When I stated that the Year of the Linux desktop has already happened, I am speaking about hundreds of individual school-age students who use their Linux computers for day to day work. To our Reglue kids, Linux is a way of life. It is the way they access their computers and hence, the world.
But in the larger sense, in the sense that it will become a household product like Microsoft Windows, I think we all know we’ve lost that war. We were screwed from the gate, as far as ever seeing a competitive version of Linux in the market place goes. Why? Whew, them be lots of reasons.
If you are working with Linux and, like me, want to explore all of the desktop options of a distro, you’ll wind up downloading an endless list of disk images. I find this both mildly annoying and quite time consuming and apparently so do other people. Much to my pleasure, a small team (Milan Rajcic, Zeljko Popivoda, Erich Eickmeyer, and Milos Mladenovic) decided to do something about it. They created the Linux AIO project.
The company is putting a major stake in the ground in support of Apache Spark, the high-speed analytics and machine-learning engine that is the hottest thing in Big Data right now. IBM said it will embed Spark into all of of its analytics and ecommerce platforms, commit more than 3,500 researchers and developers to work on Spark-related projects and open-source its SystemML machine learning technology for plug a key hole in the Spark technology stack. It will also offer courses to train more than one million data scientists and engineers to use Spark.
Just as IBM put Linux on the commercial open-source operating system (OS) map, it plans to do the same thing with Apache's Spark platform — promising to educate more than one million data-scientists and -engineers as well as to build Spark into its analytics and commerce platforms, according to keynote speaker Beth Smith, General Manager of Analytics Platforms at IBM, at the Spark Summit 2015 (June 15-to-17, San Francisco).
What should be an emerging market for the classic PC is instead an emerging market for smartphones and tablets. The poor, newbies, youth, and consumers don’t need the bloat of Wintel, folks. The markets are speaking because people have a choice in IT these days, thanks to */Linux and ARM.
Linux is widely used in the majority of the world’s most critical infrastructure, especially in the military and banking andfinance sectors. Ninety-eight percent of the world’s supercomputers run Linux and open source software so the value and performance is irrefutable. So our thinking was centered around bringing the same functionality, serviceability, affordability, reliability, security, agility and flexibility to businesses across the globe so that they, too, can benefit from Linux without the traditional barriers to entry. Luckily innovation in the cloud helps us see this reality come true.
Dell is making sure that everyone knows that they are selling Ubuntu-powered laptops, and the company is now promoting them on Twitter, with a limited offer for the new Inspiron 14 3000 Series.
In particular, Linux has seen solid growth with a 15.9 per cent year-on-year increase in shipments in Q1 2015.
Eckhardt Fischer, research analyst of European infrastructure at IDC, said: "Linux continues to make positive strides in Western Europe, and its reported 15.9 per cent year-on-year growth in Q1 2015 can be attributed to higher levels of attraction seen by this OS in cloud, HPC, and Big Data scenarios."
If you asked me to name the hottest enterprise tech startup right now, I would have to say it’s Docker. The startup’s open-source container technology has become a hit among developers, and several major tech companies have moved to integrate with it.
When Docker announced its $95 million funding round in April, PitchBook told VentureBeat in an email that it had a $1.07 billion post-money valuation. Now the startup has plenty of money to spend.
Local price hikes from major vendors failed to blow the strengthening EMEA server market off course in the first quarter of 2105, according to IDC.
Looking at the market in euros, EMEA reported very strong year-on-year revenue growth (29,2%) in 1Q15, but a weakening euro has had a negative impact on some vendors that have been forced to adopt new pricing structures in Europe as the euro continues to depreciate against the dollar.
Dell will now offer Pluribus’ Open Netvisor Linux operating system on its S6000-ON and S-4048-ON 10G/40G switches. This is an addition to the Cumulus Networks, Big Switch Networks, Midokura and VMware packages Dell already supports on those switches.
In May, Linux overlord Linus Torvalds warned that his holiday might delay the release of Linux 4.1.
That scenario's now come to pass, with the benevolent dictator of the penguin palace posting that he's off on his vacation.
Linux Weekly News had a write-up in their Weekly Edition last week... of Lennart Poettering's talk (Containers with systemd) at LinuxCon Japan 2015. That article should be available freely later this week... but I found a recording of what appears to be the same talk at a different event from April 2015.
Nvidia has published details about the immediate availability of an updated proprietary video driver for GNU/Linux operating systems, Nvidia 352.21, the long-lived branch version.
The latest talk is that Imagination Technologies may be developing an open-source Linux graphics driver for their PowerVR hardware.
Work on the new OpenGL Transmission Format was mentioned in the EETimes. The report should be accurate given that it comes from the Khronos President, Neil Trevett. Additionally, I found out about this report as it came along this morning from the official Khronos.org news feed.
Earlier this month Catalyst 15.5 was released for Linux as the first official Linux graphics driver update since last December when Catalyst 14.12 was released (sans the special fglrx driver packaged by Canonical for Ubuntu 15.04). As discussed by users in our forums and elsewhere, Catalyst 15.5 does offer better performance for certain OpenGL workloads compared to the earlier driver, but the gains aren't universal.
NVIDIA released the 352.21 Linux driver today as the latest release in their 352.xx driver series.
While it's coming a bit behind schedule, Mesa 10.6 has been released today as the newest version of the user-space, open-source graphics drivers for Linux and other platforms. Officially only OpenGL 3.3 support is there, but many OpenGL 4.x extensions were implemented over the past three months.
After three months of hard work, the development team behind the Mesa 3D Graphics Library has had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the final version of Mesa 10.6.0.
Just over a decade ago, I took the reigns on a Fedora package called gnome-theme-clearlooks-bigpack. Among other niceties, it had many color themes and Cairo-enabled widgets for the Clearlooks (now Adwaita) GTK+ theme engine. But there was one and only one reason I took it: The Cairo_Curve theme.
This theme was a very smooth and rounded (thank you, Cairo rendering) but otherwise faithful reproduction of the Bluecurve color scheme and design philosophy (whether written or not) of just being simple and easy on the eyes for long periods of time. As you can imagine, this is great for people like myself who are using their systems for many hours at a time every day. As someone who used it on a daily basis, when it was orphaned I could not simply let it go unmanaged.
I had a presentation to make and while LaTeX and Beamer make it very easy to make multi-monitor presentations with notes and so on, I couldn't find a PDF viewer for Linux that would project the files correctly. Evince doesn't seem to have the feature, and none of the other ones I tried had it either. After some looking, I found pdfpc. It works really well and is actively developed. Take a look at the website here. I've packaged it for Fedora already but haven't submitted a review ticket yet. While I do, and the new package ticket is reviewed and the package installable from the Fedora repositories, you can get it from the copr repository here.
Is the default image viewer in your desktop environment just not working the way you want? need more features (or maybe something simpler) from an image viewer? Well, you are in luck, as there is no shortage of choices when looking at alternative image viewers in Fedora. This article covers 17 image viewers in Fedora.
Typically, an image viewer does one thing — shows you the images in a directory (sometimes in a thumbnail view), and lets you quickly flip through them. Some image viewers also allow you do simple edits of an image, and will also show you some added details of your pictures (like metadata, and color histograms).
The development team behind the upcoming Vivaldi cross-platform web browser for GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X operating systems has announced the release of a new snapshot, which includes many improvements in various areas, as well as a new gray skin.
Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions was originally released in November of last year and was a day one Linux port thanks to Aspyr. This large content update was released in April on other platforms and for one reason or another we were left waiting until now.
Fallout 4 is the latest installment in the Fallout franchise, and it's developed by Bethesda. The launch date has been set for November 10, 2015, and users are already asking for a Linux version. I think that we can safely assume that it's not happening.
The Steam Monster Summer Sale Day 5 is here, and more Linux games have been discounted. Each new day of sales has brought us more Linux titles for our collections, and the same can be said about the current offering.
Space Drifters 2D is a new minimalist top-down space shooter developed and published on Steam by Matthew Coyle. The developer also covered the Linux platform.
The latest Steam Summer sale is a pretty massive one, and it's very difficult to keep track of everything that's promoted and see how long the discounts will last. This is where the excellent SteamDB sales tracker comes into play.
Guild Software published a few days ago details about a new update for their awesome Vendetta Online 3D space combat massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Android, and iOS operating systems.
Last Friday, Dota 2 - Reborn Beta has been announced, which will not only get a completely new user interface, but will also be powered by the new Steam-Engine "Source 2", which will finally be replacing the 10 years old game engine "Source".
No matter if you're using a GNU/Linux operating system for some time now or you’ve just started discovering the wonderful and diverse world of Open Source technologies, you will eventually find out that the choices are overwhelming.
The Skrooge Team announces the release 2.0.0 version of its popular Personal Finances Manager based on KDE Frameworks.
I found out about Krita when I bought a graphic tablet and I was looking for an appropriate drawing tool.
While the current stable release of the F-Spot open-source photo manager is almost five years old, the software remains under development and a student participating in this year's Google Summer of Code is hoping to finish porting it to the GTK3 tool-kit.
Aside from larger items on my list like the previously covered Initial Setup experience, I am also working on a lot of smaller items in Polari. After finishing the GNOME 3.16 release video, I have been submitting small patches to Polari with great assistance from Florian.
Cinnamon, one the default desktops of Linux Mint (alongside Mate) has recently been updated. Version 2.6 has a boatload of fixes, tweaks and improvements.
Clement Lefebvre has published earlier today, June 14, details about the eighth maintenance version of the stable Cinnamon 2.6 open-source desktop environment for the upcoming Linux Mint 17.2 (Rafaela) operating system.
antiX has one of the most well-stocked settings menus of any Xfce desktop I have used. Actually, it has two. One is for system tools, and the other is for system settings. You scroll down the alphabetical listing to find just what you need. However, if you prefer the Control Panel approach to corralling all of the settings in one spot with large icons serving as launch buttons, it is there.
My point is that people who are likely to enjoy Chromebooks and use their computers almost solely for accessing the web will probably find Chromixium quite useful. However, while it is technically possible to access more features and off-line software through Chromixium's application menu, the process is slow and awkward when compared with other desktop Linux distributions. Granted, Chromixium is still in its early stages, it just hit version 1.0, so the standalone features will probably improve in time. For now, I think Chromixium offers an interesting web-focused environment with the fallback option of using locally installed applications. The implementation has some rough edges at the moment, but I suspect it will get better in future releases.
On June 15, Yann Le Doaré was more than happy to announce the release of his independently developed and lightweight LinuxConsole 2.4 Linux kernel-based operating system.
Yesterday a new lightweight hypervisor for OS X was released called xhyve; if you are familiar with qemu-kvm on Linux, it provides a roughly similar experience. In this post we are going to show how to run CoreOS Linux under xhyve. While this is all very early and potentially buggy tech, we want to give you some tips on how to try CoreOS Linux with xhyve and run Docker or rkt on top.
OpenELEC, the embedded operating system built specifically to run the KODI (XBMC) media player hub, has just received an update for the new 6.0 branch, and it brings it a little bit closer to the stable version.
If you are a Linux desktop user, you probably have a favorite distribution. Sticking to one distro is a good option, as it is generally less stressful and easier to master. With that said, however, some people are distro hoppers; constantly trying new Linux-based operating systems. This can be fun too, but the downside is that you are in a constant state of change -- a solid foundation has its benefits.
A new stable update for Manjaro has been released: Manjaro 0.8.13. Manjaro 0.8.13 is the latest version in the ever popular operating system based on Arch-Linux. The development team took its time with this release, which is powered by Plasma 5.3.1, Xfce4.12, KDE Apps 15.04.1, and KDE Frameworks5.10.0. The four months of development seem justified after taking a look at all the changes and improvements this branch underwent.
On Thursday, RedHat ran a Microservices Architecture Development Day in London, aimed at demonstrating a set of open-source tools that can be combined to provide a microservice architecture. With Kubernetes being demonstrated to orchestrate Docker containers that are running Fabric8 and Apache Camel routes, along with logging and metrics, the combined presentation was a great introduction to the tools and techniques that are useful in building a distributed application.
The largest distributor of open-source enterprise Linux products, Red Hat (RHT), is due to announce its first quarter fiscal 2015 results on Thursday. While some investors have remained skeptical regarding whether RHT can maintain the strong momentum it has shown over the past few quarters, there are good reasons to believe that the company is on the right track and can continue to exceed investor expectations.
Red Hat CEO JIm Whitehurst and his wife Lauren have made a crucial donation to SoarTriangle, an organization donated to help female entrepreneurs secure funding for startup ventures. Mrs. Whitehurst also is involved with the group as a principal.
In the past week I started working on the Question and Answer page of AskFedora according to my mockups. I followed a mobile first approach in coding the web page and you can view it here at my Openshift instance - http://askfedoratest-anuradhaw.rhcloud.com/
Recently Fedora developer and all-around good gal Máirín Duffy has been working on what she calls “The Fundamental Theorem of Developing FLOSS“. Inspired by what she called “opinionated non-doers”, this is an attempt to catalogue the sorts of behaviors a FLOSS developer should expect. Most of the entries revolve around change, particularly the addition or removal of features.
Fedora 22 was released recently and it has been a rock solid release. However, systems with Pre-Sandybridge era, Intel-based graphics solutions have seen some issues. For example, an Intel 4 series motherboard with G41 chipset and GMA X4500 graphics might produce a display like this screenshot on Fedora 22 :
Canonical has just released the fourth major update for Ubuntu Touch, and it marks the switch to a new Ubuntu 15.04 base, not to mention the fact that it comes with new features and improvements.
Full shell rotation on Ubuntu Touch is now a little bit closer to land on everyone's phones after the feature made its way onto the latest rc-proposed image for the mobile operating system.
Canonical's Snappy Ubuntu Core development team has started reporting the new features and changes that have been implemented lately in the operating system for Internet of Things.
Canonical has published earlier a new security notice for all of its supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, informing users that a Linux kernel vulnerability has been patched, urging them to update their systems as soon as possible.
After announcing the release of the Cinnamon 2.6.8 desktop environment earlier today for the upcoming Linux Mint 17.2 (Rafaela) operating system, it would appear that Clement Lefebvre already published the ISO images of the Release Candidate (RC) version on the main servers.
Two weeks after the announcement of the Beta version of the upcoming Mangaka Nyu Linux distribution for anime and manga fans, based on Ubuntu, Animesoft International has released the RC (Release Candidate) version.
Inforce Computing has announced a major upgrade to its 100 x 70mm, Linux- and Android-friendly, Pico-ITX form factor IFC6410 single board computer, which it introduced in 2013 to showcase Qualcomm’s quad-core, 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 system-on-chip. The S4 Pro, which is more commonly known as the Snapdragon 600, stays put on the new Inforce 6410Plus SBC, along with the previous 2GB of DDR3 RAM, 4GB of eMMC flash, and $143 price. However you get new MIPI interfaces, a beefier 12V power supply, a new GPS radio, and a shorter 16mm profile, and a new expansion connector aimed at robotics and IoT applications.
CompuLab’s three Linux-friendly x86 COM Express modules include a Type 6 COM with 5th Gen Core CPUs and Type 10 COMs with Atom E3800 and AMD G-Series SoCs.
What is an Arduino? Maybe you've heard of it, or seen a project built with one. But what is that little piece of open hardware, and what exactly does it do?
Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative open source project developing a common, Linux-based software stack for the connected car, has announced availability of the AGL Requirements Specification 1.0. It’s the industry’s first open in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) software specification that allows automakers and suppliers to collaborate directly with AGL’s global community of developers and advance the creation of a de facto reference platform for the connected car.
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY), (TSE:BB) is, according to rumors breaking in recent days, going to put Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Android on a new smartphone. There are mixed feelings about the story on Wall Street. Some feel that jumping to Google’s popular Android OS could save the firm, while others feel the move shows Blackberry is in “dire straits.”
Android is no longer just an operating system you choose to get on your smartphone or tablet. The industry is evolving and welcoming new platforms, form factors and applications. You can now even opt to get Android Auto with your car!
If BlackBerry is looking to experiment and make an Android phone, it makes sense to try it out on the mass market.
Wireless carrier Verizon is letting Motorola Droid Turbo users in the US get a feel of how the Android 5.1 (Lollipop) OS update will look and feel on their smartphones.
Once one of the slowest to update its Android handsets, Samsung is leading the pack with Android 5.1.1. The company is pushing the latest software update to its flagship Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones.
All very convenient and in the interests of consumers planning to leap to iPhone or iPad. But while it’s built an app that concludes by telling you that your Android device can be be recycled at your nearest Apple Store, the company won’t tolerate the equivalent any time soon.
Gaming accessory maker Razer has acquired Android game console maker Ouya. Rumors had suggested Ouya was looking for a buyer, and recently we’d heard that Razer was close to reaching a deal to acquire the company.
Following much clamor on the part of Android users — and keeping its promise — Adobe has launched four Creative Cloud apps on the Google Play store.
Now that the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge have become the first devices with software updates not directly handled by Google to get Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, you may be wondering when this version of the OS will land on other phones.
And before you have a chance, yes, that is a screenshot of the iOS version. I just wanted a pretty picture for the article. I'm sorry. Now, back to the news! If you've been keeping an eye on E3 the last 24 hours, you probably heard something about Fallout Something Or Other For Mobile, or more accurately, Fallout Shelter - Bethesda's new vault-builder game for mobile devices. It's out on iOS now, and it's super fun. You can expect our review of it later this week.
An update to Android M for most Android devices has been confirmed for later this year, likely around October or November, and Google’s even released it early as a developer preview or beta for the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and the Nexus Player. And while updating to the latest M release may be tempting, there are a few reasons why you should skip the Android M developer preview release.
Have you been using Android Lollipop and are ready for what's next for the platform? Get ready, there's some serious improvements in store. Jack Wallen takes a look at what's coming for Android "M."
These days, smartphones and tablets have all but overtaken the PC in terms of user adoption. Even those folks who own desktop PCs usually spend far more time in front of their smart phones or tablets.
This reflects my experience as well, since I do most of my work from an Android tablet when I'm not at home. In this article, I'll explain how common mobile users such as myself are able to substitute their PC with Android devices when access to a desktop PC isn't available.
There is a civic hacker in you! He or she is in there... I promise! Today, technology has evolved into a perfect storm of open source tools, code, social networks, and lots of data. Civic technologists thrive on all of these getting together with like-minded hackers and turning all these sources into useful applications, websites and visualizations.
Jen Krieger used her first computer in the early 80s and maintained a strong interest in technology ever since. She started her career as a financial analyst and eventually moved into IT where she gained expertise in software development and releases. Jen has worked with many development methods, from waterfall to Agile.
The Open Source Initiative€® (OSI) announced today that Associazione LibreItalia, a non-profit organization working to reduce the digital divide and tear down barriers to digital citizenship throughout Italy, has joined the internationally recognized steward of open source as an Affiliate Member.
If you have been burnt by the decline of the organic reach of your Facebook pages, you may consider trying something different, although of course it’s hard to replace a website that has become such an integral part of our lives.
The presentations are conducted in German, so it's mainly interesting for German people. There are several OpenStack and also Ceph related talks on the schedule, including a work shop on Ceph. As far as I know there are still tickets available for the conference.
With open-source cloud endeavours, it’s not so much a question of maturity as it is figuring out which offering is the best fit for your organisation. As Amanda McPherson, chief marketing officer at the Linux Foundation points out, “Open source and collaboration are clearly advancing the cloud faster than ever before. Just consider the many OpenStack distributions and ecosystem emerging around Linux containers that didn’t even exist a year ago. Yet, as the open source cloud evolves so quickly, it can sometimes be difficult for enterprises to identify the technologies that best fit their needs.”
If a new stack is to take root in the modern enterprise, then something has to give. Not only must an old infrastructure make room for a new way of work, but the new stack must open itself up to the prospect of interoperability and co-existence with something that, at least in our frame of reference, is no longer new.
It’s no secret that OpenStack is becoming the de-facto standard for private cloud...
Datto, a company that offers data backup and recovery solutions are teaming up ownCloud which will allow Datto customers to securely sync and share enterprise files. Initially the ownCloud secure file sync and share capabilities will come to Datto’s SIRIS product line.
The central role of the open-source movement in analytics rose back to the surface last week after LinkedIn Inc. released another one of its internally-developed data crunching technologies under a free license to help promote emerging use cases. And in particular, performing real-time business intelligence at the kind of scale where the traditional databases typically used for the task fall short.
Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) won't experience a risk any time soon from open-source software vendors, an analyst said Monday.
Deutsche Bank's Karl Keirstead said vendors, like privately held MongoDB Inc., "don't represent a near-term threat" to Oracle, which is set to post results Wednesday.
Bloomberg recently reported how Oracle is heavily leaning on its existing customers as it sees a slump in new product sales. Not just the smaller companies, big players are also moving away from fancy products with big price tags and choosing open source software. As open source becomes increasingly reliable, the threat looms large for Oracle and the likes. The report shows that Oracle's sales of new software licenses have declined for seven straight quarters compared with the same period a year earlier. It heavily relies on revenue from update and maintenance contracts more than from new business.
Apple announced last week that its Swift programming language — a currently fully proprietary software successor to Objective C — will probably be partially released under an OSI-approved license eventually. Apple explicitly stated though that such released software will not be copylefted. (Apple's pathological hatred of copyleft is reasonably well documented.) Apple's announcement remained completely silent on patents, and we should expect the chosen non-copyleft license will not contain a patent grant. (I've explained at great length in the past why software patents are a particularly dangerous threat to programming language infrastructure.)
Let me get this straight, Apple: you send me an e-mail outlining the terms under which you will redistribute my content, and you will just assume that I agree to your terms unless I opt out?
This makes typical clickwrap EULA nonsense look downright reasonable by comparison. You're going to consider me bound to terms you just declared to me in an e-mail as long as I don't respond? That's completely crazy. You don't even know if I received the e-mail!
I'm conflicted about this. On one hand, the whole reason I have an RSS feed for this blog is to make it easy to access it in a variety of ways. The RSS feed exists precisely so it can be used by programs like this, which take the content and display it to the user. I don't like the idea of showing ads next to my content in this situation, but I'm pretty sure I have no right to control that. If I didn't want people taking my blog and putting it in an app and showing it to people that way, I wouldn't have a feed.
On the other hand, Apple isn't just taking my feed and displaying it. They're shoving terms and conditions at me, and unilaterally assuming that I agree to them unless I take explicit steps to respond and say that I don't.
Robyn Bergeron makes life awesome for people participating in the Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana communities. Passionate about improving ease of development and deployment of infrastructure and applications, she tirelessly advocates for end-users of open source projects, which why her current title is Operations Advocate at Elastic.
She has been a sysadmin, program manager, and business analyst, and has an ongoing role as mother of two stellar kids. Her most recent gig was as the Fedora Project Leader at Red Hat, where she herded cats through several releases of the Linux distribution.
The open-source model for biopharma R&D yields better results when it comes to late-stage success, according to a new report released by Deloitte at this week’s BIO convention in Philadelphia. Collaboration, even with competitors, helps usher a drug into successful development.
On March 11, 2013 New York State launched open.ny.gov which is dedicated to increasing public access to data. The state hopes to spark innovation, foster research, provide economic opportunities, and increase public participation in state government. Officials hope this increase in transparency will better inform decision making throughout the state.
Facebook’s Open Compute Project (OCP) has upended the data-center computer-hardware in just four years. How did it get so far so quickly?
The Node.js open source project and its fork, io.js, have decided to kiss and make up, with the aid and support of the Linux Foundation.
Node.js is an open-source, OS-agnostic runtime environment that allows developers to write server-side web applications using JavaScript.
The French Ministry of Ecology declared a ban on the use of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide in the nation's nurseries and garden centers Sunday, citing the previous UN classification of the chemical glyphosate as "possibly carcinogenic."
The company that sells itself on securing your password has messed up (my language is possibly too strong) and lost some of your data. Luckily user’s master passwords was not part of the compromised data, despite this they are warning users of the service of the attack and have suggested users change their password immediately and wherever else it may have been used.
The aggressive SSHPsychos botnet that struck the Internet last summer at one point accounted for more than a third of all global SSH traffic until it was sinkholed, Level 3 Communications has detailed in its latest quarterly report.
The latest security update for OpenSSL cryptographic library includes a fix for a vulnerability that permits a threat actor to weaken the encryption mechanism that secures communication between two parties.
A June 13 New York Times article about the pope's forthcoming climate change encyclical failed to follow leading Times staffers' recommendations by using the term "climate skeptic" to refer to those who blatantly deny established climate science.
The Times article stated that the Vatican's stance on climate change has "rankled ... climate change skeptics, who have suggested that Francis is being misled by scientists[.]" It added that "a group of self-described climate skeptics, led by the Heartland Institute" organized a protest of the Vatican's position in Rome, and described Marc Morano, a member of the Heartland delegation to Rome, as a former "aide to Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and climate change skeptic."
It’s no secret that the American middle class has been on the ropes for a while now. The problem isn’t just a crippling recession and an economic “recovery” that has mostly gone to the richest one percent, but the larger shifting of wealth from the middle to the very top that’s taken place since the late ‘70s. Add in things like the dismantling of unions that has accelerated apace since Ronald Reagan crushed the air-traffic controllers, and we’ve seen the middle class more solid in places like Canada, Germany, and Scandinavia, and begin to grow in a number of nations even while it shrinks here. Economists like Thomas Piketty thinks the process is inevitable with global capitalism, while others – the equally wise Joseph Stiglitz, for example – think the balance can be restored if we can find the political will.
The Rupert Murdoch controlled Sunday Times of London finds itself embroiled in controversy today, over both a front page article that appeared in the paper yesterday and a related DMCA Notice it issued against the U.S. based political website The Intercept.
The Sunday Times article, with the headline “British Spies Betrayed to Russian and Chinese,” carries the byline of Tom Harper, Richard Kerbaj and Tim Shipman and expands on a news story spreading across the UK on the pulling of some intelligence operators from Russia and China by the UK government over fears that they might have been compromised by information leaked by Edward Snowden.
This article prompted an article published last night on The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald: “The Sunday Time’ Snowden Story is Journalism at It’s Worst — and Filled With Falsehoods.”
The Intercept article, which attempts to detail alleged inaccuracies in The Sunday Times article, has prompted Times Newspapers Ltd., the owner of the Times, to circle the wagons and issue a DMCA takedown notice in the U.S. The notice indicates that The Times takes exception to the posting of a photograph of yesterday’s Times front page, as well the inclusion of a handful of quotes from the Times article — all of which would appear to be covered under U.S. “fair use” copyright provisions.
After 2.5 years of operations the Mega cloud storage service has published its first transparency report. Aimed at inspiring confidence in how the company deals with complaints and protects privacy, the document reveals that Mega takes content down faster than Google and a maximum of 0.165% of users have been suspended.
None of it was true, but it was part of a concerted effort by administration officials to smear Ellsberg as a "Soviet spy" and a "traitor" when all he really did was blow the whistle on things by sharing documents with reporters.
Does that sound familiar? Over the weekend, a big story supposedly broke in the UK's the Sunday Times, citing anonymous UK officials arguing that the Russians and Chinese got access to all the Snowden documents and it had created all sorts of issues, including forcing the UK to remove undercover "agents" from Russia. That story is behind a paywall, but plenty of people have made the text available if you'd like to read the whole thing.
There are all sorts of problems with the report that make it not just difficult to take seriously, but which actually raise a lot more questions about what kind of "reporting" the Sunday Times actually does. It's also worth noting that this particular story comes out just about a week or so after Jason Leopold revealed some of the details of the secret plan to discredit Snowden that was hatched in DC. Even so, the journalism here is beyond shoddy, getting key facts flat out incorrect, allowing key sources to remain anonymous for no reason, and not appearing to raise any questions about the significant holes in the story.
So we've already written about the massive problems with the Sunday Times' big report claiming that the Russians and Chinese had "cracked" the encryption on the Snowden files (or possibly just been handed those files by Snowden) and that he had "blood on his hands" even though no one has come to any harm. It also argued that David Miranda was detained after he got documents from Snowden in Moscow, despite the fact that he was neither in Moscow, nor had met Snowden (a claim the article quietly deleted). That same report also claimed that UK intelligence agency MI6 had to remove "agents" from Moscow because of this leak, despite the fact that they're not called "agents" and there's no evidence of any actual risk. So far, the only official response from News Corp. the publisher of The Sunday Times (through a variety of subsidiaries) was to try to censor the criticism of the story with a DMCA takedown request.
Either way, one of the journalists who wrote the story, Tom Harper, gave an interview to CNN which is quite incredible to watch. Harper just keeps repeating that he doesn't know what's actually true, and that he was just saying what the government told him -- more or less admitting that his role here was not as a reporter, but as a propagandist or a stenographer.
For most of us, festivals are a way to escape our invisible prisons of technology. “I’m not taking my iPhone to Glasto,” you mutter to your pal, “I’m going off the grid.” Who can blame you? For just a few days, you want to enjoy yourself in a priceless disconnected moment of Gaymers fuelled euphoria. Up until very recently, you could be granted that small civil liberty, but this weekend at Download, new technology is being trialled by Leicestershire Police that could change the way your carry yourself at major events.
So why do we spend so much of our time ignoring the thousands of words of legally binding “end-user licence agreements” (EULAs, if you like) legally-binding contracts we agree to every day? Is it even possible to read the T&Cs for everything a typical person does? Is there any value in reading all this anyway?
“The biggest lie on the internet is ‘I have read and agree to the terms and conditions’,” says security expert Mikko Hyppönen. Setting out to prove his point, Hyppönen’s company F-Secure set up a free WiFi hotspot in the heart of London’s financial district in June 2014.
Ask any two people in government today their stance on encryption and you'll almost certainly get very different (and often opposing) answers.
As the White House pushes for greater encryption across federal sites to help better protect data flowing between a user's computer and the federal agency, other factions in government want to weaken the encryption used by installing "backdoors" for law enforcement uses.
As of right now, the data that moves between Wikipedia.com and most users is unencrypted, which increases the chances that someone else may be eavesdropping on you. That, however, is about to change: On Friday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that it’s moving its sites toward HTTPS by default, so that all data transferred between you and its servers will be encrypted.
For years artists had grumbled about record labels, cable networks and distributors controlling them, restricting their artistic freedom, and taking more than their fair share of the coffers. Napster offered a new way for artists to reach their fans. While the labels and networks condemned this as “piracy,”many artists detected the first ripple of a new revolution.
As the result of a rather broadly interpreted court order, many innocent Cox Communications subscribers have been dragged into a piracy lawsuit. The account holders are involved because their current IP-addresses were used to download infringing content in the past, but some weren't even a Cox subscriber at the relevant time.