● 05.18.17

● Links 18/5/2017: Catching Up With the Past Three Days

Posted in News Roundup at 5:00 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• ​So here we are fans of Linux! But are we up to the bar? To get our hands a little dirty and maybe do what a surgeon do Tongue Well if that disgust you then I didn’t mean cutting up your favorite distro and operating on it. I meant a minor thing like stitches and tending to some easy commands.

• elementary OS Despite desktop Linux becoming more popular over the years and the GNU/Linux family of operating systems gaining more mainstream support from software and hardware creators, there still are not a lot of big name hardware companies selling Linux computers. Even those which do, such as Dell, tend to tuck their Linux options into a back corner, shinning the spotlight on their computers that ship with Windows pre-installed.

• This has left the Linux hardware market relatively open for smaller players. Many smaller shops have appeared over the years, specializing in selling computers with Linux pre-installed. One of the most recent arrivals in the Linux market is the Alpha Litebook. The Litebook, which was launched in early 2017, is a $249-$269 USD notebook computer which ships with elementary OS. elementary is based on Ubuntu and the distribution uses the Pantheon desktop environment by default.

• Happy with the price-to-specifications ratio featured by the Litebook and curious to see how the device would perform, I ordered one of the laptops at the start of March. This review of the Alpha Litebook will consist of four sections: acquiring the Litebook and dealing with Alpha’s customer support; the hardware of the Litebook; my thoughts on elementary OS as a default distribution; and the process of installing another Linux distribution on the Litebook.

Kernel Space

• Linus Torvalds might just be a big softie after all. The Linux Lord, infamous for his occasional foul-mouthed criticism of those who don’t meet his standards, has just popped out release candidate one for Linux 4.12 a day early so he could give his undivided attention to Mother’s Day.

• “So I’m doing this one day early, because I don’t like last-minute pull requests during the merge window anyway, and tomorrow is mother’s day, so I may end up being roped into various happenings,” Torvalds wrote on the Linux Kernel Mailing List on Saturday. Torvalds’ release announcements are usually made on Sundays.

• Immediately after announcing earlier today the availability of the first point release of the Linux 4.11 kernel series, Greg Kroah-Hartman is informing the community about the launch of new maintenance updates to the Linux 4.10, 4.9 and 4.4 kernels.

• Linus Torvalds kicked off the development of the Linux 4.12 kernel series by announcing the availability of the first Release Candidate (RC) a day early than expected due to the Mother’s Day celebration and last-minute pull requests.

• According to Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel 4.12 RC1 is a pretty large patch that contains numerous additions, including support for AMD’s next-generation Radeon RX Vega GPUs, along with a new driver for Intel Atom IPUs (Image Processing Units).

Graphics Stack

• There’s some activity on the Mesa-dev mailing list with patches that will enable both Dying Light & Dead Island Definitive Edition (and it seems Dead Island Riptide Definite Edition too) to work on Mesa.

• Mesa 17.0.6 is the latest bug-fix release for the 17.0 series, but it also comes with AMD Polaris 12 support for the ‘radv’ Vulkan driver that has been back-ported.

• As expected, the sixth point release to the Mesa 17.0 stable graphics stack was officially unveiled by Andres Gomez, and will soon be available from the software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution.

• Containing a total of 55 changes, which include both new functionality and fixes for recently discovered bugs, we can say that Mesa 17.0.6 is a hefty maintenance update that all users of the Mesa 17.0 3D Graphics Library series should install, that, of course, if they didn’t already upgrade to the newer Mesa 17.1 stable branch.

Applications

• I have always had a special inclination towards Linux. Privacy, Security, Simplicity (GUI) and Power (Shell). It has its issues but it has its strengths as well. However, sometimes you find that in a software, when that one thing that makes or breaks your workflow is absent, you find yourself unable to continue using it.

• In my case, it was Evince.

• For many reasons I had to use Windows for a couple of months. Dual Booting on my laptop failed despite many tries and my college project required exclusively Windows-only software and the Microsoft Office Suite. They are just 2 reasons of many. However, one big reason I used Windows was the lack of the exact PDF reader I wanted. Silly? Let me explain.

• Calibre developer Kovid Goyal released this weekend yet another maintenance update to his popular, free, cross-platform and open source ebook library management software for all supported operating systems.

• Calibre 2.85 arrived on Friday, May 12, 2017, exactly one week after Calibre 2.84, bringing an updated Kobo driver that now supports the recently unveiled Kobo Aura H2O Edition 2 eReader device, along with a bunch of new features like the ability to right-click on the Book Details panel to search the Internet for the current ebook or other works by that author.

• It was built as a Sinatra web service, simply acting as a frontend to a popular emulator database, allowing the user to navigate & preview app for various systems, and download / run them locally. The RetroFlix application itself is offered as a lightweight Microservice simply acting as a proxy to the required various underlying components. It’s fairly simple to setup & install (see the README), and builds upon existing emulators & components the user has locally.

• ​PuTTY as an SSH and Telnet client was originally developed by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. It is the most popular SSH client on Windows. It is also available on Linux and other operating systems as a direct port of the Windows SSH client. It is also able to use as a client for rlogin and raw TCP computing protocols.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

• Linux fans interested in running the latest Windows games and apps will be glad to learn that the Wine 2.8 development release arrived with support for the newest game titles and dozens of improvements to older ones.

• Incorporating two week’s worth of enhancement and bug fixes, Wine 2.8 makes the Direct3D command stream to run asynchronously, improves the HiDPI (High Dots Per Inch) settings, implements system tray notifications on Apple’s macOS platform, and introduces better automatic detection of parallel and serial ports.

Games

• First person platformer, A Story About My Uncle [Official Site, Steam] has been released for Linux! The game was released in May 2014, but just recently, developers Gone North Games decided to release support for both Linux and Mac.

• The problem is that Feral Interactive ported HITMAN to Linux, as Square Enix seem willing to team up and allow Feral Interactive through some deal to port and publish certain games to Linux. The issue here is that if Io-Interactive are picked up by another publisher, they may not be so willing to allow Feral to port future titles to Linux.

• This is awesome news. Sudden Strike 4 [Steam, Official Site] now has a proper release date of August 11th and it seems it will see a day-1 Linux release too.

• Another time to show support for a game to come to Linux, if you would buy it that is. The developer of Inner Voices [Steam, Official Site] has stated with enough support they will bring it to Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Dominique Leuenberger reports this weekend on the latest updates that landed in the software repositories of the openSUSE Tumbleweed operating system, which were brought by a total of six snapshots released in the last two weeks.

• These new Tumbleweed snapshots contained a lot of the latest GNU/Linux technologies and software updates, including the KDE Plasma 5.9.5 and GNOME 3.24.1 desktop environment, KDE Applications 17.04.0 software suite, KDE Frameworks 5.33.0 collection of add-ons for Qt 5, and GRUB 2.02 bootloader.

• KDE developer Elvis Angelaccio is happy to report on the general availability of a new package that makes it possible for fans of the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment to access their Google Drive accounts without any weird tricks.

• I’m here again and I will talk about my accepted GSoC proposal, but how every history, I have to start from the start, so sit down, drink a coffee or a hot chocolate(I like) and have fun.

• I’m from Brazil, to be more specific from Salvador, Bahia. I’m an undergraduate student in Analysis and System Development. I’m not like so many other people that code since their 9 years old or something like that. I just wrote my first line of code with 20 years old and now I have 23, but like my mother says, “It’s never late to do something, no matter what” (Yeah, my mother is amazing. By the way, Happy Mother’s Day).

• In first years in the college, I had the opportunity to work in a software house, that works with proprietary software. I didn’t like that experience for so many reasons, but I was holding myself for money (I’m poor). Someday a teacher from my college invite to a course about Qt and C++ and told to us that we can choose what we want to do and presented KDE and Open Source. I quit my job and started to go to the college in my free time. In this time I studied python and read some books about that and I loved it.

• Monday, 15 May 2017. Today KDE has made a testing release of our desktop Plasma 5.10 with new features across the suite to give users an experience which lives up to our tagline: simple by default, powerful when needed.

Distributions

Reviews

• NixOS is a viable daily distro for average users who are willing to put a small amount of work into it. Since it is a little strange, knowledge about NixOS may not translate well to other distros. NixOS is very lightweight and usable. I think that it is probably a very good distro for a more advanced user. Like I said, I was able to do everything I wanted on NixOS (except get my NVIDIA drivers working, but I think that’s my fault). The Nix package manager is also available for most other distros, so if you want to use the Nix package manager and all the Nix glory associated with it (like isolation of packages) you can. I probably won’t keep NixOS on my machine, but I think I will start using the Nix package manager on whatever distro I settle on for this week.

New Releases

• Neptune Linux developer Leszek Lesner proudly announced this weekend the availability of a new ISO snapshot for the Neptune Plasma 5 edition of the Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution.

• The new Neptune Plasma 5 ISO is shipping with the latest KDE Applications 17.04 software suite, which includes numerous improvements and new features for the Dolphin file manager, Kdenlive video editor, Kate text editor, Ark archive manager, Konsole terminal emulator, Okular PDF viewer, and Gwenview image viewer.

Red Hat Family

Finance

Fedora

• The past few months have brought many changes for me. I traveled throughout Europe to experience some of the open source conferences and communities across the continent. Along the way, I met incredible people with powerful stories about their own communities. However, there is one community that I knew about before I came to Europe. The Open Labs Hackerspace in Tirana, Albania is a special community that I was fortunate enough to discover and meet. Together, they have helped set in motion the open source way in their own city.

• [...]

• I am privileged and honored to be an official member of this community. However, I am mostly an observer in my role. The passion and interest are at the heart of the hackerspace. The members from Tirana have invested so much of themselves into this community, its mission, and its values. From reading, visiting, and talking with the people involved with Open Labs, you see many of their hearts dedicated to what they’re doing. And when you see someone else who invests their heart into something, it’s challenging to not lend some of your own too.

Debian Family

• The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Guilhem Moulin (guilhem) Lisa Baron (jeffity) Punit Agrawal (punit)

• The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Sebastien Jodogne Félix Lechner Uli Scholler Aurélien Couderc Ondřej Kobližek Patricio Paez

• Congratulations!

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Flavours and Variants

• Ubuntu MATE project leader Martin Wimpress announced today the availability of the MATE 1.16.2 desktop environment in the special PPA (Personal Package Archive) created for users of the Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.

• Patrick Emmabuntus is pleased to inform us today about the release and immediate availability of the Emmabuntus 3 1.04 update of the educational-oriented GNU/Linux distribution based on Xubuntu and the Xfce desktop environment.

• Ubuntu comes in a number of different flavors, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. Which one is best for you? A writer at Linux.com recently delved into the various flavors of Ubuntu and considered what they had to offer.

Devices/Embedded

• Sometimes, if you want something badly enough, you need to get off your lazy tuchus and make it happen yourself.

• For years now, I’ve been hoping and pining (and often complaining and whining) about how much I want Linux-powered… everything. Not Android. Not ChromeOS. Real Linux. The kind of Linux you have full control over—the sort you’d install on your desktop PC.

• Artila Electronics, which specializes in the development and manufacture of Linux-ready ARM embedded industrial computers, launches the highly integrated compact Box Computer , Matrix-710, based on ARM Cortex-A5, especially for industrial control, automation gateway, mobile gateway, smart energy application. Matrix-710 adapts the innovated technology of ARM processor coupled with the open Linux operating system, which provides the backbone for innovative smart IoT solutions. To achieve the need for M2M application, it equips the WiFi, cellular modems which allow Internet connectivity and GPS for location information transition, considering the practical needs, Matrix-710 also offers a miniPCIe slot for users to deploy these modules easily.

Phones

Tizen

• It has been over 2 years since the launch of the first Tizen smartphone– The Samsung Z1. The Z1 was a major attempt by Samsung to prove that Tizen is a capable platform to even run smartphone applications. With the device being launched in the 2nd largest population-India initially the word about Tizen mobile spread instantly. Fast forward to May 2017 and now we have 4 Tizen smartphones released so far- Z1, Z2, Z3 and now the Samsung Z4.

Android

• For the Android enthusiasts among us, Google’s announcement of Project Treble felt like a message straight from the heavens. The new system, coming in Android O, lays the groundwork for Android devices to have proper separation between the core of Android and the necessary (and unnecessary) customizations device manufacturers need to apply before sending out software updates. Functionally, it means Google can update its own parts of Android without disturbing the OEM interface on top or the low-level device-specific firmware underneath. Reaction on Twitter and in the comments of our articles took this announcement as a sign that the utopian future of Android updates is finally here.

• If you’re not a mobile developer working win Android, chances are you haven’t heard of Kotlin. If you are an Android programmer, it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

• While Java has long been Android’s main programming language, it’s never a good fit. Java was written when “mobile” computing devices were 7-pound laptops. In the meantime, Apple iOS developers had the pleasure of working with mobile-first languages such as Swift. Unlike Swift, which is now open source but started as an in-house Apple product, Kotlin started out as a third-party language.

Free Software/Open Source

• Elastic is of course the company behind the open source Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack products.

• Into the Elastic 5.4 release then… (as a result of the recent acquisition of data anomaly detection business Prelert) Elastic’s machine learning features will work on any time series data set to automatically apply machine brain intelligence.

• The evaluation of open source software is nowhere near conclusive when it comes to enterprise grade application development. Decisions remain in the exploratory phases. Roadmaps are incomplete. Most are without clear routes to a destination. Some are without destinations. However, it would be wrong to assume roads are not being built.

• There is no way that the future of application development – on IBM i or anywhere else – can handle everything that is coming down the pike without open source. That’s not a mandate to jump on a band wagon. It’s an awareness wake-up call. The IBM i community should not be napping.

• If open source has swiftly become the latest religious practise in the telecom industry, it is still attracting its share of skeptics and unbelievers.

• Some were on display at this week’s annual TM Forum Live conference in Nice, where Shahar Steiff, an assistant vice president at Hong Kong’s PCCW, described open source as an “overrated necessity” in front of conference attendees.

Events

• LinuxFest NorthWest was a fantastic time for me, our Ubuntu booth had Valorie (Kubuntu), Simon (Kubuntu/Lubuntu) and over at the Jupiter Broadcasting we had the awesome Martin Wimpress (Ubuntu Mate). One top question was “what about that Unity news” which we gave a clear answer about Unity development ending and the move to GNOME. Since we were also burning DVD’s and dding usb drives we would recommend that users try out GNOME Shell if GNOME was there preferred Desktop.

• FOSS4G Boston 2017 is shaping up to be a very diverse conference. We have a diverse set of keynote speakers including Holly St. Clair, Chief Digital Officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, and other open source and geospatial leaders. There are also a variety of workshops and presentations this year. Topics will include R, 3D, analytics, artificial intelligence, routing, big data, drones, GeoNode, GeoServer, image processing, QGIS, PostGIS, projections, and much more! To see the full lineup, visit the full list of accepted presentations and workshops.

• I’ve aways been an introspective person and when I was approved to Analysis and Systems Development Course, I thought that I don’t would need to talk with people anymore (while working at least) and I was happy with this xD. Things were going well, until the day that I met the open source concepts and KDE, through my professor, Sandro Andrade (yes, it’s your fault :p). It was love at first sight, I liked the idea to share knowledge and help another people or I was just thinking that I could work with my shorts, I hate pants. I will never know the truth xD.

CMS

• WordPress 4.7.5 is now available. This is a security release for all previous versions and we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.

BSD

• I used the steps below to install OpenBSD, add the xfce4 desktop and to set up a graphical log-in on my Thinkpad X200 laptop.

• After 12 years, I switched from macOS to OpenBSD. It’s clean, focused, stable, consistent and lets me get my work done without any hassle.

• While a few of these projects indicate they are a "plan B" or an "attempt III", many are still hewing to their original plans, and all have produced impressive results. Please enjoy this vibrant collection of reports, covering the first quarter of 2017.

Licensing/Legal

Leftovers

• Code42 reckons that 58 per cent of decision makers "have become desensitised to potential cyber security threats due to over-exaggeration and exposure by the media." Furthermore, three-quarters of the ingrates said that they have heard more about cyber threats in the last 18 months than they have ever heard in their lives before.

• [...] could prod other big private-sector donors to follow suit.

Science

• Thieves then tend to siphon off virtual items to a network of other accounts they control, often also stolen. The items are in effect shared out between an in-game criminal gang of characters, which usually makes them hard to trace.

• A new study by John Pucher and Ralph Bueler (PDF here) confirms what every cyclist already knows: physically separated bike lanes are by far the best way to reduce injuries and deaths. The two researchers had already shown that more bike lanes mean more cyclists and that bikes keep you skinny, but now demonstrate that cycle tracks keep you alive.

Health/Nutrition

• The authors suggest that the World Health Organization and/or other health agencies take up the issue by monitoring drug production and access, as well as potentially setting up economic incentives to boost supplies and distribution.

• Henderson Island, which is located between New Zealand and Chile, was found to be covered in an estimated 38 million pieces of trash, most of it plastic, according to a new study. The density of debris was the highest recorded anywhere in the world, the authors say.

Security

• Globally active ransomware virus has partially affected the computer systems in some institutions in Maharashtra, including that of its police department, a police official said here.

• The exact data about the systems hit by the ransomware, however, will be known once the offices open today, the official said.

• A cyber ransomware is a type of malicious software that blocks access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid through the online medium. As per reports, the ransomware has hit as many as 200,000 victims in over 150 countries.

• While the effects were felt all over the world in almost 100 countries, the NHS was the most terrifyingly significant target for us in Britain – literally, the lifeline of the UK.

• After installing a small file, the operators would then be able to instruct the computer to kill any use of a web browser on a set schedule. For instance, the software could be instructed to shut down Firefox every 25-35 seconds. Similarly, the example included a measure to “lock up” PowerPoint files 10 minutes after they were loaded. It would also allow operators to create a delay when PowerPoint files were attempting to load.

• While the examples they used are simple and relatively harmless, the software could perform virtually any assigned task. Because the data is encrypted with a key stored outside of the machine, the code would be extremely difficult to detect and/or decipher.

• After installing the software, the documentation instructs users to “kick back” and “Relax – After Midnight will take care of the rest.”

• The second piece of software detailed is similar to “AfterMidnight” and is called “Assassin.” That piece of software is a relatively simple way of collecting data remotely and then delivering results to a listening post on a schedule.

• Through screenshots in the documents, it can be seen that the author is named “Justin,” is working from a Dell computer, and desktop shortcuts to an encrypted chat program called ‘Pidgin,’ as well as a folder entitled “drone.”

• However, I find it depressing to think of the massive financial damage likely wrought by this ransom campaign in exchange for such a comparatively small reward. It’s particularly galling because this attack potentially endangered the lives of many.

• Microsoft’s reaction to the Windows ransomware crisis that occurred on Friday and Saturday has shown one thing: no longer can the company continue to use the business buzzword “proactive” when it talks about itself. It was caught unawares and left looking very old and tired in the way it responded to the situation.

• “What you can follow is the money,” Mr Raiu said. “You can follow the Bitcoins [although] following the Bitcoins is kind of an art in itself.”

• The question is how to introduce product liability, because just imposing it would instantly shut down any and all software houses with just a hint of a risk management function on their organizational charts.

• The robots currently at work knocking around for your guessable password could easily be repurposed to guess your Unicode password currently known as your port knocking sequence, and quite likely have been already.

• The timing couldn’t be better. Just as President Xi Jinping steps on stage to outline his vision for a Chinese century, the world becomes hostage to malicious software.

• This weekend’s ransomware offensive hit hundreds of thousands of computers in at least 150 countries. The financial toll is still being calculated; the psychological toll could be infinite.

• Developed by the security agency of China’s biggest rival and exploiting a ubiquitous product developed by that country’s globally dominant software company, the attacks offer Xi the perfect opportunity to make the case for an alternative to Microsoft Corp. and its Windows operating system. That the techniques used in the attacks were stolen from the National Security Agency also makes this the perfect chance to argue that global technology can’t be trusted in the hands of a single nation.

• After all, security vendors are still seeing successful exploitation attempts today for MS08-067, the Windows vulnerability that allowed the Conficker computer worm to spread nine years ago.

• Friday’s attack seems to have run its course but it may not take much to develop other strains of the virus {sic} that are not affected by the kill switch. For now, the best you can do is make sure your computers are running the latest software updates – and don’t click on any funny-looking emails.

• At the very least, we should respect his privacy. MalwareTech doesn’t give out his name on his Twitter page or blog. There are no headshots. It’s obvious that he just wants to be left alone to get on with what he enjoys – hacking shit, and figuring out how stuff works.

• The NHS could be considering switching its software infrastructure from Windows to Ubuntu, after Windows XP vulnerabilities were exploited in the recent cyber attack that crippled the National Health Service. Or is it just an elaborate gag?

• The NHSbuntu platform came to our attention via Dr Dean Jenkins, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and editor-at-large of BMJ Case Reports, who writes about it on Differential Diagnosis, his blog.

Defence/Aggression

• Experts are worried about India, Pakistan and North Korea.

• Besides Saudi Arabia, Trump’s first foreign trip will also include visits to Israel, the Vatican, Brussels for a NATO summit and Sicily for a Group of Seven summit.

• What few people knew, including some of the recruited veterans themselves, was that Saudi Arabia’s government was largely paying for the effort, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite a World War II-era U.S. law requiring lobbyists to immediately reveal payments from foreign governments or political parties, some of the campaign’s organizers failed to notify the Justice Department about the Saudi kingdom’s role until months afterward, with no legal consequences.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• It repeated Ecuador’s request for guarantees of non-extradition to any third country.

• The letter by Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry voices concern over a "serious lack of progress" by Swedish prosecutors investigating the sexual misconduct case against Assange, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported.

• Ecuador has voiced concern over the “serious lack of progress” by the Swedish government in dealing with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

• It said there had been a “serious failure” by Sweden’s prosecutor to complete an inquiry into sexual assault allegations dating back to 2010.

• Mr Assange has been confined to the Ecuadorean embassy, where he has asylum, for nearly five years.

• He fears he will be extradited to the US if he leaves the building.

• The Australian national is concerned the US may seek his arrest over Wikileaks’ release of 500,000 secret military files on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

• Ecuador has written to the Swedish government complaining of a “serious lack of progress” in the investigation involving a rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

• According to the BBC, the letter criticises Sweden’s prosecutor for a “serious failure” to complete an investigation into rape allegations dating back to 2010. Ecuadorian authorities accuse the prosecutor of a “lack of iniative”.

• Julian Assange has been confined at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has asylum, for nearly five years. British police say he will be arrested if he leaves the embassy.

• Edward Snowden and Noam Chomsky are among those calling on Donald Trump to drop the US government’s investigation into Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

• The pair – along with more than 100 other activists, journalists and government workers – have signed an open letter to the president that calls prosecuting WikiLeaks “a threat to all free journalism”. The letter asks the Department of Justice to drop plans to charge Assange and other WikiLeaks staff members.

• We are lawyers for WikiLeaks. We are speaking out because we believe that Laura Poitras’s film Risk, released in U.S. theaters on May 5 this year, places our clients in legal jeopardy.

• The film serves to undermine WikiLeaks just as the Trump administration has announced that it intends to prosecute its journalists, editors and associates.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• India’s notorious traffic pollution is no longer an urban malaise, its impact is now being felt 4,000 metres above sea level, in the Himalayas.

Finance

• The regions have also witnessed lower-than-average gross domestic product growth in the 2010s, despite continuing to make up 61 per cent of the national output. Uusimaa alone accounts for a third of the national output but has failed to contribute to economic growth in 2010–2015, according to Hetemäki.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Citizens of the United States cannot address all the threats posed by all the errant leaders of all the countries on a planet that has plenty of problems. But they do have a duty to be on alert to threats posed by elected and appointed officials who fail to recognize their responsibilities, who act irrationally, or who disregard the rule of law.

• We have already declared out election system to be critical national infrastructure. This is largely symbolic, but it demonstrates a commitment to secure elections and makes funding and other resources available to states. We can do much more. We owe it to democracy to do it.

• Then there is the question of whether US allies will be more reluctant to share sensitive intelligence information with the US, lest the president put sources at risk.

• This loose treatment of highly secretive "code word" intelligence raises broader questions, too, about how the cavalier disclosure of such secrets might impact the international relationships so essential to ensuring national security at home.

Censorship/Free Speech

Privacy/Surveillance

• CNIL said that Facebook collected and compiled user data "without having a legal basis" and "without obtaining their explicit consent". It said the social network was able to track websites that users were visiting when they left Facebook, and that this was unclear to the users themselves.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Moreover, to make money to afford extra food or phone calls, many detainees have no option but to work for $1 per day. They are ruthlessly exploited by corporations looking to make a profit.

• In a two-page memo to federal prosecutors across the country, Sessions overturned former attorney general Eric H. Holder’s sweeping criminal charging policy that instructed his prosecutors to avoid charging certain defendants with offenses that would trigger long mandatory minimum sentences. In its place, Sessions told his more than 5,000 assistant U.S. attorneys to charge defendants with the most serious crimes, carrying the toughest penalties.

• His group organised protests by hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Jakarta late last year over a comment about the Koran made by the capital’s governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic-Chinese Christian.

• If you’re poor and arrested in Louisiana, you will rot in jail for months or even years waiting for a trial which will be indifferently argued by a grossly overworked public defender. As a result, the majority of poor arrestees plead guilty, and 85% of those accused of crimes are poor. Black people in Louisiana are jailed at four times the rate of white people.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Facing extensive net neutrality support, FCC is ready to gut open Internet rules.

• Net neutrality is a handy name for a pretty simple principle: the idea that the company providing your internet access should deliver you the online content of your choosing, when you choose it, without interfering. And since 2015, it’s been the law of the land. Now we stand to lose it once again — but the arguments that industry and some regulators are making against it are disingenuous at best, and a pack of lies at worst.

• As a way of hastening along the neutracidal moment, the Internet & Television Association (AKA National Cable Television Association) conducted a push-poll asking Americans if they wanted Net Neutrality killed right now, or straightaway (more or less).

• But even within the shitty, stilted choices the poll offered, Americans still spoke overwhelmingly in favor of Net Neutrality, leaving Big Cable to desperately spin the outcomes to claim that Americans really wanted to have their internet connections slowed down unless they were accessing their ISPs’ preferred services.

DRM

• The controversial project to standardize DRM for streaming video on the web started in 2013 and culminated last month with a poll by W3C members whose results are confidential (though the W3C has chosen to publish the outcomes of previous polls and may yet do so for this one).

• As this site has long documented, DRM more often than not provides a false sense of security to those terrified of piracy, yet just as frequently annoys paying customers — ironically driving those customers to the piracy alternatives the DRM was supposed to prevent in the first place.

• The latest example of this phenomenon: with the latest version 5.0 of the Netflix app, Netflix is now leaning entirely on Google’s Widevine digital rights management system. With Netflix recently introducing downloadable shows (assuming the license for that specific program allows it), Netflix’s programming partners likely wanted Netflix to utilize Widevine to ensure that Netflix’s app “only works with devices that are certified by Google and meet all Android requirements.”

• Netflix customers who previously viewed the service using a ‘rooted’ Android device are no longer able to do so, at least officially. The development has been confirmed by Netflix, who say that the company’s reliance on Google’s Widevine DRM standards means that modified and/or non-certified devices will be excluded from the service.

• However, Netflix has now confirmed to us that blocking modified devices from downloading the app was intentional.

• This is the full statement:

• With our latest 5.0 release, we now fully rely on the Widevine DRM provided by Google; therefore, many devices that are not Google-certified or have been altered will no longer work with our latest app and those users will no longer see the Netflix app in the Play Store.

Intellectual Monopolies

• MP3 is no less alive now than it was last month or will be next year — the last known MP3 patents have simply expired.

Copyrights

• Copyright trolls are known for their dubious tactics, but how should they be fought in court? Motivated by false accusations against alleged BitTorrent pirates. Matthew Sag and Jake Haskell have written an in-depth overview that could help defense lawyers to make their case.

• Following a landmark trial, the key player at streaming site Swefilmer has been jailed for an unprecedented three years, longer than any defendant in the earlier Pirate Bay case. An administrator of the site received a relatively lenient sentence of probation and community service.

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