Mohammed bin Salman Tests Americas Ability to Forgive – The Atlantic

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

Read: What Jeff Bezoss reported phone hack says about billionaires

That Bezoss net worth is comparable to the GDP of a state (such as Kuwait or Morocco, two fellow Arab monarchies that Saudi Arabia has almost surely tried to bug) does not reduce the hideousness of the accusation. Yet Bezoss wealth and global influence put the alleged phone hack in a different context, as an act of espionage akin to what developed nations have done for a long time, and without apology.

The fury at the current accusation resembles in some ways the anger at the United States after allegations by Edward Snowden that it had tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkels phone. Merkel told the Americans that spying between friends just isnt on. Yet in fact, a certain amount of espionage is not only on but standard and responsible practice, and when done between friends, it does not entirely unravel the friendship. What is not standard practice is to be caught and exposedas the United States was then, and as Israel was, most dramatically, in the case of Jonathan Pollard.

The key question for MbS is whether he stands in the same category as Israel and Germany, and whether offenses taken and given will sever affections forever. It sometimes appears that MbS is doing everything he can to encourage his own vilification, in the confidence that Saudi Arabia is as close a friend to the United States as Israel and Germany are. His strategy appears to be to wait for America to forget the state-sponsored murder of the Posts Jamal Khashoggi. For him to be personally involved in the sordid targeting of a private citizen, due to his ownership of a critical newspaperand then get caughtwould be an enormous gift to MbSs enemies, and it would further test the U.S.-Saudi relationships capacity for forgiveness.

Read: The U.S. loved the Saudi crown prince. Not anymore.

The current administration in Washington dislikes Bezos and will not alter its policies over his exposure. But MbS is 34 years old, and he is seeking allies for a reign that may last the next half century, long past the second Kushner administration. And the disappearance of trust and goodwill between him and his various American counterparts is a setback from which he will not easily recover, as Israel and Germany have. (Indeed, the Bezos hack is both a symptom and a cause of that disappearance of trust: Many news sources have reported the hack as fact, even though the best technical analysis of the device has failed, as of this writing, to show more than circumstantial evidence that MbS infected his phone.)

MbS should be asking what marks an ally as one capable of receiving the benefit of the doubt and, finally, pardon. What Israel and Germany share with the United States is a commitment (sometimes honored in the breach) to basic liberal democratic values, rule of law, and the unalienable rights of their citizens. This commitment is a salve that Saudi Arabia will have great difficulty whipping up, given that democracy and liberalism are utterly foreign to it. Saudi Arabia has liberalized dramatically since MbSs de facto rule began three years ago, but it is still an absolute monarchy and will probably remain one. Those who wish it would democratize will find that they have to decide between political and social liberalization, at least in the short term, because MbS has promoted the latter at the expense of the former.

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Mohammed bin Salman Tests Americas Ability to Forgive - The Atlantic

$10 Million Lab in New York Exists Just to Break Into iPhones – Wccftech

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

A $10 million lab has been created in New York by the district attorney of Manhattan to break into iPhones and iPads. The lab houses technology experts who use state-of-the-art equipment to try and break into smartphones used by criminals.

Fast Company has published a profile of the cyber lab built by the district attorney of Manhattan, Cyrus Vance Jr. The lab was built to compete against the encryption efforts by technology giants like Apple and Google, who implemented stronger security measures on their platforms. The lab has specialized hardware to repair damaged devices and even a supercomputer to generate passcodes to be used for brute force attacks.

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Proprietary software provides prosecutors with real-time information about each smartphone in their possession, which can be removed from the radiofrequency-shielded room using Ramsey boxesminiaturized versions of the isolation chamber that allow technicians to manipulate the devices safely.In other corners of the lab are a supercomputer that can generate 26 million random passcodes per second, a robot that can remove a memory chip without using heat, and specialized tools that can repair even severely damaged devices.

As per Vance, Apple used to happily provide data from iPhones before September 2014. But things changed ever since Edward Snowden exposed the surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency, also known as the NSA. Edward had revealed that Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook participate in the surveillance program by providing direct access to their servers to the NSA. This was denied by Apple and it double-downed its encryption efforts next year with iOS 8, and started encrypting iPhones with passcodes. The company also introduced longer passcodes, and limits to how many times a passcode could be entered per second. This time would increase exponentially with every wrong entry, which made it almost impossible to brute force into an iPhone.

Awareness of smartphone security has also increased. As per Moran, director of the High Technology Analysis Unit, the number of locked smartphones that come in for investigation has changed from 52% five years ago, to 82% now.

Although Apple provides iCloud backups for investigation, which are not end-to-end encrypted, it sometimes is not enough. It usually does not include the latest backup from the time of the incident, which causes difficulties in investigation. The latest communications, GPS coordinates and other important information is usually missing from such backups. Automated iCloud backups usually take place at night when the iOS device is connected to WiFi and plugged in for charging.

Not all investigations result in charging criminals. Many wrongly accused suspects have been exonerated because of the data and evidence extracted from their smartphones. These are the kind of examples that are used by Vance to try and convince the CEOs of Apple and Google, as well as the Congress, to legislate a "compromise" against encryption. Vance somehow also believes that Apple has a backdoor for iOS, even though the company refuses to create one.

Despite the security measures put into place by Apple, devices like Jeff Bezos' iPhone X have fallen to hacks. Even the FBI unlocked an iPhone 11 and an iPhone 11 Pro Max, without Apple's help. United States President Donald Trump has been pressurizing Apple to help with iPhone unlocks, especially for the Florida shooting case, where the FBI has been unsuccessful.

This cat and mouse game between law enforcement and tech companies will not end anytime soon. Each time Apple and Google release software updates, they make it even more difficult for law enforcement agencies to crack into iPhones and Android smartphones and conduct investigations. The tech companies rightfully believe that creating backdoors will compromise the security of everyone. Including those who ask for the backdoor.

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$10 Million Lab in New York Exists Just to Break Into iPhones - Wccftech

Top 5 Crypto Regulatory Developments Of 2019 – Forbes

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

The digital currency space experienced several key regulatory developments in 2019. This article ... [+] narrows down the list to the five most important ones.

In recent years, the regulatory environment surrounding digital currencies and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) has been in a state of constant flux.

In the beginning, digital assets existed on the margins, with bitcoin being something that was advocated by technologists and Libertarians.

However, this changed over time, as cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology drew far greater interest, fueling a hype-driven bull market in 2017 and early 2018.

In 2019, lawmakers, industry representatives and government officials all continued to push for a more mature regulatory environment.

While there were many important developments, this article will highlight the top five.

[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]

1) China Leads The Way

China led the way last year, its president making headlines in October when he emphasized the many applications of blockchain technology and stated that it is it is necessary to seize the opportunity presented by this innovative distributed ledger.

The next day, Chinas parliament approved a cryptography law (scheduled to become effective Jan. 1, 2020) designed for regulating the utilization and management of cryptography, facilitating the development of the cryptography business and ensuring the security of cyberspace and information, according to the Constitution and Law Committee of the National People's Congress.

However, in November, Chinese city Shenzhen issued a warning or risk reminder, which emphasized that certain illegal crypto-related activities have been making a comeback.

The warning stated that with the promotion of blockchain technology, the hype of virtual currency has risen, and some illegal activities have shown signs of resurgence.

Shortly after, it was reported that government offices in Chinese city Shenzhen had been investigating virtual currency trading venues, finding a total of 39 businesses that were suspected of illegal virtual currency activities.

The crackdown on the digital currency space was not limited to government action, as Weibo, which has been referred to as Chinese Twitter, banned the accounts of major exchange Binance and platform Tron, according to Bloomberg.

These developments took place as China made steps toward issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Some believe that the nations government enacted the new cryptography law to lay the foundation so the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) could implement a digital fiat currency.

In December, it was reported that the PBOC was expected to test its CBDC in Shenzhen and Suzhou. The plan was to evaluate the digital currency to see how well it performed in real-world use cases like healthcare and transportation.

As a result of all this, it would seem that China made progress toward issuing its CBDC but also cracked down on digital currency activity.

Therefore, it looks like China is looking to benefit from blockchain technology and digital assets, but avoid the associated problems like speculation and illegal activity.

Multiple analysts weighed in on this situation.

In the same way that China is trying to remain communist in terms of government and become capitalist in terms of its economy, it is certainly trying to have its cake and eat it, too, with respect to crypto/blockchain, said Tim Enneking,managing director ofDigital Capital Management.

Josh Lawler, partner at Zuber Lawler & Del Duca LLP and technologist with an interest in blockchain and DLT, added the following:

China is historically very concerned with the flow of funds out of the country and would look at much of the cryptocurrency trading activity as a hole in their restrictive architecture.

Going forward, digital currency enthusiasts should watch for continued deliberate policy decisions that will facilitate use cases while minimizing speculation and currency movement outside of the country, said Lawler.

2) Libra Struggles With Intense Scrutiny

Facebook announced Libra, its proposed payment system, in June, quickly generating countless headlines. The project, which would allow participants to send each other money using a native digital currency, drew significant scrutiny from regulators.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate questioned David Marcus in June, voicing their concerns about the many potential risks associated with Libra.

In September, the governments of Germany and France voiced their concerns about the Libra project. We believe that no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of Nations, the two governments said in a joint statement.

Further, lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee questioned Mark Zuckerberg later that month, highlighting Facebooks various challenges.

The intense scrutiny that Libra has encountered thus far illustrates the power of regulators.

While the digital currency space has repeatedly emphasized decentralization, decentralized systems may have a hard time operating if they are banned by the governments of major economies.

The Libra case is a perfect example that not all digital currencies are the same, and that the organizations and governance models around a digital currency are just as important as the technologies underpinning them, said Dan Simerman, head of financial relations for The IOTA Foundation.

Governments should be concerned about what sorts of actors are joining the space under the pretenses of decentralization and financial freedom, as Bitcoin is quite different from Libra in its makeup, he noted.

In order for digital currencies to become truly widespread, organizations need to work with the governments of the world rather than try to circumvent them, said Simerman.

3) The SEC Keeps Shooting Down Bitcoin ETFs

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continued to reject proposals that would allow bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

In October, the government agency declined a proposal floated by financial services firm Bitwise Asset Management, emphasizing that it failed to meet the requirements surrounding market manipulation and illegal activities.

This was just the latest move by a government agency with a long history of rejecting proposals that would allow for bitcoin ETFs.

The first time the SEC shot down one of these proposed funds was 2017, a move that generated widespread media attention.

The government agency is unlikely to approve one of these funds soon, analysts predicted, noting that the SEC would require the exchanges involved to have surveillance sharing agreements.

A Bitcoin ETF is unlikely to be approved in the near future unless stakeholders can prove that price discovery is organic and authentic, and that would require increased SEC involvement with the top crypto exchanges involved in Bitcoin's price formation, said Joe DiPasquale, CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund managerBitBull Capital.

The earliest time that such a fund would receive approval would be the end of this year, and even that is unlikely, stated Enneking.

Recent developments with futures markets (Bakkt, CME, etc.) actually increase the chances of an ETF being approved in the US, he noted.

What surprises me is that no other OECD country has approved an ETF to compete with any future US ETF and gain first-mover advantage, said Enneking.

I expect that to change this year.

4) The SEC Goes After Token Sale Issuers

The SEC settled in September with Block.One, the creator of EOS, regarding its unregistered token sale that raised more than $4 billion.

The company raised this money by conducting an initial coin offering (ICO) between June 2017 and June 2018, according to the SECs order, but did not register this token sale as a securities offering.

Further, Block.One did not attempt to obtain an exemption from federal securities laws.

To address this matter, the company agreed to settle with the regulatory agency by paying a $24 million fine, which is less than 1% of the money raised during the ICO.

The SEC sued Telegram, which previously raised $1.7 billion by selling TON tokens, receiving a temporary restraining order against two foreign entities that conducted the aforementioned ICO.

Telegram fought back, filing a motion requesting that the court dismiss the SECs claims.

The government agency also sued Kik Interactive Inc. for its $100 million sale of Kin tokens, claiming that the company held an unregistered securities offering.

At the time, the SEC claimed Kik Interactive held the aforementioned sale in 2017 to raise money and restore its financial situation, after spending years losing money on its sole product, an instant messaging app.

By holding this token sale, the company was able to raise more than $55 million from U.S. investors, but the SEC claimed that the tokens sold had lost significant value.

Kick Interactive opted to fight this in court, filing a response that denied the allegations brought forth by the SEC and requested a dismissal of the government agencys complaint.

Since the digital currency industry is still relatively new, and constantly changing, these legal developments might be a signal that businesses in the space will have a far easier time working with government agencies than fighting them.

Given how lenient the SEC has been with crypto companies, working with the regulatory body appears far more productive than fighting it, said DiPasquale.

Even Block.one, which raised over $4 billion had a relatively small fine ($24 million - less than 1%), he stated.

However, companies fighting back can also push the SEC to accelerate regulatory developments and set clearer guidelines for the future, emphasized DiPasquale.

5) Global Exchanges Pull Out Of Various Markets

In 2019, several exchanges announced plans to halt trading in markets around the world. In June, it was reported that Binances DEX was planning to have its website block users in 29 countries, including the U.S.

Later that month, Binance announced that it was creating Binance.US, designed specifically to offer crypto trading to those in the U.S.

The day after, Binance indicated that it would prevent users from depositing funds or trading if they failed to comply with the companys Terms of Use.

The day of the first announcement, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that some short term pains may be necessary for long term gains.

In November, Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville penned a blog post revealing Circles plans to spin out Poloniex so it could operate as an independent company and enhance its user platform.

A separate announcement revealed that as that month, U.S. investors would not be able to trade using the platform. U.S. residents were given until Dec. 15 to withdraw their assets.

Later that month, U.S. exchange Bittrex announced it was leaving 31 markets due to regulatory uncertainty, indicating that it would pull out of these areas on Oct. 29th.

The simple fact that exchanges are making efforts to comply with existing regulations (or ceasing their offerings in the U.S. because of regulatory uncertainty) is a great example of how the regulations surrounding digital currencies and DLTs continue to evolve.

Further, it helps show that these exchanges are willing to work with regulators, according to analysts.

With the SEC actively taking note of digital assets and services available to US residents, crypto exchanges are beginning to take regulations more seriously, said DiPasquale.

He added that while their decision to pull out of various jurisdictions affects users, particularly from developing nations, it is a step that should motivate regulatory bodies around the world to reach consensus on the status of digital assets and guidelines governing their trading, usage, and taxation.

Disclosure: I own some bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin, ether and EOS.

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Top 5 Crypto Regulatory Developments Of 2019 - Forbes

Quantum Cryptography Market is expected to reach US$ 1996.1 Mn in 2027 – WhaTech Technology and Markets News

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

Quantum Cryptography Market to 2027 - Global Analysis and Forecasts By Offering (Solutions and Services); Application (Network Security, Application Security, and Database Security), by End-user (IT & Telecommunication, BFSI, Government & Defense, Healthcare, and Others)

According To a New Report Published by the Insight Partners Titled Global Quantum Cryptography Market to 2027" is a specialized and in-depth study of the Quantum Cryptography industry with a special focus on the global market trend analysis. The report aims to provide an overview of Quantum Cryptography Market with detailed market segmentation by product, type, consumption distribution channel and geography.

The Global Quantum Cryptography Market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the leading Quantum Cryptography Industry players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.

Quantum Cryptography Market on a global scenario was valued at US$ 105.3 Mn in 2018 and is expected to reach US$ 1,996.1 Mn by 2027 with a CAGR growth rate of 39.2% in the forecast period from 2019 to 2027.

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Leading key market players mentioned in the report:-

Currently, technologys advanced solutions are helping technology companies across the globe to accelerate their digital transformation adoption. From the last few years, the technology industry observed high growth and a dramatic increase worldwide.

Factors such as IT spending, economic growth, and technological innovations influence the technology industry significantly.

The global economy is expected to stabilize and grow at a steady speed during the forecast period, mostly driven by developing economies such as China, India, and Brazil. New developing markets and enterprises are anticipated to spend in the technology market to build IT infrastructure that would help lessen costs and optimize business productivity.

New developing markets and economic growth and increasing demand from small and medium enterprises are anticipated to boost the technology industry. The Asia Pacific developed as the fastest-growing region during the last few years in the technology industry, led by economic growth and expanded IT spending.

Various industries such as BFSI, IT & telecom, government and defense, healthcare, and others are adopting software technology to enhance their business productivity and to ease their business process. Quantum cryptography technology has become significant for various industries to work in a secure environment.

This technology is gaining significance important in every region owing to growing cyber-attacks. Hence, such substantial growth is expected to offer ample growth opportunities for the quantum cryptography market players during the forecast period of 2019 to 2027.

The spending on quantum cryptography is quite high in both developed and developing regions such as North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. The demand for quantum cryptography is expected to grow further during the forecast period of 2019 to 2027.

Rising digitization and positive economic outlook are some of the major macroeconomic factors driving the growth of the quantum cryptography market. Quantum cryptography technology is turning more into the global business, and various large players can offer quantum cryptography solutions and services worldwide.

Presently on a global scale, industry verticals such as BFSI, IT & telecom, government and defense, and healthcare are the major contributors in Quantum Cryptography spending.

The governments of different countries across the globe as well as various private organizations are significantly investing in cybersecurity. This is majorly attributed to secure critical data from unauthorized individuals while transferring.

The enhanced security solutions offered by the market players including Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), virtual encryptor, quantum cryptography communication device and Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) among others facilitate in strongly encrypting critical data. This factor is attracting several governments and industries to invest in such advanced technology.

Thus, the rising investment towards cybersecurity solutions is a key catalyzer for quantum cryptography market.

The quantum cryptography market players are also investing substantial amounts and man-hours in research & development activities to develop robust solutions and services. The companies operating in the quantum cryptography are partnering with different other companies, research laboratories, and governments to develop and implement their solutions to safeguard data from leakage.

The report also analyzes the factors affecting Wastewater Treatment market from both demand and supply side and further evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend.

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Quantum Cryptography Market is expected to reach US$ 1996.1 Mn in 2027 - WhaTech Technology and Markets News

Whats the Difference between Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology… – Coinspeaker

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

Even in 2020, blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) remain a black box to the majority of the world. In this article, we will explain all you need to know about the blockchain and the distributed ledger technology, and enough to get you into any conversation.

The blockchain has grown to be a far more popular term than the DLT itself, which of course is thanks in no small part to the rise of the Bitcoin and other digital currencies over the decade.

While blockchain is the spine of the major cryptocurrency, it, of course, has other use cases and applications with the potential of being implemented across diverse sectors other than finance, including health, agriculture, and countless other sectors that the blockchain itself might even redefine. Thus, what is it about blockchain that sets it apart as probably the most important innovation of the past decade?

The blockchain is, put simply, the sequences, and series of records that cannot be altered and is being managed by a large body of computers. Computers verifying transactions in a blockchain might be hundreds, thousands, or even in many practical cases, millions in numbers.

The blockchain, due to its immutability, security and lack of a central authority, has grown in popularity. By cutting away the need for a middle man, the blockchain allows products and prospective services to be rendered directly to the customers without the middleman.

Its like buying pizza without the delivery guy or paying client miles and oceans away from your country directly without any mediums such as Visa, or Paypal cutting in the deal. Blockchain has provided the ground for many smart protocols and contracts and is only going to get stronger and find more use cases.

The blockchain, modeled as a series of immutable records, is only secure because of the cryptography linking its blocks. This is where the concept of chain is derived.

There are two kinds of records in a blockchain system. The first is the Transaction, and the other is the Block. The transaction record stores time-stamped transactions over no transaction cost. The block records are secured by a cryptography hash, which has encoded information of the preceding block.

The blocks in a blockchain are time-stamped, recording the present state of the system cryptographically so that any future change would have to be verified by the majority of the network. This means the addition of a new block to the existing chain becomes harder and involves more processes. Each increase in block given each addition would have to be verified by the existing network.

Thus, the blockchain comes off more secure. By requiring the majority of the system to verify a change it eliminates the need for trust, simply giving authority to the majority. Kalle Alm, a Bitcoin Core developer, explained why this process is important. He stresses that verification eliminates the possibility of fraudulent transactions while still eliminating trust at the same time:

Blockchains alleviate the trust requirement in a shared time-stamped database, he commented. For a public cryptocurrency, this is obviously necessary or someone might just go and give themselves a million USD, but for a private database, especially when it is not a cryptocurrency but some more abstract form of smart contract platform, it starts to make less and less sense.

As hyped and known as the blockchain is, the blockchain is however just a type of distributed ledger. If a pencil is a writing material as well as a pen, then the blockchain is a very good pencil! This is a terrible over-simplification by the way, but the point remains that blockchain is a specific type of distributed ledger, and there could be other types of ledgers different from blockchain and with different use cases.

The distributed ledger is likewise a database that is public in nature. It requires many witnesses and is open to all participants. Like in the blockchain, the DLT does not require a middle man which makes the concept of distributed ledger technologies very alluring.

While the blockchain, of course, has stolen the march and grown into respectable popularity over the years, there is every possibility that other forms of DLTs would materialize in the very near future.

As James Wallis, Vice President of Blockchain Markets and Engagements for IBM explained, applications of DLTs in the future would come off in the most unlikely of ways and places.

You will see uses for DLT that you cant even think of today, he said. But that this will involve a level of sharing that hasnt really existed before.

As mentioned, the blockchain is only a type of DLT, and just so happens to be the one known to be underlying DLT technology in the world. However, other key differences set the blockchain apart from its parent term.

For one, the blockchain is a permissionless system while the DLT is not necessarily permissionless. In fact, a DLT is generally considered to require permission.

The underlying concept behind the blockchain is particular about the growth and openness of the network, thus, a blockchain is open to anyone. Meaning any party can create and verify nodes on the former while at the latter, it is not the case. According to the director of the ecosystem at Hyperledger, Marta Piekarska, this particular feature is probably the most important feature that separates the two. Explaining its corresponding impact on its application, he talked up Bitcoin:

First and foremost: one is permission less, the other is permissioned. This means that in the first case anyone can participate in the network, in the other: only chosen participants have access to it. This also determined the size of the network: Bitcoin wants to grow infinitely, while in a permissioned blockchain space, the number of parties is smaller.

Apart from this, not all DLT are cryptographically hashed: it is perhaps uncommon and unnecessary in the majority of other existing DLTs. These subtle differences contribute to other major differences that affect the performance of both subjects.

The blockchain, as known, is largely decentralized. However, while the DLT is shared by many participants, its database is majorly centralized. This, of course, leads to the issue of scalability. By decentralizing its entire network, the blockchain is generally slower in transactions than most DLTs, leading to significantly inferior scalability.

Nevertheless, the blockchain is here to stay, and its increasing use cases is more than enough proof. Other forms and applications of distributed ledger technologies would be emanating soon in the near future. We can only keep our fingers crossed and enjoy the unveiling evolution.

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Whats the Difference between Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology... - Coinspeaker

‘Trust no one’ is good enough for the X Files but not for software devs: How do you use third-party libs and stay secure, experts mull on stage – The…

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

Enigma In a chilly conference room at the San Francisco's Hyatt Regency on Monday, legal and digital security pros convened at USENIX's Enigma conference to hold forth on security, privacy, and related matters.

Following a discussion panel on encrypted messaging, the talk turned to mitigating the risks that come with using third-party code, external vendors, and crowdsourced advice.

Those risks became more apparent in the security problems spotted in a series of software libraries over the past few years.

In August last year, a Ruby software package called rest-client was found to be sending credentials to a remote server. In November, 2018, the NPM module event-stream was modified to steal cryptocurrency. There were similar incidents in July last year involving the NPM module electron-native-notify and in September, 2017, when the PyPI, the repository for Python software packages, was found to be hosting malicious software libraries.

While in theory no one should use anyone else's code without a thorough security review, that's impractical in the open source software ecosystem, where so many applications depend on code libraries written and maintained by third-parties and those libraries, in turn, depend on still more third-party libraries.

So the presenters explored ways to deal with risky trust relationships.

Filippo Valsorda, a cryptography engineer on the Go team at Google, offered an overview of the Go checksum database, a system deployed last year to provide a central log of Go module checksums the values returned from a cryptographic hash function to verify the modules.

"We all use other people's code," he said. "Modern software development practices involve using third-party software that is made available through the open source ecosystem."

Valsorda explained that the Go team has attempted to design a system that ensures the integrity, availability, and provenance of third-party code. And he said the team had the benefit of seeing where other software repositories went wrong.

We all use other people's code...

Go developers can use the go command client to verify the log entries stored in the Go checksum database, which stored checksums for all publicly-available Go modules. This doesn't guarantee that a library is free of malicious code, but it does ensure that the library hasn't been altered without authorization from its author.

Valsorda pointed to the left-pad incident when the creator of an NPM module unpublished his code and mayhem ensured to emphasize why code availability matters.

"The Go solution here is that there is a proxy protocol specified that allows you to fetch modules," he said. "And as long as the license of a certain module allows for distribution, we will hold on to the contents so that even if they get deleted, they will still be available for you to build."

There are privacy implications in Google's oversight of the central Go module database. These involve the possibility of exposing the text of private module paths and exposing how developers use public modules. Google has tried to reduce these privacy consequences by supporting proxy servers that other organizations can run on their own.

Companies, he said, "can run their own proxy, which will cache everything that has ever been used an organization and guarantee within the organization that everything will still be available in the future for as long as the internal infrastructure is accessible."

In the presentation that followed, Sarah Harvey, a security engineer for payments biz Square, examined the workflows organizations can use when integrating third-party vendor systems to reduce the risk of bad outcomes. She pointed to the 2014 hacking of Target's payment system through credentials that had been granted to its HVAC contractor as an example of the potential consequences of a third-party with too much network access.

Harvey described the integration flow that third-party vendors go through to connect to Square's systems. It basically involves filling out online forms that specify contextual information about vendors and their products, descriptions of the data being transferred, and the network domains required to make the relationship work. That information must then be translated into network and policy rules.

Because forms of this sort introduce friction that could discourage thorough disclosure, Harvey said she did a lot of work on the UX and UI design to auto-populate many of the data fields.

"You have to be very calculated amount of friction you're you are introducing and try to reduce it as much as possible to get people through the system," she said.

The third presentation on the topic of third-party trust involved Felix Fischer, a security researcher at Technical University of Munich, delving into the ups and downs of Q&A site Stack Overflow as a source of code examples. Fischer and others have penned papers [PDF] on the security consequences of relying on community-contributed code, but he had more in mind than rehashing past findings about the problem with copying-and-pasting insecure snippets into apps.

"Ninety-seven percent of apps that reuse code from Stack Overflow applied insecure code," he said. On the other hand, he said, some 70 per cent of code examples from the Q&A site incorporated helpful advice that applied security best practices. So good advice is available on Stack Overflow. However, only 6 per cent of Google Play apps reuse those code examples.

The reason that bad advice becomes more popular than good advice, he explained, has to do with the incentive structure of Stack Overflow, where people to earn reputation points by duplicating popular answers and reposting them.

"What we found was that over a third of the so-called highly-trusted users, users with a particularly high reputation score, posted insecure code," he said. "So all the very meaningful indicators on Stack Overflow were indeed pointing in the wrong direction."

Denying developers access to Stack Overflow won't help and would probably make things worse, said Fisher. He argues that behavioral science can be used to guide UX and UI modifications to Stack Overflow that help nudge developers to make the right security choices without taking away their freedom.

"We developed a nudge system based on deep learning that knows what suggested code examples are about and whether they're insecure or not," he said.

One way this was tested involved having the nudge system re-rank search results on Stack Overflow to present the most helpful and secure advice first. The system also warned about insecure advice within discussion threads while also always offering safe alternative solutions.

"Our nudging interventions did not harm productivity and significantly increased code security," he said.

In short, third-party code, third-party vendor relationships, and third-party advice have the potential to be harmful, but they don't have to be that way.

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'Trust no one' is good enough for the X Files but not for software devs: How do you use third-party libs and stay secure, experts mull on stage - The...

Canada’s complicity in the persecution of Julian Assange – World Socialist Web Site

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

Canadas complicity in the persecution of Julian Assange By Roger Jordan 27 January 2020

The British government is conspiring with the Trump administration to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US to face bogus Espionage Act charges and a possible 175-year prison term.

The Australian-born journalist and publisher has been the target of a 9-year legal vendetta, mounted by British and US authorities, and supported by the Canadian political establishment, because he sought to inform working people around the world of the crimes carried out by US imperialism and its allies.

The prosecution of Assange is a legal travesty. One, moreover, that is being used to gut basic democratic rights, including the rights of free speech and freedom of the press and the right to due process.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer has repeatedly denounced his treatment by British authoritiesincluding his seven years of effective detention in the Ecuadorean Embassy and his current incarceration, in virtual solitary confinement, at the hellish maximum security Bellmarsh Prisonas psychological torture. Scores of doctors have warned that this torture has placed Assanges life in grave danger.

The CIA has spied on Assanges interactions with his lawyers. Chelsea Manning, who handed over hundreds of thousands of secret US cables to WikiLeaks in 2010, has also been detained since last March because she refused to testify against Assange in a rigged US Grand Jury proceeding.

Assange has been subjected to this horrific treatment by some of the worlds most powerful governments for the crime of informing the public about the war crimes and diplomatic skullduggery of their governments. These include the massacre of civilians in Iraq by US troops, the mistreatment of prisoners of war in Afghanistan, and Washingtons bullying of governments around the world. Even leading bourgeois newspapers, like the New York Times, that have published scurrilous attacks on Assange have been forced to concede that his successful prosecution would represent a threat to journalists and the freedom of the press the world over.

The Canadian political establishment has maintained a deafening and complicit silence about the prosecution and persecution of Assange throughout the past nine years. This is true of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals, but also of all the other parties that posture as progressive, from the New Democrats and Greens to the Bloc Quebecois, and the pseudo-left Quebec Solidaire.

The reason for this deafening silence is not hard to find. The Canadian capitalist elite, which is more reliant than ever on its military-strategic partnership with US imperialism to advance its own predatory interests on the global stage, fears the impact of WikiLeaks exposures. Like its British and American allies, the Canadian ruling elite is anxious that Assange be subjected to exemplary punishment so as to intimidate all those who seek to lay bare the crimes and machinations of the western imperialist powers.

Whilst the Trudeau government is not directly involved in Assanges prosecution, it has provided crucial political support for it. Last July, for example, the then Canadian Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, co-hosted a Global Media Freedom Conference in London along with British Foreign Secretary Jeremey Hunt, just weeks after Hunt had presided over the British governments illegal seizure of Assange from his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Canada and the UK are working together to defend media freedom and improve the safety of journalists who report across the world, Freelands office declared in a truly Orwellian statement. Needless to say, neither Freeland nor Hunt mentioned the fate of Assange, an award-winning journalist and publisher, at the meeting.

The refusal of any section of Canadas political establishment to criticize the persecution of Assange, let alone mobilize popular opposition to it, is a damning exposure of their oft-repeated claims to stand for human rights and democracy on the world stage. The reality is Ottawa, like Washington, cynically and hypocritically invokes human rights as a cover for the rapacious pursuit of their imperialist interests. The North American imperialist powers denounce both real and fabricated violations of human rights committed by governments they view as obstacles to their interests, while covering up and excusing state repression, torture, and war crimes carried out by their client regimes, allies, and, last but not least, their own military and security intelligence apparatuses.

Since 1999, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have participated in US-led wars and regime change military interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, Syria and Iraq that have left entire societies in ruins. Trudeaus Liberals have further integrated Canada into US military-strategic offensives around the world. This includes participating in Washingtons war preparations against nuclear-armed Russia and China, but also its regime-change intrigues in Venezuela.

Canadas ruling elite has also moved to criminalize dissent and workers struggles at home and to build up the repressive powers of the state with the aim of suppressing popular opposition to austerity, social inequality, and war. Canada is a key partner in the global US National Security Agency-led Five Eyes spying network. Under the phony pretext of the war on terror, successive governments have dramatically expanded the powers of the intelligence services. Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) has been empowered to break virtually any law in disrupting activities deemed to pose a threat to public security or Canadas territorial integrity.

The work of whistleblowers like Assange and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been invaluable in bringing to light some of the crimes Canadian imperialism has committed as it pursues aggression abroad and attacks democratic rights at home. It was a US State Department memo released by WikiLeaks that informed the Canadian population that while the Liberal government of Jean Chretien publicly posed as an opponent of the George W. Bush-ordered 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was reassuring Washington behind the scenes that it would provide discreet support for the illegal US war.

Following the meeting, political director Jim Wright emphasized that, despite public statements that the Canadian assets in the Straits of Hormuz will remain in the region exclusively to support Enduring Freedom, noted the memo, which described a meeting between top US and Canadian foreign ministry officials on March 17, 2003. They will also be available to provide escort services in the Straits and will otherwise be discreetly useful to the military effort. The two ships in the Straits now are being augmented by two more en route, and there are patrol and supply aircraft in the U.A.E. [United Arab Emirates] which are also prepared to 'be useful.

Snowdens disclosures in 2013 revealed that the Canadian Security Establishment (CSE), Canadas signal intelligence agency, acts as a veritable arm of the NSA. Documents leaked by Snowden showed that the CSE helps develop NSA spying operations and techniques, provides information on countries that US citizens have difficulty accessing, and conducts economic spying for Canadian corporations around the world.

The Canadian ruling elite was outraged by these exposures. In 2013, Conservative Foreign Minister John Baird declared that Snowden should hand himself over to the US authorities, effectively condemning him to a death sentence. Three years later, Michael Doucetthe governments top watchdog for the countrys intelligence agenciesblurted out the true feelings of the ruling elite towards whistleblowers like Snowden and Assange. Asked his opinion on how Snowden would have been treated had he been an employee of CSIS, the countrys premier domestic spy agency, Doucet responded, If Edward Snowden had worked for CSIS and did what he did, he should be shot. (See: Canadas top spy watchdog says Edward Snowden should be shot)

Underscoring the fact that Doucets remark reflected broader sentiments in ruling circles, the Trudeau government took no action against him for this outrageous comment.

The complicit silence of Canadas political elite on Assanges torture, persecution, and imminent extradition underscores that his freedom can be won only through the mobilization of the working class, the basic constituency for the defence of democratic rights around the world.

Workers and young people who want to oppose Canadian imperialist aggression and war overseas and attacks on democratic rights at home should join the global struggle for the freedom of Assange and Manning, which has already won important and growing support in Britain, Australia, France, South Asia, and countries around the world. The struggle to defend these two courageous whistleblowers must be made the spearhead of the fight to oppose the imperialist powers drive to war and the gutting of democratic rights.

The Socialist Equality Party (Canada) is holding a public meeting in Montreal on Sunday, February 2 to initiate steps to develop a cross-Canada campaign to win Assanges freedom, defend democratic rights, and oppose Canadian imperialism and war.

We strongly urge those living in western Quebec and eastern Ontario to make plans to attend. For details see below.

No to war and the assault on democratic rights: Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning must be defended!

Montreal

Sunday, February 2, at 1:30 PMCentre St-Pierre, Room 2011212 Rue Panet (near the Beaudry Mtro station, on the Green Line)

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the same party as Joe Biden – World Socialist Web Site

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the same party as Joe Biden By Genevieve Leigh 28 January 2020

Democratic Representative from New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said in an interview with New York Magazine that she and former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, would be in different political parties in any other country.

The comment came in response to a question about what role Ocasio-Cortez might play as a member of Congress should Biden win. She said in response, In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.

Ocasio-Cortez added that the Democrats could be too big of a tent and criticized the Congressional Progressive Caucuss standard for lawmakers. They let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive, she stated, adding, theres no standard.

The comments prompted a wide range of responses in the media. There were dozens of headlines touting (or lamenting) Ocasio-Cortezs radical left agenda, with many agreeing that the two prominent Democrats should not, in fact, be in the same party.

Jacobin, the unofficial media voice of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), ran an article with the headline: AOC Is Right: She and Joe Biden Should Not Be in the Same Party, which outlined the supposed gulf between the politics of Biden and those of Ocasio-Cortez on numerous issues. Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the DSA, and Jacobin and the DSA regularly celebrate the congresswoman as the way forward for the socialist movement in the US.

Jacobin concludes: She and Biden dont belong in the same party. No party is big enough for the both of them.

The obvious question is why, if Ocasio-Cortezs political opinions are indeed so radically different from Bidens, are they in the same party? Jacobin responds by attributing this to the particularly anti-democratic form of the American two-party system, with its restrictive ballot access laws and the absence of proportional representation.

In reality, Ocasio-Cortez, like Bernie Sanders, is playing a critical role that has long been assumed, in different forms, by supposedly left organizations and individuals within the Democratic Party: namely, channeling social tensions and opposition behind the oldest capitalist party in America.

There is the experience of the Peoples Party and the presidential campaigns of William Jennings Bryan in the late 1890s, through which the populist movement was appropriated and smothered by the Democratic Party; the Farmer-Labor Party campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s in the upper-Midwest, which were absorbed by the Democrats; the Jesse Jackson campaigns in the 1980s; and most recently the campaigns of figures like Dennis Kucinich and Sandersall of whom served in one form or another to contain social opposition within the framework of the Democratic Party and the capitalist two-party system.

The DSA itself, from its inception, has existed as an auxiliary arm of the Democratic Party, with no serious pretense to independence. The predecessor organization of the DSA, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), emerged out of a split within the Socialist Party of America in 1972. Michael Harrington was the founder of both the DSA in 1982 and its predecessor organization, the DSOC.

Harringtons early political training came in the 1950s as a leader of the Young Socialist League, the youth organization of the Independent Socialist League, led by Max Shachtman. Shachtman had split from the Socialist Workers Party, the pioneer party of American Trotskyism, in 1940, leading a petty-bourgeois opposition opposed to the defense of the Soviet Union against imperialism.

By 1950, the Shachtmanites were defending US intervention in the Korean War. In 1961, soon after merging his organization with the US Socialist Party, Shachtman supported the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. He soon was defending imperialist war crimes in Vietnam.

Harrington broke with Shachtman over the latters vociferous support for the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. His criticisms were not based on principled opposition to imperialism, however, but rather on the view, shared by most sections of the Democratic Party, that the war was unwinnable and was undermining the interests of American capitalism.

Both Shachtman and Harrington, despite their political differences, sought to keep the working class tied to the Democrats. They attached themselves to different wings of this party of imperialist reaction.

Shachtman had become a top adviser to AFL-CIO President George Meany and to the most right-wing war hawks among the Democrats. Harrington was close to other sections of the trade union bureaucracy, and to the wing of the Democrats supporting George McGovern, the partys presidential candidate in 1972. The McGovern campaign played a critical role in the reorientation of the Democratic Party, abandoning all pretense of defending the working class and instead basing itself on privileged layers of the middle class on the basis of the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.

The first issue of Democratic Left, the flagship publication of the DSOC, laid out its orientation: to build a progressive majority for the Democratic Party in 1974 and 1976. In a prominent editorial in the same edition, Harrington explained the function of the newly founded group: We believe that the left wing of realism is today found in the Democratic Party. It is there that the mass forces for social change are assembled; it is there that the possibility exists for creating a new first party in America.

The time period when Harrington was drawing the conclusion that the Democratic Party was the way forward for socialists and social change is of particular significance. American capitalism was entering a period of protracted economic decline. The Vietnam War spelled the end of the Great Society and the War on Poverty. By the late 1960s, the postwar boom had begun to unravel and the policies of the Democratic Party underwent a shift to the right. The ruling class was preparing to launch a social counterrevolution, beginning the process of tearing up all the gains workers had won in an earlier period.

Further on in the same commentary, Harrington added: We do not want to purge the New Politics from the Democratic Party; we choose, rather, to help bring out its best potential.

The New Politics to which Harrington referred was a reflection of the Democratic Partys attempt to absorb middle class elements emerging from the movement against the Vietnam War. None other than President Richard Nixon adopted a similar strategy after 1968 with his embrace of black capitalism, a program that included policies such as affirmative action and racial quotas aimed at promoting a layer of black businessmen and politicians who then helped preside over an immense increase in social inequality.

Harrington articulated the views of a broad layer of 1960s radicals who were moving to the right. They had abandoned any conception, to the extent they ever had one, of socialism based on the working class. This layer did not want to be burdened by any principles, socialist or otherwise, that stood in the way of their entry into the upper-middle class.

The four decades since the founding of the DSA have seen an unbroken movement to the right on the part of the ruling class as a whole, and the Democratic Party in particular. The Democrats long ago rejected any association with social reform. Under the Obama administration (2009-2017), the Democrats oversaw the biggest redistribution of wealth from the working class to the rich in US history.

There is mass popular opposition to inequality and war, which has erupted in the form of demonstrations and strikes throughout the world, along with a growing political radicalization of young people. More and more, young people are identifying themselves as socialists.

The emergence of Ocasio-Cortez is completely in line with the traditional role of the Democratic Party as an instrument of the ruling class to capture and strangle popular opposition to capitalism. She herself is not the head of a mass movement that the Democratic Party is working to co-opt. She is rather the product of maneuvers by the DSA, operating inside the Democratic Party, to preempt the popular support for socialism that was revealed in 2016 in the 13 million votes for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primaries.

Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, is a long-time functionary for the Democratic Party. He ran as the supposed opponent of the billionaire class and champion of a political revolution, which turned out to be a campaign to hustle votes for Hillary Clinton, the candidate of Wall Street and the political establishment.

Ocasio-Cortezs marching orders are to keep the growing opposition in the working class within the safe confines of the two-party system. Neither Ocasio-Cortez nor Sanders has anything to do with a genuine movement for socialism, which must be based in the working class and guided by a program to mobilize workers on an international basis against world capitalism. In her brief tenure in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez has already demonstrated that her politics are entirely compatible with those of the Democratic Party establishment.

She has fully accepted the Democrats anti-Russia campaign and the right-wing, pro-war basis of their impeachment proceedings against Trump. She has dropped her demand to abolish ICE, which is spearheading Trumps war on immigrants, and cultivated a close relationship with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

She has been silent on the persecution of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning and the associated attack on free speech, as well as the illegal military violence, mass spying and record deportations carried out by the Obama administration.

She, along with Sanders, joined in the disgusting chorus of praise for arch-warmonger John McCain following the Arizona senators death, tweeting: John McCains legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency. (See Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders praise McCain: An object lesson in the politics of the pseudo-left)

Her signature legislation, the Green New Deal, was put forward as a non-binding resolution. It features left-sounding rhetoric but has zero significance in terms of resolving the global warming crisis. It promotes the fiction that it is possible to avert an environmental catastrophe within the framework of capitalism and the Democratic Party.

At the end of the day, Biden and Ocasio-Cortez agree on all of the fundamental points that define the Democratic Party: support for imperialist war, which requires attacks on democratic rights and social programs; American nationalism and defense of the nation-state framework, which means attacks on immigrants and a buildup of police state repression; and the defense of capitalist ownership of the means of production, the source of the social evils that Biden and Ocasio-Cortez claim to oppose.

Ocasio-Cortez has moved steadily away from any association with the term socialism. In a particularly revealing interview with NBC News Chuck Todd last year, she was asked if one could be a socialist and capitalist at the same time. Ocasio-Cortez replied that she thought it was possible.

The working class has been repeatedly sold the same bill of goods about reforming the Democratic Party for more than a century. Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA are hoping they can pull off this political swindle one more time.

As the new decade opens, the working class is facing enormous political dangers: the threat of a third world war, the rise of fascism, a looming ecological catastrophe, and the further destruction of jobs and social services. At the same time, strikes and protests against social inequality and attacks on democratic rights are taking place on virtually every continent. The growing international movement against capitalism shows the potential for a revolutionary socialist alternative.

The critical question is the building of a revolutionary leadership, which requires the rejection and defeat of all those, such as Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA, who seek to trap working people within the confines of capitalist politics.

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Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the same party as Joe Biden - World Socialist Web Site

10 Years After His Passing, Howard Zinn Remains a Threat to the Status Quo – Truthout

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

In Howard Zinns play Marx in Soho, Karl Marx remarks, They are all proclaiming that my ideas are dead! Its nothing new. These clowns have been saying this for more than a hundred years. Dont you wonder: why is it necessary to declare me dead again and again?

Reflecting on Zinns death 10 years ago, the parallel is striking: the right and all too many liberals still find it necessary to attack the historian, playwright and socialist thinker because of the remarkable clarity, power and danger his ideas represent today.

When whistleblower Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison, charged with releasing classified documents, including the video of a 2007 U.S. airstrike on Iraqi civilians that killed two Reuters journalists, Manning declared: As the late Howard Zinn once said, There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.

Protesters have carried placards bearing this quote and many others by Zinn in marches around the globe, and graffiti artists and muralists have shared his words and image internationally.

Zinn continues to be referenced in popular culture, including recent appearances in John Leguizamos one-person Broadway show and television special Latin History for Morons, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsons television series Broad City and Greta Gerwigs movie Lady Bird.

The actor Riz Ahmed, discussing his television miniseries Englistan, told Variety that A Peoples History of the United States had shown him the possibility of taking a different look at events of the past.

A Peoples History of the United States, Zinns most famous work, challenges traditional historical narratives taught in U.S. schools, and instead focuses on the history of those often erased from textbooks. A Peoples History of the United States continues to sell remarkably well, seeing a large bump after the 2016 presidential election, and has now sold more than 3.6 million copies of the U.S. edition alone. The book continues to influence how people both teach and learn history and how they see themselves in history.

More than 100,000 teachers have registered with the Zinn Education Project, which promotes and supports the teaching of peoples history in classrooms across the country, and are using its free resources and curricula in classrooms across the country.

Throughout his life, Zinn emphasized agency, not just of heroic individuals but of people in common cause, in organizations, in social movements. And he embodied in his everyday life a spirit of joyful defiance of authority.

This is at the heart of Zinns radicalism, and why he remains such a threat to the establishment, whether the right or establishment liberals.

Ten years after Zinns death, the world is at a perilous crossroads. The great English historian Eric Hobsbawm titled his history of the years 1914 to 1991 The Age of Extremes. But that title could well describe the decade we have just collectively survived, as well as the dangerous new one we are entering.

Right-wing authoritarianism in some cases, directly linked to newly emboldened fascist forces is openly shaping politics in Brazil, India, the United States and beyond.

The planet is on fire, as Naomi Klein has extensively documented, and eco-fascist movements are using the environmental crisis to advance their hateful ideology.

The ultra-rich hoard wealth, while billions face displacement, hunger, malnutrition, shortened lifespans, surveillance, caging and oppression.

The powerful would like to smash our planet, and grab as much as they can while they are alive. And they want no interference from the wretched of the Earth.

Zinn described our world as topsy-turvy, and dedicated his life to turning it right side up. That is why his ideas live on. That is why so many people need to declare them dead again and again.

Writing about the great writer and socialist Kurt Vonnegut, who died three years before him, Zinn noted his wry humor, a trait they both shared.

Zinn then observed, Vonnegut was often asked why he bothered writing. He answered this way: Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about. You are not alone. Millions and millions of people, all over the world, reading him, do not feel alone. What could be a more important achievement?

In our atomized and cruel world, the same can be said of Zinns remarkable life and achievement.

Zinn reminds us that we are not alone, that the only way anything has ever changed is when people collectively acted to bring about changes none of them could have imagined or achieved on their own, and that we can and must wrest the world from the fools who are destroying it.

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10 Years After His Passing, Howard Zinn Remains a Threat to the Status Quo - Truthout

14 Best Free And Open Source Software For Windows 10 Every …

Posted on January 27, 2020 by admin

Microsoft is mostly criticizedby the Linux community for their closed-source Windows operating system which single-handedly outperforms the popularity of all the Linux distros combined. The company has been an advocate of proprietary software, but in the last couple of years, Redmond has made a lot of contributions to the open source community.

Microsoft is now one of the top-tier members of the Linux Foundation and has aregular presence on GitHub. Stuffing distros such as Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora into the Windows Subsystem is the sign of love Microsoft is showing towards the Linux community.

However, on the other hand, some people might want to tie this with Microsofts evil intentions. Earlier, it was predicted that they would digestLinux in the long run. If Windows becomes capable of running Linux applications someday, then people might fall for it.

Leaving all these things aside, one important thing to consider is that various free and open-source software available for Windows 10. If you want to take advantage of Windows 10s fluidity and other features, you can do so with a touch of open source.

Dont forget to check out our list of open source apps for Android.

Developed by Mozilla Foundation, Firefox is an open-source web browser which was first released in 2002. Firefox started to lose its user base after the arrival of Google Chrome in 2009. But last year, Mozilla gave a massive transformation to Firefox, and now it stands proudly in front of Chrome and other leading browsers.

Firefox is the default web browser on various Linux distributions, but it also has gigantic user based on the Windows platform, and not to mention Android.

Download Mozilla Firefox

People often criticize Google Chrome for its proprietary nature; its daddy Chromium is always ready to rescue the popular browser with its open source goodies. In fact, Chrome borrows itsbase code from Chromium after which Google makes some changes.

One of the advantages of having Chrome or Chromium is that you can stream content from your desktop to TV screen using a Chromecast receiver.

Chromium has posed itself as a serious contender for the default web browser on Linux systems. When it comes to Windows 10, many people are stuck to Chrome, but Chromium can be a great alternative if you want to fill your proprietary machine with some open source software.

Download Chromium

Its hard to imagine a Windows 10 machine without the VLC. Thats the reason it hasbagged the top position on our list of best media players for Windows 10. The open-source media player developed and maintained by VideoLAN.

Other than playing different audio/video formats, VLC can also be used to stream online content and download YouTube videos.

Download VLC

You might have heard about the direct connect (DC) protocol used for sharing files over the internet. The open source DC++ is the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing client based on the direct connect protocol.

You can use DC++ as an alternative to BitTorrent. Other than Windows, various DC clients are available for macOS and Linux. Read this post to know more about the pros and cons of DC++.

Download DC++

qBittorrent is an open source client for Windows 10 which is used to download torrent files. The letter q in the name qBittorrent is because it is designed using Qt. qBittorrent is also available for other operating systems including macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.

Download qBittorent

GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) can be assumed as the open source answer to Adobe Photoshop unless youre planning to spend ten years and master MS Paint,like, this guy did.

Created by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, GIMP has existed for more than two decades since its first release in 1995. The open source graphics editor can be used to create and make changes to photos and clipart in raster image formats including JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc. GIMP is available for Windows 10, Linux, and macOS.

Download GIMP

Another name in the list of free and open source software for Windows 10 is Libre Office. In 2011, the office application suite sprung out of another open source project known as OpenOffice.

Libre Office currently offers a variety of apps like Writer (similar to MS Word), Calc (MS Excel), Impress (Powerpoint), Math (used to create and edit maths formulae), Draw (vector graphics editor), and Base (a database management program).

There are two versions of Libre Office which are in continuous development. Fresh release comes with all the latest features created for Libre Office, on the other hand, Still release is a little behind in terms of features but focuses more on stability.

Download Libre Office

You cant question the capabilities of the 17-year-old open source tool 7zip when compressing and extracting files. The fact that 7zip is open source adds to the comfort of the haters of proprietary software.

7zip is primarily created for machines running Windows operating system. However, command line based versions for Linux distros are available. Other support for popular compression formats, 7zip also offers its own compression format called 7z.

Download 7zip

Probably, the only hypervisor software known to common users like us is VirtualBox. It allows people to run some other operating system, be it Windows or Linux, inside their primary operating system.

The original development of this open source software was carried out by Innotek GMbh before it was taken over by Sun Microsystems followed by Oracle.

Other than being an open source software available for Windows 10, VirtualBox is also available for other platforms including Linux, Solaris, macOS, etc.

Download VirtualBox

Tor Browser is the perfect solution for users who dont want to blow their anonymity cover on the internet. The open-source web browser for Windows 10, macOS, and Linux leverages Tor network to conceal users identity and IP address.

Its a modified version of the Firefox ESR browser which includes some add-ons such as HTTPSEverywhere, NoScript, etc. Tor browser reroutes the traffic through various nodes on the Tor network. It automatically deletes cookies and web history when the user closes the browser window, thus, reducing the chances of a user getting tracked.

Download Tor Browser

The file-sharing software FileZilla is also a great open source software for Windows 10. Its available for Linux and macOS as well. The FTP client was born as a class project of a student trio in 2001.

FileZilla offers protected file sharing which requires a username and password to access the shared data. Overall, the software has received a positive response, but it has been accused of storing passwords insecurely. Users have criticized FileZilla for bundling adware as a part of SourceForges revenue program.

Download FileZilla

Thunderbird is an email client developed by Mozilla. Launched in 2004, it was able to serve the rising demand for a dedicated email client. In the last few years, Mozilla has reduced their focus on Thunderbird because they dont believe it can make the same the industry-wide impact as Firefox does.

The open source email client is available for Windows 10, Linux, and MacOS. Other than an email client, Thunderbird includes a Calendar,Chat client, and can receive RSS feeds amongst various other features. However, the emails are listed in a congested manner and might ruin your user experience.

Download Mozilla Thunderbird

MPC-HC is also an open source media player for Windows 10. In terms of video and audio format support, it can easily go shoulder to shoulder with VLC. One thing I like about MPC-HC is that it can play 4K videos if youre running capable hardware.

The biggest drawback of MPC-HC is that its only available for Windows platforms, thats where VLC takes over by providing a cross-platform media player.

Download MPC-HC

In our list of the best password managers, you can find the open source Windows software called KeePass. Standing confidently among other proprietary password managers, KeePass provides an effective way to save and organize tons of usernames and passwords you have for your web accounts and various services.

All the account credentials added to KeePass are stored on the users system in an encrypted file to protect the information from attackers. It supports input and export of data from other password managers and also comes with built-in password generator which can suggest random passwords. Read more about creating a strong password.

Download KeePass

So, these were some of the free and open source software for Windows 10 you can use in your daily life. Ill try to extend this list in the future.

Did you find this helpful? Drop your thoughts and feedback.

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