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Links 13/8/2015: KDE Frameworks 5.13.0, Red Hat Satellite 6.1





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Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Is Bassel Nearer to Freedom?
    Earlier, Bassel won the Index on Censorship Digital Freedom Award, which helped get him moved from a horrifically bad jail to a less hostile Adra Prison. Winning this award will further increase the spotlight on Bassel, which increases the pressure to release him, your fellow Free Software engineer and Creative Commons activist.


  • HashPlex Unveils Lightning Network Implementation
    Lightning Network is a proposal for an off-blockchain network that would support super-fast transactions and boost Bitcoin scalability. Wednesday, miner hosting company HashPlex unveiled an alpha Lightning Network hub implementation, as developers continue to refine the layer (sometimes called layer-2) on testnets.


  • Google's Open Source Project: Why They Did It and What's Next
    The word “Kubernetes” may not roll off the tongue as easily as the word “Google,” but it is nonetheless an important project many outside the software community have probably not ever heard of.


  • Goldman Sachs to Give Out ‘Secret Sauce’ on Trading


  • Goldman Sachs just pulled a Silicon Valley move
    The investment bank is giving away some of its trading technology to clients through open source software, according to The Wall Street Journal.


  • Goldman Sachs to give clients more open-source access


  • Why Open-Source Middleware Will Rule the Internet of Things
    Market researchers are predicting that by 2020, more than 20 billion devices will be connected to the Internet. These objects and devices will produce massive amounts of data 24-7, which will be a pain in the backbone to manage, unless tackled efficiently. To a great extent, the solution to the influx of IoT data rests in the effectiveness of the data infrastructure supporting cross-device communication—or, in other terms, in the effectiveness of IoT middleware. I firmly believe that in order to succeed in its purpose, this infrastructure should be founded on open-source platforms and technologies.


  • How Open Source Can Help the IoT Industry Reach Full Potential
    The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to be one of the most powerful technological innovations to date. In fact, its reach will be so extensive—encompassing billions of connected endpoints across the globe—that it will completely change the way companies and consumers connect with one another and share information.


  • Open sourcing Grid, the Guardian’s new image management service
    For about a year, a small dedicated team has been building the Guardian’s new image management service.

    From the beginning, the vision was to provide a universal and fast experience accessing media that is well organised and using it in an affordable way to produce high-quality content.


  • Go wide: Open source advocacy on Twitter
    Effective open source advocacy on Twitter requires you to go wide. You need to find and participate in communities of people who are not focused on open source. Maybe people passionate about arts education. Public health advocates. Bicycling enthusiasts or bridge players or pet rescuers or Habitat for Humanity people or meditation people or Esperanto speakers or folk music singer/songwriters.


  • The changing face of open-source software
    The increasing number of open-source initiatives in existence leads some to catch a dose of initiative-fatigue. What's really going on here?


  • Open Source and Enterprise App Development
    To open source or not to open source, that is the question for many IT teams that are struggling with deciding on the best approach to mobile application development. There is no doubt that today’s broad array of open source offerings appear to offer development nirvana – free, community driven, customizable software.


  • Bringing IoT to Fruition with Fully Open Source Software
    Non-profit foundations can help encourage fully open source software (FOSS) collaboration across industry and community. A relative newcomer is the prpl Foundation, an open-source non-profit foundation focused on enabling next-generation datacenter-to-device portable software and virtualized architectures. One of prpl's focus areas is OpenWrt, a Linux distribution for embedded devices. Industry and community collaboration on a common FOSS baseline software stack can help facilitate new IoE products, applications and technologies, and enable easier connectivity and data exchange across a variety of platforms in the market.


  • Events



    • The Potential of the Blockchain: LinuxCon Keynote Preview
      There are many similarities between Linux and the blockchain and so I was thrilled that Greg Maxwell, one of the core Bitcoin maintainers and a long term open source and cryptogrophy developer, accepted my invitation to keynote LinuxCon this year. I recently caught up with him to talk about his speech and the potential he sees for the Blockchain.


    • Open Source T-Shirt Contest




  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS/Big Data



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • LibreOffice community achievements
      Saying LibreOffice or OpenOffice to people can lead to interesting reactions. For some people, LibreOffice is the darling of the open source world, and for others, it is a crappy Microsoft Office alternative that they look down on.

      I believe that LibreOffice plays an important function in the world, and one that spans beyond the mere function of an office suite. Before we get to that though, I think looking back through the tremendous journey that led to the LibreOffice project we know today is important.


    • LibreOffice 5.0, one week later
      Following the announcement, donations have doubled in comparison to the previous weeks. As a consequence, we have reached the threshold of 150,000 donations since May 2013, when we started keeping track of the numbers. A huge thanks to all donors! With their money, they make LibreOffice sustainable, supporting the costs of the entire organization.


    • LibreOffice 5 released with bug fixes, cloud and mobile aspirations
      LibreOffice, the non-Microsoft and (to many) beloved office suite, has reached a new milestone with the release of version 5. It’s of particular interest to Linux mavens, but the rest of LibreOffice users will benefit as well, thanks to an impressive boost in performance through GPU hardware and some interesting new features.




  • CMS



    • Czech TV and radio switch websites to Drupal
      The Czech government-owned public TV broadcaster ÄŒeská televize has switched to using the open source content management system Drupal for its CT 24 news website, it announced on 6 August. One month earlier, the government-owned ÄŒeský rozhlas (Czech Radio) also began using Drupal.




  • Funding



  • BSD



    • Two Year Anniversary
      We're quickly approaching our two-year anniversary, which will be on episode 105. To celebrate, we've created a unique t-shirt design, available for purchase until the end of August. Shirts will be shipped out around September 1st. Most of the proceeds will support the show, and specifically allow us to buy additional equipment to record on-site interviews at conferences.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Licensing



    • Random Windows licensing facts
      These facts brought to you by “let me just stick the GPL in an ACPI table so I can install the damn thing already”.




  • Programming



    • Love for Perl unites diverse community
      I've used Perl for several years, beginning in 2002 on Solaris, then moving to Debian and working on Koha in 2008. Surprisingly (bafflingly, in retrospect), I had not connected with the larger Perl community at all in that time, choosing to stay within the smaller communities I was already embedded in.


    • Your "Infrastructure as Code" is still code!
      Whether you’re a TDD zealot, or you just occasionally write a quick script to reproduce some bug, it’s a rare coder who doesn’t see value in some sort of automated testing. Yet, somehow, in all of the new-age “Infrastructure as Code” mania, we appear to have forgotten this, and the tools that are commonly used for implementing “Infrastructure as Code” have absolutely woeful support for developing your Infrastructure Code. I believe this has to change.


    • The making of ZeMarmot: planning


    • Assign Phabricator reviewers based on module ownership
      Inspired by Quora's Moving Fast With High Code Quality post, we are thus implementing a review routing system - the code is live on GitHub at phabricator-utils. It's written in Python (hey, we're a Java/JS/Python shop), though we do plan to contribute closer to the Phabricator codebase itself and that will be in PHP.






Leftovers



  • Science



    • State spending $1.5m on computer science training for teachers
      Vinter acknowledged that MassCAN’s campaign is driven in part by self-interest: Google and other companies are worried about a lack of programmers and developers, specialists that are highly in demand in the booming Massachusetts tech industry.


    • 5-year plan for improving diversity in tech
      I think we can all agree that open source is a good way to spread knowledge and empower people in many different ways, but it's also true that competition, natural in a meritocracy, can and often does privilege those who can invest in the competition itself; minorities are being outspent and thus left aside by those who can afford to work, basically, for free.




  • Security



    • Linux Concerns: Convenience vs. Security
      Once upon a recent time, Linux was more secure than it is today. Only the root user could mount external device, and in many distributions new users were automatically assigned a few groups that limited the hardware they could access. Distributions followed the principle of least privilege (aka least access), under which users, applications, and devices receive only the access to the system that they absolutely require.


    • Security updates for Thursday
    • One Definition Of Lock-in: Running “2003” So Many Years Later
      Why do they do it? Run “2003” in 2015! It’s not cost, because Debian GNU/Linux would cost $0. It’s lock-in whether by habit or by application. Lots of folks have invested heavily in applications that still work so they are willing to risk everything, perhaps by adding other layers of security. Why?


    • Imploding Barrels and Other Highlights From Hackfest DefCon
      Visiting Las Vegas can feel a bit like being a metal sphere in a pinball machine—you’re tossed from bright lights to blaring shows and back again until you eventually (hopefully) emerge out a hole at your home airport. When you visit Vegas with a swarm of hackers and security researchers, the dizziness gets amped up tenfold and can be laced with a dose of dark mischief.


    • Cisco networking gear can be hijacked, warns company
      An attacker can swap out the device's firmware with altered, malicious software.


    • Video Shows a Terrifying Drug Infusion Pump Hack in Action
      It’s one thing to talk about security vulnerabilities in a product, but another to provide a proof-of-concept demonstration showing the device being hacked.

      That’s what occurred last month when BlackBerry Chief Security Officer David Kleidermacher and security professional Graham Murphy showed how easy it is for hackers to take control of a hospital drug infusion pump by overwriting the device’s firmware with malicious software.


    • August ’15 security fixes for Adobe Flash
      ...Adobe released updated Flash player plugins which adddress many new vulnerabilities (as usual).




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression





  • Finance



  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Privacy



    • Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to Local Police
      Facial recognition software, which American military and intelligence agencies used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify potential terrorists, is being eagerly adopted by dozens of police departments around the country to pursue drug dealers, prostitutes and other conventional criminal suspects. But because it is being used with few guidelines and with little oversight or public disclosure, it is raising questions of privacy and concerns about potential misuse.


    • Facebook axed internship for student who exposed location flaw
      If you're about to start an internship at one of the world's biggest social networks, it might not be in your interest to publicly embarrass it shortly before you begin. It's a lesson that Harvard student Aran Khanna learned the hard way after creating an app that took advantage of a privacy flaw within Facebook Messenger. Khanna had found that, whenever you chat to your friends, the system automatically shares your location. As such, he built a browser plugin, called the "Marauder's Map," that showed you where your buddies were as they were talking to you.




  • Civil Rights



    • Boston Police Commissioner Wants Cameras Further Away From Cops, Criminal Charges For Not Assisting Officers
      Earlier this year, Texas legislator Jason Villalba attempted to shortchange the First Amendment in the name of "officer safety" by making it illegal to film police officers from within a 25-foot, constantly-moving radius. His proposed law was greeted with criticism (and death threats, according to Villalba) and was consequently discarded because it was a terrible, arbitrary law that had only the briefest of flirtations with reality and logic.

      For one thing, the law would have prompted officers to split their attention between the job at hand (whatever crime they were responding to/investigating) and Villalba's directive. Of course, officers could easily choose not to enforce this bad law, but far too many officers have been filmed leaving crime scenes just to hassle citizens with cameras. And the instant the officer started closing the gap between him and the photographer, a law would have been violated in letter, if not in spirit. Villalba is a staunch supporter of law enforcement agencies and his proposal was just an attempt to give officers a little less accountability.




  • DRM



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Rightscorp Deal Turns DMCA Notices Into Piracy Lawsuits


        Piracy monetization firm Rightscorp has signed an agreement to provide lawfirm Flynn Wirkus Young with the IP-addresses of persistent pirates. The data will be used to target U.S. Internet users who ignore DMCA notices and settlement offers sent by copyright holders. The first cases are already in progress.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
When we get back we'll probably sort out some balloons and venue for the next party
Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Internal Changes at Red Hat / IBM"
It seems like quite a few people are leaving
Confirmed in French Media: Mass Layoffs (10% Culled) in Microsoft France
Now some reports in French
Microsoft in Freefall in Finland
Can Finland eradicate Windows from all its infrastructure, including core operations that are sensitive to sabotage by cracking?
Google's Chrome Passes 70% and Web Standards Are Dying
The Web is quickly becoming devoid of any standards
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and Ponzi Scheme, Bubble About to Burst Entirely, Admits Goldman Sachs
the hype that Google News and The Register MS actively participate and profit from
 
When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
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Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
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Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
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Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
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As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025
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We already saw signs of it a month ago and named some of the people
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GAFAM must be worried
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Imagine what this will do to staff's morale
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People need to call out The Register MS on its hypocrisy
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slopfarms will lack an actual "engine"
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Internet Relay Chat Didn't Fall Off a Cliff
IRC will turn 40 in less than 3 years from now
The UEFI 9/11 - Part V - This is Not a Drill (Disable "SecureBoot" Now)
A "9/11" Coming
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The very fact that "bkuhn" is till spending time in social control media says a lot about his poor judgment
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 01, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 01, 2025
Microsoft Trying to Force People to Resign (Amid Mass Layoffs) a Strategy That Takes Its Toll
Microsoft seems to be circling down the drain and the "final flush" will be the moment the "hey hi" (AI) bubble implodes completely
Google Simply Cannot Be Trusted
Only fools would trust GAFAM
Admission That a Third Party (or Parties) Funds the SLAPPs Against Techrights
This can end up costing them over a million dollars
Modifying and Writing One's Own Computer Programs is Not a Crime (or: Google Proves That Stallman Was Right)
We're generally gratified to see so many positive mentions of him
Why We Stopped Publishing Videos (for Now)
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When You Turn Web Sites About Tech Into Political Sites
A lot of people fall into the trap of catering only for particular groups
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Gemini Links 01/09/2025: News Corp. WSJ and A Month With NixOS
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There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
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Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
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Over at Tux Machines...
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