● 11.01.17

● Links 1/11/2017: GNOME 3.26.2, 4MLinux 23.0

Posted in News Roundup at 6:49 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• I spend most of my computing life in the Shell (command line, terminal or whatever you want to call it on your platform of choice). This can be a bit challenging, though, when I need to work with large groups of other people, especially in big enterprise companies that — well — use anything but the Shell.

• The problems that crop up are made worse when other people within your company use a different platform than you. I tend to use Linux. If I’m doing a lot of my daily work from a Linux terminal and the bulk of my co-workers use Windows 10 (entirely from the GUI side), things can get … problematic.

• If there’s one thing surrounding Linux usage that bothers me more than anything else, it’s when the detractors say you cannot work with Linux without knowing the command line. This is a bit of FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — that keeps new users from giving the open source platform a try. I’m here, right now, to dispel that myth.

Server

• Even with a shortage of IT workers, some employers are still discerning in their hiring requirements and are either seeking certified candidates or offering to pay for their employees to become certified.

• The Linux Foundation’s 2017 Open Source Jobs Report finds that half of hiring managers are more likely to hire a certified professional, while 47 percent of companies are willing to help pay for employees’ certifications. Meanwhile, 89% of hiring managers find it difficult to find open source talent.

• The demand for skills relating to cloud administration, DevOps, and continuous integration/continuous delivery is fueling interest in training and certifications related to open source projects and tools that power the cloud, according to the report. Workers find certification important, too. In fact, 76 percent of open source pros say certifications are useful to their careers.

• Christian Kniep is a Software Evangelist at Docker. With a 10-year journey rooted in the HPC parts of the german automotive industry, Christian started to support CAE applications and VR installations. After getting bored with the small pieces, he became the InfiniBand go-to-guy while operating a 4000 node crash-test cluster and pivoted to the R&D department of Bulls BXI interconnect. When told at a conference that HPC can not learn anything from the emerging Cloud and BigData companies, he became curious and is now pushing for containerization within Sony Interactive Entertainment. Christian likes to explore new emerging trends by containerizing them first and seek application in the nebulous world of DevOps. As an organiser of three workshops at ISC HPC and ISC Cloud as well as talking frequently at HPC Advisory Council events, FOSDEM and MeetUps, Christian has a long standing commitment to share valuable information about Linux Containers in the HPC and BigData community.

• Back in 2010, I published a blog post defining the term cloud-native, based on discussions between I’d had with my colleagues at WSO2. At around the same time, Netflix also started using that term in presentations. Since then the interest in cloud-native has rocketed, including many blog posts, books, and of course the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

• The high-level concept of cloud-native is simple: systems that give users a better experience by virtue of operating in the cloud in a genuinely cloud-centric way. In other words, the cloud may make an existing database easier to start up, but if the database doesn’t support elasticity then it can’t take advantage of the scaling capabilities of the cloud.

Kernel Space

• The Linux Foundation introduced the new Acumos AI project which is still in formation and is expected to be launched in early 2018. The project aims to make artificial intelligence (AI) available to everyone by providing a common framework and platform for the free exchange of machine learning products. The founding organisations include AT&T and Tech Mahindra. Others are invited to participate as members in the coming weeks as the Acumos Project establishes its governance model.

• With the Acumos platform, the organisation said it’s working to create an industry standard for making AI applications and models reusable and easily accessible to any developer. The Acumos platform will be user-centric, with an initial focus on creating apps and micro-services.

• The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, has introduced the Acumos Project, which aims to make artificial intelligence (AI) available to everyone – including drone developers – by providing a common framework and platform for the free exchange of machine learning solutions.

• The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, announced that 20 new organizations have joined the Foundation as Silver members. Linux Foundation members help support development of the greatest shared technology resources in history, while accelerating their own innovation through open source leadership and participation.

• For the past five years or so has been work on Intel DRM “Fastboot” support and it’s looking like this feature may finally be re-enabled by default.

Graphics Stack

• Intel developers have finally landed their patches for supporting the i965 Mesa OpenGL on-disk shader cache.

• While RadeonSI has implemented its on-disk shader cache since earlier this year, the Intel shader cache that originally pre-dates that work was finally carried over the finish line last night and are now in Git. This work is present for the Mesa 18.0 release due out in early 2018 and not the upcoming Mesa 17.3 update due out in about two weeks.

Benchmarks

• Continuing on in our fresh Radeon Linux graphics benchmarks in commemorating 10 years of AMD’s open-source driver strategy with already showing how the driver compares to the old Catalyst/fglrx and Ubuntu 14.04 to 17.10 OpenGL tests, up next is an 18 way graphics card comparison of both old and new Radeon graphics cards while using the very latest Linux driver stack.

Applications

• In 2015 and 2016, I awarded “Best Couple” to two open source commands or program types that, combined, make my world a better place. This year, the “Best Couple” prize has turned into the “Best Trio,” because resolving the problem I set out to fix—effective server-side email sorting—took three pieces of software working together. Here’s how I got everything to work using SpamAssassin, MIMEDefang, and Procmail, three common and freely available open source software packages.

• Each Desktop environment has their own terminal emulator app to interact with system through commands. In many reason, you may feel its not suitable for you as its offering the stand features and doesn’t offer robust future such as Tilix, Tilda, Terminator, Upterm, etc,.

• CobiBird theme is designed to work in most of the Linux desktops including Gnome, Unity, Xfce, Lxde, Cinnamon, and Mate. It was based on Greybird theme with dark menus for a while but since version 0.8.2 the creator changed almost everything (from menubar items, menu adjustment, color selection fix, improves insensitive menus, to fixed menu separators) in this theme and now it is not based on Greybird Gtk. The initial version was released way back in 2013 and recently a new version of CobiBird has been released to support Gtk 3.22. We have added it to out PPA and it is now available for Ubuntu 17.10/17.04/16.04/14.04/Linux Mint 18/17. If you find any kind of bug or problem with this theme then report it to creator and it will get fixed in the next update.

Proprietary

• Write is a word processor app with which you can write like you would on a paper with a pen using a stylus. It was built by a development team based in the San Francisco Bay area.

• It has lines on top of which you can enter smart text while significantly maintaining your handwriting. Its ability to recognize lines of written text offers users an array of features not excluding easily adding handwritten links, combining sketches with texts, bookmarking, and the standard open document format.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

• Hearthstone is probably the most popular digital card game. The Warcraft-themed game from Blizzard has seen quite a bit of growth over its lifetime, and it’s even a major e-sport.

• Even though Hearthstone was released for a wide array of platforms, including mobile devices running Android, it has never seen official Linux support. Thankfully, Hearthstone is a lightweight game that can be run on Linux systems through Wine.

• A brand-new Wine development release is now available for download, versioned 2.20, bringing better support for several Windows games, as well as some noteworthy improvements.

• First of all, Wine 2.20 is here to improve event support in the MSHTML proprietary layout engine for the Internet Explorer web browser, add preloader support on the AArch64 (ARM64) architecture, improve metafile support in GdiPlus, as well as to implement interpolation modes in Direct3D.

Games

• We previously covered Banshee as one of the interesting Vulkan-based projects with this open-source game engine supporting OpenGL / Direct3D 11 and as of January added Vulkan support. They had been planning to firm up Linux support for Q4 and they have managed to strike that goal.

• The Banshee Engine is written in C++14 and is designed for 2D/3D games. It’s quite a full-featured system, boasts its own customizable editor, has a scripting system, and extensive documentation.

• There is now official Linux support within Banshee to complement their Windows support. Interestingly, the Linux support was completed prior to the engine’s macOS support, which remains a work-in-progress.

• Although I am not a gamer, I like to play games occasionally. To do so, I I run Steam on my Linux computers.

• One day, I stumbled upon a title that happened to be interesting: Bendy and the Ink Machine. It is a horror game that relies more on the ambience than it does on jumpscares to create its effect.

• The first chapter is free, so I installed it and played it. I liked the experience, so I bought the second chapter. It was good.

• Samurai Riot [Steam, Official Site] is a 2D co-op Beat’em up with a few rather interesting features to set it apart from others, it’s also now on Linux.

• As of their patch on October 20th, the developer Wako Factory release a Linux version. This patch also included cloud saves as well as bug fixes.

• If you love the simplicity of Bomberman, you might want to take a look at Splody [Steam, Official Site] which released a Linux version.

• If you enjoy simple puzzle games, and don’t mind low-poly aesthetics then Skipper [Steam] is a game that might tickle your brain.

• Surviving Mars [Steam, Official Site] is the new city-builder from Haemimont Games and Paradox that sees you build a colony in a harsh environment. It’s not due for release until next year, so details have been light, but they’re finally ready to talk about it some more.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The Linux smartphone scenario has never been so exciting. Recently, Purism’s Librem 5 smartphone achieved its crowdfunding goal and scored partnerships from GNOME and KDE. On the other hand, postmarketOS is also showing some good promise.

• When KDE partnered with Purism, it announced that Plasma Mobile will be ready for the real world and integrate with a commercial device for the first time. “Slowly, but surely, hardware vendors have discovered that Plasma Mobile is an entirely different software platform to build products on top of,” KDE developer Sebastian Kügler wrote in a blog post.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• I’m pleased to announce the release of GNOME 3.26.2, the final planned release for the GNOME 3.26 series. It includes many bugfixes, documentation improvements, and translation updates. All distributions shipping GNOME 3.26 are strongly encouraged to upgrade.

• GNOME’s Michael Catanzaro is announcing today the availability of the second and last scheduled maintenance update for the GNOME 3.26 desktop environment carrying numerous bug fixes.

• GNOME 3.26.2 is out just in time, as initially scheduled, and it’s here three weeks after the first point release to improve the stability, security, and reliability of your GNOME 3.26 desktop environment. It will be coming soon to the stable repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distro, so make sure you update as soon as possible.

• GNOME.Asia summit 2017 was held in Chongqing city of China. The venue was the Chongqing University approximately 90 years old with the vast beautiful Eco-friendly campus. I was invited as one of the speakers. The topic of my speech was “Why FOSS in education make sense?”. The message of my talk was to incorporate the open source in the education system. I believe that faculty members in the computer science department in various Universities around the world should be made aware and practice open source software and also if possible contribute to open source project. This way they can guide their students in the best possible way. They can act as the medium between the student and the open source project mentors as the teachers knows their students well. They can direct their students according to their capabilities and interests.

Distributions

• The Solus Linux distribution project has shared some of the work they are currently pursuing for their Solus 4 operating system update.

• Solus developers are planning to turn back on Wayland support for the distribution. They are also planning to improve the NVIDIA driver support, including making use of the GLVND library (OpenGL Vendor Neutral Dispatch) so its OpenGL driver can co-exist happily without disturbing the Mesa drivers on the system. They are also looking at enabling EGLStreams support to allow the NVIDIA driver to work under Wayland on their operating system. As part of their GLVND push is also looking to improve NVIDIA Optimus laptop support.

New Releases

• The status of the 4MLinux 23.0 series has been changed to STABLE. Create your own images with GIMP 2.8.22, edit your documents with LibreOffice 5.4.3.1 and GNOME Office (AbiWord 3.0.2 with Gnumeric 1.12.35), share your files using DropBox 37.4.29, surf the Internet with Firefox 56.0 and Chromium 61.0.3163.100, stay in touch with your friends via Skype 5.5.0.1 and Thunderbird 52.4.0, enjoy your music collection with Audacious 3.9, watch your favorite videos with MPlayer SVN-r37931 and VLC 2.2.6, play games powered by Mesa 17.0.4 and Wine 2.19. You can also setup the 4MLinux LAMP Server (Linux 4.9.52, Apache 2.4.28, MariaDB 10.2.9, PHP 5.6.31 and PHP 7.0.24). Perl 5.24.1 and Python 2.7.13 are also available.

Arch Family

• The rapidly growing Archlabs Linux distribution has split into two as the developers clash. As a result, we now have a new Linux distribution called ArchMerge.

Red Hat Family

Finance

Fedora

• Fedora 26 introduced the concept of modularity to Fedora. To paraphrase Fedora’s own description, the modularity project is an attempt to separate the life cycles of the applications in a distribution from both each other and the distribution itself. Users need to be able to upgrade to the most recent version of both an application stack, but also retain earlier versions of individual pieces of that stack for backward compatibility (such as Python 3.x versus Python 2.x).

• Previous versions of Fedora had each software component—this database, that language runtime—as a discrete package. Modularity groups those packages into modules—this database with this core database application and that library—and lets each module be installed and run separately. Modules also have their own versioning and life cycles, so users can deploy both cutting-edge and more conservative editions of app stacks side by side. It takes some manual work to convert packages into modules, but one of the goals of Fedora going forward will be to automate as much of the process as possible.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• With the release of the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, Canonical replaced their Unity user interface with the GNOME desktop environment, and now they’re looking to sponsor the project by becoming a member of the Advisory Board.

• Among some powerful members of GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board, we can mention Google, FSF (Free Software Foundation), and Linux Foundation. And now, Canonical will also support the GNOME Project by providing funding and expert consultation.

• It’s a timely and logical appointment what with the recent Ubuntu 17.10 release being the first version of Ubuntu to ship with the GNOME Shell desktop environment by default.

• But what is the GNOME Advisory Board?

• Well, GNOME explain it as “…a body of stakeholder organizations and companies who support the GNOME Project by providing funding and expert consultation.”

• Other members of the board include Google, The Document Foundation, Red Hat and SUSE.

• As you’re no doubt aware, the default Ubuntu desktop is now running GNOME Shell following the 17.10 release and so we naturally have a great deal of interest in the plans and direction of the GNOME project. The best way for us to get more involved in the future of GNOME is to become a member of the Advisory Board, and so, I’m happy to announce that we are now fully signed up members.

• With some sadness I recently replaced my Ubuntu Phone with a Nexus 5. It lasted me just over 1000 days (almost three years) as my everyday phone, and I last wrote about it at the 500 mark.

Flavours and Variants

• Seven months after reaching half million downloads, the Zorin OS 12 GNU/Linux operating system passed today the one million downloads mark.

• Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution targeted at those who want to migrate from Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s macOS computer operating system to an Open Source alternative that offers them a more secure, stable, and reliable computing environment. Zorin OS 12 is the latest stable version of the Linux OS, and it got its second point release in September 2017.

Devices/Embedded

• Emcraft unveiled a uClinux BSP for NXP’s new i.MX RT1050 EVK and up to 600MHz i.MX RT chip, which NXP calls the fastest Cortex-M processor yet.

• With last week’s announcement of its “crossover” i.MX RT processor, NXP further blurred the boundaries between application processors, which can run high-end OSes like Linux, and MCUs, which usually can’t. Aimed at real-time operating systems like FreeRTOS, Arm’s Mbed, and Zephyr, the Cortex-M7 based chip is incapable of running a full-fledged Linux stack. However, Emcraft has announced a BSP (board support package) for the chip built around the minimalist, Linux-based uClinux distribution. The BSP targets NXP’s i.MX RT1050 EVK board (see farther below).

• Matrix Electronica’s rugged, IoT-oriented “MTX-Router-Titan II” features up to 4G connectivity, including LTE, plus WiFi, Ethernet, USB, and serial links.

• Madrid-based Matrix Electronica, a subsidiary of the Flexitron Group, has released a rugged industrial router with IoT gateway features that offers a mix of wireless and wired interfaces. The MTX-Router-Titan II 4G upgrades its earlier MTX-Router-Titan routers by adding 4G and LTE Cat 1 support, HSPA+ 3G, and a wider range of wired connectivity and wireless options. As before, the router supports other 3G services and 2G GPRS. There’s also a separate 3G/2G only version called the MTX-Router-Titan II 3G.

• Created by French developer Alexandre Pailhoux, the DevDuino is an Arduino compatible with a U-shaped PCB that lets you add mezzanine shields on the bottom using male headers. Other standout features on this breadboard friendly board include a 1.3-inch 128 x 64 OLED display (SSD1306 controller) as well as a numerous LEDs. The DevDuino is available on Kickstarter through Dec. 1 for 37 Euros ($43) or 59 Euros with accessories.

Android

Free Software/Open Source

• It all started ten years ago. ROS grew out of several early open-source robotic software frameworks, including switchyard by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

• The same year, legendary research lab and technology incubator Willow Garage hired its first employees: Jonathan Stark, Melonee Wise, Curt Meyers, and John Hsu. You can point to a lot of seminal moments in robotics history, but this is a top contender for the year modern robotics was born.

• The society-wide adoption of the Internet of Things into our everyday business and cultural lives has left many company’s scrambling to find the best fit for the IoT in their businesses. Most of them have encountered serious trouble; choosing which IoT platform is right for you is no easy job, and the complexities of your decision can sometimes seem overwhelming.

• Considering an open source IoT solution to your company’s problems can help alleviate some of the burdens brought on by this decision. A quick review of how open source IoT solutions stand to benefit you without breaking the bank shows why this route may be the go-to option for IoT practitioners in the future.

• STAR Vote’s goal was to make voters more comfortable with the security and reliability of electronic voting, DeBeauvoir says. STAR Vote would have provided voters with a paper receipt of their ballot. Such a receipt is called a Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail, or VVPAT.

• “The purpose of a VVPAT Is to make sure the voter knows for a fact that the choices they have entered on the electronic voting system are in fact the correct choices that really represent their decisions,” DeBeauvoir says.

• Besides reassuring voters, a paper trail can help election officials perform post-election audits.

• “Most people think what we’re using the paper trail for is a recount,” she says. “You can just do post-election audits because you’re double-checking the math and the statistics of an election.”

• Pineberry Manufacturing Inc. makes friction feeders that insert coupons, paperboard inserts, envelopes, cards, etc. The firm claims to have the only open-source feeders in the marketplace, which means proprietary electrical components have been eliminated. Pineberry Manufacturing’s HSF and SF Series friction feeders, says the firm, are characterized by an unmatched level of operational simplicity, reliability, robustness, and cost efficiency. Also, they can be easily integrated into manual or automated lines. The HSF operates at 8,000 inches/min and the SF at 3,000.

• “Our friction feeders are open-source, servo-controlled power platforms with a Schneider Electric PLC touchscreen controller, reducing the overall number of components to the machine,” says Pineberry Manufacturing President David McCharles. “Users can get information from the terminal remotely through an app on a smart phone. Open-source technology is the way the future is being built.”

Events

• Check out the on-stage conversation with Linus Torvalds and VMware’s Dirk Hohndel, opening remarks from The Linux Foundation’s Executive Director Jim Zemlin, and a special presentation from 11-year-old CyberShaolin founder Reuben Paul. You can watch these and other ELC and OS Summit keynotes below for insight into open source collaboration, community and technical expertise on containers, cloud computing, embedded Linux, Linux kernel, networking, and much more.

• Between the 7th and 9th October the KDE Edu team met in the Endocode offices in Berlin to work on and plan KDE’s educational software.

• We split up the work into three general areas: organization, infrastructure and coding.

• The KDE Edu team is diverse in that there are different people interested in different tools. A sprint such as this one is the ideal meeting place to work on making sure that we are headed in the same direction. We discussed the website and how we present our projects to the outside world. We also covered improvements to our usage of Phabricator and our roles on the different goals we set for ourselves. We wanted to make sure all our members are aware and on board with them.

• During the last week of September I attended the 2017 edition of CppCon, in Bellevue, WA. Unusually late due to my presence at Qt World Summit which took place just after it, here’s my trip report.

• Percona, the company that delivers enterprise-class MySQL®, MongoDB® and other open source database solutions and services, announced the success of Percona Live Open Source Database Conference Europe 2017, which took place September 25-27, 2017 at the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in Dublin, Ireland.

• The SDN & NFV DevRoom is back this year for FOSDEM, and the call for content is open until November 16th. Submissions are welcome now!

Web Browsers

Chrome

Mozilla

• We inquired about people’s relationships with their connected devices, like smart TVs, Fitbits, and routers. Questions ranged from “What connected devices do you own?“ to “What is your biggest fear as we move toward a more connected future?”

• Nearly 190,000 people around the world responded. People from the tiny islands of Tuvalu to the huge landmass of China and everywhere in between. (Mozilla released the survey in six languages: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Portuguese.)

• What we learned is fascinating. Like: People in India are more likely to own a smart appliance, whereas people in Argentina are more likely to own a smart TV. And: People everywhere are worried that a more connected future will jeopardize their privacy.

• Mozilla is partnering with museums, universities, nonprofits, libraries, and high schools in Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, and beyond.

• “We’re focusing on projects that leverage gigabit internet speeds — up to 250x average speeds — to make a positive impact in the communities we serve and across the country,” says Lindsey Frost, who directs Mozilla’s gigabit work. “Projects use augmented reality to train first responders; raise awareness about coastal erosion through virtual reality simulations; bring robotics into high school classrooms; and much more.”

• Through the Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund — a partnership with the National Science Foundation and U.S. Ignite — Mozilla invests in projects that leverage lightning-fast gigabit internet connectivity to further education and workforce development.

Funding

• After over a year of development, FundRequest has released a new Blockchain platform built specifically for the funding, claiming, and rewarding of open source contributions. The company aims to introduce a new approach towards open source development that benefits both the developers who are creating the code and the organizations that use it with the overall goal of further driving the applications of open source technology.

BSD

• If you haven’t upgraded your pfSense BSD-based firewall to the major 2.4.x stable series yet, we have some good news for you today as the pfSense 2.3.5 security update is now available to download.

• pfSense 2.3.5 is a maintenance and bugfix release for the pfSense 2.3 stable series of the world’s most trusted open source firewall, and it’s here to patch a few critical security vulnerabilities, including that nasty WPA2 KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attack) issue.

• The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce a collaborative project with Delphix to implement one of the most requested ZFS features, to allow RAID-Z pools to be expanded one disk at a time. We’ve combined our resources with iXsystems and Delphix to bring this project to fruition. The RAID-Z Expansion project will allow OpenZFS users to incrementally add storage to their RAID pools, one device at a time. The expansion will happen online, in the background, with zero downtime, and while maintaining the redundancy and reliability of RAID-Z.

Licensing/Legal

• Self-hosted Git repository management tool GitLab today announced that it is abandoning its Contributor Licensing Agreement (CLA) and adopting a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) and license.

• According to the company, which claims 67% market share in the self-hosted Git market, “the DCO gives developers greater flexibility and portability for their contributions.”

• GitLab, a software product used by 2/3 of all enterprises, today announced it was abandoning the industry-standard Contributor License Agreement (CLA) in favor of a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) and license. The DCO gives developers greater flexibility and portability for their contributions. The move has already attracted the attention of large open source projects who recognize the benefits. Debian and GNOME both plan to migrate their communities and open source projects to GitLab.

• GitLab’s move away from a CLA is meant to modernize its code hosting and collaborative development infrastructure for all open source projects. Additionally, requiring a CLA became problematic for developers who didn’t want to enter into legal terms; they weren’t reviewing the CLA contract and they effectively gave up their rights to own and contribute to open source code.

Programming/Development

• We are super excited to announce that later today Node.js 8 will be ready for production as it transfers into the de facto Long-Term Support release line opening it up to a larger user base that demands stability and security (Node.js 8.9.0 is the first official Node.js 8 release to hit LTS status). Node.js 8 is one of the biggest release lines from the Node.js community to date with features and add-ons like Async / Await and V8 JavaScript Engine 6.1. It is up to 20 percent faster than its predecessor Node.js 6 (source nearForm) in typical web applications. An early tester found that Node.js 8 cut its web response by 70 percent:

• Tensors are data tables in n dimensions and when they occur they are often sparse, i.e. most of the entries are zero. In the past we have hand-crafted code to work efficiently with sparse tensors, but now we have Taco, an open source compiler that can automatically generate code that can run up to 100 times faster.

Leftovers

Security

• Michael Duffy, who leads cybersecurity and communications at the DHS, explained that fewer than half of their agencies were using Kaspersky’s anti-virus software.

• This new regulation represents a tightening of the data protection laws. The new regulation requires far faster responses to data breaches (within 72 hours), and the maximum penalty for breaching the legislation has increased by over four times to twenty million euros or four percent of a business’s annual global turnover, whichever is higher. In addition, GDPR will unify the processes by which EU countries regulate their data security. This will ensure breaches are easier to report, investigate and respond to the new supervisory authorities being introduced.

• Electronic messages traveling across the internet are under constant threat from data thieves, but new security standards created with the technical guidance of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will reduce the risk of messages being intercepted or stolen. These standards address a security weakness that has been a part of the internet since its earliest days.

• A Disney-branded home internet filtering device might keep bad content out, but it was an open door to bad actors until earlier this month.

• That’s what Cisco Talos’s William Largfent found when he took a look at “Circle with Disney”, a Circle Media parental control device on which the entertainment giant slapped its brand.

• Whatever its qualities in filtering an screen time management, the US$99 box is riddled with 23 vulns, as the Talos post discloses.

• This summer, DefCon’s “Voting Machine Hacking Village” turned up a host of US election vulnerabilities (PDF). Now, imagine a more mainstream national hacking event backed by the Department of Homeland Security that has the same goal: to discover weaknesses in voting machines used by states for local and national elections.

• That might just become a reality if federal legislation (PDF) unveiled Tuesday becomes law. The proposal comes with a safe harbor provision to exempt participants from federal hacking laws. Several federal exemptions for ethical hacking that paved the way for the DefCon hacking village expire next year.

• The bipartisan “Securing America’s Voting Equipment Act” also would provide election funding to the states and would designate voting systems as critical infrastructure—a designation that would open up communication channels between the federal government and the states to share classified threat information.

Defence/Aggression

• Today, the Central Intelligence Agency posted a cache of files obtained from Osama Bin Laden’s personal computer and other devices recovered from his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan by Navy SEALs during the raid in which he was killed on May 2, 2011. The 470,000 files, 321 gigabytes in all, include documents, images, videos, and audio recordings, including Al Qaeda propaganda and planning documents, home videos of Bin Laden’s son Hazma, and “drafts” of propaganda videos. There is also a lot of digital junk among the files.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• The International Trade Commission (ITC) issued its recommendations for solar panel component tariffs on Tuesday, a month after it decided that US manufacturers of cells and modules had been harmed by cheap equipment imports. The commissioners offered three different recommendations, but it will be up to President Trump to decide on which recommendation to follow—or to make a completely new recommendation.

Finance

• As we noted a couple of months ago, the topic of corporate sovereignty — also known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) — has rather dropped out of the public eye. One post on the subject from earlier this year pointed out that an editorial in the Financial Times had called for ISDS to be “ditched”. That was welcome but surprising. At the time, it seemed like an outlier, but it now looks more as if it was simply ahead of the field, as many more have started to call for the same. For example 230 law and economics professors are urging President Trump to remove corporate sovereignty from NAFTA and other trade deals (pdf).

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

Censorship/Free Speech

• Facebook Inc. said it will double its safety and security staff to 20,000, including contract workers, by the end of 2018.

• A reaction to the (non-physical) “explosion of social media in our society” has prompted an Florida legislator to make a questionable law even worse. Florida already has a law on the books making it a second-degree felony to threaten to kill or harm someone via electronic communications.

• Russia’s dwindling band of liberal-minded opposition journalists is shrinking fast in the face of a spate of terror attacks. The Kremlin insists it has nothing to do with the violence. But critics say the government has stoked a hostile atmosphere in the country by demonizing liberal reporters as traitors.

• “The level of neurosis and hysteria is growing, with official attempts to find scapegoats to blame,” says Dmitry Muratov, the editor of one of the few remaining opposition newspapers, Novaya Gazeta.

• South Sudan’s media regulator has suspended all press associations in the country while they register for licences to operate, journalists said, a move that raised concern about a possible crackdown on independent media.

• The directive, handed to South Sudan’s three associations this week and seen by Reuters on Wednesday, gave them seven days until Nov. 7 to obtain operations licences or face permanent closure.

• Most eighth graders might blush and laugh uncertainly when they hear their classmates read the N-Word aloud in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. In 2004, Garvey Jackson, a 13-year-old attending school in Hillsborough, N.C., was not as amused as his peers. After studying Lee’s novel in English class, Jackson went to school dressed in a shirt covered with the book’s many racial slurs, claiming that if the N-word is “good enough for the book, it’s good enough for the shirt.”

Privacy/Surveillance

• Many schools and nurseries in the UK partner with external companies to “fundraise” around Christmas, offering your child’s art printed on cards, mugs, etc. The school gets 20% of the item cost back and parents get a lovely keepsake. My daughter’s nursery did this for this Christmas. They had all their children do little Christmas-themed things, including many hand and foot prints.

• Halloween is now behind us, but perhaps the scariest thing facing America right now (at least, that has little or nothing to do with Donald Trump) is a current Senate bill that would codify the numerous legal and constitutional violations routinely committed by the National Security Agency (NSA).

• For the first time since Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA has been routinely intercepting communications by U.S. citizens without a warrant, the law which used to justify this surveillance is up for congressional review. Some sort of legislation regarding the surveillance state must pass Congress before Dec. 31, since that’s the expiration date of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

• Senior Norwegian politician Reynir Johannesson opened this year’s Datacloud Nordic event by stressing the country’s commitment to policies which are friendly to data centres, including improved connectivity, use of green energy and support for autonomous cars.

• This report is FRA’s second publication addressing a European Parliament request for in-depth research on the impact of surveillance on fundamental rights. It updates FRA’s 2015 legal analysis on the topic, and supplements that analysis with field-based insights gained from extensive interviews with diverse experts in intelligence and related fields, including its oversight.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Do the police in Fairfax County, Virginia really not know about the 1st Amendment? It certainly appears that way after watching the video of them violently arresting a reporter named Mike Stark, who was trying to cover the gubernatorial campaign of Ed Gillespie. Now, because some people will want to mention this, I’ll note that the following is (a) true and (b) makes no difference at all to this story: Stark works for a highly partisan website that is strongly opposed to Gillespie. But the points here would be identical if it were a reporter at the other end of the partisan divide following the opposing candidate. The positions of the reporter (or the candidate) are meaningless to the basic question of why the fuck was Mike Stark thrown to the ground, piled on by cops and arrested.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Earlier this year, the Trump administration and GOP handed a giant gift to the nation’s telecom duopolies when they dismantled FCC broadband privacy protections. While ISPs whined incessantly about the rules, the protections were relatively modest — simply requiring that large ISPs be transparent about what personal data is being collected and sold, who it’s being sold to, and that working opt out tools be provided to consumers. The FCC’s rules were only created after Verizon was caught modifying packets to covertly track users around the internet and AT&T tried to make consumer privacy a luxury add on.

• But in the wake of the GOP’s myopic dismantling of the rules, more than 30 states began considering their own disparate privacy protections for consumers. The EFF threw its support behind one such bill in California, arguing that it could provide a good template for other states to follow in order to gain some uniformity. But Google, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon collectively lobbied to scuttle that law last month, leaked documents showing how they lied to California lawmakers by claiming the rules would have emboldened extremists, boosted annoying popups, and somehow harmed consumers.

• What has changed over the last 4 years is market share of traffic on the Web. It looks like nothing has changed, but GOOG and FB now have direct influence over 70%+ of internet traffic. Mobile internet traffic is now the majority of traffic worldwide and in Latin America alone, GOOG and FB services have had 60% of mobile traffic in 2015, growing to 70% by the end of 2016. The remaining 30% of traffic is shared among all other mobile apps and websites. Mobile devices are primarily used for accessing GOOG and FB networks.

• AT&T is reportedly abandoning its attempt to stop a Louisville ordinance that helped draw Google Fiber into the city.

• In February 2016, AT&T sued the local government in Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky to stop an ordinance that gives Google Fiber and other ISPs faster access to utility poles. A US District Court judge dismissed AT&T’s lawsuit in August of this year, when he determined that AT&T’s claims that the ordinance is invalid are false.

• We’ve noted for months how an unknown party has been using bots to bombard the FCC website with entirely bogus support for the agency’s planned attack on net neutrality. Inquiries so far have indicated that whatever group or individual is behind the fake support used a bot that automatically pulled names — in alphabetical order — from a compromised database of some kind. Earlier this year one reporter actually managed to track down some of these folks — who say they never filed such comments or in many instances had no idea what net neutrality even is.

• Verizon has asked the Federal Communications Commission to preempt any state laws that regulate network neutrality and broadband privacy.

• The FCC’s Republican majority is on course to overturn two-year-old net neutrality rules, perhaps by the end of the year. Broadband privacy rules passed by the FCC during the Obama administration were already undone by Congress and President Donald Trump early this year.

• With the two sets of rules either gone or on their way out, it’s possible that state governments might impose similar rules to protect consumers in their states. Verizon told the FCC in a filing last week that the commission should preempt laws in any state that does so.

DRM

• Ubisoft is pushing back against reports that the DRM used in Assassin’s Creed: Origins is eating up significant CPU cycles and causing performance problems for many people playing the PC version of the game.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• CBS has sued a photographer for copyright infringement for doing something that’s practically ubiquitous in the news and entertainment business—publishing still images from a television show.

• The lawsuit against New York photojournalist Jon Tannen, filed on Friday, is essentially a retaliatory strike. Tannen sued CBS Interactive in February, claiming that the online division of CBS had used two of his photographs without permission. Now, CBS has sued Tannen back, claiming that he “hypocritically” used CBS’ intellectual property “while simultaneously bringing suit against Plaintiff’s sister company, CBS Interactive Inc., claiming it had violated his own copyright.”

• A company that sold Kodi-based software which accessed infringing TV, movie and sports streams has lost an interesting case featuring Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. MovieStreamer claimed that it only provided a referral service to third-party content through a series of links but the court found that despite the convoluted process, it still communicated copyrighted works to the public.

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