● 07.18.17

● Links 18/7/2017: Sparky 5.0, Krita 3.2 Beta, Mageia 6, Slackware Turns 24

Posted in News Roundup at 7:48 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Linux 4.13 is under way. Linus Torvalds pulled one of his semi-surprises by announcing release candidate one on Saturday, rather than issuing his usual Sunday evening missive.

• The headline features of the next kernel include support for Intel’s forthcoming 10nm Cannonlake CPUs, due later this year, and the 14nm Coffeelake that will precede it, tweaks to scale the EXT4 filesystem up to two billion entries if required and Xen enhancements that will enable the open source hypervisor to create machines with more than 32 virtual CPUs.

• Linus: “I no longer feel like I can trust ‘init’ to do the sane thing”

• In a discussion around rlimits being introduced for setuid exec’s, Linus makes the bold statement that he can no longer “trust init to do the right thing”, referring to systemd. Lots of interesting discussion around this on HackerNews.

Desktop

• Want a cheap Linux desktop? Look elsewhere. But, if you want a kick-rump-and-take-names desktop for serious graphics or development work, you want the Dell 5720 AIO workstation.

• This take-no-prisoners workstation starts at $1,699, but the model I looked at costs over $3,200. It’s worth it.

• This model came with a Quad Core 3.8Ghz Intel Xeon Processor E3-1275. In a word, it’s fast.

• It also comes with 64GB of 2133MHz DDR4 ECC RAM. That’s fast, too. The main memory is backed by a 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD and a pair of 1TB 2.5-inch SATA (7,200 RPM) hard drives. Yes, they’re really fast, too.

• I like minimalistic views. If I could run everything in a terminal I would. It’s free from shiny stuff that hogs my resources and distracts my feeble mind. I also grow tired of resizing and moving windows, never getting them to align perfectly.

• On my quest for minimalism, I grew fond of Xfce and used it as my main desktop environment for years on my Linux computers. Then, one day I came across a video of Bryan Lunduke talking about the awesome window manager he used called Awesome. It neatly arranges all of your windows for you, and so, sounded like just what I wanted. I tried it out but didn’t get the hang of the configuration needed to tweak it into my liking. So, I moved on and discovered xmonad, but I had a similar result. It worked fine but I couldn’t get around the Haskell part to really turn it into my perfect desktop.

Server

• Chances are good that you are already an administrator for some systems you own, and you do it for free because that’s just how it goes these days. But there are employers willing and eager to pay good money for someone to help administer their systems. We’re currently near zero unemployment in system and network administration, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects continued 9% growth in the field through 2024.

• What about automation, you ask. Perhaps you’ve heard sysadmins say how they intend to automate away their entire job, or how they automated their predecessor’s job in a single shell script. How many have you heard of that succeeding? When the job is automation, there is always more to automate.

• If you attend or watch videos of sysadmin conferences, you’ll see a field that needs new blood. Not only is there a distinct lack of younger people, but also fairly extreme gender and racial imbalances. While those are topics for a different article, diversity is well proven to improve resilience, problem-solving, innovation, and decision-making—things of great interest to sysadmins.

• We won’t belabor an attempt at explaining how quantum computing works (if you want to dig into this, see detailed discussions in Schatsky’s content on the Deloitte University site). Schatsky calls it “a fantastical” form of computing” that harnesses that “bizarre properties” of subatomic particles, as described by quantum mechanics, and in so doing “will be able to perform certain kinds of calculations exponentially faster than the fastest computers currently known.” At its core is the elimination of steps that a conventional computer goes through to complete a complex task.

Kernel Space

• On this day, 25 years ago, just as Source One was on it’s way to becoming a leading provider of strategic sourcing and cost reduction services, 386BSD – frequently known as “Jolix” – was officially released to the public. As one of the early operating systems, Jolix was responsible for determining basic computer functionality, but soon was overtaken in popularity by its competitor, Linux.

• A day early than initially expected, the development of the Linux 4.13 kernel was kicked off by Linus Torvalds himself with the first Release Candidate (RC) in the series.

• The merge window was opened during the past two weeks, since the launch of the Linux 4.12 kernel, which is now stable and ready for deployment, so Linus Torvalds decided to close it a day early to avoid late pull requests and push the first Release Candidate of Linux kernel 4.13 out the door for public testing, which seems to be quite huge, but it’s normal for this stage.

• Linus Torvalds took the wraps off the first Linux 4.13 kernel release candidate on Saturday, a day ahead of its expected release.

• The new release candidate (RC) comes a fortnight after the stable release of Linux 4.12, which was one of the biggest updates in the kernel’s 25 year history. That kernel also got its first update to 4.12.1 last week.

• There are many bug reports out there about issues with Dell’s TB15 and TB16 Thunderbolt docks under Linux, but at least some of those remaining issues should be cleared up by a pending fix.

• Frequent Phoronix readers may recall that for more than one year a new Linux Random Number Generator has been in-development and today marked the 12th version of these patches being released.

• This new random number generator, LRNG, aims to provide sufficient entropy during the boot time and in virtual environments as well as when using SSDs or DM targets. LRNG has been in development by Stephan Müller.

• Adding to the list of changes/features you will not find in Linux 4.13 is AMD’s Secure Memory Encryption as supported by the new EPYC processors.

• AMD has been posting Secure Memory Encryption patches for the Linux kernel going back to last year, but so far have not been merged to mainline. The code continues to be updated and published today was the tenth version of these patches.

Graphics Stack

• Intel’s Daniel Vetter has sent in a second batch of code updates of new feature work to be staged in DRM-Next for the eventual Linux 4.14 kernel cycle.

• For end-users this latest intel-drm-next code isn’t too exciting, but it does have more fixes around support for Intel’s next-generation Cannonlake hardware. Cannonlake is still months away from succeeding Kabylake, but should be exciting on the graphics side as it’s introducing “Gen 10″ graphics. Cannonlake details are still light, but stay tuned to Phoronix to learn more over the months ahead. The Intel Linux developers have been bringing up this next-gen hardware for months and with Linux 4.14 the support is being further readied.

• Earlier this month the VC5 open-source driver was announced as a new driver for Broadcom’s next-generation graphics processor. This has already led to speculation this much more powerful GPU will be found in future Raspberry Pi hardware. Work on this driver has continued while not forgetting about the VC4 driver for current-gen Raspberry Pi devices.

• While Intel’s Mesa-based open-source OpenGL Linux driver has been officially conformant since early 2017 and has enabled OpenGL 4.5 since last October, the Intel Windows OpenGL driver is finally catching up.

Benchmarks

• With Mesa 17.2 due to be branched by the end of the week and thus place this quarterly update to Mesa under a feature freeze, here are some fresh benchmarks of the AMD RadeonSI OpenGL driver on 17.2-dev compared to v17.1.4 stable as well as a few RADV Vulkan benchmarks too.

Applications

• UBports’ Marius Gripsgård has announced the availability of a new project titled Anbox – which will allow its users to run Android applications on top of their current Linux Distros.

• Tilix (previously called Terminix), is a GTK3 tiling terminal emulator with a focus on organizing multiple terminal windows while maintaining a beautiful and intuitive GUI; its windows can even be arranged horizontally and vertically via drag-n-drop.

• Because it follows the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines, you can be rest assured that its look will look consistent with whatever system fonts and themes you have running on your workstation.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Ballistic Overkill [Steam], one of the best online shooters on Linux has updated again and it now has better matchmaking, if you don’t want to manually pick a server.

• The strategy game in space with RPG elements will be getting a massively reworked edition that’ll be free for existing owners of the game.

• Creating a console that plays both retro games and more modern titles, even if they only turn out to be Android-based, is certainly a ballsy move given the failure of most microconsoles. The Mini NES succeeded, in part, due to its simplicity and cheap price, both of which would be difficult in a more capable console.

• Good news for MMORPG fans, as the in-development Dogma: Eternal Night [Official Site] seems to already have Linux builds available to test if you purchase a copy.

• I’ve been following it for a while, but I didn’t realize that they had already put out Linux versions. I only noticed due to this tweet popping up about the Linux client being updated. Turns out, it’s not the first time either.

• Albion Online [Official Site], a pretty interesting MMO is releasing today with full Linux support and we will be livestreaming for the occasion.

• Following on from the hints about Dark Forces getting the Linux version on Steam, it seems like STAR WARS: Rebel Assault I + II will also see their DOSBox wrapped versions have Linux support on Steam.

• Going by SteamDB again, this popped up which makes it seem like it’s finally going to be put on Steam for us.

• Battlevoid: Sector Siege, from the developer of Battlevoid: Harbinger [Official Site] has been announced and the developer said they will be planning a Linux version. It’s been in development for a while and it’s expected to release after the summer, but no clearer date given yet.

• Over half a year since release, the RPG from Obsidian has gotten several large patches with free content as well as DLC. I was interested in seeing what had changed and how the game stacked up through multiple playthroughs. Here are my updated thoughts after playing many hours more with the DLC.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• This is a short public service announcement: KWin master as of today requires a compiler which supports C++14. This means at least gcc 5 or clang 3.4. All major distributions support at least one of the two.

• Version 3.2 of the popular Krita digital painting program has a variety of bug-fixes and some new features.

• We’re releasing the first beta for Krita 3.2.0 today! Compared to Krita 3.1.4, released 26th of May, there are numerous bug fixes and some very cool new features. Please test this release, so we can fix bugs before the final release!

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Dash to Dock is a GNOME extension dock for the Gnome Shell that turns the dash from the app overview into a dock; enabling users to launch and switch between application windows and desktops a lot faster.

• This extension is particularly useful for Linux users who enjoying customizing virtually every aspect of their desktop. You can decide to display app badges; transition through open app windows using the mouse scrollbar; peek at live window previews using custom keyboard shortcuts; hide favorites from the panel; and show the dock menu on as many monitors that are connected, among other customization options.

• Are you learning to speak different language using Duolingo, the freemium language-learning platform? If so, you may want to check out this free GNOME Extension.

• Subclassing a GtkDrawingArea and drawing a circle, I was trying to run a skeleton-like custom widget code, all I could see was an empty window. Took me to some to ‘realize’ my mistake (I had left the overrided realize callback empty). I was so happy when I managed to draw this circle in cairo

Distributions

Reviews

• Fedora 26 is a great release of one of the major Linux distributions. Yes, the differences between Fedora 26′s and Fedora 25′s Workstation variants are minimal, but the few changes that are there are solid reasons to upgrade. For users interested in different desktop environments, Fedora’s various spins provide a solid Fedora core experience with different desktop environments on top. The LXQt spin in particular is an interesting new addition to the Fedora family and is worth checking out. Though, the real star of this release is the Python Classroom Lab, which is a wonderful way to provide a Python programming environment for classrooms. Even when running off live media, it is very functional, making it a great way to temporarily turn a few general purpose computers into a lab for teaching programming without a lot of work.

• If the worst thing I can say is that Fedora 26 is boring, I think the developers have done a great job. I really look forward to the next few releases of Fedora, which should be much more interesting, assuming planned developments actually make it into the releases.

• We want a nice looking distro, don’t we? We want a distro that does the best work when it comes to stability. Don’t we? Here we come across NeptuneOS, a Linux distro based on Debian with KDE desktop environment. As we all know when it comes to stability, there are a lot of fewer distros that can match Debian. Also being based on Debian, the number of compatible software increase a lot.

• SharkLinux OS is a cool display of innovation and design. The developer boasts that he never used a physical keyboard in making his distro. Petit developed it exclusively in a cloud environment accessed from his Samsung Galaxy Android smartphone.

• Even if you do not have a big commitment to cloud services, SharkLinux OS offers an excellent computing platform for everyday tasks. It is an easy rival to other Linux distros.

• Instead of versioning its releases, SharkLinux offers a base system that you can upgrade or convert. The base includes primarily standard Ubuntu releases with all upstream software being offered by way of optional installs and upgrades.

New Releases

• 4MLinux creator and lead developer Zbigniew Konojacki informs us today about the availability of the first bug fix release of his TheSSS 22 server-oriented GNU/Linux operating system.

• After LinuxLite users, now SparkyLinux users can install the newest Linux 4.12 kernel series on their computers, as the development team behind the Debian-based distro was pleased to announce the availability of Linux 4.12 in the “unstable” repo.

• SparkyLinux appears to be the fourth GNU/Linux distribution to offer the Linux 4.12 kernel in their repositories, after Linux Lite, Arch Linux, and Ubuntu, though users will have to enable the “unstable” repository following the instructions provided at https://sparkylinux.org/wiki/doku.php/repository to upgrade their kernels.

• Sparky “Home” edition provides fully featured operating system with lightweight desktops: LXQt, MATE and Xfce.

• As usually, Sparky MinimalGUI (Openbox) and MinimalCLI (text based) lets you install the base system with a minimal set of applications and a desktop of your choice, via the Sparky Advanced Installer.

• There are a lot of Linux-based operating systems in the wild, and I suggest trying as many as you can. Think of it like fruit — apples are great, but you shouldn’t stop after just tasting it. The world is full of different choices, such as mangoes, bananas, and oranges. The more you try, the more your knowledge expands. The same can be said of Linux — even if you really like, say, Ubuntu, you should also test Fedora, Mageia, and more. Expand your mind!

• Today, yet another distro hits a major milestone; SparkyLinux achieves version 5.0. Called “Nibiru,” it is a rolling release operating system that is based on the popular Debian (using modern testing repos). It aims to be lightweight, with choices of three desktop environments that are easy on resources — LXQt, MATE, and Xfce. In other words, Sparky can breathe new life into aging computers. If you have meager hardware, you should definitely give it a look.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

• The whole Mageia community is extremely happy to announce the release of Mageia 6, the shiny result of our longest release cycle so far! It comes with many new and exciting features, a new range of installation media and the usability and stability that can be expected from any Mageia release. See the Release Notes for extensive details.

• Though Mageia 6’s development was much longer than anticipated, we took the time to polish it and ensure that it will be our greatest release so far. We thank our community for their patience, and also our packagers and QA team who provided an extended support for Mageia 5 far beyond the initial schedule.

• If you are dissatisfied with Windows 10, there is no shortage of Linux-based operating systems to install as an alternative. In fact, some people — including yours truly — think there are too many distros, but I digress. While Ubuntu is always a fine choice, it is not the only game in town. If you are interested in becoming a Linux desktop user, you shouldn’t be scared of exploring different options.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is now available as the operating system for SAP solutions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Slackware Family

• Today marks 24 years since the original release of Slackware, which continues to be led by Patrick Volkerding. Slackware releases are much more infrequent these days with the last official release being Slackware 14.2 from June of last year and before that was Slackware 14.1 in 2013. But development on Slackware does continue and its rolling-release code is currently on the Linux 4.9 LTS kernel and has many new packages compared to the v14.2 release.

Red Hat Family

• Lennart Poettering, creator of PulseAudio, Avahi, systemd, and currently a Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, stopped by the Linux Technologies Meetup on July 13th to give a debut talk about his new project, casync. casync is an instrument used for efficient image synchronization for IoT, containers, VMs and backups.

• Fedora has been involved in this particular event since its first festival in 2009 and has continued to be a vital part of the event through 2017. The event is the only large scale Linux and open source festival for the South Eastern United States. Even though there is a large number of Linux Users Groups throughout the south this is the only event that draws various communities together in celebration of Linux and Open Source Software. There was a similar event in Orlando Florida in 2015 called FOSSETCON, but the event coordinator announced that the event would occur every two years vice annually. Hopefully the event did not come apart for the fall this year as it normally is scheduled. Most of the Ambassadors arrived on Thursday 8 June the night prior to the event commencement.

• According to Sanjay Bhatia, Vice President of Solutions Marketing and Strategy, GENBAND: “Red Hat is a leader in the delivery of OpenStack for NFV environments, so we are delighted to be a part of their ecosystem and confident that our VNF solutions will be an integral part of our success moving forward. We are already actively engaged in strategic projects at multiple large service providers and are looking forward to helping bring about increased network agility through certified solutions.”

Finance

Fedora

• If you’re already using Fedora, you can upgrade from the command line or use GNOME Software — upgrade instructions here. We’ve put a lot of work into making upgrades easy and fast. In most cases, this will take half an hour or so, bringing you right back to a working system with no hassle

• The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) on Friday approved a number of the early change proposals for Fedora 27.

• This week I’ve been working on transitioning my main production workstation to Fedora 26, but I had a really tough time this cycle deciding which graphics card to use, even with having dozens at my disposal.

• For this most-main system of mine, whenever upgrading Fedora I end up installing it to a new SSD out of habit for data integrity and keeping around the old backup before eventually wiping it and using that old drive in one of the benchmarking systems. This time around I decided to just assemble a new system out of spare parts as part of my upgrade to Fedora 26. I went with the Ryzen 5 processor so I had to decide which graphics card to use… The past few of my main production systems have just been all-Intel with integrated graphics, which work fine for my purposes.

• Another awesome Fedora Release Party in Novi Sad! Thank you all who came to hang out and hear what is new in Fedora 26.

Debian Family

Derivatives

• The developers of the Debian-based SolydXK GNU/Linux distribution announced today the release and immediate availability for download of the SolydXK 9 operating system series.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• We’re mid-way through the Ubuntu Artful development cycle, with the 17.10 release rapidly approaching on the horizon. Now is a great time to start exercising the new GNOME goodness that’s landed on our recent daily images! Please download the ISO, test it out on your own hardware, and file bugs where appropriate.

• Could Ubuntu have had an impact on the versioning and naming conventions of other software projects, including Windows, Android and more?

• Reader Abu A. pinged us earlier today to share this interesting insight he has on Ubuntu’s contributions to the wider software community.

• I don’t consider myself to be psychic and yet, somehow, miraculously, I happen to know what you’re going to be doing later.

• You’re going to help test the Ubuntu 17.10 daily builds on real hardware to uncover unwanted behaviour in user-facing features.

• Canonical’s Alan Pope invites the Ubuntu community today to download and test out the latest daily build ISO images of the upcoming Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system to report if things are working correctly or not on their PCs.

• UBports announced today on Twitter that they managed to successfully run their modification of Canonical’s deprecated Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system on the Nexus 5 smartphone.

Flavours and Variants

• Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon Edition has been released and announced by Linux Mint project, include the latest Cinnamon 3.4 as default desktop environment. Cinnamon 3.4 is the largest and most important part of the Linux Mint 18.2 release. It includes loads of improvements, new features and bug fixes, both to the desktop itself and to the Cinnamon Spices add-ons.

• This article is a simple list for interesting Cinnamon applets. You see here how to install applet, and then CPU Temperature Indicator, Pomodoro, Internet Search Engine, Net speed indicator, Record Desktop (screencaster, like Kazam), Sticky Notes, and Stopwatch. I hope this list helps you find your needs and ease your daily life.

• Endless OS, the user-friendly, powerful, easy-to-use, and fast Linux-based operating system that comes preloaded with over 100 applications and tools, some of which work offline, has been updated to version 3.2.

• Let us a-go distro-testing! Today, we focus on Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya, freshly released with a nice sprinkling of Cinnamon on the proverbial distro pudding. For years, this was one of the best performing distributions, offering a complete experience to the Linux user. Lately though, the experience has been slightly less amazing. Serena was just ok.

• But then, this spring testing season – slowly moving into the summer, cue Vivaldi music – has been pretty good overall. The Ubuntu flock seems to be behaving reasonably, with the Flagship Ubuntu and in particular the KDE-flavored Kubuntu offering a splendid revival of hope and quality. Armed with this foreknowledge, we commence.

Devices/Embedded

• Building robots is a challenging task, even for Husarion, a robotic company known for creating a rapid development platform for robots called CORE2-ROS, which, in combination with the popular Ubuntu OS, makes robot development easy and fun.

• Husarion’s Dominik Nowak explains in a recent blog article how CORE2, the company’s second generation robotics controller, and their cloud platform that helps them manage all CORE2-based robots assists those interested in creating robots, using only an SBC (single-board computer) like Raspberry Pi with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed and a real-time microcontroller board.

• “Building robots is a challenging task that the Husarion team is trying to make easier,” said Dominik Nowak, CEO at Husarion. “CORE2 combines a real-time microcontroller board and a single board computer running Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution not only for desktops but also for embedded hardware in IoT & robotics applications.”

• If you’re flying a drone in a public place like a park, you’re going to get some looks. While consumer drones are becoming more widely available and more popular, they’re still novel to most consumers. Until recently, most drones were too big and conspicuous to comfortably take anywhere, not to mention the hundreds to thousands of dollars you’d have to spend to get one.

• PAI’s “Sandman Doppler” is an Alexa-enabled smart alarm clock and music streamer that runs Linux on the Chip Pro COM, and offers 6x USB charging ports.

• Palo Alto Innovation (PAI) had a troubled first-time Kickstarter launch with its original Sandman Clock, but the company fulfilled all its orders and moved on to a next generation model, the Sandman Doppler. This larger, more capable digital alarm clock and smart speaker adds Amazon Alexa voice controls, dual speakers, and two more USB charging ports, among other features. The Linux-driven device is built on the Next Thing’s open spec Chip Pro module, and lets you hack the COM via its micro-USB port (see farther below).

• The inspiration for this post (and this project) came from something that I recently read in the Raspberry Pi blog. I would like to start out by saying if you are interested in computers, programming, DIY electronics, space exploration, or just technology in general, you are very likely to find the Raspberry Pi blog interesting and entertaining.

• Google Wifi came out last year to join the increasingly competitive mesh router market. It has a competitive price compared to the competition, and we found the performance to be solid. It might be nice if it had a few more features, though, right? That’s where the GaleForce project comes in. You can use GaleForce to tweak your Google Wifi and gain root access, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

• Google Wifi is based on Chrome OS, but many of the config files and blobs for the device (code name Gale) are not in the open source code. So, you can’t just build Chrome OS from source and run it on Google Wifi. GaleForce modifies the system, keeping the device’s router capabilities intact and also allows you to make deeper changes. Want to set up a built-in VPN? Done. Change the gateway IP? Also doable.

• There’s an open-source project on GitHub called GaleForce which allows you to customize your Google Wifi router, as spotted by Android Police. Under the hood, Google Wifi is running a version of Chrome OS Linux. GaleForce (Google Wifi’s hardware codename is “Gale”) lets you run a VPN server, customize your gateway IP address, or do any other system admin sort of thing that Linux makes possible.

Tizen

Android

• Remix OS, the Android-x86 derived operating system for x86/ARM to run Android applications on PCs, is now being discontinued in its current form.

• The operating system has been in beta since last year but Jide, the company behind Remix OS, is now abandoning it in favor of an enterprise focus.

• The “VIA ALTA DS 4K” signage computer runs Android 5.1.1 on a Zhaoxin ZX-2000 SoC, and offers dual Ethernet ports and support for simultaneous 4K and HD.

• VIA Technologies has been active in the Android digital signage market for years, with products such as its VAB-630 SBC. While that product tapped a homegrown dual-core, Cortex-A9 SoC, the new VIA ALTA DS 4K signage computer instead runs a customized Android 5.1.1 image on a quad-core, 1.4GHz Cortex-A17 ZX-2000 (translated) from Zhaoxin.

• Despite plenty of hype and potential around it, today brings word that Remix OS is discontinued.

• This desktop-orientated version of Android was designed to be used like a regular desktop OS and could be freely installed on Intel PCs and Macs. A variety of conventional desktop features were plumped in to make the OS more “desktop friendly”, including a task bar, a start menu, a system tray, and the ability to run multiple Android apps in resizable windows.

• Remix OS for PC, which is based on the work of the Android x86 project, also boasts full local installation, UEFI support, and (until now) OTA updates.

• But it seems the project won’t migrate out of beta.

Free Software/Open Source

• The head of Nokia’s software business is very much a believer in open source, which might come as a surprise to some considering the telecom vendor’s deep ties to proprietary software.

• Of course, “open source does not mean free,” said Bhaskar Gorti, president of Applications & Analytics at Nokia. “Open source, in fact, if anything, is a great opportunity for us to increase our R&D velocity.”

• Many open source components exist in the world—but most of them have been built for a generic IT environment, not a telco grade, and that’s what a lot of people are looking to get from Nokia. VMware and Red Hat are among its partners.

• Artificial intelligence is now powering a growing number of computing functions, and today the developer community today is getting another AI boost, courtesy of Yandex. Today, the Russian search giant — which, like its US counterpart Google, has extended into a myriad of other business lines, from mobile to maps and more — announced the the launch of CatBoost, an open source machine learning library based on gradient boosting — the branch of ML that is specifically designed to help “teach” systems when you have a very sparse amount of data, and especially when the data may not all be sensorial (such as audio, text or imagery), but includes transactional or historical data, too.

• Besides providing a drastically different aesthetic experience from website to website, it can also help readers identify the brands they trust, and the news they can rely on. But in an online world overwhelmingly dominated by the English language, India’s many regional languages make up a miniscule part of the available content. So, their scripts rarely receive the kind of attention that the English script does.

• With a rising volume of data arising from mobile, social, cloud and IoT sources, the demand for real-time data integration solutions is growing worldwide and India is no different. Digital transformation is another interesting phenomenon that has made business prioritize the data-driven insights more than ever before.

• [...]

• The company projects itself as a next generation open source alternative to the incumbent proprietary solutions vendors such as Informatica, Oracle, SAP and IBM. It offers enterprises open source integration solutions that are either free to download and use under GPL or Apache open source licenses or subscription-based.

Events

• The event has grown and I felt a relaxed yet productive atmosphere when entering the venue. Just a few minutes after I arrived I hooked up with interesting people with even more interesting discussions. It was very nice to get together with all the Free Software friends I made over the last years. It was also pleasent to see the event becoming bigger and bigger. I take that as a sign that our community grows although it might also just be consolidation of events.

• Our local Linux community “LinuXatUNI = Fedora + GNOME” have received an invitation to do a talk regarding Linux security at the “THE MARINA OF WAR OF PERU”.

• It’s been three months since a group of students from different universities decided to learn more about GNU/Linux in a local community. This idea started while LinuXatUNI had been organized and powered by Fedora and the GNOME project.

Oracle

• ZFS should have been great, but I kind of hate it: ZFS seems to be trapped in the past, before it was sidelined it as the cool storage project of choice; it’s inflexible; it lacks modern flash integration; and it’s not directly supported by most operating systems. But I put all my valuable data on ZFS because it simply offers the best level of data protection in a small office/home office (SOHO) environment. Here’s why.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

BSD

• The first point release of the FreeBSD 11 operating system is about to be unleashed very soon as developer Glen Barber just announced the release of the third RC development milestone.

• FreeBSD 11.1 was in development for only a month, during which it received three Beta and three RC builds that users could download and test out on their personal computers to report bugs or any other issues. And now that the third RC is out, it looks like it might also be the last one for this cycle.

• For more than two and a half years now, OPNsense is driving innovation through modularising and hardening the open source firewall, with simple and reliable firmware upgrades, multi-language support, HardenedBSD security, fast adoption of upstream software updates as well as clear and stable 2-Clause BSD licensing.

• A little overview: In this post I will give you some background information, compare the appearance / usability of both products and then take a look at some special features before giving a conclusion.

• All iXsystems arrays run the OpenZFS file system with at-rest data encryption, inline compression and deduplication, replication and delta-based snapshots.

• this is *paused* migrations, not live migrations.

• This morning IBM announced the z14 mainframe that is much faster than its predecessors and offers full encryption capabilities.

• The z14 reportedly offers 10% greater performance-per-core over the z13 series and around 30% greater performance overall than this previous series. The z14 CPU also has new instructions, including for SIMD, and offers much greater encryption performance and potential.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• For those curious about the GCC versus LLVM Clang compilers with Intel’s new Core i9 7900X, earlier this month I had ran some compiler benchmarks on this high-end processor.

• I simply forgot to post these GCC vs. Clang i9-7900X benchmark results earlier, but here they are for those interested. The tests were done with the performance-oriented Clear Linux distribution.

• Given our recent articles of Glibc enabling a per-thread cache for malloc and Fedora 27 will use glibc 2.26, you may be curious about some of the other features coming to this next version of the GNU C Library.

• Most people have never heard of the software that makes up the machinery of the internet. Outside developer circles, its authors receive little reward for their efforts, in terms of either money or public recognition.

• One example is the encryption software GNU Privacy Guard (also known as GnuPG and GPG), and its authors are regularly forced to fundraise to continue the project.

• GnuPG is part of the GNU collection of free and open source software, but its story is an interesting one, and it begins with software engineer Phil Zimmermann.

• We do not know exactly what Zimmermann felt on January 11, 1996, but relief is probably a good guess. The United States government had just ended its investigation into him and his encryption software, PGP or “Pretty Good Privacy”.

Licensing/Legal

• San Francisco, July 18 (IANS) US-based open-source community Apache Foundation has said it will not use Facebook’s ‘BSD-licensed’ code for any of its new software projects for legal reasons.

• The foundation banned the use of libraries, frameworks and tools covered by Facebook’s open-source ‘BSD-plus-Patents’ license in any new projects, The Register reported on Tuesday.

• “No new project, sub-project or codebase, which has not used Facebook’s ‘BSD-plus-Patents’ licensed jars are allowed to use them,” Chris Mattmann, Legal Affairs Director, Apache Foundation, was quoted as saying.

• The Apache Foundation has declared that none of its new software projects can include Facebook’s booby-trapped BSD-licensed code.

• The foundation’s legal affairs director, Chris Mattmann, said over the weekend that libraries, frameworks and tools covered by Facebook’s open-source-ish BSD-plus-Patents license should not be absorbed into any new projects.

• “No new project, sub-project or codebase, which has not used Facebook BSD+Patents licensed jars (or similar), are allowed to use them,” Mattmann wrote. “In other words, if you haven’t been using them, you aren’t allowed to start. It is Cat‑X.”

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Huntington’s disease is brutal in its simplicity. The disorder, which slowly bulldozes your ability to control your body, starts with just a single mutation, in the gene for huntingtin protein. That tweak tacks an unwelcome glob of glutamines—extra amino acids—onto the protein, turning it into a destroyer that attacks neurons.

Open Access/Content

• Openness should be the defining characteristic for collaboration in the 21st century, and the values and practices underlying successful business-university-government collaboration should be shot through with collaborative principles.

• The underlying platform is obvious: the internet, worldwide web, 5G, unlimited data, and artificial intelligence (AI) are meshing together at speed to create unprecedented capacity for openness. But there is a serious glitch in the technology, a persistent snag in the force, a cacophonous noise in the system. Namely, the creators of openness are habituated to closedness. They are tribal and insular creatures: they are us. And we must be overcome.

• Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is embarking on a new online venture that the rest of us can only hope succeeds: Creating a new business model for quality journalism.

• To counter the flood of digital fake news, Wales, whose founding of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia stands as one of the shining successes of the Internet era, has announced plans for a for-profit, crowdfunded news website offering stories by journalists and volunteers working together.

Open Hardware/Modding

• As the market for 3D printers has moved from sophisticated, experienced designers into the mass consumer market, individuals are saving substantial money with pre-designed, DIY products made on 3D printers. These opportunities are poised to increase due to the Free Open Source 3D Customizer, a libre, 3D model customizer that anyone can use to create their own 3D printed designs.

• To demonstrate how the software works and the possibilities that it creates, I’ll show how breast cancer survivors and others can use the Free Open Source 3D Customizer to design and produce 3D-printable external breast prosthetics.

• But first, a recent history lesson.

Programming/Development

• Herb Sutter has once again provided a nice recap of the latest ISO C++ standards meeting that just wrapped up in Toronto.

• The twelveth update in the 0.12.* series of Rcpp landed on CRAN this morning, following two days of testing at CRAN preceded by five full reverse-depends checks we did (and which are always logged in this GitHub repo). The Debian package has been built and uploaded; Windows and macOS binaries should follow at CRAN as usual. This 0.12.12 release follows the 0.12.0 release from late July, the 0.12.1 release in September, the 0.12.2 release in November, the 0.12.3 release in January, the 0.12.4 release in March, the 0.12.5 release in May, the 0.12.6 release in July, the 0.12.7 release in September, the 0.12.8 release in November, the 0.12.9 release in January, the 0.12.10.release in March, and the 0.12.11.release in May making it the sixteenth release at the steady and predictable bi-montly release frequency.

• When it comes to breaking into a career as a developer or adding a new coding language to your skillset, certain languages are easier to pick up than others, according to a new report from WP Engine.

• WP Engine surveyed 909 developers across the US. California, unsurprisingly, was home to the greatest percentage of programmers (14%), while states including Florida, New York, and Texas had a high volume of residential programmers. Nearly 70% of the programmers surveyed were men, and 30% were women.

• Application development methodologies have seen a lot of change in recent years. With the rise and adoption of microservice architectures, cloud computing, single-page applications, and responsive design to name a few, developers have many decisions to make, all while still keeping project timelines, user experience, and performance in mind. Nowhere is this more true than in front-end development and JavaScript.

• To help catch everyone up, we’ll take a brief look at the revolution in JavaScript development over the last few years. Next, we’ll look at the some of the challenges and opportunities facing the front-end development community. To wrap things up, and to help lead into the next parts of this series, we’ll preview the components of a fully modern front-end stack.

• Go, Google’s open source, concurrency-friendly programming language, has soared to new heights with developers, cracking the top 10 in the Tiobe index of language popularity for the first time.

• With an all-time high rating of 2.363 percent, Go ranks as the 10th most popular programming language in this month’s index, ahead of languages such as Perl, Swift, Ruby, and Visual Basic. The Tiobe Programming Community index assesses language popularity using a formula based on frequency of searches for the languages in popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Baidu, and Wikipedia.

Leftovers

• His low-budget body of work, which included ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ creeped out audiences for decades. George A. Romero, the legendary writer-director from Pittsburgh who made the 1968 cult classic Night of the Living Dead for $114,000, thus spawning an unrelenting parade of zombie movies and TV shows, has died. He was 77.

• Romero, who put out five other zombie movies after a copyright blunder cost him millions of dollars in profits on his wildly popular first one, died Sunday in his sleep after a battle with lung cancer according to a statement from Romero’s producing partner Peter Grunwald to the L.A. Times. Romero’s family confirmed his death to the Times as well.

• Saying “I’ll get to it soon” when someone recommends a new show, movie, or 15-book fantasy series has taken over as my number-one social white lie, pushing “Yeah, we totally should start a podcast” into second place. I’m never going to watch or read half the shit I want to, and I’m never getting to your recommendation. The reasons for this are mostly obvious. I’m older, I have more responsibilities, I don’t have as much free time as I once did — all true, to an extent. But the reasons I’m losing my former rigor mortis grip on pop culture go a lot deeper than that. The thing is, they didn’t start making themselves known until I cut movies, shows, and every other entertainment distraction out of my life in a desperate attempt to get to bed before dawn. Here’s what I learned by doing that …

• When teams in the same organization—or even across organizational boundaries—start to collaborate, they will most likely realize that not all of their goals align. The IT team, for instance, might not have the same criteria for success as the sales team. Different teams have different benchmarks, even if the teams are part of a larger organization (as in the case of relationships between a developer team and an operations team).

Science

• Scientists have turned shy, low-ranking mice into aggressive fighters who almost always win in dominance competitions. And they did it by stimulating a part of the mouse brain that controls “effortful” behavior.

• Finally, there’s the bottom layer, which consists of intentionally nefarious and sometimes outright illegal algorithms.

Hardware

• Rock deities Radiohead have snuck a program for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum into a re-release if their seminal 1997 album “OK Computer”.

• Dubbed “OKNOTOK”, the re-release can be had as £100/US$130/€120 boxed edition that includes three vinyl records, books galore and “a C90 cassette mix tape compiled by us, taken from OK COMPUTER session archives and demo tapes.”

• The Spectrum app resides – natch – on the C90 cassette, as that medium was the dominant way of storing Speccy programs and data. Accounts of the cassette’s track list suggest it opens with a track named “Zx sprectrum symphony” but that the application is listed as “Ok Computer Program” and is the last track on side B.

• Replacing your router (or firmware) almost always fixes your problem.

• Adding an additional router almost always makes things worse.

Health/Nutrition

• The New York Times is again spreading the absurd myth that House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans want a free market in healthcare. While it is very helpful to the Republicans to imply that they are trying to advance some grand principle, as opposed to just giving money to rich people, it is a lie on a par with climate denialism.

• There are no government-granted patent monopolies in a free market. As a result of these government-granted monopolies, we will pay more than $440 billion for prescription drugs this year. These drugs would likely cost less than $80 billion in a free market. The difference of more than $360 billion a year is a bit less than 2 percent of GDP, more than seven times as much money as is at stake in the Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts. (Those cuts cover a decade, this is a single-year figure.)

• The same story applies to medical equipment. MRIs are cheap without patent protection.

• The German Federal Supreme Court in a decision drawing significant attention on 11 July upheld a temporary compulsory licence granted for the HIV drug Isentress (X ZB 2/17). The antiretroviral drug, based on raltegravir, has been the object of a prolonged court fight between Japanese drug company Shionogi and its US competitor Merck.

• Merck since 2008 sells Isentress on the German market. It is used for treatments of HIV patients to reduce the amount the virus cells in the body, while increasing the number of CD4 (T) cells.

• A new study by the World Health Organization finds that most countries will have the technological and the financial ability to reach universal health coverage in the next 13 years, according to authors.

• [...]

• The number of US$274 billion a year is described as a “progress scenario,” while an “ambitious” scenario in which health system targets are reached would cost US$371 billion, according to the study. That ambitious scenario would save some 97 million lives and significantly increase life expectancy, it says.

Security

• To some, the terms ‘open source’ and ‘security’ may not exactly go hand in hand. Characterized by its transparent code—which means it’s highly accessible to anyone— as opposed to ‘closed’, proprietary systems, it’s no wonder that some still have the misperception that open source is the more vulnerable party. In an open source environment, companies as well as communities of sorts are able to access and contribute to the code. This often gives off the impression that because it is open, it must be fully exposed to risks and viruses.

• But today, open source is pervasive. The world as we know it is changing — technology is evolving faster today than it has at any other point in human history. And open source is the reason for that; it is the driving force behind many of today’s technology innovation that we see. Today’s enterprises simply cannot rely on a proprietary piece of source code to manage their increasing multitude of applications that are powering their critical business transactions.

• And with the rising adoption of this software, there has never been a better time to learn the truth about misconceptions of open source security.

• Ventura will this detail a more active approach to intrusion prevention – where defenders can use basic network software applications to look for threats and stop attacks – later this month in his Black Hat USA talk entitled “They’re Coming for Your Tools: Exploiting Design Flaws for Active Intrusion Prevention.”

• The latest State of the Software Supply Chain Report from DevOps tools specialist Sonatype reveals that organizations which actively manage the quality of open source components flowing into production applications realize a 28 percent improvement in developer productivity, a 30 percent reduction in overall development costs, and a 48 percent increase in application quality.

Defence/Aggression

• In Srebrenica the cowardice and bureaucratic blinkers of a group of Dutch officers were shameful. But Mosul is the equivalent of the Dutch having fought alongside the attackers then pretended not to notice anything at all was happening.

• There is also another great difference in western culpability. In the Balkan Wars the Serbs were the “enemy” of the West – NATO even bombed them – so justified mainstream media outrage was screamed at us. In Mosul, those perpetrating the massacre are on “our side”, so you will never hear much of it. The deliberate conflation of Sunni tribesmen defending their homes against their traditional enemy, with the separate forces of ISIS, aids this lie.

• The greater irony is of course that in Syria the UK and US forces are operating on the opposite side of the same conflict. There the Sunni jihadists, with precisely the same ideology and the same financing as ISIL and before Mosul was cut off sometimes the same physical people, are our allies. There is no distinction of the remotest importance in beliefs, funding or operational methods between the jihadists who were controlling Mosul and those who were controlling Eastern Aleppo.

• Yet, despite the glaringly obvious intellectual paucity of the position, the devastation of Mosul by western backed forces was described as a “liberation”, whereas the precisely analogous devastation of Eastern Aleppo by Syrian government forces was described as a… “devastation”.

• Still more astonishing, the Western media in co-ordinated fashion played up fears of a massacre in Eastern Aleppo, whereas in fact no massacre took place. In the event, so concerned were the Syrian government (of which I do not generally approve) to refute allegations of intended massacre, they allowed many of the actual jihadists to bus out to Raqqa, where they are fighting again today.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Nothing they said, however, was all that new. In fact, the Department of Defense has known about, and sometimes planned for, the security threats created by climate change for well over a decade.

• One person who appears to believe that the Russians are interested in stopping oil and gas extraction via fracking, in fact, is Hillary Clinton herself. In a private, paid speech delivered in Canada on June 18, 2014, the former secretary of state denounced “phony environmental groups” she claimed had been created by Russia to oppose fracking.

• On Friday evening, Bloomberg reported that it has seen an early draft of a study from the Department of Energy (DOE) concluding that renewable energy like wind and solar are not a threat to the reliability of the grid at present. The study was commissioned at the request of Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

• [...]

• The draft also apparently says that, even though baseload plants are being retired, that doesn’t translate to reliability issues. “The power system is more reliable today due to better planning, market discipline, and better operating rules and standards,” the draft allegedly says. “Grid operators are using technologies, standards and practices to assure that they can continue operating the grid reliably.”

Finance

• Another cause for concern is that FirstNet’s proposed solution comes with extremely limited transparency. From the beginning, Congress granted FirstNet with an exemption related to public scrutiny (major transparency rules 47 USC 1426(d)).

• [...]

• As transparency also begets accountability, it’s no surprise that today, after 15 years of planning and layers upon layers of committees, it’s nearly impossible to understand exactly what the FirstNet-AT&T solution is offering and how the federal government will deliver on its promises to the states.

• Food prices could soar by nearly a quarter and supermarket standards “decline abruptly” due to the Government chaos over Brexit , a new report warns today.

• A major academic study by experts at the University of Sussex says eye-watering tariffs could hit a third of our food supplies after we leave the EU in 2019.

• And it warns bungling Ministers still have no plan to replace the vital EU regulations that maintain the quality of our supermarket products, with just 20 months to go until Brexit.

• Expert Prof Tim Lang slammed those Tories backing a hard Brexit, saying: “A food system which has an estimated three to five days of stocks cannot just walk away from the EU, which provides us with 31% of our food.

• At a key moment in Othello, one of Shakespeare’s characters exclaims: “I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.” Right now you could mount the words on a plaque outside the Foreign Office.

• For people, reputation establishes a legacy after they die, and delimits the amount they can achieve while still alive. For countries, it determines not only global standing, but their entire economic and political ecosystem.

• The problem with reputation speaks to Brexit’s broader irony: we don’t have much control over it. That is, we can move to influence the perspective of others, but ultimately they will reach their own conclusions. Just as we can’t force countries to trade with us, we can’t force others to like us, respect us, fear us or think we’re powerful when we’re not. Foreign policy, and influence in foreign affairs, depends on how much other countries rate us and think we matter.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Governments around the world are enlisting “cyber troops” who manipulate Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets to steer public opinion, spread misinformation and undermine critics, according to a new report from the University of Oxford.

• After six solid months of co-ordinated allegation from the mainstream media allied to the leadership of state security institutions, not one single scrap of solid evidence for Trump/Russia election hacking has emerged.

• I do not support Donald Trump. I do support truth. There is much about Trump that I dislike intensely. Neither do I support the neo-liberal political establishment in the USA. The latter’s control of the mainstream media, and cunning manipulation of identity politics, seeks to portray the neo-liberal establishment as the heroes of decent values against Trump. Sadly, the idea that the neo-liberal establishment embodies decent values is completely untrue.

• Truth disappeared so long ago in this witch-hunt that it is no longer even possible to define what the accusation is. Belief in “Russian hacking” of the US election has been elevated to a generic accusation of undefined wrongdoing, a vague malaise we are told is floating poisonously in the ether, but we are not allowed to analyse. What did the Russians actually do?

• The original, base accusation is that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC and Podesta emails and passed them to Wikileaks. (I can assure you that is untrue).

• From Donald Trump’s first days in office, news of the damage to America’s international stature has come hard and fast. As if guided by some malign design, the new president seemed to identify the key pillars that have supported U.S. global power for the past 70 years and set out to topple each of them in turn. By degrading NATO, alienating Asian allies, cancelling trade treaties, and slashing critical scientific research, the Trump White House is already in the process of demolishing the delicately balanced architecture that has sustained Washington’s world leadership since the end of World War II. However unwittingly, Trump is ensuring the accelerated collapse of American global hegemony.

• Rupert Murdoch could soon be able to “control people’s access to the internet, TV, digital radio and emails.” And, like something out of the George Orwell novel 1984, the boss of Sky News and The Sun could use his power to influence the political thinking, and ultimately the voting behaviour, of more than 13 million people.

Censorship/Free Speech

• The April 2018 goal to protect under-18s was revealed as digital minister Matt Hancock signed the commencement order for the Digital Economy Act, which introduces the requirement.

• But details as to how the scheme will work have yet to be finalised.

• Filmmaker Hansal Mehta points out how censorship is increasingly becoming a test of patience for filmmakers.

• The wobbly, squabbling, minority Tory government—propped up by Northern Ireland’s DUP—has laid before MPs its first commencement order for the recently passed Digital Economy Act, in which it confirmed that an age checker system for access to porn sites will be brought in next spring.

• The act of vandalism has not happened yet, though it is expected to happen. Nothing, it seems, can stop it.

• The target of the vandalism is a law library: the library of the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court.

• You may not care about law libraries. But whatever your view, please take a moment to read about this act of impending vandalism. It has, as I set out below, wider significance.

• Last year, the National Archives (NARA) acquired a large number of historically valuable National Security Agency records. But they remain inaccessible to researchers, at least for the time being.

• Being censored 51 times, sendika.org will celebrate “hurdle race against censorship” with a party.

• A century ago last month, America came close to formally empowering government censorship of the modern news media. That might seem like ancient history, but the censorship monster rises anew whenever a president finds himself under intense scrutiny and seeks to stifle coverage he doesn’t like.

• Donald Trump is waging a particularly angry campaign to harness press freedoms, including implied advocacy of violence against the “fake news media,” threats to yank reporters’ credentials and increasing bans on live TV coverage of White House press briefings.

• The 1917 Espionage Act was an effort by Congress, supported by President Woodrow Wilson, to block any accidental or deliberate revelation of national security secrets as the United States fought the First World War. The original version explicitly outlined executive powers to censor newspapers prior to publication. Luckily, more reasonable minds prevailed and press censorship provision was withdrawn before the bill passed.

• Even so, Wilson insisted, “Authority to exercise censorship over the press … is absolutely necessary to the public safety.” This newspaper had solidly backed Wilson on other national issues, but our editorials then match our position today: The president was as wrong as he could be.

• I came across the phrase “false news” in a most unexpected setting the other day and it led my thoughts down some intriguing corridors.

• The concept is better known in the Trumpian era, of course, as “fake news.”

• “False” and “fake” aren’t synonyms, to be sure.

• I certainly hope the parade does not become censored because there are some groups I would like to see banned. That’s not where freedom should lead us. The kids aren’t much interested in antique cars, politicians, the pro-life movement or Planned Parenthood, but they are all part of the parade. That’s America. I doubt any kids even noticed or understood the float.

• An ACLU letter sent to Kansas Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook, 10th District, has resonated with at least one Gardner resident. Wes Rains, Gardner, recently sent a letter to Lee Moore, Gardner councilman, requesting Moore “unblock” his ability to post to Moore’s official city councilman’s Facebook page.

• Now if it was societal censorship, then members of the public would be the one with the power to decide if such information is wrong or not. If they had disagreed with the stories on 1MDB, then they can choose not to read them or purchase The Edge. Hence, these stories would not gain traction.

• Society can also object to the articles and counter argue them. This would come in the form of civilised debates and discourses. This would benefit everyone because it would mean that the issue would be discussed and analysed further for better understanding among the public.

• The death on Thursday of Chinese dissident activist and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo elicited an outpouring of grief and anger in China, particularly from its artists. Though usually preferring to remain safely apolitical, members of the Chinese art world defied a ban on covering or mentioning Liu and expressed their sorrow and frustration at his death through mostly indirect references on Chinese social media.

• Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident artist now living in Berlin, told the BBC yesterday: “It still comes as a big shock… because he has been such a symbol for China’s human rights or democratic movement.” Ai said of his friend, “I think Liu Xiaobo will be remembered as an individual, a strong mind, with his belief, and as a brave fighter, believing in democracy and freedom of speech. And he sacrificed his life for his belief.”

Privacy/Surveillance

• Can the government stop you from finding out it’s been looking through your private Facebook content as part of a “secret” investigation that’s not actually secret? That’s the question raised by an alarming case pending in the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals. Facebook has described the investigation as “known to the public,” and the timing and venue match the January 20th, 2017 Presidential Inauguration protests (known as “J20”), the investigation of which is indeed quite public. But even if the warrants pertain to another investigation, the government should not be allowed to impose gag orders with respect to any information that is already publicly known.

• Last week, EFF led a group of civil society organizations that included Access Now, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and New America’s Open Technology Institute in filing a brief demanding that the court apply a stringent constitutional test before enforcing gag orders accompanying a number of secret search warrants. We argued that the First Amendment rarely if ever allows gag orders in such cases, where the government seeks to limit public scrutiny of high-profile and potentially politicized investigations.

• If you happen to be a fan of the heavy metal band Isis (an unfortunate name, to be sure), you may have trouble ordering its merchandise online. Last year, Paypal suspended a fan who ordered an Isis t-shirt, presumably on the false assumption that there was some association between the heavy metal band and the terrorist group ISIS.

• Then last month Internet scholar and activist Sascha Meinrath discovered that entering words such as “ISIS” (or “Isis”), or “Iran”, or (probably) other words from this U.S. government blacklist in the description field for a Venmo payment will result in an automatic block on that payment, requiring you to complete a pile of paperwork if you want to see your money again. This is even if the full description field is something like “Isis heavy metal album” or “Iran kofta kebabs, yum.”

• These examples may seem trivial, but they reveal a more serious problem with the trust and responsibility that the Internet places in private payment intermediaries. Since even many non-commercial websites such as EFF’s depend on such intermediaries to process payments, subscription fees, or donations, it’s no exaggeration to say that payment processors form an important part of the financial infrastructure of today’s Internet. As such, they ought to carry corresponding responsibilities to act fairly and openly towards their customers.

• Unfortunately, given their reliance on bots, algorithms, handshake deals, and undocumented policies and blacklists to control what we do online, payment intermediaries aren’t carrying out this responsibility very well. Given that these private actors are taking on responsibilities to help address important global problems such as terrorism and child online protection, the lack of transparency and accountability with which they execute these weighty responsibilities is a matter of concern.

• Broadband privacy? Say what? That was probably what you were asking yourself in March when you read about Congress’s vote to repeal privacy rules for your Internet provider. If you were paying attention—and you should in an era where free press, voter privacy, and other constitutional rights are being challenged—you quickly realized that what Congress did. It sold out your right to keep your browsing history and personal information private so the cable companies can sell it and make even more money off of you than they already do. Nice, right?

• Luckily, many states, including California, have stepped up to the plate for you. They have introduced bills that give back to you the right to control how your private information is used by the companies that control the Internet pipeline into your home. In California, lawmakers in Sacramento are considering a bill that would reinstate those privacy rules, requiring Internet providers to get your permission before they can profit off of your personal information.

• Silicon Valley should rally behind Chau’s AB 375 and ensure online privacy protections for all Californians —San Jose Mercury News

• “The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”, said Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today. He has been rightly mocked for this nonsense claim, that foreshadows moves to require online messaging providers to provide law enforcement with back door access to encrypted messages. He explained that “We need to ensure that the internet is not used as a dark place for bad people to hide their criminal activities from the law.” It bears repeating that Australia is part of the secretive spying and information sharing Five Eyes alliance.

• But despite the well-deserved mockery that ensued, we shouldn’t make too much light of the real risk that this poses to Internet freedom in Australia. It’s true enough, for now, that a ban on end-to-end encrypted messaging in Australia would have absolutely no effect on “bad people”, who would simply avoid using major platforms with weaker forms of encryption, in favor of other apps that use strong end-to-end encryption based on industry standard mathematical algorithms. It would hurt ordinary citizens who rely on encryption to make sure that their conversations are secure and private from prying eyes.

• After months of delay, the Trump administration is finalizing plans to revamp the nation’s military command for defensive and offensive cyber operations in hopes of intensifying America’s ability to wage cyber war against the Islamic State group and other foes, according to U.S. officials.

• Under the plans, U.S. Cyber Command would eventually be split off from the intelligence-focused National Security Agency.

• Details are still being worked out, but officials say they expect a decision and announcement in the coming weeks. The officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter so requested anonymity.

• Shortly before the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is set to have its first meeting on Wednesday July 19—which will be livestreamed here—the controversial committee published hundreds of pages from concerned citizens about the group’s work. In some cases, the White House released citizens’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses, seemingly without their knowledge.

• However, a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the group, indicated that releasing such personal information was ok.

• “These are public comments, similar to individuals appearing before commission to make comments and providing name before making comments,” Marc Lotter, press secretary to the vice president, told Vox on Friday. “The Commission’s Federal Register notice asking for public comments and its website make clear that information ‘including names and contact information’ sent to this email address may be released.”

• Trump’s pick to head the FBI — former DOJ prosecutor Christopher Wray — appeared before the Senate to answer several questions (and listen to several long-winded, self-serving statements). Wray’s confirmation hearing went about as well as expected. Several senators wanted to make sure Wray’s loyalty lay with the nation rather than the president and several others hoped to paint him into a Comey-bashing corner in order to belatedly justify Trump’s firing of his (potential) predecessor.

• The goddamned idiot continued, “I’m not a cryptographer, but what we are seeking to do is to secure their assistance. They have to face up to their responsibility. They can’t just wash their hands of it and say it’s got nothing to do with them.”

• Snapchat’s fancy new feature is called the Snap Map. It’s like a funky GPS locator for all your kids’ Snapchat friends. When they first activate it, it asks if they want to share their location with all of their friends, some of their friends, or keep it private with “Ghost Mode.” Far-too-trusting teens may be tempted to let the whole world know where they’re hanging out, but parents know better. It might be useful for twenty-somethings trying to find a party on a Saturday night, but why does the world need to know where your teen is spending the afternoon — or even weirder — where they live?

• According to a report in ReCode, Facebook has determined that it can’t put more ads into users’ feeds without harming their experience.

• Namazie is a political and secular activist like me, and I too have experienced similar problems with threats, but this issue with Facebook is something that affects everyone. I’ve reported hundreds of death threats to Facebook, and dozens to Twitter, and have never received a satisfactory conclusion. I’ve also been banned for posting nothing more than a quote from the Bible or the Qur’an. Crazy, isn’t it?

• It sounds as though the United States’ Cyber Command will break off from the National Security Agency and be more aligned with the military in the future. The move would “eventually” cleave Cyber Command from the intelligence-focused NSA and instead align it more with the military, according to the Associated Press. “The goal is to give Cyber Command more autonomy, freeing it from any constraints that stem from working alongside the NSA,” AP reports. The NSA’s core task of intelligence gathering sometimes is at odds with military cyber warfare operations, hence the proposed separation. Prior to this, the two had clashed on getting intel from Islamic State networks (the NSA’s task) and attacking (Cyber Command’s).

• After months of delay, the Trump administration is finalizing plans to revamp the nation’s military command for defensive and offensive cyber operations in hopes of intensifying America’s ability to wage cyberwar against the Islamic State group and other foes, according to U.S. officials.

• Under the plans, U.S. Cyber Command would eventually be split off from the intelligence-focused National Security Agency.

• HTC has been promising Amazon Alexa integration for its newest flagship, the U11, since before it hit the market. Two months after release, it has finally arrived. U11 customers can now download the HTC Alexa app to enable the feature.

• This isn’t the first Android phone with Alexa integration (that honor goes to the Huawei Mate 9), but it’s the first smartphone to have always-on, hot-word support for Amazon’s digital assistant. This allows you to say “Alexa” at any time and have the phone wake up and respond, basically turning it into a portable Echo. You can also trigger Alexa by mapping it to the U11′s pressure sensitive side button or by just tapping the app icon.

• The global war against privacy tools, VPNs and encryption continues utterly-unhinged from common sense, and the assault on consumer privacy remains a notably global affair. Reddit users recently noticed that India’s fifth largest ISP, YOU Broadband, is among several of the country’s ISPs that have been trying to prevent customers from using meaningful encryption.

• Never mind that the law 1) would not achieve the desired results because all the smart “terrorists and drug traffickers and pedophile rings” will simply use a third-party encryption app, and 2) would make everyone else in Australia less secure. But that’s all ground I’ve covered before.

• IBM acquired the detailed medical records of 61 million Italians, as reported on this site by Glyn Moody. This is a largely underreported story that doesn’t not just need more exposure, but more discussion: I believe it’s one of those stories where the future will show this was the correct thing to do, even though it violates every principle of liberty at the time.

• A federal appeals court is giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation a big boost when it comes to secretly investigating national security affairs. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld federal rules prohibiting companies from promptly disclosing to customers that the FBI is demanding a user’s private data with a National Security Letter (NSL).

Civil Rights/Policing

• Israeli officials have cut off electricity to almost 2 million Gazans for all but three or four hours a day—in conjunction with nominal Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has cut funding for Gaza’s electricity in an effort to punish his political rivals in Hamas. The Gaza Strip, which remains under effective Israeli control despite the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli troops, requires 450 megawatts daily, but since June has received only around 150 megawatts per day. The power cuts, according to UN humanitarian coordinator Robert Piper, severely undermine “critical functions in the health, water and sanitation sectors,” and have created a “looming humanitarian catastrophe.”

• Republicans who run Texas are increasingly targeting laws passed by cities and counties with so-called preemption measures, bills that would restrict a local government’s power to pass laws regulating certain industries or setting policy. It is part of a national trend in which Republican legislators are moving to preempt local governments, on issues ranging from minimum wage laws to immigration enforcement and even the use of plastic bags at retail establishments.

• Supporters say the preemption laws are meant to create a consistent set of laws around a state. Opponents say it is a way for conservative legislatures to overrule more liberal city governments, at the cost of local control.

• “Part of it is motivated by our urban communities that are very blue and Democratic and have different ideas about the environment and workers rights. I think it’s just offensive to Republican leaders,” Gina Hinojosa, a Democratic state representative whose district includes the core of downtown Austin, said in an interview in her Capitol office.

• A former Metropolitan police commissioner has waded into the political row about the impact of austerity by warning that potential terrorist tip-offs are being missed because of cuts in police numbers.

• Paul Condon, who headed the Met from 1993 to 2000, said the reduction in the number of frontline officers had left the police close to breaking point.

• Since 2010, when Theresa May became home secretary, the number of police officers has decreased by 20,000. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lord Condon did not mention the prime minister, but he did cite this figure, which has become most associated with her watch as home secretary.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Comcast filed comments in support of the FCC’s plan to kill the 2015 net neutrality rules today. And while pretty much everything in them is expected — Comcast thinks the rules are burdensome and hurt investment, yet it says it generally supports the principles of net neutrality — there’s one telling new quirk that stands out in its phrasing: Comcast now says it’s in support of a ban on “anticompetitive paid prioritization,” which is really a way of saying paid prioritization should be allowed.

• In a blog on its site, VHA has asked readers to send a letter to their MP to free up funds from the USO for improved mobile coverage and to declare domestic roaming.

• AirBnB, Amazon, ACLU, Google, Etsy, Y Combinator Among Organizations Standing Up To Government Plan To Let ISPs Block Content, Charge Fees for ‘Fast Lanes’

• San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a broad coalition of user advocacy groups and major technology companies and organizations joined forces today to protest the FCC’s plan to toss out net neutrality rules that preserve Internet freedom and prevent cable and telecommunications companies from controlling what we can see and do online.

• Without net neutrality, Internet service providers (ISPs) can block your favorite content, throttle or slow down Internet speeds to disadvantage competitors’ content, or make you pay more than you already do to access movies and other online entertainment.

• The problem is that politicians in the United States and some other places are giving communications monopolies and tax breaks to entrenched legacy industries – telco and cable – which have an enormous strategic incentive to prevent the Internet from ever reaching its potential, but pretend to embrace it.

• If you count just by numbers alone, net-neutrality activists have succeeded in their big July 12 push to get citizens to file comments with the Federal Communications Commission. As I write this, it looks as if 8 million or more comments have now been filed on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to roll back the expansive network-neutrality authority the commission asserted under its previous chairman in 2015.

DRM

• The most important number for investors, of course, was subscriber growth. There, Netflix beat expectations: it added 5.2 million new customers in total during the second quarter of this year, versus its forecast of 3.2 million. 1.1 million of these new customers came from the United States, and 4.1 million came from overseas, where most of the company’s growth investments are focused.

• IFLA identifies the laws that protect DRM (like Europe’s EUCD and the US’s DMCA) as barriers to these activities and notes that the W3C refused to enact a widely supported proposal to extend its existing rules that ban members from invoking the law to shut down legitimate activity, giving the web the worst of both worlds: an easier road for people to want to use DRM, and no protections for those whom DRM harms.

• In all of these cases, incorporating EME into HTML without a similar effort to protecting the rights of libraries and their users creates a risk of unbalancing the Internet.

• Last week, on the 6th of July, Tim Burners Lee approved the proposal for DRM in open web. He approved EME (Encrypted Media Extensions); which endorses non-free extensions to be built into the modern web so that HollyWood’s content can be watched without challenging their view of technology.

Intellectual Monopolies

• The field of 3D printing has been growing rapidly for years. It has applications in many areas of life and the economy, such as healthcare, aerospace, and parts replacement. 3D printing also reshapes supply chains and democratizes manufacturing. Fueled by this growth, 3D printing-related patent filings are trending upward.

Copyrights

• “We built Paperstorm as a fun (and mildly addictive) way for Internet users to learn about and engage with a serious issue: the EU’s outdated copyright laws,” says Mozilla’s Brett Gaylor, one of Paperstorm’s creators.

• “The Parliament has a unique opportunity to reform copyright,” says Raegan MacDonald, Mozilla’s Senior EU Policy Manager. “We hope this campaign served as a reminder that EU citizens want a modern framework that will promote — not hinder — innovation and creativity online. The success of this reform hinges on whether the interests of these citizens — whether creators, innovators, teachers, librarians, or anyone who uses the internet — are truly taken into account in the negotiations.”

• Currently, lawmakers are crafting amendments to the proposal for a new copyright law, a process that will end this year. Now is the time to make an impact. And we are.

• Over the last two months, more than 100,000 Internet users visited Paperstorm.it. They sent 12,000 tweets to key MEPs, like France’s Jean-Marie Cavada, Germany’s Angelika Niebler, and Lithuania’s Antanas Guoga. In total, Paperstormers contacted 13 MEPs in 10 countries: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the UK.

• River City Ransom Underground was removed from Steam late last week, part of an unfolding legal drama surrounding a composer who has been directing DMCA copyright-infringement takedowns at games she says don’t have the rights to her music.

• Conatus’ Andrew Russell, one of the developers of River City Ransom Underground, said in a short statement that “we are aware that RCRU is down on Steam. We have contacted Valve’s copyright department, and will let you know when access is restored.” But composer Alex Mauer confirmed to Destructoid that the removal was the result of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request she made against the title.

• Over the past two weeks, dozens of pirate streaming sites had their homepages stripped from Google’s search results. The removals are triggered by a series of targeted takedown requests sent by the law firm Kilpatrick Townsend, which acts on behalf of several major Hollywood studios.

• A recent economic study commissioned by YouTube found no value gap — in fact, the report said YouTube promotes the music industry, and if YouTube stopped playing music, 85 percent of users would flock to services that offered lower or no royalties.

• [...]

• The dispute boils down to what YouTube pays for songs.

• For example, the “snippet tax” would require commercial sites that quote even tiny portions of online press publications to pay a licensing fee for each one. Given the way social networks constantly quote and cross-link information, that’s clearly absurd. And yet the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) committee of the European Parliament has come up with a cunning plan to make it even worse. It wants the snippet tax to apply to physical publications as well as digital ones:

• Australian entertainment giant Village Roadshow and its co-executive chairman have invested AUS$1.5m in a company developing anti-piracy technologies. Linius Technologies holds a patent which allows for the virtualization of video files, enabling the modification of streaming content on-the-fly and the viewing of secure “ghost files” on users’ devices.

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