Category Archives: Viva!

Trans-Pacific Partnership revived after 11 nations agree to trade deal – without US

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Canada coaxed back after lobbying by Japan and Australia, while door left open for Washington

The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which had been on life support since Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US a year ago, has finally been resuscitated.

The 11 remaining countries are expected to sign an amended agreement on 8 March in Chile, Australia’s trade minister, Steve Ciobo, has confirmed.

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Linus Torvalds is Furious at Intel as Linux Kernel 4.15 Release Gets Delayed

via aleksey godin

Brief: Linux Kernel 4.15 release has been delayed because Intel has not yet provided a proper fix for the nasty CPU bugs. And that has made Linus Torvalds go into swearing mode, again.

Torvalds is angry with Intel

Linux creator Linus Torvalds is furious. He is frustrated. He is using lots of cuss words as well.

The year 2018 started on a bad note as the computing world has been rocked by Meltdown and Spectre bugs. These kernel memory bugs open the possibilities of malicious scripts stealing secret data such as passwords. It’s not only Linux that has been impacted. Windows, macOS, BSD etc have been equally impacted.

Google found these vulnerabilities in Intel, AMD and ARM processor mid-last year. Intel was notified along with AMD, several Linux distributions, Microsoft, Apple and many other big players.

While the operating system vendors are providing the software updates for the vulnerability, it is Intel who is responsible for fixing the issue at the firmware level. And apparently, Intel is not doing its job properly.

Kernel 4.15 gets delayed because people were busy with Meltdown and Spectre

Linux Kernel 4.15 was supposed to be released today i.e. 22 January 2018. But that didn’t happen because Torvalds is not feeling comfortable with its development.

As most people were busy dealing with Meltdown and Spectre, the development of 4.15 got impacted. There are still pending fixes in the upcoming release.

Torvalds mentions in Linux Kernel mailing list:

I really really wanted to just release 4.15 today, but things haven’t calmed down enough for me to feel comfy about it, and Davem tells me he still has some networking fixes pending. Laura Abbott found and fixed a very subtle boot bug introduced this development cycle only yesterday, and it just didn’t feel right to say that we’re done.

Kernel 4.15 becomes the slowest release since 2011

Because of the pending fixes, Torvalds announced Release Candidate (RC) version 9 instead of the final Kernel 4.15.

So I’m doing an rc9 instead. I don’t particularly like to, but I like it even less releasing something that doesn’t seem baked enough.

The last Kernel release to have RC 9 was version 3.1 back in 2011.

the patches are COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE

Linus Torvalds hasn’t been happy about how Intel tried to downplay the Spectre vulnerability. He is clearly not happy how Intel is dealing with the fixes.

While Kernel 4.15 release got delayed, Torvalds had some nasty words for Intel development team over the Spectre bug fixes. You can read his unhappiness in the Kernel mailing list.

Some of the highlights are:

So somebody isn’t telling the truth here. Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons. Sorry for having to point that out.

And then he goes on to call the fixes from Intel “COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE”. Yes, that was in caps.

F word was also mentioned in the mailing list. However, it seems that Torvalds has new year resolution of swearing less and hence he used asterisks instead of using the expletives uncensored.

WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?

And that’s actually ignoring the much _worse_ issue, namely that the

whole hardware interface is literally mis-designed by morons.

Lots of caps lock, lots of swearing. That’s classic Torvalds. Considering that Intel hasn’t been able to fix the issue even after six months, it is only natural that Torvalds get frustrated as he likes to keep the Kernel secure and vulnerability-free.

What do you think of the entire episode?

Palestinians burn photos of Pence ahead of his visit to Israel

PNN/ Bethlehem/

Dozens of Palestinians on Sunday evening burned photos of US vice president, Mike Pence, ahead of his arrival to meet with Netanyahu and the Israeli president on Tuesday.

The protesters, who gathered in Manger Square in Bethlehem, burned the photos and stepped on them before dumping them in the trash containers, as a form of rejection of the US policies against the Palestinians, and Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Scretary of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), Mohammad Al-Masri, told PNN reporter that the event carried the same message of a previous protest which took place following Trumo’s declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“The Palestinian people were counting on the Arab peoples in the countries visited by the US Vice President to express their rejection of the American position,” Al-Masri said, referring to Egypot and Jordan which Pence has visited the past days.

Fatah movement announced a general strike on Tuesday, when Pence arrives to Israel, where he will meet leaders and address the Knesset.

On Sunday, Pence met with the King of Jordan, who said that “East Jerusalem must be the capital of a future state of Palestine.”

Prior to that, Pence met with the Egyptian president, Abdul-Fattah Al-Sissi.

My bedroom is a phone-free zone and I feel so much better for it

Laughable – really. After a trend starts, all editors ask writers and other editors to begin looking for counter trend stories. When trend is just beginning, they want as many trendy stories as possible.

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I get more and better sleep, feel less anxiety and even get out of bed quicker – and it’s all because social media sucks

I never quite fell in love with smartwatches, but I do credit my brief time with one for sparking the most positive change to my life for years: relegating my smartphone to the hallway.

With only one plug socket by my bed, and no space for an adaptor, I had to choose one device to win the hallowed bedside charging position. Thanks to my desire to eke out one final hour of standing time to goose my activity tracking, the watch won.

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US to open Jerusalem embassy sooner than expected, says Pence

Who’s on first? When will #TraitorTrump disown his VP for trying to look better than him?

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Controversial move to be made by end of 2019, vice-president tells Israeli parliament

The US will open its embassy in Jerusalem by the end of 2019, ahead of schedule, the vice-president, Mike Pence, has said. Arab-Israeli politicians were ejected from the Knesset at the start of Pence’s speech for heckling.

“In the weeks ahead, our administration will advance its plan to open the US embassy in Jerusalem – and that United States embassy will open before the end of next year,” he said in a speech to roaring applause in the Israeli Knesset.

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Peru passes law allowing roads through pristine Amazon rainforest

Stupid is as stupid does – why don’t any of these fools realize that the Amazon and us by extension be killed by their folly?

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  • Pope warned on Friday of threat to Amazon and its peoples
  • New roads in border areas could affect five indigenous reserves

Peru has approved a law that would allow roads to be built in the most remote and pristine region of its Amazon rainforest, a haven for isolated indigenous groups and an area of primary forest rich in mahogany trees.

Related: Pope Francis says Amazon indigenous people under greater threat than ever

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Rupert Murdoch tells Facebook: pay ‘trusted’ publishers for their content

That would leave his publications off Facebook since none of them are trustwothy

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Amid policy changes at social network, media mogul criticizes it for failing to ‘adequately reward’ publishers that add value and integrity

Rupert Murdoch issued a new salvo in the row between Facebook and news publishers on Monday, calling on the social media company to pay publishers for their content.

“If Facebook wants to recognize ‘trusted’ publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies,” the News Corp chairman said in a statement. “The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services.”

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