The Chinese government is investigating security tools for its Windows XP systems, while it negotiates with Microsoft over upgrade pricing
China will focus on the development of a new operating system (OS) based on Linux to cope with the shutdown of Windows XP, an official said on Wednesday.
Zhang Feng, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said "the ministry will beef up support for the development of such an OS."
Microsoft ended support for the 13-year-old Windows XP on April 8 and advised users to upgrade to Windows 8 or get a new PC if necessary. About 70 percent of Chinese personal computers, even in critical sectors like telecommunications, are still running Windows XP.
"The shutdown will bring risks directly to China's basic telecommunication networks and threaten its overall security," said Zhang.
China is one of the countries that have suffered the most when Microsoft decided to pull the plug on Windows XP. The Chinese government is now looking towards Linux to fill that gap, and it intends to use its resources to make that happen.
I’m very glad that the author admits to being a “Windows guy” at the beginning of the article. At least he’s being up front about it, and that’s rather refreshing. That said, I disagree with most of his conclusions. He’s clearly stuck in the mid 1990s or so in his mindset while the rest of the world has moved on from those days of complete Microsoft domination of the computing world. I give him props for noting that he has tried other operating systems and platforms, but he doesn’t seem to have gotten much out of them as the Windows-centric mindset still seems to dominate his thinking.
Over the next year, support for Chromebooks will grow, and as a result the features and abilities of Chromebooks will increase. Thus, I believe that the best time to purchase a Chromebook is now, since we should expect them to rival PCs and tablets within the next year.
Computing and services giant IBM did something very unlike IBM today. It has decided to open up its Power chip architecture to outside developers to improve upon it.
Nine months after IBM opened up its Power architecture, it is launching a new line of servers based on the technology and showing off a server built by Tyan that uses the processor too.
IBM today formally announced its Power8 silicon and server lineup in a bid to help improve Big Blue's hardware fortunes. A key part of the Power8 launch is a renewed focus on Linux for data center workloads.
The OpenPower Foundation , an open development community dedicated to accelerating data center innovation, has taken its first steps to deliver actual system designs based on IBM's new Power8 processor. Formed by Google, IBM, Mellanox Technologies, NVIDIA, and Tyan, the Foundation makes Power hardware and software available for open development, as well as Power intellectual property licensable to other manufacturers. As Re/code notes, "the move allows anyone with the technical chops to design and manufacture their own Power-based chip and add their own enhancements to it."
Cloud server provider ElasticHosts, has announced the expansion of its white label cloud hosting option for the reseller market into its Elastic Containers. Using Linux Containers (LXC) an innovative way of selling cloud services based on consumption rather than capacity, with accompanying cost savings.
Greg Kroah-Hartman has released stable kernel 3.13.11 with some important fixes. This is the last 3.13.y release. Please move to 3.14.y now.
A Seattle-based band called netcat - not to be confused with the networking tool of the same name - has perked ears in the software community by releasing its debut album as a Linux kernel module (among other more typical formats.)
The Linux Foundation today announced it has formed a new project to fund and support critical elements of the global information infrastructure. The Core Infrastructure Initiative enables technology companies to collaboratively identify and fund open source projects that are in need of assistance, while allowing the developers to continue their work under the community norms that have made open source so successful. Founding backers of the Initiative include Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Rackspace, VMware and The Linux Foundation.
The first project under consideration to receive funds from the Initiative will be OpenSSL, which could receive fellowship funding for key developers as well as other resources to assist the project in improving its security, enabling outside reviews, and improving responsiveness to patch requests.
The last version of the stable Linux kernel 3.13.11 has been announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman, marking the end of this particular branch.
While the Catalyst 14.4 OpenGL Linux graphics driver offers OpenGL 4.4 support, bug-fixes, and other improvements, it seems the performance improvements are limited -- at least in terms of raw frame-rate performance and frame latency. Some Phoronix readers have been boasting about the Catalyst 14.4 Linux driver being better with some Steam Linux games, but from my tests of a few Source Engine games, there didn't seem to be any major differences. The Catalyst 14.4 Linux driver only showed measurable performance boosts in a few benchmarks, where the biggest performance change for the four tested graphics cards was 6~9% faster.
AMD has made its Catalyst 14.4 Windows and Linux drivers available for download. This Release Candidate (RC) driver is expected to arrive in its official WHQL form in a week or two but for those who like the look of the improvements and regularly install beta drivers it may well be appealing. The headline features of this driver include; support for the AMD Radeon R9 295X, enhancements and fixes for people running CrossFire configured systems and full support for OpenGL 4.4.
It’s always the simple things that reach out and grab me. Here’s shush, which I almost skipped over because ideally, it needs some sort of local e-mail subsystem to do its job correctly.
Wireshark, one of the better network protocol analyzers offering users the means to capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network, is now at version 1.10.5.
The current version of Wireshark, 1.10.7, supersedes all previous releases, including all builds of Ethereal, and is now the latest stable build. It comes packed with numerous changes and features updates for various protocols.
Setting it up is no big trick: Move the todo, todone and todone-archive files out of the git clone folder and somewhere in your $PATH. Copy sh-todo to $HOME/.sh-todo, edit it to give it a path for your lists (the default is a Dropbox folder), and from there it’s very quick to learn.
Unfortunately, this is all I have to show for shell.fm, which allows a console interface to Last.fm.
After extensively reviewing Bitwig Studio in the soon-to-be-released issue three of Linux Voice, our audio-geek-in-residence (Graham) has made a video showing how to get the best out of this music-making software. It’s also useful for people looking to get to know a bit more about Jack, the audio glue that holds some of Linux’s best sound software together.
Clementine 1.2.3, a multiplatform music player inspired by Amarok 1.4, focusing on a fast and easy-to-use interface for searching and playing your music, has been released and is now available for download.
Last year Google unveiled the Google Web Designer as a program to put out clean, human-readable HTML5 code and this WYSIWYG editor can take advantage of the full realm of new HTML5 and JavaScript possibilities. That tool for web developers is now finally available to Linux users.
Google Web Designer is a program for creating interactive HTML5 websites and ads for any device. Using it, you can create content using drawing tools, text, 3D objects, add animations and Google Fonts directly from the Google Web Designer interface and more. The tool "outputs clean human-readable HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript".
The fans of the Opera Internet browser have long given up the hope of seeing their favorite software get a Linux version. There are still a few stranglers that still hang on to the old version, but there is no indication that anything will happen on the Linux front.
Wasteland 2's Linux build is no longer on the way; it's just been added to inXile's post-apocalyptic RPG beta, along with around 400 other changes and additions including a new area, a redesigned vendor screen, and new tutorials and music tracks. Listing everything would keep me occupied until the real apocalypse, so I'll give you the highlights of this giant list after the break.
The good news now is that I've heard from a Valve Linux developer that additions to the Steam API will finally allow us to at least record universally a build revision/number for each game... Up to now it's been rather hard to tell if two separate copies of a Steam game being benchmarked were actually the same version (and thus comparable) or not since there wasn't an expressed build number across the board of all Steam games. With the latest Steam API work, it looks like we finally have that ability to record a build number for Steam games to make sure the same version of a game is being benchmarked.
Here’s another piece of news that shows the importance of the community for a developer. Due to a considerable amount of interest, the developers behind the Thinking With Time Machine mod for Portal 2 have finally decided to bring the mod over to Linux.
Steam is one of the most popular options for gamers these days. But have you ever wondered about the numbers behind the games? Which games are really the most popular and how often do they get played? Ars Technica has dug into the data behind Steam and come up with some very interesting information about the games on Steam.
This schedule follows the same rhythm as 4.13 since it seems to have worked well. So in roughly 4 month you get some new KDE Application with some new features.
I have some posts to write about Cantor but first I would like to request a help to KDE packagers of several Linux distros around the world.
I received some mails from users asking “how can I use python in Cantor?” or “where is python support in Cantor?”. Well, python2-backend is available in Cantor since KDE 4.12 release. If you is using KDE >= 4.12 but you can not to use python in Cantor, maybe the package was not build correctly.
In my last post, I described an experiment that I’m running for the GNOME 3.14 development cycle. The goal is to make it easier of people to contribute to GNOME, by making it easy to find tasks to work on and getting rapid and effective feedback.
Since I wrote that post, I’ve been working with a number of GNOME application maintainers to get their bugs in a state where it is easy for people to contribute. The result is three apps that have a clear set of bugs that contributors can get to work on today.
4MLinux 8.2 Beta Multiboot Edition, a mini Linux distribution that is focused on the 4Ms of computing, Maintenance (system rescue Live CD), Multimedia (e.g., playing video DVDs), Miniserver (using the inetd daemon), and Mystery (Linux games), has been released and is ready for testing.
Today the Black Lab Linux team is pleased to announce the release of its Enterprise edition 5.0.1 to current and prospective customers. With this release we have fixed a myriad of problems experienced with release 4.2.5. The fastest growing alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux has just gotten better.
Ikey Doherty is probably one of the most tech-smart people I know. Fact is, Ikey is much like that guy you hear about on the news, the guy that can hear a string of 4 digit numbers and tell you the sum of them in a couple of seconds. Now, I don’t know if Ikey is capable of that feat, but I do know what he can do.
Red Hat announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 RC for all customers and partners just a few days ago, and now the company has even provided an image that anyone can download and test.
For anyone wishing to try out the release candidate to the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 operating system release, the ISO is now publicly available.
There was an era where, if you were playing a game of word association with me and you were to say, "Linux," I would probably respond, "dependencies." That era may officially end in 2014 as one of the more innovative mechanisms for packaging and distributing a server application becomes officially embraced by Red Hat and soon implemented in a special version of its Enterprise Linux server.
Red Hat has proven many times that it can acquire and oversee open source projects without tainting them with commercial efforts or otherwise fouling them up. I expect most CentOS users, like the project itself, stand to gain from wearing Red Hat. As for Red Hat, joining with CentOS represents a net win in terms of growing community, ecosystem and paying customers.
Red Hat Inc., the world's largest open source software solutions provider, is expected to achieve a high double-digit revenue growth in its new financial year ending March 31, 2015 (FY15), up from US$1.53 billion (RM5 billion) a year before.
As my post from earlier today explains, the focal point of changes in this release was groups and how to approach them sanely. Then there is some niceties like improved documentation, fixed resource leaks and one feature that hopefully many everyday users will find useful: the --refresh option that forces expiration of all repos, thus ensuring given operation runs with the latest & greatest metadata (just don’t come back complaining it takes time).
The distributions included:
Oracle Linux 6.5 - Oracle's spin of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 source tree.
Oracle Linux 7.0 Beta 1 - Oracle's spin of the earlier RHEL 7.0 Beta 1 source code.
CentOS 6.5 - The community spin of RHEL 6.5 that is now collaborating with upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Fedora 20 - The out-of-the-box Fedora 20 for the latest experience of the Red Hat sponsored distribution
RHEL 7.0 RC1 - The just-released public ISO of the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 environment.
Another Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee meeting took place on Wednesday where another round of features were approved for the Fedora 21 Linux release.
The latest Steam client update bumps the Steam Runtime for compatibility with Ubuntu 14.04, fixes some potential hangs and game crashes, support for setting the voice input device via the Big Picture mode, many other fixes and improvements to the Big Picture mode, VR mode improvements, and other general improvements.
A new stable version of the Steam Client for Linux has been released a while ago (after a few development versions), getting a lot of optimizations for Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr (and Linux Mint 17 Qiana) and some SteamOS improvements.
That future Ubuntu developer wants to deliver app updates instantly to users everywhere; we can make that possible. They want to deploy distributed brilliance instantly on all the clouds and all the hardware. We’ll make that possible. They want PAAS and SAAS and an Internet of Things that Don’t Bite, let’s make that possible. If free software is to fulfil it’s true promise it needs to be useful for people putting precious parts into production, and we’ll stand by our commitment that Ubuntu be the most useful platform for free software developers who carry the responsibilities of Dev and Ops.
Mark Shuttleworth has announced the codename for the upcoming Ubuntu release: Ubuntu 14.10 will be codenamed "Utopic Unicorn".
Canonical has released a new version of the Ubuntu Touch operating system, this time based on the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS which was released on april 17, 2014.
This release of Ubuntu Touch features the followings:
overhauled home screen scope experience new web container featuring the V8 javascript engine and chromium rendering Qt 5.2 enablement stack from the Android 4.4 branch
The new image has not the highest quality yet so you may experience some problems and bugs, but this release of Ubuntu Touch version is definitely a big step forward compared to the initial release done in October 2013. Ubuntu developers have been working for more than a year now, and are still working very hard with high velocity to give the user a very nice product.
The Ubuntu Kernel Team is looking to extend stable support for the Linux 3.13 kernel until April of 2016, or another two years. The Ubuntu developers will be carrying out 3.13.y.z stable point releases over on their Ubuntu.com Git infrastructure. Their 3.13 kernel will be maintained the same as the upstream rules regarding stable kernel point releases. Their extended stable kernel plans are outlined via the Ubuntu Wiki.
The Ubuntu developers have announced that they continue to provide support for the Linux kernel 3.13.x that has just reached end of life.
Greg Kroah-Hartman, the maintainer of the 3.13.x branch of the Linux kernel, has revealed that this particular version has reached end of life and that users should upgrade as soon as possible.
While a new kernel should mean better performance, Canonical's UI troubles persist.
Telegram is a free messaging app that focuses on speed and security. There are official Telegram applications available for iOS and Android as well as various unofficial clients for Windows, Mac OS X and Windows Phone.
For years, proponents proclaimed the Linux operating system would someday be a viable competitor on desktop PCs to its rivals, Windows and Mac OSX.
When someone on an internet message board says they’re having trouble with a Mac or PC, someone will almost inevitably tell them to try Linux.
If anyone has been waiting for the code repository for PiDoorbell, the Raspberry Pi project we presented at PyCon a couple of weeks ago, at least part of it (the parts I wrote) is also available in my GitHub scripts repo, in the rpi subdirectory. It's licensed as GPLv2-or-later.
This week the new BeagleBone Black Rev C development board has been unveiled offering a similar board to that offered by the Raspberry Pi mini PC and Arduino UNO.
One of the most hyped examples of the Internet of Things is the Internet-connected refrigerator. But according to Rebecca Jacoby, Cisco CIO, the refrigerator will not likely be an Internet of Things use case that she deploys within Cisco itself.
The 18.5 x 9.4 x 8.5-inch device runs Linux on a Raspberry Pi SBC, or for $110 more, on a quad-core, Freescale i.MX6 based Udoo Quad, which also runs Android. Each SBC furnishes Bluetooth and WiFi streaming, as well as I/O made available at the rear of the system.
Ever since the Raspberry Pi burst onto the scene in 2012, open source hardware projects have been promoting their Linux-ready hacker boards as offering faster, more capable alternatives. Considering the Pi's 700MHz ARM11 processor and relatively modest feature set, that's not such a stretch, but matching the $35 price is another story. If you can't match the price, what you really need to get the attention of Pi-lovers looking for a bit more oomph is to look and act like a Pi.
Samsung users aren't interested in the company's branded messenger, voice-activated search, or app store Samsung Hub, according to a new report. Samsung users vastly prefer Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and the Google Play store to their Samsung counterparts. They spent an average of seven minutes a month using Samsung apps, according to the market research firm Strategy Analytics. That's compared to 11 hours on Facebook alone.
OnePlus, the startup founded by former Oppo VP Pete Lau, has unveiled its first smartphone, the OnePlus One. It's a powerful effort, with a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 processor, a 5.5-inch 1080p display, 3GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel f/2 camera unit, and bottom-facing stereo speakers designed with assistance from JBL. It runs a minimalist custom UI atop CyanogenMod, the modified version of Android breaking out as an operating system in its own right.
Efforts to boost the Gear 2 ecosystem include the Samsung Gear App Challenge, where developers could win cash prizes equating to $1.25 million.
Already in 2014 it has won a major joint-tender contract from a consortium of Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales' Electoral Commissions, that will see the company provide 5100 tablets for vote counting purposes at each state's forthcoming elections. All of these Acer branded devices will run Android, and deployment begins shortly.
After a few new sleek and affordable Motorola phones leaked out under their cryptic model numbers recently, we now learn that at least one of them will arrive as the Moto E, an affordable device similar to the Moto G, but featuring a much thinner and more compact body.
Following months of anticipation, OnePlus today revealed their flagship device, the OnePlus One. Embodying the OnePlus motto of 'Never Settle', the OnePlus One boasts industry leading design, superior build quality and top of the line specs at a disruptive price point.
Alex Payne, formerly a developer at Twitter and Simple, has released an interesting set of scripts he's calling "Sovereign" that help with building cloud services on your own server. I've been interested in running my own email, calendar, file sharing, and other services for a few years now, and since Alex did most of the heavy lifting already, I decided it was time to give it a shot. My experience so far has been good, but this is still rarefied air, and not for the inexperienced.
You'd expect LinuxCon content to be centered around Linux -- and of course the ten tracks we have between LinuxCon and CloudOpen will feature the latest in developer and SysAdmin/DevOps technical topics such as Linux kernel development, virtualization, containers and open cloud technologies. (Plus a keynote speaker you may have heard of: Linus Torvalds.) But it’s been inspiring to see the principles of Linux and open source -- open collaboration, meritocracy, crowdsourcing -- spread to other areas of society, from education to 3D printing to medical devices and cars.
Docker container virtualization, massive open online courses, 3D printing and running open source software in your car are among the featured topics at the upcoming LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America event. Each of those subjects appears on the list of keynotes for the conference, which the Linux Foundation just announced.
Late last year, survey results began to appear left and right confirming that IT departments around the world were either planning to deploy the OpenStack cloud computing platform or considering deploying it. An OpenStack Foundation survey found that cost savings and the flexibility of an open cloud platform were key drivers behind these trends.
Open source software, hardware, and methods are gaining popularity and access to them couldn't be more prolific. If you're thinking about starting a new open source project, there are five common pitfalls you should be aware of before you begin.
Don't despair if you've already started your project and are just now reading this! These pointers can be helpful at any stage if things are still running smoothly.
NGINX 1.6 features improvements to its SSL support, SPDY 3.1 protocol support, cache revalidation with conditional requests, an auth request module, and many other changes and bug-fixes.
Right now Lumina is considered in an early alpha state but is now found within PC-BSD's ports/package repositories. Lumina aims to be lightweight, stable, and fast-running. Most of the Lumina work is being done by PC-BSD's Ken Moore.
FreeNAS, a free implementation of a minimal FreeBSD distribution, has finally reached version 9.2.1.5, and the developer implemented a large number of improvements.
The Free Software Foundation's GCC (GNU Compiler Collection), featuring front ends for such languages as C, C++, Objective-C, and Java, has been upgraded with improvements for devirtualization and fixes to bottlenecks.
GIMP: The cross-platform, open-source GNU image manipulation programme may not win any awards for design, but it is arguably the most complete Photoshop replacement that you don’t need money to buy. The interface is very different, so Photoshop users will have some learning curve to negotiate, but a variety of add-ons allow GIMP plenty of flexibility. Get it at Gimp.org for your PC, Mac or Linux computer.
If you've used an operating system with a command line interface, you've had Emacs available to you. It's been around for decades (since Richard Stallman and Guy Steele wrote it in 1976), and its the other major text editor to stand behind in the Holy Text Editor Grail Wars. It's not the easiest tool, but it's definitely one of the most powerful. It has a steep learning curve, but it's always there, ready for use. It's had a long and storied history, but the version that most people wind up using is GNU Emacs, linked above. It's richly featured, too—Emacs can handle almost any type of text that you throw at it, handle simple documents or complex code, or be customized with startup scripts that add features or tweak the interface and shortcuts to match your project or preference. Similarly, Emacs supports macro recording, tons of shortcuts (that you'll have to learn to get really familiar with it), and has a ton of modules created by third parties to leverage the app for completely non-programming purposes, like project planning, calendaring, news reading, and word processing. When we say it's powerful, we're not kidding. In large part, its power comes from the fact that anyone can play with it and mold it into something new and useful for everyone.
I had a chance to catch up with David A. Wheeler, a long-time leader in advising and working with the US government on issues related to open source software. As early as the late 1990s, David was demonstrating why open source software was integral to the US goverment IT architecture, and his personal webpage is a frequently cited source on open standards, open source software, and computer security.
Open source is propelling the United Kingdom's PatientView, a web-based solution written in Java that displays laboratory results, medicine information, correspondence and explanations of test results, diagnoses and treatment. PatientView is already implemented by 60 of the UK's 70 renal clinics and is used by more than 20,000 of their patients. The solution is increasingly used by other health care disciplines, says Jenny Ure, a researcher at the Centre for Inflammation Research at the University of Edinburgh.
"PatientView is not only providing patients with access to their records", Dr Ure says. "It is a very useful communication tool for multidisciplinary teams, working in different hospitals and health clinics", she said at the Medetel conference, in Luxembourg on 10 April.
Kivy is a highly cross-platform graphical framework for Python, designed for the creation of innovative user interfaces like multitouch apps. Its applications can run not only on the traditional desktop platforms of Linux, OS X and Windows, but also Android and iOS, plus devices like the Raspberry Pi.
The 2014 Google Summer of Code program will involve 1,307 college students this year, who were selected from a pool of 4,420 applicants.
The world's longest-running laboratory experiment has finally delivered a result - eight months after the man who patiently watched over it unrewarded for five decades died.
Although ARM reported a drop in royalty payments for its embedded chip designs, the company reported an increase in licensing revenues and a healthy boost in the chips it sells into smartphones, including the first 64-bit sales.
The World Health Organization hit back on Wednesday against vaccine deniers who claim that immunisation is pointless, risky and that the body is better off fighting disease unaided.
"The impact of vaccines on people's lives is truly one of the best things that one could see out there," said Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele, head of the UN health agency's immunisation and vaccines division.
McDonald‘s just announced it will be the first fast food restaurant in the United States to add lab-grown meat to its menu. Following the success of Sergey Brin’s lab-grown burger experiment in London last year, McDonald’s says they will ‘grow’ their own chicken McNuggets in special laboratories across New Jersey.
At least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system, many of whom were placed on a secret waiting list.
The secret list was part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix who were trying to hide that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor, according to a recently retired top VA doctor and several high-level sources.
To that end, EFF is evaluating the feasibility of offering a prize for the first usable, secure, and private end-to-end encrypted communication tool. We believe a prize based on objective usability metrics (such as the percentage of users who were able to install and start using the tool within a few minutes, and the percentage who survived simulated impersonation or man-in-the-middle attacks) might be an effective way to determine which project or projects are best delivering communication security to vulnerable user communities; to promote and energize those tools; and to encourage interaction between developers, interaction designers and academics interested in this space.
At the beginning of this year, secret backdoor ‘TCP 32764’ was discovered in several routers including Linksys, Netgear, and Cisco. But even after releasing the new security patch, the backdoor binary continues to be present in the new firmware version, and the backdoor on port 32764 can be opened again by sending a specific network packet to the router.
The greatest boost ever received by Islamic fundamentalism was the invasion of Iraq. Closely followed by extraordinary rendition, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and drones, and Israeli bombings of Gaza. All of those things lead some Muslims to believe a violent response by terrorism is required to defend themselves. So for Tony Blair, who has promoted huge hatred and caused unnumbered deaths through a career of deceit and self-enrichment, to warn about the dangers of Islamic terrorism is something nobody but a few Guardian and Murdoch acolytes wish to hear.
The Dutch defense department says several NATO member countries scrambled jets Wednesday afternoon after a pair of Russian bomber planes approached their airspace over the North Sea.
As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, a topic that plagues the country is the impact hosting these games will have on the local environment and various ecosystems. Despite efforts by soccer’s ruling body, FIFA, to “greenwash” the games—by holding “green events” during the World Cup, putting out press releases about infrastructure construction with recycled materials and speaking rhapsodically about the ways in which the stadiums are designed to capture and recycle rainwater—the truth is not nearly so rank with patchouli oil.
A 32-year study of subarctic forest moths in Finnish Lapland suggests that scientists may be underestimating the impacts of climate change on animals and plants because much of the harm is hidden from view.
The study analyzed populations of 80 moth species and found that 90 percent of them were either stable or increasing throughout the study period, from 1978 to 2009. During that time, average annual temperatures at the study site rose 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and winter precipitation increased as well.
In this clip, Krugman tells Bill that America is on the road to becoming a society controlled not by self-made men or women, but by their offspring.
Updates on how inequality persists across generations; the nonsense of "taxes are job killers"; governor uses tax revenues to prevent unionization in a private enterprise. Major discussion of state and local taxes in the US; the economics of paying executives very high incomes; and the privatization of public services. Response to listener's question on recent Medicare report on oversize payouts to doctors.
The Russian Lower House has approved a bill that provides up to five years in prison for denying the facts set out in the Nuremberg Trial, rehabilitation of Nazism and distributing false information about the actions of Russia and its allies during WWII.
1) Do you agree it is a reasonable practice for authors to persuade friends and family to post favorable reviews on Amazon? Do you agree with Mr Aaronovitch’s implication that Amazon’s policy forces authors to do this?
2) A wayback archive search shows that in fact a number of poor reviews of Voodoo Histories were deleted by Amazon. Did Mr Aaronovitch contact Amazon to initiate these deletions?
3) In fact, the poor reviews deleted were not, with a single exception, posted any earlier than similar quantities of five star reviews. Why was it decided to delete several one star reviews and no five star reviews? Who took this decision? Was it in any way motivated by Amazon’s own political sympathies? Was it motivated by a desire to boost sales?
For years, I felt the same way about email. When I send a message to a specific email address, I figure that it'll be opened by the person who owns that email address, and even if anyone else did stumble across that message, it's unlikely that they'd be interested in the contents. I knew about methods of email encryption such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard), because I occasionally saw the email signatures of people who cared deeply about such things; they'd include a public key that you could use to send them encrypted messages. But rather like the lemon juice, dealing with the various keys and additional processes all seemed too much like hard work. I reckoned that the people who emphasised its importance were at best excessively geeky and at worst ridiculously paranoid.
Still responding to the National Security Agency surveillance revelations, Google is reportedly preparing to help users beef up Gmail security with end-to-end encryption. The search giant is working on a way to make Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption easier to use for Gmail fans, according to a report by Venture Beat.
The 27th European Media Art Fest€ival began this even€ing in Osnab€rueck, Ger€many. In the wake of all the global intel€li€gence whis€tleblow€ing that has gone on over the last few years, the theme for the artists of 2014 is “We, the Enemy”.
Why Microsoft is altering files on OneDrive for Business, is not documented anywhere by the company, but the revelation has again raised doubts about the integrity with Microsoft.
Pavel Durov, the founder of Vkontakte (VK)—the largest social network in Russia—said on Tuesday that he fled the country one day after being forced out of the company, claiming that he felt threatened by Kremlin officials.
In a post on his profile page on Monday, Durov explained that he was fired from his position as CEO of VK and that the so-called “Russian Facebook” is now “under the complete control” of two oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin.
Law enforcement peak body wants to make it easier to decrypt communications
Law enforcement agencies represented at today's Senate committee hearing, including the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), South Australia Police, Queensland Police, the Australian Federal Police, the ATO and ASIC, all backed a data retention regime that would impose requirements on service providers in terms of the storage and release to law enforcement of metadata.
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called the Internet a CIA project and made comments about Russia’s biggest search engine Yandex, sending the company’s shares plummeting.
The Kremlin has been anxious to exert greater control over the Internet, which opposition activists — barred from national television — have used to promote their ideas and organize protests.
Russia’s parliament this week passed a law requiring social media websites to keep their servers in Russia and save all information about their users for at least half a year. Also, businessmen close to Putin now control Russia’s leading social media network, VKontakte.
Dr Rahinah Ibrahim is not a national security threat.
The federal government even said so.
It took a lawsuit that has stretched for eight years for the feds to yield that admission. It is one answer in a case that opened up many more questions.
Namely: How did an innocent Malaysian architectural scholar remain on a terrorism no fly-list – effectively branded a terrorist – for years after a FBI paperwork screw up put her there? The answer to that question – to paraphrase a particularly hawkish former Secretary of Defense – may be unknowable.
Twitter is a cool website where you can type any old thing into a box and send it out into the ether for the entire internet to read. Some people use it to joke around, some people use it to be like, "HEY INJUSTICE IS HAPPENING, WHOA #GETINVOLVED," and some people use it to roleplay as characters from Sonic the Hedgehog. It's a lot of fun, especially if you like heated arguments with total strangers.
Brown only pleaded to three counts: transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, accessory after the fact to unauthorized access to a protected computer, and interfering with the execution of a search warrant. Statutorily, he faces a maximum sentence of 102 months imprisonment (8.5 years) but will likely serve considerably less.
This insight into how police think the public should interact with them is certainly enlightening. (via this tweet and Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess blog)
The backstory is this: a woman was walking down the street when a motorcycle cop approached her, asked her if she lived in the area and if she would talk to him. She says his approach made her feel uncomfortable, so she refused and continued on her way.
This blog post is my extended remarks to the opening session of Netmundial 2014. I can only say about 80% of it live because of time limits.
The “404-No-More” project is backed by a formidable coalition including members from organizations like the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Old Dominion University, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Part of the Knight News Challenge, which seeks to strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation through a variety of initiatives, 404-No-More recently reached the semifinal stage.
After amassing 106,000 signatures a petition aimed at improving the prison conditions of Gottfrid Svartholm has been delivered to the Danish government. In the hope that it may even prompt the total release of the Pirate Bay founder, yesterday the Danish Pirate Party handed the petition to Karen Hækkerup, Denmark's Minister of Justice .
Defending free culture doesn't come cheap. Nor does running elections. We don't get the money we need to campaign from fat cats and big backers. We are funded by people like you, through your donations and your membership payments, we couldn't do it without you.