Here is where Linux currently stands among the world's operating systems (stats via the Linux Foundation):
#1 Internet client (Android). 82% of the smartphone market share (Android again). 100% share of the supercomputer market. 90% share of mainframe customers. 90% of the public cloud workload. 62% of the embedded systems market. #2 to Windows in enterprise.
Linux is also at the base of countless open-source software stacks, which in turn support vast sums of productivity and economic benefit to countless verticals. Telecom, retail, automotive, energy, transportation, medicine, networking, entertainment and pharma are just a few of the big familiar ones.
He continues on to talk a little about his experience, including Linux Mint having an off day not finding a drive to install on. However, that didn't stop him, whereas I'm sure other writers would have then gone off on a rant he simply picked a different distribution (Ubuntu). Usually, when I see such writers on major news websites writing about Linux, it ends up coming across as a pretty disappointing read as if they've set themselves up not to like it. So it was incredibly refreshing to see him have a little patience to push though it. It's the same for anything that's new to you, if you're not prepared to learn a little—you will probably fail.
Instead, the Linux-based system can take advantage of protocol weaknesses and take command of the drone, either forcing it to land in a safe area or sending it back to its launch site.
The first mobile prototype for the system will be incorporated into the Bushmaster’s electronic warfare platform.
Games for Linux are booming like never before. The revolution comes courtesy of cross-platform dev tools, passionate programmers and community support. Join us this month as we take a Deep Dive in to gaming.
Oracle supports both simple and weighted round-robin load balancing of requests from its web components and aims to improve features like high availability and load balancing. By following a specific path and port, Linux remote direct memory access (RDMA) has problems regarding performance and security perspectives. In the LDAP environment, load balancing for writes of a user and group data can produce undesirable behavior due to the replication. LDAP replication does not guarantee transaction integrity; the limitation of replication is however very dominant in the system itself.
Segmenting the user and group data may be effective for distributing the load if the case rests upon separate user population in distinct branches of the Directory Information Tree (DIT). By maintaining different primary LDAP server for read and write purpose, load balances of such kind of operations can be obtained efficiently. Also, selecting a standard network interface card can be beneficial as they pick which network device is appropriate to transport the data. RDMA is proved to be more resilient over IP (RDMAIP) which creates a high availability connection to create a bonding group among adapters’ ports. The traffic automatically gets transported to the other ports in the group in case of loss of any significant port. This can be achieved by utilizing Oracle's Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS).Oracle supports both simple and weighted round-robin load balancing of requests from its web components and aims to improve features like high availability and load balancing. By following a specific path and port, Linux remote direct memory access (RDMA) has problems regarding performance and security perspectives. In the LDAP environment, load balancing for writes of a user and group data can produce undesirable behavior due to the replication. LDAP replication does not guarantee transaction integrity; the limitation of replication is however very dominant in the system itself.
Segmenting the user and group data may be effective for distributing the load if the case rests upon separate user population in distinct branches of the Directory Information Tree (DIT). By maintaining different primary LDAP server for read and write purpose, load balances of such kind of operations can be obtained efficiently. Also, selecting a standard network interface card can be beneficial as they pick which network device is appropriate to transport the data. RDMA is proved to be more resilient over IP (RDMAIP) which creates a high availability connection to create a bonding group among adapters’ ports. The traffic automatically gets transported to the other ports in the group in case of loss of any significant port. This can be achieved by utilizing Oracle's Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS).
The mobile operator no longer has the luxury of dealing with a relatively closed and well-defined set of technologies and partners. The mobile network is increasingly intertwined with fixed line connections, and also with broad virtualized, programmable platforms, which will be essential to enable new business models and justify the investment in 5G. That sees operators getting deeply involved in a host of new technologies and standards, and increasingly emerging from the secrecy of inhouse labs and working through open source projects. Two important areas of effort are edge computing and machine learning (ML). Both are the focus of several open initiatives, in which certain operators, notably AT&T, are prominent. Both are starting to be deployed, often starting with the…
Look at the history of open source. Twenty years ago there was nothing that was relevant to an enterprise that was open source. Maybe BSD [Berkeley Software Distribution version of Unix], but basically nothing. Five years later, 2003, Linux and the LAMP stack [Linux, the Apache HTTP Server, the MySQL relational database management system and the PHP programming language] was pretty common already. Java wasn’t quite open source, but I’ll throw it in there. Basically, every five years afterwards, the amount of IT where open source was relevant was bigger.
Besides the Linux "k10temp" AMD CPU temperature reporting driver recently seeing support for Threadripper 2 temperature monitoring, much older Excavator (Bulldozer 4th Gen) processors will now see working CPU temperature reporting for select models.
While AMD Excavator CPUs came out in 2015, particularly in the APU form like Carrizo, not all of these models have had working CPU temperature reporting even with the latest Linux kernel code. Excavator CPUs in the Family 15h (Bulldozer) have a CPUID model between 60h and 6Fh and newer revisions between 70h and 7Fh. But the k10temp Linux driver up to now has just been checking for 60h and 70h, not any of the other model numbers.
The annual Maintainer and Kernel Summits will be held in Vancouver, BC on November 12 to 15, in conjunction with the Linux Plumbers Conference. The program committee is looking for topics for both summits; read on for details on how to submit ideas and, perhaps, get an invitation to the Maintainer Summit.
We have had great response to our call for 2018 Linux Plumbers Conference refereed-track submissions.
However it would seem that we are attracting a lot of procrastinators given the number of emails we have received requesting for an extension.
Patches currently under review for the Linux kernel's "Sun4i" Direct Rendering Manager driver provide support for the Display Engine 3.0 hardware found on newer Allwinner SoCs and most notably HDMI 2.0a support.
While Google got the NSA-developed Speck into the Linux kernel on the basis of wanting to use Speck for file-system encryption on very low-end Android (Go) devices, last month they decided to abandon those plans and instead work out a new "HPolyC" algorithm for use on these bottom-tier devices due to all the concerns over Speck potentially being back-doored by the US National Security Agency.
After Google reverted their plans to use Speck for file-system encryption, it was called for removal from the Linux kernel with no other serious users of this code... Speck had been added to the crypto code in Linux 4.17 and then to the fscrypt bits for file-system encryption with Linux 4.18.
Alyssa Rosenzweig and others working on the "Panfrost" out-of-tree Gallium3D driver for ARM Mali graphics hardware have now succeeded in bringing up the newer ARM Mali T860 graphics processor on this open-source driver.
One of the exciting events to look forward to this month is the actual launch of the GeForce RTX 2080 series with these graphics cards slated to begin shipping on 20 September. While NVIDIA has talked up the RTX 2080 series performance it has exclusively been under Windows. NVIDIA hasn't provided any official comments about the RTX 2080 series on Linux, but here is my pre-launch analysis and commentary.
The Vega 20 open-source driver enablement march continues with Bas Nieuwenhuizen, the RADV independent Radeon Vulkan driver co-founder, introducing an initial patch series this weekend adding support for the unreleased graphics processor.
NOUVEAU -- One of the few longtime independent contributors to the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" driver, Ilia Mirkin, sent out a set of patches today working on basic HDMI 2.0 functionality for this Linux DRM driver.
HDMI 2.0 allows for 18 Gbit/s bandwidth and can carry 4K video at 60Hz with 24 bit/px color depth. HDMI 2.0 also allows for up to 32 audio channels, new color spaces, new 3D formats, and various other capabilities.
HDMI 2.0 has been out for years while now the bits for the Nouveau DRM driver are in the works. At the moment the functionality like 12/16 bpc, YUV420, and other bits are not in place but just the basic implementation.
Peter Hutterer of Red Hat today announced the third and expected final release candidate of the long-baking libinput 1.12 cycle.
Libinput 1.12 has already introduced its own quirk handling system, documentation changes, FreeBSD support, improved trackpoint handling, improved touchpad handling, and other enhancements. With Libinput 1.12 RC3 that work has continued.
libinput 1.12 was a massive development effort (over 300 patchsets) with a bunch of new features being merged. It'll be released next week or so, so it's worth taking a step back and looking at what actually changed.
The device quirks files replace the previously used hwdb-based udev properties. I've written about this in more detail here but the gist is: we have our own .ini style file format that can match on devices and apply the various quirks devices need. This simplifies debugging a lot, we can now reliably tell users why a quirks file applies or doesn't apply, historically a problem with the hwdb.
With many of our other initially planned Threadripper 2 Linux benchmarks out of the way, recently I carried out a compiler benchmarking comparison on the Zen+ Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX between GCC and Clang.
For those curious about the performance of code generated by GCC versus the LLVM Clang C/C++ compilers on AMD Zen+ hardware, I ran some tests using GCC 7.3.0, GCC 8.2.0, a GCC 9.0.0 development snapshot, LLVM Clang 6.0.1, and LLVM Clang 8.0 SVN. Tests of Clang 7.0 weren't bothered since it was fairly recently that LLVM Clang 7.0 was forked from trunk and not many changes between 7.0 and 8.0 in SVN for right now.
Over the years we have covered some of the best file searching tools for the Linux desktop and till date, the titles that we covered remain the most sought out for by users.
Today, we bring you a compiled list of the 6 most awesome so that you don’t have to do all that work yourself any longer.
Tracktion Software has made its powerful cross-platform digital audio workstation (DAW) available to download for free.
T7 DAW (often known as Tracktion 7) was first released back in 2016 at a cost of $59. Warmly received, the app managed to score a number of awards and plaudits from industry magazines and websites.
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T7 DAW is free to download and use but it is not open-source; it’s simply freeware. That said, more choice never hurts, especially when it supports Linux as a core OS and not an afterthought.
T7 DAW is a digital audio workstation and music production suite written in C++ that allows you to record, edit, and mix audio and MIDI tracks.
Matt Klein, a senior software engineer at Lyft, the outfit which created Envoy, has warned that open source economics are fundamentally broken.
Generally, an application process' lifecycle has three main states: start, run, and stop. Each state can and should be managed carefully if we want to be competent administrators. These eight commands can be used to manage processes through their lifecycles.
Learn to use touch command in Linux with these useful and practical examples.
Released on Friday was Wine 3.15 while available now is the newest Wine-Staging release that re-bases against this upstream version of Wine to run Windows programs/games on Linux while adding close to 900 patches on top for various testing/experimental functionality.
Wine-Staging 3.15 is still at about 890 patches against upstream Wine with a handful of new patches this round. In particular, a number of patches were merged considering MFPLAT - Microsoft's Media Foundation Platform. The Wine-Staging patches implement more of the functionality needed by the MFPLAT DLL.
Victory At Sea Pacific, the second world war naval combat game from Evil Twin Artworks is going to officially release on September 14th this will include Linux support.
The developer sent over a key recently for me to take a look and early testing seems promising. It has a few issues I'm hoping they solve before launch, which i've given them feedback on.
Developer Turtle Juice might have made the most insane game I've seen for quite some time. Fluffy Horde is a 2D side-scrolling hybrid between real-time strategy and tower defense coming to Linux (confirmation).
Along with a big update to improve weapon recoil, hitboxes and more, Zombie Panic! Source is getting Linux support.
The Universim, a hybrid of a god game and a city builder launched into Early Access recently, although it was missing a file for Linux users which has been fixed. You could get it to run yourself with a manual fix, but an official fix is welcome.
After testing it once again myself, completely purging the game I can confirm the Linux issue with it crashing during loading is indeed fixed. There were a few other major issues which have also been fixed, like the game not saving or loading properly in some situations, your people freezing when a Fishing Hut was placed, your people standing still and doing nothing and a bunch of other high-priority items.
The main thing I'm not currently sold on, is requiring a building to save the game. It's a gimmick, but it doesn't really feel like it fits in well with the game. If they do intend to keep it, they need to work on the immense stuttering when opening the building to save the game.
Introversion Software have updated Prison Architect once again! Update 16 that's currently in Beta adds in cooperative prison building for up to 8 people.
Currently, the Beta is not on Linux. Their previous Betas have been, so we've reached out to see what's up there. The Beta is also only available on Steam right now, while they work on polishing the feature.
StingRay is a new entry in the field of Linux-based chess software. It’s billed as a simple chess graphical user interface with basic functionality to run against UCI and XBoard engines.
The software is designed to be lightweight and not burden the chess player with features they’ll never use. In essence, the software is designed for someone who simply wants to play a casual game of chess against a computer opponent.
If you enjoy retro gaming, there are so many options, it can be tough to know what to get. The choices range from officially sanctioned systems from Nintendo all the way to homemade RetroPie projects like I've covered in Linux Journal in the past. Of course, those systems are designed to be permanently attached to a TV.
But, what if you want to play retro games on the road? Although it's true that you could just connect a gamepad to a laptop and use an emulator, there's something to be said for a console that fits in your pocket like the original Nintendo Game Boy. In this article, I describe two different portable DIY retro gaming projects I've built and compare and contrast their features.
GOG are doing another ridiculously big sale and this time around it will have special "Flash Deals" every single hour. I won't note any of those, as it's a bit pointless of course, you will just have to keep checking to see if anything takes your fancy.
Two Point Hospital has been out in the wild for a good few days now, so I've had some time to sink into it and here's some thoughts on it. Tested on Ubuntu 18.04 64bit, with an NVIDIA 980ti using the latest 396.54 driver.
I just today discovered the surreal puzzle adventure The Gardens Between and it looks like it's going to be something special. The visuals along with the presentation sucked me right in.
The Steam Linux market-share for August is reported to be at 0.59%, which is actually a 0.10% improvement over the month prior. It's possible that some of this increase may be attributed to the recent beta roll-out of Steam Play that via the Wine-based Proton and DXVK allows for many Windows games to now run on Linux. Steam Play purchased games count as Linux sales and obviously it's still the Steam Linux client running for survey purposes.
FreeOrion [Official Site, GitHub], the free and open source strategy game inspired by the Master of Orion series pushed out a new update a few days ago with a lot of improvements.
I've been looking for another reason to write about Vaporum and here's a good excuse! The developers just added gamepad support.
War Brokers is an indie FPS that has many different game modes, including a Battle Royale mode. Their Linux support is in good shape and they've pushed out another good update. There's quite a few updates to their Battle Royale mode, to give it a number of improvements that actually make it quite a bit better to play.
One for those of you who enjoy your Doom mods, as Doom Slayer Chronicles [ModDB] just released giving you a chance to slay some demons wave after wave.
After getting Linux support in early during their alpha phase, twin-stick shooter Moss Destruction entered Early Access yesterday.
This week, Aleix (KDE eV Vice Predisdent), Albert Vaca (KDE Connect maintainer) and me will be in Denver to attend the Libre Application Summit 2018.
Libre Application Summit is unfortunately not free to attend so even if i'd urge you to come and see the amazing talks we're going to give I can see why not everyone would want to come.
Recently I had a discussion with Carlos Soriano from our Red Hat desktop team about Flatpak support in KDevelop, he was told, when discussing Flatpak support in gnome-builder during KDE Akademy, that we already have support in KDevelop for flatpaks. I told him we really do, but that it’s more in the state of proof of concept and it’s probably not that easy to use it as in gnome-builder. We have this support since KDevelop 5.2, but it never made it to release notes and I guess not many people know about this. I only found some information about it in a blog post from Aleix Pol. I decided to give it a try, I actually already tried it once when I saw that blog post last year, but this time I would like to give a small how to and encourage you to try it and give some feedback to Aleix so we can improve this workflow.
I can play a piano, but never in a million years could I build one. Similarly, while I can use Krita fairly well, it’s the fine folks working their code sorcery behind the scenes that make Krita—and the art I create with it—possible. I salute them!
This is how you can find any pixel color value using a picker on your screen, including the task bar.
Gcolor3 is a free and open-source native GTK3 app available for Ubuntu/Linux. Using this app, you can pick any color from any pixel on your screen.
It also comes with a full fledged palette which you can easily mix and match to come up with new colors together.
Saving option is also there where you can save the color code and use later.
All the editing & uploading for the GUADEC videos is now finished. The videos were all uploaded to YouTube some time ago, and they are all now available on http://videos.guadec.org/2018 as well.
Thanks to everyone who helped with the editing: Alexis Diavatis, Bin Li, Garrett LeSage, Alexandre Franke (who also did a lot of the work of uploading to YouTube), and Hubert Figuiere (who managed to edit so many that I’m suspicious he might be some kind of robot in disguise).
With GNOME 3.30 due to be released this week, GNOME-Tweaks 3.30 has been released as being ready to tweak this latest flagship open-source desktop environment.
I looked at a variety of open source tools for natural language processing. These provide good ways to tokenize a text and to identify the “part of speech” (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) but I didn’t yet find one that could analyze the types of clauses that are used. Which is a shame. My understanding of this is an area of English grammar is still quite weak and I was hoping my laptop might be able teach me by example but it seems not.
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I found some surprisingly polished libraries that I’m keen to use for … something. One day I’ll know what. The compromise library for JavaScript can do all kinds of parsing and wordplay and is refreshingly honest about its limitations, and spaCy for Python also looks exciting. People like to interact with a computer through text. We hide the UNIX commandline. But one of the most popular user interfaces in the world is the Google search engine, which is a text box that accepts any kind of natural language and gives the impression of understanding it. In many cases this works brilliantly — I check spellings and convert measurements all the time using this “search engine” interface. Did you realize GNOME Shell can also do unit conversions? Try typing “50lb in kg” into the GNOME Shell search box and look at the result. Very useful! More apps should do helpful things like this.
A new version of the popular Dash to Dock GNOME Shell extension has been released — but don’t get too excited.
Dash to Dock v64 is the first update to the icon-based task bar since April, but only sports a modest set of changes.
OSGeoLive is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB thumb drive or Virtual Machine based on Lubuntu, that allows you to try a wide variety of open source geospatial software without installing anything. It is composed entirely of free software, allowing it to be freely distributed, duplicated and passed around.
Linux kernel 4.17.19 Xorg server 1.20.1 GNOME 3.28.2 Libreoffice 6.1.0 PHP 7.2.9 E2fsprogs 1.44.4 Openssh 7.8p1 Ssh-askpass 7.8p1 Mesa 18.1.7 GIMP 2.10.6 VLC 3.0.4 Thunderbird 60.0 qBittorrent 4.1.2 Gnucash 3.2 Fuzzy 1.3.1
Technology consultant Singlepoint has been accredited as a Red Hat Advanced Business Partner.
The status is in recognition of its DevOps expertise and the technical enablement completed as part of the Advanced Level Partner Accreditation on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform integrates the architecture, processes, platforms and services needed to empower development and operations teams. It is designed to deploy reliably across environments, and it can enable partners to meet customer demand while reducing infrastructure costs. Singlepoint achieved the status by passing service-specific verification of customer references and a technical review.
As a computer science major, Chloe Kaubisch was already looking for a tech internship last November when an opportunity surfaced at the Boston office of Red Hat. She knew the fast-growing company was the leading provider of open-source enterprise software, but what sealed it for her was the chance to work on ChRIS Research Integration Service, created with Boston Children’s Hospital.
Kaubisch (CAS’20) is part of a team of engineers and interns using open-source software and cloud computing technologies to make high-powered computing more widely available for medical analytics, while allowing healthcare organizations to maintain control of their data.
SELinux does not worry so much about executing individual programs, although it can do this. SELinux is basically about defining the access of a process type. Just because a program can execute another program does not mean that this process type is going to be allowed the access that the program requires. For example.
A user running as guest_t can execute su and sudo, and even if the user might discover the correct password to become root, they can not become root on the system, SELinux would block it. Similarly guest_t is not allowed to connect out of the system, so being able to execute ssh or ping does not mean that the user would be able to ping another host or ssh to another system.
Fedora 29 development and testing is currently in full swing, and Fedora 29 features a range of improvements to Internationalization (i18n) support. Major improvements in Fedora 29 include better font support, and improvements to the iBus input method.
All this week, the Fedora i18n Team is running a Test Day Week to try out these new features. More details on helping out and testing is available at the Test Day wiki page.
My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donors (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it’s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me.
The Linux Mint Project community announced the release of LMDE 3 Cinnamon, codenamed as ‘Cindy’. LMDE( Linux Mint Debian Edition) is a Linux Mint project where the main goal of Linux Mint team is to see how viable their distribution would be and how much work would be necessary if Ubuntu was ever to disappear.
LMDE aims to be similar to Linux Mint, but without the use of Ubuntu. Instead, LMDE package base is provided by Debian.
LMDE 3 Cindy includes some bug and security fixes. However, the Debian base package stands unchanged. Mint and desktop components are updated continuously. Once ready, the newly developed features get directly into LMDE. These changes are staged for inclusion in the next upcoming Linux Mint point release, which is not yet disclosed.
UCS 4.3-2 now offers a maintenance mode for importing release updates via Univention Management Console (UMC). UMC is the web-based, graphical user interface for the administration of the entire domain. In the past, when a release update was recorded, short-term failures of the UMC could occur, for example, because the updated services were restarted. This new maintenance mode significantly improves the reliability during the import of release updates via UMC. In addition, you can now track the progress of the updates.
Earlier this year in May, we reported regarding Canonical’s interest in shipping Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish with inbuilt Android integration. In the latest development, as it turns out, it’s not going to happen.
As per a report by OMGUbuntu, the Ubuntu developers aren’t satisfied with the current state of GSconnect GNOME Shell extension. For those who don’t know, the developers were planning to bring an out-of-the-box Android integration with the help of this extension only.
A major redesign of the Ubuntu Software app is being proposed by Canonical.
The planned overhaul, hammered out at a design sprint hosted by Canonical back in June, wants to make it easier for you, me, and everyone else to “discover” new apps, more often,
Canonical design team member Matthew Paul Thomas has produced a series of mockups depicting an idealised “front page ” for the GNOME Software & Ubuntu Software stores, aimed at making the catalog a more exciting and dynamic place
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 543 for the week of August 27 – September 2, 2018.
Linux Mint is a Debian and Ubuntu-based community-driven distro that aims is to be modern, elegant, powerful, and easy to use.
Straight out of the box it provides full multimedia support due to its inclusion of proprietary software that is bundled with several free and open-source apps.
It was created by French IT specialist, Clement Lefebvre in 2006 who at the time had the responsibility of maintaining a website that provided documentation and guides to Linux newbies until when he decided to develop a distro that will fix Ubuntu’s weaknesses.
Linux Mint is available in 3 main editions – MATE, Xfce, and Cinnamon, as well as in Community and Debian editions.
With data security and privacy becoming an alarming issue while dealing with the data-hungry companies, ZeroPhone seems like a sigh of relief.
ZeroPhone is a Raspberry Pi-based, open-source, Linux-powered handset that has been launched as a project on Crowd Supply; we’ve already told you about the phone in the past. The device promises no carrier locks, no pre-loaded apps and good riddance from harvesting of data without users’ knowledge.
Most people find it difficult to differentiate between a pi and an Arduino. What most people do not understand is that an Arduino is a microcomputer while the Arduino is a micro-controller. This article is about laying out those differences and simplifying each bit by bit. Most probably some of you might have used a Pi and never used an Arduino.
We knew it was pretty much inevitable, but Purism's embargo has just expired confirming the news that the Librem 5 smartphone will not be released in January as originally planned.
Purism is announcing today that there's been a three-month delay in releasing the Librem 5 GNU/Linux smartphone. The new release plan is to begin shipping the units in April 2019.
The folks from LoverPi.com have sent out some of their newest ARM SBCs. What we're taking a look and benchmarking first is the Libre Computer Board ROC-RK3328-CC. Pricing on this board, which was developed between the Libre Computer Project and Firefly, starts at $35 USD with 1GB of DDR4 but at $80 USD a 4GB version can be acquired. This quad-core 64-bit ARM board has modern features like Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, and other interfaces over what is found with current generation Raspberry Pi hardware.
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Officially supported by this Libre Computer Board is Android 7.1.1 and Ubuntu 16.04 by Firefly. The Libre Computer Project also has Ubuntu 18.04 and Debian 9 images available that make use of Rockchip's Linux 4.4 LTS kernel.
Ibase announced a rugged “MAI602-M4D80” motion control computer with 6th or 7th Gen Core CPUs and a PCIe card with 4-axis motion control and a camera. You also get 80-channel DIO and mini-PCIe expansion.
Ibase’s rugged MAI602-M4D80 computer is billed as a motion control system, but it combines features from both motion controllers and embedded vision systems. The fanless computer is designed for “various factory production applications such as automated optical inspection, semiconductor wafer handling, packaging, and material handling systems.”
Samsung makes many of their products in India, for example, TVs are one of their biggest investments. Now, a report suggests that Samsung are looking to stop the production of TVs in India in favor of imports. It is said that the company are working out plans to import their TV lines from Vietnam instead of making them locally in India. The report has said that Samsung have been considering this for a few months now after the government levied an import duty on key parts that are necessary to make their Smart TVs.
Xiaomi stunned the tech community with the release of the POCO FONE F1, launching it at an unfathomable price. This actually has been the norm for Xiaomi, they always have something up their sleeves.
They also were the first company to do a proper full bezeless smartphone without the notch, the Mi Mix 1. That phone had a very interesting design, including a piezoelectric earpiece for calls and a host of other innovations to make it possible. It made the world look at Chinese smartphone manufacturers in a different light, who were often stereotyped for making cheap knock off smartphones.
Android is the most used operating system on the planet. In fact, it’s almost omnipresent in the mobile ecosystem. Even the Android versions, like Nougat, Marshmallow, Lollipop, etc. have been able to build their individual fan following.
Google is very punctual in releasing the market share of these Android versions on a monthly basis. This data gets uploaded to their developer portal and gives us a rough estimate of the most popular Android versions for the month. It helps the developers prioritize their resources for widely used Android versions, rather than wasting them on near out-of-date Android versions.
Android’s dominance over other mobile operating systems is mainly due to the endless customization opportunities it provides to its user base. Launchers are one of the most customizable parts of Android. Android smartphones are inoperable without a launcher, which comprises of your home screen and the catalog of all the apps available on your device. So every device comes with a default launcher pre-installed.
It's an interesting world that we live in. On August 10, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences—the same organization responsible for the Academy Awards (also known as the Oscars), not exactly an industry that's renowned for its openness—teamed up with the Linux Foundation to form the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF). The purpose of this organization is "to increase the quality and quantity of contributions to the content creation industry's open source software base." That's right; the film industry has put together an organization in support of open source software.
According to the ASWF, over 80% of the film production industry uses and even produces open source software, especially for visual effects and animation. Some very critical libraries and interchange formats like OpenEXR, OpenColorIO, and Alembic have been born directly from companies like Industrial Light and Magic and Sony ImageWorks.
The Cathedral and The Bazaar is a classic open source story, written 20 years ago by Eric Steven Raymond. In the story, Eric describes a new revolutionary software development model where complex software projects are built without (or with a very little) central management. This new model is open source.
Some of the reasons open source is so successful can be traced back to the founding principles Eric describes. Releasing early, releasing often, and accepting the fact that many heads are inevitably better than one allows open source projects to tap into the world’s pool of talent (and few companies can match that using the closed source model).
The organisers of PyConZA, LinuxConfZA, and PGConfZA have announced the “first ever” Open Source week.
“This will be a monumental and historic first for South Africa, as we host a series of community-organised conferences and events for an entire week at the same venue,” said the organisers.
Open Source week will run from 8-14 October 2018, and will be hosted at the Birchwood Hotel – 10 minutes aware from OR Tambo airport outside of Johannesburg.
Firefox 62, which lands in general release this week, adds support for Variable Fonts, an exciting new technology that makes it possible to create beautiful typography with a single font file. Variable fonts are now supported in all major browsers.
What are Variable Fonts?
Font families can have dozens of variations: different weights, expanded or condensed widths, italics, etc. Traditionally, each variant required its own separate font file, which meant that Web designers had to balance typographic nuance with pragmatic concerns around page weight and network performance.
Compared to traditional fonts, variable fonts contain additional data, which make it possible to generate different styles of the font on demand. For one example, consider Jost*, an open-source, Futura-inspired typeface from indestructible type*. Jost* comes in nine weights, each with regular and italic styles, for a total of eighteen files.
I’m excited to announce that Alan Davidson is joining us today as our new Vice President of Global Policy, Trust and Security.
At a time when people are questioning the impact of technology on their lives and looking for leadership from organizations like Mozilla, Alan will add considerable capacity to our public policy, trust and security efforts, drawing from his extensive professional history working to advance a free and open digital economy.
Alan will work closely with me to help scale and reinforce our policy, trust and security capabilities and impact. He will be responsible for leading Mozilla’s public policy work promoting an open Internet and a healthy web around the world. He will also supervise a trust and security team focused on promoting innovative privacy and security features that put people in control of their online lives.
“For over 15 years, Mozilla has been a driving force for a free and open Internet, building open source products with industry-leading privacy and security features. I am thrilled to be joining an organization so committed to putting the user first, and to making technology a force for good in people’s lives,” says Alan Davidson, Mozilla’s new Vice President of Global Policy, Trust and Security.
In an announcement made through Mozilla blog, it was revealed that Mozilla developers will be changing their approach towards anti-tracking. This announcement came on August 30th, 2018 and stated that in the upcoming days, Firefox will be protecting its users from potential data breaches by default. Mozilla would achieve this by blocking all kinds of tracking and offering a clear set of controls. The blog stated that these controls aimed to give users ‘more choice over what information they share with sites.’
Mozilla developers also mentioned the reason for why are they announcing this approach, “This is about more than protecting users — it’s about giving them a voice. Some sites will continue to want user data in exchange for content, but now they will have to ask for it, a positive change for people who up until now had no idea of the value exchange they were asked to make.”
Auterion has raised $10 million in funding for its open source commercial drone operating system and launched its drone OS today as an enterprise version of the PX4 open source standard.
The Zurich, Switzerland-based company will use the money to scale its operations and speed up development of its platform.
The funding comes from Lakestar, Mosaic Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Tectonic Ventures. Auterion will continue to work in close alignment with the PX4 community, the most widely used open source drone autopilot software, to bring the technology to the enterprise.
Auterion, a startup that offers a drone operating system built on top of the popular PX4 open source software, has landed $10 million in seed funding. Backing the round is Lakestar, Mosaic Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Tectonic Ventures.
The young Swiss company says the injection of cash will be used to work closely with the wider PX4 community to further develop the open source code, and to bring the technology to more enterprise customers in the form of the Auterion platform.
The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 7.2, the second feature update of the NetBSD 7 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements.
While NetBSD 8.0 was released in July with new features like initial USB 3.0 support and UEFI boot-loader support for x86 64-bit hardware, for those not wanting to jump to 8.0 from the 7 series can now enjoy NetBSD 7.2.
NetBSD 7.2 is a feature update to NetBSD 7 for those not yet or unable to migrate to NetBSD 8.0. NetBSD 7.2 back-ports support for USB 3.0 hardware, enhances the Linux emulation subsystem, provides support for newer Intel WiFi/WLAN cards, adds Raspberry Pi 3 support, offers various USB improvements, and has various bug fixes and stability improvements.
The NetBSD Project has released NetBSD 7.2, which is the second feature update of the NetBSD 7 release branch. This release brings a subset of fixes that were deemed important to security or stability reasons, and several new features and overall enhancements.
NetBSD is a free and highly portable Unix-like operating system, and is entirely Open Source. It is available for many platforms such as 64-bit x86 servers, to various embedded ARM and MIPS based devices (SoCs).
The issue came to a head last week due to two separate licensing decisions in the space. First, the database project Redis, which is known for its ability to store data in memory, announced it would use a new kind of license called “The Commons Clause,” which looks like open source (in that the source is available to use and modify) but doesn’t fully fit the standard because it allows the project to require that some commercial clients pay for use.
The problem for Redis Labs, the maker of the software, was that many cloud providers, such as Amazon, use its software but don’t contribute to its upkeep.
“Cloud providers contribute very little (if anything) to those open source projects. Instead, they use their monopolistic nature to derive hundreds of millions dollars in revenues from them,” the company wrote on its licenses page. “Already, this behavior has damaged open-source communities and put some of the companies that support them out of business.”
A compiler engineer working for Loongson Technology Co is looking to land a number of improvements to these newer MIPS64 processors into the mainline GCC code-base.
Paul Hua of Loongson Tech sent out a number of patches to improve the GNU Compiler Collection's support for these Chinese MIPS64 CPUs. In particular, the six patches officially add support for the 3A1000, 3A2000, and 3A3000 series processors. Also, there is support for the older Loongson 2K1000 processor series.
Recent discussions about the purpose and functioning of the FSFE have led me to consider the broader picture of what I would expect Free Software and its developers and advocates to seek to achieve in wider society. It was noted, as one might expect, that as a central component of its work the FSFE seeks to uphold the legal conditions for the use of Free Software by making sure that laws and regulations do not discriminate against Free Software licensing.
This indeed keeps the activities of Free Software developers and advocates viable in the face of selfish and anticompetitive resistance to the notions of collaboration and sharing we hold dear. Advocacy for these notions is also important to let people know what is possible with technology and to be familiar with our rich technological heritage. But it turns out that these things, although rather necessary, are not sufficient for Free Software to thrive.
Someone recently asked me what education will look like in the modern era. My response: Much like it has for the last 100 years. How's that for a pessimistic view of our education system?
It's not a pessimistic view as much as it is a pragmatic one. Anyone who spends time in schools could walk away feeling similarly, given that the ways we teach young people are stubbornly resistant to change. As schools in the United States begin a new year, most students are returning to classrooms where desks are lined-up in rows, the instructional environment is primarily teacher-centred, progress is measured by Carnegie units and A-F grading, and collaboration is often considered cheating.
Shell languages are useful for interactive use. But this optimization often comes with trade-offs against using them as programming languages, which is sometimes felt when writing shell scripts.
Last Saturday was cut-down day in the NFL, when rosters are shaved from 90 players down to 53. For the first time, I decided to follow the action for my team by spending time (too much time, really - the kids were monopolizing the TV with video games) watching a Twitter list solely dedicated to reporters and commentators discussing my team.
I've never used Twitter this way, but from an academic point of view I'm glad I did, because I witnessed first-hand the full microcosm of Twitter journalism. First, there were the reporters, who were all jockeying to be the first to report someone was cut (and confirm it with "sources."). Then, there were the aggregators, sites with a lot of writers devoted to team analysis and discussion, but who on this day were simply tracking all of cuts/trades/etc. Ironically, the aggregators were better sources of info than the reporters' own sites, because the reporters didn't publish a full list until later in the day, along with an article that they were too busy to write because they were gathering facts.
Then there were the professional commentators - journalists and semi-professional social media types who have been doing this a long time or have some experience in the sport, but who were not gathering facts. They mostly commented on transactions. Both the reporters and commentators answered fan questions. And then...there were the fans, commenting on the transactions, commenting on the reporters, commenting on the commentators, etc. This is where it got interesting.
Apparently experienced commentators don't like it when fans tell them they're wrong. They like to make clear that either a) they have been doing this a long time, or b) they have a lot of experience in the league, and therefore their opinion should not be questioned. Indeed, in one case a commentator's statement seemed so ridiculous that the "new reporter" in town made fun of it, and all the other reporters circled the wagons to say that the new guy shouldn't be questioning the other men and women on the beat, all of whom had once held his job but left for better jobs. Youch! It turns out the statement was, in fact, both wrong and ridiculous (and proven so the next morning).
The HP Pavilion Power 580-146nd packs a lot of power for a price that is hard to match when building your own PC. However, it might surprise you that I would not recommend this exact machine to others. The reason is that Nvidia cards are still better supported on openSUSE Leap 15. I feel that for most people, the HP Pavilion Power 580-037nd would be the better choice. This machine features an Intel i5-7400 CPU, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU and has 8 GB of RAM. The pricing is very comparable. And the outside of the machine is the same.
For me personally, this machine was absolutely the right choice. I am very interested in the AMD Ryzen CPU’s. I also like AMD’s strategy to develop an open source driver for its GPU’s (amdgpu) for the Linux kernel. I was looking for an AMD machine and this HP Pavilion Power 580-146nd fits the bill and then some.
For the first couple of decades of my life, computers as we know them today were exotic beasts that filled rooms, each requiring the care of a cadre of what were then called systems programmers. Therefore, in my single-digit years the closest thing to a computer that I laid my hands on was a typewriter-sized electromechanical calculator that did addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I had the privilege of using this captivating device when helping out with accounting at the small firm at which my mother and father worked.
I was an early fan of hand-held computing devices. In fact, I was in the last math class in my high school that was required to master a slide rule, of which I still have several. I also learned how to use an abacus, including not only addition and subtraction, but multiplication and division as well. Finally, I had the privilege of living through the advent of the electronic pocket calculator. My first pocket calculator was a TI SR-50, which put me firmly on the infix side of the ensuing infix/Polish religious wars.
A nice long weekend (in the US at least) is a great time to deal with your Backups. You do have backups right? They work right?
For a number of years now I have been using rdiff-backup for my backups. Unfortunately, a week or so before flock my backups started erroring out and I put off looking into it for various reasons until now.
A prominent federal judge quietly resigned from the board of directors at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center this year after the Houston Chronicle and ProPublica detailed a high rate of patient deaths and unusual complications following heart transplants at the hospital.
Carolyn Dineen King, a senior U.S. Circuit Court judge, confirmed that she stepped down from the St. Luke’s board on May 30, two weeks after the investigation was published. King joined the board in January 2014 and chaired the committee that oversees quality and patient safety at the hospital.
A reporter asked King, 80, if she quit because she hadn’t been fully informed by the hospital about problems in the heart transplant program. She responded: “I don’t want to talk about it any further than what you just laid out, what you’ve acquired. I don’t really want to get into it.”
Health ministers from the World Health Organization Africa region last week endorsed a roadmap for access for the years 2019-2023 concerning areas such as fair pricing, intellectual property management, and supply chain management. The previous day, they pledged to implement key strategies to end cholera outbreaks in the African region by 2030.
[...]
On 28 August, 47 African countries adopted a Regional Framework [pdf] for the implementation of the global strategy for cholera prevention and control, 2018–2030, according to a press release. The framework includes key strategies for ending cholera outbreaks in the African region by 2030, it said.
Moeti in the release said, “Every death from cholera is preventable. We have the know-how and today countries have shown that they have the will to do whatever it takes to end cholera outbreaks by 2030.”
Africa is vulnerable to cholera, which has led to over 3,000 deaths in 17 countries in Africa, mainly because 92 million people in the region still drink water from unsafe sources, according to the release.
Five years ago I wrote about using a yubikey on OpenBSD. The only problem with doing this is that there's no validation server available on OpenBSD, so you need to use a different OTP slot for each machine. (You don't want to risk a replay attack if someone succeeds in capturing an OTP on one machine, right?) Yubikey has two OTP slots per device, so you would need a yubikey for every two machines with which you'd like to use it. You could use a bastion—and use only one yubikey—but I don't like the SPOF aspect of a bastion. YMMV.
After I played with TOTP, I wanted to use them as a 2FA for ssh. At the time of writing, we can't do that using only the tools in base. This article focuses on OpenBSD; [...]
Germany announced a new agency on Wednesday to fund research on cyber security and to end its reliance on digital technologies from the United States, China and other countries.
Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman criticized Intel's slow initial response to the Spectre and Meltdown bugs in a talk at the Open Source Summit North America.
Kroah-Hartman said that when Intel finally decided to tell Linux developers, the disclosure was siloyed.
"Intel silenoed SuSE, they siloed Red Hat, they siloed Canonical. They never told Oracle, and they wouldn't let us talk to each other."
Almost all modern CPUs use Speculative Execution as a means to improve performance and efficiency. Your computer’s processor performs tons of calculations in advance and chooses the correct one according to a program’s flow. It makes sense as an idle CPU is undoubtedly a wasted resource.
When it comes to Linux creator Linus Torvalds, he likes the way speculative execution improves performance. What irritates him is the fact that not all incorrect calculations are completely discarded — this is what turned out to be the root cause of bugs like Spectre and Meltdown.
If the security community could tell you just one thing, it’s that “nothing is unhackable.” Except John McAfee’s cryptocurrency wallet, which was only unhackable until it wasn’t — twice.
Security researchers have now developed a second attack, which they say can obtain all the stored funds from an unmodified Bitfi wallet. The Android-powered $120 wallet relies on a user-generated secret phrase and a “salt” value — like a phone number — to cryptographically scramble the secret phrase. The idea is that the two unique values ensure that your funds remain secure.
In somewhat related news, John McAfee's $120 Android-based unhackable cryptocurrency wallet was hacked again. TechCrunch reports that "Security researchers have now developed a second attack, which they say can obtain all the stored funds from an unmodified Bitfi wallet" and that with this cold-boot attack, "it's possible to steal funds even when a Bitfi wallet is switched off."
Prior to cybercriminals using crypto mining scripts to harness your CPU power illegally, different kinds of ransomware like WannaCry kept infecting computers all across the world. It’s not like the ransomware threat is over — every now and then, a new and interesting ransomware appears on the horizon.
You might have come across the term side-channel attacks while reading news articles on Spectre and Meltdown. These exploits were possible due to the way Speculative Execution was implemented in Intel CPUs. Here, I’ll be telling you a new type of “physical” side-channel attack.
In such an attack, the hackers can steal the information stored on your computer by measuring the effects of the same on the physical environment. Dubbed Synesthesia, this specific exploit measures the “acoustic leakage from LCD screens.” LCD screens with both CCFL and LED backlights are affected.
Open source has become one of the mainstays of modern vehicle technology. As vehicles move from being a mere assembly of parts into a full automotive experience, OEMs and suppliers need to delve further into the realms of technology but, as research from Flexera has revealed, this revolution is reliant on vast amounts of open source software that many companies do not realise they are even using, as Jeff Luszcz, Vice President of Product Management at the company, explained in a recent Automotive World webinar.
Google has open-sourced an internal tool that can help security researchers find security bugs in font display (rasterization) components.
The tool is named BrokenType and is the work of Google Project Zero security engineer Mateusz Jurczyk, one of the leading experts in font-related security bugs.
The UK has retained possession of a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean that includes the strategic US airbase of Diego Garcia through political pressure and secret threats, the international court of justice has been told.
In the opening submissions of a legal challenge to British sovereignty of the Chagos Islands at the court in The Hague, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, Mauritius’s defence minister, alleged that his country was coerced into giving up a large swathe of its territory before independence.
That separation was in breach of UN resolution 1514, passed in 1960, which specifically banned the breakup of colonies before independence, the Mauritian government argued before the UN-backed court, which specialises in territorial and border disputes between states.
British officials threatened Mauritians with the withdrawal of an independence agreement if they did not surrender a large tract of their territory to the British, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) heard on Monday.
This is according to the statement delivered by Sir Anerood Jugnauth, Mauritius’s defence minister, before the court in the Hague, as it embarked on its public hearings that may determine the legal consequences of the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965. The archipelago is Britain’s last remaining African colony.
On Monday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague began public hearings that may determine the fate of the Chagos Islands — Britain’s last remaining African colony.
Twenty-two nations have applied to take part in the proceedings. Supporting Britain in its bid to retain control of the islands are the United States, Australia and Israel. The United States maintains a large and strategically important naval base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands.
Opposing Britain’s continued rule over the Indian Ocean archipelago is Mauritius, which argues that the Chagos Islands should fall under its sovereignty.
The British government has been accused of threatening a close ally in an increasingly bitter diplomatic tug-of-war over the fate of a tiny, strategic archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
The dispute over the Chagos Islands - home to the US military base on Diego Garcia - is being portrayed by some as an indication of Britain's waning influence on the world stage following the Brexit vote.
Next week the issue will come before judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
"We have had verbal threats," said the Prime Minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, in an interview with BBC News.
He did not dispute a report that Britain's former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had called him personally to pressure Mauritius to back down on its demand that the islands be returned after decades under UK control.
After the 1998 nuclear weapon tests at Pokhran, codenamed Operation Shakti, the CIA had recruited a spy in a bank at Port Blair to keep track of a senior army officer who had played a major role in the project.
Twenty years after Colonel Gopal T Kaushik (retired) commanded the 58th Engineering Regiment, which was entrusted with the challenging task of ensuring the security of the Pokhran test range, deceiving CIA spy satellites, assembling bombs, carrying out construction and transportation in a remote location in Rajasthan, he narrated untold spy stories, akin to a James Bond thriller, at Nehru Centre in Worli on Saturday.
John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski, the authors of a new explosive book on 9/11 have taken a new and deeper look and find huge holes and contradictions in the official story into the tragedy, happened on September 11, 2001, mere “a failure to connect the dots.”
Fifty years ago Britain separated the Chagos Islands from its colony Mauritius, expelling the entire population to make way for the installation of a US military base that is today highly strategic.
Britain's 1965 acquisition of the Indian Ocean archipelago has been disputed ever since, with Mauritius demanding its return.
As the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague holds hearings on the case from Monday, here is some background.
MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa has reportedly demanded the axing of Vice Presidents Constantino Chiwenga and Kembo Mohadi in a list of demands he has reportedly placed before President Emmerson Mnangagwa before he could accept the latter as President.
MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa has reportedly demanded the axing of Vice Presidents Constantino Chiwenga and Kembo Mohadi in a list of demands he has reportedly placed before President Emmerson Mnangagwa before he could accept the latter as President.
His spokesperson Nkululeko Sibanda said weekend that the opposition leader will not negotiate in public although he could not be drawn into revealing if there was any engagement between the political rivals.
Taruvinga castigated President Emmerson Mnangagwa for attempting to use Chamisa’ s name to mend his tattered relations with the international community.
MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa wants any talks with President Emmerson Mnangagwa to yield electoral reforms and an economic rescue package for the country.
"On 29 August 2018, the national council met in Harare at Morgan Tsvangirai House, to review the situation and consider its position and way forward," wrote Chamisa.
Israeli prosecutors say they plan to charge executives of an Israeli drone company with fraud and export violations concerning its dealings with a “significant client.”
A Justice Ministry statement said Wednesday that after an almost yearlong investigation the State Attorney’s office summoned top Aeronautics Ltd. officials, including its chief executive, for a hearing pending indictment.
Top officials of the Aeronautics Defense Systems Ltd, an Israeli arms manufacturer, on Wednesday were summoned to a hearing by Israel’s State Attorney’s office, which said it intends to indict the company for allegedly using an armed kamikaze drone against Artsakh targets last year under orders from Baku during a live demonstration of its product, the Orbiter 1K model UAV.
According to The Times of Israel, Wednesday’s announcement comes after a nearly year-long joint investigation of the Israel Police’s Unit of International Crime Investigations, the Defense Ministry’s investigation unit and the State Attorney’s Office into Aeronautics’s conduct.
Israel has accused an Israeli drone maker of bombing ethnic Armenian soldiers in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region at the request of Azerbaijani clients during a sales demonstration, government and local media reported.
The accusation by Israel’s Justice Ministry on August 29 did not specifically mention Azerbaijan or Nagorno-Karabakh in its statement. But Israeli media said a complaint filed with the Defense Ministry, which promoted an investigation, made it clear that Azerbaijani officials and ethnic Armenian soldiers were involved.
Employees of an Israeli drone manufacturer are facing charges for reportedly demonstrating their weaponry on Armenian soldiers at the request of clients from Azerbaijan, the justice ministry and media said on Wednesday.
"Aeronautics and 10 of its employees were informed that they were set to be charged, pending a hearing," the justice ministry said of the company based in the central Israeli town of Yavneh.
Aeronautics chief executive Amos Mathan and other senior employees were suspected of "fraudulently obtaining something under aggravated circumstances" as well as violations of Israel's security export control law, the ministry said.
Israel's State Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday, August 29 that it intends to indict, pending a hearing, officials of a drone manufacturer that allegedly attempted to bomb the Armenian troops in Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) on behalf of Azerbaijan during a demonstration of one of its unmanned kamikaze aerial vehicles last year, the Times of Israel reports.
Among those from Aeronautics Defense Systems Ltd summoned to appear before the State Attorney’s Office’s Economics Division are the company’s CEO Amos Matan, deputy CEO Meir Rizmovitch, development director Haim Hivashar and marketing director David Goldin.
Israeli prosecutors say they plan to charge executives of an Israeli drone company with fraud and export violations concerning its dealings with a "significant client."
A Justice Ministry statement said Wednesday that after an almost yearlong investigation the State Attorney's office summoned top Aeronautics Ltd. officials, including its chief executive, for a hearing pending indictment.
The State’s Attorney's Office's Economic Department has summoned ten employees of Aeronautics Defense Systems, a company that produces UAVs and multirotor drones, to a hearing.
Employees are to be questioned regarding one of the company’s deals with a major client abroad. The details are still concealed under a gag order.
The Israeli state prosecutor's office intends to sue the Israeli drone firm Aeronautics Defense Systems for using the drone against Armenian troops during the demonstration in Baku.
Norwegian police on Sunday said they were investigating the disappearance of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's associate Arjen Kamphuis, a cyber security expert, who was last seen in northern Norway.
"We have started an investigation," police spokesman Tommy Bech told AFP, adding that so far they had no clue about the Dutch citizen's whereabouts.
The police "would not speculate about what may have happened to him," Bech said.
Associate of founder Julian Assange goes missing in Norway
The internet transparency entity WikiLeaks tweeted on Sunday about Arjen Kamphuis' "strange disappearance," saying he has been missing since August 20 when he left his hotel in the northern Norwegian town of Bodo.
WikiLeaks said that Kamphuis, an associate of founder Julian Assange, had a ticket for a flight departing on August 22 from Trondheim, which is over 700 kilometres (435 miles) south of Bodo.
"The train between the two takes (approximately) 10 hours," suggesting he disappeared either in Bodo, Trondheim or on the train, WikiLeaks said.
Norwegian police on Sunday said they were investigating the disappearance of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's associate Arjen Kamphuis, a cyber security expert, who was last seen in northern Norway.
"We have started an investigation," police spokesman Tommy Bech told AFP, adding that so far they had no clue about the Dutch citizen's whereabouts. The police "would not speculate about what may have happened to him," Bech said.
WikiLeaks tweeted on Saturday about Kamphuis's "strange disappearance", saying he had been missing since August 20 when he left his hotel in the northern Norwegian town of Bodo.
It added that Kamphuis had a ticket for a flight departing on August 22 from Trondheim, a city located more than 700 kilometres (435 miles) south of Bodo.
Police in Norway are looking into the disappearance of Arjien Kamphuis, a Dutch citizen with links to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Versions on Twitter have ranged from a hiking incident, to a secret assignment, to a CIA hit.
Kamphuis, a cyber security expert and co-author of a handbook for investigative journalists on how to keep themselves and their work safe from government spying, has been missing since August 20th, when he checked out of a hotel in the town of Bodø in northern Norway.
This weekend, the WikiLeaks Twitter account claimed that cybersecurity expert Arjen Kamphuis went missing on August 20, two days before he was scheduled to fly to Amsterdam. This comes amid concerns about the security of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is about to end his six-year self-imposed confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Norwegian police have opened an investigation into the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's associate, who was last seen in the northern Norwegian town of Bodo on August 20.
The investigators don't know the whereabouts of Kamphuis, police spokesman Tommy Bech said, as cited by AFP. He refused to speculate on what may have happened to the missing Dutchman.
Norwegian police on Sunday said they were investigating the disappearance of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's associate Arjen Kamphuis, a cyber security expert, who was last seen in northern Norway.
"The train between the two takes (approximately) 10 hours," suggesting he disappeared either in Bodo, Trondheim or on the train, WikiLeaks said, triggering numerous conspiracy theories on Twitter.
Assange has been holed up at Ecuador's embassy in London since 2012 when he was granted political asylum as he feared extradition to the United States to face trial over WikiLeaks' publication of secret US military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010.
NORWEGIAN police said yesterday they were investigating the disappearance of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s associate, Arjen Kamphuis, a cyber security expert, who was last seen in northern Norway.
“We have started an investigation,” police spokesman Tommy Bech told AFP, adding that so far they had no clue about the Dutch citizen’s whereabouts.
Kamphuis, a cybersecurity expert, was scheduled to fly out of Trondheim, a town located 435 miles south of Bodo, but appears to have never boarded his plane. “Arjen left his hotel in Bodø on August 20. He had a ticket flying out of Trondheim on August 22. The train between the two takes ~10 hours, suggesting that he disappeared in within hours in Bodø, Trondheim or on the train,” WikiLeaks tweeted over the weekend.
Assange's organisation WikiLeaks tweeted on Saturday about the Dutchman's disappearance, sparking numerous conspiracy theories online.
Kamphuis, 47, was last seen Aug. 20 checking out of his hotel in the Norwegian town of Bodø.
With Reality Winner sentenced to five years behind bars, The Intercept’s Jim Risen joins Aaron Maté to discuss the NSA leaker’s harsh sentence and what the document she revealed actually says. Is there solid evidence of Russian vote hacking?
[...]
NSA leaker Reality Winner was recently sentenced to five years in prison for sending a top secret NSA document to the Intercept. The document accuses Russian military intelligence of a cyber operation targeting the U.S. voting system. Reality Winner’s prison sentence is the longest ever for a media leak in a federal U.S. case. And among many issues, her case has renewed concerns about the selective and harsh prosecution of some government leakers but not others. In a statement, the Intercept said Winner was, quote: “prosecuted with bishops resolve under the Espionage Act,” which it calls, quote: “an attack on the First Amendment that will one day be judged harshly by history,” unquote.
Well, joining me is Jim Risen. He’s the Intercept’s senior national security correspondent, and director of First Look Media’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, which supported Reality Winner’s defense. Welcome, Jim. The issue of the prosecution of government leakers has been an issue that you’ve been close to for some time. Talk about the prosecution of Reality Winner, and how it fits into the concerns you’ve been raising for a while about who gets prosecuted, who doesn’t, and how they’re treated by the justice system.
amilies of a notorious massacre during the Northern Ireland troubles have condemned the arrest of two investigative journalists who worked on a documentary on the outrage. Award winning reporters Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey have been detained over the suspected theft of confidential documents relating to the Loughinisland killings of 1994.
Six men were murdered when loyalists opened fire on a crowd of football fans gathered around a TV in a village pub watching the Republic of Ireland play in the World Cup.
Last year's No Stone Unturned film examined the persistent claims of state collusion in the murder and broke new ground by publicly naming what it said were suspects.
Greece's Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias hit back at the main opposition on Monday after New Democracy implicitly accused the government of caving into the demands of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) in the name deal achieved last June, following information revealed in a Wikileaks cable.
The leaked information shows FYROM was willing to accept the name Republic of Northern Macedonia or Republic of North Macedonia as early as 2008, provided it included the recognition of the “Macedonian” language and nationality.
New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated his pledge on Monday not to ratify the deal reached between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the latter’s name back in June, following the release by WikiLeaks of a cable which showed Skopje would have accepted the name “North Macedonia” in 2008 provided it included the recognition of the “Macedonian” language and nationality.
“Today’s revelation from WikiLeaks, that Skopje had been asking since 2008 to name their country ‘North Macedonia’ and their people ‘Macedonians’ who supposedly speak the ‘Macedonian’ language confirms in the most tragic way what I have been stressing all those months. That [PM Alexis] Tsipras, [Defense Minister Panos] Kammenos and [Foreign Minister Nikos] Kotzias wanted to present their extremely damaging agreement – which satisfied what Skopje had been demanding for years and had been rejected by all previous governments – as a success for Greece,” Mitsotakis said in a statement.
The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) was willing to accept the name Republic of Northern Macedonia or Republic of North Macedonia as early as 2008, provided it included the recognition of the “Macedonian” language and nationality, according to a cable of the US embassy in Skopje, released by Wikileaks.
The classified cable, titled “What the Macedonians need to resolve the name dispute”, is dated July 29, 2008 and was compiled by the then US Ambassador to the neighboring country, Gillian Milovanovic.
The cable shows FYROM's negotiating targets have not changed much in the last decade and were achieved - to a certain extent - with the signing of the Greek-FYROM deal in Prespes Lake region in June this year.
New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated on Monday his pledge not to ratify in Parliament the deal reached between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) over the latter's name back in June, following a cable by Wikileaks which showed Skopje would have accepted the name “North Macedonia” in 2008.
The nationalistic government of Skopje under Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski back in 2008 appeared ready to accept an agreement with Greece under the name “Republic of North Macedonia” or “Republic of Northern Macedonia”, a previously classified cable of the US embassy in Skopje, released by Wikileaks.
Specifically, the document entitled “What the Macedonians need to resolve the name dispute”, dated July 29 2008, reveals that FYROM has made no concessions towards the Greek side, despite currently ruling SYRIZA and Independent Greeks (ANEL) coalition government’s story surrounding the Prespes Agreement.
Signed by the then US Ambassador to the Balkan country Gillian Milovanovic, the cable shows that FYROM had already set its own “red lines” demanding the recognition of the “Macedonian” language and nationality in order to proceed to a deal with Greece.
According to a classified cable from the US embassy in Skopje which was released by Wikileaks on Monday, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) was willing to accept the name Republic of Northern Macedonia or Republic of North Macedonia since 2008.
The basic term clarified in the cable titled ‘What the Macedonians need to resolve the name dispute’ and dated July 29, 2008 was to secure the recognition of the “Macedonian” language.
The cable compiled by the then US Ambassador to the neighboring country, Gillian Milovanovic was in fact very similar to the joint deal that was signed by FYROM and Greece in the Prespes Lake region back in June.
New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated his pledge on Monday not to ratify the deal reached between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the latter’s name back in June, following the release by WikiLeaks of a cable which showed Skopje would have accepted the name “North Macedonia” in 2008 provided it included the recognition of the “Macedonian” language and nationality, Kathimerini writes. “Today’s revelation from WikiLeaks, that Skopje had been asking since 2008 to name their country ‘North Macedonia’ and their people ‘Macedonians’ who supposedly speak the ‘Macedonian’ language confirms in the most tragic way what I have been stressing all those months. That [PM Alexis] Tsipras, [Defense Minister Panos] Kammenos and [Foreign Minister Nikos] Kotzias wanted to present their extremely damaging agreement – which satisfied what Skopje had been demanding for years and had been rejected by all previous governments – as a success for Greece,” Mitsotakis said in a statement.
The revelations in a Wikileaks document released on Monday, according to which the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) would have accepted the name North Macedonia back in 2008, provided that Greece recognized a Macedonian language and identity, are one more reason for FYROM citizens to vote “Yes” in the upcoming referendum on the name deal, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said on Tuesday.
“Part of the name solution and its erga omnes use was accepted, both for North and Upper Macedonia,” Zaev told reporters. “I am pleased that we have received confirmation of our identity, the Macedonian language, which was an important objective of the negotiating team."
Just tree weeks before a referendum on 30 September on Macedonia's name deal with Greece, a US embassy cable revealed by Wikileaks showed the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) was willing to accept the name Republic of Northern Macedonia or Republic of North Macedonia as early as 2008. The name dispute has blocked closer EU relations.
Norwegian police have launched an investigation into the disappearance Arjen Kamphuis, Dutch expert on cybersecurity and colleagues of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was last seen two weeks ago in Norway.
WikiLeaks published an updated tweet on Saturday, “about the strange disappearance of the” man that called itself a “digital specialist of self-defense”, – informs the Huffington Post.
When Michael Crick embarrassed Theresa May by quizzing her on her non-existent opposition to apartheid as she visited Mandela’s old cell, the response of New Labour was to defend May by claiming the Tories had opposed apartheid all along. Progress and Labour Friends of Israel rushed immediately to the defence of the person they truly adore, who sits higher still in their Pantheon than Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They rushed to defend the memory of Margaret Thatcher.
Ex-Labour MP Tom Harris and Blair’s former Political Director John McTernan (who now write for the Tory Spectator and Telegraph) led the suicide charge of the Labour Thatcherites.
[...]
The truth is very easy to discover, and it is not what the Blairites now claim in their deluded Thatcher worship. Sir Patrick Wright, former Head of the Diplomatic Service, was absolutely correct in observing that Thatcher supported a “Whites-only” state:
In the past five years, more than 1,300 students from dozens of college and university campuses in the United States and Canada have flexed their media literacy “muscles” by researching and publicizing important but underreported news stories through Project Censored’s Campus Affiliates Program.
Critical thinking and media literacy are essential skill sets for students in the 21st century, as supporters of Project Censored no doubt appreciate. Through the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program, college and university professors across North America provide their students with direct, hands-on opportunities to develop their critical thinking skills and media literacy by researching what we call Validated Independent News stories.
Because here’s the thing: since society is made of narrative, and since nobody knows what the fuck is going on, you can pretty much arrange the narratives around you in a way that suits you just by declaring confidently, consistently and assertively what it is that’s happening. People will adjust their ideas about what’s going on to accommodate your ownership of the narrative, and before you know it you’re being uplifted by society and supported toward whatever goals you’ve got in mind. Decide you’re a leader, they’ll make you a leader. Decide you’re successful, they’ll make you successful. Decide you know what’s happening, they’ll believe you. Say what you want like it’s going to happen, and if it’s a want that society can fulfill, they will.
While you’d never know it from this statement, the “censorship” charges against Facebook, Twitter, and Google are all fairly different. Trump’s main complaint here seems to be losing followers on Twitter, which is suspending large numbers of apparent spam accounts. That’s completely different from his complaint about Google, which he claims is manipulating its algorithms to display a disproportionate amount of negative news coverage about him. Trump hasn’t talked as much about Facebook, but a few Congress members have complained about conservative publishers getting less page traffic than usual — without, however, providing evidence that this isn’t part of a larger traffic slump for all publishers.
Catholic priest, Father Fidelis Mukonori, has called on youths from both Zanu PF and the MDC Alliance to lobby their warring party leaders to set aside their differences and form another Government of National Unity (GNU) to end the current stalemate, which he said was crippling economic transformation.
In an interview with NewsDay yesterday, the cleric, who facilitated former President Robert Mugabe's stepping down last November, said the current polarised environment was compromising the national agenda.
Father Fidelis Mukonori, has urged youths from both Zanu PF and the MDC Alliance to lobby their party leaders to set aside their differences and form another Government of National Unity (GNU) and end the current statemate which he said was crippling the country’s economic transformation.
Father Mukonori said the youths had the mandate to sing the GNU mantra daily as a way of encouraging both leaders to form a coalition government as a way forward for Zimbabwe.
Despite his campaign promises, Trump has consistently put corporations and the rich ahead of American workers.
John McCain‘s funeral exposed the cynicism of Anti-Trumpism.
The technical issue being raised by many is that social media is being misused for creating enmity between communities, which is being dubbed as hate speech. There are laws to curb hate speech. The police and society have instruments to prosecute people who misuse social media, which in turn has the responsibility to respond to the state as soon as it is warned of a potential misuse.
But social media platforms argue they are not Indian platforms as they operate from the US. Google and Facebook take the position that they are not bound by the Indian law; only the US law governs them.
India has laws to prosecute people who misuse social media. Social media platforms have to cooperate with the state in fulfilling its basic function, and if they don’t, we should explore options to make them liable under Indian law. After all, hate is not freedom of speech; it’s culpable offence under the Indian law.
Perhaps learning from past failures, Hussein was strategic about his calls for Internet censorship. Rather than just outright demanding that speech he disagrees with be purged from the Web — for instance, speech criticizing mass Islamic migration into the West, Islam itself, or even its prophet, Mohamed — he interspersed his comments between references to reported Buddhist attacks against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (also known as Burma). In fact, he even threatened Internet companies such as Facebook that they could be prosecuted by self-styled global “authorities” as “accessories” to crimes, merely for not taking down speech that the UN thinks should be banned.
Following the decision to remove a news article on "rapid-onset gender dysphoria," the University issued the following statement, and the School of Public Health dean wrote to Brown's public health community.
Brown University has censored a research paper on gender dysphoria from its website after it sparked a backlash from the LGBT community.
A research paper was published by Brown University School of Public Health Professor Lisa Littman about a trend amongst teenagers involving gender dysphoria. The piece contends that young people are experiencing “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.”
Is there a need to censor social media in our society?
Let’s be more specific, do we need to censor social media influencers?
The issue prior to this one tackled about influencers in the marketing world. This time, the thin line that separates “freedom of speech” from “decency or censorship” and how these influencers acknowledge that line, if there is, in the way they express their thoughts online.
Anyone here thinks there should be a limitation on how the personalities we follow on social networking sites express themselves?
In recent months, technology companies have come under increasing public scrutiny as they aim to strike a delicate balance between allowing free user expression on their platforms and preventing abuse.
Last Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump took aim at Facebook, Google and Twitter as he said the platforms were "treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful."
Trump's remarks came after he alleged that Google had "rigged" its search engine to prioritize left-leaning media outlets as well as negative news about him and other conservatives.
Alternative rock’s rise to prominence in the early ’90s made for some surprising hit singles, including some from cult heroes for whom mainstream acceptance never seemed in the cards. After Nirvana, it seemed like a shot at their proverbial 15 minutes. But even by that measure, the success of Danzig‘s “Mother ’93” felt a little bit like hell freezing over.
Glenn Danzig wasn’t groomed for major radio and MTV, and even his hit single took five years to break through the underground to wider audiences (“Mother ’93” is a slightly retooled version of “Mother”, originally released on the self-titled 1988 debut album from the singer’s namesake band). But the song’s success won Danzig more than record sales and fame. It also earned him some hearty vindication.
Conversations about social media continued to dominate the capital. “Conversations” is too strong a word — it was more like a sustained airing of petty grievances. As usual it was unclear what, if anything, would emerge from these grievances, other than another round of headlines about them.
FACEBOOK has been blasted as "hypocritical" after it removed a post by the Anne Frank Center just weeks after its CEO Mark Zuckerberg said holocaust deniers would not be banned.
"Hi @Facebook, you removed our post promoting the need for Holocaust Education for apparently violating community standards. You haven't given us a reason, yet allow Holocaust Denial pages to still exist. Seems a little hypocritical?" tweeted the Anne Frank Center on Wednesday.
Facebook recently removed a post by the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect over an alleged violation of the site’s “community standards.” So far, the tech giant has not answered questions as to why the post was removed.
Facebook has apologised for removing a Holocaust news article by the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect “for violating community standards”.
The image showed naked, emaciated children at a Nazi concentration camp and linked to a news article titled “Americans and the Holocaust. Scary numbers.”
The article revealed the results of a survey that showed almost a third of Americans believe that substantially fewer than six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
ABC’s website was blocked on Aug. 22, according to an official statement by ABC — the same day the Australian government banned Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE from building Australia’s 5G network due to national security concerns.
ABC now joins the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, whose websites are also blocked in China.
More than a dozen human rights groups are urging Google not to offer censored internet search in China, amid reports it is planning to again provide the service in the giant market.
A joint letter Tuesday calls on chief executive officer Sundar Pichai to explain what Google is doing to safeguard users from the Chinese government's censorship and surveillance.
It describes the company's secretive plan to build a search engine that would comply with Chinese censorship as representing "an alarming capitulation by Google on human rights."
As both the Alternative for Sweden (AfS) and the Sweden Democrats (SD)are expected to punch above their weight in the upcoming elections, the deliberate removal of their content has been seen as tampering with its outcome.
The mass removal of video content by two of Sweden's most right-wing parties by Google-owned YouTube has prompted politicians and ordinary Swedes alike into accusations of censorship and election meddling.
The newly-founded Alternative for Sweden (AfS) party, who's had its channel deleted and restored by YouTube, has had numerous videos of election meetings with voters made unavailable for viewing in Sweden.
The debate over social media playing the censor is not new. Often, the debate stems from a superficial understanding of social media, which is the offshoot of an information technology breakthrough. Most forms of information and communication technologies are dual use, which can be used to protect human rights and empower citizens. But they can also be used to undermine human rights and democracy. The last five years has seen an inversion of the initial trend.
During the early days of the internet, everybody was convinced that the internet would have only positive consequences. Now, we have a reality to check and see a lot of its negative effects.
Social media companies have always had community standards for terms of use and were more limited than the constitutionally protected right to free speech. So even if our country allowed us, for instance, to engage in harassing behaviour and there was no law against that, some social media companies made that unacceptable on their platforms. What we need to see now is the second generation of tightening of those norms because it is very clear that some actors of social media are taking it too far.
Under German law, the copyright term for recordings which were made prior to January 1, 1963 has expired, meaning they have entered the public domain. Recordings taken after that date were given extended protection in 2013 and thus cannot be digitized. Aware of this rule, I only undertook to upload recordings which were taken before the 1963 date in order to fully comply with the law. Despite that precaution, the process that followed presented a number of unexpected challenges.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, U.N. special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, reportedly told Zuckerberg that Facebook incorrectly defines all nonstate groups that use violence as terrorists.
Facebook and other social media firms are increasingly involved in regulation that used to be done by states, and are under pressure from governments to police content disseminated by users, Ní Aoláin said.
President Trump's tweets charging that Google search results are biased, against him and against conservatives, are the loudest and latest version of a growing attack on search engines and social media platforms. It is potent, and it's almost certainly wrong. But it comes at an unfortunate time, just as a more thoughtful and substantive challenge to the impact of Silicon Valley tech companies has finally begun to emerge. If someone were truly concerned about free speech, news, and how platforms subtly reshape public participation, they would be engaging these deeper questions. But these simplistic and ill-informed claims of deliberate political bias are the wrong questions, and they risk undermining and crowding out the right ones. Trump's charges against Google, Twitter, and Facebook reveal a basic misunderstanding of how search and social media work, and they continue to confuse "fake news" with bad news, all in the service of scoring political points. However, even if these companies are not responsible for silencing conservative speech, they may be partly responsible for allowing this charge to gain purchase, by being so secretive for so long about how their algorithms and moderation policies work.
So what do search engines actually do when users access them for information or news? Search engines deliver relevant results, nothing more. That judgment of relevance is based on hundreds of factors: including popularity, topic relevance, and timeliness. Results are fluid and personalized. There's plenty of room in this complex process for overemphasis and oversight, and these are important questions to examine. But serious researchers who actually already study this are careful to take into account the effects of personalization, changes over time, and the powerful feedback effects of users. This is a far cry from looking at your own search results and being troubled by what you see. (Even the author of the report Trump was likely reacting to acknowledges that it was unscientific and disagrees with the suggestion that regulation of search should follow.)
A few weeks back I wrote a big piece on internet platforms and their controversial content moderation efforts. As I've pointed out more recently, part of the reason why what they do is so bad is it is literally impossible to do this well at the scale they do things at. That is, even if they can reach 99% accuracy, given the amount of content on these sites, it's still going to take down a ton of legitimate stuff, while leaving up an awful lot of awful stuff. This doesn't mean they shouldn't do anything -- but my own proposal is for them to shift the way they think about this issue entirely, and move the moderation out from the center to the ends. Let third parties create their own filters/rules and allow anyone else to not just use them, but to adjust and modify and reshare them as well. Then allow the users to not just "opt-in" to the kind of experience they want, but allow them to further tweak it to their own liking as well.
I've seen some pushback on this idea, but it seems much more viable than the alternatives of "do nothing at all" (which just leads to platforms overwhelmed with spam, trolls and hatred), and continue to focus on a centralized moderation system. There have been a number of articles recently that have done a nice job highlighting the problems of having Silicon Valley companies decide who shall speak and who shall not. EFF's Jilian York highlights the problems that occur when there's no accountability, even if platforms have every legal right to kick people off their platforms.
This week Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte is visiting Israel. He has killed many thousands of drug users and has vowed to kill millions. What makes no sense is that he himself is reportedly addicted to the opiate fentanyl following a motorcycle accident more than four years ago. However it is doubtful whether he will be arrested or have himself killed.
It is worse than the Emergency because everyday life and discourse is being twisted by reading draconian emergency powers without an Emergency.
Memories of the government's use of force at Standing Rock, coupled with evidence of its plans for the Keystone protests, raise immense concerns.
In the aftermath of Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock, leaked documents revealed that law enforcement agencies had collaborated with private security contractors to employ counterterrorism tactics against “pipeline insurgencies” and to manufacture a conspiracy lawsuit against indigenous and environmental protesters.
Now, with the State Department greenlighting the new Keystone XL pipeline route (pending a new review ordered by a federal judge), indigenous and environmental activists are wondering: Will the government treat environmental protesters with the same wrath as last time?
Rather than waiting for the first concussion grenades and tear gas canisters to fly, we’re demanding answers now. On Tuesday, we sued the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and several other federal agencies to find out the government’s plans for cooperating with state law enforcement actors and private security contractors around anticipated Keystone XL protests. From these records, we hope to determine what plans the government has for thwarting, surveilling, and otherwise engaging with indigenous and environmental activists who oppose the construction of another oil pipeline. We also hope to determine whether and how the federal government is targeting indigenous communities to preempt political protest.
At Standing Rock, we witnessed law enforcement flying planes, helicopters, and drones over protest encampments to record their activities at all hours. We heard accounts of local sheriff departments teaming up with federal law enforcement authorities to deploy tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, mace, and water cannons on peaceful protesters near the Oceti Sakowin Camp. We learned of law enforcement officers forcing women protesting the pipeline to undergo strip searches in front of male officers.
On 20 July 2018, France's data protection authority the CNIL declared (FR) that the activities of two French start-ups, Teemo et Fidzup, are illegal. They geolocate millions of people for advertising purposes and without their consent. The companies have three months to cease these activities. Unfortunately, in the long run their model could become legal. That is what the European Union is debating in an upcoming ePrivacy regulation.
Western intelligence allies are presenting a united front in their fight against encryption. The "Five Eyes" countries (US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) have issued a Statement of Principles indicating that they will push for "lawful access" to private data as often as possible. While the governments acknowledged that encryption was valuable, they argued that encrypted data use "should be rare." They hoped companies would voluntarily offer legal solutions, but vowed "technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures" to force access if the tech industry didn't cooperate.
The Five Eyes nations -- UK, US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand -- still think there's a way to create encryption backdoors (that they studiously avoid calling backdoors) that will let the good people in and the bad people out.
The backlash against government calls for backdoors has made these demands a bit more subdued in most Five Eyes countries. The UK government really doesn't seem to care and uses every terrorist attack as another reason to prevent law-abiding citizens from using secure encryption for their communications. Others members have taken a more measured approach, talking around the subject while legislative inroads continue unabated.
In the US, the periodic "going dark" discussions have taken on a (no pun intended) darkly comical tone as FBI and DOJ officials continue to claim harder nerding with solve the "problem" it has misrepresented for years.
The countries may be taking different approaches to undermining encryption, but they're all still looking to do this in the future if they can just find a way to sell it to the public without the actual nerds speaking up and ruining all their plans. The Register notes the Five Eyes surveillance partnership has delivered another ultimatum (that it won't call an ultimatum) about encrypted communications following a meeting in Australia. But it is taking care to couch its wants and desires in pretty words about the safety and security of the general public.
The Five Eyes allies have threatened to introduce legislation if technology providers don’t help them to break end-to-end encryption in specific cases where private info is sought on suspects.
The five-country partnership of the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand met in Australia last week with homeland security, public safety and immigration ministers and attorneys-general in attendance.
The joint statements released following its conclusion ratcheted up the hyperbole on a subject where law enforcers and intelligence agencies on one side and technologists on the other are in deadlock.
“The increasing gap between the ability of law enforcement to lawfully access data and their ability to acquire and use the content of that data is a pressing international concern that requires urgent, sustained attention and informed discussion on the complexity of the issues and interests at stake,” it said. “Otherwise, court decisions about legitimate access to data are increasingly rendered meaningless, threatening to undermine the systems of justice established in our democratic nations.”
According to the statement, in the hour before she called police to report her 13-month-old was unresponsive, her searches included: [...]
The United States’ top spy catcher said Chinese espionage agencies are using fake LinkedIn accounts to try to recruit Americans with access to government and commercial secrets, and the company should shut them down.
Mastercard holders, some two billion globally, were unaware of this because neither of the companies have made it public, the report said.
In other words, if an anonymous Google account clicks an advert, and then goes on to buy the product offline within 30 days, the company will include the information in a summary to the advertiser in question.
Google has refused to patch a vulnerability in older versions of Android that allows malicious attackers to track and locate smartphones, unless users upgrade to the latest version, or Android Pie.
Sandy Parakilas, who was responsible for privacy and compliance at Facebook for two years, said the company flagrantly disregarded his warnings over other companies’ misuse of children’s data.
He said content and product design was driven by algorithms that maximised the number of users, irrespective of the harm to people’s well-being through addiction or the promotion of inflammatory disturbing or threatening material.
Motuznaya initially stayed quiet after being charged with extremism and offending religious sensibilities. But one day in July, she read a story about torture in prisons, and decided to go public: “Hi everyone, my name is Masha, I’m 23 and I’m an extremist,” she wrote on Twitter, kicking off a viral sensation and a major discussion over extremism laws.
The following protest song was initially featured at Ongoing History Of Protest Songs.
“Thirty years ago, the world did not need too much from me in terms of activism. Now we need all the activists in the world to do something, and still it may not be enough.”
The above was posted on Yoko Ono’s Twitter account. The statement is an apt description of why, at 85 years of age, Ono continues her five-decade long career of using her art to promote social change.
She recently announced a new album “Warzone” that will be released on October 19, 2018. The album re-imagines tunes that were previously released between 1970–2009.
The UK’s leading broadcasters and ISPs have called for the government to introduce independent regulatory oversight of social media content.
The group of media and broadband operators in the tightly regulated industries spans both the state-funded and commercial sector — with the letter to the Sunday Telegraph being inked with signatures from the leaders of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, BT and TalkTalk.
They argue there’s an “urgent” need for independent oversight of social media, and counter suggestions that such a move would amount to censorship by pointing out that tech companies are already making choices about what to allow (or not) on their platforms.
A public records request sent to the Louisiana State Police has uncovered something disturbing. Although the LSP continues to refuse to release the document in question, it appears this law enforcement agency has been using a bogus list of supposed Antifa members compiled by 8chan users to keep tabs on Americans opposed to Trump.
The public records lawsuit [PDF] filed by Harvard lecturer (and former staff attorney for Orleans Public Defenders) Thomas Frampton on behalf of records requester William Most, alleges law enforcement's refusal to hand over the "antifa.docx" file referenced in obtained emails is an indication the state police actually believe this bogus "Antifa" list -- compiled from a list of signatories to an anti-Trump petition -- is credible enough to be used in ongoing investigations and litigation.
Here's Frampton's summation of the situation, as gleaned from the state police's responses to Most's repeated requests for a copy of the Antifa doc.
[...]
But it's the Antifa doc that's making headlines. Alone it could mean nothing more than something passed around by law enforcement officers and officials before being discarded. Coupled with the LSP's insistence that release of the document would compromise both an investigation and its confidential informant, the refusal to release the docx file suggests the agency has opened investigations predicated on a hoax. However strongly one may feel about the criminality of Antifa's actions, there's nothing in this document justifying investigations and surveillance of people who did nothing more than sign an online petition. If the LSP fell for a hoax and opened investigations based on protected speech (the signing of online petitions), it's going to be facing a lot more litigation in the future.
As the wife of a Muslim religious leader, she came to America with uncertainty and hope. A suspected hate crime snuffed out the hope.
[...]
A gunman had shot Alauddin dead in the streets of Queens. His friend, Thara Miah, had been slain as well. The gunman had fled, and his reason for killing the two men, the authorities said at the time, was a mystery: There had been no dispute; the men’s valuables had not been stolen.
Minara found her husband laid out on the sidewalk, his white robes stained with blood. He’d been shot in the back of the head, and his face was marked by multiple exit wounds. For Minara, there was no question about the gunman’s motive: Alauddin had been targeted because of his faith.
In Kenya, more and more young women are using sugar daddies to fund a lifestyle worth posting on social media. Transactional sex was once driven by poverty, says film-maker Nyasha Kadandara. But now, increasingly, it's driven by vanity.
[...]
The sample size was small and the study was not fully randomised, so the results only give an indication of the possible numbers, they cannot be taken as definitive. Also, only a small percentage openly admitted to having a sugar daddy; the researchers were able to infer that a number were hiding the truth from answers they gave to other questions, using a technique called list randomisation. But interestingly, when talking about others, not about themselves, the young women estimated on average that 24% of their peers had engaged in a transactional sexual relationship with an older man - a figure very close to that reached by the researchers.
Instead, they have to settle them privately with their employer. It’s unclear why these plaintiffs would voluntarily sign an arbitration agreement, especially if they had been planning a lawsuit. Most likely, the plaintiffs didn’t read their new contract closely or even realize what it said.
Like most protections, the rules simply prevent ISPs from using their broadband monopolies to unfairly throttle, block, or censor competing content and services. Unlike weaker bills (like those being proposed by ISPs), the bill also takes aim at all of the creative anti-competitive efforts ISPs have been engaged in in recent years, from anti-competitive abuse of usage caps and overage fees (zero rating), to the anti-competitive abuse of interconnection points with transit operators and content companies.
With SB822's passage, the entire west coast is now covered with net neutrality rules thanks to laws passed in Oregon and Washington State; certainly not the end game most ISPs envisioned after spending millions to lobby the federal government.
You'll likely now hear ISPs, ISP lobbyists, and their literal armies of think tankers, payrolled academics, consultants and others whine incessantly for weeks about the unfairness of having to deal with numerous, discordant state-level protections. Of course none of these folks will acknowledge that's the telecom industry's fault, since this wouldn't be happening if they hadn't waged endless war on modest (by international standards), popular, and cohesive federal rules. Whatever your thoughts on net neutrality, this move was a reflection of what the public wanted (aka, Democracy).
Unified's OPAL (Objective PAtent Landscape) and ASSURE (A Standard SUbmission REpository) reports were designed to address asymmetries in the licensing of standard essential patents and to create a more fair and transparent patent licensing process around some of the core patents supporting these next waves of consumer technology growth.
Unified has published OPAL and ASSURE reports for the new Video Codec Zone which provides a comprehensive analysis of standard essential patents and technical specifications for the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC or H.265) standard developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC).
The World Intellectual Property Organization committee charged to find effective ways to protect traditional knowledge and folklore closed a weeklong meeting in consensus on several items, among which are two revised texts to be discussed further at the next session.
Uncertainty surrounding Brexit and what form it will take has been felt strongly by all UK businesses, and not least those with intellectual property rights protected at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). However, recent statements during a House of Commons debate and in the Government’s Brexit White Paper have gone some way towards assuaging their fears.
While these recent developments bode well for rights owners, as Britain’s negotiations with the EU enter a critical phase, further clarifications will be needed to ensure that there is a smooth and problem-free transition.
In a House of Commons debate on July 19, Robin Walker, under secretary of state at the Department for Exiting the European Union, made assurances that any EU trade marks, registered community designs (RCDs) and unregistered designs owned by businesses in the UK will be replaced with new UK trade marks “automatically and for free”, even in the event of a hard Brexit.
We know what the EU27 and UK would like to see in terms of IP and Brexit but as the prospect of a deal being reached before 29 March 2019 looks increasingly unlikely, it's time to ask: what will happen if there is no deal?
Under a deal, EU designs and trade marks would be automatically converted to UK rights, apparently at no cost. This does not look to be available if there is no deal. Instead, it is likely that the EU trade mark and Community registered and unregistered designs would cease to apply in the UK and until legislation is put in place which offers protection on similar terms, there will be no equivalent protection in the UK.
The UK government is rolling out various technical notices on a UK no deal scenario throughout September. The first collection of these notices is available here. While there is some consideration of the impact of importing and exporting as well as product labelling, the current tranche of notices do not consider intellectual property rights including what will happen to the Trade Mark Regulation ((EU) 2017/1001) or the Community Designs Regulation ((EC) No 6/2002). This will follow in one of the next tranches of technical notices.
The choice of the starting point for evaluation of inventive step requires a justification which is not in itself provided by the fact that a certain citation proves ex post to be the “closest state of the art”.
In a recent, game changing decision, European Union’s highest court (EU High Court) has ruled that Christian Louboutin’s famous red sole shoes are eligible for protection as a trademark. This article discussed the significance of the decision and the opportunity it provides U.S. fashion designers to promote and protect their color brands in the European Union.
Patrick Wingrove analyses the most-important recent trade mark-related rulings from the CJEU, including cases involving Nestle, Puma, Louboutin and Red Bull
The controversial Copyright Directive is fast approaching another pivotal vote on 12 September. For the third time in half a year MEPs will decide whether Article 13 - or something even worse - will usher in a new era, where all content is approved or rejected by automated gatekeepers.
Seen through an economic lens the Directive’s journey is viewed as a battle between rights holders and tech giants. Yet a growing chorus of ordinary citizens, Internet luminaries, human rights organisations and creatives have rightly expanded the debate to encompass the missing human dimension.
Open Rights Group opposes Article 13 - or any new amendments proposing similar ideas - because it poses a real threat to the fundamental right to free speech online.
Just before the summer holidays, on 5 July, the European Parliament (EP) Plenary decided to reject the EP’s Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee’s negotiation mandate with the Council on the copyright reform. This decision implies that now all 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) get to have their say on this important issue. MEPs are now scheduled to vote on this file during the 12 September Plenary session, and the deadline for Amendments was set to 5 September (13h CET).
With this deadline around the corner, MEP Axel Voss (EPP, Germany), the JURI Committee Rapporteur, circulated end of last week a set of compromise proposals for Articles 11 (ancillary copyright) and 13 (the #CensorshipMachine). His ambitions are two-fold: (1) he’s trying to find a majority in order to limit the attempts from other MEPs to push their own alternative amendments on these Articles, and as such hijack the process, and (2) by giving a ‘piece-offering’ on these Articles, he’s trying to convince colleagues to keep the lid closed on other Articles and to only focus on these two core issues. However, MEP Voss is actually continuing the strategy he used during the JURI negotiations (and for which the Estonian and Bulgarian Council Presidencies also became renowned): making things worse with every version.
Since the internet is saturated with pirated content, therefore, Hollywood studios have to deploy automated bots through reporting agencies for identifying the URLs that are violating the copyrights. These infringing URLs are then reported to various service providers such as Google for taking the appropriate action against them.
However, these bots are far from perfect, and there are several bugs that are causing problems lately. In an earlier incident, Topple Track, an anti-piracy and content monitoring service had to take down its bots after a series of faulty takedown notices were submitted.
A rather persistent bug in the takedown code of a major reporting agency has caused an embarrassing situation for several Hollywood studios. For quite some time now, companies including Sony Pictures Television and Columbia Pictures have been inadvertently asking Google to remove the IMDb listings of their own work.
Swedish Internet service provider Bahnhof is a fierce opponent of so-called copyright trolling efforts. Where other ISPs have shared the personal details of allegedly pirating subscribers, Bahnhof hasn't, simply because it keeps limited logs. The company's CEO wants to know why other ISPs aren't following suit.
Four Swedish men sentenced in 2017 for their part in running the pirate sites Dreamfilm, TFplay, Tankafetast, and PirateHub, were initially given jail sentences. Following a 2018 appeal, those immediate jail sentences were removed but their significant fines were increased four-fold. Two of the men have taken their appeal to the Swedish Supreme Court.