● 07.07.17

● Links 7/7/2017: 2017 Linux Laptop Survey Results, Fedora 27 Previews

Posted in News Roundup at 5:42 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• Following the two week survey process, here are the results from our inaugural Linux Laptop Survey. There are 30,171 responses, a lot of data to now sift through while in this article is an overview of the initial findings. There may be some additional follow-up articles in the days/weeks ahead when sifting through more of the data.

Server

• Depending upon the event you use to start the clock, cloud computing is only a little more than 10 years old. Some terms and concepts around cloud computing that we take for granted today are newer still. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) document that defined now-familiar cloud terminology—such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)—was only published in 2011, although it widely circulated in draft form for a while before that.

• Ubuntu, Red Hat, SUSE and Oracle provide some level of enterprise support, but you should review these options carefully to determine the best fit.

Audiocasts/Shows

• This week we make a green screen webcam, mention upcoming laptop reviews from Entroware and Dell and reveal an Entroware laptop competition is coming soon. Then we discuss the death of the Linux desktop, this weeks command line love is using ffmpeg to create “high quality” animated .gifs and we go over your feedback.

Kernel Space

• KDAB, a German consulting firm that develops graphics and visualization tools, has released Hotspot 1.0, a GUI too for visualizing performance data generated by the Linux perf tool.

• Perf analyzes system and application behaviors in Linux and generates a detailed report showing which calls, programs, disk I/O operations, or network events (just to name a few possibilities) are eating up most of the system’s time. Because Perf is a command-line tool, most of its output is static, and it can be a multi-step process to produce an interactive, explorable report from data provided by Perf.

• The Device Mapper (DM) updates have been pulled into mainline Git for the Linux 4.13 merge window.

• Perhaps most prominent to end-users for the Device Mapper changes in Linux 4.13 is support for zoned/SMR devices in DM core. The past few kernel releases have seen work in the area of shingled magnetic recording (SMR) devices across different areas, including native support within some file-systems.

Graphics Stack

Benchmarks

• With having carried out a new Windows 10 install this week for the latest Windows 10 WSL / VirtualBox benchmarking, I used this as a fresh opportunity for some new Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux benchmark figures.

Applications

• Avid user of Linux Twitter client Corebird? Well, you may want to know that a new release is available to download. But before you get too excited about finding new features I should point at the latest release comes with stability improvements and nothing else.

• With a bit more than a month into the GSOC coding time, my project is almost complete. As a reminder, I was working on implementing a keyframe curve for the transformation properties (which control the positioning and size of a clip) in Pitivi.

Instructionals/Technical

• ​Hey, pal! Again I am here with my another article which again focuses on showing you the power of the terminal. Today’s article is focused on how you can control the power functions of PC i.e. Power Off, Hibernate, suspend and restart. The commands are really easy and you can easily remember them and use them as you need.

Games

• Next Up Hero [Steam, Official Site] is a new arcade action-adventure being developed by Digital Continue and it’s being published by Aspyr Media.

• It seems the Linux version is now coming closer!

• Oh goodie, another new unit that’s actually on our side. Let’s take a look at The Skirmisher another unit you will find in the War of the Chosen [Steam] expansion coming to XCOM 2.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Some time ago I published a couple of blog posts talking about Qt WebGL Streaming plugin. The time has come, and the plugin is finally merged into the Qt repository. In the meantime, I worked on stabilization, performance and reducing the calls sent over the network. It also changed a bit in the way the connections are handled.

• The Qt tool-kit has merged support for WebGL streaming.

• The Qt WebGL Streaming plug-in has been merged to mainline. This WebGL streaming support will be present in Qt 5.10 due to be released in November and will be considered a technical preview module for that release.

• A ‘next generation’ version of open-source video editor Kdenlive is available for testing.

• This development build, though unstable, includes a new timeline, new features, and a much cleaner, leaner code base.

• “We are very happy to announce the first AppImage of the next generation Kdenlive. We have been working since the first days of 2017 to cleanup and improve the architecture of Kdenlive’s code to make it more robust and clean,” the development team behind the non-linear video editor say in a blog post.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Patches are pending for GStreamer that provide the first public client and server implementation of the RTSP 2.0 protocol, Real Time Streaming Protocol 2.0.

• Real Time Streaming Protocol 2.0 was firmed up last year as the replacement to RTSP 1.0 that does break backwards compatibility. To date the protocol authors know of no other implementation of the RTSP 2.0 so this makes GStreamer the first with a working client and server, albeit not yet merged to Git.

Distributions

New Releases

• The development team behind the Debian-based Pardus Linux distribution for Turkish-speaking users are proud to announce today the release and immediate availability for download of Pardus 17.0.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

• openSUSE Project’s Dominique Leuenberger is reporting today on the latest updates that landed in the main software repositories of the openSUSE Tumbleweed operating system.

• OpenSUSE Leap 42.3 has the finish line in sight and it’s scheduled to cross that line by the last week of July. Here’s a look at the new features.

Red Hat Family

Finance

Fedora

• Red Hat’s Fedora Program Manager Jaroslav Reznik announced today that the Fedora 26 Linux operating system was cleared for launch, as planned, next week on July 11, 2017.

Debian Family

Derivatives

• Debian and Ubuntu are the most influential Linux distributions ever. Of the 290 active distributions currently listed on Distrowatch, 131 are derived from Debian, including Ubuntu, and another 58 are derived directly from Ubuntu — roughly two-thirds. Yet the experience of using them differs in just about every aspect. Consequently, choosing between them is no easy matter.

• Asked to explain the difference between the two distributions, most users would describe Debian as an expert’s distribution, and Ubuntu as a beginner’s. These characterizations are partly true, but exaggerated. Debian’s reputation rests on its state over a decade ago, and today Debian allows as much hands-on control as each user chooses. Today, it would be better described as a distribution for all levels of users, provided that they are willing to do their own maintenance. Extensive help on the Debian wiki makes this do-it-yourself philosophy less formidable than it might first sound.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical’s Will Cooke informs the Ubuntu Linux community today about the latest progress of the Unity 7 to GNOME Shell migration and transition process for the upcoming Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system.

• It has already been nine months since Ubuntu 16.10 was released, marking the end of support cycle. Ubuntu’s parent company Canonical has announced that it won’t be providing any support for the users of Yakkety Yak after the nine-month period expires in July.

Devices/Embedded

• After launching PINE A64 as the world’s first $15 open source gaming machine that runs Android and other Linux-based operating systems, the PINE64 company has created a new, more powerful single-board computer that they call ROCK64.

• Application development on the 820 Nano SOM is facilitated on Android Nougat and embedded Linux using a feature-rich carrier board that enables quick prototyping. Mistral further offers optional adaptor boards, such as LCD, camera, sensors and battery charger for increased ease of development around the 820 Nano SOM.

Phones

Tizen

• Smartphone OS has become a two horse race for several years now between Android and iOS. The competition and the market share between the two has put down some big names in the smartphones OS business to dust such as Symbian,Blackberry OS and of course Windows phone OS. However, recent reports from market research firm Strategy Analytics points that the Android-iOS supremacy is slowly going to decline from 2019 and hence paving way to new competition likely hailing from Asia.

Android

• RED, the leading manufacturer of professional digital cinema cameras, announced that it would develop the world’s first holographic Android smartphone, which the company will launch sometime next year.

Free Software/Open Source

• Open source development at Google is both very diverse and distributed. The larger projects that we release generally have dedicated teams developing and supporting the project, working with their external developer communities and providing internal support to other Googlers. Many of the smaller projects include just one or two engineers working on something experimental or just a fun, side project. While we do have a central Open Source Programs Office (the group I manage), it is relatively small compared to the size of the company. Instead, the actual development happens throughout the company, with hundreds of teams and thousands of engineers, tech writers, designers and product managers contributing to open source in some way.

• …Hotz said he decided to open-source the plans, enabling anyone who wanted to build it for free.

• Going way back, pretty much all software was effectively open source. That’s because it was the preserve of a small number of scientists and engineers who shared and adapted each other’s code (or punch cards) to suit their particular area of research. Later, when computing left the lab for the business, commercial powerhouses such as IBM, DEC and Hewlett-Packard sought to lock in their IP by make software proprietary and charging a hefty license fee for its use.

Events

• I recently attended a Snappy Sprint in London, UK. As well as the Canonical people attending (including me) with experience in the whole Snappy stack (Snapcraft, the Snap store, snapd, snapd-glib) we had great representation from the Elementary, Fedora, GNOME, MATE and KDE communities. My goal was to help improve the Snap experience for desktop apps both on Ubuntu and other distributions.

• This July, celebrate the CoreOS and Kubernetes birthdays with us and more. We hope to see you at GopherCon, and at the Los Angeles Kubernetes meetup.

• Antonio Larrosa is the current president of KDE España and he and I have been friends for quite some time now. It may seem logical, since we both live in Málaga, are passionate about Free Software in general, and KDE in particular. But in most other respects we are total opposites: Antonio is quiet, tactful, unassuming and precise. Enough said.

• But that is what is great about Antonio; that and the fact he is very patient when troubleshooting. I know this because he has often helped me out when I have unwittingly wrecked my system by being an idiot and installing what I shouldn’t. When he quietly muses “¡Qué cosas!” (which roughly translates to “That’s interesting”) you know you’ve messed up good.

• openSUSE.Asia Committee calls for proposals of talks for openSUSE.Asia Summit 2017 held at the University of Electro-Communications on October 21 and 22.

• Please refer to the following announcement for the detail of openSUSE.Asia Summit:

• https://news.opensuse.org/2017/06/30/opensuse-asia-summit-2017-tokyo-japan/

• The speakers are eligible to receive sponsorship from openSUSE Travel Support Program (TSP). Even if you live away from Tokyo, please consider applying for the event.

• DEF CON is canceled again this year, and this time that statement is at least partially true. There will be no special official badges this year. There is no challenge or mystery embedded in the official DC badge. This is the year that unofficial badges from villages and random attendees finally supersedes the official offering. This is badgelife, and for the next few weeks, we’re going to be taking a look at some of the unofficial badges of DEF CON.

• The idea for [dorkengine]’s Puffy badge began last year with the so-called Bender badges from AND!XOR. Chalk this up to a story that ends with, ‘but you had to have been there’, but the Bender badges were wildly popular, sold like hotcakes, and were an astonishing success of independent badge craft at DC. [dorkengine] decided to get in on the action and build his own badge for DC 25.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Mozilla unveiled “Project Things,” which builds upon standard web technologies and the Web of Things project, and released code that runs on a Raspberry Pi.

• In March of last year, a few months after Mozilla announced it was shutting down its Firefox OS project for Linux-based mobile phones, it unveiled four Firefox OS based “Connected Devices” projects for the Internet of Things. The Connected Devices project has since shut down, but a website is still available for others to advance the code. Instead, Mozilla turned its IoT team toward an existing Web of Things (WoT) project aimed at developing a decentralized, open source IoT framework built as much as possible using existing World Wide Web technologies.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• We got support question for Arduino EKG/EMG shields which do not work correctly.

• Neuroon Open is an open source sleep and meditation wearable aimed at enhancing your sleep and providing you with a tool that can help you monitor your sleep patterns. Essentially it’s a sleep tracker, of course, improved sleep is just the main goal of the device. It also works as a smart meditation device that guides you through meditation sessions with audio-assisted feedback. It also has a Lucid Dream function, and it even interacts with smart home devices like lights and thermostats, such as the Nest Smart Thermostat. While sleep tracking and smart home device support aren’t exactly new features for a wearable, those things together with the added Lucid Dream and meditation features makes the Neuroon Open a more unique device than it may seem on the surface.

Funding

• AT&T is putting big money behind its Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), today committing up to $200 million to a venture capital fund that will invest in technologies that run on ONAP.

• AT&T is committing $200 million to Coral, a venture capital fund focused on technologies that run on the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP).

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Using the term “permissive” as an antonym to “copyleft” – or “restrictive” as its synonym – are unhelpful framing. Describe license reciprocity instead.

• Some open source licenses implement a clever hack invented by Richard Stallman where, as a condition of the copyright license, anyone creating derived versions has to agree they will license the new version the same way as the original. In a play on words, this concept is called “copyleft” and many open source licenses implement this hack.

• In its strongest form, the “copyleft” idea can place a condition on the licensing of all the other code compiled together to make the eventual binary executable program. Complying with this requirement can prevent use of business models that deny software freedom to the end user; as a consequence, many commercial software developers avoid the strongest forms of copyleft licensing.

• There are less stringent forms of copyleft. Licenses like the MPL (Mozilla Public License) only require individual files that are modified to be licensed under the same license as the original and don’t extend that requirement to other files used to build the executable. The Eclipse Public License (EPL) has a copyleft provision that’s triggered by distribution of the source code. These scope-restricted variants are all described as “weak copyleft.”

• In discussing these licensing approaches with clients, I’ve often found that these terms “strong copyleft” and “weak copyleft” lead to misunderstandings. In particular, developers can incorrectly apply the compliance steps applicable to one “weak” license to code under another license, believing that all such licenses are the same. As a consequence, I prefer to use different terms.

• Read the full license, and if you find yourself thinking, “That sounds impossible to enforce,” you aren’t alone. To me, the Fair Source License looks like another one of the many attempts I’ve seen to come up with something that looks like a free or open source license, but really isn’t.

• Hello, friends!

• You might have noticed that I haven’t been present on the list or perhaps answered your direct email in several months. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long without a word, but I’m not coming back any time soon. There’s no big news with me. I’ve just found that I’ve drifted away and today I’m acknowledging what’s already happened.

• This summer marks 30 years since I began writing the GNU C Library. (That’s two thirds of my lifespan so far.) It’s long enough.

• Glibc has added a per-thread cache to malloc and enabled it by default.

• The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) now has support for the ARMv8-R architecture.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• The fish in the tank and the plants in the garden above them rely on one another to flourish. The fish produce waste, microorganisms in the water convert the waste to fertilizer, and the plants drink up the fertilizer, cleaning the tank in the process. “Think about it—fish and plants can harmoniously coexist in the same ecosystem,” the Aquapioneers website reads. “So why not put those fish to good use?”

Programming/Development

• GitHub has announced a new feature that makes it easier to identify which people need to review changes that have been made to code in a repository.

• Using code owners, you can define specific teams or individuals that are responsible for a piece of code so that when you make a pull request the relevant people are informed automatically.

Leftovers

• If you’ve ever been skeptical about whether carpool policies actually work, Indonesia would like to have a word with you. Jakarta, one of the biggest metropolitan areas on Earth, had a carpool policy that seemed to be particularly susceptible to abuse. Abruptly, in March 2016, the Jakarta government announced that the policy would end in a week.

• This gave a group of economists at Harvard and MIT just enough time to collect traffic data before the policy ended and compare it to the aftermath. What they found wasn’t pretty: that unpopular carpool policy was making a big difference to traffic, which got even nastier after the policy ended.

Science

• Hobby Lobby, the US crafts supply company known for its pro-Christian branding, apparently has a side interest in smuggling rare archaeological artifacts.

Health/Nutrition

• Tuberculosis is still a deadly killer, and a new report by two humanitarian organisations raises alarm on poor progress on the disease diagnosis and treatment. The report calls for governments to increase efforts to fight the disease, and for the G20 countries to mobilise funds to help, in particular to boost research and development for new treatments. Separately, the World Health Organization issued a call for new treatments to fight antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea.

Security

• The implant for Windows is called BothanSpy and targets versions 3,4 and 5 of the SSH client Xshell. It dates back to 2015. The Linux implant is known as Gyrfalcon and is aimed at OpenSSH; it dates back to 2013.

• The leaked documentation for the tools was updated as recently as March 2015, and the file relating to BothanSpy reveals that XShell needs to be installed as it itself installs as a Shellterm extension. There are smatterings of humor throughout the file, with a warning that: “It does not destroy the Death Star, nor does it detect traps laid by The Emperor to destroy Rebel fleets.” There is also the introductory quip: “Many Bothan spies will die to bring you this information, remember their sacrifice.”

• By operating under their policy of terminating customer relations upon distribution of their GPL-licensed software, Open Source Security Inc., the owner of Grsecurity, creates an expectation that the customer’s business will be damaged by losing access to support and later versions of the product, if that customer exercises their re-distribution right under the GPL license. This is tantamount to the addition of a term to the GPL prohibiting distribution or creating a penalty for distribution. GPL section 6 specifically prohibits any addition of terms. Thus, the GPL license, which allows Grsecurity to create its derivative work of the Linux kern

• The UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has published the Global Cybersecurity Index 2017 (GCI-2017). The GCI-2017, the second in this index series, measures the commitments of the 193 member states of the ITU to cybersecurity and helps the member states to identify areas for improvement, according to a press release.

• The index indicates the improvement and strengthening of all GCI indicators, which are legal, technical, organizational, capacity building an international cooperation, the press release states. There is space for further improvement in cooperation at all levels, capacity building and organisational measures, according to the GCI-2017.

Defence/Aggression

• Though Trump breaks the mould in some ways, his shock tactics do follow a script, and one that is familiar from other countries that have had rapid changes imposed under the cover of crisis.

• “Ridicule is not enough” to defeat the US President, said the renowned academic, who called for direct activism to combat the Republican administration’s policies.

• The linguist and political philosopher identified Mr Trump’s stance on global warming and nuclear weapons as the two biggest threats posed by his presidency.

• Of course, ridicule is not enough. It’s necessary to address the concerns and beliefs of those who are taken in by the fraud, or who don’t recognize the nature and significance of the issues for other reasons. If by philosophy we mean reasoned and thoughtful analysis, then it can address the moment, though not by confronting the “alternative facts” but by analyzing and clarifying what is at stake, whatever the issue is. Beyond that, what is needed is action: urgent and dedicated, in the many ways that are open to us.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• The truth is that when lawsuits settle, they merely require agencies to meet existing legal requirements to protect things like the air we breathe, the water we drink and the wildlife we value. And that means industries can’t pollute as they see fit — which often leaves polluters, and polluter cheerleaders like Pruitt, crying foul.

• The Prime Minister has been accused of a “dereliction of duty” after revealing that climate change has been excluded from her top priorities at this weekend’s G20 summit.

• In an address on Thursday, France’s environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, said that the country would aim to phase out electricity from coal-fired plants by 2022 and end the sale of gas and diesel internal combustion cars by 2040.

• Nicolas Hulot, the country’s new ecology minister, said: “We are announcing an end to the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040.” Hulot added that the move was a “veritable revolution”.

• France is considering banning the sale of all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040, the country’s environmental minister said Thursday, according to multiple reports. It’s unclear, however, whether this proposal is an official position of French President Emmanuel Macron’s new government, and if so, how it will be implemented. But it’s a sign of France’s desire to be a leader in sustainable energy after the departure of the US from the Paris climate accord.

Finance

• The news comes after more than a year of financial turmoil at the company, which led to deteriorating customer service, dwindling inventory, and key executive departures — all as the company entered into a legal battle with rival Fitbit.

• Jawbone, the consumer electronics firm once valued at $3 billion, is going out of business. The company has begun liquidation proceedings, after years of financial pressures, according to a person close to Jawbone.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The implications of his resignation show how hard it is to stop potential ethics violations made by Trump and his administration. “This resignation is yet another indication of how badly Mr. Trump has been violating the Constitution and failing in his oath to uphold it,” explains Corey Brettschneider, a professor of political science at Brown University. “[Shaub] cannot do his job with a president in office who blatantly violates the Emoluments Clause and its requirement that a president not personally benefit from his office. By refusing to put his assets in a blind trust, Trump is trampling on our founding document. He is ignoring its requirement that a president not use the nation’s highest office for profit.”

• The controversies over trade and climate, as well as the topics of the anti-terror fight and security policy in foreign policy, are expected to consume most of the attention of the G20 heads of states during their two-day meeting. Much nervousness also has built up over meetings between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• The Prime Minister has been accused of a “dereliction of duty” after revealing that climate change has been excluded from her top priorities at this weekend’s G20 summit.

• Theresa May left it off her list of key objectives despite the issue likely becoming the central task of the meeting of world leaders, following Donald Trump’s decision to quit the Paris Agreement on climate change.

• The summit in Hamburg will see the Prime Minister meet Mr Trump one-on-one for the first time since he caused outrage by announcing the US would not implement the agreement as it stands.

Censorship/Free Speech

• RTHK is crying foul after TVB abruptly pulled an episode of its Headliner satire show that included sarcastic comments about visiting president Xi Jinping and references to terminally ill dissident Liu Xiaobo. While there probably was an element of self-censorship, Headliner lost its relevance a long time ago

• Ministers have been accused of using Gardai as their personal police, in the Dáil chamber this afternoon.

• It follows the detention of a blogger while travelling through Dublin Airport last week.

• The blogger was cautioned over a blog post questioning the personal business dealings of the Social Protection minister, Regina Doherty.

• The NHS Norfolk Action Group (NAG) was holding Marion Macalpine’s exhibition ‘How Come We Didn’t Know?’ at the Forum, Norwich, as part of their anniversary celebrations for the health service.

• But yesterday, Thursday, they were asked to take it down because it was deemed “too political”, according to some members.

• Jan McLachlan, from the NAG, said: “NHS NAG are shocked by the fact we have been asked to dismantle the ‘How Come We Didn’t Know?’ exhibition.

• “The exhibition comprises of photographs of some of the buildings occupied by corporations who now own parts of the NHS.

• Activist Joshua Wong’s party say they are disappointed that the leadership of the Asia Society has failed to take remedial measures, after Wong was rejected from speaking at an event at its Hong Kong centre.

• Freedom of expression NGO PEN Hong Kong planned to host a book launch at the Asia Society’s Hong Kong centre. However, they were told that Wong – one of the book’s authors – would not be allowed to speak. The organisation then switched the event to the Foreign Correspondents Club in Central.

• Asia Society’s New York headquarters said in a statement on Friday that “it is clear that an error in judgement at the staff level was made involving the PEN Hong Kong event.”

• Not long ago, the reputable Denmark-based international watchdog Freemuse, which monitors the freedom of artistic expression around the globe, published its annual report, titled “Art under threat”. One of the highlighted pieces from the report stated that “Ukraine in 2016 topped the list as the worst country to practise censorship, with 557 registered acts of censorship”.

• If I had not lived in Ukraine for some sixty odd years and not learnt what real censorship meant since the early 1970s – being expelled from university for unauthorised publications and barred from any subsequent study or decent job – I probably would have bought the news at face value. Especially if I happened to read elsewhere that Ukraine is run by a fascist junta, which usurped power after a coup d’etat and eviction of a “democratically elected president”. And moreover, that the Russian-speaking minority is oppressed and terrorised and disobedient journalists are systematically killed, harassed and persecuted.

Privacy/Surveillance

• A federal judge in California has decided to allow Twitter’s lawsuit against the attorney general’s office to go forward. She rejected arguments that the social media giant should not be allowed to be precise in its transparency reports when describing how it responds to the government’s requests for user data.

• Twitter has argued that, just as it has been precise in other areas of its transparency report, so too should it be allowed to say precisely how many national security orders it has received from American authorities. For now, under federal law, it is only allowed to describe those numbers in vague ranges, such as “0 to 499,” and “500 to 999,” and so forth. Lawyers for Twitter say that this law constitutes a violation of the company’s First Amendment rights and is “prior restraint,” a concept of blocking legitimate speech before it is uttered.

• Two of the recurrent themes here on Techdirt recently are China’s ever-widening surveillance of its citizens, and the rise of increasingly powerful facial recognition systems. Those two areas are brought together in a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal that explores China’s plans to roll out facial recognition systems on a massive scale. That’s made a lot easier by the pre-existing centralized image database of citizens, all of whom must have a government-issued photo ID by the age of 16, together with billions more photos found on social networks, to which the Chinese government presumably has ready access.

• Privacy International has filed a federal lawsuit in which it asks that the Five Eyes alliance coughs up records relating to the 1946 post-war agreement that set it up.

• Let’s Encrypt, the free and open certificate authority (CA) launched as a public service by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), says it will begin providing free “wildcard” certificates for Internet domains in January 2018. Wildcard certificates allow anyone operating a domain to link a single certificate to multiple subdomains and host names within a domain. That means a single free certificate could be used to provide HTTP Secure (HTTPS) encryption of pages on multiple servers or subdomains hosted on a single server, significantly lowering the barrier for adoption of HTTPS on personal and small business websites.

• One of the most important skills any computer user should have is the ability to use a virtual private network (VPN) to protect their privacy. A VPN is typically a paid service that keeps your web browsing secure and private over public Wi-Fi hotspots. VPNs can also get past regional restrictions for video- and music-streaming sites and help you evade government censorship restrictions—though that last one is especially tricky.

• This is not to argue against population-wide whole-genome sequencing, or to suggest that health institutions should never work with companies like Google. But the fact that this week alone saw the announcement of the UK’s major genomics project, the news that DeepMind is already talking about getting involved in the analysis of data that will be generated, and the discovery that the sensitive medical details of any Australian citizen can be be bought online, underlines the extremely rapid pace of developments in this sector. It also makes clear the pressing need for an informed public debate about mass genome sequencing and privacy in the age of Google.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Police have deployed water cannons and pepper spray against thousands protesting the Group of 20 summit in Germany’s second-largest city, breaking up the march after some demonstrators tossed projectiles and refused to take off their masks.

• The appeals court reverses the lower court’s decision. The government will have to do something it explicitly tries to avoid by using civil asset forfeiture rather than criminal asset forfeiture: taking a case to trial and actually having to provide more definitive evidence than “the dog said it smelled like drugs.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• For a while now we’ve noted that it’s actually the youngest among us that are leading the cord cutting revolution. Viacom has watched channels like Nickelodeon experience a ratings free fall for several years now as streaming alternatives have emerged as a useful alternative to strictly-scheduled, commercial-bloated Saturday morning cartoons. Toddlers don’t really care if they’re watching the latest and greatest “True Detective” episode or not, and parents, like everybody else, are tired of paying for bloated cable bundles filled with channels they never watch.

• Thousands of websites plan massive online protest for July 12th. Other participants include Amazon, Reddit, Netflix, OK Cupid, Mozilla, Etsy, Kickstarter, Vimeo, and PornHub

• The letter has been signed by major names in the YouTube community, such as the Fine Brothers. In total, the guild says, the letter represents video creators with an audience of more than 150 million people.

• Consumer watchdog finds 60% of consumers have had issues with service in past six months and more than 75% of NBN customers have had problems

• On Monday, July 3rd, as I sat in the living room of a house just a bit north of New York City, I pushed the last writing and editing changes to CSS: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition and notified the production department at O’Reilly that it was ready.

• All twenty chapters, three appendices, and associated front matter are now in their hands.

Intellectual Monopolies

• The US State Department wants to team up with other government agencies and Hollywood in a bid to create a “fake Twitter feud” about the importance of intellectual property rights. As part of this charade, the State Department’s Bureau of Economic Affairs says it has been seeking the participation of the US Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and “others.”

Trademarks

• It’s frankly sort of ridiculous, but the state of trademark protectionism that exists today has rendered the trademarking of a person’s own last name somewhat unwise. Given the low bar that has unfortunately been set in terms of judging real or potential customer confusion in the marketplace, simply using one’s own name for a commercial brand rife with danger where trademarks are concerned. Something of an example of this is currently taking place between a small New York clothing designer named Thaddeus O’Neil and famed surf wear manufacturer O’Neill. The latter has been blocking a trademark application by O’Neil for over a year now.

Copyrights

• The European Parliament today with over 600 votes adopted the legal instruments to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty on access to reading material for the visually impaired. The treaty, adopted by the members of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2013 and effective since last year, has been subject of controversies due to lobbying from publishers in the European Union, members of Parliament said today in Strasbourg before the vote. EU member states after today’s vote have one year to implement.

• Google has just reached a new landmark after removing 2.5 billion ‘pirate’ URLs from its search results. The staggering number is the result of increased efforts from copyright holders to remove links to copyright infringing material from the web. Despite this massive takedown effort by Google, not all rightsholders are pleased.

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