Meeting notes, Thursday 2014-07-17

Meeting 18:00–20:00

Gnews

Presenter: Adam B.

• Software Releases

  • ownCloud 7 beta 2 - Official support for DB migration (eg. SQLite to MySQL) via the included data migration tool. AGPL 3
  • webODF 0.5.0 (stable release) - entirely written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Provides OpenDocument Text file support. AGPL 3
  • Salt 2014.1.7 - bug fixe release. Apache 2.0
  • QEMU 2.1.0-rc2 - improved Allwinner SoC emulation, more complete AArch64 handling, USB support for file-sharing via MTP emulation, mouse wheel support for the SDL 2.0 interface. GPL 2 / LGPL 2.1
  • mozjpeg 2.0 - now reduces file sizes for both baseline and progressive JPEGs by 5% on average compared to those produced by libjpeg-turbo, the standard JPEG library upon which mozjpeg is based. Modified BSD license variant
  • KDE Plasma 5.0 - Improvements too numerous to document here. GPL 2 / LGPL 2.1 / GFDL 1.2
  • Speed Dreams 2.1 quietly released (not yet announced on the website) which has numerous improvements including a new engine. Speed Dreams is a racing game forked from TORCS. GPL 2
  • Warsow 1.51 - Bugfixes and speed improvements. GPL 2
  • Debian 7.6 - security and bug fix release. Various licenses
  • Wine 1.7.22 - development release. LGPL 2.1
  • LibreSSL portable 2.0.0 - the first LibreSSL portable release. This is OpenBSD's fork of OpenSSL, which aims to refactor to improve security. Apache 1.0-style
    • And just last night: ‘Overblown’ LibreSSL PRNG Vulnerability Patched - 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 have since been released.s
  • BoringSSL project announced - Google's own OpenSSL fork. Will work with OpenSSL and LibreSSL teams. Apache 1.0-style
  • CentOS-7 on x86_64 released. Various licenses

• Take-down notices

  • "Internet's Own Boy" Briefly Knocked Off YouTube With Bogus DMCA Claim - documentary celebrating Aaron Swartz, the late Internet activist who helped create the Creative Commons, has been taken down from YouTube by a misguided copyright claim."
  • Qualcomm DMCA Notice Takes Down 100+ Git Repositories over alleged copyright infringement - Among the affected Git repositories taken down by GitHub was a CyanogenMod repository, Sony Xperia Developer World, Qualcomm's own QCA repository, and dozens of other affected GitHub accounts.
    • GitHub posted the DMCA take-down letter here.
  • Qualcomm Retracts Its Massive DMCA Takedown Of Git Repositories

• Other

  • Australian Electoral Commission Refuses To Release Vote Counting Source Code
  • 'Hidden From Google' Remembers the Sites Google Is Forced To Forget - Site here: http://hiddenfromgoogle.com/
  • XPrivacy - privacy manager for Android. GPL 3+
  • NSA Says Snowden Emails Exempt From Public Disclosure - one reason given for not allowing the release was "could cause an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy". The letter marks the first time the NSA has publicly acknowledged retaining communication and employment records related to Snowden’s time as a contractor.
  • finnish-national-tv-broadcaster-starts-sending-bitcoin-blockchain - Finnish National TV Broadcaster Starts Sending Bitcoin Blockchain
  • Telcos Move Net Neutrality Fight To Congress - Servers buckled under load of comments as the commenting deadline approached. Deadline was extended until Friday.
  • Panic Button Android app, called “Calculate!” in F-Droid, which looks like a simple calculator, but actually dials someone or messages or some other action. GPL 3
    • Designed as an emergency “help I'm under duress” app
  • Obama Administration Says the World's Servers Are Ours - U.S. Justice Department is claiming that companies served with valid warrants for data must produce that data even if the data is not stored in the U.S.
  • William Binney: NSA Records and Stores 80% of All US Audio Calls
  • Australian Police Use Telcos For Cell "Tower Dump" of All Connected Users' Data
    • Possible solution? Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector GPL 3+
  • Choice lauds NZ ISP's anti-geo-blocking service
  • New Snowden Leak: of 160000 Intercepted Messages, Only 10% From Official Target
  • Use of Encryption Foiled the Cops a Record 9 Times In 2013

Main Feature: Trans-Pacific Partnership

Jon Lawrence of EFA: was scheduled as presenter, but had to cancel at late notice due to illness.

Links:

• http://tppaustralia.org/what-is-the-tppa/ (with short video)
• http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/
• Leaked TPP draft from 2013-08-30
  • KEI analysis of leaked draft
  • Further analysis at Techdirt
• Australian Wikileaks Party: Why Australians should be worried about the TPP