Linux is everywhere these days, including in toilets. Yes, an unemployed but very creative man named Thomas Rucker has created a Linux-based toilet that sends tweets each time it is flushed. The tweets track water use and may be a harbinger of things to come as more everyday objects become connected to the Internet, reports Computerworld.
Take Thomas Ruecker's project. With parts from an electric motor, a few household items, an open-source hardware board running Linux, and some coding, he built a connected toilet that Tweets with each flush.
When people say Intel, they usually think about processors, but the company also makes a host of other products, including very cool or useful concepts that might have some very important applications in everyday life.
€6m: the amount the municipality of Turin hopes to save over five years by switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in all of its offices.
A recent online survey of cloud professionals conducted by the Linux Foundation found OpenStack to be the most popular open-source cloud computing project by a wide margin. Its nearest rival, CloudStack, came at a distant fourth, with less than half the number of votes garnered by OpenStack. The greatest surprise, however, was the emergence of second-placed Docker. A relative newcomer on the scene, it has taken the cloud computing world by storm in a little over 12 months since it was officially announced. So what exactly is Docker, and will it become a significant threat to OpenStack's dominance?
Our latest solid-state storage Linux benchmarking at Phoronix is looking at Intel's 530 Series SSD within the M.2 form factor.
It turns out Windows does certain things better than Linux—for example, in the area of rebooting. Apparently, there are several techniques that can be done in software to cause a system to reboot. But in some cases, the Linux system will go down successfully, and then not come up again. This is a problem, for example, in server farms with minimal human staff. If 20 systems are acting up and you want to reboot them all, it's easier to give a single command from a remote terminal, than to send a human out into the noise and the cold to press each reset button by hand.
The ZFS on Linux kernel driver performs the same block device operations as its counterparts on other platforms. As a consequence, its ability to ensure data integrity is equivalent to its counterparts on other platforms and this ability far exceeds that of any other Linux filesystem for direct attached storage.
With Wayland said to be shipping in millions of smart TVs, set-top boxes, IVI systems, and more, who are the top contributors to this modern display server technology? Here's a look at the top contributions in recent months to Wayland and its Weston reference compositor.
Two months after the release of X.Org Server 1.16, AMD finally has readied a Catalyst Linux driver update that is compatible with the latest xorg-server ABI. This driver is being sent into the Ubuntu 14.10 archive and thus allowing the entire Linux graphics stack in Ubuntu 14.10 to finally be updated.
With my Intel Core i7 5960X Haswell-E Linux review out there, one of the quick to be requested extra tests is benchmarking the i7-5960X 16-thread processor with LLVM/Clang against GCC. Here's some initial data comparing the compilers for this $1000+ processor.
The current release of Listaller handles all of this with a plugin for PackageKit, the cross-distro package-management abstraction layer. It hooks into PackageKit and reads information passing through to the native distributor backend, and if it encounters Listaller software, it handles it appropriately. It can also inject update information. This results in all Listaller software being shown in any PackageKit frontends, and people can work with it just like if the packages were native packages. Listaller package installations are controlled by a machine policy, so the administrator can decide that e.g. only packages from a trusted source (= GPG signature in trusted database) can be installed. Dependencies can be pulled from the distributor’s repositories, or optionally from external sources, like the PyPI.
The XBMC developers are moving on and they are now working on Kodi, the successor of the XBMC project. The name change was announced a while ago and the devs have revealed some of the new features and changes in the new 14.x branch.
A new version of VirtualBox, a virtualization product for enterprises and end users, has been announced by Oracle, bringing a number of fixes and small improvements.
Unvanquished, a free, open source first-person shooter combining real-time strategy elements with a futuristic and sci-fi setting, has been updated yet again and this is one of the biggest releases so far.
The Linux version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive seems to have been in the works for ages, but now there is finally some news about it, although it's nothing definitive.
Valve has ported most of its games catalog to the Linux platform, with just three exceptions: Alien Swarm, the first Left 4 Dead game in the series, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
In tonight's Linux news Matt Hartley dispels those persistent Linux myths. Bruce Byfield uses KDE and GNOME projects' financial statements to analyze their priorities and direction. Ubuntu community wallpapers for 14.10 are beginning to be chosen and some guy built a Linux toilet in hopes of getting a job.
During my workshop, I showed you how to improve the performance of a word-count application which also creates a word histogram and finds the longest word of a file.
Akademy 2014 is still in full swing in Brno in the Czech Republic with the traditional hack week that started on Monday. At about 200 participants it was well attended and organized. This years conference will very likely mark a milestone of change for KDE – a new board was elected, and a strategy discussion was started that will affect the direction and development of the KDE community for a decent amount of time. When I traveled home from Akademy 2014 on the train from Brno to Berlin, I personally felt a sense of satisfaction, because the community has managed to steer clear of the dangers of bike shedding about the board succession, and is accepting the change imposed by a shifting environment as a positive force.
Hot on the heels of the 3.17.01 release comes a new version of the digiKam Recipes ebook. As the version number indicates, this is a major release that features several significant improvements.
KDE is community. We welcome everyone, and make our software work for everyone. So, accessibility is central to all our work, in the community, in testing, coding, documentation. Frederik has been working to make this true in Qt and in KDE for many years, Peter has done valuable work with Simon and Jose is doing testing and some patches to fix stuff.
However, now that KF5 is rolling out, we're finding a few problems with our KDE software such as widgets, KDE configuration modules (kcm) and even websites. However, the a11y team is too small to handle all this! Obviously, we need to grow the team.
Red Hat Satellite 6, released Wednesday, also comes with an entirely new interface for writing server configurations. The company replaced its own software with the popular open source configuration management software Puppet.
Comprising a number of open source IT configuration and management tools, Red Hat Satellite was designed to help administrators maintain large numbers of servers running RHEL, which is Red Hat’s flagship enterprise Linux distribution.
There are many ways to manage Linux systems. Some people still swear by shell scripts with their fine control. Others like high-level tools such as cPanel that enable them to control servers with broad strokes. But, for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) users, nothing beats Red Hat Satellite (RHS).
Red Hat’s technology chief has floated over to Google following his abrupt and uncelebrated exit.
Brian Stevens suddenly left the Linux distro and aspiring OpenStack cloud fluffer after 12 years as executive vice president and chief technology officer.
As of this month, Stevens has become Google’s vice president of cloud platforms - just days after leaving Red Hat. He posted the new position on his LinkedIn page but there were no details about what exactly his new role entailed.
Want to keep your operating system on the straight and stable while at the same time using cutting edge development languages and programs? Then Red Hat has the tools for you with its beta release of Red Hat Software Collections (RHSC) 1.2.
When we setup Freexian’s offer to bring together funding from multiple companies in order to sponsor the work of multiple developers on Debian LTS, one of the rules that I imposed is that all paid contributors must provide a public monthly report of their paid work.
As you may know, Ubuntu Touch is being developed on three different branches: a stable branch, a devel branch and a RTM branch. While new features and changes are first tested on the devel branch and get moved to the stable one when they are stable enough, the RTM branch does not get new features, only security and stability fixes.
Before getting Ubuntu Touch on the market, developers will need to release an RTM version of the operating system, and it looks like they are very close to this milestone.
Having an RTM version for an operating system is actually much harder than you can imagine. RTM stands for release to manufacturing, and it means that whatever product you have with this denomination then it's pretty close, if not ready, to get into the hands of the public.
The Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn community wallpapers were revealed today. They haven't landed in Ubuntu 14.10 yet but if you don't want to wait or you're not using Ubuntu 14.10, you can download them already.
The mobile market seems to be saturated with products and software, and that includes operating systems. The people are pretty much divided into Android, iOS, and Windows Phone users. There are some scraps at the table, but that's pretty much it. Where will Ubuntu for phones fit in this tight-knit ecosystem?
The next evolution of Ubuntu is supposed to center around convergence. In order for that to happen, both Mir and Unity 8 must be ready for production environments. They aren't. Period. In fact, the closest thing you can get to even trying the Mir/Unity 8 combination is a special ISO build called Ubuntu Desktop Next.
I read an interesting article on OMG! Ubuntu! about whether Canonical will enter the wearables business, now the smartwatch industry is hotting up.
On one hand (pun intended), it makes sense. Ubuntu is all about convergence; a core platform from top to bottom that adjusts and expands across different form factors, with a core developer platform, and a focus on content.
That being said, I do not think smartwatches are anything but buzz right now regardless of what OS is running on them whether it be Android, iOS, Firefox OS, Ubuntu or others. I think we still need a couple years before this technology will be on par with smartphones and tablets and at a reasonable price point.
I felt like I had to write something on this after reading this article on OMG Ubuntu on the possibility of a Ubuntu powered smartwatch.
At some point in time somebody convinced you to give Ubuntu a spin and now you are thinking "What now?"
If you’re a developer or tester and haven’t heard of Elementary OS Freya Beta 1 has been made available, then you’re missing out.
Intel launched its Edison COM for IoT apps, with a “Tangier” SoC that mixes a dual-core Atom running Linux with a Quark chip, plus optional breakout boards.
TiVo announced a Linux-based “TiVo Mega” DVR with 24TB of storage — enough for 4,000 hours of HD video — plus six tuners and streaming to mobile devices.
The new Apple Watch was announced and the first models are scheduled to appear sometime in 2015, but the truth is that they are really late to the party. If you really want something truly professional, Linux-based, and full of features, you can choose Leikr.
The IoT has the potential to transform peoples' lives. However, IoT equipment and software have to be designed from the start with security in mind, said NCP Engineering CTO Joerg Hirschmann. That transformation will not occur if security is left to individual product makers. Securing the IoT will require a commitment to openness among manufacturers.
For developers and commercial companies Interested in Tizen IVI, here is the Tizen IVI image with Yocto, provided by Ronan from Eurogiciel.
Ever since we got an iPad in the family, one thing that bothered me a lot was that Google Hangout app on the iPad allowed to make phone calls whereas the feature was missing from the Android app.
Back in May the people behind the Fairphone announced they were making a second batch of phones that you could pre-order, then in July they announced that they are now being delivered. Right now they have around 14,000 out of 35,000 left in stock. However the phone will only ship to Europe for the time being.
The Android L is an upcoming release of the mobile operating system created by Google. The name "Android L" is still a working title but it is also known as Android 5.0. The OS was first shown June 25 earlier this year, with the beta released the day after for select Nexus devices.
According to stats published by Google, the newest Android release, codenamed KitKat, is powering around one out of every four Android devices accessing the Google Play store.
You wouldn't know it by the name, but the Dell Venue 8 7000 Series is shaping up to be a pretty special tablet. Measuring a measly 6mm in thickness, this Atom-powered Android slate surpasses even Sony's Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact in the race to be the world's thinnest tablet. But whereas the Sony device has sizeable bezels all around its display, the Venue 8 has almost none on three of its sides. There's less than an inch of bezel on one side, which houses the speaker and front-facing camera while also serving as a handle for the user. It's the same approach that Sharp took with the Aquos Crystal smartphone and the visual effect is just as striking.
Dell doesn't wants to be just your data center server provider. In partnership with Cumulus Networks, they want to be your open-source network services provider as well.
The Google Chrome Internet browser has just advanced to version 37.0.2062.120 and packs a few minor features, a Flash update, and some bug fixes.
The latest major Thunderbird release, 31.1, saw the introduction of a lot of features and fixes. These kind of changes were sorely missed and the devs managed to improve the application, even if it's no longer actively worked on.
OpenStack orchestration vendor Piston is shooting to make do-it-yourself private-cloud computing easier with the release this week of a new version of its Piston OpenStack platform, which it says offers all the benefits of the AWS public cloud without the costs or security vulnerabilities.
FoundationDB, the company so far known mainly for its NoSQL data storage platform, expanded into the SQL world this week with the release of SQL Layer, a free and open source database engine that runs on top of the FoundationDB NoSQL platform.
Version 8 also saw a range of other new features, including a simple WordPress-style installer, which reduces the technical demands of getting Gibbon up and running. It is hoped that this new feature will enable more schools and companies to trial Gibbon as a solution to their information management and online learning needs. In addition, Linguist sees the introduction of improved visuals, system update alerts, personalised Markbook targets, better mass mailing, quicker staff finding, support for cutting edge code, improved Markbook interface and close to one hundred other tweaks, fixes and enhancements.
CartoDB, the leading all-in-one web mapping and geospatial platform, is today announcing it has raised a $8 million Series A.
Two years ago, I wrote about using an inexpensive RTL2832-based DVB/DAB USB dongle as a spectrum analyzer and receiver. (See “Software-Defined Radios Help Explore RF Spectrum,” July 11, 2012). It is still part of my travel toolkit, but when I can, I make room for an Ettus Research USRP B200. As with the RTL2832 dongles, software is available to use it as a receiver or spectrum analyzer. Unlike the cheap dongles, it includes a transmitter that allows it to be used as a simple antenna or filter analyzer with the addition of a directional coupler.
Great news! I am very happy to announce that we have reached a new milestone for Elektra and released a new version, 0.8.8! This release comes right on the tail of the 0.8.7 release and it might just be our biggest release yet! We already have a great article covering all the changes from the previous release on our News documentation on GitHub. I just wanted to focus on a few of those changes on this blog, especially the ones that pertain to my Google Summer of Code Project.
Spanish supplier Blendhub is taking the rare step of offering customers access to its new library of near infra-red (NIR) spectroscopy analyses from more than 300 raw materials.
There are few things more frustrating or dread-inspiring than staring at a brand new $100 textbook only to know that in a few months it will not only be useless, but almost worthless.
With a never-ending demand for textbooks and no clear alternative established, textbook publishers have turned into modern day robber barons. As prices for textbooks and other school materials rise, students are left helpless only to accept the glutinous punishment doled out on them at the start of every new semester.
Historically, universities were not inclusive places. While you can find free traditional university education (Norway's much-lauded education system comes to mind, as well as some other European countries), the vast majority of the world simply didn't have access to higher education before the emergence of online technologies. This made higher education largely an exercise in class and gender role reinforcement. In more recent decades, universities have been aggressively monetizing, which theoretically eliminates class and gender as exclusionary factors but more realistically simply acts to reinforce the exclusivity and inaccessibility of further study.
Facebook’s Open Compute Project has been one of the most talked about developments in the world of data center hardware over the past couple of years, and interest in the first ever open source hardware design community and its output has only grown.
When's the last time you tinkered with something? Maybe it was someone else's code, maybe it was a project you found on a forum. Were you curious enough to dive in, or did you just toss the idea to the wayside?
We talk to a lot of great engineers and developers at Metacloud. Many seek us out as an amazing place to work, some we find and reach out to. There’s a growing trend to let your GitHub profile be the source of truth for your talents and experience, and I wanted to touch on why that’s a bad idea.
The latest episode of the Free Press-produced “The Documentary Podcast” chats with filmmaker and rabble-rouser Michael Moore, whose “Roger & Me” is being celebrated this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore slammed President Barack Obama during a discussion at The Hollywood Reporter's video lounge at the Toronto Film Festival Wednesday, expressing a "huge disappointment" with the legislative accomplishments of the politician.
It’s a security step everyone should be taking, according to Richard Anstey, CTO EMEA Intralinks.
Diverging views on global matters between the West and Russia in a new poll don’t signal the advent of a new Cold War, German Marshall Fund president Karen Donfried tells DW. But there is still cause for concern.
Kissinger is most closely associated with the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. Of the latter, he famously delivered this order: "A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves." Credible estimates of the number of people killed as a result of this order range as high as 800,000.
So what does a "full range of views" look like to the New York Times? Powerful people who worked for Republicans and Democrats.
It is not that hard to come up with examples of US attacks that were not designed to strike at leaders. The use of "signature strikes"–attacks launched based on movements or behaviors the United States thought looked like the sort of thing a militant might do–was well-documented in Pakistan until widespread criticism reportedly forced US officials to curtail that policy (AP, 7/25/13).
Whether or not they meant to refer to current US drone attacks exclusively, it is misleading for the Times to talk about US war policies this way.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul expressed support for President Obama's latest round of military action against terrorist state ISIS while insisting that the operation is nevertheless technically unconstitutional.
Keep the military's base of operations out our education system
The 132nd Fighter Wing of the Iowa Air National Guard is coming under an attack, of sorts, today with a rally from protesters opposed to the use of militarized drones. The mission of the fighter wing had always been manned aircraft, but those F-16 jets were a victim of budget cuts and the mission of the airmen was shifted to include a piloting-and-control center for weaponized drones.
Ed Flaherty, director Iowa Chapter 161 with Veterans for Peace, says that could turn the "Field of Dreams" into the "Killing Fields."
Nearly six years into a presidency devoted to ending U.S. wars in the Muslim world, President Barack Obama faced the nation Wednesday night to explain why he has decided to engage in a new one.
If we are going to condemn, and rightly so, actions we do not condone, then we need to do it with conviction and not selectively. Who used napalm and depleted uranium weapons in Iraq, killing many women and children? Is that not barbaric? Who uses drones, which kill the innocent along with the guilty? We all know that the posturing on the world stage calling for war, albeit without ''feet on the ground'', will not resolve the problems.
Ethan Hawke stars in the film as Major Thomas Egan, a fighter pilot turned drone pilot who "begins to question the U.S. policy on the use of drones after being ordered to hit civilians."
The United States’ controversial bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War killed fewer civilians than American drone attacks under President Barack Obama have done, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said on the weekend, a claim labelled as “disingenuous”, foolish and plain wrong by historians and experts.
In a National Public Radio (NPR) interview aired Saturday, Kissinger also said decisions taken by the US during the war, including the massive aerial bombing of Cambodia and Laos, were correct and would be taken by anyone faced with the same circumstances today.
Estimates for the number of civilian casualties of the US bombardment of Cambodia targeting North Vietnamese communists and later the Khmer Rouge – which saw some 2.75 million tonnes of ordnance dropped between 1965 and 1973 – vary greatly, however most scholars agree that they are at least in the tens of thousands.
I stand dumbfounded at our nation even considering putting US citizens back into Iraq — when we were lied to with grotesque fabrications of reality to persuade us to make war on them in the first place. Now, our leaders are “making the case” for making war on Syria while the distortions of reality continue.
Ahmed Abdi Godane, one of the State Department’s most wanted men was killed by US drone strikes outside Mogadishu last week. Godane, who was also known as Abu Zubeyr was the leader of al-Shabab, an Islamist militant group based in Somalia. He had a $7 million bounty placed on his head by the US government after he pledged formal allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012. Eleven other men were also killed in the traveling convoy which was attacked by up to 10 Hellfire missiles.
The death by drone of Al Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane was “a delightful victory” for Somalia’s struggling transitional government, and a major boost for a new anti-Al Shabaab military offensive. But as African Union troops push further in south-central Somalia, Human Rights Watch has reported horrific sexual abuse and exploitation at the Amisom base in Mogadishu. So much for the moral high ground.
At least 11 civilians died and 13 others were injured in a raid by NATO warplanes in eastern Kunar province, an Afghan official confirmed to Efe on Wednesday.
The strike took place Tuesday as the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force was targeting Taliban strongholds in cooperation with Afghan units, government spokesman Abdullah Gani said.
The folks behind “Good Kill,” a new movie about the U.S. military’s drone operations in the Middle East, hope the film becomes a cinematic flash point (think “Zero Dark Thirty”). And that’s probably why the Department of Defense RSVP’d no when invited to participate.
Tensions between the two rival Palestinian factions of Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Islamist Hamas movement were stepped up this weekend after Abbas said he will break off his partnership with Hamas if they don’t make some changes. Speaking on a visit to Egypt, where indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinains are expected to resume in the next few weeks. Abbas said that Hamas must accept a Palestinian state must have “one government, one law and one weapon”, meaning that Hamas must subordinate its military forces to those of Fatah. The two groups inaugurated a unity government in July, but it has yet to function. Over the weekend, Hamas officials claimed that Abbas’s security forces in the West Bank were arresting its men for no reason, and Hamas today called on its operatives in the West Bank not to cooperate with Palestinian Authority security investigations. Support for Hamas has increased dramatically since the end of the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Hamas is also demanding a “new unity government” meaning it wants to renegotiate the terms of it’s agreement with Fatah.
One flagship project established at Arizona State University (ASU) since 2009 examines “radical” and “counter-radical” movements in Southeast Asia, West Africa and Western Europe. This month, I obtained exclusive access to some of the online research tools being used by the Pentagon-funded project, disclosing a list of 36 mostly Muslim organizations in the UK targeted for assessment as to their relationship to radicalism.
So begins a 22-page, heavily redacted, previously top-secret document titled "Legality of a Lethal Operation by the Central Intelligence Agency Against a US Citizen," which provides the first detailed look at the legal rationale behind lethal operations conducted by the agency. The white paper [pdf below] was turned over to VICE News in response to a long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Justice Department.
Before the warmongers have a cow, keep in mind that Obama’s idea of managing a terrorism problem involves killing people, without warning, even in countries where we are not at war. Just this week he authorized an airstrike in Somalia in an attempt to kill the leader of al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda offshoot. Obama’s fondness for drones as instruments of surveillance and assassination is such that any terrorist leader is foolhardy if he ventures to take out the garbage.
The new leader of Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels is thought to be a devout and ruthless hardliner who was one of the most trusted lieutenants of the group's late chief, according to experts and analysts.
Somalia’s Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabab militants have announced the appointment of a successor to their former leader who was killed in a US air strike.
The Islamist group named Ahmad Umar, also known as Abu Ubaidah, as its new head.
Abu Ubaidah is thought to be a devout and ruthless hardliner who was one of the most trusted lieutenants of the group’s late chief Ahmed Abdi Godane, according to experts and analysts.
We cannot forever attack people in other countries with impunity
It's not that fracking or oil drilling aren't controversial; the Times' Nelson Schwartz notes that the "environmental consequences of the American energy boom…are being fiercely debated nationwide." But Ohio isn't like other parts of the country where opposition to fracking is intense, "because residents are so desperate for the kind of economic growth that fracking can bring, whatever the risks."
When BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, Fox News pundits rushed to the corporation's defense with excuses ranging from pitiful to conspiratorial. But now the ruling is out, exposing the falsities of Fox's defense: BP was to blame for the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Syncora has been Detroit’s most aggressive foe from the start of Detroit’s bankruptcy case, filed July 18, 2013.
Last month, Syncora’s criticism of Detroit’s restructuring plan and its actions during the bankruptcy became so harsh that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes threatened the bond insurer with sanctions.
“The…truth is that the rich are the great cause of poverty”
This may end up making it easier for Americans fighting for a terrorist group to be killed in a drone strike by their own government than to lose their U.S. citizenship against their will.
In addition to committing what the State Department calls “potentially expatriating acts,” an individual must do so both “voluntarily and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. nationality.”
On September 8, the Senate voted to debate the proposed constitutional amendment, which would re-establish campaign finance laws that the conservative justices of the Supreme Court struck down in Citizens United in 2010. That decision overturned part of the McCain-Feingold Act -- much-needed bipartisan campaign finance reforms instituted to prevent corruption of the political process and level the playing field between small donors and the wealthy -- and effectively eliminated limits for independent corporate spending in federal elections. Specifically, Citizens United radically rewrote First Amendment precedent and expanded the legal concept of "corporate personhood," with the court ultimately deciding that the political spending by corporations was constitutionally equivalent to the free speech of actual human voters. The conservative justices chipped away at campaign finance limits even further this year in McCutcheon v. FEC, which abolished direct contribution limits that worked to control the corrupting influence of multimillion-dollar donations.
Anyone who listens to NPR has heard plenty of corporate sponsorship announcements, and some listeners have raised substantive questions about whether those financial ties compromise NPR's journalism (Extra!, 3/14). According to the new boss, nothing's going to change–you're just going to hear more about "brands that matter" because you'll be "interested" in them. That is, as long as you're part of the "not just affluent" audience that the supposedly noncommercial network is so proud of–for the "larger commitments" from sponsors they can command.
Looks like Disconnect won a battle but lost the war to sell its app in Google’s Android app store.
One day after lifting a ban on Disconnect Mobile and allowing the app back into the Play store, Google reinstated the ban and booted the app out again, CEO Casey Oppenheim told Business Insider.
Assistant Professor of Mathematics Djordje Milićević has received a Young Investigator Grant from the National Security Agency’s Mathematical Sciences Program. This award is available to promising investigators within ten years after receiving the Ph.D.
Hezbollah is constantly searching for such spy devices planted by the Israelis in strategic places in southern Lebanon and many have been found, sometimes with the help of the Lebanese Army, in places such as Barouk, Sanine, Sarifa Valley, Houla Valley and Zararieh Valley.
Greenwald was a constitutional and civil right lawyer, who became a blogger in 2005 alarmed at “the radical and extremist theories of power the US government had adopted in the wake of 9/11” and shocked at revelations about “warrantless eavesdropping” by the US National Security Agency on electronic communications of Americans. He then became a columnist for the Guardian and bestselling author. It was this background that prompted Snowden to choose Greenwald as his first contact person for revealing NSA wrong doing.
Not long after Edward Snowden revealed just how the world’s spy agencies were trying to crack encryption protecting citizens’ private messages zipping around the internet, various organisations sought to enforce better standards across the web. Many programs were already in place, they just needed fresh impetus, which the NSA files duly provided.
Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has been sweating it out in the spotlight this summer for converting his spy cred into a lucrative security consulting business shortly after stepping down from the National Security Agency. The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf calls Alexander’s new IronNet Cybersecurity firm an “unethical get-rich quick plan” because it will charge hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for “ new” technologies the firm is patenting. “What could make [Alexander] so valuable, save the highly classified secrets in his head?” wrote Friedersdorf. But Alexander is far from the first to realize that the NSA’s area of expertise is in high demand in the commercial sector these days as more and more of our information is being digitized and concerns about security and privacy mount. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden may have immersed the agency in controversy but it hasn’t stopped it from becoming a fertile breeding ground for privacy and security entrepreneurs who are leaving the agency and quickly raking in millions from venture capitalists. Synack, Virtru, Area 1 Security and Morta Security are a few of the start-ups in recent years whose twenty- and thirty-something founders got their engineering training at the NSA.
It wasn’t that long ago that Democrats nationwide were angry over NSA privacy violations. But Democrats are violating citizens’ privacy, too.
Fifty percent of people believe the government's anti-terrorism policies have not gone far enough to protect the United States, according to a new poll, a 15-point shift since last year.
On the eve of the 13th anniversary of 9/11, American Senators and intelligence officials met today in public and private hearings to discuss cybersecurity and real world terrorist threats posed the United States domestically and abroad.
In this week’s issue, though, Yasha Levine explains why we don’t need the government to make us paranoid. It’s got nothing, Levine argues, on the for-profit surveillance being run by tech companies like Google. Oh, and if you thought technologies like Tor were keeping your data safe and anonymous, think again.
Little wonder then that Google, and the rest of Surveillance Valley, is terrified that the conversation about surveillance could soon broaden to include not only government espionage, but for-profit spying as well.
The majority of German citizens, for the first time in history, insist on less dependence on the United States in terms of their national security and diplomacy, according to a major survey released by the German Marshall Fund think-tank.
The study published on Wednesday shows that most Germans want their country to take a more independent position from the United States, especially on issues as vital as national security and sovereign diplomacy.
A majority of 57 percent of German respondents opted for a more independent approach, according to the Transatlantic Trends survey, which is up from only 40 percent back in 2013. What is even more interesting is that just 19 percent of Germans say they want to have a closer relationship with the United States – compared to 34 percent of Americans who wanted their country to get cosier with Germany.
At a recent Republican rally in Dawsonville, Tisdale was shooting video of speeches by statewide candidates. She taped Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens making this comment about Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn: "I thought I was gonna absolutely puke, listening to her."
A few minutes after Tisdale recorded that humorous remark, she was suddenly told to stop taping by a Dawson County sheriff’s deputy. When she continued to shoot video, the deputy grabbed her, dragged her away from the meeting area, and had her arrested on charges of obstructing an officer.
Just six weeks after 9/11, with virtually no debate and a bipartisan demand for more executive power, the Patriot Act was passed in October 2001. The country wanted revenge, safety, and action to prevent another act of terrorism. While their media propped up everything the Bush administration did, the freedoms Americans cherished slowly become a distant memory.
A 5-month-old company in Washington has developed what it calls ground-breaking technology to thwart cyberattacks before they’ve been identified — a significant advancement over current systems, which react to known threats.
Yet, the effort itself is under a more conventional attack. The founder of the company, Keith Alexander, had led the National Security Agency until March, and his plan to patent the technology is drawing criticism from people who say he’s profiting from work he did for the government.
A near majority of Americans feel less safe today than they did 13 years ago on 9/11.
The potential lifestyle and business benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT) are huge. How great would it be in this future IoT world where information flows freely around us, that a business could pull data on any process, any time, anywhere in real time?
The problems with Germany are growing. During German President Joachim Gauck's visit, we saw the tip of the iceberg. The image of Turkey in Germany was seriously undermined during the Gezi protests. The reactions were so out of control that an adviser argued that the protests had been provoked by Germany to prevent the construction of a third airport in ðstanbul. He was given an annual award for paranoia in Germany.
To keep up with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham‘s logic, you’ve got to be able to run around in circles … really, really fast .
Seriously … one week Graham wants to bomb one group, the next week he wants to bomb another. And it’s always in response to some totally ridiculous fearmongering.
The iCloud naked photos leak, the AWS casualty Code Spaces, and the NSA PRISM Surveillance Programme… all have caused a crisis of confidence in the cloud. These highly publicised incidents have caused us to question the security of the model as a whole. But are these fears justified?
“I don’t know why I would need that,” said one student. “I don’t have anything to hide.”
When I hear something like that from a journalism student, I try very hard to slow down my reactions. If I jump into the discussion too soon, it has a chilling effect and nothing is learned except my own view of this subject.
"Are we that afraid of others? Of ourselves? Of the possibility of genuine change?"
The Ferguson shooting protest continues to hunt the American government and the whole nation. Although the unrest has died down a bit, its psychological effects to lives of ordinary citizens have dented people's trust to the police forces. The very first public meeting since the shooting in the Missouri city has been held and it was filled with anger, mostly from the camp of the 18-year old victim, Michael Brown.
America is rushing to outfit cops with cameras, but even experts aren’t sure of the laws regulating the storage of the videos they capture—or determining who exactly has access.
If you watched this drama closely, you surely noticed how narrowly we conceptualize corruption in America. A government official is guilty of corruption only if he or she was given a gift, favor or cash in direct exchange for an official action that favored the business in question. In effect, general influence peddling and election purchasing, which we see more commonly, are legitimate.
If what "weev" did could be considered hacking, the FBI just might be a hacker, too, a former federal prosecutor says.
The trial attorney for Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, Orin Kerr, says the actions the FBI took to find the servers of the online drug haven Silk Road could fall under the same hacking statute in which his high-profile client was charged.
According to newspaper accounts over 1,500 people die annually in the US in law enforcement related deaths. These are all deaths in the presence of law enforcement personnel both on the street and in local jails. Infamous cases such as Andy Lopez, Oscar Grant, and Michael Brown are only the tip of the iceberg. Many hundreds more are killed annually and these deaths by police are almost always ruled justifiable, even when victims are unarmed or shot in the back running away. We interviewed 14 families who lost loved ones in law enforcement related deaths in the SF Bay Area from 2000-2010. All the families believe their loved one should not have been killed and most felt that the police over-reacted and murdered their family member. All families reported abuse by police after the deaths. Most also reported that the corporate media was biased in favor of the police and failed to accurately report the real circumstances of the death.
Federal employees who expose government waste, fraud and abuse are having a tough time in the “most transparent administration in history.”
Robert MacLean, a former air marshal, told a House subcommittee Tuesday that managers at the Transportation Security Administration “thumb their nose” at whistleblower protection laws.
MacLean, who complained that air marshals were improperly grounded by the TSA, is taking his termination to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing a series of lopsided proceedings at the agency. He said the TSA branded him “an organizational terrorist.”
I have been called the whistleblower who "conquered Countrywide” by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times. I have also been referred to as “Wall-Street’s Greatest Enemy: The Man Who Knows Too Much” in a revelatory article by David Dayen in Salon. However, I do not feel like a conqueror at all. I feel like a victim who has been repeatedly re-victimized by a system that allows legal loopholes, misrepresentations, and fraud on a trial and appellate court.
The United States has instructed Europol, the European Union’s police agency, to withhold its own annual internal data-protection review from EU lawmakers because the report was written without the US Treasury Department’s permission.
In violation of the Army’s Code of Ethics, “enhanced interrogation” (torture) has been carried out; and a majority of the U.S. public has been convinced that these methods are both essential and acceptable. However, General Stanley Mcchrystal, who headed operations in Iraq, opposes the use of torture because, he has contended, “it corrodes the torturer more than the tortured.”
In 2006, George Bush Jr was caught at a G8 dinner in St Petersburg on an open mic, laying out his plan to halt the strife in Lebanon: “See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s*** and it’s over,” he told Tony Blair. It was high time, Bush thought, for the then United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, to get on the phone with the Syrian President, Bashar Al Assad, and “make something happen”.
U.S. troops blare The Star Spangled Banner across this 45-square-mile base each morning at 8 o’clock sharp. Fireworks crackle overhead on the Fourth of July.
Marines control the fenceline opposite Cuba’s minefield and American sailors check visitors’ passports or Pentagon ID cards as they arrive by plane.
Canonical has decided to join the fight in support for net neutrality and it will be a part of the "Internet Slowdown day" event.
If you're not yet aware of this, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in the United States has to make a very important decision that could allow ISPs to provide paid prioritization to companies, which would hugely increase the monopoly of the corporations.
Net neutrality, the principle that all traffic on the Internet should be treated equally, should be a basic right for Internet users. It's also crucial for free software's continued growth and success.
You know the net neutrality conversation is breaking new ground when even the porn sites are weighing in. And that's just what we're seeing: Major adult platforms Pornhub and Redtube are joining an online protest on September 10, calling for stronger protections for net neutrality. They’re teaming up with dozens of digital rights organizations, including EFF, Demand Progress, and Fight for the Future, as well as other Internet companies like Etsy, reddit and Mozilla, in a digital day of action designed to bring the net neutrality debate to hundreds of thousands of Internet users worldwide.
Google, which helped kill net neutrality for wireless, has rejoined the debate.
New research from Spotify shows that music piracy via BitTorrent dropped 20% in Australia during the first year the streaming platform was operational. The drop was mostly driven by casual file-sharers, and the number of hard-core pirates remains stable.