● 12.13.17

● Links 13/12/2017: GIMP 2.9.8, Fedora 25 End Of Life, AltOS 1.8.3

Posted in News Roundup at 3:48 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Server

• A survey conducted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation indicates that the deployment of Kubernetes on AWS and other public clouds is on the rise.

• Kubernetes is one of the hottest technologies in the cloud world today, with organizations big and small talking about the open-source platform. But what exactly is Kubernetes?

• Introducing Kubeflow, the new project to make machine learning on Kubernetes easy, portable, and scalable. Kubeflow should be able to run in any environment where Kubernetes runs. Instead of recreating other services, Kubeflow distinguishes itself by spinning up the best solutions for Kubernetes users.

• The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, home of the Kubernetes open-source community, grew wildly this year. It welcomed membership from industry giants like Amazon Web Services Inc. and broke attendance records at last week’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon conference in Austin, Texas. This is all happy news for Kubernetes — the favored platform for orchestrating containers (a virtualized method for running distributed applications). The technology needs all the untangling, simplifying fingers it can get.

• This is also why most in the community are happy to tamp down their competitive instincts to chip away at common difficulties. “You kind of have to,” said Michelle Noorali (pictured), senior software engineer at Microsoft and co-chair of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America & Europe 2017. “These problems are really hard.”

• Network slicing is poised to play a pivotal role in the enablement of 5G. The technology allows operators to run multiple virtual networks on top of a single, physical infrastructure. With 5G commercialization set for 2020, many are wondering to what extend network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) can help move network slicing forward.

Kernel Space

Linux Foundation

• Hyperledger is a global blockchain collaboration hub created and hosted by nonprofit The Linux Foundation. Its members are leaders in finance, banking, the Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and technology.

• Now two years in, Hyperledger compares closely to the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance.

• Hyperledger is a hub for communities of software developers building blockchain frameworks and platforms. These developers, on the other hand, are a mix of individuals and teams from organizations around the world.

• Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), an industry leader in automated, scalable and secure networks, today further bolstered its support for open standards during its annual NXTWORK user conference, by announcing its intent to move the codebase for OpenContrail™, an open-source network virtualization platform for the cloud, to the Linux Foundation. Juniper first released its Juniper® Contrail® products as open sourced in 2013 and built a vibrant user and developer community around this project. Earlier this year, Juniper expanded the project’s governance, creating an even more open, community-led effort to strengthen the project for its next growth phase. Adding OpenContrail’s codebase to the Linux Foundation’s networking projects will further its objective to grow the use of open source platforms in cloud ecosystems.

• “Fortunately at Juniper we have a secrect weapon and one that i’m so very proud of and that’s Contrail,” Rami Rahim, Juniper Networks CEO said during his keynote. “The way we have been investing and innovating in Contrail over the last few years is sort of similar to how a car company would invest in a Formula 1 car, it’s essentially a proving ground for the world’s best technology.”

• Rahim commented that the use-cases for Contrail so far have been somewhat limited, but that’s about to change.

• “The future of Contrail is as a platform, a single controller that can solve a variety of really compelling use-cases with ease and simplicity,” Rahim said. “Whether it’s management of overlay and underlay, or SD-WAN connectivity, or multi-cloud fabric management.”

• Juniper originally acquired Contrail in December 2012 in a deal valued at $176 million. In September 2013, Juniper open-sourcedthe Contrail technology, creating the OpenContrail project.

• The Linux Foundation is far more than just Linux. It’s also the home of many open-source networking projects such as the software-defined network (SDN) OpenDaylight, Open Platform for Network Function Virtualization (OPNFV), and Open Network Automation Program (ONAP). Now, networking power Juniper Networks has announced that OpenContrail, its open-source network virtualization cloud platform, will join the others as part of The Linux Foundation.

• Juniper first released its Contrail products as open source in 2013 and built a community around the project. However, many stakeholders complained that Juniper didn’t work very hard to build the community, and some called it “faux-pen source.”

• Juniper Networks has announced its intent to move the codebase for OpenContrail, an open-source network virtualisation platform for the cloud, to the Linux Foundation. OpenContrail provides both software-defined networking (SDN) and security features and has been deployed by various organisations, including cloud providers, telecom operators and enterprises to simplify operational complexities and automate workload management across diverse cloud environments.

• Juniper Networks plans to move the codebase for its OpenContrail open-source network virtualization platform for the cloud to the Linux Foundation, broadening its efforts to drive more software innovations into the broader IT and service provider community.

• The vendor is hardly a novice in developing open source platforms. In 2013, Juniper released its Contrail products as open sourced and built a user and developer community around the project. To drive its next growth phase, Juniper expanded the project’s governance, creating an even more open, community-led effort.

• Juniper Networks today announced the codebase for OpenContrail, its open source network virtualization platform for the cloud, is moving to The Linux Foundation.

• Bell Canada has become one of the first service providers to deploy Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), focusing its initial attention on automating its data center tenant network provisioning process.

• By making this transition in its network, the service provider said it will provide its operations teams with a new tool to improve efficiency and time to market.

• This is the first step in using ONAP as a common platform across Bell’s networks on its journey towards a multipartner DevOps model.

• Canadian communications provider Bell is the first organization to deploy an open source version of the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) in a production environment.

• The milestone was noted in a blog post by Arpit Joshipura, general manager of networking and orchestration with the Linux Foundation.

• The annual Open Source Jobs Report from Dice and The Linux Foundation reveals a lot about prospects for open source professionals and hiring activity in the year ahead. In this year’s report, 86 percent of tech professionals said that knowing open source has advanced their careers. Yet what happens with all that experience when it comes time for advancing within their own organization or applying for a new roles elsewhere?

Graphics Stack

• AMD isn’t the only one busy with GPU software updates today but NVIDIA has issued CUDA 9.1 as their first feature update to the CUDA 9 compute platform.

• Ahead of the Vulkan 1.0 debut nearly two years ago, we heard that for AMD’s Vulkan Linux driver it was initially going to be closed-source and would then be open-sourced once ready. At the time it sounded like something that would be opened up six months or so, but finally that milestone is being reached! Ahead of Christmas, AMD is publishing the source code to their official Vulkan Linux driver.

• For modern AMD graphics cards there are two OpenGL drivers and two Vulkan drivers available to Linux users/gamers that support the same modern AMD GPUs, not counting the older AMD Linux drivers, etc. Here’s a rundown now on how those drivers compare.

• With AMDGPU-PRO 17.50 now allowing you to mix and match driver components and AMD finally open-sourcing their official Vulkan driver, the scene may be even more confusing about which AMD Linux driver(s) to use depending upon your use-case.

• There’s more Radeon Linux excitement today beyond AMD finally open-sourcing their Vulkan driver. Coming out today is the AMDGPU-PRO 17.50 driver that bundles in the open-source RADV and RadeonSI drivers too, in letting you “mix and match” the driver components you want for your system.

• With yesterday’s release of the Radeon Software Adrenalin driver for Windows, it actually picks up a feature that is roughly similar to something the open-source Radeon driver stack – and all of the Mesa’s Gallium3D drivers for that matter – have offered for years.

• Following yesterday’s excitement around the Radeon Software Adrenalin Driver as well as word of AMD open-sourcing their Linux driver and making other Linux driver changes, AMD’s GPUOpen team has announced the release of a new version of Radeon GPU Profiler.

• During last week’s Snapdragon Technology Summit, a few references to “Vulkan2″ were dropped… Well, here’s the official comment from Khronos on that as well as my thoughts on this hypothetical next version of Vulkan.

• Several Phoronix readers have pointed out (e.g.) references to “Vulkan2″ in the context of the new Snapdragon 845 SoC announced at this year’s Snapdragon Technology Summit. The Snapdragon 845 with Adreno 630 does mention “Vulkan2″ support.

Applications

• Everdo is a modern and beautifully-designed Electron-based task management application with which you can keep track of your work using tags, project folders, smart filters, and schedules. It doesn’t need a cloud account to work so your data will remain save on your PC.

• Everdo features a modern and minimalist User Interface with an extremely clean, clutter-less, and uniform design in order to enhance speedy and distraction-free productivity.

• I don’t do Windows. The operating system, I mean. At least, not on my own computers and not with any of my own work.

• When I was a consultant, I often had to work out of my clients’ offices, which meant using their hardware, which also meant using Windows at many of those offices.

• Even when using Windows, I tried to install as much open source software as I could. Why? Because it works as well as (if not better than) its proprietary equivalents. One of the applications I always installed was Notepad++, which Opensource.com community moderator Ruth Holloway looked at in 2016.

• GIMP 2.9.8 has been released with on-canvas gradient editing, better handling of Adobe Photoshop PSD files, and support for those using GIMP on Wayland.

• GIMP 2.9.8 has been released as the newest development version of this widely-used, open-source Photoshop-like program in its road to GIMP 2.10.

• Earlier this week I happened to highlight many of the changes building up for GIMP 2.9.8 as featured in A Lot Of Improvements Are Building Up For GIMP 2.9.8, Including Better Wayland Support.

• GIMP 2.9.8, a development version towards the major GIMP 2.10 release, was announced by developer Alexandre Prokoudine for all supported platforms, including Linux, Mac, and Windows.

• Newly released GIMP 2.9.8 introduces on-canvas gradient editing and various enhancements while focusing on bugfixing and stability. For a complete list of changes please see NEWS.

• VLC 3.0 is something we’ve been looking forward to for years and it’s looking like that big multimedia player update could be released very soon.

• Thanks to Phoronix reader Fran for pointing out that VLC 3.0 release candidates have begun to not much attention. VLC 3.0 RC1 was tagged at the end of November and then on Tuesday marked VLC 3.0 RC2 being tagged, but without any official release announcements.

• A new major release is available of Cryptsetup, the user-space utility for dealing with the DMCrypt kernel module for setting up encrypted disk volumes.

• Cryptsetup 2.0.0 is notable in that it introduces support for the new on-disk LUKS2 format but still retaining support for LUKS(1). The LUKS2 format is security hardened to a greater extent, more extensible than LUKS, supports in-place upgrading from LUKS, and other changes.

Proprietary

• There is no doubt Facebook is one of the most popular and dynamic social network platform in the modern Internet era. It has revolutionized technology, social networking, and the future of how we live and interact. With Facebook, We can connect, communicate with one another, instantly share our memories, photos, files and even money to anyone, anywhere in the world. Even though Facebook has its own official messenger, some tech enthusiasts and developers are developing alternative and feature-rich apps to communicate with your buddies. The one we are going to discuss today is Caprine. It is a free, elegant, open source, and unofficial Facebook messenger desktop app built with Electron framework.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

• It’s almost 2018, and for some reason there still exists an obnoxious barrier between Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems when it comes to running apps and playing games.

• CrossOver 17 for Linux was designed to break that tedious barrier down, by allowing you to run your favorite Windows apps and games directly on your Mac or Linux computer, and it’s available for over 50% off at just $19.

Games

• Finding Paradise is due to release with same-day Linux support tomorrow, to get you in the mood the official trailer is now up.

• Studio Wildcard have finally released an official fix for the broken water in ARK: Survival Evolved [Steam] on certain maps, sadly though it seems they’ve broken the Linux version completely.

• Party Panic [Steam, Official Site], the online and local-multiplayer party game just had a big update which includes a much requested board game mode.

• Bystander, [Steam] a game about making sure people follow the law that seems a little like Papers, Please has added Linux support.

• Xenomarine [Official Site, itch.io, Steam] feels quite a bit like playing a 2D roguelike version of the old Alien Trilogy game and it just had a huge content update.

• With today’s AMDGPU-PRO 17.50 Linux driver release alongside the Radeon Software Adrenalin Driver for Windows users, it’s significant in a few ways. First and foremost, AMD has stuck to their word of the past two years and is now able to open-source their official Vulkan Linux driver. When it comes to AMDGPU-PRO 17.50 itself you are now able to mix-and-match driver components to choose what pieces you want of AMD’s somewhat complicated driver make-up. Additionally, their OpenGL/Vulkan drivers in 17.50 have some new feature capabilities. So with that said here’s a fresh look at how the AMDGPU-PRO 17.50 professional driver performance compares to the latest open-source RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV Vulkan drivers.

• Did you get a little worried at the start of that headline? Fret not, as it’s about the game ‘The End Is Nigh’ and it’s now out of beta on Steam for Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• It turns out that if firing up KDE’s KWin Wayland compositor without XWayland support, it can start up so fast that it causes problems.

• Without XWayland for providing legacy X11 support to KDE Wayland clients, the KWin compositor fires up so fast that it can cause a crash in their Wayland integration as KWin’s internal connection isn’t even established… Yep, Wayland compositors are much leaner and cleaner than the aging X Server code-base that dates back 30+ years, granted most of the XWayland code is much newer than that.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• NetworkManager now has support for Intel’s lean “IWD” WiFi daemon.

• IWD is a lightweight daemon for managing WiFi devices via a D-Bus interface and has been in development since 2013 (but was only made public in 2016) and just depends upon GCC / Glibc / ELL (Embedded Linux Library).

Distributions

New Releases

• SparkyLinux developers have released the SparkyLinux 4.7 operating system for ARMhf hardware architectures supported on Raspberry Pi single-board computers.

• This is the first release of the Debian-based SparkyLinux operating system to come to the tiny Raspberry Pi SBCs, most probably supporting both Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 single-board computers. The ARMhf port of SparkyLinux was in development for the last couple of months.

• Based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” operating system, SparkyLinux 4.7 for ARMhf includes all the Raspberry Pi scripts and packages, and it’s distributed in two flavors, a graphical version using the lightweight Openbox window manager and a text-based Lite edition that lets you customize the OS as you see fit.

Screenshots/Screencasts

• Emmabuntüs recently released a video where they explain the goals and reasons of the project, current achievements and show people who really use this operating system. You can also see the members of the project live.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1, the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, has achieved an additional Common Criteria Certification. Enhancing the existing Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ certification announced in October 2016, this certification was under the General-Purpose Operating System Protection Profile (OSPP) 3.9. Red Hat Enterprise Linux was the first operating system to be Common Criteria-certified with Linux Container Framework Support, underscoring Red Hat’s commitment to delivering hardened and more secure IT innovations like Linux containers.

Finance

Fedora

• You may remember reading about plans for Fedora 27 Server. The working group decided not to release that at the same time as the general F27 release, and instead provided a beta of Fedora 27 Modular Server. Based on feedback from that beta, they decided to take a different approach, and the Modularity subproject is going back to the drawing board.

• Fortunately, there is a contingency plan: Fedora’s release engineering team made a “classic” version of Fedora 27 Server — very similar to F26 Server, but with F27’s updated package set. The quality assurance ran this version through validation testing, and it’s being released, so:

• - The Fedora Project’s plans on delivering an initial “Fedora 27 Modular Server” build constructed under their new packaging principles has been thwarted.

• Due to less than stellar feedback on their Fedora 27 Modular Server build, the Fedora Modular working group is going back to the drawing board for determining a brighter future to its design. Previous to being canned, F27 Modular Server was delayed to January but is now being abandoned in its current form.

• As of the 12th of December 2017, Fedora 25 has reached its end of life

• for updates and support. No further updates, including security updates, will be available for Fedora 25. Fedora 26 will continue to receive updates until approximately one month after the release of Fedora 28. The maintenance schedule of Fedora releases is documented on the Fedora Project wiki [0]. The Fedora Project wiki also contains instructions [1] on how to upgrade from a previous release of Fedora to a version receiving updates.

• As of December 12, 2017, the Fedora 25 Linux operating system is no longer supported and it won’t receive further updates or security patches as it reached end of life.

• Fedora 25 Linux was released last year on November 22, and will be remembered as the first release of the GNU/Linux distribution to adopt the next-generation Wayland display server by default for its Workstation edition using the acclaimed GNOME desktop environment.

• Fedora Project usually provides updates for each Fedora Linux release until a month after the second succeeding version of the operating system is released. Fedora 25 received thirteen months of support, and now that Fedora 27 Linux is out as of November 14, 2017, users need to upgrade.

• Three weeks after the launch of the Fedora 27 Linux operating system, the Fedora Project announced the release of Fedora 27 Server edition, but it’s not what you might have expected.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical announced on Wednesday the availability of officially certified FIPS 140-2 cryptographic packages for the long-term supported Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system series through its Cryptographic Module Validation Program.

• Level 1 FIPS 140-2 cryptographic packages can now be purchased for your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS operating system through Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage service or as a separate, standalone product. Ubuntu Advantage subscribers can already find the FIPS-compliant modules in the Ubuntu Advantage private archive if they use Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) on their PCs.

• Not only are Ubuntu developers working towards demoting Python 2 on their Linux distribution but they are also working on being able to demote the GTK2 tool-kit from the main archive to universe followed by its eventual removal in the future.

• Matthias Klose is hoping to organize more work towards this slow demotion process of GTK2 and ideally to get some of the issues cleared up ahead of the Ubuntu 18.04 Long-Term Support release in April.

Devices/Embedded

• Gumstix’s Arduino-driven “RoomSense” board offers an ATSAMW25 MCU, WiFi, passive-IR motion detection, plus temperature, humidity, and barometric sensors.

• The Gumstix RoomSense is a USB dongle board that can detect room occupancy using passive infrared (PIR) technology and report on temperature, humidity, and barometric conditions. The board can be customized in the Gumstix Geppetto online development service, which was used to design it in the first place. Geppetto users can “customize specifications online by changing processors or adding GPS and sensors as needed,” says Gumstix.

• Bdale and I are pleased to announce the release of AltOS version 1.8.3.

• AltOS is the core of the software for all of the Altus Metrum products. It consists of firmware for our cc1111, STM32L151, STMF042, LPC11U14 and ATtiny85 based electronics and Java-based ground station software.

• This is a minor release of AltOS, including support for our new TeleMega v3.0 board and a selection of bug fixes Announcing TeleMega v3.0

Android

Free Software/Open Source

• In his keynote at OpenStack Summit in Australia, Jonathan Bryce (Executive Director of the OpenStack Foundation) stressed on the meaning of both “Open” and “Stack” in the name of the project and focused on the importance of collaboration within the OpenStack ecosystem.

• OpenStack has enjoyed unprecedented success since its early days. It has excited the IT industry about applications at scale and created new ways to consume cloud. The adoption rate of OpenStack and the growth of its community exceeded even the biggest open source project on the planet, Linux. In its short life of 6 years, OpenStack has achieved more than Linux did in a similar time span.

• So, why does OpenStack need to redefine the meaning of the project and stress collaboration? Why now?

• “We have reached a point where the technology has proven itself,” said Mark Collier, the CTO of the OpenStack Foundation. “You have seen all the massive use case of OpenStack all around the globe.”

• In contrast, asynchronous decision-making, which is often used in large open source projects—for example, at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), where I’m most active—provides an efficient way for teams to move forward with minimal meetings. Many open source projects involve only a few meetings each year (and some none at all), yet development teams consistently produce high-quality software.

Events

• This has been a pivotal year for Linux Foundation events. Our largest gatherings, which include Open Source Summit, Embedded Linux Conference, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Open Networking Summit, and Cloud Foundry Summit, attracted a combined 25,000 people from 4,500 different organizations globally. Attendance was up 25 percent over 2016.

• Linux Foundation events are often the only time that developers, maintainers, and other pros who contribute to Linux and other critical open source projects — like AGL, Kubernetes and Hyperledger to name a few — get together in person. Face-to-face meetings are crucial because they speed collaboration, engagement and innovation, improving the sustainability of projects over time.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• When we set out to launch Firefox Quantum earlier this year, we knew we had a hugely improved product. It not only felt faster — with a look and feel that tested off the charts — it was measurably faster. Thanks to multiple changes under the hood, we doubled Firefox’s speed while using 30% less memory than Chrome.

• In less than a month, Firefox Quantum has already been installed by over 170M people around the world. We’re just getting started and early returns are super encouraging.

• We’re joining with others across the web — from Github and Reddit to Etsy and Imgur — for a Break the Internet Day of Action. The idea: to show how broadly we all value an open internet. And to ask Americans to call their members of Congress and urge them to stop the FCC’s plan to end net neutrality.

Databases

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Brian Fox is a titan of open source software. As the first employee of Richard Stallman’s Free Software Foundation, he wrote several core GNU components, including the GNU Bash shell. Now he’s a board member of the National Association of Voting Officials and co-founder of Orchid Labs, which delivers uncensored and private internet access to users like those behind China’s firewall. We talked to him about his career and how he works.

Public Services/Government

• The OSPC contributes to an open-source tool, called Tax Calculator, developed by economists and contributors across the partisan divide that anyone can use to better understand tax policy.

Licensing/Legal

• We live in the era of gig economies and e-commerce, where supply chains are evolving before our eyes due in part to the speed of technological innovation. All transportation and logistics services are under pressure to deliver highly analytic data-rich solutions in addition to freight. The challenge to gain advantage through information technology systems, let alone to remain competitive, is often met through “homegrown” proprietary IT solutions in addition to those many options available on the market.

• Developing proprietary IT systems, whether for core operating systems or customer-facing applications, can be a costly endeavor and therefore the speed and cost of development tend to be areas of concern. Most IT systems today contain what is known as open source software because using open source is generally much more cost-effective than developing entirely from scratch. While using open source software is advantageous in some ways, it also carries certain risks that must be navigated in order to achieve and protect the full potential of a homegrown system.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Hardware/Modding

• Dana Lewis kickstarted the Open Artificial Pancreas System (previously) by trying to solve her own problems with monitoring her glucose levels, calculating insulin doses, and administering them around the clock — an onerous task that her life depended on, which disrupted her sleep and challenged her to make reliable calculations regarding dangerous substances while her blood-sugar levels were troughing or spiking.

• An open-source LTE shield equipped with SIMCOM’s SIM7000-series modules combined with the latest LTE CAT-M technology has been created by Hackaday member Timothy Woo to enable Arduino users to easily connect low-power Internet of Things devices to next-generation cellular technology!

Leftovers

Science

Health/Nutrition

• According to a report released today by the World Health Organization and the World Bank, at least half the world’s population is lacking access to essential health services. Out of pocket expenses related to health care are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty each year, the report says. Both organisations say they are committed to working with countries to increase access to essential health services.

• The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) announced today that MedsPaL, its database of information on the patent and licensing status of selected HIV, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis medicines, now extends to patented treatments on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. New patents data include medicines for leukaemia, breast cancer and other cancer indications.

• MedsPaL now covers 6,800 national patent applications in more than 110 countries for more than 70 priority treatments, according to a press release. Patent information has been added for seven medications: bendamustine, bevacizumab, dasatinib, imatinib, nilotinib, rituximab and trastuzumab, “as a first step in incorporating additional data on patented medicines on the WHO’s EML [Essential Medicines List],” according to the release.

Security

• Developers working in secure development guidelines can still be bitten by upstream bugs in the languages they use.

• That’s the conclusion of research presented last week at Black Hat Europe by IOActive’s Fernando Arnaboldi.

• As Arnaboldi wrote in his Black Hat Europe paper [PDF]: “software developers may unknowingly include code in an application that can be used in a way that the designer did not foresee. Some of these behaviors pose a security risk to applications that were securely developed according to guidelines.”

• Despite the criticism it received in the United States and in the United Kingdom, Kaspersky continues to be one of the leading security vendors for Windows users across the world, with its software protecting millions of systems powered by Microsoft’s OS.

• But it turns out that some of those whose computers were running the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Kaspersky Internet Security 2018 have been hit by a bug causing a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) since earlier this month.

• BornCity reveals that the issue first appeared earlier this month when some users complained of a BSOD on Windows 10 build 16299.98, which indicates that these systems were running the latest version of the OS with cumulative update KB4051963.

• ROBOT is the return of a 19-year-old vulnerability that allows performing RSA decryption and signing operations with the private key of a TLS server.

• The attack can compromise a website’s RSA encryption by decrypting the data using the private key of the TLS server. It was possible because of the vulnerability present in the RSA algorithm used in SSL protocol, exploited by Bleichenbacher.

• While you might be thinking about the ways to get rid of the secret (flawed) ME chip Intel puts insider its processors, the silicon giant has announced their plans to prevent the ME chip from getting hacked in the future.

• The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued the second draft of the proposed update to the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity—also known as the Cybersecurity Framework. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) encourages all relevant stakeholders to submit draft comments to NIST by the deadline on Friday, January 19, 2018.

Defence/Aggression

• Protests have broken out across the Middle East against President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — and Western critics complain that the move adds one more brick in the wall against the prospects for peace.

• Professor Francis Boyle, who teaches international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and served as a long-time legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), calls Trump’s announcement a “symbolic but still critical step in Israeli designs to control not just Jerusalem, but all of historic Palestine.” I spoke with Boyle on Dec. 6.

• In an effort to further tighten the screws on North Korea in what is likely to be another failed U.S. attempt to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear program, President Trump put that country back on its list of countries sponsoring terrorism. North Korea will join Iran, Sudan and Syria on the list. In response, North Korea has conducted another ballistic missile test.

• Like Pavlov’s dog, the mainstream media slobbers predicable reactions every time North Korea launches another test missile. Listening to the blather one would think that once Kim Jong Un has a missile capable of reaching the U.S., he is going to use it in an unprovoked nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland killing millions of Americans.

• In the U.S., I first understood the power of the documentary during the editing of my first film, The Quiet Mutiny. In the commentary, I make reference to a chicken, which my crew and I encountered while on patrol with American soldiers in Vietnam.

• The other day we learned that there are four times more U.S. troops in Syria than any earlier official figure had acknowledged. The discrepancy did not get much public attention, perhaps because the numbers are small compared to some other U.S. military deployments: about 2,000 troops in Syria, with the earlier official figure being 500.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Referring to erroneous reports that the Trump campaign received a file of hacked emails ten days before it was posted on Wikileaks in September 2016, the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald wrote this weekend that last Friday was “one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time.” While Greenwald’s rhetoric about the American press is often harsh even by leftist-intellectual standards, it’s hard to say he is wrong about this. Let’s review:

• • CNN reported Friday morning that Donald Trump Jr. and his father received an email on Sept. 4, 2016 which would have allowed them to access hacked Democratic emails that weren’t posted by Wikileaks until Sept. 13. CNN’s report was based on “multiple sources,” and would have been huge news—evidence of the Trumps being given an early look at material that, it’s believed, was originally obtained by Russian intelligence operatives.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• In the early hours of August 31, explosions erupted at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, where floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey had cut off the power supply to refrigerated containers containing organic peroxide. Residences in a 1.5-mile radius had been evacuated, and deputies manning barricades began falling ill in the middle of the road one by one. Medics were called, but no further warning was given as columns of black smoke filled the air.

• Arkema knew the fires were coming — organic peroxides burst into flames unless they are kept cool — but company officials had insisted in a press conference prior to the explosions that the chemicals were not toxic or harmful to people, according to a lawsuit filed in September by emergency workers injured at the scene.

Finance

• A key ally of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has claimed that a growing awareness of the damaging terms of a future Brexit deal has led to a rise in support in the UK for a second referendum on EU membership.

• Manfred Weber, the leader of the largest party in the European parliament, said a row over the ineligibility of Britain’s cities in the European capital of culture competition was just the latest example of the UK’s losses hitting home.

• “An opinion poll showed 50% of the British people are in favour of a new referendum,” Weber, who leads the centre-right European People’s party, told MEPs in Strasbourg. “The British people realise that Brexit means losing many things, but not gaining anything.”

• Before knowing about Litecoin and its exponential growth, I’d like to tell you about the term “Altcoin.” As its name tries to give away (alt + coin), altcoins are the alternative digital coins that mushroomed on the scene after Bitcoin’s success. This was inevitable. A notable feature of all the altcoins is that they try to pose themselves as a better option with more features.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• In New York, three of the 16 women who have publicly accused Donald Trump of sexual abuse called on Congress Monday to investigate the president. In a press conference in Manhattan, the women shared accounts in which they said Trump groped, fondled or otherwise made unwanted sexual advances toward them. This is Rachel Crooks, who says Trump forcibly kissed her against her will in 2005.

• Mary Trump, the Scottish-born mother of the US President who died in 2000, is reported to have been acutely embarrassed by the antics of her fourth child during the 1990s when his failing marriage and business were the subject of intense tabloid scrutiny.

• Born as the 10th child of the MacLeod family on the Outer Hebridean Isle of Lewis in 1912, Ms Trump was raised in a strict Presbyterian, Gaelic speaking household.

• [...]

• Psychologists who are analysing the President behaviour have wondered whether his thin skin, need for praise and poor treatment of women – particularly those who stand up to him – stems from his relationship with his mother.

• Prudence Gourguechon, from the American Psychoanalytic Association, told Politico: “I’m not talking specifically about any individual, including the president, or his mother”.

• The Alabama Supreme Court has reportedly stayed a lower court’s order to election officials that would have required the preservation of voting records in Tuesday’s Senate special election.

• A circuit judge on Monday ordered election officials to set voting machines to save all digital ballot images, which would preserve voting records in the event of a recount.

• Alabama’s AL.com said Tuesday morning that the state’s Supreme Court had blocked the order.

• A group of four Alabama voters filed a lawsuit last Thursday arguing that the state is required by law to preserve the images. The voters’ attorney, Priscilla Duncan, said that the circuit judge’s order would protect votes if there were an “election challenge.” “People think that when they mark the ballots and they go into the machine that that’s what counted,” Duncan told AL.com. “But it’s not, the paper ballot is not what’s counted. That ballot is scanned and they destroy [the ballots] after the election.”

• President Donald Trump’s choice to head a federal coal mine regulator, like more than one of his nominees, is a vocal critic of the very agency he’s being asked to lead. Steven Gardner is a longtime coal industry consultant, and he has called the agency’s marquee Obama-era regulation the product of “one of the most disingenuous and dishonest efforts put forward by a government agency.”

• But in Gardner’s case, there is an unusual — and contentious — twist: He runs an engineering firm that produced a report as part of the process of preparing that regulation, and the agency deemed it so shoddy that it cut ties with Gardner’s company. Now he’s the nominee to head that agency, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. (In broad terms, OSMRE — pronounced “oz-muhr” — focuses on mining’s effect on the environment, while the other key regulator, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, focuses on the welfare of miners.)

• More than half the 2,000 people who received pedestrian tickets in Duval County, Florida, from 2012 to 2016 saw their driver’s licenses suspended or their ability to obtain one limited, according to an analysis by the Florida Times-Union and ProPublica.

• The tickets, which carry what can seem like a modest $65 fine, can have more significant consequences for those who get them and refuse to pay or are unable to do so.

• Over five years, a total of 2,004 pedestrian tickets were issued in Duval County, which is comprised almost entirely by the city of Jacksonville. Of those tickets, 982 people who failed or were unable to pay the fine lost their driver’s licenses or their ability to obtain one, according to the analysis.

• The license suspensions help answer a question at the center of a Times-Union/ProPublica investigation of pedestrian tickets in Jacksonville: What are the consequences for individuals swept up in the Jacksonville Sheriff Office’s aggressive enforcement of some two dozen often obscure pedestrian statutes?

• Last month, the Times-Union/ProPublica investigation showed that 55 percent of the tickets given in recent years went to blacks despite the fact that they make up only 29 percent of the city’s population. Blacks were similarly overrepresented in the 932 tickets that led to license suspensions — 54 percent.

• As of Tuesday’s City Council meeting, three elected officials on the body have called on Sheriff Mike Williams to order his officers to stop writing pedestrian tickets. Council member Garrett Dennis asked the Office of General Counsel to review what authority the council had to compel him to do so. In addition to voicing her support for that measure, council member Katrina Brown asked for a noticed meeting focused on pedestrian infrastructure and enforcement.

Censorship/Free Speech

• The most recent attempt at censorship came from a petition started by Mia Merrill. Merrill complained about a painting that’s housed at the Metropolitan Art Gallery titled Thérèse Dreaming by a Polish-French painter known as Balthus.

• In the petition, Merrill states that the painting “is an evocative portrait of a prepubescent girl relaxing on a chair with her legs up and underwear exposed.” She goes on to say that the image is “disturbing,” and that Balthus “had a noted infatuation with pubescent girls,” and finally, that “given the current climate around sexual assault and allegations,” the gallery is “perhaps, unintentionally, supporting voyeurism and the objectification of children.” Merrill claims that she’s “not asking for this painting to be censored,” but only for the gallery to consider the “implications” of having such a painting on display.

• The ACLU of Pennsylvania is again confronting Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Darlene Harris for allegedly censoring a constituent on her new official Facebook page.

• In a letter to the city solicitor Tuesday, the civil liberties organization accused Harris of deleting a post on her official page that included a link to the Facebook group, “Citizens Against Darlene Harris for Pittsburgh City Council.”

• Hate is a natural human emotion. It’s not illegal. In fact, it is part of our freedom of thought and belief. Just don’t commit a crime while you’re expressing it.

• Seated in his Khartoum office overlooking the Blue Nile, Sudanese journalist Adil al-Baz no longer fears a crackdown by security agents over his articles since he launched an online newspaper.

• “We are free to publish what we want on our online newspaper,” Baz, a former print newspaper editor, told AFP at the office of Al-Ahdath, the website he launched this year.

• In a country of increasing media censorship, Baz is among several independent journalists who have left newspaper jobs and launched online papers or websites.

• Reacting to Theresa May’s proposal to make social media companies liable for content, Jim Killock, Executive Director of Open Rights Group said:

• “This is an attempt to make Mark Zuckerberg a national censor.

• “Facebook and Twitter will censor legal material because they are scared of fines. They are the worst people to judge right and wrong. Theresa May is in danger of removing people’s right to a proper legal decision.”

• Over the last few years, China and Russia have been quietly exporting their models of online information controls through the supply of surveillance and censorship equipment, as well as providing training in the latest information control techniques. However, Beijing and Moscow differ considerably in the way they control information online, and these differences will determine which is more popular with authoritarian regimes in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

• Despots, dictators, and autocrats will pick the model they prefer using two criteria: the ambition of the censorship system (e.g. how much information can a system filter) and the technology and services required to maintain the system. China’s model outcompetes Russia’s model in both categories.

• LONDON mayor Sadiq Khan has been criticised over his office banning an ad campaign relating to a conflict-ridden region in Pakistan.

• The #FreeBalochistan adverts were displayed on London taxis and buses to highlight alleged “war crimes and human rights abuses”, but were later removed by Transport for London (TfL) for allegedly breaching advertising guidelines.

• Three recent documentaries track the ingenious ways that banned literature, films, and music circulated in the Soviet Union.

• About 200 young girls marched through the streets of Johannesburg on Wednesday to demand that Google and Facebook respect African culture.

• Organised by local media company TV Yabantu‚ the march was to pressure social media platforms to stop censoring African cultural content. Lazi Dlamini said the companies are insulting African culture and women as they continue to remove cultural videos and images that feature bare-breasted women on their platforms.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray faced questions from the House Judiciary Committee about how his department is implementing one of the government’s most powerful surveillance tools. Despite repeated bipartisan requests, Director Wray refused to tell the Members of the Committee how many Americans have been impacted by Section 702, enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Act. This isn’t the first time the FBI has refused to answer to Congress.

• EFF has long held that Section 702 is being used to violate the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Section 702 authorizes the acquisition of foreign intelligence information; however, because many Americans communicate with foreign persons outside the United States every day, our communications are also being captured and read without a warrant.

• The man at the helm of the White House’s voter suppression efforts has a terrible record that just keeps getting worse.

• The ACLU’s Voting Rights Project today amended our complaint in ACLU v. Donald Trump, our lawsuit against the White House’s voter suppression commission, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

• In addition to the ACLU’s existing transparency and fair balance claims, the amended complaint charges that the commission has acted arbitrarily and outside the scope of its legal authority. In making its unprecedented decision to aggregate the personal data of every registered voter in the United States, the commission failed to properly consider, for example, the cybersecurity and privacy implications of compiling this sensitive data. In addition, investigating records of individual voters goes well beyond the commission’s mandate to study and make recommendations concerning registration and voting processes.

• Kobach’s record on this matter is extremely troubling. His prized voter monitoring system, Crosscheck, which stores millions of voter files and is ostensibly meant to stop people from voting in more than one state, has serious defects. It not only produces erroneous findings, but it is also open to massive security risks.

• Gizmodo found that “the records passing through the Crosscheck system have been stored on a server in Arkansas operating on a network rife with security flaws” and that “multiple sets of login credentials” have been compromised. ProPublica similarly discovered that security vulnerabilities, like hosting files on an insecure server and sharing login credentials over email, “could imperil the safety of millions of peoples’ records.” And security analysts warned in a recent court brief that Kobach’s plan to collect millions of files containing voters’ personal information “would constitute a treasure trove for malicious actors.”

• Hong Kong-based sex toy company Lovense received some bad publicity the past weekend after someone on reddit accused the company of secretly recording users’ lovemaking sessions with the mobile app allowing for remote controlling of its vibrators.

• Basically, reddit user /u/tydoctor claimed he came across a .3gp file stored on his device that was “a full audio recording 6 minutes long of the last time I had used the app to control my SO’s remote control vibrator.” This way, the user claimed, Lovesense secretly created audio recordings of the sex sessions, obviously making people believe that the company was actually spying on people.

• And since spying is quite a hot topic these days, it’s ten times worse when it involves anything related to sex, so the discussion rapidly made the rounds, with more than 200 users chiming in and debating how and why Lovsense creates the audio recording.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The city will create a task force to review its agencies’ use of algorithms and the policy issues they implicate.

• Invisible algorithms increasingly shape the world we live in, and not always for the better. Unfortunately, few mechanisms are in place to ensure they’re not causing more harm than good.

• That might finally be changing: A first-in-the-nation bill, passed yesterday in New York City, offers a way to help ensure the computer codes that governments use to make decisions are serving justice rather than inequality.

• Computer algorithms are a series of steps or instructions designed to perform a specific task or solve a particular problem. Algorithms inform decisions that affect many aspects of society. These days, they can determine which school a child can attend, whether a person will be offered credit from a bank, what products are advertised to consumer, and whether someone will receive an interview for a job. Government officials also use them to predict where crimes will take place, who is likely to commit a crime and whether someone should be allowed out of jail on bail.

• The execution of Daniel Shaver demonstrates the importance of police training.

• Two words stick in my mind when I think of the video of Daniel Shaver begging for his life before he was shot and killed by Officer Philip Brailsford of the Police Department in Mesa, Arizona. The two words were written on the dust cover of the AR-15 rifle Braisford used to kill Shaver:

• “You’re fucked.”

• We have seen this movie before. Daniel Shaver was not armed or committing any crime when was he shot to death by Brailsford. Like many previous police shooting videos, this one shows police behaving much more aggressively than Mr. Shaver. And like previous videos, a jury acquitted the officer of all criminal charges. But this video showed us two things about policing culture in America that stand out. First, the video shows Shaver begging for his life while he tried to follow contradictory instructions screamed at him by an officer. And Shaver was white.

• Shaver had a job killing pests. Sometimes he used a pellet gun to get the job done, and he was seen holding the gun by people at the hotel. When the police were called, they were told a man had a gun so they had to be careful.

• I get it. But how far does that information take us?

• The ACLU polled likely voters and found strong support for prosecutors committed to criminal justice reform.

• “Mass incarceration is a myth.” Racial bias in the criminal justice system “is the most ludicrous concept ever.” Data on sexual assault prosecutions should be kept secret because it might be “misinterpreted by the public.”

• These are all real quotes from elected prosecutors, the most powerful people in the criminal justice system. There are approximately 2,400 elected prosecutors in America, and these views may well be common among them. But the public appears to be moving away from these misconceptions.

• A first-of-its-kind poll conducted by the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice shows that voters of every persuasion across the United States — in red states and in blue states alike — strongly prefer elected prosecutors who are committed to reducing incarceration, tackling racial disparities, and being transparent.

• Approximately nine out of 10 likely voters surveyed said that it was important for their prosecutor to prioritize alternatives to incarceration. This includes 83 percent of Republicans polled. Eighty-eight percent of voters also said they were more likely to support a prosecutor who actively works to reduce racial bias in the criminal justice system. And 91 percent want prosecutors to reduce sentences in instances where people were treated unequally because of their race. Respondents also want a prosecutor who makes a commitment to transparency, with 85 percent favoring a prosecutor who shares data and policies with the public.

• The U.S. Department of Defense denied the allegation, saying there was no credible evidence to support it.

• Nils Melzer, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said he had information that Ammar al-Baluchi – accused of being a co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks on the United States – was being subjected to treatment that is banned under international law.

• “His torture and ill-treatment are reported to continue,” a statement from the U.N. human rights office said, without giving details of the source of Melzer’s information.

• “In addition to the long-term effects of past torture, noise and vibrations are reportedly still being used against him, resulting in constant sleep deprivation and related physical and mental disorders, for which he allegedly does not receive adequate medical attention,” it said.

• The Ferguson-Florissant School District was born out of a 1975 federal desegregation order, intended to remedy effects of historical discrimination against African-American students.

• Yet, as recently as 2014, the school board was all white, and its members had not had a racial make-up that reflects the district’s population in the 12 years prior. Slightly less than half of the voting-age residents of the district are African-American, as are roughly 80 percent of the students who attend the public schools. While some African-American candidates have been elected to the school board in the last few years, recent victories do not erase the district’s long history of racial exclusion and inequality.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Regardless, the rollback is expected to pass by a 3-2 margin on party lines. In separate phone interviews conducted last week, The Verge spoke with commissioners Clyburn and Rosenworcel about this week’s vote, and what happens next.

• Interviews were conducted separately. They have been condensed and edited.

• The dream of the Internet is dying. Killed by its children. We have barely noticed its demise and done even less to save it.

• It was a dream of openness, of unprecedented technological and social freedom to connect and innovate. Whilst expressed in technology, it was a dream that was, in essence, political and social. A dream of equality of opportunity, of equality of standing, and of liberty. A world where anyone could connect and almost everyone did.

• No-one controlled or owned the Internet; no one person or group decided who got on it or who didn’t. It was open to all.

• Repeal will corporatize selection too. A free and open Internet has allowed independent artists like Sturgill Simpson, Drive-By Truckers and Chance the Rapper to grow and cultivate a fan base on their own terms, and for fans to find them. But if Net Neutrality goes away, not only will access to discovery platforms be limited, corporations and providers will have the opportunity to boost artists that have deals with their brands instead. And since the Internet is such an important vehicle behind the genre-less creativity in today’s music – artists grow up with near universal access to music from every corner of the globe through the Web – the end of Net Neutrality could mean more music that is culturally myopic in scope.

• This is a problem faced by millions of Americans, according to a new analysis from the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a nonprofit that advocates for equitable development and local government rule. Based on the Federal Communications Commission’s own data, the ILSR found that 129 million Americans only have one option for broadband internet service in their area, which equals about 40 percent of the country.

• No one wanted to see big service providers turn the Internet into the cable industry, with its high prices and relatively few choices. But that’s what’s about to happen.

• The 12th annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum will open in Geneva next week. The United Nations entity, which presents itself as a free electron of internet governance, will host a large number of sessions addressing pressing issues of the digital world, including big data, cyber security, and artificial intelligence. Discussions held at the forum will enhance understanding of the broad issue of internet governance, and help hold actors accountable.

• The 12th annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will take place from 18-21 December on the theme “Shape Your Digital Future.” This is the first time the IGF is being held in Geneva, which is the home of the IGF secretariat.

DRM

• Recently, Sean Paul from Google’s ChromeOS team, submitted a patch series to enable HDCP support for the Intel display driver. HDCP – or High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection to its parents – is used to encrypt content over HDMI and DisplayPort links, which can only be decoded by trusted devices.

• HDCP is typically used to protect high-quality content. A source device will try to negotiate a HDCP link with its downstream receiver such as your TV or a frame-capture device. If a HDCP link can be negotiated, the pixel content will be encrypted over the wire and decrypted by the trusted downstream device. If a HDCP link cannot be successfully negotiated and pixel data remains unencrypted, the typical behaviour is to fall back to a lower resolution, or quality that is in some way less desirable to capture.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• While looking at the scanned copies for the copyright renewal entries for movies published in the USA, an idea occurred to me. The number of renewals are so few per year, it should be fairly quick to transcribe them all and add references to the corresponding IMDB title ID. This would give the (presumably) complete list of movies published 28 years earlier that did _not_ enter the public domain for the transcribed year. By fetching the list of USA movies published 28 years earlier and subtract the movies with renewals, we should be left with movies registered in IMDB that are now in the public domain. For the year 1955 (which is the one I have looked at the most), the total number of pages to transcribe is 21. For the 28 years from 1950 to 1978, it should be in the range 500-600 pages. It is just a few days of work, and spread among a small group of people it should be doable in a few weeks of spare time.

• A series of documents released by the US Department of State have revealed how Sweden was pressed to take action against The Pirate Bay. According to US officials, this directly led to law enforcement’s decision to shut down the torrent site more than ten years ago. Sweden, meanwhile, avoided a spot on the feared US Trade Representative’s 301 Watch List.

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