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11.27.15

Links 27/11/2015: KDE Plasma 5.5 Plans, Oracle Linux 7.2

Posted in News Roundup at 7:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • What I Learned from Blowing An Interview

    Likewise, blogging or writing books about software development is necessarily removed from software development. Patterns, architectures, idioms, and algorithms are potential value. It’s only by applying the ideas that we realize the value. The same goes for creating infrastructure like operating systems, text editors, programming languages, frameworks, and libraries.

  • How Deduplication Has Evolved to Handle the Deluge of Data

  • Hardware

    • More than a billion PCs are over three years old, and there’s little reason to replace them

      And right there is the problem facing the PC industry. You’re replacing a tool with another tool that does the same thing. Much like a light bulb or a hammer. It’s why we’re seeing a proliferation of “smart” devices – smart light bulbs, smart thermostats, smart smoke detectors, smart refrigerators – because without that new “smart” twist people just aren’t replacing their light bulbs, thermostats, smoke detectors, or refrigerators until the day they release the magic smoke and stop working.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • A Winter’s Tale: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

      A Turkish jet shoots down a Russian jet. Parliament votes to send RAF jets into the mix. What could possibly go wrong?

      Unfortunately, things do go wrong. Cameron’s 70,000 “moderate rebels” prove either non-existent or crazed pro-Saudi Wahabbists. Mostly they are the very jihadists Russia is attacking, but we are supporting. In the fog of war, another Russian plane is downed. A Russian pilot downs a British jet. With politicians on all sides afloat on the sea of militarist rhetoric, within 24 hours it has spiralled hopelessly out of control.

    • Cameron Overreaches With “70,000” Claim Nobody Believes

      Cameron is in serious trouble at Westminster after overreaching himself by the claim that there are 70,000 “moderate rebels” willing to take up the ground war with Isis. Quite literally not one single MP believes him. There are those who believe the lie is justified. But even they know it is a lie.

      There is a very interesting parallel here with the claims over Iraqi WMD. The 70,000 figure has again been approved by the Joint Intelligence Committee, with a strong push from MI6. But exactly as with Iraqi WMD, there were strong objections from the less “political” Defence Intelligence, and caveats inserted.

  • Finance

    • China may invest $1 trillion overseas in next 5 years

      Continuing the carrot and stick approach to international trade, Premier Li Keqiang told poorer European nations that China would likely invest in their countries and import their products if they promised to buy Chinese products

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Guardian’s Anti Corbyn Campaign Plumbs New Depths

      Yet astonishingly the Guardian ran three whole articles entirely about the McDonnell gaffe. You could read every single word of these three articles and not learn the basic information provided in each of the three Blue Tory papers above. The utterly disgraceful Jonathan Jones, John Crace and Tom Phillips all managed to produce articles which utterly omit what McDonnell actually said and why he said it, to contrive to give the impression that McDonnell was quoting Mao straight and with approval.

      [...]

      UPDATE: This is absolutely beyond parody. The Guardian have just published a FOURTH article on this subject, by Roy Greenslade, which still fails to say that McDonnell was referring to Osborne’s disposal of British assets to the Chinese state. Instead Greenslade cuts and pastes the most damning comments he can find in the Tory media. Not of course including any of the Tory media quotes given above which, unlike the Guardian, tell you what McDonnell was saying.

      When do you think the fifth Guardian article is coming?

  • Privacy

    • Teardown shows Nest Cam is “always-on” even when you think it’s off

      It turns out your home security camera may see more of your home than you thought it did. In a teardown of the Nest Cam, a team at ABI Research found that even when “off,” the camera draws nearly the same amount of power as when it’s fully powered on, meaning it’s functional and running even when the indicator light claims otherwise.

    • Tor Project appeals for help to carry on, expand anti-spying network

      The Tor anonymous browsing project has asked for donations to improve the network and invest in educational projects.

      The Tor Project is a non-profit scheme which runs Tor. Otherwise known as The Onion Router, the system allows users to enter areas of the Internet which remain unindexed by common search engines.

      The node-and-relay layout also skewers the original IP of the user, improving anonymity and thwarting surveillance efforts.

    • Glenn Greenwald: Why the CIA is smearing Edward Snowden after the Paris attacks

      Decent people see tragedy and barbarism when viewing a terrorism attack. American politicians and intelligence officials see something else: opportunity.

      Bodies were still lying in the streets of Paris when CIA operatives began exploiting the resulting fear and anger to advance long-standing political agendas. They and their congressional allies instantly attempted to heap blame for the atrocity not on Islamic State but on several preexisting adversaries: Internet encryption, Silicon Valley’s privacy policies and Edward Snowden.

      [...]

      The CIA’s blame-shifting game, aside from being self-serving, was deceitful in the extreme. To begin with, there still is no evidence that the perpetrators in Paris used the Internet to plot their attacks, let alone used encryption technology.

      CIA officials simply made that up. It is at least equally likely that the attackers formulated their plans in face-to-face meetings. The central premise of the CIA’s campaign — encryption enabled the attackers to evade our detection — is baseless.

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