Free Software Melbourne

January the 21st of 2016

Ben Sturmfels

Preventing Cat-astrophes with GNU MediaGoblin

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Free Software Melbourne

Gnews for January 2016

To build your own slides:

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Things to do

Can you still access international Netflix

• Netflix has announced it will be blocking Australian subscribers
• Can you still access overseas Netflix libraries? How are you doing it?
• Survey

Save the link

• petition EU Digital Economy Commissioner Oettinger
• Petition

Software Freedom Conservancy seek supporters

• join and become a Conservancy Supporter
• "We need 2,500 of you to become annual Supporters now to continue our work enforcing copyleft licenses"
• Article

Copyright Office calls for comments over criticism of DMCA anti-circumvention provisions

• now the Copyright Office recognizes that exemptions often are of little value if you can't get help from your friends
• we want you to send comments as well
• Article

More to come on this

• Aus Gov is accepting feedback on its changes to the Copyright Act until the 12th of February
• Have your say

Free Culture

Elsevier and Researchers vs The People

• Public access to publicly funded data
• Article

Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards

• Bro, Django, Mercurial, Read The Docs, Discourse, CodeMirror, Buildbot
• Article

LibreOffice Now Has More than 1,000 Developers

• Planning for the next 1000 already
• Jan Iversen from Apache Software Foundation has joined the team and he will be [...] mentoring
• Article1 Article2

More people use Ubuntu than anyone actually knows

• did Ubuntu reach Its Goal Of 200 Million Users
• "But in reality, hundreds of millions of PCs, servers, devices, virtual machines, and containers have booted Ubuntu to date"
• Article

Open Hardware

System 76 Oryx Pro

• comes with Linux pre-installed
• Article

year-end wrap-up highlighting some of the ways that Mesa has developed

• "This time last year core Mesa and the drivers were still limited to OpenGL 3.3 compliance while in 2015 we've seen core Mesa reach up to OpenGL 4.2 support"
• "VirtIO GPU driver for 3D support in guest VMs, continued work on the new Raspberry Pi 3D driver (VC4), video encode/decode improvements"
• Article

Linksys to Provide DD-WRT Support for All Current WRT Routers

• "With Linksys and Marvel working closely to improve the upstream support for the Marvel CPUs and Wi-Fi radios, DD-WRT can now provide stable and robust support for the modern WRT series"
• rise in popularity for these Linux distributions means that hardware makers can no longer ignore them
• Article

Releases

Microsoft Edge’s JavaScript engine to go open-source

• the core components of Chakra as ChakraCore
• Starting in January, we will open our public GitHub repository for community contributions
• Blog Article

GCHQ releases Gaffer

• open-sourced graph database
• creation of graphs with summarised properties and flexible stats
• different security levels
• internally being replaced by Gaffer2
• Source Article

Apple's Swift is now open source

• programming language
• releasing a version of Swift that works on Linux
• The forthcoming release of Swift as open source and availability of builds for Linux, as well, should theoretically provide even more momentum going forward
• Article Source

Facebook Open Sources 'Big Sur' AI Hardware Design

• used to train neural networks
• Open Rack-compatible hardware
• eight high-performance GPU boards of up to 33 watts each
• Designed in collaboration with Nvidia
• Article1 Article2

Firefox 43 released

• 64-bit version for Windows :p, strict blocklist for the browser’s tracking protection, and tab audio indicators on Android
• Article Blog

PostgreSQL 9.5 has BEEN RELEASED

• UPSERT capability, Row Level Security, and multiple Big Data features
• INSERT, ON CONFLICT UPDATE
• integrates with external label-based security stacks such as SE Linux
• bigger faster stronger
• Release

Security & Privacy

NSW bans blueprints for 3D printing firearms

• "must not possess a digital blueprint for the manufacture of a firearm on a 3D printer or on an electronic milling machine."
• The maximum penalty is 14 years' jail.
• Defences for the offence include innocent production, dissemination or possession; public benefit or approved research
• Article Article Bill

Breaking Your Employer's Computer Policy Isn't a Crime

• ensures that employers [...] don’t have the power to criminalize a broad range of innocuous everyday behaviors, [...] through simply adopting use restrictions
• cannibalism, thoughtcrime, EFF
• Article

Let’s Encrypt has entered Public Beta

• Let’s Encrypt issued over 26,000 certificates during the Limited Beta period
• I think it's over to 250,000 now...
• more work to do [...] particularly on the client experience [...] wide range of platforms
• Article1 Article2

Self-Driving Cars Could Be The Cornerstone Of The Surveillance Dystopias Of Tomorrow

• Ford, GM and Toyota were hit by a class action lawsuit earlier this year claiming the car companies were failing to adequately disclose the problems
• The case was ultimately dismissed, the court ruling that the plaintiffs have yet to prove sufficiently concrete harms
• smart cars will ultimately form the backbone of the smart cities of tomorrow
• Your relationship to the car you ride in, but do not own, makes all the problems mentioned even harder
• Article Article

Unfortunate Gnews

Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock

• Ian's dream has lived on, the Debian community remains incredibly active
• condolences may be sent to in-memoriam-ian@debian.org where they will be kept and archived
• Article Article

Thunderbird “a tax” on Firefox development

• "With all due respect to Thunderbird and the Thunderbird community" ... that's never good
• find "the right kind of legal and financial home" for the Thunderbird project
• Article

LibreOffice and Thunderbird

• The Document Foundation is already planning to develop its own PIM software
• Article Article

government is completely ignoring an innovative legal reform on copyright

• federal government has released draft changes to the Copyright Act 1968, with the aim of increasing access to content
• Easing statutory copyright license provisions for educational institutions
• Providing clear copyright access rules for “cultural institutions”
• Changing protections around unpublished works so libraries have greater scope to provide public access
• Giving “safe harbour” protections to search engines, universities and libraries
• “fair use” provisions favoured by the technology sector, and proposed by the Australian Law Reform Commission, are missing
• fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws were responsible for $US 4.5 trillion in revenue in 2006
• government is accepting feedback on its changes to the Copyright Act until the 12th of February
• Have your say
• Article Report

EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month

• Microsoft's patent on a UI
• filed the patent for the slider in 2006
• currently using it to sue Corel, arguing that Corel owes it all profits earned
• Article