The membership of Linux Australia is showing a downward trend, according to the minutes of the organisation's general body meeting, with current numbers down to 70 per cent of the highest 2014 figure.
The meeting was held on January 12 and the minutes circulated on January 31. During the meeting, the membership numbers were claimed to be the same as 2014 by one member, Michael Still, but the outgoing secretary, Kathy Reid, clarified that they were about 70 per cent of 2014.
One of the comments I received from my previous article was that another operating system has just as much capability on the command line as Linux does. This person said that you could just add this software to get these features and that package if you want those features. That makes my point. With Linux, it is all built in. You do not have to go elsewhere to get access to the power of Linux.
Many people left comments stating that they could see how it might be nice to know the Linux philosophy as a historical curiosity, but that it had little or no meaning in the context of daily operations in a Linux environment. I beg to differ. Here is why.
Microsoft is working very hard on Windows 10 and it's baking everything on the success of this new operating system. This prompted some voices in the community that it's the end of the Linux desktop, whatever that means, but I'm here to tell you that's not really the case.
The M3800 with Ubuntu is available now, and getting rid of Windows 8.1 carves a savings of $101.50 from the price tag. This means the starting price is $1533.50, which is certainly not cheap, but for users planning to replace Windows with Linux anyway, not being forced to spend extra for the OS is a solid deal.
After wiping Windows 8.1 off the laptop, I started with the Fedora 21 installation.
There’s an odd thing happening out there in the world. Some Mac owners are actually replacing OS X with Linux. While there are no numbers available to show how many are doing this, it’s clearly something that has been happening for a while as you can see from this thread on Reddit. I have some thoughts of my own to share about this, and I’ll tell you in this post why some Apple customers might be moving to Linux on their Macs.
This concept builds further upon the socket activation. When restarting a service, systemd can push the used sockets/file descriptors of that service to the sytemd daemon and pass it again to the service once it restarted. This way, no sockets/fd's are lost.
I’m getting tired of the ever-increasing detailed fragility of systemd taking over the world. I despair of Debian Jessie ever being released at this rate. A lot of the release critical bugs are triggered by systemd because it meddles with so many knobs. Go read the following article and have a good cry… Maybe it’s all a bad dream.
The Linux community is filled with friction and diversity. One of the advantages of open source software is the diversity that leads to innovative approaches to improve the computing environment.
But can the diversity go too far? Is it a defining characteristic that kills programming creativity?
The news cycle surrounding open source technology is fed by ongoing arguments about PulseAudio versus ALSA Sound in one Linux distro or another. Hotly debated discussions ensue about the merits of Systemd replacing init. Some disputes lead to key developers forking a project. Others force particular project developers or contributors to quit.
The latest version of the stable Linux kernel, 3.14.31, has been announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman, and this is the most advanced long-term support branch of the kernel.
The average Linux user can be forgiven for being mystified by the passion and anger that surround the arguments over systemd, which aims to replace the traditional init daemon and shell scripts that initialise a Linux installation. Shell scripts are the tried and trusted method by which the Linux kernel is instructed on the options for its startup processes, and are seen by many sysadmins as ‘the Unix way’ of doing things. Scripts can be changed at will and the kernel doesn’t need a reboot.
Today however I wanted to review the Evolution client and my experience with it, especially in the light of my extensive use of Claws Mail (and to a lesser extent, Thunderbird). Just before we start, however, I just would like to underline that I’m not forgetting my adventures with email clients on Emacs. Expect a post on this topic later this month.
Syncthing GTK is a GTK3 & Python GUI for Syncthing, which includes a tray icon / Ubuntu AppIndicator. The app adds extra features on top of Syncthing, like filesystem watching and instant synchronization using inotify, system notifications for file updates and Syncthing errors, an auto-updater for the Syncthing daemon binary, speed throttling options and more.
TLP 0.7 was released recently, bringing an option which allows setting the minimum and maximum Intel P-state performance, better ThinkPad support and various other changes and bug fixes.
Boxes is a GNOME application in Fedora that is used to create, manage, and run virtual machines. It was designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind, building upon the harder to use qemu-based virt-manager. Although it does not provide many of the features that virt-manager boasts, it is the perfect tool for Fedora users looking to try out new (potentially unstable) operating systems, or tinker with new software packages without polluting their own workstations.
Unvanquished Alpha 36 was released on Sunday with a number of gamer-facing changes while on a technical side it looks like next month's Alpha 37 will be more exciting.
It has been a long wait since Jane Jensen's crowd-funded game was released for Windows and Mac in April last year. Now, almost 10 months later, a Linux build is up in a closed beta on Steam.
Safe-zones can now be secured, and the intense/sickening blurring on movement is now fixed as well! I am starting to have faith in Techland, not a lot mind you due to the still awful performance of the game on OpenGL, but more faith than before.
Lords of Xulima has just release the Linux version of their fantasy RPG and it looks fantastic, we decided to give it a go and tell you what we think.
Today in Linux news, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols said that rolling release distributions are "gaining on" traditional releases and Christine Hall welcomes the "new breed of Linux users." Reviews of KaOS and Linux Mint stood-out in the newsfeeds as did Jun Auza's comparison of Mint to Ubuntu. Michael Larabel switched to back to Fedora and Robert Pogson is horrified at systemd creator's future plans.
There are tons of different options when it comes to desktop environments for Linux. But which one is right for you? That's a tough call and can only be made by each individual, but Datamation has some ideas to get you started finding your preferred desktop environment.
It should be apparent that as developers there are parts we want to embrace as it. In many cases it allows us to throw away large amounts of code whilst at the same time providing a better user experience. Adding it as an optional extra defeats the main benefit.
Recently I was finally able to close BUG#305960 where a user requested support for 3D Cube FITS support in KStars. The FITSViewer tool always supported monochrome images since its inception, as this is what most CCD cameras in astronomy use. But single-shot color CCDs and DSLRs' utilization within the astrophotography world kept growing over the last few years.
After a short discussion, we came up with a release date for Krita 2.9! It's going to be... February 26th, Deo volente. Lots and lots and lots of new stuff, and even the old stuff in Krita is still amazing (lovely article, the author mentions a few features I didn't know about).
Then it's time for the port to Qt5, while Dmitry will be working on Photoshop-style layer styles -- a kickstarter feature that didn't make it for 2.9.0, but will be in 2.9.x. A new fundraiser for the next set of amazing features is also necessary.
It's been a long time since I wrote my last post. In my last post, I had described my SoK project, how DLNA/UPnP media client works and my plans about implementing DLNA/UPnP media server.
So at the end of the Oxygen period, UX/UI design was reaching an inflection point. Gone were the days were graphical designers challenged its own illustrations skills in a perpetual "I can my candy more naturalistic silly than yours".
A few weeks ago Alex Fiestas passed maintainership of PowerDevil, KDE’s power management service, over to me (thanks!), and there have been many exciting things going on in the power management department. Let’s take a look!
KDE Plasma 5.2 was just released a few days ago but for power KDE Plasma 5.3 are already exciting features building up, including greater power management capabilities.
The KDE Gardening Team selected the February “Bug of the Month”. Before announcing it, let me write about other bugs that got resolved recently.
In other words, I got nothin’ today. A few ideas, but not the energy nor motivation to follow through quite yet. I’m blaming the Super Bowl, the outcome of which is unknown as I write this. I’m thinking the world will continue to whirl around real nice like, whichever way it goes. But I did find a few minutes to give my aging behemoth home PC a bit of a makeover. Really all I did was to change the wallpaper to a nice new Debian logo-ed 3D thing. Shiny! I’d been using this old one for a few years I think, and it was just getting boring I guess.
Some of you may recall that I use Linux, Debian Stable (Wheezy!) to be exact, and the hard core savant types may recall that I also use, and love, KDE. Nobody knows what the K stands for - maybe Kool?, but the rest is desktop environment. One of the things that KDE allows idiots like me to do is to easily enable Desktop Effects. Eye candy. Things that wobble and spin and get all pretty like. I’m a sucker for this crap, and have even convinced myself that some of it is useful, even an aid to efficiency. Not that slothful inefficiency isn’t also charming under certain circumstances.
A new year, a new release... The digiKam Team is proud to announce the release of digiKam Software Collection 4.7.0. This release includes many bugs fixes from Maik Qualmann who propose patches to maintain KDE4 version while KF5 port is under progress.
Today, I decided to help someone out and, as is often the case with coding, I got carried away.
A rolling-release Linux is one that's constantly being updated. To some of you, that will sound a lot like DevOps' idea of continuous deployment. You'd be right in thinking so. In both cases, the idea is that users and developers are best served by giving them the latest updates and patches as they're created.
There are several ways of doing this. One is to deliver frequent, small updates, which is the model that Arch Linux uses. Another is to replace an old image of the operating system or program with a new one as changes are added to the software. Ubuntu Core is taking this approach.
The final release version of Simplicity Linux 15.1 is finally available for download. Simplicity 15.1 is based on Slacko, and uses the LXDE desktop environment for Netbook and Desktop editions. Also, we are proud to announce the release of our first 64-bit Edition: X. X 15.1 is a 64-bit only release and uses KDE as it’s desktop. Netbook and Desktop Editions are our only 32 bit releases for this cycle. One thing we are particularly pleased to bring you this release cycle is the fact that Simplicity Linux can view Netflix content straight out the box. You do not need to update libraries, change agent strings, or anything else. Just use the shortcut or use Chrome to view Netflix content.
UBOS is a new Linux distro that I like for two reasons. One is that it works toward making it easy for muggles to set up their own fully independent personal home servers with little or no help from wizards. The other is that it comes from my friend Johannes Ernst.
The polls are closed and the results are in. We once again had some extremely close races and our first ever three way tie.
Every year Linux fans wait for the results of LinuxQuestions.org Member Choice Award Winners and today the end of 2014 results are in. What was the favorite distribution this year? Which was the most used messenger these days? Who brings the best office suite or desktop environment? You might be surprised.
Linux Mint is great if you are a traditionalist and you like the way things have pretty much always been.
Nice little touches are built upon again and again and the improvements are steady but not spectacular.
Linux Mint is just a really good, stable and solid Linux distribution and it is obvious why it is so popular.
KaOS 2014.12 is a very slick, very beautiful product. But it is not the most refined operating system out there. Sure, in terms of friendliness and accessibility, it's right there among the big names, offering everything a user might want or need. Still, to get to that point, you will need to sweat a little. Printing, installer errors, availability of software, all these are potentially critical obstacles that must be addressed before KaOS can become a familiar and well-recommended family name.
You cannot fault the composition, the style, the setup. It's really charming. Done with elegance. Maybe all my ranting has helped bring Linux aesthetics to a higher level. But while I do sometimes drool over pretty and shiny, I demand stability and predictability, first and foremost. KaOS has some catching up to do here. And so, it probably deserves around 6.5/10. Pitted against Manjaro, Netrunner Rolling and Chakra, it's probably the second best Archy offering out there at the moment. The best? Well, read all those other reviews. Anyhow, this isn't bad, but not quite good enough to wrestle with Ubuntu, Mint and friends. I shall definitely follow this distro's progress.
Simplicity Linux, a Linux distribution based on Slacko that uses the LXDE desktop, has reached version 15.1 and is now available for download and testing.
Why pre-Alpha? Because we are eager to deliver you the freshest and hottest, and with your help this new release can start shining brighter even sooner! Have fun, report bugs, enjoy!
The pre-alpha of OpenMandriva Lx 3 features X.Org Server 1.16.3 and Mesa 10.4.2 as the latest for open-source Linux graphics, KDE 4.14.3 is the desktop environment while OpenMandriva is working on migrating to KF5 + Plasma 5, SDDM is the new log-in manager, LXQt 0.8 is available as the new lightweight desktop environment, and there's various package updates.
It might not seem like a long time, but two years for a Linux operating system is more than usual. Users need to keep in mind that this is provided for free, so its maintaining it for a long time is actually time consuming, especially since the same devs have released other versions since then, which are better and more up to date.
Canonical is already trying to stay ahead of the IoT (Internet of Things) movement and the company managed to have the latest Snappy Ubuntu Core ready just in time of the Raspberry Pi 2. At this point you might be wondering what the Internet of Things is and why Ubuntu is making a move for it.
The next generation Raspberry Pi 2 was announced by Raspberry Pi Founder Eben Upton on February 2. The biggest difference is the new quad-core 900MHz Broadcom ARM Cortex-A7 CPU which deliver up to six times the processing power of the Raspberry Pi B+.
For the past couple of years, users wanted to see how this Ubuntu convergence concept will come together and now their wish has been granted. More and more details have been revealed and there are a ton of videos that show how convergence works.
Axiomtek’s rugged, Linux-ready DIN-rail PC has a dual-core Atom E3827, remote IoT management, 4GB soldered RAM, and isolated serial, GbE, and DIO ports.
Raspberry Pi enthusiasts started the week with some welcome news: A Raspberry Pi 2 Model B SBC that is claimed to be six times faster than previous versions is available for the same $35 price. The community-backed single board computer swaps out the old ARM11/ARMv6 processor for an ARMv7 system on chip that features four 900MHz Cortex-A7 cores. That, along with a doubling of RAM to 1GB, means that for the first time, the Pi fully supports Ubuntu. In fact, there's already an optimized build available of Canonical's new lightweight Snappy variant of Ubuntu.
The next-gen Raspberry Pi 2 is on sale now, and despite its souped-up memory and CPU performance, it is still just $35.
NI has launched a real-time Linux-based “RoboRIO” robot controller with a Zynq ARM/FPGA SoC and NI’s LabVIEW IDE designed for FIRST robotics competitions.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is finally getting the Android Lollipop update after weeks of speculation. The update will be rolling out to Galaxy S5 phones in the United States. The Verizon Galaxy S5 Lollipop update is the first Galaxy Android 5.0 update in the U.S., but it won’t be the last update for all U.S. Galaxy users.
Samsung started rolling out its first round of Galaxy Android 5.0 updates at the end of last year. The company’s first update was the Samsung Galaxy S5 Lollipop update, according to Gotta Be Mobile. The update wasn’t much of a surprise for users since the Galaxy S5 is Samsung’s current Galaxy S flagship phone. The company typically rolls out updates for its current flagship models at the beginning.
I really, really like Android 5.0 (or “Lollipop” as it’s known by those of us who probably care too much about these things). It cemented my preference for Android, and has earned the Nexus 5 another few months as my go-to phone.
Back in December last year, Blizzard finally rolled out the Android version of Hearthstone, the company’s popular and admittedly addictive free-to-play online card game. This basically means that the game is now available on iOS and Android tablets, but no smartphones just yet, although Blizzard did state that they are planning on bringing the smartphone version to iOS and Android devices this year.
The HummingBoard-i2eX is a versatile board. It has greater performance than the Raspberry Pi 1 and includes more memory. At $110 it is more expensive than the Raspberry Pi, but you get more for your money.
Android users who are unhappy with their own version of Android Lollipop could only have less than a month to wait before Google rolls out the first major update for the latest iteration of its Android mobile platform.
Importantly, these tools are largely being born within enterprises like LinkedIn that have serious Big Data needs that no commercial software can solve. Even the National Weather Service has jumped in, open sourcing the code that powers its global forecast system.
That’s one of the key findings of research recently conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Zimbra, a provider of commercial open source collaboration software in Frisco, Texas. Open source “provides improved control over your software and inherent security and privacy benefits brought to bear by a development community,” said Olivier Thierry, Zimbra’s chief marketing officer, in an interview. “These benefits are tied to the transparent nature of open source, which is taken a step further by commercial vendor support, ensuring long-term viability.”
DataStax has acquired Aurelius LLC, provider of the open source graph database Titan. The Aurelius team will join DataStax to build DataStax Enterprise (DSE) Graph, adding graph database capabilities into DSE alongside Apache Cassandra, DSE Search and Analytics. Development of DataStax Enterprise Graph will begin immediately with availability announcements coming later this year.
Email clients have long been a necessary evil for anybody living in the information age. I have yet to find an email client that I like. Tolerate, yes. But not like. I have found web browsers that I like, note taking programs that I like, even text editors that I love. But email remains the proverbial thorn in my desktop side.
For years now I’ve been using Mozilla’s Thunderbird, because while I don’t actually like it, it’s the one I hate the least. It has been stable and reliable all this time, something that couldn’t be said for the Evolution client it replaced. But it had flaws, and plenty of them. The biggest of which, in my opinion, is that it is slow. Not only is it slow when I’m doing something with it, it’s somehow even slow when I’m not doing anything.
I am thrilled to be joining OPNFV as its Director of NFV working directly with those who are committed to advancing open source NFV for all. I am excited about this organization, this technology, this community, and what the future holds for NFV.
The Linux Foundation's OPNFV project for open source network functions virtualization technologies has appointed Heather Kirksey as director of NFV. It has also added new industry partners.
The Linux community is filled with friction and diversity. One of the advantages of open source software is the diversity that leads to innovative approaches to improve the computing environment.
But can the diversity go too far? Is it a defining characteristic that kills programming creativity?
The news cycle surrounding open source technology is fed by ongoing arguments about PulseAudio versus ALSA Sound in one Linux distro or another. Hotly debated discussions ensue about the merits of Systemd replacing init. Some disputes lead to key developers forking a project. Others force particular project developers or contributors to quit.
I work with IT teams that are so passionate about Red Hat’s open source mission that they bring a "default to open source" mentality to every project we work on. We’ve been quite successful in finding open source solutions for many of our business needs. Naturally, we turn to our own open source solutions for our operating system, middleware, and cloud needs. Beyond that, we always seek out open source solutions first for our other business needs, such as user authorization and telephony.
It’s through these first-hand experiences that I’ve reflected on the reasons why open source is a good fit for the enterprise. Here are some fundamental advantages I believe open source offers over proprietary solutions.
Alex Housley, 31, is the founder of Seldon, an open-source platform that generates user recommendations for any kind of company or industry.
Although it is not a universal remedy, open-source software is still an important ingredient in an EU strategy for more security and technological independence. The quality of the lifecycle processes of open-source software is crucial for its security – more than technology.
Support and fund maintenance and/or audit of important open-source software: open-source initiatives, some of them widely implemented for security and privacy, need funding to keep going and be audited (with regard to both code and processes).
Google distributed $1.5 million in awards in 2014 for security vulnerability disclosures, money that was spread across 200 different researchers and included disclosures on over 500 bugs in Google's Chrome Web browser. In total, Google has paid out $4 million in bug bounties since it first began rewarding researchers in 2010.
VMware today is delivering on its promise of providing an integrated OpenStack cloud offering. VMware first announced the VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO) product at its VMworld conference in August, as the company's full embrace of the OpenStack platform.
If you're bewildered by the number of open cloud platforms and usage models for them that are available, there are some useful new guides you should know about.
With all the hubbub surrounding open source cloud computing platforms that are proliferating more rapidly than ever, it's easy to get lulled into thinking that projects like OpenStack and CloudStack rule the cloud roost. That's not even close to the truth, though. The proprietary cloud is going strong, and Amazon remains the 800-pound gorilla in the cloud space.
Inspired by the pothole identification and alert site and app, fixmystreet.com, OFE, through its fixmydocument.eu, is giving a crowd-sourced voice to public frustration with software interoperability limitations that stand in the way of citizens who are seeking to communicate and interact with government.
It should be noted, however, this is more than a vehicle through which to vent. Many parts of the EU are legitimately working hard to implement ODF, the open document format for office applications. Fixmydocument.eu will help them better identify software and documents that are presenting the most pressing and immediate problems. As an added benefit, it should not go unnoticed that more fully deploying ODF and other open standards will help the EU avoid vendor lock-in.
The OSI will launch our first ever Individual Membership Drive this year, coinciding with our 17th anniversary, Feb 3rd, 2015. Our membership drive goal is to sign up 2,398 members in celebration of our founding on 2/3/98 — "2,398 for 2/3/98" — see what we did there? :-) The membership drive will also run in parallel with our annual Board elections, with nominations opening on Feb 2nd. The membership campaign will become an annual event.
A recording from a MeetBSD California 2014 talk titled "WhatsApp: Half a billion unsuspecting FreeBSD users" by Rick Reed.
The FSF's list consists of ready-to-use full GNU/Linux systems whose developers have made a commitment to follow the Guidelines for Free System Distributions. This means each distro includes and steers users toward exclusively free software. All distros on this list reject nonfree software, including firmware "blobs" and nonfree documentation. The Guix System Distribution is a new and growing distro that currently ships with just over 1000 packages, already including almost all of the programs available from the GNU Project.
For software vendors, open source software (OSS) should be treated like a compliance issue - in the same way that corporate, securities or environmental compliance is a concern for many companies. The failure to manage compliance can be costly - just like it would be if a company ignored its environmental or securities compliance obligations. An environmental remediation order or a cease-trade order might result from compliance failures in those other areas.
The project plans to democratise camera technology and put the power back into the hands of the users. ‘It is a self-liberation by creating high end tools that we ourselves love to work with - fully independent of any of the big, established camera corporations,’ explains a member of the team.
“This year we are releasing all of the data included in the President’s Fiscal Year 2016 Budget in a machine-readable format here on GitHub,” the White House wrote. “The Budget process should be a reflection of our values as a country, and we think it’s important that members of the public have as many tools at their disposal as possible to see what is in the President’s proposals.”
That seemingly simple question is sometimes a topic of heated debate, even though, if one digs into the details, it’s more a debate about how to think about transformation rather than a debate about the end state.
Back up a minute—you can think about DevOps as living somewhere between two poles.
You can treat your cloud just like it was a data center full of servers with system administrators cracking the whip over them, but that misses the point of how to get the most from your cloud with DevOps.
To no huge surprise, the next-generation OpenGL standard will be shown off next month at GDC 2015.
When we talk about the stalwart, hard-nosed relentlessness that ignites Detroiters' souls, it's hard to think of a better example than James Robertson.
His story is so outlandish it seems certain to be apocryphal: His home is in Detroit, but his work is in Rochester Hills. He has no car, and our public transit system is a joke that's played daily to brutal effect on people like Robertson. That means he hoofs it up to 21 miles per day, through whatever obstacles man or mother nature toss in front of him. Together, Robertson's commute and his shift consume a staggering 20 hours of every day. This has been his life for a decade, since his old car died. Earning just $10.55 an hour, Robertson couldn't save up for another.
To the parent of the unvaccinated child who exposed my family to measles:
I have a number of strong feelings surging through my body right now. Towards my family, I am feeling extra protective like a papa bear. Towards you, unvaccinating parent, I feel anger and frustration at your choices.
ABC News contributor Laura Ingraham falsely suggested there's a link between vaccines and autism, which flies in the face of substantial scientific evidence and her own employer's reporting on the issue.
A domestic measles outbreak has highlighted the rising numbers of American parents who disregard medical recommendations and choose not to vaccinate their children, often for religious or personal reasons.
Security researcher claims more than 110k users of the social network were infected in two days by trojan pretending to be a Flash update
Well, it's been a week since we've heard about a security vulnerability in Adobe Flash -- that's like a lifetime in terms of this program. While the application is slowly receding, it's far from dead and that means users have reason for worry. Of course, using Flash at all is a general concern -- it's a highly targeted platform for attackers.
A new FireEye report details how attackers were able to target groups within the Syrian opposition to learn battlefield tactics and strategy.
Malware is being used as a tactical weapon to gain intelligence in the ongoing Syrian civil war, according to a new report from security firm FireEye.
The civil war in eastern Ukraine has continued fitfully since September, when the parties signed a ceasefire known as the Minsk Agreement. The ceasefire has often been more honored in the breach than the observance, but overall it has led to considerably less bloodshed, especially among civilians, than the previous six months fighting. In the spring of 2014, the level of killing escalated sharply, at U.S. urging, when the newly-installed coup government in Kiev chose to attack rather than negotiate with the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk and People’s Republic of Luhansk (now joined in the self-proclaimed federal state of Novorossiya). So far, only the Republic of South Ossetia has recognized these Ukrainian “republics” as independent countries. Only Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Nauru recognize South Ossetia, which declared its independence from Georgia in 1990, but secured it only in 2008 with the help of Russian intervention.
There is a window of hope, thanks to a U.N. human rights body, for a solution to the diplomatic asylum of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, holed up in the embassy of Ecuador in London for the past two and a half years.
Authorities in Sweden, which is seeking the Australian journalist’s extradition to face allegations of sexual assault, admitted there is a possibility that measures could be taken to jumpstart the stalled legal proceedings against Assange.
The head of Assange’s legal defence team, former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, told IPS that in relation to this case “we have expressed satisfaction that the Swedish state“ has accepted the proposals of several countries.
Britain was sprinkled with the white stuff this morning, leading to an assault of pictures on our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds. Even London was dusted, and clearly tormented people of the capital dutifully documented the magical white wonderland before them.
Starting Monday, thousands of Croatia's poorest citizens will benefit from an unusual gift: They will have their debts wiped out. Named "fresh start," the government scheme aims to help some of the 317,000 Croatians whose bank accounts have been blocked due to their debts.
The Labour Party supports austerity in England but opposes it in Scotland.
It's passages like this that make me hope that my child never falls in love with a centrist. "Purity" is bad, "pragmatism" is good–the latter defined as inherently in the center. Is the centrist position that acknowledges the catastrophic effects of global warming while expanding the extraction of fossil fuels really pragmatic? Or decrying the concentration of wealth while proposing policies that will do almost nothing to counteract it?
What's wrong is that there was no "Venezuelan nuclear bomb plot," and the scientist in question, Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, didn't offer Venezuela anything. What Mascheroni was convicted of was telling undercover FBI agents, who were pretending to work for Venezuela, that he could give them nuclear weapons secrets. In real life, Venezuela had nothing to do with it.
Google, Microsoft and Amazon have paid Eyeo a significant sum of money to be automatically whitelisted in Adblock Plus
Internet giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola have reportedly paid AdBlock Plus to allow their ads to pass through its filter software.
The confidential deals were confirmed by the Financial Times, the paper reported today.
Eyeo GmbH, the German startup behind Adblock Plus, said it did not wish to comment.
Two suburban Wisconsin lawmakers have unveiled an economic development plan for the lowest-income neighborhoods of Milwaukee, and their "solutions" for the Wisconsin communities hit hardest by deindustrialization come directly from a national right-wing playbook.
Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) represent two of the wealthiest districts in Wisconsin and have no background in economic development, yet have proposed at 23-page plan targeting the majority-minority communities with the highest unemployment rates in the state -- and have done so without consulting any of the elected officials who actually represent the area.
As we've been covering, the cable and broadcast industry's response to the shift toward Internet video appears to be a three-staged affair. Stage one was largely denial, with cable and broadcast executives either mocking (or denying the existence of) cord cutters, while going out of their way to try and ignore any data disproving their beliefs. Stage two is a one-two punch of desperately trying to milk a dying cash cow (like endless price hikes) while pretending to be innovative by offering largely uninteresting walled-garden services like TV Everywhere.
It's not a terribly hard cartoon to parse: Islam is the modern equivalent of Nazism, and threatens a new Holocaust. The cartoon lists entities that have nothing in common with each other aside from their connection to Islam–political movements like Hezbollah and Hamas, who have been the targets of far more violence than they are responsible for, along with groups like ISIS and Boko Haram, terrorist groups whose victims are primarily Muslim. Hezbollah and ISIS are actually engaged in intense warfare with each other.
In case you missed the point, the cartoon puts one of the holiest phrases in Islam–"Allah Akbar," or "God is great"–in the mouth of a Nazi skeleton.
We've been noting how the trend du jour among news outlets has been to not only kill off your community comments section, but to proudly proclaim you're doing so because you really value conversation. It's of course understandable that many writers and editors don't feel motivated to wade into the often heated comment section to interact with their audience. It's also understandable if a company doesn't want to spend the money to pay someone to moderate comments. But if you do decide to reduce your community's ability to engage, do us all a favor and don't pretend it's because you really adore talking to your audience.
David Cameron’s proposals to limit the use of end-to-end encryption technology in the UK are “absurd” according to Phil Zimmermann, creator of the email encryption software, PGP, and now president of secure communications firm Silent Circle.
There's no playbook for leaking evidence of state and corporate wrongdoing. But with the uptick in whistleblower prosecutions by the US government, there probably should be.
For now, studying past whistleblowers, from Daniel Ellsberg to Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, is a good place to start. Some whistleblowers, like former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake and former US Department of Justice ethics adviser Jesselyn Radack (now Snowden's lawyer), have shown themselves willing to offer instruction.
Drake and Radack, who appeared at the Berlin Transmediale festival's CAPTURE ALL event to discuss the documentary Silenced, spoke to me about the challenges facing future whistleblowers and journalists. While they didn't lay out a precise playbook, they did offer advice on how whistleblowers and journalists can better protect themselves.
For Radack, it starts with understanding the Espionage Act. While the 1917 law was initially designed to protect against spies, not whistleblowers, the US government has taken to claiming that the leaking of classified information is equivalent of espionage. Espionage Act prosecutions under President Obama, in Radack's estimation, have created a “backdoor war on journalists” and an “unofficial way to create an official secrets act,” which exists in the United Kingdom but not in the US. Educating whistleblowers and the journalists who work with them is of the utmost importance to Radack.
The political fallout of WikiLeaks has passed, but the fury of law enforcement has not. More than four years after the organization published a trove of U.S. diplomatic cables, federal agents continue to wage a secret legal campaign to put the screws to those responsible.
This month, a new twist to the story emerged as lawyers for WikiLeaks accused Google of betraying its users by secretly turning over their communications to the Justice Department. Google shot back that it did all that it could, but the government stifled the company with gag orders.
The dispute suggests someone is not telling the truth but, at a deeper level, points to the problem of secret rabbit holes in the U.S. justice system that obscure the existence of criminal investigations.
Citing a fundamental right to privacy, travel and association, The Rutherford Institute has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to prohibit police from gaining unfettered access to motel and hotel guest registries. In an amicus curiae brief filed in City of Los Angeles v. Patel, et al., Rutherford Institute attorneys are asking the Court to declare unconstitutional a Los Angeles ordinance that allows police to inspect private hotel and motel records containing information about the persons who are staying there without a warrant or other judicial review. The Institute’s brief argues that the ordinance, which is similar to laws on the books in cities across the nation, flies in the face of historical protections affording hotel guests privacy in regards to their identities and comings-and-goings and burdens the fundamental rights of travel and association, which the Court has long safeguarded from arbitrary government scrutiny.
I've been a big Facebook supporter - one of the first users in my social group who championed what a great way it was to stay in touch, way back in 2006. I got my mum and brothers on it, and around 20 other people. I've even taught Facebook marketing in one of the UK's biggest tech education projects, Digital Business Academy. I'm a techie and a marketer -- so I can see the implications -- and until now, they hadn't worried me. I've been pretty dismissive towards people who hesitate with privacy concerns.
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Facebook has always been slightly worse than all the other tech companies with dodgy privacy records, but now, it's in it's own league. Getting off isn't just necessary to protect yourself, it's necessary to protect your friends and family too. This could be the point of no return -- but it's not too late to take back control.
This kind of request is not unique to Canada. Some European countries also won’t allow certain types of data to leave the country. However, Canada has been open about using technology from the United States in the past, so a Canada-only request is unusual.
Michael Hayden, the former CIA and NSA director, has revealed what most people already suspected -- to him, the Constitution is a document that he can rewrite based on his personal beliefs at any particular time, as noted by Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic.
A RECENT PUSH to get the incorrigible so-called Snoopers' Charter into law has been stopped, freeing the UK, probably only briefly, from the threat of choke-strength communications monitoring.
British politicians keep trying to sneak the Snoopers’ Charter into law – even when it is obvious that the last thing you need when looking for a neeedle in a haystack is more hay
The Federal Bureau of Investigation put Anonymous hacker Jeremy Hammond on a secret terrorist watchlist, according to confidential records obtained by the Daily Dot.
The records further reveal how the FBI treats cybercrimes and shines a rare light on the expanding definitions of terrorism used by U.S. law enforcement agencies.
The United Nations' highest court on Tuesday ruled that neither Croatia nor Serbia committed genocide against each other's populations during the Balkan wars that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Peter Tomka, president of the International Court of Justice, said many crimes had been committed by both countries' forces during the conflict, but that the intent to commit genocide — by "destroying a population in whole or in part" — had not been proven against either country.
Portugal is to introduce a law granting citizenship rights to the descendants of Jews it persecuted 500 years ago, following Spain’s adoption of similar legislation last year.
Cabinet spokesman Luís Marques Guedes said changes to the nationality law would provide dual citizenship rights for Sephardic Jews, the term commonly used for those who once lived in the Iberian peninsula.
The rights will apply to those who can demonstrate a “traditional connection” to Portuguese Sephardic Jews, such as through “family names, family language and direct or collateral ancestry”.
Ross Ulbricht's lawyers began his defense case today, and it promises to be a short one—very short.
The half hour or so of testimony today, which included three character witnesses, will be combined with an estimated hour of direct testimony tomorrow. Unless something surprising happens, closing arguments will take place tomorrow afternoon.
The government has spent ten days laying out its case that Ulbricht is the mastermind behind the Silk Road drug-trafficking website; he could face life in prison if convicted.
Ulbricht will not be testifying on his own behalf. That decision was put off by Ulbricht and his lawyers until today, but US District Judge Katherine Forrest asked Ulbricht about it directly after testimony finished today.
The Mannerheim League for Child Welfare says it receives a constant stream of questions from schools and parents about how to handle increasing internet use by children and youth. One school in the eastern city of Kuopio has tried to intervene in late-night messaging and internet bullying.
“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck,” Malcolm said. “Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”
If you haven’t heard, the FCC has officially defined broadband Internet service as 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up. This is more than six times the previous standard of 4Mbps down and represents a major shift in how the Internet is regarded by the U.S. government.
Frankly, the 3Mbps upstream minimum is still too low, but the 25Mbps downstream is adequate. This means that suddenly, many Americans no longer have broadband Internet access — and realistically, they haven’t in any way but name for many years now.
A new Federal Communications Commission proposal expected this week has the potential to be a game-changer in the debate over net neutrality.
The Wall Street Journal adopted the language of net neutrality critics to describe the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) net neutrality proposal, deeming the new potential rules an "intrusive regulation."
On January 30, the FCC announced that it would "introduce and vote on new proposed net neutrality rules in February." Although the official proposal has yet to be released, according to The Huffington Post, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler "suggested that Internet service... should be regulated like any other public utility."
The debate of a whether net neutrality should be a thing in the US has been going on for over a decade now. There is a clear rift between what the public wants and what the service providers want; ISP oppose net neutrality and any regulation whereas the public want a neutral net.
It has long been evident that TAFTA/TTIP is not a traditional trade agreement -- that is, one that seeks to promote trade by removing discriminatory local tariffs on imported goods and services. That's simply because the tariffs between the US and EU are already very low -- under 3% on average. Removing all those will produce very little change in trading patterns. The original justification for TTIP recognized this, and called for "non-tariff barriers" to be removed as well.
Homeland Security's Immigration & Customs Enforcement group (ICE) has a history of seizing stuff without understanding even the most basic concepts around intellectual property. After all, these are the same meatheads who seized some blogs for alleged copyright infringement, and then had to return some of them over a year later, after they realized it was a mistake. ICE also has a history of using big sporting events to kiss up to the multi-billion dollar sports organizations by shutting down small businesses, protecting Americans from unlicensed underwear. And, of course, what bigger sporting event is there than the Super Bowl. Every year they make a bunch of seizures related to the Superbowl, and this year was no different.
The first of those things is that the copyright industry had a medical case of severe rectocranial inversion when they made the sloppy business assumption that an unlicensed copy of a movie or a piece of music was equivalent to a lost sale.
The second of those things is that it wouldn’t have mattered even if it were true (which it wasn’t), because no industry gets to eliminate fundamental civil liberties like the private letter, completely regardless of whether the continued existence of civil liberties means they can make money or not.
So we of the net generation knew all along that the copyright industry was not only wrong and stupid, but also that their assertion was – or should have been – irrelevant in the first place.
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So the copyright industry has successfully lobbied for laws that ban people from sharing and discussing interesting things in private, and done so from the sloppiest conceivable of false business assumptions. As a result of this dimwitted business sense combined with diehard foolhardiness, we’re left with nowhere to talk or walk in private.