Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Why It Matters That a City Council in Louisiana Repealed a Ban on Saggy Pants

Lawmakers in Shreveport, Louisiana voted 6-1 on Tuesday to repeal a 12-year-old ordinance banning pants that sag below the waist after outcry over the death of Anthony Childs, who was stopped by police for violating the law.  Childs was walking down a sidewalk in early February when Shreveport Police Officer Traveion Brooks attempted to stop him […]

Wait ‘Til They Hear About Super PACs!

Can “big money” get away with this? From 1920.

Look on The Bright Side

Sure, we’re destroying the Earth and society is falling apart, but there’s always a silver lining.

For those yaml indenters out there (I'm looking at you @gitlab CI):

https://twitter.com/jpmens/status/1138543433549828104

#vim 's `set cursorcolumn` is very helpful

Indigo Ag Wants Better Farming to Help Fight Global Warming

The Washington Post reports today on the Terraton Initiative from Indigo Ag, a supplier of seed treatments and agricultural logistics. The idea is simple and appealing: we need to do more than simply reduce carbon emissions if we want to avoid the worst effects of global warming. We need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. […]

Experts Warn Congress: Proposed Changes to Patent Law Would Thwart Innovation

It should be clear now that messing around with Section 101 of the Patent Act is a bad idea. A Senate subcommittee has just finished hearing testimony about a bill that would wreak havoc on the patent system. Dozens of witnesses have testified, including EFF Staff Attorney Alex Moss. Alex’s testimony [PDF] emphasized EFF’s success in protecting individuals and small businesses from threats of meritless patent litigation, thanks to Section 101.

Section 101 is one the most powerful tools patent law provides for defending against patents that never should have been issued in the first place. We’ve written many times about small businesses that were saved because the patents being used to sue them were thrown out under Section 101, especially following the Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank decision. Now, the Senate IP subcommittee is currently considering a proposal that will eviscerate Section 101, opening the door to more stupid patents, more aggressive patent licensing demands, and more litigation threats from patent trolls.

Three days of testimony has made it clear that we’re far from alone in seeing the problems in this bill. Patents that would fail today’s Section 101 aren’t necessary to promote innovation. We’ve written about how the proposal, by Senators Thom Tillis and Chris Coons, would create a field day for patent trolls with abstract software patents. Here, we’ll take a look at a few of the other potential effects of the proposal, none of them good.

Private Companies Could Patent Human Genes

The ACLU, together with 169 other civil rights, medical, and scientific groups, has sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee explaining that the draft bill would open the door to patents on human genes.

The bill sponsors have said they don’t intend to allow for patents on the human genome. But as currently written, the draft bill would do just that. The bill explicitly overrules recent Supreme Court rulings that prevent patents on things that occur in nature, like cells in the human body. Those protections were made explicit in the 2013 Myriad decision, which held that Section 101 bars patents on genes as they occur in the human body. A Utah company called Myriad Genetics had monopolized tests on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which can be used to determine a person's likelihood of developing breast or ovarian cancer. Myriad said that because its scientists had identified and isolated the genes from the rest of the human genome, it had invented something that warranted a patent. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that DNA is a product of nature and “is not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated.”

Once Myriad couldn’t enforce its patents, competitors offering diagnostic screening for breast and ovarian cancer could, and did, enter the market immediately, charging just a fraction of what Myriad’s test cost. Myriad’s patent did not claim to invent any of the technology actually used to perform the DNA analysis or isolation, which was available before and apart from Myriad’s gene patents.

It’s just one example of how Section 101 protects innovation and enhances access to medicine, by prohibiting monopolies on things no person could have invented.

Alice Versus the Patent Trolls

Starting around the late 1990s, the Federal Circuit opened the door to broad patenting of software. 

“The problem of patent trolls grew to epic proportions,” Stanford Law Professor Mark Lemley told the Senate subcommittee last week. “One of the things that brought it under control was the Alice case and Section 101.”

A representative of the National Retail Federation (NRF) explained how, before Alice, small Main Street businesses were subject to constant litigation brought by “non-practicing entities,” also known as patent trolls. Patent trolls are not a thing of the past—even after Alice, the majority of patent lawsuits continue to be filed by non-practicing entities.

“Our members are a target-rich environment for those with loose patent claims,” NRF’s Stephanie Martz told the subcommittee.

She went on to give examples of patents that were rightfully invalidated under Section 101, like a patent for posting nutrition information and picture menus online, which was used to sue Whataburger, Dairy Queen, and other chain restaurants—more than 60 cases in all. A patent for an online shopping cart was used to sue candy shops and 1-800-Flowers. And a patent for online maps showing properties in a particular area was used to sue Realtors and homeowners [PDF], leading to decades of litigation.

The Alice decision didn’t end such cases, but it did make it much easier to fight back. As Martz explained, since Alice, the cost of litigation has gone down between 40 and 45 percent.

The sponsors of the draft litigation have made it clear they intend to overturn Alice. That will take us back to a time not so long ago, when small businesses had to pay unjustified licensing fees to patent trolls, or face the possibility of multimillion-dollar legal bills to fight off wrongly issued patents. 

More Litigation, Less Research

The High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA), a group of large technology companies, also spoke against the current draft proposal.

The proposal “would allow patenting of business methods, fundamental scientific principles, and mathematical equations, as long as they were performed on a computer,” said David Jones, representing HTIA. “A more stringent test is needed, and perhaps even required by the Constitution.”

Jones also cited recent research showing that the availability of business method patents actually lowered R&D among firms that sought those patents. After Alice limited their availability, the same companies that had been seeking those patents stopped doing so, and increased their research and development budgets.

The current legal test for patents is not arbitrary or harmful to innovation, Jones argued. On the contrary, the Alice-Mayo framework “has improved patent clarity and decreased spurious litigation.”

EFF’s Alex Moss also disagreed that the current case law was “a mess” or “confusing.” Rather than throw out decades of case law, she urged Congress to look to history to consider changes that could actually point the patent system towards promoting progress. 

“In the 19th century, when patent owners wanted to get a term extension, they would come to Congress and bring their accounting papers, and say—look how much we invested,” Moss explained. “I’d like to see that practical element, to make sure our patent system is promoting innovation—which is its job under the Constitution—and not just a proliferation of patents.”

At the conclusion of testimony, Sen. Tillis has said that he and Sen. Coons will take these testimonies into account as they work towards a bill that could be introduced as early as next month. We hope the Senators will begin to consider proposals that could improve the patent system, rather than open the door to the worst kinds of patents. In the meantime, please tell your members of Congress that the proposed bill is not the right solution. 

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS WE DON'T NEED MORE BAD PATENTS

Details of Justice Department Efforts To Break Encryption of Facebook Messenger Must Be Made Public, EFF Tells Court

Ruling Blocking DOJ Should Be Unsealed To Keep Public Informed About Anti-Encryption Tactics

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked a federal appeals court today to make public a ruling that reportedly forbade the Justice Department from forcing Facebook to break the encryption of a communications service for users.
Media widely reported last fall that a federal court in Fresno, California denied the government’s effort to compromise the security and privacy promised to users of Facebook’s Messenger application. But the court’s order and details about the legal dispute have been kept secret, preventing people from learning about how DOJ sought to break encryption, and why a federal judge rejected those efforts.
EFF, the ACLU, and Stanford cybersecurity scholar Riana Pfefferkorn told the appeals court in a filing today that the public has First Amendment and common law rights to access judicial opinions and court records about the laws that govern us. Unsealing documents in the Facebook Messenger case is especially important because the public deserves to know when law enforcement tries to compel a company that hosts massive amounts of private communications to circumvent its own security features and hand over users’ private data, EFF said in a filing  to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. ACLU and Pfefferkorn, Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, joined EFF’s request to unseal. A federal judge in Fresno denied a motion to unseal the documents, leading to this appeal.
Media reports last year revealed DOJ’s attempt to get Facebook to turn over customer data and unencrypted Messenger voice calls based on a wiretap order in an investigation of suspected M-13 gang activity. Facebook refused the government’s request, leading DOJ to try to hold the company in contempt. Because the judge’s ruling denying the government’s request is entirely under seal, the public has no way of knowing how the government tried to justify its request or why the judge turned it down—both of which could impact users’ ability to protect their communications from prying eyes.
“The ruling likely interprets the scope of the Wiretap Act, which impacts the privacy and security of Americans’ communications, and it involves an application used by hundreds of millions of people around the world,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Andrew Crocker. “Unsealing the court records could help us understand how this case fits into the government’s larger campaign to make sure it can access any encrypted communication.’’
In 2016 the FBI attempted to force Apple to disable security features of its mobile operating system to allow access to a locked iPhone belonging to one of the shooters alleged to have killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Apple fought the order, and EFF supported the company’s efforts. Eventually the FBI announced that it had received a third-party tip with a method to unlock the phone without Apple's assistance. We believed that the FBI’s intention with the litigation was to obtain legal precedent that it could compel Apple to sabotage its own security mechanisms.  
“The government should not be able to rely on a secret body of law for accessing encrypted communications and surveilling Americans,” said EFF Staff Attorney Aaron Mackey. “We are asking the court to rule that every American has a right to know about rules governing who can access their private conversations.
For the motion:
https://www.eff.org/files/2019/06/12/e.c.f._9th_cir._19-15472_dckt_000_filed_2019-06-12.pdf

Contact:  Andrew Crocker Senior Staff Attorney andrew@eff.org Aaron Mackey Staff Attorney amackey@eff.org

Sick of Hearing About Electability? It Will Take Organizing To Expand Our Political Imagination.

Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign with impossible promises, from erecting a massive, Mexican-funded border wall to revitalizing dying industries. Instead of being dismissed as a huckster, he raised Republican voters’ expectations of the possible and normalized the party’s shift to its extreme. Trump’s victory seemed to turn on its head the conventional wisdom that only centrists win general elections.

Centrist Democrats are nonetheless clinging to that conventional wisdom, undermining popular progressive candidates and policies on the grounds that one of their own is the most likely to unseat Donald Trump. As one of Joe Biden’s supporters and fundraisers, South Carolina state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, told Vanity Fair, “This [election] isn’t a battle of ideologies or identity or Medicare for All or a Green New Whatever. It’s all about who can stop this juvenile narcissist from getting a second term.”

To an extent, the Democratic establishment has polling on its side. Biden consistently leads in primary polling, and a Quinnipiac poll from May shows 61% of registered Pennsylvania Democrats think Biden is the most likely to beat Trump. Bernie Sanders is a distant second at 6%; Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are tied at 3%.

In response, the Left can point out that policies such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal—which Biden does not support, and which several other candidates do—poll well with voters. We can also remind Democrats that campaigning on centrism did not work for John Kerry or Hillary Clinton. It may be early enough in the election cycle that an examination of Biden’s long history of conservative positions, coupled with his current dismissal of millennials and progressive policies, will be enough to dampen perceptions of his electability.

But given the strength of the centrist media establishment, it’s also possible these perceptions will not change. Through week two of Biden’s campaign, for instance, FiveThirtyEight showed him receiving almost as much media coverage as every other Democratic candidate combined. Left media can and should make the case against Biden, but we simply do not have the megaphone needed to counteract the influence of broadcast and cable news.

Instead, we need to find other ways to reach ordinary voters (and nonvoters). Organizing around non-presidential candidates and issues is one way to build relationships, start face-to-face conversations and engage in political education, which can build power and raise consciousness for 2020, 2024 and beyond—not to mention achieve bigger social goals.

That could mean lobbying with National Nurses United on Medicare for All, organizing strikes with the Fight for 15, supporting Black Youth Project 100 in their work against the prison-industrial complex, donating to organizations in hard-hit communities (like Milwaukee’s Black Leaders Organizing for Communities), or volunteering for the Sunrise Movement. Alongside the victories of politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), these actions can challenge perceptions about what is possible and who is electable.

Labor organizing should be key to this approach. Many unions engage in political education with their membership, and drive money and volunteers with their endorsements. In 2008, 59% of union households supported Barack Obama—a relative political unknown then running on anti-establishment populism—over John McCain; in 2012, 58% of union households supported Obama over Mitt Romney. But in 2016, union support for Hillary Clinton—seen as a centrist establishment candidate—dropped to 51%.

The question of electability may not be answered until voters go to the polls next year. But if history is any indicator, an “electable” centrist could very well win the primary and fail in the general. Since the formation of the moderate Coalition for a Democratic Majority—more than 40 years ago, in the wake of progressive George McGovern’s loss to Richard Nixon—centrist Democrats have used so-called electability as a weapon. It may take consistent, grassroots organizing to liberate ourselves from it.

Bernie Sanders Has Laid Out the Stakes of the 2020 Election: Democratic Socialism or Barbarism

The opening salvo of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign came not in a defamatory speech or presidential tweetstorm, but in an overlooked report put out in October 2018 by his White House Council of Economic Advisers titled “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism.”

The bizarre document featured a mash-up of Margaret Thatcher quotes, paeans to Nordic truck drivers and allegories about Christmas sweaters, but its central conceit—that a socialist menace haunted the American public—has come to animate Trump’s talking points as he sets his sights on 2020.

In his State of the Union address in February, Trump thundered, “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” At the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, he claimed, "We believe in the American dream, not the socialist nightmare." During a National Republican Campaign Committee fundraiser in April, he said “I love the idea of ‘Keep America Great,’ because you know what it says is we’ve made it great. Now we’re going to keep it great, because these socialists will destroy it.”

Such fear mongering is not new. Barack Obama was consistently derided as a freedom-hating socialist by everyone from billionaire David Koch to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Indeed, from William Jennings Bryan in the 1890s to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s to Bill Clinton in the 1990s, conservatives have attempted to tar Democratic presidential candidates as socialist agents.

The difference in 2020 is that this time around, one of the Democratic front runners embraces the socialist label. On Wednesday, at George Washington University, Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered an unwavering defense of democratic socialism in a major campaign speech.

“Democratic socialism to me requires achieving political and economic freedom in every community in this country,” said Sanders.

Presenting a defense that tethered the principles of democratic socialism to battles throughout U.S. history to expand freedom and provide a better life for the American people, Sanders said that the task today is to “take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion.”

But Sanders made clear that his vision goes beyond that of FDR’s. "We must recognize that in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, economic rights are human rights," Sanders said, making a case for enshrining not only healthcare as a right, but also education, employment, housing and the ability to live in a “clean environment.”   

This conception of democratic socialism sees such basic human needs as inalienable, and demands they not be subject to market forces. During the speech, Sanders raised the question of whether people are truly free if they can’t afford to go to the doctor, or if they have to work 80 hours a week to make a living.  

With inequality levels mirroring those of the Gilded Age, and corporate profits at an all-time high, democratic socialism is finding a fervent audience: More than 6 in 10 Americans are unhappy with the current size and influence of corporations, and the same proportion say the current distribution of money and wealth in our society is unfair. Medicare for All, Sanders' trademark proposal, is now backed by 70 percent of Americans, and his calls for a jobs guarantee, tuition-free college and a Green New Deal all boast majority support. How would such programs be paid for? More than 75 percent of Americans say we should soak the rich.

Sanders has similarly proposed a democratic socialist approach to workers’ rights. He advocates expanding union rights, increasing employee ownership and creating a worker-run fund that would pay them out dividends.

If the constituent parts of Sanders’ socialist vision are increasingly popular, so is the term itself. Despite the Right’s best attempts to stigmatize socialism, 4 in 10 Americans now say they would rather live in a socialist country than a capitalist one, and majorities of women, young people and Democrats all now say they favor socialism over capitalism.

In his speech, Sanders did more than repeat his calls for a more egalitarian politics and bold left-wing policies. He argued that we are up against an oligarchy that has captured our political system, and that we must stand in solidarity with the movements of working people who are demanding fundamental change—from striking teachers, to climate justice organizers to women fighting for reproductive freedom.

Sanders made the case that the term “free market” is an oxymoron. Citing the Wall Street bailouts of 2008 and subsidies heaped each year on the fossil fuel industry and monopolistic enterprises like Amazon, Sanders said that Trump and his fellow oligarchs have long engaged in a form of “corporate socialism” that uses the power of the state to guarantee their continued profitability. Quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said “this country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor,” Sanders argued that nothing short of a full-fledged economic transformation can reverse this arrangement.

By reframing the debate around socialism to rebuke the greed of Trump and corporate America, Sanders attempted to turn the tables on critics who dismiss his democratic socialist agenda. "The issue of unfettered capitalism is not just an academic debate,” he said. “Poverty, economic distress and despair are life-threatening issues for millions of working people in the country."

He linked the turn toward oligarchy and authoritarianism in America to the pantheon of rightwing authoritarian leaders who have consolidated power around the world. He named names: Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Muhammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and America’s own Donald Trump.

“These leaders meld corporatist economics with xenophobia and authoritarianism,” said Sanders. “They redirect popular anger about inequality and declining economic conditions into violent rage against minorities—whether they are immigrants, racial minorities, religious minorities or the LGBT community. And to suppress dissent, they are cracking down on democracy and human rights.”

In contrast to such hate-mongering, Sanders counterposed democratic socialism which he said seeks “a higher path, a path of compassion, justice and love.”

With hate crimes on the rise across the country, and the Trump administration engaging in such policies as the caging of migrant children, Sanders made clear that democratic socialism is not some radical philosophy to be feared, but rather the antidote to the growing dogmas of bigotry—one that could overcome the hate-filled fantasies of the Steve Bannons of the world.

Trump has made his game plan for 2020 abundantly clear: attack the Democrats as the party of socialism. No matter who wins the nomination, whether it’s Sanders, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, they will surely be smeared as socialists. With his full-throated defense of democratic socialism, Sanders welcomed such a debate, trusting that the American people will be on his side.

Never in modern U.S. history has there been a more clear-cut contest between the forces of “socialism and barbarism,” as the old Marxist idiom goes. If Sanders’ speech is any indication, it’s a fight he’s eager to have.

Finally, a Climate Change Documentary That Will Get You Excited to Fix It
https://earther.gizmodo.com/finally-a-climate-change-documentary-that-will-get-you-1835448238 #climatechange #climatecrisis

I think today marks the day I've received my first ever racist & homophobic reply on the fediverse.

On the one hand it's impressive it actually took more than a year for it to happen, on the other hand it's just mind-blowing what fucked-up reactions a simple photo of a pink park bench can provoke in some people. 🙄

House Democrats Hold Trump Officials in Contempt for Withholding Census Documents

The House Oversight Committee voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for withholding key documents about why the Trump administration added a controversial question about citizenship to the 2020 census. The resolution passed by a vote of 24-15, with every Democrat and Rep. Justin Amash […]

Reaching and grasping: Learning fine motor coordination changes the brain

When we train the reaching for and grasping of objects, we also train our brain. In other words, this action brings about changes in the connections of a certain neuronal population in the red nucleus, a region of the midbrain. Researchers have discovered this group of nerve cells in the red nucleus. They have also shown how fine motor tasks promote plastic reorganization of this brain region.

The short life of Must Farm: The final decades of the Bronze Age in Britain

An extraordinarily well-preserved Late Bronze Age settlement in Cambridgeshire provides exceptional opportunity to investigate the everyday lives of people in the final decades of the Bronze Age in Britain.

Fifty years later, DDT lingers in lake ecosystems

To control pest outbreaks, airplanes sprayed more than 6,280 tons of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) onto forests in New Brunswick, Canada, between 1952 and 1968, according to Environment Canada. By 1970, growing awareness of the harmful effects of DDT on wildlife led to curtailed use of the insecticide in the area. However, researchers have now shown that DDT lingers in sediments from New Brunswick lakes, where it could alter zooplankton communities.

Released #libhandy v0.0.10 - a #gtk based widget library for mobile devices:

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/libhandy/tags/v0.0.10

@purism #handy

M$ with it's issues again... https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/windows-june-updates.html?m=1

Why Smart Cards Are Smart
If you use GPG keys, learn about the benefits to storing them on a smart card.
By @kyle https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/why-smart-cards-are-smart
#encryption #security #privacy

Mysterious holes in Antarctic sea ice explained by years of robotic data

Why did a giant hole appear in the sea ice off Antarctica in 2016 and 2017, after decades of more typical sea ice cover? Years of Southern Ocean data have explained the phenomenon, helping oceanographers to better predict these features and study their role in global ocean cycles.