● 05.03.17
● Links 3/5/2017: Wine Staging 2.7, Nextcloud 12 Beta, GCC 7.1, LibreSSL 2.5.4 Released
Posted in News Roundup at 5:43 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux
Desktop
↺ Why and how to run Linux in macOS … for free
* MacBooks are quite popular within the commercial open source community. I cover a lot of open source events and all I see are MacBooks running macOS. I myself carry a MacBook to such events.
* Why?
* The short answer is that it just works.
* The longer answer is that macOS is UNIX so you get access to all utilities, commands and tools that you get on your desktop Linux box, including running cronjobs, rsyncing files and writing USBs with the ‘dd’ command from macOS’s native Terminal app.
↺ Microsoft sparks new war with Google over low-cost lappies for kids
↺ usually it just bribes people if it comes to this
* Over 50 per cent of US schoolchildren use Chromebooks in class and now…
Server
↺ Former Concur CEO to Lead Docker Containers Forward
* Just over a week ago, Ben Golub was on stage at the DockerCon 17 conference explaining how well his company Docker Inc. was doing and why container use is the future of technology. While Golub was optimistic about the future of Docker Inc., apparently his future as CEO of the company was to be short-lived. Today Docker Inc. announced that Steve Singh will be the company’s new CEO.
* What is surprising about the move is that there was no indication, at DockerCon 17 or elsewhere, that a CEO search or replacement exercise was under way. As it turns out, discussions about a new CEO have been ongoing for weeks, though there was no formal executive search under way.
↺ Interview: New Docker CEO Steve Singh explains what’s next for the cloud container powerhouse
↺ One of tech’s most ambitious open source projects puts a software veteran at the helm
↺ In an effort to get its house in order, Docker containerizes and ships out its CEO
↺ Docker replaces CEO Ben Golub with former Concur cofounder and CEO Steve Singh
↺ Docker hires veteran Steve Singh as CEO to lead commercialization efforts
↺ Docker names Steve Singh as new CEO, tapping former Concur and SAP exec for next growth phase
↺ Docker appoints industry veteran as new CEO
↺ Docker Names New CEO While Top Executive Golub Moves To Container Tech Company’s Board
↺ Docker Names Former Concur Exec as New CEO
↺ Former Concur CEO Steve Singh to lead cloud company Docker
Kernel Space
↺ MD RAID Optimizations For Linux 4.12
* Another pull request worth mentioning for Linux 4.12 are the MD (Multiple Device) Software RAID changes.
↺ Intel P-State, Schedutil Get Updated For Linux 4.12 Kernel
* Intel’s P-State CPU frequency scaling driver continues getting in shape with the latest mainline Linux Git code and the CPUFreq Schedutil governor also received some tuning, among other power management and ACPI changes vetted for Linux 4.12.
* For the Linux 4.12 kernel, the Intel P-State driver’s sysfs interface has been reworked so it’s now “more straightforward and more intuitive”, P-State should now work with all CPUs advertising hardware P-States (HWP), the load-based P-State selection algorithm will now be used on a wider range of systems, there is now Gemini Lake support in P-State, and there has been other clean-ups and optimization work to this Intel CPU scaling driver alternative to ACPI CPUFreq.
↺ Livepatching With Linux 4.12 Will Be Faster For Some Modules
* For those making use of the Linux kernel’s integrated livepatch functionality, the time to load patched modules will be faster in some instances with the in-development Linux 4.12 kernel.
* Jiri Kosina of SUSE sent in the livepatching updates today for the Linux 4.12 kernel. Aside from a per-task consistency model and other changes, what caught our attention is that the patch module load time is reduced for some modules.
↺ Linux 4.11 Improves Security and Performance
↺ Linux Kernel 4.11 ‘Fearless Coyote’ Released
Applications
↺ Jailhouse 0.7 Hypervisor Released
* Version 0.7 of the Jailhouse Linux hypervisor has been released.
* Jailhouse 0.7 adds support for debug console access from the root Linux cell, support for Intel’s Denverton SoC, gcov code coverage statistics, and a configuration for the Orange Pi Zero.
↺ PeaZip 6.4.1 Open-Source File Archiver Adds Experimental Privacy_Mode Directive
* PeaZip, an open-source and cross-platform file archiver utility for GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems providing a unified and portable interface and supporting around 190 file formats, was updated to version 6.4.1.
* PeaZip 6.4.1 comes about one month after the release of version 6.4.0, the first in the new stable series, and, as expected, it’s a maintenance update adding various improvements and fixing some of the issues reported by users lately.
Proprietary
↺ Now Slack-ing Off Is Encouraged!
* If your company hasn’t already chosen to utilize Slack, it’s probably only a matter of time. For anyone who has been around IRC before, Slack might seem like a total ripoff. I’ll be honest, when one of the companies I work for starting using it, I wasn’t impressed, because I could do all the same things with IRC.
↺ Discord – voice and text chat for gamers
* Hi guys, it is been a long pause on our website due to our exams and stuff but we are now back with more interesting stuff for you guys. Today we are going to meet Discord. If you are into online gaming and MOBA type games then you must have used or heard about Discord. It is one of the most versatile app out there for voice and text based chat. There are other apps like Skype or Teamspeak but Discord is unique in it’s own way. Let’s get to know more about this app.
Instructionals/Technical
↺ How To Install Webmin on CentOS 7
↺ Create A List Of Installed Packages And Install Them Later From The List In Arch Linux
↺ Using mysqldumpslow to read the mysql slow query log
↺ How to install ClamAV with Clamtk UI in GNU/Linux
↺ DNF Package Manager For RPM-Based Linux Distributions
↺ Default usernames in AWS for logging on to different Linux distros EC2 instance.
↺ Nine ways to compare files on Unix
↺ How to Change your Android Screen Resolution for the Asus Tinker Board
↺ How to run multiple commands in sudo under Linux or Unix
↺ How to update/upgrade Pi-hole with an OpenVPN on Ubuntu/Debian Linux server
↺ Installing Google TensorFlow Neural Network Software for CPU and GPU on Ubuntu 16.04
Wine or Emulation
* The Wine Staging release 2.7 is now available.
* Wine Staging, the experimental area for future Wine development builds has a new version out. Not much exciting in this release compared to previous releases.
↺ Wine Staging 2.7 Released with Various Improvements, It’s Based on Wine 2.7
* The Wine Staging development team announced today the release and immediate availability of download of the Wine Staging 2.7 open-source implementation of Wine on GNU/Linux operating systems.
↺ Wine-Staging 2.7 Released With Latest Experimental Patches
* Building off last week’s Wine 2.7 release is now an updated Wine-Staging.
Desktop Environments/WMs
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
↺ [Video] KDE Discover convergence test on Ubuntu 17.10 KDE
↺ Have You Heard? KDE Applications 17.04 and Plasma 5.9.5 Now Available
* The last two weeks have been busy for the KDE Community. On April 20 we announced the release of KDE Applications 17.04, and five days later we released a new set of bugfixes and translations for Plasma, officially versioned Plasma 5.9.5.
* Both new versions of our products have introduced several features and stability improvements to the overall KDE user experience. Here are some of the highlights from the latest KDE Applications and Plasma releases. As always, you can find a lot more information in their respective changelogs.
↺ Randa Meetings 2017 – 10th to 16th of September
* From Sunday, 10th to Saturday, 16th of September we will meet in the middle of Europe to make more KDE Applications accessible to as many people as possible and to improve some of our PIM (Personal Information Management) apps.
↺ QStringView Diaries: Masters Of The Overloads
Distributions
↺ Shirish Agarwal: Advice for people registering for debconf
* One contribution that people can easily do/make and doesn’t need a lot of Unix skills is the Debian SSO documentation , you could do in the Debian wiki or if mediawiki is your tea then the Debconf wiki is also welcoming which uses mediawiki. The current documentation is text-based, it would be an improvement if we have the same thing with help of pictures showing how you get the certificate and add it to your favourite browser. Let somebody who is new try it, if nobody steps up say in a week, then will do that documentation myself.
New Releases
↺ Koozali SME Server 9.2 Operating System Officially Released, Based on CentOS 6.9
* Terry Fage from the Koozali SME Server development team was proud to announce today, May 2, 2017, the release and general availability of the Koozali SME Server 9.2 operating system.
* After being in development since early March, the Koozali SME Server 9.2 release is now the latest stable and most advanced of the server-oriented GNU/Linux distro based on CentOS, which in turn is derived from the freely distributed sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
OpenSUSE/SUSE
* Sayre’s law states: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake”. In that context, it is perhaps easy to understand why the discussion around the version number for the next major openSUSE Leap release has gone on for hundreds of sometimes vitriolic messages. While this change is controversial, the openSUSE board hopes that it will lead to more rational versioning in the long term — but the world has a way of interfering with such plans.
* OpenSUSE Leap is an interesting hybrid distribution; its core packages come from the slow-and-stable SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) release, but those packages are replaced or supplemented by much newer software where desired. The current (and only) openSUSE Leap release was originally based on SLE 12 and openSUSE 13.1. The project had an immediate problem in that it needed to come up with a version number for this new distribution; in the end, it did what any of us would have done and chose 42. The current release is openSUSE Leap 42.2.
* [...]
* That said, this decision has set up another existential crisis for the future: what happens when the SLE 42 release comes out and openSUSE Leap is faced with reusing a version number — a deed seen as being even more foul than going backward? Brown shrugged off this problem, saying that, at the current release rate, SLE 42 isn’t due for over 100 years. There should, he implied, be time for plenty of other flame wars before that one needs to heat up.
* Brown’s math is neglecting an important fact, though: SLE just skipped over two numbers, and might well be expected to do the same thing again in the next century. After all, 16 is a power of two, and all those zeroes might make some potential customers nervous. It’s also the atomic number of sulfur; best to just skip it. Italians see 17 as an exceptionally ill-starred number. 18 is voting age in much of the world, and nobody has had luck with voting recently, so that one should be avoided too. 19 is suspiciously prime, but might yet prove acceptable pending further research. And so on; SLE 42 may come far sooner than anybody expects.
Red Hat Family
↺ An Expert Talks Containers and Cloud Computing
* Gordon Haff, Technology Evangelist at Red Hat, discusses container technology and how it impacts cloud computing.
↺ Red Hat launches OpenShift.io, an online IDE for building container-based applications
* Red Hat is launching OpenShift.io today, its first major foray into offering cloud-based developer tools. As the name implies, OpenShift.io sits on top of the company’s Kubernetes-based OpenShift container management platform and provides developers with the tools they need to build cloud-native, container-based apps. That includes team collaboration services, Agile planning tools, developer workspace management, an IDE for coding and testing, as well as monitoring and — of course — continuous integration and delivery services.
↺ Amazon Cloud, Red Hat Integrate on OpenShift Containers
↺ Red Hat and Amazon integrate AWS, RHEL, and OpenShift
* For the first time ever, Red Hat will align its flagship operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), development and release dates with a third-party: Amazon Web Services (AWS). This alliance underlines just how important the cloud is to Red Hat as it moves from being a Linux distributor first to being a cloud services provider first.
↺ Red Hat speeds app deployment with AWS cloud services in OpenShift Container Platform
* Red Hat customers will now be able to deploy Amazon Web Services (AWS) tools directly from Red Hat’s OpenShift Container Platform, thanks to a new partnership announced Tuesday.
* The AWS services can be leveraged through OpenShift in the cloud and on-premise, according to a press release announcing the integration. Also, the integration of new AWS products and services will come to Red Hat Enterprise Linux even faster as a result.
↺ Cavium to Demonstrate HPC Solutions at Red Hat Summit 2017
↺ Red Hat and IBM raise objections to Java 9 modularization
↺ IGEL Technology Selects Red Hat, HP Vet to Lead North American Sales
↺ Carahsoft Wins Red Hat North America Partner Award
↺ Red Hat unveils new developer productivity innovations at Summit
↺ EnterpriseDB Introduces New Red Hat-Certified Containers for the OpenShift Platform
↺ Big Switch Networks Achieves Red Hat OpenShift Prime Designation for SDN-based Big Cloud Fabric
↺ Red Hat Expands Container-Native Storage for OpenShift Across the Hybrid Cloud
↺ Red Hat & AWS form alliance to accelerate enterprise container adoption
↺ Access to AWS Services Coming to Red Hat OpenShift
↺ Watch live from the Red Hat Summit 2017
↺ Red Hat Unveils End-to-End Cloud-Native Development Environment with Red Hat OpenShift.io
↺ Red Hat wraps AWS in OpenShift containers for easy consumption
↺ Red Hat deepens partnership with AWS
↺ Red Hat kicks off annual Summit by leaning dev-wards
↺ AWS, Red Hat Partner on Containers
↺ Red Hat solidifies open-source strategy with OpenShift.io
↺ Red Hat beefs up its OpenShift containerization platform
↺ Red Hat OpenShift adds containers and microservices features for developers
↺ Red Hat: Containers are Not Magic
* The Red Hat Summit got underway today, highlighted by a new partnership with Amazon for OpenShift that doesn’t involve the Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) as well as some bold pronouncements about competitors in the cloud market.
↺ Red Hat’s new Health Index for Linux containers
↺ Red Hat Gears Up OpenShift For Developers
↺ New Projects Unveiled at Red Hat Summit
↺ Red Hat Advances Container Development Efforts with OpenShift
Finance
↺ Analytical Guide for two rising stock’s: Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), RSP PERMIAN, INC. (RSPP)
↺ Gateway Investment Advisers LLC Reduces Stake in Red Hat Inc (RHT)
↺ Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services LLC Invests $1.011 Million in Red Hat Inc (RHT)
↺ First Financial Corp IN Has $917000 Position in Red Hat Inc (RHT)
↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) EVP Arun Oberoi Sells 30000 Shares of Stock
↺ Zacks: Analysts Expect Red Hat Inc (RHT) Will Announce Earnings of $0.34 Per Share
↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Upgraded to Strong-Buy by Zacks Investment Research
↺ Nisa Investment Advisors LLC Reduces Stake in Red Hat Inc (RHT)
↺ Two Stocks To Trade Now: Gogo Inc. (GOGO), Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)
↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Files Form 4 Insider Selling : Michael Cunningham Sells 12700 Shares
↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Receives “Neutral” Rating from MKM Partners
↺ Louisiana State Employees Retirement System Has $952000 Stake in Red Hat Inc (RHT)
↺ National Pension Service Buys 4692 Shares of Red Hat Inc (RHT)
↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Moves into Overbought Territory
↺ Red Hat (RHT) Receives Media Sentiment Rating of -0.01
↺ Michael Cunningham Sells 9000 Shares of Red Hat Inc (RHT) Stock
↺ The Michael Cunningham Sells 8000 Shares of Red Hat Inc (RHT) Stock
↺ James M. Whitehurst Sells 47,608 Shares of Red Hat Inc (RHT) Stock
↺ Red Hat Inc (RHT) Files Form 4 Insider Selling : Delisa Alexander Sells 12062 Shares
↺ William S. Kaiser Sells 25000 Shares of Red Hat Inc (RHT) Stock
Fedora
↺ Fedora at the Red Hat Summit 2017
* This week is the huge, annual conference where Red Hat comes together with its customers, partners, and key communities. One of the main features of the Partner Pavilion here is the gigantic Community Central area. Anchoring that space are the Fedora and CentOS booths, back to back.
Debian Family
↺ My Free Software Activities in April 2017
* I was assigned 15 hours of work by Freexian’s Debian LTS initiative and worked 13.25 hours.
Derivatives
Canonical/Ubuntu
↺ Canonical Developer Works on Bringing Snap Support to Raspberry Pi’s Raspbian
* Canonical’s Simon Fels announced today that he’s working on bringing the Snapd Snappy daemon to the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Raspbian operating system to allow the installation of Snaps.
Flavours and Variants
↺ Lubuntu 17.04 – simple evolution
* Lubuntu 17.04 continues to deliver a nice and friendly environment for those who like a light and snappy uncomplicated experience without many graphical bells and whistles. And it still lacks a common theme for applications and their design, because LXDE is not fully a “desktop environment” per se.
* The Live session of Lubuntu 17.04 felt quick and snappy for me, which is no wonder on my new laptop.
* The only small problem I mentioned in this review was the set of default applications. But that’s easy to fix, isn’t it?
Devices/Embedded
↺ Qseven module runs Linux on TI’s AM5728
* Advantech’s Linux-driven “ROM-7510” module offers TI’s dual-core AM5728 SoC, 8GB eMMC, USB 3.0, PCIe, GbE, SATA, and industrial temperature support.
↺ Android smart speaker supports Alexa and Google Assistant
* An Android-based “Clazio” speaker and smart home hub features a 7-inch touchscreen, dual 5W speakers, and support for both Alexa and Google Assistant.
↺ Linux-friendly Skylake modules can take the heat
* Eurotech has spun two rugged, Linux-friendly COM Express Type 6 modules in Basic and Compact form-factors, built on Intel’s 6th Gen Core CPUs.
* Eurotech’s 125 x 95mm COM Express Basic Type 6 “CPU-162-22” and 95 x 95mm Compact Type 6 CPU-161-17 modules expand upon Intel’s 6th Gen Core “Skylake” processors, in EQ- and U-series models, respectively. Both COMs can run Linux or Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, and support Eurotech’s optional Everyware Software Framework (ESF), an IoT framework based on the Java/OSGi Eclipse Kura project.
↺ How to run a Raspberry Pi meetup
* Raspberry Jam is the name for Raspberry Pi meetups—and they come in many different formats. Some are like traditional tech user groups, but many are family-friendly events that provide opportunities for kids to learn to code and make things. The Raspberry Pi Foundation supports the community of Raspberry Jams and has just released a Guidebook to help people get started.
Phones
Tizen
↺ FAQ of Tizen Users – YouTube videos / WhatsApp audio files and Tizen Store
↺ Samsung launches QLED TVs in India with a free Galaxy S8+ for pre-orders
Android
↺ This little baby phone runs Android Nougat on a 2.4-inch screen
↺ T-UI Launcher brings a command line interface to Android
↺ Android patches critical flaws in media handling, hardware drivers
↺ Will Android O FINALLY Merge Android With ChromeOS?
* Will Google FINALLY merge ChromeOS into Android inside Android Oreo?
* This one’s being doing the rounds for years now, but I still think it is worth talking about as merging Android and ChromeOS does make a lot of sense.
* Why? Simple: it gives Google some serious reach into spaces currently dominated by Apple and Microsoft with their respective iPads and Surface machines.
* But will it happen this year?
↺ Android Central is giving away three LG G6s over Twitter!
↺ New home screen in Google Maps for Android, exclusive to India
↺ Android security: Google’s May update hits bugs with critical patches for Nexus, Pixel
↺ Ulster Bank introduces Android Pay
Free Software/Open Source
↺ 3 steps to secure, open source DevOps
* Nobody really writes their own code anymore, right? We go out to GitHub, download some libraries, avoid recreating unnecessary wheels, and package those wheels together along with our own glue to create new software. Then we download a half dozen front-end frameworks to make it all pretty and responsive and we’re off the races. In my review of apps, both in my company and others, I’ve found that more than 90% of the code that makes up an app these days is something we borrowed, not wrote ourselves.
* Most of us scan our own code for flaws with static analysis tools, but what about all the stuff we didn’t write? How do we know what’s actually there? Once you find out what’s in there, what actions do you take to either clean it up or keep it fresh? How do you avoid getting pwned because you let a nasty in the backdoor with that whiz-bang library that does the really cool thing you couldn’t live without?
↺ Open Source Test Suite Adds to Broad Toolset for Heterogeneous System Architecture Development
* The HSA Foundation through its member companies and universities has also released many additional projects which are all available on the Foundation’s GitHub site…
↺ Nextcloud 12 Hits Beta, Introduces Push Notifications and Many Cool New Features
* The Nextcloud development team announced today the release and immediate availability of the Beta build of the project’s next major milestone, Nextcloud 12.
* A lot of goodies are about to hit Nextcloud 12 in the coming weeks, but those who can’t wait until then to get their hands on the cool new features implemented so far can fetch the Beta milestone right now from the usual places and discover that it introduces push notifications that notify you instantly of shares, comments, calls, etc.. Client support should also be available in the final release.
↺ BitPay enters open source blockchain security development agreement with Bitmain
* Atlanta-based bitcoin payments provider BitPay announced today that it has entered into a multi-million dollar development agreement with China-based Bitmain Technologies, the foremost provider of the “mining” hardware used to secure blockchains. Over the course of its multi-year agreement with new customer Bitmain, BitPay will create advanced open source software for the miners, mining pools and full node operators which maintain and secure blockchain transactions.
↺ IBM Open Sources their API Microgateway
* IBM has recently announced that they’ve open sourced their API Microgateway. This means that any developer/business can now take advantage of this software in their own computing projects at no cost.
* An API gateway is a software layer between one to many API services and their consumer applications. The purpose of this software is to provide a variety of common services useful for all APIs. Examples of such services are security, rate limit, and change management tooling. IBM’s Microgateway is written in Node.js and utilizes the Swagger 2.0 spec. The open sourcing of this software is a huge boon to the development community as API gateways from major corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. are usually licensed. The IBM Microgateway is not to be confused with IBM’s DataPower Gateway, which is a different Enterprise solution which has a greater emphasis on security.
↺ Deep Information Sciences Goes Open Source, Relaunches as Deep Software Foundation
Events
↺ Disruptive Collaboration: The Next Generation of Network Software and Hardware
* About 10 years ago, mobile networks began experiencing massive increases in demand with the launch of the iPhone and the introduction of other smart phones. In a keynote at the Open Networking Summit, Andre Fuetsch, President AT&T Labs and CTO, AT&T says that the demand increased over 250,000% in the past 10 years. What AT&T quickly realized was the hardware-centric approach they’d been taking for decades wasn’t going to be enough, and they believed that shifting to software was their best bet to meet this accelerating demand. However, individual companies working alone tend to build similar solutions and duplicate effort, so AT&T isn’t doing this alone. They are collaborating together with other companies in a consolidated effort around ONAP, Open Network Automation Platform.
↺ Catch Up With The Linux Foundation at OpenStack Summit in Boston
* The Linux Foundation will be at OpenStack Summit in Boston — one of the largest open cloud infrastructure events in the world — with many conference sessions, intensive training courses, giveaways, and a chance to win a free OpenStack training course or a Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit.
Web Browsers
Mozilla
↺ Firefox Containers Feature Now Lets You Assign Websites to Specific Containers
* Have you heard about Firefox containers? Until today neither had I. But this neat experimental feature recently picked up a neat new feature, so it feels like a good time to mention it. Firefox Containers Firefox containers is an experimental feature that let you segment tabs in to separate silos while you browse.
SaaS/Back End
↺ How will OpenStack find the next generation of leaders?
* OpenStack has evolved over the past several years to serve as the de facto standard for open source cloud computing. But what makes an open source project deserving of a superlative?
* Recently, the various groups that govern OpenStack—the Technical Committee, User Committee, Board of Directors, and the staff of the OpenStack Foundation—gathered to have a conversation about the future of the project and assess its health. To begin, they took some time to analyze the status of the current community. Is it growing or shrinking? Is it sufficiently diverse? And is it cultivating the next generation of technical and non-technical leaders who will keep the project evolving and adapting to tomorrow’s challenges?
↺ Economic realities make open platforms a part of the future
↺ Does OpenStack have an advantage over proprietary cloud solutions?
* The intent behind Rackspace Inc. and NASA’s OpenStack project was to build a community around the first fully open-source cloud platform towards the creation of cloud infrastructure. At the time in 2010, development resources were split between both public and private cloud solutions, pitting OpenStack against market giants like Amazon Web Services with their own proprietary solutions.
* But today, while Rackspace still supports the OpenStack public cloud with innovations and seemingly endless scalability, the focus for the company has shifted to primarily work with private cloud solutions because that’s where they have seen the most growth, according to Bryan Thompson, general manager, OpenStack Private Cloud, at Rackspace.
↺ A tale of two networks: Open-source, 5G race toward a connected world
* Day one of Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts, brought together major open-source contributors in a keynote address to discuss how open-source collaboration and the 5G network are combining to manifest a hyper-connected world.
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
↺ LibreOffice crash reporting – An update
* Nearly a year ago I wrote a blog post describing the LibreOffice crash reporting setup and how the crash reporting code works. Since then we have released two minor versions with the crash reporter enabled (5.2 and 5.3) including many bug fix releases and release candidates. According to the crash reporting server a total of 27 versions are recognized and it is time to list some of the statistics surrounding the crash reporter.
Education
↺ Evolving with Open Source Software at the iSchool
* I’d been using primarily Linux and open source software for only 4 months when I started at Syracuse University. I started with Linux Mint, a distro (slang for distribution or operating system) focused on easing the transition to Linux. It does this by pre-installing necessary open source software alternatives for the average user – i.e. GIMP image editor, Banshee, and VLC media players, Firefox web browser, and LibreOffice, and Mozilla Thunderbird email client.
Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)
↺ What it’s like to report in one of the world’s deadliest places for journalists
* Since 2000, 124 journalists have been killed in Mexico, according to the National Human Rights Commission, the government’s independent watchdog. Article 19, a nonprofit that advocates for media protections in Mexico, recorded 426 threats or attacks against the press last year, including beatings and torture.
* Only Syria and Afghanistan surpassed Mexico in the number of journalists killed in 2016, according to Reporters Without Borders.
↺ Calls for safety of Indonesian, West Papuan journalists to be prioritised
* There were 78 violent attacks on journalists in 2016, up from 42 attacks in 2015 and 40 in 2014. The AJI found only a few attackers from those 78 attacks had been brought to justice.
* Ever since Indonesian troops first marched into West Papua in 1961, the government has sought to tighten its grip on this resource-rich, lushly forested territory. This has involved military occupation – at least 15,000 troops are stationed in West Papua1, making it one of the most militarized zones in Southeast Asia – and also the transmigration of Indonesians into West Papua. In several key regions, the Indigenous population is now outnumbered by Indonesian settlers. ‘In 1999, Indonesia had set up just nine regencies [local administrative areas] within West Papua,’ says Octovianus (Octo) Mote, Secretary-General of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). ‘Today, they have 43, and are planning to expand to 73, each with its own police stations and military base. This is all to accommodate new settlers and further outnumber our people. The kind of colonial history that took Western powers many years to carry out is happening here at high speed.’
* [...]
* Dissent is often met with violence and arbitrary arrest. According to Jason Macleod of the University of Sydney: ‘Acts of state violence occur all over West Papua and are carried out by all parts of the security forces. [Human rights violations] include killing, torture, sexual assault and deprivation of liberty.’
↺ Lenovo Expands Commitment to Open Source
↺ excludes GNU/Linux, then censors people who talk about it
↺ Datto Hires Open Source Expert Markus Rex
↺ Why Some Enterprises Don’t Do Open Source
* As everyone knows, the code for open source software (OSS) is made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone for any purpose. OSS is typically developed in a collaborative public manner, relying on the intelligence and creativity of crowdsourcing to create platforms, applications and infrastructure that in many cases rivals that of its proprietary, closed-source cousin.
* While smaller companies can quickly adopt open source products, many larger enterprises are laggards due to structural constraints. Though a group within an enterprise may use an open source solution, the tools rarely end up being deployed enterprise-wide because open source solutions are built to solve a specific problem for a specific line of business. If another line of business struggles with the same problem, they can’t simply adopt the same solution – they need to spend time setting up initial configurations and establishing the right IT support mechanisms. Bottom line: most large enterprises don’t do open source.
↺ Think open source is a meritocracy? It is, but only if no one knows you’re a woman
↺ Study Finds Gender Bias in Open Source Community
↺ Airbnb acquired its React Native partner Deco Software, Deco IDE goes open source
BSD
↺ Tab completion in OpenBSD’s ksh
* One of the features OpenBSD’s ksh shares with its more popular friends is user definable completions! Something that sets it apart, however, is the simplicity of these completions.
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
↺ GnuBee: Personal blobfree NAS/Cloud server for hackers
* GnuBee is a personal NAS (Network Attached Storage) cloud server that is currently being funded on crowdsupply. It is a low-cost, low-power, NAS device that runs GNU/Linux and it is claimed to be based on free, libre, and open source software. No proprietary drivers needed to use GnuBee.
* We are proud to announce the next, major release of the GNU Compiler Collection, 7.1. This year we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the first GCC beta release and this month we will celebrate 30 years since the GCC 1.0 release.
* The GNU Compiler Collection 7 (GCC 7) stable release is now available with today’s announcement of GCC 7.1.
* GCC 7.1 features experimental support for all of the C++17 draft, various performance improvements, improved debugging/diagnostics, optimization work, various hardware-specific improvements, OpenMP 4.5 offloading to NVIDIA PTX, and much more. More details in Changes To Find With The Upcoming Release Of GCC 7.
↺ GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 7.1 Released to Celebrate 30 Years Since GCC 1.0
* Jakub Jelinek happily reports today, May 2, 2017, for the GCC project on the general availability of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 7.1.0, the latest and most advanced release of the open-source and free compiler for the GNU system.
Programming/Development
↺ Learn how to fix a Django bug from beginning to end
* For those who are starting to code and want to make open source software, sometimes starting is hard. The idea of contributing with that fancy and wonderful library that you love can sound a little bit scary. Lucky for us, many of those libraries have room for whoever is willing to start. They also give us the support that we need. Pretty sweet, right?
Leftovers
Science
* The Economist quantifies the problem. According to its article, voice-biometrics software similar to the kind deployed by many banks to block unauthorized access to accounts was fooled 80% of the time in tests using the new technology. Humans didn’t do much better, only spotting that a voice had been cloned 50% of the time. And remember, these figures are for today’s technologies. As algorithms improve, and Moore’s Law kicks in, it’s not unreasonable to think that it will become almost impossible to tell by ear whether the voice you hear is the real thing, or a version generated using the latest cloning technology.
Health/Nutrition
↺ Mosque leader took flight to India amid FBI probe
* Federal prosecutors say the alleged female genital mutilation conspiracy started in 2005 and ended last month. That time period overlapped with some of the period that Bhabrawala, 52, was president of the Farmington Hills mosque.
* Burchett is the first elected official in Tennessee to make the connection between reporting FGM to the Department of Health and medical licensure, noting that, “If anybody in the medical community is performing that, they need to lose their license.”
Security
↺ Security updates for Tuesday
↺ Intel’s AMT remote vulnerability
↺ Home Router Botnet Shut Down in Past 72 Hours. Who did it?
* On April 11th, 3 weeks ago, we published a story discussing routers at a specific set of ISPs that have been hacked. These routers have been used to launch attacks on WordPress websites. The ISPs with compromised routers included Telecom Algeria, BSNL in India, PLDT in the Philippines and many more large ISPs around the world.
↺ DevSecOps: Paradigm shifts are messy, but someone’s got to take the lead
↺ Personal Security Takes A Hit With Public Release Of NSA’s Hacking Toolkit
* Former members of Team Espionage recently expressed their concern that the Shadow Brokers’ dump of NSA Windows exploits had done serious damage to the security of the nation. The unwanted exposure of NSA power tools supposedly harmed intelligence gathering efforts, even though the tools targeted outdated operating systems and network software.
↺ Finnish technology firm wins contract from US Marine Corps
* Sensofusion, a Vantaa-based developer of drone countermeasures, has been awarded a contract by the US Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL) and the Defence Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) to further develop its proprietary technology, Airfence.
* This is the first stable fix release for the LibreSSL 2.5.x branch.
↺ security things in Linux v4.11
* Building on the efforts of Elena Reshetova, Hans Liljestrand, and David Windsor to port PaX’s PAX_REFCOUNT protection, Peter Zijlstra implemented a new kernel API for reference counting with the addition of the refcount_t type. Until now, all reference counters were implemented in the kernel using the atomic_t type, but it has a wide and general-purpose API that offers no reasonable way to provide protection against reference counter overflow vulnerabilities. With a dedicated type, a specialized API can be designed so that reference counting can be sanity-checked and provide a way to block overflows. With 2016 alone seeing at least a couple public exploitable reference counting vulnerabilities (e.g. CVE-2016-0728, CVE-2016-4558), this is going to be a welcome addition to the kernel. The arduous task of converting all the atomic_t reference counters to refcount_t will continue for a while to come.
Defence/Aggression
↺ By beheading soldiers, Pakistan has abandoned the dialogue option
* Bodies of two Indian soldiers killed in action were mutilated by attackers from across the border.
↺ Kashmir attacks: Indian soldiers mutilated and police shot dead
Transparency/Investigative Reporting
↺ Who is Publishing NSA and CIA Secrets, and Why?
* There’s something going on inside the intelligence communities in at least two countries, and we have no idea what it is.
Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature
↺ Lakes worldwide feel the heat from climate change
Finance
↺ Zillow Sued By Homeowner Because Its Estimate Is Lower Than The Seller Wants To Sell The House For
* Real estate site Zillow is getting sued. Again. The company has already been sued for trade secret theft, copyright infringement, and settled multiple lawsuits related to harassment and other workplace violations. This time it’s getting sued for handing out a “Zestimate” the plaintiff feels is too low.
↺ The House just passed a bill that affects overtime pay
* The measure, backed by Republicans, would let employers give workers paid time off instead of time-and-a-half pay the next time they put in extra hours. The vote tally was largely along party lines, with no Democrats voting in favor of the bill. Six Republicans also voted against it.
* G.O.P. leadership has touted the legislation, called the Working Families Flexibility Act, as an attempt to codify flexibility for employees.
* “I don’t think there’s anything more powerful than giving them more control over their time so that they can make the best decisions for themselves and their families,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington said Tuesday morning in a press conference held by Republican leaders in the House.
↺ Apple reports surprise decline in iPhone sales
* The American tech giant said it had sold 50.7m iPhones in the three months to the end of April, 1pc below the same period last year.
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
* Senior Republican aides confided this week that President Donald Trump’s puzzling statements over the last few days have left them confused.
* According to Politico, GOP aides on Capitol Hill and at the White House have been unable to explain why Trump unleashed a string of baffling claims over a 24-hour period in interviews with Bloomberg, CBS News and SiriusXM radio.
* [...]
* Politico reported that White House officials insisted there was “no broader strategy” for scheduling the interviews.
* “They were not helpful to us,” a senior administration official explained. “There was no point to do all of them.”
* Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, were dumbfounded.
* “I have no idea what they view as a successful media hit,” one GOP consultant told Politico.
↺ Stephen Colbert “interviews” Trump
↺ The real and worrying significance of the Downing Street dinner leaks
* The real significance of the leaks from the Downing Street dinner between Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker is what the detail reveals about the UK’s lack of grasp about the process and issues of Brexit, and about how weak the arguments are which UK ministers are seeking to deploy.
* These details are telling, even taking due account of spin and bias. These details are also such that they cannot have been invented (or even exaggerated) by the leakers. (On these details see my thread on Twitter here, republished at my FT blog here.)
Censorship/Free Speech
↺ Istanbul cancels invite for Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales after ban
* Istanbul authorities have withdrawn an invitation sent to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to attend a major conference in the city. The reversal comes after Turkey blocked the website, citing objections to its content.
↺ Newspaper firms must face heavy fines over extremist content — MPs
* Newspaper companies are putting profit before safety and should face fines of tens of millions of pounds for failing to remove extremist and hate crime material promptly from their websites, MPs have said.
* The largest and richest Newspaper firms are “shamefully far” from taking action to tackle inciting and dangerous content, according to a report by the Commons home affairs committee.
* The inquiry, launched last year following the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox by a far-right gunman, concludes that Newspaper multinationals are more concerned with commercial risks than public protection. Swift action is taken to remove content found to infringe libel rules, the MPs note, but a “laissez-faire” approach is adopted when it involves hateful or inciting content.
↺ Automated censorship is not the answer to extremism
* The UK’s Home Affairs Select Committee released a report yesterday following its inquiry into hate crime, in which it criticised social media companies’ handling of illegal content. The report recommends, for example, that the government considers introducing “meaningful” fines for social media companies which fail to remove illegal content within a strict timeframe. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, argues here that the recommendations would threaten free expression and risks censorship of legal content.
↺ A Look at Government Censorship in the Age of Facebook
* Censoring the Internet is easier than ever. In the past, governments tried to rely on technology to stifle online dissent, but now they have another option: They can just use trolls and social media to rob protest movements of their power.
↺ Breast cancer charity releases advert with singing boobs to combat nipple censorship
↺ If You Love Boobs, You’ll Love This Ad For Breast Cancer Awareness
* Here’s the thing: social media still censors photos of breasts that include nipples, even if the photo is for breast cancer awareness. Why is this a big deal? Because women need to know what they’re looking for to detect breast cancer. Thanks to this type of censorship, people can’t circulate photos of actual breasts, so a photo of lemons emulating signs of breast cancer went viral. Seriously. It’s a dozen lemons in an egg carton. We can’t show boobs with breast cancer, but bring on the lemons with lumps!
↺ NYT Cheers the Rise of Censorship Algorithms
* Just days after sporting First Amendment pins at the White House Correspondents Dinner – to celebrate freedom of the press – the mainstream U.S. media is back to celebrating a very different idea: how to use algorithms to purge the Internet of what is deemed “fake news,” i.e. what the mainstream judges to be “misinformation.”
↺ DPM advocates self-censorship
* The culture of self-censorship could help prevent society from falling into negative influences, says Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
* Ahmad Zahid, who is also the Home Minister, added self-censorship could also stop Malaysians from making inaccurate decisions.
↺ Practise self-censorship when sharing information online: Zahid
* There is a need to practise self-censorship when uploading information online, particularly in this era where information technology is rapidly advancing, said Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
* He stressed that the habit of self-censorship can help prevent the spread of negative news from being circulated online.
* “This will also prevent the public from making irrational decisions,” he said in his speech at the National Book and Telenovela Awards 2017 ceremony held at the Seri Pacific Hotel.
↺ Australian Greens on a censorship crusade
↺ Australian courts crack down on free speech
Privacy/Surveillance
↺ Look to Zuck’s F8, Not Trump’s 100 Days, to See the Shape of the Future
* Then a few weeks later, Marc Zuckerberg took to the stage of a developer’s conference to tout a Facebook vision of 24/7 augmented reality with sensors, camera, and chips embedded in clothing, everyday objects, and eventually the human body-–-with Facebook the central processing station for those terabytes upon terabytes of data and the central transaction platform for our commercial lives lived digitally. And finally, last week, the newly appointed head of the FCC announced his intention to revisit, revise, and eliminate the rules of net neutrality that treat internet service providers as utilities and constrain them from charging different prices for speedy data.
↺ You: Don’t Fall for the NSA’s Latest Ploy
↺ Since Snowden spilled his secrets, U.S. surveillance targets have surged
↺ NSA collected more than 151 million phone records in 2016
↺ NSA collected Americans’ phone records despite law change, report shows
↺ NSA, Reined In, Still Collected 151 Million Phone Records in ’16
↺ US sought names of 1,934 Americans in intelligence reports
↺ NSA granted nearly 2K ‘unmasking’ requests in 2016
↺ Former NSA Chief Hayden: Agency Loses Intel, But Gains Politically With Collection Change
↺ NSA collected 151M phone records in 2016, despite law change
↺ Since Snowden spilled his secrets, U.S. surveillance targets have surged
↺ NSA collected Americans’ phone records despite law change: report
↺ NSA continued spying on Americans, collecting over 151 million phone records despite law change
↺ US Security Agency Collected 151Mln Phone Calls Data in 2016
↺ NSA collected 151 million phone records in 2016, despite surveillance law changes
↺ US asked that 1,934 Americans’ names be ‘unmasked’ in intel
Civil Rights/Policing
↺ [Older] Girl, 12, forced to pull out of chess championship ‘because her dress was too seductive’
* A 12-year-old girl was forced to withdraw from a chess tournament because her outfit – a knee-length cotton child’s dress – was deemed ‘too seductive’.
↺ 20,000 Chinese writers will create their own Wikipedia competitor
* The third edition of the Chinese Encyclopaedia will be “the nation’s first digital book of ‘everything,’” featuring 300,000 entries of about 1,000 words each, according to the South China Morning Post, which reported the news on Sunday. More than 20,000 authors from universities and research institutes will contribute to the effort. Ultimately, that will make the Chinese Encyclopaedia twice as large as Encyclopedia Brittanica and about the same size as the Chinese-language Wikipedia.
↺ Hundreds of Bangladeshi female workers leaving Saudi Arabia alleging ‘dupery, torture’
↺ A Woman Is On Trial For Laughing During A Congressional Hearing
* The U.S. Capitol Police officer who decided to arrest an activist because she briefly laughed during Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing in January is a rookie cop who had never conducted an arrest before nor worked at a congressional hearing. Nevertheless, prosecutors persisted this week in pursuing charges against the 61-year-old woman the rookie had taken into custody.
* Katherine Coronado of the U.S. Capitol Police was in her second week on the job when she was assigned to keep watch over Sessions’ confirmation hearing on Jan. 10. Coronado was involved in the arrest of Desiree Fairooz, an activist affiliated with the group Code Pink, after Fairooz laughed when Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said that Sessions’ record of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.” (Sessions had been rejected as a federal judge in the 1980s because of concerns about his views on race, and back when he was still a Democrat, Shelby himself actually ran an ad suggesting Sessions had called the Ku Klux Klan “good ole boys.”)
↺ Officer recorded shooting unarmed man in back pleads guilty
* A white South Carolina police officer accused of the video-taped shooting of a fleeing, unarmed suspect pleaded guilty Tuesday to a single federal civil rights violation. A video of Officer Michael Slager shooting and killing 50-year-old Walter Scott was secretly taken in 2015 by a passerby. The video has been viewed millions of times online and on television. It was a key factor in the North Charleston Police Department’s decision to abandon its initial backing of the shooting.
↺ Google rater fired after speaking to Ars about work conditions
* Last week we reported on the lives of Google raters, people whose job is to provide Google with data on the usefulness of its algorithms. The 10 anonymous raters we spoke with were all contractors at Leapforce, a staffing firm that provided rater services to Google. Yesterday, one of those raters, Kyle Martin Medeiros, was fired by Leapforce for an unspecified “breach of contract.” Every Leapforce rater signs a contract that includes a broad NDA.
Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
↺ Republican Senators Have Introduced a Bill That Would End Net Neutrality Forever
↺ Net Neutrality Lawsuit Heads to the Supreme Court
↺ Senate Dem: FCC chief may have violated law in net neutrality rollout
↺ Net neutrality rules preserve internet’s vitality
↺ New Verizon Video Blatantly Lies About What’s Happening To Net Neutrality
↺ GOP’s “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority
* Nine Republican US senators yesterday submitted legislation that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from ever again using the regulatory authority that allowed the commission to impose net neutrality rules. The “Restoring Internet Freedom Act” would prohibit the FCC from classifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act and “from imposing certain regulations on providers of such service.”
↺ ISPs Lose En Banc Appeal, Current Net Neutrality Rules Remain Intact…For Now
* Last June, you’ll recall that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC’s net neutrality rules, claiming the FCC was within its rights to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. In fact, the FCC was driven toward that move by Verizon, which sued to overturn the agency’s much weaker 2010 rules. Needless to say, ISPs were quick to try and appeal last June’s court decision by requesting an en banc hearing before the whole court.
↺ Hollywood Demands Net Neutrality Exceptions to Tackle Piracy
* The Motion Picture Association has advised the Indian government to forge exceptions in any eventual net neutrality regulation so that the fight against infringing content is not hindered. ISPs should be permitted to block or throttle unlawful transmission of pirate material, the Hollywood group argues, without “judicial determinations” prior to every instance.
↺ Senate Republicans introduce anti-net neutrality legislation
* Democrats including Sens. Edward Markey (Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Technology and Communications subcommittee ranking member Brian Schatz (Hawaii) have all said that Republicans have been too far to the right on net neutrality for them to come to the table on a compromise.
* Senator Mike Lee from Utah, along with 8 other cosponsors, has introduced S.993: “A bill to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from reclassifying broadband Internet access service as a telecommunications service and from imposing certain regulations on providers of such service” aka the Restoring Internet Freedom Act. Senator Lee’s plan is to forbid the FCC from even being able to declare internet service providers (ISPs) as Title II common carriers – essentially negating the Open Internet Order from 2015. Senator Lee also sponsored an identical bill in 2016 during the 114th Congress with the same 8 cosponsors.
Intellectual Monopolies
Copyrights
↺ [Older] Experts unanimously slam EU copyright expansion plans – but are politicians listening?
* Independent academic experts have denounced these plans in untypically frank terms as “ill-conceived”, “undesirable”, “unlikely to achieve anything”, “an interference with freedom of speech”, “displaying an alarming disregard for fundamental rights” and bad for everyone from authors, small publishers and startups to the news industry as a whole. (See sources below.)
* The European Parliament will soon make a decision on these plans. While some members clearly share the experts’ criticism, others aren’t just cheering on these plans but even, incredibly, seeking their expansion.
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