04.19.17
Gemini version available ♊︎Links 19/4/2017: DockerCon Coverage, Ubuntu Switching to Wayland
Contents
GNU/Linux
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Desktop
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Announcing a new fun venture for me: Our sister site LifeOnLinux
I’ve debated for quite some time setting up my own more generalised Linux and technology site, so screw it, I did it. Announcing LifeOnLinux.com as a new experiment!
To be clear: GamingOnLinux will stay exactly the same and keep improving as it always does. LifeOnLinux costs nothing extra to run and it’s mainly an experiment right now.
It will have the same basic principles as GOL itself: No bullshit, no adverts, no clickbait, SSL for everyone for free and it will keep things simple and to the point as much as possible. It will accept user contributed articles too, just like GOL does.
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A Linux story, why I got into Linux and what it means to me
When I had turned 16 years old, my granddad had purchased my first ever computer for me and it didn’t have Windows. While I was initially shocked, I was also very curious, as I grew up playing with various models of Amiga so I was already a little used to something different.
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An interview with Ryan Sipes from System76 about Ubuntu and their future
I did a little interview with Ryan Sipes from System76 about the future of Ubuntu and what they plan to do now Ubuntu is dropping the Unity desktop environment.
This interview references this blog post by Mark Shuttleworth about Ubuntu moving back to GNOME Shell. I throw in some other questions for good measure.
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Did North Korea Linux ripoff Apple’s macOS?
North Korea has long been a mystery to most westerners. Life inside of the hermit kingdom is not easy for those of us in the west to fully understand, particularly when it comes to technology.
And yet North Korea has been active in developing its own computer operating system. The country has its own version of Linux called Red Star OS, which is often referred to as North Korea Linux.
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Dell Launches Precision 5720 All-in-One Workstation Powered by Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Dell’s Barton George is pleased to announce today the general availability of the last Ubuntu-based system for the company’s all-new Precision line-up of computers, the Dell Precision 5720 All-in-One.
Back in January, Dell launched the first of three mobile workstations of its new Precision line-up, the Dell Precision 3520, an affordable and fully customizable 15-inch laptop, along with Dell Precision 5520, which the company dubbed as world’s thinnest and lightest 15-inch notebook powered by Ubuntu Linux.
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Server
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Docker LinuxKit: Secure Linux containers for Windows, macOS, and clouds
At Dockercon in Austin, Texas, Docker CEO Solomon Hydes said, Docker “is a bunch of projects not a monolith.” One of the newest of these projects is LinuxKit. This is a toolkit for building secure, portable, and lean operating systems for containers.
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As container adoption grows, Linux community champions open source
While much of the recent rise in enthusiasm for containers in applications has users closely associating that functionality with Docker Inc., members of the Linux community have been eager to point out how long their systems have been using containers in applications and to encourage users to look into further Linux utility for their needs.
“Containers aren’t a Docker thing; containers are a Linux thing. … It’s been a core Linux feature for over a decade now,” said Brian Gracely (pictured), director of product strategy at Red Hat Inc.
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Introducing Moby Project: a new open-source project to advance the software containerization movement
Since Docker democratized software containers four years ago, a whole ecosystem grew around containerization and in this compressed time period it has gone through two distinct phases of growth. In each of these two phases, the model for producing container systems evolved to adapt to the size and needs of the user community as well as the project and the growing contributor ecosystem.
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Docker’s new Moby open-source project is the ‘Lego Club of container systems’
Docker Inc. is launching a new open-source initiative, dubbed the Moby Project, which the San Francisco-based company describes as a new effort to move software container technology further into mainstream use by developers and businesses.
Moby was announced this morning at the annual DockerCon convention in Austin, Texas. The project includes a library of backend components, a framework for assembling those components into a container platform, and a reference assembly called Moby Origin, explains Docker founder and CTO Solomon Hykes in a post announcing the new project.
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Docker debuts containerized kit for building Linux distros
Since its beginning, Docker has been created by synthesizing elements in Linux and repackaging them in useful ways. Docker’s next trick is the reverse: using container elements to synthesize distributions of Linux.
Today Docker unveiled LinuxKit and the Moby Project, a pair of projects that are intended to allow operating system vendors, do-it-yourselfers, and cutting-edge software creators to create container-native OSes and container-based systems.
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DockerCon: Docker announces two new collaborative open-source container projects
Docker wants containers to be the building blocks of interchangeable platforms. The company announced two new open-source projects, the LinuxKit and the Moby Project, at day two of its DockerCon conference in Austin, Texas.
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Container Projects Expand as Ecosystem Matures [Ed: Microsoft tries to make Docker more proprietary (with Hyper-V), adding the usual back doors [1, 2, 3]]
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Docker Opens Ups Container Platform With LinuxKit and Moby Project
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How Docker Continuously Improves Its Container Platform
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Containers in dynamic interactions: The Linux comeback
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How Docker Has Changed in the Last Four Years
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Docker emits LinuxKit: You can probably guess what it does
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Docker ‘explodes’ in the enterprise, expands containers into new applications
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It’s ‘developer day’ at DockerCon with two open-source projects announced
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Watch live from DockerCon 2017
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Docker Advances the Software Containerization Movement with Two New Collaborative Projects
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Kernel Space
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Linux 4.10.11
I’m announcing the release of the 4.10.11 kernel.
All users of the 4.10 kernel series must upgrade.
The updated 4.10.y git tree can be found at:
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.10.y
and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st…
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Linux 4.4.62
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Linux 4.9.23
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Linux 3.18.49
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Linux Kernels 4.10.11, 4.9.23 LTS & 4.4.62 LTS Improve MIPS, Intel i915 Support
Today, April 18, 2017, renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the availability of another set of updated kernels for the Linux 4.10, 4.9, and 4.4 branches.
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Linux Kernel 3.18 Gets One More Update, Version 3.18.49 Adds Many Improvements
After announcing the release of the Linux 4.10.11, 4.9.23 LTS and 4.4.62 LTS kernels, Greg Kroah-Hartman also informed the community today, April 18, 2017, about the availability of the long-term supported Linux 3.18.49 kernel.
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My Favorite Features/Changes Of The Linux 4.11 Kernel
With Linux 4.11.0 being released as soon as this weekend, here’s a look back at the changes I found most exciting about this next kernel feature release.
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Linux Foundation Gold Members Elect Representatives to Board of Directors
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the appointment of Hisao Munakata of Renesas and Dirk Hohndel of VMware to its Board of Directors. Linux Foundation Gold members elected Messrs. Hohndel and Munakata to represent them for a two-year term. They take the places of outgoing Board member Alan Clark of SUSE and Hisashi Hashimoto of Hitachi, who has moved to a Platinum Director seat.
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Systemd-implementation of “rm -rf” Buggy, Could Erase Root Partition
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Graphics Stack
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Benchmarks
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LLVM Clang 3.9.1, Clang 4.0 & GCC 6.3 With Intel’s Clear Linux
A few days back Intel’s Clear Linux updated their LLVM Clang compiler from 3.9.1 to the recent 4.0.0 release, following Beignet getting LLVM 4.0 support. Here are some before/after benchmarks as well as fresh GCC benchmarks.
Clear Linux ships both LLVM Clang and GCC and switches between the default compiler when building its packages/bundles depending upon which compiler is known to do the best for the particular workload. As far as the default compiler exposed, GCC is the default. I ran some tests of Clear Linux 14620 that shipped with GCC 6.3 and and LLVM Clang 3.9.1 followed by upgrading to Clear Linux 14640 to get the distribution’s LLVM Clang 4.0 build. (Note there was also a small update to its Linux 4.10 kernel with that build too.)
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NVIDIA 381 Linux Beta vs. Linux 4.11 / Mesa 17.1 Radeon Comparison
For those wondering how the bleeding-edge open-source Radeon driver stack is comparing to the latest NVIDIA closed-source binary blob, here are some fresh benchmarks on many different cards. Tested is the new NVIDIA 381.09 binary driver with different Maxwell/Pascal GPUs alongside various AMD GCN card tests using the Linux 4.11 Git kernel and Mesa 17.1-dev Git.
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Applications
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The Wire Linux client is now available to install from a secure repo
Encrypted messaging service Wire is now available to install on Ubuntu (and related distros) from a secure repository that offers verified packages.
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Oracle Outs VirtualBox 5.1.20 and 5.0.38 with Minor GUI Improvements, Bug Fixes
Oracle’s Simon Coter announced today, April 18, 2017, the availability of the VirtualBox 5.1.20 and 5.0.38 stable updates for the open-source and cross-platform virtualization software.
Including all the security fixes revealed as part of “April 2017 Oracle CPU”, the VirtualBox 5.1.20 and VirtualBox 5.0.38 releases are small bugfix updates that add multiple GUI (Graphical User Interface) improvements, such as a fix for a crash that occurred when attempting to restore the defaults in the Appliance Import dialog.
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Text editor ‘Atom’ set to get improved startup time, results are impressive so far
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Proprietary
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Nylas Mail Comes to Windows & Linux, Brings Pro Features for Free with Version 2.0
Back in January, the folks at Nylas announced that Nylas N1, their flagship email client was being rebranded as Nylas Mail and also introduced a free version of the app, called Nylas Mail Basic. Nylas Mail Basic included most of the features of the Pro version, but was only available for Mac when the announcement was made. The company has today launched Nylas Mail 2.0 — a big release that brings some Pro featured promised in January and also makes the app available to Windows and Linux users.
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Instructionals/Technical
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More KVM Modules Configuration
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Signing Linux Kernel Modules and enforce to load only signed Modules
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Wrapping Up the Mars Lander
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Reporting and monitoring storage events
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A better March Madness script?
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The GUI for Clam anti virus – clamtk .
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How to configure your Fedora development system to access the Fedora staging infrastructure
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make-theme-image: a script to make yourself an idea of a icon theme
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Syncthing on openSUSE
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Versioning a REST API in Kubernetes with NGINX Ingress Controller
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How To Make Your Ubuntu Linux Appear Like Windows, Use UKUI Desktop
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Games
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Geneshift, the top-down shooter with vehicles has an Early Access launch date and a Linux demo
Geneshift [Steam, Official Site], previously known as Subvein: Mutant Factions, a top-down shooter with vehicles will officially launch on April 27th (Early Access) and they also have a demo now too.
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Downward, an impressive first-person open-world Parkour adventure supports Linux
I’ve tested out Downward [Steam, Official Site] and I’ve found it to be a rather incredible open-world Parkour game and I love it.
Disclosure: Key provided by the developer.
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Flinthook, a fast action-platformer with roguelike elements releases day-1 for Linux
It does look pretty good, so I will likely look to cover it in more detail when we can get hold of the developer for a review key. We have a lot of games like it, so hopefully it does something really unique to set itself apart.
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Unreal Tournament 0.1.10 Released
Epic Games has announced their April update to their cross-platform, free-to-play Unreal Tournament game, v0.1.10.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Calligra 3.0 Open-Source Office Suite Gets First Point Release, 26 Issues Fixed
It’s been three months since the major Calligra 3.0 release hit the streets in mid-January, and it now received its first point release to fix the various issues reported by users lately.
Calligra 3.0.1 has been released on April 17, 2017, and while it may not yet be available in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distributions, we can tell you about the changes implemented by the hard working development team behind this open-source office suite targeted at KDE users.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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3.24 Release Party – Back in time
So, this Saturday 15th, we got together in São Paulo, Brazil, to celebrate another GNOME release. And what a fun time!
We went to a very nice place called “Taverna Medieval” (Medieval Tavern), an almost-real tavern with nice drinks, huge burgers (including the vegan one called “Elven of the Woods”! what a nice burger) and of course a super awsome tavern keeper.
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Minwaita GTK Theme Puts GNOME’s Adwaita on a Diet
If you like the Adwaita theme Ubuntu GNOME ships with but don’t like the size of its title bars, here’s a theme that may be of interest.
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I’m not looking forward 3.24
Those who follow my work are used to read my “Looking forward ” posts, and they appear to be quite popular. This cycle, however, I’m not looking forward the next GNOME release.
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Distributions
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Hardened Node.js distro comes to Docker-friendly Alpine Linux
NodeSource is releasing a distribution of its enterprise-level, commercially supported NSolid Node.js runtime that works with Docker-friendly Alpine Linux. NSolid for Alpine Linux is intended to work with Alpine’s small footprint and security capabilities, said Joe McCann, NodeSource CEO.
With the NSolid Node.js runtime, the company accommodates three critical enterprise technologies: the Linux kernel, Docker containers, and Node.js server-side JavaScript applications.
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Oracle to acquire Wercker, SnapLogic’s machine learning tech, and NodeSource N|Solid for Alpine Linux — SD Times news digest: April 18, 2017
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NodeSource Introduces N|Solid Customized for Alpine Linux
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Linux: 5 best desktop distributions
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Reviews
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Tiny Core: Small Footprint, Big Potential
Tiny Core comes in a few architectures. It is available for ARM, x86 and x86_64 processors.
Tiny Core Linux may not have all the bells and whistles you get from a more functional Linux distro. However, if you prefer telling your OS what to do rather than the other way around, Tiny Core Linux could be an interesting alternative for you.
I was impressed with Tiny Core’s speed and simplicity. It is a Linux variant that can let you work without desktop distractions. It is also a handy and tiny OS very suitable for tinkering. It is an ideal OS option to familiarize users with a hefty collection of lightweight classic desktop environments.
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New Releases
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Linux distribution ‘Solus’ has a new snapshot available with ‘Bulletproof Boot Management’
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Solus 2017.04.18 Brings Updates, Bulletproof Boot Management
Solus 2017.04.18.0 was released today as the latest ISO snapshot for this growing Linux distribution well known for its original Budgie desktop.
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ExTiX 17.4 – “The Ultimate Linux System” – with LXQt 0.11.1, Nvidia 381.09 and kernel 4.10.0-19-exton – Build 170418
I have made a new version of ExTiX – The Ultimate Linux System. I call it ExTiX 17.4 LXQt Live DVD. (The previous version was 17.2 from 170320).
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ExTiX 17.4 Distro Launches Based on Ubuntu 17.04, Features LXQt 0.11.1 Desktop
GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton announced today, April 18, 2017, the release and immediate availability for download of the ExTiX 17.4 LXQt Live DVD GNU/Linux distribution.
ExTiX 17.4 appears to be the second distro based on Canonical’s latest Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system, after Ultimate Edition 5.4. However, ExTiX 17.4, which is dubbed “The Ultimate Linux System,” is also based on the repositories of Debian GNU/Linux 8.7 “Jessie” and Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch.”
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OpenSUSE/SUSE
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Bird Watching: An openSUSE Maker Project
Creating cool projects is what makes openSUSE so much fun and a recent project by an openSUSE member highlights just how creative and fun one can be using openSUSE.
Adrian Schröter took a Raspberry Pi 3 using openSUSE to create a 3D-printed foldable tripod and took the idea even further by using the Raspberry Pi 3 used to build the tripod to take interval photographs of a Storch and it’s nest with a Sony A5100 camera.
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Red Hat Family
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Scientific Linux 6.9 Officially Released, Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9
On April 17, 2017, Fermilab’s Pat Riehecky was proud to announce the release and immediate availability for download the Scientific Linux 6.9 operating system.
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Red Hat Names Eric Shander as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
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Red Hat promotes Eric Shander to CFO job
Open source software company Red Hat has chosen one of its own as the company’s new chief financial officer.
The Raleigh-based company announced Tuesday that Eric Shander, who was named acting CFO in January, has been promoted to executive vice president and chief financial officer. Shander, whose appointment takes effect immediately, previously was vice president and chief accounting officer.
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Red Hat names new CFO
Four months after Frank Calderoni resigned as Red Hat’s chief financial officer, the Raleigh-based open-source software firm has named Eric Shander to the role.
Shander had been serving as interim CFO while continuing his role as chief accounting officer. He joined Red Hat in 2015 after long stints at IBM and Lenovo. Red Hat says he “has helped strengthen and grow the company’s finance operation.”
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Red Hat looks to ramp up channel storage business
Over the last year, Red Hat has been on a mission to increase the relevance of non-Linux business, with the goal to find a 50/50 balance between its Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its non-Linux properties.
To do that, it needs to aggressively grow its storage business.
And to do that, it needs to grow the channel around its storage business.
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Finance
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Red Hat Inc (RHT) Shares Gap Up Following Analyst Upgrade
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Red Hat Inc (RHT) PT Raised to $95.00
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The Markets Are Undervaluing these stock’s: AbbVie Inc. (ABBV), Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Files An 8-K Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers
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National Pension Service Boosts Position in Red Hat Inc (RHT)
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Today’s Analyst Moves: Nucor Corporation (NUE), Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)
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Company Stock in Focus: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)
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Fedora
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Fedora at Technologix 2017
On 16th March’17, Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering (SJCE), Mysore invited Red Hat to be the part of there ongoing CSI fest, Technologix. Red Hat was the premium sponsor of the fest. The event was a success with fresh energy. Most of the students were sophomores and were aware about Fedora, Linux and open source.
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Help translate the Fedora User Handbook
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Translation Sprint 2017
The last couple of days there was a Fedora Translation Sprint that I took as an opportunity to find out how translations in Fedora work nowadays. The actual translation happens at Fedora’s Zanata instance, a web based application for translation collaborations. Even though it accepts Fedora’s FAS single sign-on system, it is not possible to directly propose translations. Unfortunately, several manual steps are required. Luckily I noticed this early enough in the sprint and Roman, the German translation team coordinator, pressed the necessary buttons in time for me to join during the sprint.
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Flock Cod Logo Ideas
Ryan Lerch put together an initial cut at a Flock 2017 logo and website design (flock2017-WIP branch of fedora-websites). It was an initial cut he offered for me to play with; in trying to work on some logistics for Flock to make sure things happen on time I felt locking in on a final logo design would be helpful at this point.
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F25-20170418 Updated Live isos released
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Community Managers Sit Everywhere. Should They?
This week’s opensource.com community blogging prompt by Stormy Peters includes the question, “should community managers sit in marketing or engineering?” This is a very individualized decision and not an easy one at that.
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Fedora Media Writer Test Day: 2017-04-20
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Debian Family
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Call for Proposals for DebConf17 Open Day
The DebConf team would like to call for proposals for the DebConf17 Open Day, a whole day dedicated to sessions about Debian and Free Software, and aimed at the general public. Open Day will preceed DebConf17 and will be held in Montreal, Canada, on August 5th 2017.
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Systemd again (or how to obliterate your system)
Ok, I have been silent about systemd and its being forced onto us in Debian like force-feeding Foie gras gooses. I have complained about systemd a few times (here and here), but what I read today really made me loose my last drips of trust I had in this monster-piece of software.
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My March 2017 Activities
March was a busy month, so this monthly report is a little late. I worked two weekends, and I was planning my Easter holiday, so there wasn’t a lot of spare time.
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Debian bins keys assigned to arrested Russian contributor
Debian has removed keys assigned to developer Dmitry Bogatov after he was arrested by Russian authorities for using the internet to organise protests. Or, as Russian outlet TASS puts it, “for terrorism and attempts to stage unrest in Moscow.”
Bogatov was remanded in custody for two months, but claims he was not at his keyboard at the time posts calling for protests were made. He’s also said he will co-operate with authorities.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus released
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UBports Recommends Buying Fairphone 2, OnePlus One or Nexus 5 as Ubuntu Phones
Continuing our coverage on the UBports’ Unity 8 and Ubuntu Touch plans, we’ve got word from Marius Quabeck, who’s now the new community manager for UBports, about some of the aspects that remained unclear since the last Q&A.
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Ubuntu Is Switching to Wayland
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Ubuntu May Ditch Thunderbird, Possibly Ship With No Email App
Developers are considering dropping the Thunderbird email client from Ubuntu’s default apps list in Ubuntu 17.10 due later this year.
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The Unity desktop environment isn’t dead, forks planned
As expected, some users and developers aren’t happy that the Unity desktop environment is going to be stopped and removed in favour of GNOME Shell. Here come the forks!
Details are light on both, since of course everything is so very new, but hopefully they will see rapid development.
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Flavours and Variants
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Black Lab Linux’s Weekly Releases Move to the GNOME 3 Desktop, New ISO Out Now
Black Lab Software’s Roberto J. Dohnert is informing Softpedia today about the immediate availability for download of the Black Lab Linux Weekly 258 ISO snapshot of the Ubuntu-based distribution.
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Devices/Embedded
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Raspberry Pi pulse generator HAT targets motor control
CNC Design’s “Pulse Train Hat” is a Raspberry Pi add-on that generates variable frequency pulses for automation systems such as stepper/servo motors.
CNC Design Limited has launched a Pulse Train Hat (PTHAT) add-on board for the Raspberry PI designed to “make motor control easy, fast and accurate.” The Raspberry Pi HAT compliant board lets customers use simple serial ASCII commands to generate clean, fast and accurate variable frequency pulses. The chief application is to drive stepper/servo motors that use pulse and direction lines, such as motors found in 3D printers, CNC machines, and robot arms.
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ADAS development system runs Linux on TI’s TDA2X
D3 Engineering’s “DesignCore RVP-TDA2x Development Kit for ADAS” taps TI’s TDA2x, Jacinto 6, or AM562x, and offers a 3GHz FPD-Link III video input.
D3 Engineering’s DesignCore RVP-TDA2x Development Kit for ADAS is a Rugged Vision Platform (RVP) development kit designed for evaluating ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) technology under realistic on-vehicle conditions. Applications include front or rear cameras with analytics, 3D Surround View with Car Black Box (CarBB), driver monitoring, and mirror replacement and camera monitoring systems (CMS), says the Texas Instruments platinum design partner.
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Phones
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Tizen
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Android
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Google partners with PayPal to bring new checkout options for Android Pay
Google has announced a partnership with PayPal that allows you to use your account to buy things anywhere Android Pay is accepted.
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Details leak on Android creator’s mysterious Essential phone
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Halium is an Open Source Project Working Towards a Common Base for Non-Android Mobile Operating Systems
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Google forced to open up Android to rival search engines in Russia
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Android Open Source Project Website Gets Material UI, Improved Navigation
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Google Reaches Android Antitrust Settlement In Russia
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Nokia 6 gets Android 7.1.1, hints at a promising life
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6 hidden Android tricks to increase productivity
If you’re looking for ways to help make your Android Nougat experience a bit more productive, Jack Wallen reveals six hidden tricks to help you gain more on-the-go efficiency.
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Google buckles under pressure from Russia, will open Android to other search engines
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Ultimate custom Android home screen Battle Royale (poll results)
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PayPal teams up with Android Pay for mobile payments
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Google Earth for Chrome & Android gets upgraded with guided tours, more discovery features
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Latest Substratum Update Adds Full Android O Theming, Dynamic Refresh Mode and More
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What is Google’s Android mascot doing in North Korea?
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Galaxy S8 and S8+ review: Another pair of excellent mainstream smartphones from Samsung
When you talk about Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, it’s hard not to talk about ‘the average consumer.’ Because the Galaxy S series is the second-most popular line of smartphones on earth, its audience is unashamedly mainstream, and the vast majority of sales of these devices will be to consumers who aren’t what you’d call tech-savvy. The issue for Samsung, increasingly, is learning how to split the difference between a smartphone that provides a good experience for everybody and maintaining that all important credibility with its fans and enthusiasts.
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Free Software/Open Source
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5 Open Source companies to watch in 2017
As if getting venture funding themselves isn’t exciting enough for open source-oriented startups, seeing an open source-focused company like Deis get snapped up by Microsoft must be a thrill as well.
While it would be more thrilling, perhaps, if Microsoft disclosed how much it paid, I’m sure those in the startup world and their backers have ways of finding out that information. Not that the acquisition path is necessarily the exit route that all of these startups envision for themselves, but such money can obviously talk.
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Open source telco projects will struggle to gain traction until 5G matures
Large-scale telco cloud deployments will reach global critical mass after 2020, in parallel with the deployment for 5G, according to a new study from ABI Research. Such massive deployments will likely require the new core network currently being architected by 3GPP to allow for advanced concepts, including network slicing and services geared toward different business verticals. The research firm adds that early 5G deployments will likely focus on enhanced mobile broadband, during which time there will not be an immediate need for a new telco core.
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3 things community managers can learn from the 50 state strategy
There are a lot of parallels between the world of politics and open source development. Open source community members can learn a lot about how political parties cultivate grass-roots support and local organizations, and empower those local organizations to keep people engaged. Between 2005 and 2009, Howard Dean was the chairman of the Democratic National Congress in the United States, and instituted what was known as the “50 state strategy” to grow the Democratic grass roots. That strategy, and what happened after it was changed, can teach community managers some valuable lessons about keeping community contributors. Here are three lessons community managers can learn from it.
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Open source is changing the build or buy question
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Events
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Dive Into Connected Car and Open Source at Automotive Linux Summit 2017
Next month, the world’s leading automotive experts and engineers will gather at Automotive Linux Summit in Japan to discuss the future of connected cars and collaborate on the open source technologies driving innovation in the automotive arena.
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SaaS/Back End
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Partnerships and collaboration: the secret to big data innovation done better with open source software and Obsidian Systems
The strength of open source software is the community that helps to develop it and the vendors that adopt it, and that’s just as true in the world of high-end enterprise solutions for real-time big data management as it is for traditional data warehousing and business intelligence. That’s why Obsidian Systems, South Africa’s leading open source software provider, has partnered with global leaders in the field to bring the benefits of live data capture and analytics to local companies with some of the most powerful and cost-effective platforms available.
Obsidian has built a strong reputation for real-time analytics in finance, retail, mining and telecommunications. It’s done this by leveraging the capabilities of its key partners in the field, Hortonworks and Talend.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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LibreOffice 5.4 Office Suite Enters Development, Slated for Release in Late July
The Document Foundation, through Italo Vignoli, announced today, April 18, 2017, that the upcoming major update to the popular LibreOffice open-source office suite, versioned 5.4, has entered development.
While the LibreOffice 5.4 release should hit the streets sometime at the end of July, the folks over at The Document Foundations already planned the first bug hunting session for the first Alpha build, which should happen next Friday, on April 28, 2017. During this session, the team plans to squash numerous bugs.
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A Look At Some Of The Changes So Far For LibreOffice 5.4
LibreOffice 5.4 is due out this summer as the next feature update to this open-source cross-platform office suite.
Some of the changes queued so far for LibreOffice 5.4 include various Writer and Calc refinements, improved importing of EMF+ vector images, integration of pdfium for rendering inserted PDF images, Notebookbar improvements, a responsive design for the document iframe, some performance improvements, localization enhancements, and more.
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The felt dependency on Microsoft Outlook [iophk: "psychological addiction"]
On 10th April an international journalist team around Harald Schumann of the German tagesspiegel published the results of researches they did over several months about “Europe’s dire dependency on Microsoft“. The article mainly focuses on LibreOffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office. I can only underline all of the explanations, experiences and facts described in this article from my eleven years of experience in the OpenSource groupware scene.
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[Old] The Problem Isn’t Email, It’s Microsoft Exchange
If your email experience is via Exchange and Outlook, the net effect is both time consuming and disruptive.
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iWork and iLife apps are now free for old and new Mac and iOS users [iophk: “No ODF support for the garbage“
Previously, users with old hardware had to pay for each app. Individual programs cost between $5 and $20 each
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Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)
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Programming/Development
Leftovers
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These New Yorkers Are Covering Advertisements with Art
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The Building Shaker: a thumping gadget for annoying your noisy neighbors
The Chinese media report on a man called Zhao from Xi’an who took revenge on his noisy upstairs neighbors whose boy wouldn’t stop jumping on his ceiling by buying a “building shaker” — a gadget that thumps your shared walls until your neighbors capitulate — and leaving it on while he went away for the weekend.
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Science
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Explained: Neural networks
In the past 10 years, the best-performing artificial-intelligence systems — such as the speech recognizers on smartphones or Google’s latest automatic translator — have resulted from a technique called “deep learning.”
Deep learning is in fact a new name for an approach to artificial intelligence called neural networks, which have been going in and out of fashion for more than 70 years. Neural networks were first proposed in 1944 by Warren McCullough and Walter Pitts, two University of Chicago researchers who moved to MIT in 1952 as founding members of what’s sometimes called the first cognitive science department.
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Why Slashing the NIH Budget Is Indefensible
We can’t afford to defund the vital efforts that could help solve some of our greatest challenges, from cancer to climate change.
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Hardware
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Chinese HDMI-to-SDI converters
The last issue is by far the worst, but it only affects 3G-SDI resolutions. 720p60, 1080p30 and 1080i60 all work fine. And to be fair, not even Blackmagic’s own converters actually send 352M correctly most of the time…
I wish there were a way I could publish this somewhere people would actually read it before buying these things, but without a name, it’s hard for people to find it. They’re great value for money, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them for almost all use… but then, there’s that almost.
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Security
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Security updates for Monday
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Practical basics of reproducible builds 3
On my quest to generate reproducible standalone binaries for GNU FreeDink, I met new friends but currently lie defeated by an unexpected enemy…
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Security updates for Tuesday
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Vigilante botnet infects IoT devices before blackhats can hijack them
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IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction [iophk: "proprietary protocol == insecure"]
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Researchers identify new variant of IoT/Linux botnet
A new variant of the IoT/Linux botnet “Tsunami” has been identified by Unit 42 researchers, according to a blog post by Palo Alto Networks.
Co-authored by Claud Xiao, Cong Zheng and Yanhui Jia, the post names the new variant as Amnesia, a botnet that targets an unpatched remote code execution vulnerability.
This vulnerability was publicly disclosed over a year ago in March 2016 in DVR (digital video recorder) devices made by TVT Digital and branded by over 70 vendors across the globe.
This unpatched remote code execution vulnerability affects about 227,000 devices around the world especially Taiwan, the United States, Israel, Turkey, and India.
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You can now sign into a Microsoft Account without a password [iophk: “a phone is not a safe 2nd factor”
Microsoft is enabling a new phone sign in option as part of the company’s iOS and Android Microsoft Authenticator app.
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Defence/Aggression
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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History of Iran Covert Action Deferred Indefinitely
A declassified U.S. Government documentary history of the momentous 1953 coup in Iran, in which Central Intelligence Agency personnel participated, had been the object of widespread demand from historians and others for decades. In recent years, it finally seemed to be on the verge of publication.
But now its release has been postponed indefinitely.
Last year, “the Department of State did not permit publication of the long-delayed Iran Retrospective volume because it judged the political environment too sensitive,” according to a new annual report from the State Department Historical Advisory Committee (HAC). “The HAC was severely disappointed.”
“The HAC was unsuccessful in its efforts to meet with [then-]Secretary Kerry to discuss the volume, and now there is no timetable for its release,” the new report stated.
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Julian Assange Tweets About Running in the UK Election
The Brits are having an election on June 8th, as Prime Minister Theresa May looks to shore up support before things really get messy with Brexit. But an unlikely person has just floated the idea of running for British Parliament. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange just asked his followers on Twitter if he should run for election.
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Hypocritical CIA Director Goes On Rant About Wikileaks, Free Speech
The current administration is back to threatening free speech. On his way to being elected, Trump’s passion for bogus defamation suits led him to declare he would “open up” libel laws to make it easier for him to sue people for saying things he didn’t like.
This continued after the election. Trump tweeted his opposition to “fake news,” calling out pretty much any major network that wasn’t Fox News and calling them “enemies of the people.” His new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, is similarly threatening the First Amendment. In his remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pompeo went on a rant about Wikileaks — one no doubt motivated by the site’s recent data dumps on CIA computer exploits.
[...]
This is an interesting change of heart for Pompeo. Last year, when he was running for re-election in Kansas, he seemed pleased with Wikileaks and its ability to obtain damning documents.
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Pompeo vs. WikiLeaks: It’s No Contest
Last July, while stumping for then-candidate, now-president Donald Trump, US Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) gleefully referenced nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails released by the transparency/disclosure journalists at Wikileaks. “Need further proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down?” Pompeo tweeted. The emails showed that DNC officials had worked overtime to rig their party’s primaries for eventual nominee Hillary Clinton and against challenger Bernie Sanders.
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Intercepted podcast: Julian Assange speaks out as Trump’s CIA director threatens to “end” Wikileaks
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature
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Denmark to contest UK efforts to ‘take back control’ of fisheries
The British government’s plan to “take back control” of its waters after leaving the EU is about to be challenged by a claim from Denmark that its fishermen have a historical right to access to the seas around Britain dating back to the 1400s.
Officials in Copenhagen have mined the archives to build a legal case that could potentially be fought in the international court of justice in The Hague, although officials hasten to say that this is not their intention.
Denmark is seeking a Brexit deal that recognises the right of its fleet to continue to exploit a hundred shared stocks of species such as cod, herring, mackerel, plaice and sand eel.
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Finance
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It’s time to regulate the gig economy
Over a century ago, labour laws began to be instituted in diverse countries throughout the world. These laws were intended to provide protection to workers in what was recognised as an unequal relationship of exchange, but it also gave authority to managers to organise and direct their employees’ work. While the world of work has changed since these initial labour regulations were instituted, the fundamental reasons for the existence of labour protections – to ensure safe and healthy workplaces, to give workers a voice, and to provide minimum protections with respect to working time and earnings – remain valid.
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Why The Command-and-Control Mindset Is Killing Your Company
The world has reached a key moment in the history of the way we work. We have entered a new business environment, dictated by rapid changing technological variables that create an entirely new economic landscape. Exponential growth of our interconnected world forces us to see the world anew. The 21st century asks for a different mindset now the rules of the game have fundamentally changed.
In this game it is not anymore relevant to optimize an organization’s efficiency based on a stable set of known variables. Instead, there’s a strong need to adapt as fast as possible to increasingly complex working conditions. Efficiency has to make place for engagement and adaptability. The organizations that know how to fully engage their employees and those who are natives in this information-rich, densely interconnected world of the 21st century are the ones that thrive.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Poll: Bernie Sanders country’s most popular active politician
Sanders is viewed favorably by 57 percent of registered voters, according to data from a Harvard-Harris survey provided exclusively to The Hill. Sanders is the only person in a field of 16 Trump administration officials or congressional leaders included in the survey who is viewed favorably by a majority of those polled.
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Up In Arms in Jakarta
His election victories have sparked a backlash. Since he ran for deputy-governor in 2012, hard-line Muslim organizations have argued that the Quran forbids Muslims from selecting non-Muslims as leaders, in an effort to attack the ambitious, highly popular pluralist politician.
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‘It’s performance art’: Lawyer for Alex Jones says InfoWars founder is ‘playing a character’
The real Alex Jones is not his bombastic, conspiratorial InfoWars persona, his lawyer is hoping to convince a Texas jury in the radio host’s child-custody battle.
That’s more or less what attorney Randall Wilhite told Texas District Judge Orlinda Naranjo, the Austin American-Statesman reported on Sunday.
Wilhite told Naranjo that Jones’ public personality should not be considered as material in evaluating the InfoWars founder’s ability to be a father. Wilhite said doing so would be comparable to judging actor Jack Nicholson in such a custody battle based on his performance as the Joker in “Batman.”
“He’s playing a character,” Wilhite said of Jones. “He is a performance artist.”
But Kelly Jones, the InfoWars host’s ex-wife who is seeking sole or joint custody of the couple’s three children in the case, testified that Jones’ InfoWars personality was indeed the real Jones.
[...]
Jones, with millions of followers, rose to new prominence during the 2016 election cycle after Donald Trump, then the Republican frontrunner, appeared on his broadcast in late 2015. Trump’s Democratic challenger in the election, Hillary Clinton, called Jones out in a speech she delivered in August that targeted Trump’s support from the so-called alt-right.
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7 takeaways on Britain’s snap election
The most tumultuous period in post-war British history just got more tumultuous.
Over the next seven weeks and two days, Theresa May will take on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the most consequential election of the last 30 years.
On the ballot paper is Britain’s future outside the European Union.
Standing outside Number 10, the prime minister framed the election as a choice between an orderly, clean Brexit under her leadership, or a half-hearted, chaotic version under the most radical Labour leader since the 1930s.
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Lenin Again Wins Ecuador’s Presidential Race After Recount
Despite the opposition alleging fraud in the presidential elections, they didn’t bother to send any delegates to observe the recount process.
Ecuador’s National Electoral Council President Juan Pablo Pozo reported that Tuesday’s recount of the ballots that had inconsistencies during the April 2 presidential run-off election was completed, with Alianza Pais candidate Lenin Moreno again winning the vote.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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“Sipilägate” topples Finland from top of press freedom table
Finland has lost its spot at the top of the World Press Freedom Index after a five-year run. The NGO Reporters without Borders cited Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s alleged attempts to influence Yle coverage of his potential conflict of interest in a state-funded nickel mine as one reason for Finland’s tarnished image.
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Russia threatens to ban VPNs and proxies that don’t censor whatever the government wants
The most recent news shows that Russia plans to ban and block the domains of VPNs and proxies that don’t work with Russian authorities to enforce their internet censorship filter.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Facebook adds a login shortcut to other Android apps
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NVIDIA and Facebook Team Up to Supercharge Caffe2 Deep Learning Framework
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Caffe2: A New, Open-Source Deep Learning Framework From Facebook [Ed: Facebook is openwashing surveillance again; what do people think it's used for?]
Facebook just announced Caffe2, a new deep learning framework developed in cooperation with NVIDIA and other vendors.
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German Consumers Face $26,500 Fine If They Don’t Destroy Poorly-Secured ‘Smart’ Doll
We’ve noted repeatedly how modern toys aren’t immune to the security and privacy dysfunction the internet-of-broken-things has become famous for. A new WiFi-enabled Barbie, for example, has come under fire for trivial security that lets the toy be modified for use as a surveillance tool. We’ve also increasingly noted how the data these toys collect isn’t secured particularly well either, as made evident by the Vtech incident, where hackers obtained the names, email addresses, passwords, and home addresses of 4,833,678 parents, and the first names, genders and birthdays of more than 200,000 kids.
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Microsoft Latest Service Provider To Pry A National Security Letter Free From Its Gag Order [Ed: Show trials and publicity stunts are made for the media, for the most privacy-infringing companies (NSA PRISM also) to come across as heroes. PR stunt here. As Microsoft also secretly helps the NSA by inserting back doors into everything...]
Microsoft is the latest to publish a National Security Letter, following Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Calyx, Cloudflare, and… the Internet Archive. Microsoft’s NSL [PDF] was issued by the FBI (of course) and demanded the usual subscriber info.
In the post accompanying the disclosure, Microsoft points out the USA Freedom Act is the only reason it’s been able to release the NSL. This is one of the benefits of the recent law: a better, faster way to compel review of NSL gag orders, which used to take place almost never.
In addition, Microsoft notes FISA orders are on the rise. Of course, its reporting is limited to useless “bands,” so the only thing that can definitely be determined is Microsoft’s FISA interactions have at least doubled.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Manual on protesting CIA drew the Agency’s ire
A 1987 CIA memo shows that the Agency was not only deeply concerned about anti-CIA protests on college campuses in the United States, but held the protestors themselves in derision.
While some of the protest tactics were described by the CIA as “so sophomoric that it’s depressing,” it should be noted that several years before these very tactics had been extremely effective – as a result of Yale and Harvard Law Schools’ questioning of the Agency’s (flagrantly homophobic) policies towards homosexuals, the Agency’s General Counsel had recommended cancelling the recruitment trips.
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Judge: Doctor in alleged genital mutilation case a danger to public
In a historic female genital mutilation case that has planted a bull’s-eye on what prosecutors are calling an “incredibly secretive” religious ritual, a federal magistrate on Monday denied bond to an Indian-Muslim doctor accused of mutilating the genitals of two Minnesota girls at a Livonia medical clinic.
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DRM
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Microsoft Follows Valve Down The Road Of Refunds On Digital Game Purchases [Ed: If you buy a boxed game at the store (as people did before), you have many rights, including the right of return. No EULAs. Rarely DRM.]
With Steam’s policy for providing refunds on digital game purchases being roughly two years old, many people forget the context of the time when Valve began offering those refunds. It’s worth being reminded that at that time nobody in the neighborhood of the Steam client’s popularity was offering any real avenue for getting refunds on digital game purchases. Those that did mostly did so under the most restrictive conditions, with insane single-digit day windows in which a refund could be had, and only for certain reasons, of which the game being shitty was not included. Steam’s criteria was that you could request a refund during a two-week period for any reason, be it the game not living up to expectations, the gamer’s machine not being able to run it properly, or anything else. The other contextual aspect to keep in mind was that Steam had endured several weeks of absolutely brutal PR, with awful customer service ratings and the whole fiasco over its attempt at creating a paid-mod system.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Mac DeMarco Tells Fans to Grab Leaked Album From The Pirate Bay, Or Kazaa…
Instead of complaining, he actively encouraged fans to download a free copy from The Pirate Bay, Soulseek, or even long defunct pirate classics such as Napster, Limewire, and Kazaa.
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No, The Wall St. Bull Sculptor Doesn’t ‘Have A Point’
Last week, we wrote twice about sculptor Arturo Di Modica and his claim that the “Fearless Girl” statue, that was placed last month in front of his “Charging Bull” statue, violates his rights. As we explained, in detail, he has almost no legal case here. His letter to New York City argues three possible claims of action — all of which would almost certainly be losers in court (as we detailed in that last post).
However, I still have seen a bunch of people arguing in support of Di Modica, claiming that he “has a point.” Many have pointed to a blog post by Greg Fallis that is literally titled “Seriously, the guy has a point.” Others have raised other issues in discussions I’ve seen (and taken part in…) on Twitter and Facebook. I still don’t think he has any point at all, but I wanted to do a post addressing each of the key issues I’ve seen raised, and explaining why I think they fail as legitimate arguments.
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