Perhaps the biggest release of last week was Fedora 24, the first major milestone release from Red Hat's community Linux platform so far in 2016. On the desktop Fedora 24 including the GNOME 3.20 desktop and now supports the Flatpak application packaging approach. The promise of Flatpack much like Ubuntu's Snappy is a single package that can run across multiple Linux distributions.
I'm proud to announce that over the weekend LQ turned 16! I’d like to once again thank each and every LQ member for their participation and feedback. While there is always room for improvement, that LQ has remained a friendly and welcoming place for new Linux members despite its size is a testament to the community.
Distributing desktop applications for Linux has long been a headache, in large part because apps have to be repackaged for each Linux distribution. And while an app-containerization technology like Docker makes it easier to bundle and distribute apps, it wasn't really designed for distributing desktop applications.
Subuser is a new application-packaging system that allows Dockerized desktop apps to be run as if they were regular Linux applications. It provides just enough permissions to allow the Dockerized app to interact with the local system -- for instance, to work with the X11 display server -- while still keeping it locked down.
It should come as no surprise that open source training and hiring is typically predicated on what skills are trending in tech. As an example, Big Data, cloud and security are three of the most in-demand skillsets today, which explains why more and more open source professionals look to develop these particular skillsets and why these professionals are amongst the most sought after. One skillset that employers have not found as useful as professionals is container management.
Unfortunately, I’m not able to attend DockerCon US this year, but I will be keeping up with the announcements. As part of the Docker Captains program, I was given a preview of Docker 1.12 including the new Swarm integration which is Docker’s native clustering/orchestration solution (also known as SwarmKit, but that’s really the repo/library name). And it’s certainly a big change. In this post I’ll try to highlight the changes and why they’re important.
Apache Spark has been an integral part of Mesos from its inception. Spark is one of the most widely used big data processing systems for clusters. Matei Zaharia, the CTO of Databricks and creator of Spark, talked about Spark's advanced data analysis power and new features in its upcoming 2.0 release in his MesosCon 2016 keynote.
At a recent talk SoftIron gave a talk about ARM64 versus x86 servery, it was emphasized that comparisons are often apples v oranges. Given the right race, ARM64 is competitive today, say, in storage servery. That’s because smaller cores distributed with lots of storage hanging on each is a better match to the workload. Further, ARM64 is becoming competitive in its 1st generation while x86 is on its umpteenth generation. With the large cast of developers and interest from large customers, growth/maturity could come very rapidly.
The fifth weekly test release to the Linux 4.7 kernel is now available for testing.
As of writing this article, Linus Torvalds has yet to send out an official 4.7-rc5 announcement but it's available for those interested in the latest installment of the kernel that's codenamed the Psychotic Stoned Sheep.
Another Sunday, another Release Candidate build of the upcoming Linux 4.7 kernel is out for testing, as announced by Linus Torvalds himself a few hours ago, June 26, 2016.
Another week, another -rc.
Hmm. I think things are calming down, although with almost two thirds of the commits coming in since Friday morning, it doesn't feel that way - my Fridays end up feeling very busy. But looking at the numbers, we're pretty much where we normally are at this time of the rc series.
The stats looks fairly normal: about half the patch is drivers, roughly a quarter is architecture updates, and the remainder is "misc": filesystems, scheduler, mm, etc.
The bulk of the drivers is GPU updates, but there's a smattering of rdma, hwmon, Xen, gpio, sound.
The architecture side is powerpc, x86, some arm64, and some noise all over from some MM cleanups..
Go out and test. By -rc5, we really should be starting to be getting fairly ready.
And please, if Thorsten Leemhuis is tracking one of your regressions, can you make sure to double-check it and see if it remains? It's lovely to have a regression tracker again, but it would also be really good to make sure that the ones that are solved get closed.
Linus
The Linux Foundation offers many resources for developers, users, and administrators of Linux systems, including its Linux Certification Program. This program is designed to give you a way to differentiate yourself in a job market that's hungry for your skills.
To illustrate how well these certifications prepare you for the real world, this series features some of those who have recently passed the certification exams. These testimonials should help you decide if either the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) or the Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) certification is right for you. In this installment, we talk with LFCS Lorenzo Paglia.
There are times I wonder how the auto industry has managed to fall so far behind in the realm of technology. Only within the past year or so have we seen the rise of commercially available wireless options in mass production vehicles. Take a look at the standard options for mobile displays within car dashboards and you will see nothing to truly impress you. Consider that a low-spec smartphone is more impressive (and offers far more features and services) than does that console of a high-end automobile.
Recently I rented a Jeep Cherokee Limited edition, that included a touch-screen console with what was supposed to have all the bells and whistles. That touch screen wound up to be less-than user-friendly, not even remotely yielding to what I what I wanted it to do, and served little purpose other than to navigate my wife and I through Miami, Florida, listen to music, and view the rear-facing camera for backing up. The in-console display had serious issues connecting to any smartphone we had, so music was limited to satellite.
FFmpeg 3.1.0 is now available with the latest features for this widely-used open-source multimedia library.
FFmpeg 3.1 brings DXVA2-accelerated HEVC Main10 decoding for Windows users, a variety of new filters, MediaCodec H.264 decoding, new muxers/demuxers, VA-API accelerated H.264/HEVC/MJPEG encoding, an OpenMAX IL encoder with support for the Raspberry Pi, OpenEXR improvements, and a range of other improvements.
The development team behind the MPlayer-based MPV open-source video player software announced this past weekend the release of another major milestone, MPV 0.18.0.
MPV 0.18.0 is now available for all supported platforms, including all GNU/Linux distributions, as well as the Mac OS and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Looking at the release notes, we can't help but notice that there are quite some interesting new features, but also improvements to the build system, options, and commands.
Now that we know the Geary email client is alive and kicking, currently maintained by GNU/Linux developer Michael Gratton, it's time to look forward to a new version. Therefore, today we announce the debut of Geary 0.11.1.
Today, June 27, 2016, the development team behind the popular, cross-platform and open-source multimedia framework used by numerous media player software, FFmpeg, has announced the release of the FFmpeg 3.1 "Laplace" series.
I've just released version 1.3.0 of Nageru, my live software video mixer.
Linux systems are the best options for those who want to an easy to use an operating system that takes up less space than others, while at the same time loads faster. Many applications are compatible with the system, but is it possible to run Android apps on such systems.
Finally, there is an Extended Partition for all the other Linux distributions I am trying out on this little netbook. The actual number installed varies depending on what I am doing. There are currently six different distributions installed there, and there is enough free space at the end to add one or two more if I want.
The important thing here is that the Linux grub bootloader will boot either a Primary or a Logical Partition without requiring any unusual manipulation of boot files or partitions.
Ok, that's enough - probably more than enough. I hope that what all of this showed was that installing Linux doesn't require complicated disk partitioning, it can actually be quite simple.
The developer of Anima Gate of Memories has stated that they expect the Linux version to be out in around 15 days time.
I recently took my first look at GNOME 3. I’d played around with GNOME 2 a couple of times back in 2002 and 2003, not caring for it very much. This was in small part due to the fact that on Mandrake 9.X, GNOME was unstable and prone to crashing, but mainly because I found it wasn’t configurable enough for my taste. I stuck with KDE, which even back in the dark ages of the early 21st century was uber configurable.
There are four billion people on the planet without PCs or access to affordable personal computers. That figure should surely be tempered with some contextualization i.e. not everybody actually wants to have an Internet connection and many traditional, native or bucolic ways of live do still exist on the planet.
Regardless, there are a batch of global initiatives in existence which seek to give computer access to every man, woman and especially child.
Endless OS is one such project. The free operating system has been designed explicitly to work in the expensive or restrictive Internet data conditions that often exist in emerging markets where fabulously affordable broadband has yet to arrive. The software itself is built to provide useful information and educational content, with or without an Internet connection.
The Q4OS team have informed Softpedia today, June 27, 2016, about the immediate availability for download of a new maintenance release in the stable "Orion" series of the Debian-based GNU/Linux operating system.
Q4OS 1.4.12 "Orion" is now the latest and most advanced version of the distribution build around the Trinity desktop environment, and it has received all the important security patches and software updates from the upstream Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 "Jessie" repositories, along with a couple of other improvements requested by users.
Today, June 27, 2016, just a few moments ago, the developers of the antiX GNU/Linux operating system have had the great pleasure of announcing the final release of the antiX 16 distribution.
Today, June 27, 2016, the OpenMandriva team was happy to inform Softpedia via an email announcement that the second Beta release of the upcoming OpenMandriva Lx 3.0 operating system is now ready for public testing.
The openSUSE Conference ended today and people who were not able to travel to Bavaria for the conference can view most of the conference on the openSUSETV channel on YouTube.
The number of users of openSUSE, the community GNU/Linux distribution supported by the Germany SUSE Linux company, has grown, with an average of 400,000 DVD images being downloaded each month.
This past weekend, the developers behind the openSUSE-based GeckoLinux computer operating system have announced the release of updated Rolling Editions, version 421.160623.0.
Being the first time we write here about GeckoLinux, we would like to inform our readers that it's a versatile GNU/Linux distributions distributed in many flavors that are split into two main editions, Rolling Editions, based on openSUSE Tumbleweed and Static Editions, based on openSUSE Leap.
This is our fourteenth HackWeek at SUSE already. HackWeek is a SUSE way of Hackathon
Red Hat on Monday launched a new version of its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, designed to help enterprises move existing applications to the cloud.
In the past, only companies with the deepest pockets were able to benefit from gathering data from distributed devices to drive better decision making and realize additional revenue. Today, the economics of the IoT architecture--the hardware, the ubiquitous nature of connectivity, big data and analysis, and customer expectations are dramatically expanding the scope of IoT and making it possible for every enterprise--and not just consumers--to benefit.
I haven’t seen any announcement, but I noticed Fedora repositories now contain edk2-ovmf package. That is the package that is necessary to emulate UEFI in QEMU/KVM virtual machines. It seems all licensing issues having been finally resolved and now you can easily run UEFI systems in your virtual machines!
Last week I also did a heuristics evalaution on Hyper Kitty which a django based archiver for the mailman suite allowing the users to starts new threads, reply to mails and mark them as favorites, I focused on analysing the wesbite with regards to the principles that we have been taught in class. I will be updating the heuristics in a separate blog post.
I wrote recently about using git-annex for encrypted sync, but due to a number of issues with it, I’ve opted to switch to Syncthing.
DebConf will open on Saturday, 2 July 2016 with the Open Festival, where events of interest to a wider audience are offered, ranging from topics specific to Debian to a wider appreciation of the open and maker movements (and not just IT-related). Hackers, makers, hobbyists and other interested parties are invited to share their activities with DebConf attendees and the public at the University of Cape Town, whether in form of workshops, lightning talks, install parties, art exhibition or posters. Additionally, a Job Fair will take place on Saturday, and its job wall will be available throughout DebConf.
Today, June 27. 2016, Arjen Balfoort has announced the release and general availability of the June's updated ISO images for his SolydX and SolydK GNU/Linux distributions.
The folks at MediaTek in Hsinchu announced the Helio X20 Development Board today as the first development board using a tri-cluster, deca-core design.
As implied by the name, this developer board is using the Helio X20 SoC, which features a tri-cluster CPU architecture and ten processing cores: two Cortex-A72 at 2.3GHz, four Cortex-A53 cores @ 2.0GHz, and four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.4GHz. Depending upon system load, the relevant/needed cores will power up. The X20 uses ARM's Mali graphics, supports 2 x LPDDR3 POP memory, and has integrated 802.11ac WiFi.
Speech recognition software technology provider Sensory is offering TrulyHandsfree SDK to embed voice enabled functions in your embedded systems software. TrulyHandsfree SDK supports fixed triggers, user enrolled triggers and commands phrase spotting technology.
The fact that you can not use an SSD storage device with the Raspberry Pi is a huge drawback. Devices that use the Raspberry pie consume a lot of storage. Devices like drones etc could use the onboard SSD storage. Too bad that the Raspberry pi 3 does not support it. But no worries have you head of the MinnowMax Turbot board?
There are thousands of uses for the Raspberry Pi: you can use the credit card-sized computer to build an arcade machine, an internet radio, or even a mobile phone.
These have been bolstered further with the Pi 3's built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The wireless communication methods have meant more devices can interact with the personal computer than ever before.
AsteroidOS is an open-source smartwatch operating system still in its early stages of development. Developers can currently port AsteroidOS to new smartwatches, or develop, translate and test apps on their own watches. They can also create an Asteroid app by using an SDK that is generated by OpenEmbedded, a build framework for embedded Linux. Developers can use a prebuilt SDK or build it themselves.
RaspTouch mainCheck out the RaspTouch project on KickStarter, from France. It has two main elements: the touchscreen interface and the main body of the player, featuring a ES9023 or ES9018K2M DAC output.
The makers describe it as the “ultimate open source music player”.
Huawei was recently reported to be in the process of developing its own OS as a contingency plan. It isn't unique nor first in that regard. Samsung has long been believed to have invested in Tizen for that very purpose. Both of these independent pieces of news share a common theme, a common goal: being free of total dependence on Google. That concern has recently resurfaced with whispers of Google desiring to exert more and more control over Android. But whether that is true or not, and it is likely to be true, Android hardware makers will be better off remaining with Android, with or without Google.
GitHub released charts last week that tell a story about the heartbeat of a few open source, giving insights into activity, productivity and collaboration of software development.
Why are these important? Enterprises increasingly define software development as a top priority to gain competitive advantage or defend against disruption. They often turn to open source software because it is fast and agile. Enterprise IT decision makers should understand GitHub because it is the backbone of most open source projects.
Many companies benefit from open source, and countless companies have opted to open source components of their infrastructure (or even their bread and butter) in an effort to give back. However, there are a lot of misconceptions about what happens when you open up your business' code and workflows to the public, and as companies delve into how to apply open principles within their organization, it's easy to get lost in the weeds. Here are some common misconceptions about what happens when you open source your code.
Open source software that is to succeed in this new world is going to have to be better than anything else. You can't sell just openness anymore; it is added value, not a unique selling point. Open source software now has to sell user experience. In a way it is a simpler metric, and probably one that is going to change open source forever—for the better.
In this article, I review some of the top open source business intelligence (BI) and reporting tools. In economies where the role of big data and open data are ever-increasing, where do we turn in order to have our data analysed and presented in a precise and readable format? This list covers tools which help to solve this problem. Two years ago I wrote about the top three. In this article, I will expand that list with a few more tools that were suggested by our readers.
Note that this list is not exhaustive, and it is a mix of both business intelligence and reporting tools.
Windows 10 has generally be viewed as a welcome successor to Windows 8, both by businesses and individuals. However it has also come under scrutiny from users that are concerned about data privacy. So why not opt for a free Windows 10 alternative?
We've listed open source Windows 10 alternatives based on features and user reviews. Here's some of the best.
Obsidian Systems is now the exclusive African reseller partner for Icinga, a scalable and extensive monitoring system that checks the availability of resources, notifies of outages and provides business intelligence data.
Developments in cloud, big data, analytics, and social and mobile technologies are all happening to a large extent because the underlying technology is evolving quickly, and Red Hat believes that this is happening because a lot of it is based on open source and is developed collaboratively between multiple communities and companies. Much of the cloud is based on Linux and open source based technologies, consequently open source is a key driving force in these changes and the rapid innovation cycles.
UK RF specialist Lime Microsystems has raised almost $624,000 in a crowdfunding campaign to bring its LimeSDR software defined radio to market, and will now begin production of the radios, which enable open source, programmable ‘network in a box’ devices for low cost coverage, especially in rural or temporary networks.
One of the most important trends in the current reinvention of the mobile network is the introduction of open source to infrastructure hardware. Open source processes have been creeping into this formerly tightly closed world in software (from Android to carrier Linux) and in devices, but the network equipment itself remained the preserve of proprietary vendors and formal standards bodies. Now that is changing. From small innovators like Lime Microsystems (see separate item), to entrenched guardians of the old ways, like Nokia, suppliers are finding new ways to work with open source.
Mozilla is funneling yet more money into the open source ecosystem. This week, the organization best known for the Firefox Web browser announced an award of $385,000 to fund eight open source projects, including several important online privacy platforms.
Mozilla has been involved in reinventing itself for some time now. Known for the venerable Firefox browser, it has made forays into several other open source arenas, and was even known for its dalliance with the smartphone business. The company is currently involved in a broad rebranding effort, and the way it is going about rebranding comes directly from the open source playbook.
Internet advocacy and software group Mozilla is rebranding with help from johnson banks. In an unusual move, the company has decided to document the process online – from strategy and concept development to refinement – inviting its community to help shape its new positioning
The first release candidate represented 123 fixes. Some include a fix for a crash in Impress when setting a background image. This occurred with several popular formats in Windows and Linux. Caolán McNamara submitted the patches to fix this in the 5.1 and 5.2 branches. David Tardon fixed a bug where certain presentations hung Impress for extended periods to indefinitely by checking for preconditions earlier. Laurent Balland-Poirier submitted the patches to fix a user-defined cell misinterpretation when using semicolon inside quotes.
Nearly four years ago, Kersey Sturdivant and I launched a bold, ambitious, and, frankly, naive crowdfunding initiative to build the first low-cost, open-source CTD, a core scientific instrument that measures salinity, temperature, and depth in a water column. It was a dream born from the frustration of declining science funding, the expense of scientific equipment, and the promise of the Maker movement. After thousands of hours spent learning the skills necessary to build these devices, hundreds of conversations with experts, collaborators, and potential users around the world, dozens of iterations (some transformed into full prototypes, others that exist solely as software), and one research cruise on Lake Superior to test the housing and depth and temperature probes, the OpenCTD has arrived.
Retro gaming in the open source vein could be on the upswing this season. Creoqode is the London-based technology design company behind 2048, the DIY game console with retro-style video games and visuals that is also supposed to help users learn coding.
Succeeding the PHP 7.1 Alpha release that happened earlier this month is now the second alpha build of this significant update to the PHP programming language.
Nothing lasts forever -- including programming languages. What seems like the future of computing today may be tomorrow's footnote, whether deserved or undeserved.
Python, currently riding high on the list of languages to know, seems like a candidate for near-immortality at this point. But other languages are showing that they share Python's strengths: convenient to program in, decked out with powerful ways to perform math and science work, arrayed with a huge number of convenient third-party libraries.
The problem with being a jack of all trades, we can’t justify our opinion on a particular subject, you may be not be in a place to answer that question. Although your opinion may not be value because you’re not expert, I do believe that trying to learn as many things as possible will bring you baggage. This baggage can help form some sort of highly credible hypothesis when you’re asked, let’s say, by a client a particular question such as what should be done in case you’d like to build a website and include the X feature.
Linux doesn't get malware, right? Historically, by Windows standards, that has been true but as Linux-based servers have become the backbone of the Web, criminals have started targetting them like any other infrastructure. As nation state malware has ramped up, desktops have even faced rare attacks too. Linux is still diverse and difficult to penetrate, its user base mroe savvy. Unfortunately, public servers aren't always secured as well.
It appears I'm not alone in this theory. Someone commented exactly along these lines on a Guardian article, which is what led me to think twice - hey, I thought this line of thought was an effect of too much House of Cards, but it appears I might not be completely crazy after all - and take this out of my mind and put it to paper. Well, the Internet.
The big thing of the week, that has everybody talking, is of course brexit. My thoughts, as written before on a facebook comment: Direct democracy doesn't really work if it's done once in a blue moon. Wikipedia says there have been thirteen referendums in UK since 1975, but most of them (10) on devolution issues in individual countries, and only three were UK-wide referendums (quoting from the above page): the first on membership of the European Economic Community in 1975, the second on adopting the Alternative vote system in parliamentary elections in 2011, and the third one is the current one. Which means that a referendum is done every 13 years or so.
George Osborne will issue a statement early on Monday morning in a bid to calm markets after the surprise Brexit vote triggered turmoil on Friday.
The chancellor has not spoken publicly since the Leave campaign won Thursday's referendum.
His aim will be to provide reassurance about the UK's economic and financial stability, a Treasury official said.
Before that statement the pound fell further, down another 2.6% against the dollar at $1.34.
Boris Johnson says the UK will continue to "intensify" co-operation with the EU following the country's vote to leave.
The leading pro-Leave campaigner said exit supporters must accept the 52-48 result was "not entirely overwhelming".
Writing in Monday's Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson dismissed Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's call for a second independence referendum saying there was little "appetite" for one.
It came as Jeremy Corbyn said he would stand in any Labour leadership contest.
Eleven members of the shadow front bench resigned on Sunday following the sacking of shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, who told Mr Corbyn he had lost confidence in him.
In his first words since accepting the result of the EU referendum on Friday, Mr Johnson wrote that "the only change" would be to free the UK from the EU's "extraordinary and opaque" law, which "will not come in any great rush".
Boris Johnson has broken cover for the first time since reacting to the vote for Brexit to set out how the country may look if he wins the race to succeed David Cameron as prime minister.
Amid clamour for the leave campaign’s leaders to set out what happens next, Johnson claimed Britain will be able to introduce a points-based immigration system while maintaining access to the European single market.
Johnson sought to reassure remain voters the UK will continue to intensify cooperation with the EU and told his fellow leave supporters they must accept the 52-48 referendum win was “not entirely overwhelming”.
Chancellor to make morning statement to reassure markets as survey reveals negative business impact of EU vote
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Sunday blasted a planned EU-US trade treaty, saying the ambitious deal was against "EU interests."
"No free trade agreement should be concluded if it does not respect EU interests. Europe should be firm," Valls told members of the governing Socialist Party, adding "France will be vigilant about this."
President Martin Schulz says speeding up of UK exit being considered after ‘continent taken hostage because of Tory party fight’
Thousands of people are set to march on Parliament Square tonight in support of Jeremy Corbyn after the Labour party was plunged into civil war over the weekend.
More than 3,000 supporters have pledged to attend the demonstration, called #KeepCorbyn, Build our movement, while a further six thousand have declared an interest in going.
The event was posted on Facebook by left-wing group Momentum hours after 12 members of Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet left their posts on a day his leadership descended into a full blown crisis.
Already on the shitlist of U.S. broadband companies for supporting net neutrality and opposing things like usage caps, Netflix now has a new factually-challenged enemy: Russia. Russia's Culture Ministry took over government film funding through the Cinema Fund in 2012, and more recently unveiled a list of approved subject matter should film makers in Russia wish to get funding. Approved subject matter should include tales that herald "traditional values," "the constructive actions of civil society" or "heroes fighting crime, terrorism and extremism."
With Netflix now pushing into 190 different countries and launching in Russia last January, Russia has clearly become nervous about the influence the US streaming company could have on Russian culture and homegrown production efforts. As such, streaming services like Netflix have been saddled with a significant number of restrictions, including requirements that online video services must be run through a Russia-registered subsidiary, produce 30% of its content locally, and potentially apply for a broadcast license.
The web’s biggest content providers have started using automation to remove “extremist propaganda” videos from their sites.
In other words, the companies aren't (yet) using these tools to automatically determine what's "extremist" and block it, but rather they're just keeping it from being posted. Of course, we're all quite familiar with how badly this can fail in the copyright context, and it's quite likely the same thing may happen in this context as well. Remember, in the past, under pressure from a US Senator, YouTube took down a Syrian watchdog's channel, confusing its documentation of atrocities with extremist content. And, hell, the same day that this was reported, a reporter on Twitter noted that her own Facebook account was suspended because she posted a picture of a friend of hers who had been killed in Syria.
Despite holding what has long been considered one of the Liberal Party's safest seats, Ms O'Dwyer and the Liberal Party's social media advisor have forced Twitter to remove photos from an obscure Twitter account that has only 211 followers.
The Obama administration’s latest attempt at censorship, if not another attempt to avoid reality, has failed.
Shortly after the recent terrorist attack in Orlando, Fla. — which resulted in the deaths of 49 people and more than 50 people wounded — the federal government decided to redact (or censor) portions of a 911 call the terrorist made during his attack.
The Pirate Party's commitment to privacy and digital rights is reflected by it topping the election scorecards of Electronic Frontiers Australia,1 Digital Rights Watch,2 and the Australian Privacy Foundation.3 As the closing arguments of the first website blocking case under section 115A of the Copyright Act was heard in the Federal Court, the Pirate Party seeks to put digital rights and freedoms of the 2016 federal election agenda.
The recently released Udta Punjab, which deals with the drug problem in the state, ran into trouble after the CBFC suggested multiple cuts. The matter later reached the Bombay High Court, which cleared the movie with just one cut.
On Friday, June 24, Russia's State Duma approved a final draft of several anti-terrorist laws spearheaded by deputy Irina Yarovaya. Though lawmakers removed many of the legislation's most odious amendments at the last minute (which, in part, would have made it possible to revoke convicts' Russian citizenship and their right to travel abroad), the bill still revises dozens of existing laws in ways that could have profound consequences for people living in Russia. For “Yarovaya's legislation” to become law, the Federation Council must next approve the legislation, and then President Putin needs to sign it. There is no doubt that this will happen. Meduza offers a brief summary of what the State Duma just set into motion.
For the last three years, one month, and seven days, Edward Snowden has been living in exile from the United States.
If you want to stop the NSA and other nation state actors, there's one precept that comes before all others: "If you really want to protect your network, you really have to know your network."
A new exhibition is set to provide a unique opportunity for the public to delve into the history of the GCHQ Scarborough listening station.
The European Commission has finally wrapped up a new deal with the U.S. for companies to transfer data across the Atlantic.
After weeks of back and forth between Europe and the U.S., Justice Commissioner’s VÃâºra Jourová’s negotiators received a thumbs-up from their American counterparts in the early hours of Friday — just hours before the results of the British EU referendum would shock the Continent.
In other words, if you're following ISIS accounts on Twitter, DHS might not let you into the US. And sure, it's voluntary, but it looks like some in Congress are already saying that this sort of thing ought to be mandatory. Of course, for the vast majority of people, their social media profiles are going to be pretty boring for your average Customs and Border Patrol agent, but do we really think it's a good use of their time to be trolling through their Facebook and Twitter feeds or Instagram and Pinterest images?
The European Union and the United States have agreed changes to a data transfer pact that is key to transatlantic business, including stricter rules for companies holding information on Europeans and clearer limits on U.S. surveillance.
After years of tepid action, Florida officials are moving to intensify monitoring and remove residents from a sprawling complex for the disabled that has a long history of abuse and neglect.
The state is taking the unusual step of stationing an investigator at the Carlton Palms Educational Center and forming a special team to closely watch over staff and residents, documents obtained by ProPublica show. Residents will eventually be relocated to new homes.
Social media such as Skype, Facebook and internet message boards can be used to serve court papers in Singapore, the High Court ruled in Storey, David Ian Andrew v Planet Arkadia
For most of the last year the House has desperately been trying to punish the FCC for standing up to ISPs on net neutrality. This has included an endless number of taxpayer funded "accountability" hearings designed to shame the agency, as well as attempts to gut FCC authority and funding via sneaky budget riders. The latest example is the House Appropriations Committee's 29-17 vote to approve an FCC appropriations bill (pdf), part of a larger Financial Services Bill determining the 2017 budgets for multiple agencies. That bill not only dramatically reduces the FCC budget, but tried to hamstring net neutrality rule enforcement.
Opening up more markets and more users, while having less overall friction will be bad for the film industry? Only if it's run by complete idiots who don't know how to take advantage of a larger market. But, I guess that's the MPAA way!
Of course, it's not hard to understand what Dodd is really talking about. For years, Hollywood has been able to squeeze extra money out of a convoluted and corrupt manner of territorial licensing -- a system that may have made sense in a pre-modern world, but which hasn't made any sense at all in decades. But because the Hollywood studios abuse that system for profit, often making it impossible for people to see the content they want to see (and are willing to pay for), it doesn't want to change that system.
Back at the end of May the Copyright Office put out a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) concerning some changes to the DMCA agent registration process. As we've noted for years, technically to be covered by the important DMCA safe harbors you first have to register with the Copyright Office (and we've repeatedly recommended that you do so, if you have any kind of site, even a personal one, where people may post potentially infringing material). Not registering won't automatically make you liable, but it can make the legal process a lot more problematic for you if someone posts infringing material on your website. Most people who commented on this new NPRM were pleasantly surprised to see that the key part of the proposal was reducing the fee for registering an agent from $105 (or more) down to just $6. The Copyright Office says it can do this thanks to the much easier efficiency of electronic filing. That's great.
But hidden in the details is something not great at all. First spotted by the ever eagle-eyed Eric Goldman, part of this proposal was actually reviving a very bad proposal from 2011 to also force sites to renew their DMCA agent every 3 years. This is dumb for so many reasons -- and Eric, along with the EFF, told the Copyright Office this back when the proposal first came out -- and... the Copyright Office never responded (though it still says it's coming...). And here's the really nasty bit: the Copyright Office insists that any comments being made over this NPRM can only be about the change in the fee, and not the serial renewals, even though it also notes (in a footnote, of course) that this new lower fee is dependent on it becoming a recurring fee thanks to the renewals.