text:
Links 11/11/2016: Mutter 3.22.2, Slackware Live Edition 1.1.4
Posted in News Roundup at 8:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Devices/Embedded
Free Software/Open Source
From Windows to Linux: yes, that is still a thing
A request from a bank to look at a switch from Windows to Linux has led to UK-based IT specialist Patrick Fitzgerald and his colleagues at British firm i-Layer developing a detailed method for an institution to make the transition.
Fitzgerald, who gave a talk about it at SUSECon 2016, has been in the IT business for a long time. He and his colleagues only came up with the detailed plan when he had to tackle the task set for him by the Allied Irish Bank.
"The bank has 900 branches and 7500 teller workstations," Fitzgerald said. "After the move, just two people are needed to manage the lot." He added that the smallest branch had just two users, one teller and ran on bandwidth of 128k.
The bank initially called him in for advice and help when it experienced a shortage of trained staff.
A Loopy Non-Interview With Linux Advocate Marcel Gagné
This week, Roblimo again takes a virtual trip up to the Great White North, that would be Canada for the benefit of the NSA and those of you taking notes at home, and has way too much fun hanging out with Linux advocate Marcel Gagné.
When to use NGINX instead of Apache
They're both popular open-source web servers but, according to NGINX CEO Gus Robertson, they have different use cases. And Microsoft? Its web server has dropped below 10 percent of all active websites for the first time in 20 years.
Enabling the Digital Revolution: SDN and Beyond
SDN can create far greater manageability by enabling network managers and developers to access network resources at a programmatic level, treating network resources in much the way they treat other computing resources such as central processing units (CPUs) and memory. It can enable networks to become easier to scale up or down, shorten setup time, increase security, and reduce costs. And SDN can take advantage of programmable network hardware, enabling managers to change the behavior of network devices through software upgrades instead of expensive hardware replacements.
Re-Imagining the Container Stack to Optimize Space and Speed
Keynote: Blurring the Lines: The Continuum Between Containers and VMs
Graham Whaley, Sr. Software Engineer at Intel, says there is a continuum of features and benefits across the container/VM spectrum, and you should be able to choose which point on that continuum best suits you.
Docker and machine learning top the tech trends for '17
With 2017 fast approaching, technology trends that will keep gathering steam in the new year range from augmented and virtual reality to machine intelligence, Docker, and microservices, according to technology consulting firm ThoughtWorks.
AWS Gives Customers On-Premises Linux Option
Amazon Web Services recently expanded its menu of cloud services to give customers the option of using the Amazon Linux AMI on premises. Customers can use the Amazon Container Image on premises for the purpose of developing and testing workloads, AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr explained. The AMI provides a stable, secure and high-performance environment for applications running on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, he said. "It is built from the same source code and packages as the AMI and will give you a smooth path to container adoption."
Kernel Space
Linux 4.8.7
I'm announcing the release of the 4.8.7 kernel.
All users of the 4.8 kernel series must upgrade.
The updated 4.8.y git tree can be found at:
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.8.y
and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st…
Linux Kernel 4.4.31 LTS Released with Multiple Updated Drivers, Various Fixes
Immediately after informing the community about the release of Linux kernel 4.8.7, which is now the most advanced kernel you can get for a GNU/Linux distribution, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the availability of Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS.
Linux Kernel 4.8.7 Updates Intel and Radeon Drivers, Improves Wireless Support
Today, November 10, 2016, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the seventh maintenance update to the Linux 4.8 kernel series, along with the Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS long-term support version.
Finally, the release cycle of Linux kernel 4.8 has settled in and it looks like more and more GNU/Linux distributions are adopting it, including the upcoming openSUSE Leap 42.2 and Fedora 25, due for release next week. Rolling release users of Solus, Arch Linux, and openSUSE Tumbleweed are already enjoying the latest Linux kernel 4.8 updates, and soon they'll receive a new one, Linux kernel 4.8.7, which comes ten days after Linux kernel 4.8.6.
The Code To Intel's New Linux Wireless Daemon Is Now Public
During this year's systemd conference there was talk of A New Wireless Daemon Is In Development To Potentially Replace wpa_supplicant. At that time the code wasn't yet public to this new open-source WiFi daemon developed by Intel, but since then the code has now opened up.
Hyperledger's Next Act: A Blockchain Bridge to China
Immutable, shared ledgers of transactions and goods could come to serve as a reminder that everything we grow, build, buy and sell comes from the same tiny planet.
But this future is far from guaranteed, and the various blockchain developer groups competing to bring it to life have so far struggled to involve talent from all over the world in this global vision.
Blockchain consortium Hyperledger, for example, was initially founded with support from companies in almost exclusively Western nations. Yet, the consortium has grown this year to include more than 20 members headquartered in China and 10 from Japan and South Korea, with a spattering of members from other nations represented as well.
Graphics Stack
Mesa 12.0.4 Released With Dozens Of Fixes
Intel Publishes Open-Source Graphics Driver Code For Bringing Up "Geminilake"
Coming out this morning from the Intel Open-Source Technology Center is their initial hardware enablement code for the future "Geminilake" hardware with their Linux graphics driver stack.
Intel Kaby Lake HD Graphics 620 OpenGL/Vulkan Performance On Linux
Now having my initial Intel Kaby Lake Core i5-7200U MSI Cubi 2 benchmarks with Ubuntu 16.10 out of the way, this second article is focusing upon the HD Graphics 620 Kaby Lake performance with this latest stable Ubuntu release as well as when trying out Linux 4.9 and Mesa 13.1-dev.
Igalia Joins The Khronos Group
The well known Linux/open-source focused consulting firm Igalia has joined The Khronos Group as a contributing member.
Nouveau Exposes Performance Counters For Maxwell
Samuel Pitoiset, one of the few significant contributors to the open-source NVIDIA Linux graphics stack particularly when it comes to the area of performance counters, has now enabled MP performance counters in the NVC0 Gallium3D driver for NVIDIA GTX 750/900 series Maxwell hardware.
A New Version of SimpleScreenRecorder Has Been Released
A new version of Simple Screen Recorder, a powerful desktop screen capture programme for Linux, premiered earlier this month. It is the first update to the app in almost a year. SimpleScreenRecorder 0.3.x adds support for the latest FFmpeg/libav libraries, supports fragmented recording (whatever that may be) and the indicator applet icon will now notify you when there's an error during capture.
Instructionals/Technical
Security Exercises
Using the Scality S3 Server in Homeduction
How To Use Nautilus To Connect To The Raspberry PI
Getting MPDroid working with an Archphile-based box
Build a VR app in 15 minutes with Linux
How to Install Seafile with Nginx on CentOS 7
Using drush for Drupal site Backup/Restore and Migration
How to split a large archive file into multiple small files using Split command in Linux
Papirus Icon Theme to 'Discontinue' PPA
Get Exact Boot and Uptime on Ubuntu from the Command Line
Display CPU Temperature in the Unity Launcher
OpenMW 0.40 – Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on Linux
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is one of my personal favourite games of all time. Years ago I would have happily run the game in Linux, but the only real way to do so was through WINE. Thanks to OpenMW, a totally rewritten and open source engine for Morrowind, it is now very much possible to have a near complete Morrowind experience, completely natively.
OpenMW has been in development for some years now and if you've been following its development, you would know Morrowind has been playable to varying degrees with each new release. When I last tried out OpenMW (again, on Linux) a couple of years ago, it was amazing how much did work, but there were certainly missing features like opening doors in-game. You could get around these issues by using the in-game console to activate objects like doors, but it was obviously not a complete experience that you would get with vanilla Morrowind.
Dishonored 2 Linux support is only a pipe dream
Dishonored 2 isn't even officially out yet and the sequel to the critically acclaimed original is already stepping on some toes. On top of the recent problems regarding the 9 GB day one patch, the eagerly awaited title also lacks Linux support.
'Red Comrades 2: For the Great Justice. Reloaded' now available on SteamOS & Linux
'Red Comrades 2: For the Great Justice. Reloaded' [Steam], is the sequel to a point & click adventure game about two Russian pop-culture legends. It released a few days ago for SteamOS & Linux, so now you can try out this Russian adventure game on Linux.
Reviews are good so far, so it may be worth a shot!
'Super Rad Raygun' might be the retro action game you need, now on Linux
'Super Rad Raygun' [Steam, Official Site] is a very retro looking action game with a visual style much like on the original gameboy. With it's sweet monochrome graphics, its a blast from the past with a modern take.
If you try it out, let us know how it is. While I love the retro style, the colour would likely hurt my eyes after a very short amount of time in it.
'Motorsport Manager' won't get a Linux version until later, despite it releasing with a SteamOS icon (updated)
Update: The developers have now had the SteamOS icon removed.
Tyranny, the massive new RPG from Obsidian Entertainment releases today day-1 on Linux, our review
Steam Machines & SteamOS after a year in the wild
On this day, last year, Valve released Steam Machines onto the world, after the typical Valve delays. While the state of the Linux desktop regarding gaming has improved, Steam Machines have not taken off as a platform, and SteamOS remains stagnant. What happened with these projects from Valve? Why were they created, why did they fail, and what could have been done to make them succeed?
The Humble Store is having a huge birthday sale, tons of stuff for insanely cheap
Someone pass the cake, as The Humble Store is having a massive sale to celebrate a birthday and there's lots of cheap Linux games.
Desktop Environments/WMs
Many Xfce Package Updates Bring Stable GTK3 Support, Notifyd Gets Do-Not-Disturb
While it's likely a long time before Xfce 4.14 gets released with full GTK3 tool-kit integration, there are some new Xfce4 package updates available this week.
Xfce4-settings 4.13 is out and is a development release for the 4.13 series. This initial release marks Xfce Settings being fully-ported to GTK+ 3.x. That's the main change with this release is the port from GTK2 to GTK3 but some bugs do remain. There are some screenshots via this blog post.
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
Krita 3.1: third beta released
Here is the third Krita 3.1 beta! From the Krita 3.1 on, Krita will officially support OSX. All OSX users are urged to use this version instead of earlier "stable" versions for OSX.
Qt on the NVIDIA Jetson TX1 – Device Creation Style
NVIDIA's Jetson line of development platforms is not new to Qt; a while ago we already talked about how to utilize OpenGL and CUDA in Qt applications on the Jetson TK1. Since then, most of Qt's focus has been on the bigger brothers, namely the automotive-oriented DRIVE CX and PX systems. However, this does not mean that the more affordable and publicly available Jetson TX1 devkits are left behind. In this post we are going to take a look how to get started with the latest Qt versions in a proper embedded device creation manner, using cross-compilation and remote deployment for both Qt itself and applications.
Cutelyst 1.0.0 with stable API/ABI is out!
Cutelyst the Qt web framework just reached it's first stable release, it's been 3 years since the first commit and I can say it finally got to a shape where I think I'm able to keep it's API/ABI stable. The idea is to have any break into a 2.0 release by the end of next year although I don't expect many changes as the I'm quite happy with it's current state.
Cutelyst 1.0 Qt Web Framework Released
Announced today is Cutelyst 1.0 with it reaching a state where the API/ABI can be maintained until Cutelyst 2.0, which will likely come at the end of 2017. Read that announcement if you are interested in this framework and yet another interesting deployment around the Qt tool-kit.
Kwave is in kdereview
After 18 Years, KWave Sound Editor Is Working Its Way Into KDE Multimedia
KWave is a graphical sound editor that's been in development since 1998 and is finally working its way into KDE Multimedia for becoming a proper part of KDE.
A Phoronix reader pointed out today that KWave is finally working to become formally part of KDE rather than a separate project. KWave is currently in the KDE review process to be a component of KDE Multimedia, as outlined last month via this KDE-core-devel message.
KDE Applications 16.08.3 Is the Last in the Series, 16.12 Lands December 15
Today, November 10, 2016, the KDE Project announced the release and general availability of the third and last scheduled maintenance update of the KDE Applications 16.08 software suite for KDE Plasma 5 desktops.
That's right, we're talking about KDE Applications 16.08.3, which lands almost a month after the previous update, namely KDE Applications 16.08.2, bringing the long-term support version of KDE Development Platform 4.14.26 along for the ride. KDE Applications 16.08.3 is here to address over 20 bugs reported by users since then.
GNOME Desktop/GTK
An Everyday Linux User Guide To The Nautilus File Manager
Nautilus is a very popular file manager so if it isn't installed for your particular distribution you should be able to find it in the graphical package manager.
Nautilus is the default file manager within Ubuntu Linux.
Mutter 3.22.2
GNOME's Mutter 3.22.2 Ships With Many Wayland Fixes
Normally GNOME point releases aren't too worth mentioning over here, but with this morning's release of GNOME Mutter 3.22.2 it's a bit of a different story.
GNOME Mutter 3.22.2 is a worthwhile upgrade particularly if you are running on Wayland. Mutter 3.22.2 has several Wayland crash fixes (two separate bug reports_ plus has at least four bugs fixed around placement issues of windows/elements when running on Wayland. There is also a fix for popup grabs blocking the screen lock on Wayland. There is also a fix for two finger and edge scrolling under Wayland.
GNOME Shell and Mutter Get Wayland and Wi-Fi Improvements for GNOME 3.22.2
As part of the soon-to-be-released second and last scheduled point release of the GNOME 3.22 desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions, the GNOME Shell and Mutter components have received new versions earlier today, November 10, 2016.
GNOME Shell 3.22.2 and Mutter 3.22.2 are now available for download, and it looks like they bring various improvements to make your GNOME 3.22 desktop experience better, especially of you're using the next-generation Wayland display server.
For example, the Mutter 3.22.2 window and composite manager release fixes various placement issues and several crashes on Wayland, and also repairs the functionality that allowed users to switch between edge and two-finger-scrolling on the Wayland session.
Solus Project to No Longer Support openSUSE & Fedora Repos for Budgie 11 Desktop
While many of us, Solus users, are preparing for the winter holidays, the team lead by renowned developer Ikey Doherty is currently working hard on bringing what might just be the biggest Budgie desktop release so far.
We can all agree that the current Budgie desktop environment is pretty cool with its GNOME 2-like vibe, and you can even enjoy it on Ubuntu Budgie, Arch Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, SparkyLinux (Debian based), and Manjaro (Arch Linux based). You can also enjoy Budgie on RPM-based distros like openSUSE and Fedora, which currently lies on the Solus Project's OBS (Open Build Service) repositories.
elementary OS 0.4 Loki
elementary OS is a Linux desktop distribution that's based on Ubuntu. The project's goal is crafting a "fast and open replacement for Windows and macOS".
The latest, stable edition, with a core that's based on Ubuntu 16.04, is elementary OS 0.4, code-named Loki.
This article provides a walk-through of the distribution's most important features.
The distribution's login screen. By default, a guest account is enabled.
Black Lab Linux 8.0 "Onyx" Officially Released, It's Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Today, November 10, 2016, PC/OpenSystems LLC and Black Lab Software, through Roberto J. Dohnert, happily informed Softpedia about the release of the Black Lab Linux 8.0 computer operating system.
4MLinux 21.0 Operating System Enters Development, First Beta Ready for Testing
4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki informs Softpedia today, November 10, 2016, about the immediate availability of the Beta development milestone of the upcoming 4MLinux 21.0 operating system series.
OpenSUSE/SUSE
SUSE: A look inside the new SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2
While out in the streets of DC there was alternately depression and elation, gnashing of teeth and celebration, at SUSECon yesterday, SUSE announced SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 12 Service Pack 2 designed to power physical, virtual and cloud-based mission-critical environments. The goal with this release is to help SLE users accelerate innovation, improve system reliability, meet ever more challenging security requirements and adapt to the accelerating pace of new technologies. SUSE expressed great pride in the fact that 2/3 of the Fortune Global 100 are currently using SLE.
Red Hat 'spy' makes appearance at SUSECon
The attendees at SUSECon 2016, the annual conference of the Germany-based SUSE Linux being held in Washington DC this week, fall into the usual well-known categories: employee, media, analyst, speaker etc.
openSUSE Tumbleweed Users Get Latest Linux Kernel, Mesa, and KDE Plasma Updates
Today, November 10, 2016, openSUSE Project's Douglas DeMaio reports on the latest updates brought by a total of four snapshots for the openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling release Linux-based operating system.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Lands Mesa 13.0
openSUSE News: Mesa 13 Arrives in Tumbleweed with New Kernel
This week has been a bit hectic with dramatic change affecting people around the world, but openSUSE Tumbleweed users who are use to change can find some clarity in the chaos with five snapshots that were released this week.
These snapshots brought not only a new major version of Mesa but a new kernel and Plasma 5.8.3.
The newest snapshot 20161108 updated yast2 to version 3.2.3 and added a patch to fix a crash from upstream for Wayland. Lightweight web browser epiphany, which updated to version 3.22.2 in the snapshot, added fixes for adblocker and improved the password form for autofill handling.
Highlights of YaST development sprint 27
This week, during SUSECon 2016, SUSE announced an exciting upcoming new product. SUSE CASP – a Kubernetes based Container As a Service Platform.
That has, of course, some implications for the installer, like the need of some products (like CASP) to specify a fixed configuration for some subsystems. For example, an established selection of packages. The user should not be allowed to change those fixed configurations during installation.
We have implemented a possibility to mark some modules in the installation proposal as read-only. These read-only modules then cannot be started from the installer and therefore their configuration is kept at the default initial state.
openSUSE Leap Goes Gold, Fedora 25 Delayed a Week
Today in Linux news openSUSE 42.2 Leap has gone Gold Master in time for next Wednesday's release. On the other side of town Fedora 25 has been delayed a week, pushing its release to November 22, 2016. Sam Varghese and John Grogan reported on the latest from SUSECon 2016, with one covering a Red Hat spy in attendance. Eric Hameleers released his latest liveslak and ISOs. The Hectic Geek compared Ubuntu 16.10 flavors and Carla Schroder examined Ubuntu's enterprise chops.
SUSE plans container as a service platform
Germany-based SUSE Linux has announced a container as a service platform that it hopes to release as a public beta in April next year, before the first customer version comes out in July the same year.
Three of the developers involved — Federica Teodori, project manager for container and orchestration, Andreas Jaeger, senior product manager, and Simona Arsene, product manager — spoke to iTWire about the technology on the sidelines of SUSECon 2016, the company's annual conference that is being held in Washington DC this week.
Jaeger said the idea was to have a software-defined infrastructure where containers handled the workloads. The advantage was that containers, which include an application and its dependencies, could be moved around and could run from more than one location.
SUSE Deal Includes Ceph Storage Project
SUSE Growing Linux Biz Revenue at 18 percent in 2016
According to Brauckmann, the fastest-growing route to market for SUSE now is the public cloud.
Slackware Family
More Flash fixes in November
Q4 2016 fixes for Java 8 (openjdk)
LibreOffice 5.2.3 for Slackware-current
I wanted the latest LibreOffice in the upcoming Slackware Live Edition 1.1.4 (PLASMA 5 variant) so I have built and uploaded a set of packages for LibreOffice 5.2.3. They are for Slackware-current only.
Slackware Live Edition 1.1.4 – based on slackware-current of 4 Nov 2016
Today I conclude my packaging frenzy with a new release of 'liveslak'. Version 1.1.4 is ready with only some minor tweaks. Users of the "iso2usb.sh" script on non-Slackware distros should be happy that the script finds all the required programs now.
I made a set of ISO images for several variants of the 64bit version of Slackware Live Edition based on liveslak 1.1.4 and using Slackware-current dated "Fri Nov 4 03:31:38 UTC 2016". These ISO images have been uploaded and are available on the primary server 'bear'. You will find ISO images for a full Slackware, Plasma5 and MATE variants and the 700MB small XFCE variant.
Red Hat Family
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Bullish Price Target At $110
Analysts Give Price Target To Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) $91.117
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) – Top Stock from Technology Sector
Why Red Hat Inc (RHT) Is (And Shouldn't Be) Overlooked
Fedora 25 Linux Delayed by a Week, Could Arrive on November 22, 2016
Today, November 10, 2016, was the Fedora 25 Go/No-Go meeting, and it appears that the upcoming GNU/Linux distribution, which was scheduled for release next week, on November 15, was delayed by a week.
Fedora 25 Has Been Delayed To 22 November
Fedora 25 Is Quite Possibly My Most Favorite Release Yet
Fedora 25 is nearly complete and this afternoon we should hear whether it will be formally released next week or will be pushed back one week due to lingering blocker bugs. Nevertheless, I've been carrying out more tests on Fedora 25 on multiple test systems in recent days and have been very pleased with this Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution release.
Fedora 25 Finally Makes MP3 Playback Easy, Fedora 26 Might Ship It By Default
Fedora 25 Linux Workstation to Ship with MP3 Playback Support Through New Plugin
On November 10, 2016, Fedora, Red Hat and GStreamer developer Christian Schaller reports that the Workstation edition of the upcoming Fedora 25 Linux operating system is coming with MP3 support by default.
According to Mr. Schaller, who reminds us that the current stable release of Fedora Workstation, version 24, includes the open-source OpenH264 H.264 implementation for H.264 decoding and encoding, Fedora 25 Workstation is shipping with a new plugin that should allow for playback of MP3 audio files.
Fedora Looks At Changing The Default Hostname For F26 & Beyond
One of the most discussed items this week on the Fedora developers' mailing list is in regards to changing the hostname on Fedora 26 and future versions.
Fedora has defaulted to localhost.localdomain but this is becoming a problem for systems acting as a client to FreeIPA and Active Directory domain controllers.
Debian Family
Canonical/Ubuntu
Enterprise Linux Showdown: Ubuntu Linux
Canonical's Ubuntu Linux is the newcomer in the enterprise Linux space. Its first release was in 2004; the other two enterprise Linux distributions in this series, SUSE and Red Hat, were born in 1992 and 1993. In its short life Ubuntu has generated considerable controversy, supporters, detractors, excitement, and given the Linux world a much-needed injection of energy.
One of the primary differentiators between Ubuntu, RHEL, and SUSE is Ubuntu unashamedly and boldly promotes their desktop version. RHEL and SUSE soft-pedal their desktop editions. Not Canonical. Desktop Ubuntu has been front and center from the beginning.
Flavours and Variants
Ubuntu 16.10 Flavors Comparison: Ubuntu vs Ubuntu GNOME vs Kubuntu vs Xubuntu
As promised in my earlier Ubuntu 16.10 review, I have come up with an Ubuntu 16.10 flavors comparison as well, although, I was planning on coming up with this comparison much sooner (but hey, it's here!)
Unlike in my Ubuntu 16.04 LTS flavors comparison which only included two main Ubuntu flavors (Ubuntu GNOME & Kubuntu), this time, I've also added Xubuntu 16.10 to the comparison because it was requested by a couple of my readers. The ISO disc image sizes are as follows: Ubuntu 16.10 (1.6 GB), Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 (1.5 GB), Kubuntu 16.10 (1.6 GB) & Xubuntu 16.10 (1.3 GB). And also, I only chose the 64-bit versions of the disc images for the flavors review as well.
And in this comparison, I'll only be comparing the performance related data, the stability and hardware recognition of each flavor. I'll skip new features and whatnot, because you can find information about those features elsewhere, quite easily.
Google responds in EU antitrust case: "Android hasn't hurt competition" [Ed: This is Microsoft pulling EU strings]
Google—as expected—has dismissed the European Commission's charge that the ad giant abused Android's dominance to block its competitors in the market.
The company is accused of using Android's position as the dominant smartphone operating system in Europe to force manufacturers to pre-install Google services while locking out competitors.
GitLab, Consumer Driven Contracts, Helm and Kubernetes
This article will focus on building a workflow driven by Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery for deploying the services on Kubernetes.
We'll develop and deliver an Application with two different services that communicate with each other. One service is internal and the other will be accessible from the outside world via Traefik. We'll want to develop, deploy and evolve each service independently of the rest.
Announcing Rust 1.13
The Rust team is happy to announce the latest version of Rust, 1.13.0. Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.
As always, you can install Rust 1.13.0 from the appropriate page on our website, and check out the detailed release notes for 1.13.0 on GitHub. 1448 patches were landed in this release.
It's been a busy season in Rust. We enjoyed three Rust conferences, RustConf, RustFest, and Rust Belt Rust, in short succession. It was great to see so many Rustaceans in person, some for the first time! We've been thinking a lot about the future, developing a roadmap for 2017, and building the tools our users tell us they need.
Rust 1.13 Brings ? Operator, Better Performance
Rust 1.13 is now available as the latest implementation of this popular and growing programming language.
SaaS/Back End
How OpenStack Uses Nodepool
OpenStack is an open-source cloud platform at its core, but it's also much more. In order to build OpenStack itself, the OpenStack Foundation has needed to build out all kinds of infrastructure management tooling, including an effort known as nodepool.
Survey Shows Spark Spreading Out, Heading to the Cloud
New survey data from nearly 7,000 respondents in the Big Data space are in, conducted by The Taneja Group for Cloudera, which focuses on Hadoop/Spark-based data-centric tools. The new "Apache Spark Market Survey" shows that Spark is set to break from the Hadoop ecosystem and function more and more as an independent data processing tool. It may move from on-premises installations to the cloud in many instances.
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
LibreOffice 5 – Free Office Suite Keeps Getting Better
LibreOffice is the best office software available, or at least on Linux. LibreOffice is a powerful office suite that comes with a clean interface and feature-rich tools that seeks to make your productive and creative. LibreOffice includes several applications including Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for presentations, Draw for vector graphics and flowcharts, Base for databases, and Math for formula editing.
Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)
Wim Coekaerts Returns to Oracle After Brief Microsoft Stint
Wim Coekaerts first got a job working as a support analysts for Oracle in Belgium in March 1995. He ended up moving up the ranks at Oracle, leading Linux and virtualization efforts, until he left in March 2016.
Why open source Munich may bring Windows back [Ed: Microsoft paid a lot of money for Wim Coekaerts to pretend that "Microsoft loves Linux", but he has just quit]
Open source champion mulls return to Microsoft [Ed: More Microsoft nonsense courtesy if its proxy Accenture which tries to undermine Munich's migration and success story]
The Renaissance Continues for Open Source Artificial Intelligence [Ed: the latest Microsoft openwashing from the usual suspects]
City that swapped Windows for Linux debates proposed Windows 10 move [iophk: "Microsoft shill #Accenture at work. MS works through proxies even more now that it "loves" Linux"]
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
OpenMP 4.5 Fortran Support Is Being Worked On For GCC
Qualcomm FALKOR ARM Core Added To GCC
Qualcomm's Falkor core has been added formally to the GNU Compiler Collection
Programming/Development
What is hackathon culture?
That's the type of culture codeRIT and BrickHack are about. Race, gender, and how much you know about coding software doesn't matter; what matters is that you want to learn, and you want to better yourself and the world.
Microsoft lays out its hopes for a Trump presidency
As America wraps its head around the result of Tuesday's election, the tech world is taking stock of what's about to happen to it, both in the short and long term. We've heard how Silicon Valley has reacted with disappointment and uncertainty over what President Donald Trump means for tech-related policy. Microsoft on the other hand has gone into a little more detail about the relationship it wants with the president-elect.
In a blog post published the day after the election, Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, offered his congratulations to Trump while making it clear that there was a great deal of work ahead for both sides.
WTO Members Discuss UN High-Level Report On Medicines Access That WHO Declined To Discuss
The World Trade Organization intellectual property committee this week discussed the report of United Nations Secretary General's High-Level Panel on access to medicines which offered recommendations regarding the use of intellectual property in international trade. Developing countries taking the floor accentuated the use of flexibilities under trade rules, and the World Health Organization gave an overview of how its activities follow the panel's recommendations, and its future projects. Civil society meanwhile criticised the WHO's decision to dismiss a request by some developing countries to include discussions on the UN report at the next Executive Board Meeting. WHO then used this WTO meeting to make a statement about the UN report.
American Women Are Preparing for a War on Reproductive Rights Under President Trump
Benoit told The Intercept that more than two dozen women reached out to her for advice about the IUD, a small device inserted into the uterus that, depending on the type, works for three to 12 years. "I recommend the IUD right now especially because it's long term, which with 20 million+ Americans potentially losing their health insurance and potentially right to an abortion, is important," she said.
India Patent Office denies patent for prostate cancer drug sold under brand name Xtandi, generic name enzalutamide
According to this story, the India Patent Office has denied a patent for the prostate cancer drug sold under the brand name Xtandi (generic name Enzalutamide). Opponents of the patent claimed it was a new form of a known substance, and not eligible in India under Section 3(d) of its patent act.
According to the Times of India, the Astellas price for 112 pills (a 28 day supply) of Xtandi was 335,000 rupees, or about $5014.60 US Dollars. This is $179 per day or $44.77 per pill, much higher than the $26 per pill price Astellas sells the drug for in Japan.
According to the World Bank, the 2015 per capita income in India was $1,590 per year, or $4.36 per day.
Six Candidates For WHO Director General Lay Out Their Views
Funding, universal health, multisectoral work and access to medicines were among the issues addressed at the recent candidates' forum of the World Health Organization in Geneva as part of the process to choose the next director general of the UN health agency. Candidates spoke on how to fund the organisation in its quest for universal health care and response to emergencies.
Two Generics Companies Apply For First WHO Prequalification Of Novel Antiretroviral
Today, the Medicines Patent Pool announced that two generic drug companies applied for the World Health Organization prequalification of an innovative antiretroviral.
The Future of IoT: Containers Aim to Solve Security Crisis
Despite growing security threats, the Internet of Things hype shows no sign of abating. Feeling the FoMo, companies are busily rearranging their roadmaps for IoT. The transition to IoT runs even deeper and broader than the mobile revolution. Everything gets swallowed in the IoT maw, including smartphones, which are often our windows on the IoT world, and sometimes our hubs or sensor endpoints.
New IoT focused processors and embedded boards continue to reshape the tech landscape. Since our Linux and Open Source Hardware for IoT story in September, we've seen Intel Atom E3900 "Apollo Lake" SoCs aimed at IoT gateways, as well as new Samsung Artik modules, including a Linux-driven, 64-bit Artik7 COM for gateways and an RTOS-ready, Cortex-M4 Artik0. ARM announced Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 cores for IoT endpoints featuring ARMv8-M and TrustZone security.
GCHQ encourages ISPs to rewrite their software to stop DDoS attacks
The head of the GCHQ believes that if ISPs were to rewrite their software that they could potentially stop DDoS attacks from affecting their networks.
GCHQ thinks ISPs can solve DDoS by taking a good look at themselves
THE BOSS OF UK SPOOK AGENCY GCHQ reckons that he has the solution to the global problem of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that blight online services: a standard rewrite of the software and code on which ISPs run.
Ian Levy, technical director of GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre, told The Sunday Telegraph that the organisation is already planning talks with ISPs like BT about this silver bullet, and he is hopeful that it won't turn out to be silver-plated bullshit.
OpenSSL Security Advisory [10 Nov 2016]
Transparency/Investigative Reporting
Is Disclosure of Podesta's Emails a Step Too Far? A Conversation With Naomi Klein
There's an amazing irony here in some sense because I've been defending the news value of the WikiLeaks archives over the past several months, not just the Podesta but also the DNC archive. And I've defended WikiLeaks in the past, long prior to the Snowden archive. There are a couple of really fascinating nuances that I think set the stage for the kinds of distinctions that you're urging be drawn.
When I first started defending WikiLeaks back in 2010, one of my primary arguments was that WikiLeaks, contrary to the way they were being depicted by the U.S. intelligence community and their friends, was not some reckless rogue agent running around sociopathically dumping information on the internet without concern about who might be endangered. And in fact, if you look at how the biggest WikiLeaks releases were handled early on — the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, as well as the State Department cables — not only did they redact huge numbers of documents on the grounds that doing so was necessary to protect the welfare of innocent people, they actually requested that the State Department meet with them to help them figure out what kind of information should be withheld on the grounds that it could endanger innocent people.
So they were very much an ardent and enthusiastic proponent of that model — that when you get tons of information that belongs in the public eye, you have the corresponding responsibility to protect not only people's physical security but also their privacy. I used to defend them on that all the time.
Somewhere along the way, WikiLeaks and Julian decided, and they've said this explicitly, that they changed their mind on that question — they no longer believe in redactions or withholding documents of any kind.
Reddit users take WikiLeaks to task over email dumps, Russia
Among the highlights of the AMA, was WikiLeaks revealing it decides to publish information according to its "promise to sources for maximum impact." WikiLeaks also denied colluding with Trump's campaign and Russia, and defended the information it dumped and its timing.
We are the WikiLeaks staff. Despite our editor Julian Assange's increasingly precarious situation WikiLeaks continues publishing
Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature
Marrakech climate talks: giving the fossil fuel lobby a seat at the table
As the world gathers in Morocco for the historic first meeting under the Paris agreement – called "COP22" but now also "CMA1" – it does so with the unprecedented involvement of corporate interests who have fought climate action around the world, funded climate change denial and whose fundamental interest is in extracting and burning as much fossil fuel as possible.
Earlier this year, desperate moves from countries representing the majority of the world's population to examine how the UN might identify and minimise conflicts of interest were swept under the carpet by rich countries – especially the US, EU and Australia – who argued they wanted to be as "inclusive" as possible and that the concept of "conflict of interest" was too hard to define.
Myron Ebell: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Donald Trump is rumored to appoint Myron Ebell, a climate change denier, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Ebell serves as the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and he's currently heading President-Elect Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition process. Politico reports that Ebell himself will likely become the new head of the EPA. While nothing official has been announced by the Trump campaign, the appointment of Ebell would represent a dramatic shift in the United States' environmental policies.
Here's what you need to know about Myron Ebell, the possible next head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Team Trump is already filled with Washington insiders
To shape his administration, President-elect Donald Trump is drawing squarely from the "swamp" he has pledged to drain.
Trump's transition team is staffed with long-time Washington experts and lobbyists from K Street, think tanks and political offices.
It's a far cry from Trump's campaign, which ended only Tuesday night, and message that he would "drain the swamp" in Washington. He has advocated congressional term limits and proposed a "five-point plan for ethics reform" that included strengthening restrictions on lobbying, including five-year bans for members and staff of the executive branch and Congress from lobbying, and expanding the definition of lobbyist to prevent more revolving door activity.
But he has so far fully embraced lobbyists within his transition, and all signs point to a heavy influence from longtime Washington Republican circles on his transition. And with Trump mostly skipping detailed policy proposals during his campaign, these they can have a powerful impact on his agenda.
Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition
Donald Trump has selected one of the best-known climate skeptics to lead his U.S. EPA transition team, according to two sources close to the campaign.
Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, is spearheading Trump's transition plans for EPA, the sources said.
The Trump team has also lined up leaders for its Energy Department and Interior Department teams. Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna is heading the DOE team; former Interior Department solicitor David Bernhardt is leading the effort for that agency, according to sources close to the campaign.
Palm oil industry under fire as Indonesia's haze drama continues
In August, haze from Indonesian slash-and-burn agriculture enveloped Singapore and wafted into Malaysia and up to Thailand. It was not as bad as last year, however.
The usual wave of complaints came from Singapore and the diplomatic spat started again.
Indonesia's Minister of Environment and Forestry, Dr Siti Nurbaya Bakar, asked that Singapore focus on its own role in addressing the issue instead of "making so many comments". She said that Indonesia has stuck to its side of the bargain in trying to avoid the recurrence of forest fires and in strictly enforcing the law. She is right.
Dr Siti has vowed to bring the culprits to justice – mostly palm oil plantation companies, some headquartered in Singapore.
What does a Trump presidency mean for climate change?
Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, has called climate change a "Chinese hoax," so it's no wonder climate scientists are freaking out about what will happen to the environment in the years to come.
Trump has already threatened to pull America out of the landmark Paris climate change accord, eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, repeal environmental regulations, and cut climate funding. He proposed an incoherent energy plan aimed at reviving the coal industry. It's difficult to know which of these promises Trump will follow through on, but climate scientists warn that his plan is a disaster that would create lasting harm to everything from global biodiversity to food availability.
Climate change may be escalating so fast it could be 'game over', scientists warn
It is a vision of a future so apocalyptic that it is hard to even imagine.
But, if leading scientists writing in one of the most respected academic journals are right, planet Earth could be on course for global warming of more than seven degrees Celsius within a lifetime.
And that, according to one of the world's most renowned climatologists, could be "game over" – particularly given the imminent presence of climate change denier Donald Trump in the White House.
Even Fans Admit Chances Of TPP Being Ratified By US Soon — Or Ever — Have Just Slumped
In the wake of the unexpected win of Donald Trump, people in many fields are starting to re-examine their assumptions about what might happen in the next few years. One of the areas impacted by Trump's success is trade in general, and trade deals in particular. For perhaps the first time, the 2016 election campaign put trade deals front and center. They may even have contributed to Hillary Clinton's downfall, since many found her sudden conversion to the anti-TPP movement unconvincing, to say the least.
Judge rejects Trump bid to bar campaign statements from fraud trial
A U.S. judge on Thursday tentatively rejected a bid by Donald Trump to keep a wide range of statements from the presidential campaign out of an upcoming fraud trial over his Trump University venture.
The ruling came in advance of a pretrial hearing later on Thursday where lawyers for the president-elect will square off against students who claim they were they were lured by false promises to pay up to $35,000 to learn Trump's real estate investing "secrets" from his "hand-picked" instructors.
Trump owned 92 percent of Trump University and had control over all major decisions, the students' court papers say. The president-elect denies the allegations and has argued that he relied on others to manage the business.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead, Schumer tells labor leaders
The Senate's soon-to-be top Democrat told labor leaders Thursday that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal at the center of President Obama's "pivot" to strengthen ties with key Asian allies, will not be ratified by Congress.
That remark from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is expected to be the incoming Senate minority leader, came as good news to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, which met Thursday in Washington. Schumer relayed statements that Republican congressional leaders had made to him, according to an aide who confirmed the remarks.
TiSA: Trade in Services Agreement is Bad News for Workers and Communities
The report sets out how a TiSA agreement would concentrate more power in the hands of multinational corporations, put a stranglehold on vital government regulation, undo the limited progress which has been made on regulating banks and finance conglomerates, and lead to an "Uberisation" of millions of workers' jobs.
Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said: "While trade deals like TTIP, TPP and CETA are making headlines, government negotiators working hand in glove with corporate lobbyists are hoping to smuggle TiSA through while attention is focused elsewhere. This must not be allowed to happen.
From what is known about the secret TiSA deal, it would have a profound and negative impact on financial regulation, protections for workers and consumers alike, and across a whole raft of other areas. Governments have still not learned the lesson that putting corporate interests ahead of the living standards and lives of their own people is not only unjust, it is political stupidity."
Theresa May faces Brexit resistance as MPs threaten to vote against Article 50
Theresa May has been given a fresh indicator of the difficulties she could face if Parliament is given a vote on article 50, as MPs lined up threatening to vote against triggering Brexit .
Ministers are challenging a High Court ruling that Parliament must be given a say before the formal two-year process can be started by the Government, but if it comes to a Commons vote a number of MPs have indicated they would oppose the measure unless there are major concessions.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said his party would vote against Article 50 unless there was a guarantee that the final Brexit deal with the European Union is put to a fresh referendum.
He insisted he respected the decision made by voters in favour of leaving the EU but said nobody should have a deal "imposed" upon them.
Although the Lib Dems only have eight MPs they have more than 100 peers in the Lords, which could spell trouble for the Government if judges rule that a full act of Parliament is required before Article 50 can be triggered, as the legislation would have to clear both Houses.
Saudi Arabia owes billions to private firms after collapse in oil revenues
Saudi Arabia has admiited that it owes billions of dollars to private firms and foreign workers after oil revenues collapsed, the kingdom's new finance minister said.
The arrears have left tens of thousands of foreign workers, chiefly in the construction sector, struggling for months while they await back pay.
"I don't recall the exact amount now but its billions of dollars," Mohammed Aljadaan told reporters on Thursday.
Your money's no good: rupee note cancellation plunges India into panic
Queues of angry, panicked Indians wound around bank buildings in Mumbai, the financial capital, on Thursday morning, two days after the prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced that 500- and 1,000-rupee notes, worth around £6 and £12, would be taken out of circulation.
In a televised announcement on Tuesday night, Modi had urged Indians not to rush to banks, as they would have until the end of 2016 to deposit cash in their accounts. But with the high-value notes withdrawn from Wednesday in an effort to combat corruption, black-market trade and tax evasion, many were left without cash for day-to-day expenses.
Banks were closed on Wednesday, and reopened on Thursday morning with a cap on cash withdrawals. ATMs remained closed, so currency was only available from the banks. Newspapers around the country reported long queues at branches, as people scrambled to exchange their high-value banknotes for 100-rupee bills.
Trump tapped the viral anger over H-1B use
President-elect Donald Trump realized early in his campaign that U.S. IT workers were angry over training foreign visa-holding replacements. He knew this anger was volcanic.
Trump is the first major U.S. presidential candidate in this race — or any previous presidential race — to focus on the use of the H-1B visa to displace IT workers. He asked former Disney IT employees, upset over having to train foreign replacements, to speak at his rallies.
"The fact is that Americans are losing their jobs to foreigners," said Dena Moore, a former Disney IT worker at a Trump rally in Alabama in February. "I believe Mr. Trump is for Americans first."
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
Donald Trump could be impeached within weeks, claims legal professor
Donald Trump could be impeached within weeks, according to at least one legal professor.
There is a strong case for the beginning of legal proceedings that would stop Donald Trump from being president, says law professor Christopher Peterson.
A paper from Professor Peterson says that there is ample evidence to charge the new President-elect with crimes that would see him potentially being removed from office.
Professor Peterson's analysis was written in September, before Mr Trump became president. But the argument makes it applies after the election, too.
Facebook's failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?
It's a great quote, but he never said it.
It typifies the kind of fake news and misinformation that has plagued the 2016 election on an unprecedented scale. In the wake of the surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, pressure is growing on Facebook to not only tackle the problem but also to find ways to encourage healthier discourse between people with different political views.
Rather than connecting people – as Facebook's euphoric mission statement claims – the bitter polarization of the social network over the last eighteen months suggests Facebook is actually doing more to divide the world.
Why Mark Zuckerberg Is Fortune's Businessperson of the Year
President Trump: How America Got It So Wrong
"Fuck yourself," he says, thrusting a middle finger in my face. He then turns around and walks a boy of about five away from me down Fifth Avenue, a hand gently tousling his son's hair.
This was before Donald Trump's historic victory. The message afterward no doubt would have been the same. There's no way to overstate the horror of what just went down. Sure, we've had some unstable characters enter the White House. JFK had health problems that led him to take amphetamine shots during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reagan's attention span was so short, the CIA had to make mini-movies to brief him on foreign leaders. George W. Bush not only didn't read the news, he wasn't interested in it ("What's in the newspapers worth worrying about?" he once asked, without irony).
But all of these men were just fronts for one or the other half of the familiar alternating power structure, surrounded by predictable, relatively sober confederates who managed the day-to-day. Trump enters the White House as a lone wrecking ball of conspiratorial ideas, a one-man movement unto himself who owes almost nothing to traditional Republicans and can be expected to be anything but a figurehead. He takes office at a time when the chief executive is vastly more powerful than ever before, with nearly unlimited authority to investigate, surveil, torture and assassinate foreigners and even U.S. citizens – powers that didn't seem to trouble people much when they were granted to Barack Obama.
Elections, the Internet, and the Power of Narrative
Once again, the struggle over the Power of Narrative has been laid bare – just as it was in the 1530s and countless other times in history. Once again, a colluding establishment had decided to tell a unified story as The Truth, only to be shattered by new communications technology revealing the collusion and a set of alternative, unapproved talking points. This has happened before, and this will happen again, and it is the biggest power shift that can happen in society – far greater than an election.
Elections are ultimately about violence. Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, far predating modern democracy, states have taken upon themselves to enforce a certain set of rules on their population – with violence, if need be. The territorial governments under the Treaty of Westphalia – loosely what we call "countries" today – therefore have a monopoly on exercising lawful violence against bad people. This mechanism remains with modern voting, which therefore becomes an indirect way of wielding violence against those bad people.
How Data Failed Us in Calling an Election
It was a rough night for number crunchers. And for the faith that people in every field — business, politics, sports and academia — have increasingly placed in the power of data.
Donald J. Trump's victory ran counter to almost every major forecast — undercutting the belief that analyzing reams of data can accurately predict events. Voters demonstrated how much predictive analytics, and election forecasting in particular, remains a young science: Some people may have been misled into thinking Hillary Clinton's win was assured because some of the forecasts lacked context explaining potentially wide margins of error.
"It's the overselling of precision," said Dr. Pradeep Mutalik, a research scientist at the Yale Center for Medical Informatics, who had calculated that some of the vote models could be off by 15 to 20 percent.
Virtually all the major vote forecasters, including Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight site, The New York Times Upshot and the Princeton Election Consortium, put Mrs. Clinton's chances of winning in the 70 to 99 percent range.
Polls etc.
Two points which have come up at work and may be generally interesting as everyone picks through the wreckage. Research/marketing stuff, be warned. Also remember I was HIDEOUSLY WRONG about Trump not being like Brexit because I was a straw-clutching idiot. So pinch of salt but…
1) The Polls. They fucked up, and so did the aggregators (in fact worse, as one of the individual polls (IBM/TPP) did rather well). 538, PEC, etc look like post-meteor dinosaurs. But obviously the individual polls are also in trouble if the business is going to come down to "poll all year and then at the end we see who's turnout assumptions are best".
But the problem actually runs deeper than that – the trouble isn't "shy Trump voters" which you can often detect using other indicators. It's Trump voters who barely even get the chance to be shy, because years of declining response rates (down from 25% to 5% or so in the last 20 years) have created an entirely skewed survey-taking universe where the set of people who will take surveys at all is very different from the population. Estimating how many might be missing is pure guesswork: yes, an insurgent electorate is more right wing, but by 2 points? 5? 10? There's no way of knowing. These people are dark matter. PS the exit polls ARE STILL POLLS this still applies.
Tech founders want California to secede
Shervin Pishevar, an early Uber investor and cofounder of Hyperloop, posted a series of tweets Tuesday night announcing his plans to fund "a legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation."
And no, he's not joking.
"Yes it's serious," Pishevar told CNNMoney in an e-mail. "It's the most patriotic thing I can do. The country is [at] a serious crossroads."
Within hours, several other tech founders offered their support for the plan.
"I was literally just going to tweet this. I'm in and will partner with you on it," Dave Morin, an investor and founder of private social networking tool Path, tweeted in response to Pishevar.
Donna Brazile: I'm sorry only that I got caught cheating with debate questions
Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, is not only refusing to apologize for giving debate questions to candidate Hillary Clinton. She's also saying she would do it again if given the opportunity.
"My conscience — as an activist, a strategist — is very clear," she said in an interview with talk-radio host Joe Madison that aired on Monday.
Brazile argued she was simply doing her job as a strategist to know what questions the debate moderators might pose: "You're doggone right I'm gonna talk to everybody. Joe, I will never go out on TV or go on radio without the facts. I will ask. I will submit things. I will circulate things. And guess what? I also enjoy the exchange that I have with my colleagues."
Everyone Is Sharing Michael Moore's 5-Point 'Morning After To-Do List'
The morning after Donald Trump became the U.S. president-elect felt like something of a hangover for millions of Democrats. With a Republican Senate and House of Representatives to boot, to say nothing of Supreme Court vacancies, many liberals were understandably depressed.
Maybe that's why documentary filmmaker Michael Moore's five-point plan has been shared over 100,000 times since it was posted on Facebook Wednesday morning. It offers a blueprint for how Democrats can get back up and fight for their causes.
It's Still the Same United States
In the aftermath of Donald Trump's shocking victory, many liberals woke up Wednesday morning feeling like strangers in their own country, or perhaps, as if they were the familiar ones and it was the country itself that had become the stranger. I heard it in the voices of friends. I read it in texts from family. I found it in newspaper headlines from some of my favorite writers and in tweets and Facebook messages. What kind of a country do I live in? they asked. Something important has changed. This is not the nation I thought I knew.
Trump campaign staff redirects, then restores, mention of Muslim ban from website
President-elect Donald Trump's campaign staff temporarily redirected the webpage detailing his controversial proposal to temporarily ban Muslim immigration into the United States, one of the most divisive and controversial policy ideas of his campaign, but swiftly sought to restore it after reporter inquiries Thursday.
The proposal is detailed on a page titled, "Donald J. Trump statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration." Starting on Election Day, that page redirected to a new page where supporters could donate to the campaign. "Thank you America," said the banner on the new page. "We showed America the silent majority is no longer silent."
KKK announces North Carolina 'victory' parade
While one report of Ku Klux Klan activity in North Carolina following Donald Trump's election as president was debunked, the real KKK has announced a rally in the state.
Trump, a Republican, was officially endorsed by the KKK during his campaign against Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. Trump won North Carolina on his way to winning the presidency, defeating Clinton here by nearly 5 percentage points.
Details on the rally celebrating Trump's victory are scarce. It's being held by The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which is based in Pelham – a small, unincorporated community about 45 minutes north of Burlington, near the Virginia border.
The group was behind a rally in South Carolina last year protesting the removal of the Confederate flag from the state Capitol building.
Trump's dystopia is coming – but it will destroy itself
It means that the reactionary forces of the far-right are resurgent. Trump's victory is the latest in a global trend which was previously manifest in Britain's Brexit vote, which saw Britons vote to get out of the European Union. That itself follows a growing wave of popularity for right-wing extremists across Europe.
It's no surprise that among the first in Europe to congratulate Trump on taking the White House were far-right leaders like France's Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands' Geert Wilders.
That is because, as I've documented elsewhere, Trump's advisory team has close ties to Europe's fascist political parties.
His campaign rhetoric has meant that the forces he rode to victory are hardly a secret.
Theresa May still awaiting call from Donald Trump
The UK's hopes for a continuation of the much-vaunted special relationship with the US under Donald Trump have suffered an early setback after the new president-elect spoke to nine world leaders in the 24 hours after his election win, without Theresa May getting a call.
Trump has thus far talked to the leaders of Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea, according to various reports.
A Downing Street spokesman said a phone call between May and Trump was "being arranged now". He said: "They will speak at the earliest possible opportunity." The spokesman added that May had sent the president-elect a letter.
DNC Staffer Screams At Donna Brazile For Helping Elect Donald Trump
On Thursday, Democratic Party officials held their first staff meeting since Hillary Clinton's stunning loss to Donald Trump in the presidential race. It didn't go well.
Donna Brazile, the interim leader of the Democratic National Committee, was giving what one attendee described as "a rip-roaring speech" to about 150 employees, about the need to have hope for wins going forward, when a staffer identified only as Zach stood up with a question.
"Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?" he asked, according to two people in the room. "You backed a flawed candidate, and your friend [former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] plotted through this to support your own gain and yourself."
Some DNC staffers started to boo and some told him to sit down. Brazile began to answer, but Zach had more to say.
"You are part of the problem," he continued, blaming Brazile for clearing the path for Trump's victory by siding with Clinton early on. "You and your friends will die of old age and I'm going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy."
This Photo Of Sad Obama Staffers Isn't From Trump's White House Visit
The photo was taken by European Press Agency photographer Jim Lo Scalzo and shows White House staff listening as Obama spoke from the Rose Garden Wednesday.
Obama To Pardon Hillary To Save Her From Jail
Obama's last act as president will be saving Hillary from jail by granting her a pardon, despite spending the last months claiming she has done nothing wrong.
Washington insiders claim an elaborate pardon is being drawn up to protect Hillary from prosecution and jail time.
The White House is deflecting questions about President-elect Donald Trump's intent to appoint a special prosecutor to review Clinton's case, and steadfastly refusing to rule out a pardon.
Censorship/Free Speech
Users Around the World Reject Europe's Upload Filtering Proposal
Users around the world have been outraged by the European Commission's proposal to require websites to enter into Shadow Regulation agreements with copyright holders concerning the automatic filtering of user-generated content. This proposal, which some are calling RoboCopyright and others Europe's #CensorshipMachine, would require many Internet platforms to integrate content scanning software into their websites to alert copyright holders every time it detected their content being uploaded by a user, without any consideration of the context.
People are right to be mad. This is going to result in the wrongful blocking of non-infringing content, such as the fair use dancing baby video. But that's only the start of it. The European proposal may also require images and text—not just video—to be automatically blocked on copyright grounds. Because automated scanning technologies are unable to evaluate the applicability of copyright exceptions, such as fair use or quotation, this could mean no more image macros, and no more reposting of song lyrics or excerpts from news articles to social media.
In The Rush To Blame Facebook, Come The Calls To Suppress Ideas People Disagree With
In fact, it's likely to make things even worse. Remember the mostly made up "controversy" about Facebook suppressing conservative news? Remember the outrage it provoked (or have you already forgotten?). Just imagine what would happen if Facebook now decided that it was only going to let people share "true" news. Whoever gets to decide that kind of thing has tremendous power — and there will be immediately claims of bias and hiding "important" stories — even if they're bullshit. It will lead many of the people who are already angry about things to argue that their views are being suppressed and hidden and that they are being "censored." That's not a good recipe. And it's an especially terrible recipe if people really want to understand why so many people are so angry at the status quo.
Telling them that the news needs to be censored to "protect" them isn't going to magically turn Trump supporters into Hillary supporters. It will just convince them that they're even more persecuted.
Other than "censoring" certain content, the only other suggestion I seriously heard was someone suggesting that Facebook should force-feed its users opposing views. Like that's actually going to change anyone's mind, rather than get them pissed off again. And, once again, this seems like people failing to take responsibility for their own actions. If you don't have any friends who supported Trump, don't lump that on Facebook.
There are legitimate questions about whether you can better inform a populace. But censorship and force-feeding information is general paternalistic nonsense that totally misunderstands the issue and misdiagnoses the problem. As Clay Shirky noted earlier this year, too many Hillary supporters thought that "bringing fact checkers to a culture war" would win out, when that's never going to happen. Fighting Facebook's algorithim is more of the same nonsense. It's based in the faulty belief that those who voted for "the other" are simply too dumb to understand the truth, and if they just got more truth, they'd buy it. It's not understanding why they voted the way they did. It's looking for easy scapegoats.
Facebook's algorithm is an easy target, but it's even less likely to solve a culture war than fact checkers.
Less Censorship Could Make Independent Film Productions Suffer
China passed its first comprehensive law governing the film industry on Monday, a move that some said would simplify the process of approving and censoring films. Others, however, worried that it could put more pressure on filmmakers, particularly independent producers.
Number of imported films in China reaches record high
Chinese moviegoers will be spoilt for choice this month, with over 50 films, some of which are highly anticipated, from home and abroad hitting the cinemas in the month.
November will see the release of 12 foreign films, including Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Allied, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, taking the number of imported films in the Chinese market to a record high of 39 this year. The number was 34 last year.
Some domestic films are also highly anticipated, like I am not Madame Bovary, directed by Feng Xiaogang and starring Fan Bingbing, which has already won awards at Toronto International Film Festival and San Sebastian International Film Festival, and was nominated for many other awards.
Even though most Chinese audiences are already used to overseas blockbusters flushing into the Chinese market in recent years, the cinematic booty of this month is still quite unprecedented.
New claims of Facebook censorship in Norway
Just two months after Facebook found itself in the centre of an international controversy after censoring posts in Norway, the social media giant has banned another prominent Norwegian for posting a photo that included nudity.
Artist, writer and Dagbladet columnist Kjetil Rolness was banned from Facebook for three days for having shared an article from online newspaper iTromsø.
Author Tom Egeland, who was at the centre of the 'Napalm Girl' Facebook controversy back in August, was the one to bring the new case to light. He did so, naturally enough, on his Facebook page.
Polish minister accuses Facebook of censorship over right-wing symbol
Poland's far-right groups protest Facebook
Far-right Polish groups protest Facebook profile blockages
Are Mark Cuban's Reasons For Banning ESPN's Mavericks Reporters Science Fiction?
Mark Cuban turns pro-censorship in latest NBA fit
Privacy/Surveillance
Should You Spy on Your Kids?
In the middle of a long bicycle ride several weeks ago, I pulled over for a rest and took out my iPhone to send a text message to my wife. I had a feeling she might be watching me.
"If you're checking my location, I'm not dead," I wrote to her. "I'm getting coffee on Mercer Island."
As it happens, she was not keeping tabs on where I was, but she could have — and has in the past — because I have allowed her to do so using the location-tracking capability in my phone. Whenever she's curious, she can see me represented as an orange dot on a digital map on her phone. An unmoving dot could be a cyclist husband who got a flat tire, grabbed a beer with a friend or was hit by a car (hence the reassuring text).
Now and again, I, too, check my wife's location so I know when she leaves work and can time dinner with her arrival. She and I have both tracked the whereabouts of our 13-year-old daughter using her phone to reassure ourselves that she was on her way home from school or a trip to the store.
King County using customer grocery store data to target pet owners, send licensing notices
A King County letter that ended up in the mailboxes of thousands of pet owners is raising concerns over privacy.
The letter told pet owners to license their pets or face a $250 fine.
"It feels weird to me, it feels like they're kind of snooping around in a place where they shouldn't be," said dog owner Chris Lee.
Turns out for the last four years, King County has been using data companies to target specific taxpayers, or in this case pet owners. That means every time customers swipe those rewards cards, they're gathering data.
Government Needs Access To Big Data To Fight, Uh, Terrierism
Scummy King County, Washington is using customer grocery store data to target pet owners and send them letters threatening them with a $250 fine if they don't license their pets.
Good reason to pay in cash, to avoid linking a "loyalty card" to the real you (Just call me "Mrs. Claus, 1010 North Pole Lane), and to vote out the assholes doing this.
The phone so secure even the head of the NSA uses it: Boeing's secret 'blackphone' that can SELF DESTRUCT if tampered with begins testing (and no, you can't buy one)
Developed by Boeing and the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Boeing Black phone is designed for secure communication between governmental agencies and their contractors.
The handset can even self destruct if it is tampered with, destroying all the data on it, and is so secure that Boeing will only sell it to 'approved' purchasers.
New IBM Platform Brings Watson to IoT
IBM unveiled today an experimental platform that allows developers to embed Watson functions and cognitive technology into various devices. The platform, dubbed Project Intu, can be accessed through the Watson Developer Cloud, Intu Gateway, and GitHub.
Civil Rights/Policing
EU citizenship proposal could guarantee rights in Europe after Brexit
The European parliament is to review a proposal for an associate EU citizenship open to nationals of a country that has left the union but who want to stay part of the European project and retain some of their EU rights.
The plan, tabled by a liberal MEP from Luxembourg, could mean British citizens who opt for the new status would be able to continue to travel freely and live on the continent – rights that may no longer be automatic after Brexit.
"It's clear the UK is divided, and many people want to remain part of Europe," said Charles Goerens, who proposed amendment 882 to a draft report by the parliament's constitutional affairs committee on possible changes to "the current institutional set-up" of the European Union.
"The idea is simply to guarantee those who want it some of the same rights they had as full EU citizens, including the right of residence in the EU, and to be able to vote in European elections and be represented by an MEP."
Reports of racist graffiti, hate crimes in Trump's America
Fears of heightened bigotry and hate crimes have turned into reality for some Americans after Donald Trump's presidential win.
Racist, pro-Trump graffiti painted inside a high school. A hijab-wearing college student robbed by men talking about Trump and Muslims.
While Trump has been accused of fostering xenophobia and Islamophobia, some of his supporters have used his words as justification to carry out hateful acts.
Here's what some Americans are dealing with across the country.
Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
Here's How President Trump Could Destroy Net Neutrality
Donald Trump's presidential election victory could have dire consequences for US internet freedom and openness, according to several tech policy experts and public interest advocates surveyed by Motherboard on Wednesday.
The Republican billionaire will likely seek to roll back hard-won consumer protections safeguarding net neutrality, the principle that all internet content should be equally accessible, as well as a host of other policies designed to protect consumers, ensure internet freedom, and promote broadband access, these experts and advocates said.
"Everything we've accomplished over the last ten years is now in jeopardy," said Malkia Cyril, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, a nonprofit group that advocates for digital freedom and inclusion. "From net neutrality to broadband privacy to prison phone reform and the Lifeline expansion, that's all at risk now."
Trump's FCC: Tom Wheeler to be replaced, set-top box reform could be dead
Tom Wheeler's time as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is nearing an end now that Republican Donald Trump has won the presidency. You can expect Wheeler to step down from his chairmanship on or before January 20, when Trump is inaugurated.
It's customary for the chair to step down when the White House shifts to the opposing party. All five FCC commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the US Senate, with the president's party having a one-vote majority. (The president usually appoints minority party commissioners based on recommendations made by minority party lawmakers.)
Trump can't force Wheeler, a Democrat, to leave the commission entirely before his term expires, but the president can designate a new chairperson.
Intellectual Monopolies
CJEU rules against Rubik's Cube shape trade mark
In the judgment, published today, the five-judge panel said the General Court was wrong in its evaluation of functionality.
Article 7(1)(e) of the (old) CTM Regulation provides that signs which consist exclusively of the shape of the goods themselves, a shape necessary to obtain a technical result or a shape which gives substantial value are not registrable.
CJEU upholds duty to reverse-engineer trade marks in Rubik's cube decision, but what about the actual v abstract test?
The role of the graphical representation included in trade mark applications is to let competitors and bodies in charge of the registration know the scope of the requested protection.
In theory, owners' exclusive rights are limited to the aesthetic appearance of the sign as represented in the application graphic representation. Thus – according to some – the chance to register a certain sign should be based on the self-contained, easily accessible, and intelligible images that appear in trade mark application.
Anti-Piracy Group FACT Expands Reach Beyond Hollywood
The Federation Against Copyright Theft says that it will branch out into new areas of IP enforcement. For decades the anti-piracy group has relied on Hollywood for much of its business but with that work now being carried out by the MPA and others, FACT will offer services to companies outside the audio-visual sector.
CJEU says that EU law allows e-lending
As reported by this blog, this reference arose in the context of proceedings brought by the association of Dutch public libraries which – contrary to the position of Dutch government – holds the view that libraries should be entitled to lend electronic books included in their collections according to the principle "one copy one user".
This envisages the possibility for a library user to download an electronic copy of a work included in the collection of a library with the result that – as long as that user "has" the book – it is not possible for other library users to download a copy. Upon expiry of the e-lending period, the electronic copy downloaded by the first user becomes unusable, so that the book in question can be e-borrowed by another user.
E-books can be lent by libraries just like normal books, rules EU's top court
Public libraries can lend out electronic books, the European Union's highest court has ruled.
The judgment confirms the opinion of Maciej Szpunar, advocate general to the the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), who said back in June that lending out e-books should be permitted in the 28-member-state bloc provided authors are fairly compensated in the same way as for physical books.
Permalink Leave Your Comment Send this to a friend
Guest Editorial Team
Community: Get involved
IRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time
New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources


text:
Posted by: APO | 22 May 2008
DARFURI DIASPORA LEADERS URGE DARFUR FOCUS DURING UPCOMING U.S. PRESIDENCY OF SECURITY COUNCIL
DLN: 'We feel it is our responsibility to work diligently to expose the lies of the Khartoum regime as we are getting first hand information from our families and friends in Sudan.'
WASHINGTON – The Darfuri Leaders Network, a broad-based alliance representing Darfur diaspora organizations across the United States, today urged the U.N. Security Council to take immediate steps to prevent the Sudanese government from committing further genocide against Darfuri people.
In a letter delivered today to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and June Security Council President Zalmay Khalilzad, the DLN urged the Security Council to introduce a new resolution condemning the treatment of Darfuris in Khartoum following the May 10 attack on the capital by the Justice and Equality Movement. The letter also called on the council to demand full and unimpeded access to all those detained during the Sudanese government's heavy-handed response to the attack. The letter was delivered during an Africa Action rally at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
"As Darfuri leaders, we feel it is our responsibility to work diligently to expose the lies of the Khartoum regime as we are getting first hand information from our families and friends in Sudan," the letter states. "This is the right time to pressure the government to change its course of action and implement the already passed U.N. resolutions to accelerate the deployment of UNAMID. Any other gesture to this murderous regime is a wrong signal."
"We are protesting the government of Sudan's continued genocide against our people – which has now spread from Darfur to Khartoum – and ask that the international community take harsher actions against this government," said Motasim Adam, Darfur People's Association of New York president and DLN member. "We also demand that the U.S. and international community urge the protection of Darfuri people in Arab countries throughout the Middle East. We have heard disturbing reports from our relatives and friends that the Sudanese government is asking Arab countries to deport Darfurians back to Sudan, where they can be detained, tortured and worse."
On Monday Save Darfur released a summary of accounts from Khartoum and Darfur of a systematic program of reprisals and retaliations conducted by the Sudanese government against Darfuris following the May 10 attack by JEM. The human rights violations detailed in the accounts include widespread detentions and disappearances, summary executions, crackdowns on Darfuri journalists and lawyers and the looting of Darfuri homes and businesses. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir virtually promised a new round of brutal attacks in Darfur when he declared on May 20 his intention to violate a Darfur ceasefire, leaving millions of civilians in the villages, cities and IDP camps in fear for their lives.
Posted in AUTRES/OTHERS
« ONUCI / Retranscription du point de presse hebdomadaire de l'ONUCI
Soudan : Violents combats à Abyei, MSF prend en charge les blessés »

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Publications of the MPIA
Printed Version on request [more]
AG Annual Reports
Annual Reports of the MPIA [more]
Reports to the Science Advisory Board
Visitors new staff
Office Space Allocation
Roelin Prize for Olaf Fischer
Olaf Fischer of Haus der Astronomie is the 2021 recipient of the Hanno and Ruth Roelin Prize for Science Outreach. The prize, which is awarded every two years by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy Heidelberg (MPIA), honors scientists, science journalists, and academic teachers who have been particularly successful in communicating new findings…
Celebrating two decades of SPHERE challenges and achievements
Reaching new heights with 100 consortium publications including the early exoplanet demographics release.
Laura Kreidberg receives the Annie Jump Cannon Award of the American Astronomical Society
During its semiannual meeting, the American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced this week the recipients of its 2021 prizes for outstanding achievements in research and education. One of the four award winners is Director Laura Kreidberg from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), who is honored with this year's Annie Jump Cannon Award in…
Trifon Trifonov awarded by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences
Trifon Trifonov of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg (MPIA) has been awarded the Young Scientists' Prize of the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Class 2020 in Physics by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences.
Maria Bergemann awarded with 1.3 Mio Euro by ERC Starting Grant
Maria Bergemann, scientist in the MPIA Department "Galaxies and Cosmology", has been awarded with 1.37 Mio EURO by an ERC Starting Grant scheme. The grant will support two postdocs and two PhD students over the next 5 years. The main goal of the project is to understand the cosmic origins of elements heavier than iron and the role of extreme…
Richard Anderson awarded with 1.84 Mio Euro by ERC Starting Grant
Richard Anderson, currently postdoctoral research fellow at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has been awarded with 1.84 Mio EURO by an ERC Starting Grant scheme. In February 2021 he will be joining MPIA as a group leader in the "Galaxies and Cosmology Department". The ERC-group which will consist of Anderson as group leader, one…
Humboldt Foundation Sofja Kovalevskaja Award for Gregory Maurice Green
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has announced that it is granting the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award 2020 to eight international research talents. One award winner is Gregory Maurice Green from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg.
Thorsten Neckel (1937-2020)
On August 8, 2020, Thorsten Neckel has passed away at the age of 83 years. He was not only one of the first scientific employees at MPIA, but also did pioneering work in the search for a telescope site for one of the institute's observatories in the southern hemisphere.
Laura Kreidberg new director at MPIA
Beginning May 15, 2020, Laura Kreidberg will be the new third director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg. Kreidberg was most recently a Clay Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian. She initiates and conducts world-leading research projects to characterize the atmospheres of planets around other…
The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy introduces itself
The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg is one of about 80 institutes of the Max Planck Society. Here, scientists use computer simulations and observations to investigate the formation of planets and stars, study the structure of our Milky Way system and the evolution of distant other galaxies in a cosmological context.


text:
Rage Against the Machine – gruppo musicale statunitense
Rage Against the Machine – album del 1992
Rage Against the Machine – video del 1997

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
4.1 Commemorative Integrity: A Major Issue
4. Issues and Strategic Directions
4.2 Strategic Directions
4.2.1 Conserving and presenting a significant landscape
The national historic significance of the Saint-Ours Canal is symbolized by both the landscape surrounding the site and the ca-nal's continued importance as a navigation corridor. The landscape reveals an ingenious system of canal-building, an intelligent choice of locality, and judicious use of its natural strengths.
The Saint-Ours Canal is an integral element of a fertile agricultural plain shaped by the Richelieu River. It meshes with a dispersed, rural residential environment on the outskirts of the village of Saint-Ours, whose character and scale is in harmony with the canal. The canal is made up of three sectors, each with its own particular characteristics: the east bank, the island with the dam, and the west bank.
Although the canal and the lock have continued to be operated down to the present time, little about the site suggests how old it actually is. It has no "historic appeal" or personality and its main functions appear to be operational and recreational.
Recognize the landscape as epitomizing the site's heritage value and convey its historic significance, while respecting its spatial structure and considering its cultural and natural components as well as component interrelationships.
Maintain visual relationships between, on the one hand, the main spaces, traffic and activity areas, and buildings, and, on the other, the canal, the lock, the dam and the Richelieu River.
Ensure that future developments respect the historic layout of the site and its heritage value.
Foster awareness among neighbouring municipalities of the importance of preserving the scale and character of the built environment surrounding this national historic site.
< Previous Page | Table of Contents | Next Page >


text:
Watch Culture
Watch Retailers
Watch Culture • Watches
Robert Loomes is Quirky British Watchmaking at Its Best
by Sam Kessler
While we may not have quite the modern horological heft as Switzerland or, to a lesser extent Germany, the UK does watchmaking well. We have plenty of watch designers, sketching quirky dials, accessible homages and funky colours; we have a few more serious watch brands, using solid movements and aesthetics tuned to collectors' sensibilities. We even have a handful of true British watchmakers. But there's only one Robert Loomes.
The man himself is the latest in a legacy of British watchmakers dating back to Thomas Loomes in the 17th century, when the UK was still a luminary in cutting-edge timekeeping, before the proverbial fall of Rome. And while there may have been a number of generations in-between, the modern Loomes is very much the heir to those traditional, horological sensibilities. Part of that is Loomes' position as the Chairman of the British Horological Institute, the ancient representative of all things watch and clockmaking across the country. But more important is his hands-on work at his workshop in Stamford.
Robert Loomes' factory in Stamford
Loomes Red Robin, from £8,850
Stamford, for those uninitiated, is the painfully pretty little neighbour of Peterborough, Peterborough being just north of London. You don't really need to know where either is, but they're worth a visit if you're vaguely between East Anglia and the West Midlands. What matters is what was once upon a time the Stamford Gaol, a wonderfully mismatched collection of disparate architecture from centuries past. There you'll find a workshop that, aside from a couple nods to modern watchmaking, could have been preserved since the 1800s. This is the castle of Robert Loomes.
It's not all strictly watchmaking. Loomes himself cut his teeth in restoration work before taking the plunge into sticking his own name on the dial, and much of his workshop is still devoted to giving old pieces of mechanical timekeeping new life. That includes full restoration of the inner workings and, perhaps even more impressively, the dials. Not to diminish the refurbishment of movements, but there's a lot to be said for being able to find the perfect pigment of enamel to refresh the face of a watch or clock.
Robert Loomes with his team in the Loomes workshop
The dials are also a perfect illustration of how Loomes' expertise in restoration feeds into his own watches. The enamels made by his dial expert in the rafters of the old gaol are used as research, prototyping subtle new colours that are then incorporated into the main collection. Indeed, it's just next door that Loomes' own miniature kiln is heated up to fire his own dials. Granted there's only room for a handful of dials (a week) but that's part of its charm. And like all small-scale enterprises, it means the quality is superlative.
Accessed via an old, twisting staircase, the watch restoration workshop is at the very bottom of the building. Here you'll find pieces of all ages (though mostly very early) being disassembled, serviced and where necessary repaired. It's through another door in this warren of a workshop though that the more modern face of Loomes can be seen.
Well, modern might be pushing it a bit. The British watchmaking workshop, where Loomes' own pieces – such as the Loomes Original and the Robin Collection – are made has a single industrial CAD machine and a very old, very rare machine for making wheels by hand. The dichotomy of the two is delicious. Both do very different jobs and do them well, but with centuries of technology separating them.
It's here that every Loomes watch is designed and assembled – and it's worth pointing out that there's not a Swiss component in sight. Sure, this kind of workshop is far too small to cast gold and mill out steel cases, but that doesn't mean you need to resort to importing. Stamford is in the middle of what was once a centre of British industry, and plenty of metalworkers, foundries and old factories are still around.
Waxes for gold cases and casebacks
Loomes' cases, for example, are made in Sheffield, with a company that until recently specialised in big quantities of big steel construction materials. But, in a way of thinking that brands like Minase can probably appreciate, if you can make one extraordinarily demanding object from metal, you can likely make another (and probably relish the change of pace). It's a story that's repeated across Loomes' production line, meaning that the watches at the other end of it are made in Britain, not in the technical sense, but in the true letter of the phrase.
And that pretty much sums up what Robert Loomes and his watches stand for. Modern watchmaking inspired by restored antique horology; homegrown talent both in-house and out; quirky in the most British way. I could be talking about the workshop, the watches, or the man himself. In fact, it's all three.
More details at Robert Loomes.
British Watches Watch Restoration
Sam Kessler
Legend has it that Sam's first word was 'escapement' and, while he might have started that legend himself, he's been in the watch world long enough that it makes little difference. As the editor of Oracle Time, he's our leading man for all things horological – even if he does love yellow dials to a worrying degree. Owns a Pogue; doesn't own an Oyster Perpetual. Yet.
Hamilton Launch the Jazzmaster Face-2-Face III with Reversable Faces
by Michael Sonsino
With chronograph displays on both sides and a rotating body, the Hamilton Jazzmaster Face-2-Face...
Omega's New Spirate System Means Incredible Accuracy for Speedmaster Super Racing
The 9920-equipped Speedmaster Super Racing ushers in a new generation of movements for Omega with...
Jaeger-LeCoultre The Collectibles Collection Offers Historically Important Watches for Sale
With their new The Collectibles initiative, Jaeger-LeCoultre not only has an enviable museum...
Christopher Ward Launch C65 Dune Collection with Refined Field Watch Style
With retro influences and refined finishing, the C65 Dune Collection from Christopher Ward fuses...
© Oracle Time 2023 Opulent Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Get the latest watch and luxury lifestyle news straight to your inbox
By signing up to our newsletter you have agreed to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.


text:
Amalgam's remarkable 1:8 scale models
PHOTOS: AMALGAM
Amalgam's remarkable 1:8 scale models are now available in a new "Weathered" range. Here's how they're made to look so authentically mucky
"Le Papillon" – Mike Hawthorn, Britain's first Formula 1 World Champion
Mercedes-Benz W196 Monoposto - 1955 British GP Winner - Moss
It's a thing now; manufacturers and race teams preserving their winning cars exactly as they crossed the finishing line. And although the cars tend to pick up extra fingerprints and smudges over the years, and will never be raced again, everyone loves them.
Porsche 917K - 1970 Daytona Winner - Gulf Livery
So the logical next step is 'dirty' models, isn't it? You've probably seen the stunning models that Amalgam has been making for 25 years, from the 1.2m-long (48in) 1:4 scale monsters to the more regularly sized 1:18 models. Well, now the company has added a 'Weathered' range…
Ferrari 330 P4 - 1967 Le Mans - 2nd Place - Class Winner
The specialist's most intricate, exclusive models are built in its 'artisan' department in Bristol, UK. This is where the Weathered models are created, based on the condition of a specific car at a particular moment in time – usually as it wins an important race.
Every detail of the weathering is hand produced in minute detail: tyre wear, body damage, hasty repairs, stone chips, insect splatters, oil stains and brake dust.
Audi R8 - 2005 Le Mans Winner
As with all Amalgam models, the Weathered creation process starts with detailed digital scans of the real thing, with more than 1000 images taken. From these, the team creates CAD designs of every component, all of which need to fit together perfectly.
Ferrari F1-90 (641/2) - Mexico GP - Mansell
Those components are then produced by 3D printing, machining or handcrafting, if possible out of the original material used in the full-size car. They're finished with automotive paint and decals to represent carbonfibre, polished aluminium, leather or patinated surfaces.
And then the weathering begins, bringing new life to the models. The techniques are explained on these pages, where we have focused on the 1:8 scale 1995 Le Mans-winning McLaren F1 GTR, the 1970 Daytona-winning Porsche 917K and James Hunt's 1976 championship-winning McLaren M23D. The detail is mind boggling, and each model takes around 20 hours just to weather.
McLaren F1 GTR Ueno Clinic - 1995 Le Mans Winner
The 1:8 scale Weathered range also includes a Ferrari 250LM, McLaren MP4/4, Ferrari 250TR, Audi R8 Le Mans car and, now in development, Nigel Mansell's 1990 Ferrari
F1-90, with prices starting from £9000 each.
There are also 1:18 scale models (25cm/10in long) available in the Weathered range, which start at around £1000 each. They're smaller but still deeply impressive – and dirty!