• The pointless “six strikes” plan — a hilarious “voluntary agreement” between some big ISPs and the MPAA & RIAA is no more. It’s dead. It never should have lived, and of course, the MPAA is now blaming everyone but itself for the failure — and we’ll get to that. But first, some background.

• As you may remember, back in 2011, after significant direct pressure from the White House, many of the big ISPs and the MPAA & RIAA came to a (ha ha) “voluntary” agreement on a six strikes program to deal with “repeat infringers.” There was a lot of history behind this, which we won’t rehash, but the shorter version is that, for many years, the MPAA & RIAA have stupidly believed that if you could kick people off the internet (completely) if they’re caught infringing three times, that would magically make piracy go away. They got a “three strikes” law passed in a few countries, starting with France. It was a complete disaster, as basically everyone who wasn’t from the MPAA and RIAA predicted.

• In the US, it became clear that there wasn’t the political appetite to push through a three strikes law, so instead parts of the government, starting with the White House, started putting tremendous pressure on ISPs to work out a deal. The negotiations took a very, very long time. There were lots of rumors about them and then radio silence — until the “six strikes” deal was announced. The “compromise” was that (1) it was six strikes instead of three and (2) after six strikes… nothing happened. The key aspect of the three strikes plans the legacy entertainment industry had pushed was that you lose your internet connection. But the ISPs, rightfully, considered that a complete dealbreaker and basically refused any deal with a cut off.

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