Now, let's discuss how developers can use Quarkus to bring Java into serverless, a place where previously, it was unable to go. Quarkus introduces a comprehensive and seamless approach to generating an operating system specific (aka native) executable from your Java code, as you do with languages like Go and C/C++. Environments such as event-driven and serverless, where you need to start a service to react to an event, require a low time-to-first-response, and traditional Java stacks simply cannot provide this. Knative enables developers to run cloud-native applications as serverless containers in seconds and the containers will go down to zero on demand.
In addition to compiling Java to Knative, Quarkus aims to improve developer productivity. Quarkus works out of the box with popular Java standards, frameworks and libraries like Eclipse MicroProfile, Apache Kafka, RESTEasy, Hibernate, Spring, and many more. Developers familiar with these will feel at home with Quarkus, which should streamline code for the majority of common use cases while providing the flexibility to cover others that come up.
Daniel Oh is a principal technical product marketing manager at Red Hat and works CNCF ambassador as well. He's well recognized in cloud-native application development, senior DevOps practices in many open source projects and international conferences.
Most of our episodes feature languages that have clear arcs. "The Infrastructure Effect" was different. By all accounts, COBOL is a language heading the way of Latin. There are only a few specialists who are proficient COBOL coders. But it’s still vital to many long-lasting institutions that affect millions: the banking industry, the IRS, and manufacturing. And the world of tech infrastructure is moving on—to Go. Where does that leave COBOL in the next few years? And how do you tease all of that in an image?
We had to decide what visual themes could we use to depict each language—and then, how to combine them into a single, coherent frame. COBOL and Go have a similar function, so we wanted to make sure each language had clear, distinct imagery. We decided to rely on some of their real-world applications: the bank and subways for COBOL, and the cloud-based applications for Go.
I recently assisted a client to deploy Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) on Red Hat OpenShift 4.x. They had run into an issue where Elasticsearch would throw an error similar to:
Max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count [65530] likely too low, increase to at least [262144] According to the official documentation, Elasticsearch uses a mmapfs directory by default to store its indices. The default operating system limits on mmap counts are likely to be too low, which may result in out of memory exceptions. Usually, administrators would just increase the limits by running:
sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144 However, OpenShift uses Red Hat CoreOS for its worker nodes and, because it is an automatically updating, minimal operating system for running containerized workloads, you shouldn’t manually log on to worker nodes and make changes. This approach is unscalable and results in a worker node becoming tainted. Instead, OpenShift provides an elegant and scalable method to achieve the same via its Node Tuning Operator.
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1, Red Hat ships a set of fully supported on x86_64 dynamic kernel tracing tools, called bcc-tools, that make use of a kernel technology called extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF). With these tools, you can quickly gain insight into certain aspects of system performance that would have previously required more time and effort from the system and operator.
The eBPF technology allows dynamic kernel tracing without requiring kernel modules (like systemtap) or rebooting of the kernel (as with debug kernels). eBPF accomplishes this while maintaining minimal overhead for each trace point, making these tools an ideal way to instrument running kernels in production.
When it comes to digital transformation, businesses seem to be on the right track improving their customers' experiences through the use of technologies. Today, so much digital transformation literature describes the benefits of "delivering new value to customers" or "delivering value to customers in new ways."
Where I live, almost everything is a 20- or 30-minute drive from my home, and I'm always looking for ways to use my car time productively. One way is by listening to podcasts on topics that interest me, so as an open source enthusiast, I subscribe to a variety of open source-related podcasts.
Here are eight Linux and open source podcasts that I Iook forward to every week.
Welcome to Episode 310 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts take an in-depth look at the world of Digital Mobile Radio, otherwise known as DMR. It's a topic that could take volumes or multiple episodes but the idea here is to give you enough information to understand the basics of the technology, acquire appropriate hardware and get on the air using digital FM. We hope that has been accomplished. Thank you for listening.
Brent sits down with Jill Bryant Ryniker, long time linux aficionado, for a connective conversation exploring her deep involvement in linux and open source, from community to professional animation and more.
Jill wears many complimentary hats, a few of which include: co-host of Linux Weekly Daily Wednesday. regular community guest on Linux Unplugged, Linux Chicks LA co-organizer, professional animator and teacher, ...and more! Grab a seat and join us..
The internet is rife with bots and bad actors trying to compromise your servers. To counteract these threats it is necessary to diligently harden your systems to improve server security. Unfortunately, the hardening process can be complex or confusing. In this week's episode 18 year old Orhun Parmaksiz shares the story of how he and his friends created the GrapheneX framework to simplify the process of securing and maintaining your servers using the power and flexibility of Python. If you run your own software then this is definitely worth a listen.
Summary
The internet is rife with bots and bad actors trying to compromise your servers. To counteract these threats it is necessary to diligently harden your systems to improve server security. Unfortunately, the hardening process can be complex or confusing. In this week’s episode 18 year old Orhun Parmaksiz shares the story of how he and his friends created the GrapheneX framework to simplify the process of securing and maintaining your servers using the power and flexibility of Python. If you run your own software then this is definitely worth a listen.
The Linux kernel has just received its mitigation work for the newly-announced TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA) variant of ZombieLoad plus revealing mitigations for another Intel CPU issue... So today in addition to the JCC Erratum and ZombieLoad TAA the latest is iITLB Multihit (NX) - No eXcuses.
The mainline Linux kernel received mitigations for ZombieLoad TAA that work in conjunction with newly-published Intel microcode. The mitigations also now expose /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/tsx_async_abort for reporting the mitigation status plus a new tsx_async_abort kernel parameter. With the TAA mitigation, the system will clear CPU buffers on ring transitions.
LinuxBoot is approaching two years of age as the effort led by Facebook and others for replacing some elements of the system firmware with the Linux kernel.
Chris Koch of Google presented at last month's Platform Security Summit 2019 on the initiative. The Platform Security Summit 2019 took place at the start of October at Microsoft's facilities in Redmond. LinuxBoot in recent months has been able to begin booting Windows 10, which is related to the recent reports on kexec'ing Windows from Linux. But not only is Windows booting but VMware and Xen are also now working in a LinuxBoot environment.
Intel is today making public the Jump Conditional Code (JCC) erratum. This is a bug involving the CPU's Decoded ICache where on Skylake and derived CPUs where unpredictable behavior could happen when jump instructions cross cache lines. Unfortunately addressing this error in software comes with a performance penalty but ultimately Intel engineers are working to offset that through a toolchain update. Here are the exclusive benchmarks out today of the JCC erratum performance impact as well as when trying to recover that performance through the updated GNU Assembler.
The microcode update prevents jump instructions from being cached in the Decoded Icache when those instructions cross a 32-byte boundary or where they end on a 32-bit boundary. Due to that change there will be more misses from the Decoded ICache and switches back to the legacy decode pipeline -- resulting in a new performance penalty. The Decoded ICache / Decoded Streaming Buffer has been around since Sandy Bridge but only Skylake and newer is affected by this erratum. Cascade Lake is affected by this erratum but Ice Lake and future iterations appears unaffected. The erratum notice officially lists Amber Lake, Cascade Lake, Coffee Lake, Comet Lake, Kaby Lake, Skylake, and Whiskey Lake as affected generations for the JCC bug.
The third Linux Application Summit (LAS) kicks off this week in Barcelona, Spain. Formerly organised under the GNOME project, known as Libre Application Summit, the new LAS is a joint effort between the KDE and GNOME projects. The aim of the conference is to encourage the growth of a vibrant Linux application ecosystem. Canonical are proud sponsors of LAS 2019, and are sending along a team to represent Ubuntu and Snapcraft.
The volunteers on the organising committee each have a long history in the Linux application community. They’ve all worked on platforms and infrastructure to enable new software development for Linux. I took some time to chat with some of the team, and what LAS means for them.
Aleix Pol, representing KDE, has worked on Linux applications for a while, and is hopeful for increased collaboration between application developers and platform maintainers. Aleix told me; “While we [GNOME and KDE] are sizeable organisations, we have massive tasks at hand. We need to create an environment where people can come and create their solutions for all of us.”
This applies both for application developers and those who work primarily on the platforms themselves. He continued; “With GNOME, we share pieces of software, we share users and we even share some of our dreams. Meeting, talking and collaborating can only be beneficial”. Aleix also highlighted the benefits of meeting in person at events like LAS, “There’s a very different kinds of visitor. The ones who have been around will be putting faces to nicknames and having these discussions that IRC and mailing lists can’t sustain”.
Termshark, a Wireshark-like terminal interface for TShark written in Go, was updated to version 2.0.0. This release includes support for dark mode, piped input, and stream reassembly, as well as performance optimizations that make the tool faster and more responsive.
Big fan of productivity software? If so, you may be interested to know that the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors are now available on Flathub.
Yes, Flathub, aka the de facto app store for Flatpak, the cross-distro containerised app distribution method.
ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors, a free and open source office suite that offers text, spreadsheet and presentation editors for the Linux, Windows and macOS desktops, is now available on Flathub for easy installation (and update) on Linux distributions that support Flatpak.
Flathub is an app store and build service for Linux that distributes applications as Flatpak packages, which allows them to run on almost any Linux distribution.
ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors allows creating, viewing and editing text documents, spreadsheets and presentations with support for most popular formats like .docx, .odt, .xlsx., .ods, .pptx, .csv and .odp. Its website claims it has the "highest compatibility with Microsoft Office formats".
Linux is an open-source operating system. As a result, it is missing some critical components that users of proprietary operating systems enjoy. One big thing that all Linux operating systems miss out on is proprietary fonts.
The most used proprietary fonts out there today are the Microsoft Core Fonts. They’re used in many apps, development, and even graphics design projects. In this guide, we’ll go over how to set them up on Linux.
Note: not using Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, Fedora, or OpenSUSE? Download the generic font package here and install the fonts by hand.
Possibly, not all people know it can to make calculations inside Writer tables like in the Calc. But there are only 25 functions for use inside Writer tables, but Calc has over 400 functions. To start use functions inside Writer tables you should left click into cell and then press key F2 or "=" on keyboard, or use "Formula" icon on Table toolbar. It shows a Formula bar like in the Calc.
Epic Games have reached down the back of the sofa and pulled up enough loose change to acquire Quixel.
For those not familiar, Quixel are responsible for some seriously high quality 3D and 2D assets and their pretty well-known for their "Megascans". These super-high quality assets are used in plenty of AAA games, films and more. Some of what they've made is truly impressive too and Quixel have well over ten thousand assets people can use with a huge assortment of items.
Since they're now owned by Epic, their library of assets are being made completely free to Unreal Engine users. Ten of these high-res packs have already been made free on the Unreal Engine Marketplace, with more coming in future. However, they're not stopping developers using them elsewhere and for those who are, the subscription prices have been lowered and the resolution cap was removed.
Thrust is that you? Gravity Ace, a new pixel-art twin-stick shooter in development by John Watson is looking quite incredible and it's coming to Linux.
Being made in the FOSS game engine Godot Engine, it's actually inspired by both the classics Thrust and Gravitar. Obviously graphically a huge amount better since they're pretty old, Gravity Ace certainly looks like it will get quite intense and you can even try it out right now.
It seems the latest update of American Truck Simulator has come with a few issues, like the Linux version playing audio but seemingly displaying nothing. Here's a fix for you.
Curiously, it grabs your cursor and plays audio as if it's working. However, when you ALT+TAB (at least on the KDE desktop), it will then show a very tiny window so it seems something is wrong with how they're initially detecting screens since the latest update.
PPSSPP is one of the easiest to use PSP emulators. Theoretically, you can run it, select a game file, and almost immediately you’ll see most of PlayStation Portable’s titles run on your screen without a hitch.
Learn how you can install PPSSPP in Linux and customize how it works. If you have a powerful computer, you can also implement upgrades that can dramatically improve how all games are presented and perform in PPSSPP.
After a long road, the waiting on We Happy Few for both Linux and Mac is about to come to an end. Not the happiest of endings either.
Originally funded on Kickstarter back in 2015 for $334,754 CA, Linux and Mac support was then announced for We Happy Few after the campaign had started. In 2017, it was announced that Compulsion Games teamed up with Gearbox Publishing to complete it.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, the supremely stylish 2D action game Helvetii has now been confirmed to be launching with Linux support next year.
While their crowdfunding campaign didn't initially confirm Linux support, after it finished they announced that after evaluating it they've decided to do it and they "had actually quite a lot of demand" for it too. They said supporting Linux is "actually little work on our end (and we do have the ability to test it), we thought that we might as well do it".
Starcom: Nexus from Wx3 Labs is a striking looking open-world space action adventure and they've been looking into getting it running on Linux.
In a post on Steam, one of the team noted they're using Unity making it possible but "some testing and fixes are expected". They went over attempting to test with a live Linux USB stick which has enabled them to see it running, and they mentioned to reply to post if you have the game and want to test the Linux version.
Prepare for a fistful of news, as the Linux Gaming News Punch - Episode 21 has arrived to go over some recent interesting topics to allow you to keep up with all the news.
For those just joining, this is a quick take roundup on recent Linux gaming news. Meant for those who struggle to keep up or just want a little Linux gaming news on the go. Audio-only files and feed links below the video.
Critique Gaming and Mixtvision have announced that their immersive noir-styled psychological detective-thiller with conversational puzzles, Interrogation: You will be deceived, is going to release on December 5.
Previously covered here on GamingOnLinux back in August, after it caught my eye with the incredible rotoscoped almost-monochrome art. You are tasked with saving the city from a terrorist plot by interrogating suspects as the clock ticks down. To do so, you have to mix between interrogations and managing your team's reputation with time running out.
The free and open-source digiKam image organizer and tag editor released version 6.4.0 a few days ago with extended DPlugins interface.
The last minor release of the 19.08 series is out with a fair amount of usability fixes while preparations are underway for the next major version. The highlights include an audio mixer, improved effects UI and some performance optimizations. Grab the nightly AppImage builds, give it a spin and report any issues.
Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.17.3. Plasma 5.17 was released in October 2019 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.
This release adds a fortnight's worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include...
KDE developer Bhushan Shah posted today on Twitter a photo of his PinePhone open source Linux-powered smartphone from PINE64 running the latest KDE Plasma Mobile, which is mostly an open-source user interface designed for small screens, like those on phones and tablets.
KDE Plasma Mobile is currently available from various Linux OS makers, including KDE neon, Debian GNU/Linux, and postmarketOS. Of all three, KDE neon is the recommended choice for installing a Linux-based operating system on a supported devices to run the latest KDE Plasma Mobile user interface.
Sunday marked the release of KDE Frameworks 5.64 as the latest monthly update to this collection of libraries complementing Qt5.
November 10, 2019. KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.64.0.
KDE Frameworks are over 70 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the KDE Frameworks web page.
This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.
openSUSE fans can rest easy that their lovingly curated swag remains relevant, after the community behind the Linux distribution voted against a proposal to change the project’s name.
Community leaders had turned to the people – or at least interested members of the openSUSE community – following debate on whether the project should reconstitute itself as a new legal entity, such as a community.
This had unsurprisingly led to discussion over the openSUSE name and trademarks – SUSE and the SUSE logo are trademarks of SUSE LLC, the commercial company that champions the project and its open source operating system.
So, a straightforward proposal was put to the community: Do we change the project name?
The Fedora Silverblue team was not able to get the necessary changes into Fedora 31 to support having Flatpak pre-installed. They are looking at the possibility of re-spinning the Silverblue ISO to incorporate the changes. But they did update the Fedora 31 Flatpak runtime. The team updated the Flatpak’ed GNOME applications to GNOME 3.34 and built them against the Fedora 31 runtime.
Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS: As we are closing to the end of 2019, eyes go to the next releases from Canonical in 2020. A lot is going to happen for Ubuntu users in 2020 and it is going to start with the release of Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS, the next update for the Bionic Beaver before the final Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS on August 2020. From Release Schedules of Canonical, it is been noted that the LTS(Long Term Support) versions get updated releases every six months once and hence after the release on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS that happened on August 2018, we can expect Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS on the first week of February 2020.
Founded by Dr. Jörg Wurzer, an experienced entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in research and development in user experience, machine learning, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and product management, Volla Phone promises to be a privacy-focused mobile phone powered by a free and open source operating system.
At its heart, the Volla Phone device will use Nemo Mobile, an OS based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) promising increased security and privacy features, as well as simplicity for the everyday user. For developers, Volla Phone also promises to support an alternative, free, and open-source operation system like Ubuntu Touch.
Arbor’s rugged, Linux-friendly “IEC-3900” signage player has a 7th Gen U-Series Core CPU, dual independent 4K HDMI ports, 4x USB 3.0 ports, M.2 SATA storage, and a 130 x 124 x 35mm footprint.
Arbor Technology, which recently introduced a rugged ELIT-1930 signage player based on Intel’s 8th Gen Coffee Lake, has now launched an even more rugged signage system with a much more compact form factor that runs on a 7th Gen Kaby Lake processor. The 130 x 124 x 35mm, 0.73 kg IEC-3900 runs Linux or Win 10 on a dual-core, 2.8GHz/3.9GHz Core i7-7600U or 2.6GHz/3.5GHz Core i5-7300U.
Recently there have been companies working on smartphones that ship with Linux with Purism Librem 5 and Pine64 PinePhone being the most popular. But it has been possible to install Linux on various other (Android) phones thanks to projects like PostMarketOS or UBports’ Ubuntu Touch.
But to make it easier to find out whether your phone is supported, the guy(s) at Tuxphones have created a database of phones that can run Linux.
A Linux kernel is a core element of Android but despite this, Android cannot be called a Linux distribution because it lacks a GNU interface typical of a Linux distro. Android and Linux apps are not exchangeable because of different runtime systems and libraries. But with the efforts of some brilliant developers, you can actually run a legit Linux distribution on your smartphone which traditionally runs Android. The steps are as simple as installing a custom ROM and this is especially helpful if you have an aging smartphone that isn’t likely to get much – or even worse any – support.
If you’re looking to experience something other than Android – more specifically, Linux – on a smartphone, there are several touch-based Linux distros like Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, and Maemo Leste. You can head over to Can My Phone Run Linux, a database set up by TuxPhones and type your phone’s name in the search bar to find a list of Linux distributions that are supported by your phone.
As the /e/ OS remains quite complex to install, we have partnered with a refurbisher to offer a range of smartphones pre-installed with /e/OS. It’s been available since summer 2019 in the EU, and with Australia/New Zealand coming very shortly. Arrangements for offering this in the US are also underway.
Flutter is the newest addition to Google's programming cadre. Following the success of Android, Kotlin, and Golang, Flutter was created as a cross-platform application development language. It is primarily based on the Dart programming construct and is considered to be the next big programming paradigm because its code can run as a mobile app, a web app, and even a desktop app without any major changes. Supposedly it will support Google's upcoming Fuschia operating system.
Flutter plugins are simple dependencies that extend the language's capabilities. This list of the top five open source Flutter plugins includes both user interface (UI)-related and function-related plugins.
Taking place at the end of October during the Linux Foundation events in Lyon, France was the GStreamer Conference to align with the annual developer festivities.
GStreamer Conference 2019 was once again livestreamed by the fantastic folks at Ubicast.tv with their great quality video/audio recordings of the conference now for many years.
The Google Summer of Code – aka GSoC – is a global programme focused on bringing more student developers into free and open source software development. In 2019, LibreOffice was once again a participating project, and we describe the results here.
We also had a dedicated table for our mobile effort where we showcased our KDE apps for Android and of course Plasma Mobile. The latter of which we had running on a good ol’ Nexus 5X and more importantly the Librem 5 Dev Kit by Purism. Unfortunately, the Pinephone developer kits we were hoping to show as well weren’t shipped in time for the event. Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more about what’s going on with Plasma Mobile go check out our new weekly blog series!
Summary: after an epic amount of refactoring, librsvg now does all CSS parsing and matching in Rust, without using libcroco. In addition, the CSS engine comes from Mozilla Servo, so it should be able to handle much more complex CSS than librsvg ever could before.
For about three years now GNOME's SVG rendering library has been transitioning to Rust. This library, librsvg, now makes further use of Rust around its CSS parsing code and Mozilla's Servo is doing some of that heavy lifting.
Librsvg is employing the CSS engine from Mozilla's Servo engine in order to be written in Rust while also having the benefit of being able to handle more complex CSS code than the previous implementation.
Mozilla, Intel, Red Hat and Fastly today announced the launch of the Bytecode Alliance, a new open-source group that focuses on “creating new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI).”
Mozilla has long championed WebAssembly, the open standard that allows browsers to execute compiled programs in the browser. This allows developers to write their applications in languages like C, C++ and Rust and have those programs execute at native speed, all without having to rely on JavaScript, which would take much longer to parse and execute, especially on mobile devices.
Today, support for WebAssembly is part of all the major browser engines. Companies like Figma and Autodesk have experimented with it or are using it in production. I do not get the sense that mass adoption of the technology is near, though, and the barrier to entry is high for most developers. Indeed, today’s announcement probably marks the first time I’ve heard about WebAssemly this year.
Today we announce the formation of the Bytecode Alliance, a new industry partnership coming together to forge WebAssembly’s outside-the-browser future by collaborating on implementing standards and proposing new ones. Our founding members are Mozilla, Fastly, Intel, and Red Hat, and we’re looking forward to welcoming many more.
The Bytecode Alliance is a newly-formed open source community dedicated to creating new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI). Mozilla, Fastly, Intel, and Red Hat are founding members.
The Bytecode Alliance will, through the joint efforts of its contributing members, deliver a state-of-the-art runtime environment and associated language toolchains, where security, efficiency, and modularity can all coexist across the widest possible range of devices and architectures. Technologies contributed and collaboratively evolved through the Alliance leverage established innovation in compilers, runtimes, and tooling, and focus on fine-grained sandboxing, capabilities-based security, modularity, and standards such as WebAssembly and WASI.
Mozilla, Fastly, Intel, and Red Hat have announced the Bytecode Alliance as a new initiative built around WebAssembly and focused on providing a secure-by-default bytecode that can run from web browsers to desktops to IoT/embedded platforms.
"Together, we’re putting in solid, secure foundations that can make it safe to use untrusted code, no matter where you’re running it—whether on the cloud, natively on someone’s desktop, or even on a tiny IoT device," announced Mozilla.
Firefox 71 is a light release in terms of extension changes. I’d like to tell you about a few interesting improvements nevertheless.
Thanks to Nils Maier, there have been various improvements to the downloads API, specifically in handling download failures. In addition to previously reported failures, the browser.downloads.download API will now report an error in case of various 4xx error codes. Similarly, HTTP 204 (No Content) and HTTP 205 (Reset Content) are now treated as bad content errors. This makes the API more compatible with Chrome and gives developers a way to handle these errors in their code. With the new allowHttpErrors parameter, extensions may also ignore some http errors when downloading. This will allow them to download the contents of server error pages.
The Kenyan Data Protection and Privacy Act 2019, was signed into law last week. This GDPR-like law is the first data protection law in Kenyan history, and marks a major step forward in the protection of Kenyans’ privacy. Mozilla applauds the Government of Kenya, the National Assembly, and all stakeholders who took part in the making of this historic law. It is indeed a huge milestone that sees Kenya become the latest addition to the list of countries with data protection related laws in place; providing much-needed safeguards to its citizens in the digital era.
Strong data protection laws are critical in ensuring that user rights are protected; that companies and governments are compelled to appropriately handle the data that they are entrusted with. As part of its policy work in Africa, Mozilla has been at the forefront in advocating for the new law since 2018. The latest development is most welcome, as Mozilla continues to champion the 5 policy hot-spots that are key to Africa’s digital transformation.
In Tracking Diaries, we invited people from all walks of life to share how they spent a day online while using Firefox’s privacy protections to keep count of the trackers that tried to follow them.
Whenever you’re online, a multitude of third parties attempt to record what you’re doing, largely without your knowledge or consent. Creepy! That’s why Firefox has turned the tables, letting you block and see the trackers. Read on to find out how many trackers tried to trail Tiffany LaTrice Williams throughout his day, and how she felt about it.
It’s that time of year again! We’re getting ready to head on out to San Diego for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA. For me, KubeCon always makes for an exciting and jam-packed week.
To accelerate digital transformation, organizations in every industry are modernizing their on-premises technologies by adopting cloud-native applications. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), global spend on cloud computing will grow from $147 billion in 2019 to $418 billion by 2024. Almost half of that investment will be tied to technologies that help companies deliver personalized customer experiences.
One major challenge of this shift to cloud computing is that applications are typically created with their own data models, forcing developers to build, test, and manage custom code that’s necessary to map and translate data across different systems. The process is inefficient, delays innovation, and ultimately can result in a broken customer experience.
Operating systems, computer architectures and compilers have always fascinated me. I like to go in depth to understand the important software components we depend on! My life changed when engineers from IBM LTC (Linux Technology Center) came to my college to teach us the Linux Kernel internals. When I heard about the Linux Kernel Mentorship program, I immediately knew that I wanted to be a part of it to further fuel my passion for Linux.
One of the project in the lists of projects available to work during the Linux Kernel Mentorship program was on “Predictive Memory Reclamation”. I really wanted the opportunity to work on the core kernel, and I began working with my mentor Khalid Aziz immediately during the application period where he gave me a task regarding the identification of anonymous memory regions for a process. I learned a lot in the application period by reading various blogs, textbooks and commit logs.
During my mentorship period, I worked to develop a predictive memory reclamation algorithm in the Linux Kernel. The aim of the project was to reduce the amount of time the Linux kernel spends in reclaiming memory to satisfy processes requests for memory when there is memory pressure, i.e not enough to satisfy the memory allocation of a process. We implemented a predictive algorithm that can forecast memory pressure and proactively reclaim memory to ensure there is enough available for processes.
Huobi Chain, the regulator-facing public blockchain of exchange Huobi Group, is now open source and publicly available to all developers on GitHub, the firm said Tuesday.
Nervos, a blockchain development startup, is providing part of the technical infrastructure for the project.
The firms are developing pluggable components for the network that could enable regulators to supervise contract deployments, asset holdings and transfers, as well as the enforcement of anti money laundering regulations, Bo Wang, a Nervos researcher, told CoinDesk.
The components will also allow financial institutions, such as banks and regulatory agencies, to freeze assets and accounts in case of emergencies via sidechains, according to Wang.
The movement to develop software applications and all manner of IT services through the open source model is fundamentally rooted in the notion of community contribution, but things have shifted.
Probably after 6.7 we'll delete the warning. Maybe for 6.8 we'll remove -s and -S from getopt, and starting with those options will fail.
Developers keep adding crazy features, fixing bugs, and generally improving things. But how good is it if users aren’t aware of these new things? As an example, since June, our build farm has been offering lzip-compressed binaries, which results in better performance when installing software. But to take advantage of that, users need to be aware of its existence, and they need to upgrade their Guix daemon. Likewise, how do we get people to learn about the new guix deploy command that’s now available at their fingertips, about security issues that were fixed, about important infrastructure changes, new options added to existing commands, and so forth?
Our (frustrating!) experience has been that release notes, blog posts, and mailing list announcements aren’t quite enough to get the word out. There’s always people who’ll miss important info and realize when it’s already late, sometimes too late. Hence this simple idea: wouldn’t it be nice if important information would reach users right in their terminal?
[...]
Since it was applied a bit more than a month ago, we’ve already put the news mechanism to good use on quite a few occasions: giving users instructions on how to deal with locales after the last glibc upgrade, giving them upgrade info for CVE-2019-18192, telling them about new command-line options, and more.
In parallel, given that reading the mailing lists is akin to “drinking from a fire hose” as they say, Christopher Baines has been thinking about how to provide regular development updates to interested users and developers. Chris announced last week a prototype of a “Guix Weekly News” web site that would aggregate information about package updates automatically extracted from the Guix Data Service, along with manually written updates. It would seem that this service could readily grab info from channel news as well.
We are hosting this get-together to show our appreciation for your support of the FSF's work and to provide an opportunity to meet other FSF members and supporters in the area. We'll give updates on what the FSF is currently working on and we are curious to hear your thoughts, as well as answer any questions you may have.
In this course, you’ll learn about recursion. Recursion is a powerful tool you can use to solve a problem that can be broken down into smaller variations of itself. You can create very complex recursive algorithms with only a few lines of code.
In order to include categorical features in your Machine Learning model, you have to encode them numerically using "dummy" or "one-hot" encoding. But how do you do this correctly using scikit-learn?
Our first DevNation Live regional event was held in Bengaluru, India in July. This free technology event focused on open source innovations, with sessions presented by elite Red Hat technologists.
In this session, Kamesh Sampath introduces Tekton, which is the Kubernetes-native way of defining and running CI/CD. Sampath explores the characteristics of Tekton—cloud-native, decoupled, and declarative—and shows how to combine various building blocks of Tekton to build and deploy a cloud-native application.
I want to finish coverage.py 5.0. It has some big changes, so I need people to try it and tell me if it’s ready. Please install coverage.py 5.0 beta 1 and try it in your environment.
I especially want to hear from you if you tried the earlier alphas of 5.0. There have been some changes in the SQLite database that were needed to make measurement efficient enough for large test suites, but that hinder ad-hoc querying.
In this article, you will learn to get today's date and current date and time in Python. We will also format the date and time in different formats using strftime() method.
There are a number of ways you can take to get the current date. We will use the date class of the datetime module to accomplish this task.
A new minor release of RcppAnnoy is now on CRAN, following the previous 0.0.13 release in September.
RcppAnnoy is the Rcpp-based R integration of the nifty Annoy library by Erik Bernhardsson. Annoy is a small and lightweight C++ template header library for very fast approximate nearest neighbours—originally developed to drive the famous Spotify music discovery algorithm.
This release once again allows compilation on older compilers. The 0.0.13 release in September brought very efficient 512-bit AVX instruction to accelerate computations. However, this could not be compiled on older machines so we caught up once more with upstream to update to conditional code which will fall back to either 128-bit AVX or no AVX, ensuring buildability “everywhere”.
The Royal Mint has been manufacturing coins for 1,100 years, originally from the Tower of London and, since 1967, from its current site in South Wales. Today, it is the world’s largest export mint, printing 3.3 billion coins and blanks a year, and now is looking to expand its digital reach to serve retail customers online.
A new badge could appear in the future that’s designed to highlight sites that are “authored in a way that makes them slow generally.” Google will look at historical load latencies to figure out which sites are guilty of slow load times and flag them, and the Chrome team is also exploring identifying sites that will load slowly based on device hardware or network connectivity.
In the future, Chrome may identify sites that typically load fast or slow for users with clear badging. This may take a number of forms and we plan to experiment with different options, to determine which provides the most value to our users.
Badging is intended to identify when sites are authored in a way that makes them slow generally, looking at historical load latencies. Further along, we may expand this to include identifying when a page is likely to be slow for a user based on their device and network conditions.
QUIC continues to evolve through a collaborative and iterative process at the IETF — of adding features, implementing them, evaluating them, reworking or discarding them because they don’t stand up to continued scrutiny, and refining them. And in doing so, QUIC has matured in more ways than we imagined, yielding a protocol that is remarkably different and substantially better than it was in the beginning. So, keeping your arms and legs inside the ride at all times, let us take you on this journey of how QUIC has gone from an early experiment to a standard poised to modernize the [Internet].
FluidStack is a service that wants to rent your PC and internet connection and pays “up to 50 USD per month”. This may be an especially tempting offer if you're short on cash and want to make some no-effort passive income. However, you may want to reconsider FluidStack’s offer if you spend a little more time reading the fine print.
Last week, I discussed how the company behind the network-attached storage (NAS) appliance Cubbit plans to operate a datacenter from your home. Cubbit is a relatively expensive piece of hardware and I called them out for wanting to use the hardware you bought to make even more money from you and your internet connection. FluidStack’s promise of “up to $50 per month” compensation sure puts Cubbit’s business plan in perspective.
FluidStack requires that your PC is powered on and idle at least 12 hours a day, and that it’s connected to a residential internet service provider (ISP). If you’ve got more PCs then they’ll only pay you per unique residential IP address. As I discussed in the article on Cubbit, it’s your residential IP address that holds the true value to these companies.
Mini Mercury skipped across the vast, glaring face of the sun Monday in a rare celestial transit.
We asked a simple question to our Twitter followers: “What's the most outrageous health care bill you've ever received?"
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (community-mysql, crun, java-latest-openjdk, and mupdf), openSUSE (libssh2_org), and SUSE (go1.12, libseccomp, and tar).
In addition to the JCC erratum being made public today and that performance-shifting Intel microcode update affecting Skylake through Cascade Lake, researchers also announced a new ZombieLoad side-channel attack variant dubbed "TSX Asynchronous Abort" or TAA for short.
ZombieLoad / MDS (Microarchitectural Data Sampling) was announced back in May by researchers while today Cyberus Technology has announced a new variant focused on Intel processors with TSX (Transactional Synchronization Extensions). TSX Asynchronous Abort is a new ZombieLoad variant that was actually discovered back as part of Cyberus' originally discoveries but faced an extended embargo.
Today Intel and security researchers published a number of security issues covering various Intel hardware and software components. Intel has published an overview of those issues in a blog article. SUSE is providing updates to mitigate two new Intel CPU issues out of the above list.
Red Hat informes Softpedia today on a series of three new security vulnerabilities affecting the Intel CPU microarchitecture, but which have been already patched in the Linux kernel.
The three new security vulnerabilities are CVE-2018-12207 (Machine Check Error on Page Size Change), CVE-2019-11135 (TSX Asynchronous Abort), as well as CVE-2019-0155 and CVE-2019-0154 (i915 graphics driver-related vulnerabilities). These are marked by Red Hat Security team as having an important and moderate security impact, which could allow attacker to gain read access to sensitive data, and which affects all supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems.
Today, Intel announced a group of new vulnerabilities affecting various Intel CPUs and associated GPUs, known as TSX Asynchronous Abort (CVE-2019-11135), Intel€® Processor Machine Check Error (CVE-2018-12207), and two Intel i915 graphics hardware vulnerabilities (CVE-2019-0155, CVE-2019-0154).
TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA) is related to the previously announced MDS vulnerabilities but only affects Intel processors that support Intel€® Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX). Due to the similarity between this issue and MDS, the mitigations for MDS are sufficient to also mitigate TAA. As such, processors which were previously affected by MDS and which have the MDS microarchitectural buffer clearing mitigations employed are not affected by TAA. For newer processors which were not affected by MDS, but which support Intel€® TSX, TAA is mitigated in Ubuntu by a combination of an updated Linux kernel and Intel microcode packages which disable Intel€® TSX. Where TSX is required, this can be re-enabled via a kernel command-line option (tsx=on) and in this case, the kernel will automatically employ microarchitectural buffer clearing mechanisms as used for MDS to mitigate TAA.
Intel€® Processor Machine Check Error (MCEPSC, also called iTLB multihit) is a vulnerability specific to virtualisation, where a virtual machine can cause a denial of service (system hang) to the host processor when hugepages are employed. This is mitigated in Ubuntu with an updated Linux kernel.
A set of patches has just been pushed into the mainline repository (and stable updates) for yet another set of hardware vulnerabilities. "TSX async abort" (or TAA) exposes information through the usual side channels by way of internal buffers used with the transactional memory (TSX) instructions. Mitigation is done by disabling TSX or by clearing the relevant buffers when switching between kernel and user mode. Given that this is not the first problem with TSX, disabling it entirely is recommended; a microcode update may be needed to do so, though. This commit contains documentation on this vulnerability and its mitigation.
Today, as many narratives swirl around veterans and the military, I am reminded how much work is still needed to “unlearn” the toxic narratives that have been ingrained into our subconscious as a society.€ Engrained messages and societal norms that we must unlearn tell us that a man must behave a certain way to be considered masculine, women must be quiet to be considered
That wars end very differently to our own expectations – or our plans – was established long ago. That€ “we” won the Second World War did not mean€ the Americans would win the Vietnam war, or that France would vanquish its enemies in Algeria. Yet the moment we decide who the good guys€ are, and who the evil monsters whom we must destroy, we relapse again into our old mistakes.
“Whether nuclear weapons are actually illegal under international or domestic law (a doubtful proposition) is not relevant or an appropriate issue to litigate in this case,” so ruled Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, late on Friday October 18.
Once upon a time, a U.S. president told his people they were fighting “a war to end all wars.”€ Only a handful of centenarians could possibly remember the false pretexts used to sell the “Great War” to the populace and how that same president imposed draconian “peace” conditions that made the even bloodier second World War all but inevitable. A self-proclaimed progressive, President Woodrow Wilson not only ditched his anti-war credentials but suppressed free speech, the free press under the Espionage Act and civil liberties more generally. Peaceful war opposition became a crime, and many activists were jailed. Sound familiar?
So the guy whose slimy daddy got him five free passes from our imperial wars, whose party has blocked 56 veterans' bills, who's stolen millions from vets' charities, trash-talked Gold Star families, blocked 500,000 VoteVets members, tried to ban disabled vets from selling their sad wares near his gold palace and once evicted a vet with a therapy dog was just booed and shunned
“Trump’s Opposition to ‘Endless Wars’ Appeals to Those Who Fought Them” read the headline above€ a front-page story€ by Jennifer Steinhauer in the€ New York Times€ November 1. The percentage of vets deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan who disapprove of US intervention there has almost doubled since 2011! Key excerpts follow.
The€ Gambia’s€ case against€ Myanmar€ at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for violating the Genocide Convention, filed on November 11, 2019, will bring the first judicial scrutiny of Myanmar’s campaign of murder, rape, arson, and other atrocities against Rohingya Muslims, 10 nongovernmental organizations said.
On this Veterans Day, 2019, for the United States, making war is less about amassing human air, land and sea forces to attack “the enemy” as it is increasingly about amassing technological superiority in which machines replace humans enabling politicians and corporate bosses to pursue their goals without the pesky problem of waves of homeward-bound body bags and caskets.
I was very pleased to see the New York Times editorial on November 1, 2019, Suicide Has Been Deadlier than Combat for the Military. As a combat veteran myself and someone who has struggled with suicidality since the Iraq war I am grateful for such public attention to the issue of veteran suicides, particularly as I know many who have been lost to it.
"Cataloging individuals protesting government policy creates serious risk of abuse, and even without misconduct, monitoring protesters is likely to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights."
With the imposition of Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code of 1973, (which authorizes an executive magistrate to prohibit an assembly of more than four people in any area), in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, mainland India gets a small smattering of what Kashmir has been facing since€ August 5.
A Thai court has approved arrest warrants for Chaiwat Limlikit-aksorn and three other forestry officials in connection with the abduction and murder of the prominent ethnic Karen human rights defender€ Porlajee Rakchongcharoen, known widely as “Billy,” in April 2014.
“This dam is a weapon against the lowlands,” said Ulrich Eichelmann, a German ecologist and conservationist and head of the Austrian NGO RiverWatch, over the phone from Vienna. “It was planned and is now being built in a way they can hold back the whole Tigris for a long time. If you see water as a weapon, dams are the new cannons. Iraq has the oil, Turkey has the water, and sometimes, it’s much better to have the water.”
A Yemeni man stabbed three performers during a live play in the Saudi capital Monday, police said, in the first such attack since the ultra-conservative kingdom began easing decades-old restrictions on entertainment.
TWO Namibian ministers and a managing director of a multinational investment company have been named in a fishing scheme that allegedly paid N$150 million kickbacks.
Wikileaks documents pinpointed fisheries minister Benhard Esau, justice minister Sacky Shanghala and businessman James Hatuikulipi as masterminds of a Namibian fishing licence donated to the Angolan government but ended up benefiting a few individuals.
Today WikiLeaks publishes over 30,000 documents (the first of two batches) it has obtained from a whistleblower within SAMHERJI, a multinational fishing company based in Iceland. They appear to expose corrupt schemes by the company in Namibia to gain access to rich fishing grounds off the African country’s shores.
The documents are dated from 2010 to 2016, the period during which the company gained its foothold in Namibia. SAMHERJI has now become the biggest single recipient of fishing quotas in the country. The documents (which include e-mails, internal reports, spreadsheets, presentations and photos) expose how the company paid senior Namibian officials and politicians millions of dollars in order to ensure growing and continued access to the country's resources.
It also exposes that lofty promises by SAMHERJI, to build infrastructure in the country and create jobs, were never fulfilled. On the contrary, the company used its international corporate structure to transfer proceeds from the operations straight out of the country. This appears to have been done through intermediaries it controls in Cyprus and in the tax-haven of Mauritius.
Today’s released files also demonstrate how these same tools were used to transfer funds to a hidden account which was set up by SAMHERJI in Dubai for the apparent purposes of transferring kick-backs to the corrupt entities in Namibia.
SAMEHRJI currently has operations in Iceland, Germany, Poland, U.K., the Faroe Islands, Canada, France, Spain, Portugal as well as Namibia. The company has been fast growing in the last two decades and has a turnover over 700 Million USD.
Iceland’s biggest fishing company, Samherji, transfered more than 70 million dollars through a shell company in the tax haven Marshall Islands from 2011 to 2018. Samherji transferred the money through bank accounts in Norway€´s largest bank DNB NOR. The bank’s largest shareholder is the Norwegian state, which holds a 34 percent stake in the bank.
The money consisted partly of proceeds from Samherji€´s questionable and possibly unlawful operations in Namibia where the company bribes officials to get secure access to fishing quotas. The company in the Marshall Islands was used to pay salaries to the crews of Samherjis factory trawlers . These trawlers fished horse mackerel in Mauritania, Morocco and Namibia.
Among Christians in the United States, evangelicals are least likely to believe that climate change is real and human-caused, according to public opinion polls and academic research.
This is not the case in Brazil. There, evangelicals and Pentecostals — who make up about 30% of the Brazilian population — are just as environmentally concerned as other religious groups, public opinion surveys show. In fact, some surveys find that church attendance actually boosts Brazilian evangelicals’ environmental concern.
My own research on politics, religion and public opinion in Latin America reveals that many conservative Protestants in Brazil don’t just believe in climate change and think of it as sin. Some even see environmental destruction as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.
Global heating could bring “untold suffering” for humans. It could also mean less fresh water and less rice, though tasting more of arsenic.
The extreme weather comes as a new report on G20 nations reveals that "Australia is behind [on] climate action in nearly every dimension."
It’s a tale for all time. What might be the greatest scam in history or, at least, the one that threatens to take history down with it. Think of it as the climate-change scam that beat science, big time.
It's a tale for all time. What might be the greatest scam in history or, at least, the one that threatens to take history down with it. Think of it as the climate-change scam that beat science, big time.
"This is how people who craft content ensure that their voices are heard and their workplace needs are met."
An enduring US political tradition was in evidence in Seattle recently. Amazon had decided that the city council elections would be too important to leave alone. Seattle was their city after all. The aim of the company was much in keeping with the manor lord who prosecutes keen poachers: fund pro-business candidates sympathetic to its cause and defeat such Amazon critics as Kshama Sawant in their home town.
The extremely rich Americans who are now frantically trying to figure out how to intervene in the Democratic presidential campaign make me wonder how different they are from the animated character who loved€ frolicking in money€ and€ kissing dollar bills while counting them. If Uncle Scrooge existed as a billionaire in human form today, it’s easy to picture him aligned with fellow plutocrats against the “threat” of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Capitalism doesn’t work well with monopolies, insider-trading, political payoffs, fraud, and large amounts of inherited wealth. Billionaires who don’t like Sanders’s and Warren’s wealth tax should at least support reforms that end these anti-capitalist advantages.
The Centralia American Legion and the leading businessmen of that city had more than a parade in mind when they gathered on November 11, 1919, to celebrate Armistice Day. Apparently believing that the spectacle of political violence would enhance the patriotic experience, they concocted a plan to raid the Centralia IWW Hall. IWW halls were of great practical and symbolic importance to workers. As Wobbly activist and historian Ralph Chaplin explains, the halls were loved by workers, but despised by employers. These “churches of the movement,” as public historian Robert Weyeneth called them, represented the closest thing to a home for many wandering IWW members.
On its face, it seems insane, but we are living in the most insane of times! The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island has been thwarted in his effort to install washing machines in local public schools. The mayor read that a school district in another state had installed washing machines in its schools and that it had encouraged some students to attend classes because the machines had eliminated the stigma of wearing dirty clothes to school. Dirty clothes, or insufficient clothing, in a society of such unparalleled wealth is difficult to comprehend, unless readers take into account the massive level of income inequality in the contemporary US.
"This Schumer tweet is yet another reminder that the top Dem in the Senate doesn't give a damn about Islamophobia and is unfit to hold the title of Minority Leader."
A general election called to end political deadlock in Spain has only deepened uncertainty about the future of the European Union’s fifth-largest economy and raised the possibility of yet another ballot — the fifth in five years — next year.
"Does he know what it's like to carry $40,000 in college debt and have a minimum wage job?"
The spending at the hotels since Trump took office is completely out of step with such spending before his administration.
Suburban women, as Nicole Goodkind writes in Fortune, “[were] crucial to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and will be equally crucial to his reelection campaign next year.” Recent polling and actual election results, however, show Trump cannot take them for granted, and the same can be said for more centrist Democrats.
"This is not a dress rehearsal our democracy faces. It's the real thing."
Remember “no collusion,” Trump’s go-to line on the Mueller investigation?€ It was brilliant in its own way. Trump’s crimes were pretty clear: soliciting aid from a foreign government and obstructing justice—and there was ample evidence that he’d done both.
The extremely rich Americans who are now frantically trying to figure out how to intervene in the Democratic presidential campaign make me wonder how different they are from the animated character who loved frolicking in money...
Critics lament the disintegration of the British political establishment under the impact of repeated shocks from the Brexit earthquake. Competent politicians and experienced civil servants head for the exit or are evicted to make way for more ideologically acceptable successors. Whatever one thought of the members of Theresa May’s final cabinet they were better than the clutch of opportunists and fanatics appointed by Boris Johnson.
This is the final general election of the United Kingdom. The SNP has put Independence at the heart of its campaign, eschewing the dreadful error of the “don’t mention Independence” campaign of 2017 that led half a million potential supporters to sit on their hands on voting day. The SNP is going to win a thumping victory and eliminate the Tories from Scotland. Johnson’s hardline unionist pose, denying the sovereign right to choose of the Scottish people, would not be able to survive such a result. If the Tories were to think they would succeed in treating Scotland as Spain treats Catalonia, they would have a very rude awakening. Equally the SNP leadership will be politically unable to impose acceptance of whatever parameters Westminster attempts to impose. The divergence of politics and culture between Scotland and England is now so stark that the union is already over as a functioning political entity. It is now just a matter of arranging the obsequies.
Army generals appearing on television to demand the resignation and arrest of an elected civilian head of state seems like a textbook example of a coup. And yet that is certainly not how corporate media are presenting the weekend’s events in Bolivia.
President Donald Trump celebrated a military coup in Bolivia that forced President Evo Morales, who recently won a fourth term, to resign on November 10.
“After nearly 14 years and his recent attempt to override the Bolivian constitution and the will of the people, Morales’ departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard,” Trump declared. “The United States applauds the Bolivian people for demanding freedom and the Bolivian military for abiding by its oath to protect not just a single person, but Bolivia’s constitution.”
"I€ am very concerned about what appears to be a coup in Bolivia, where the military, after weeks of political unrest, intervened to remove President Evo Morales."
"Bolivia's lithium belongs to the Bolivian people. Not to multinational corporate cabals."
"What's happening right now in Bolivia isn't democracy," she said.
"Bolivia is in a state of political crisis."
"The coup mongers are destroying the rule of law," Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, tweeted late Sunday.
In yet another example of the Liberals saying one thing and doing another, Justin Trudeau’s government has supported the ouster of Evo Morales. The Liberals’ position on Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president stands in stark contrast with their backing of embattled pro-corporate presidents in the region.
Morales, who was granted asylum by Mexico after he resigned on Sunday following a disputed election, said in a tweet on Monday night that he was leaving for Mexico but vowed to return "with more strength and energy."
Demonstrators gathered near the site of Trump’s speech to protest his presence and could be heard by attendees chanting “lock him up” and blowing whistles in the distance.
In a post on his Facebook page, Higher School of Economics philologist Gasan Gusejnov writes about the Russian language, calling it ubogyi (miserable) and kloachnyi (despicable or foul).€
Everyone should be able to choose how they use the Internet, including being able to screen out material they don’t want and protect themselves from malicious software. The principle is core to empowering users and to ensuring that technology works for all of us.
But a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit threatens Internet users’ ability to tailor their online experiences by increasing legal liability for companies that build Internet filtering tools. That’s why EFF filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the court to reconsider its decision in Enigma Software Group USA, LLC v. Malwarebytes, Inc.
Technically, it's illegal for Chinese merchants to refuse payment in cash, but this rule is hardly ever enforced, and China has been sprinting to a cashless society that requires mobile devices -- not credit-cards -- to effect payments, even to street hawkers.
This has lots of implications for privacy, surveillance, taxation, and fairness, but in the short term, the biggest impact is on visitors to China, who are increasingly unable to buy anything because they lack Chinese payment apps like Wechat, and even when they install them, the apps' support for non-Chinese bank accounts and credit cards is spotty-to-nonexistent.
A recently published study by a Washington think tank indicates that women in public office — or those seeking it, whether in the United States or abroad — are increasingly bypassing traditional media, relying instead on social media to bolster their image and broadcast their message in a more nuanced and unfiltered way.
According to Wilson Center Global Fellow Lucina Di Meco, who authored the study for the organization's Global Women's Leadership Initiative, social media enables female leaders to connect directly with constituents and allows them to be "authentic, to really go beyond very scripted images that we had seen in the past, to really try and show a little bit more of themselves."
Based on 88 interviews with female leaders from 33 countries, Di Meco's research indicates that, despite a highly toxic media environment, female candidates often have been able to use both Twitter and Facebook to support their political ambitions by creating a robust network of online support.
Microsoft on Monday announced that it intends to follow California's landmark online privacy law nationwide when it goes into effect next year, a move that comes as federal efforts to draw up the country's first comprehensive privacy law have stalled.
In a Monday blog post, Julie Brill, Microsoft’s chief privacy officer, said that the company will extend the main principles of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) across the US just as it did with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) last year. The law goes into effect in California on January 1st, 2020.
CCPA, which was approved in June 2018, is one of the fiercest and most sweeping data privacy regulations in the US. It’s somewhat similar to GDPR. Under CCPA, companies must disclose to users what personal data of theirs is being collected, whether it is sold and to whom, and allow users to opt out of any sales. Users must also have access to their data and be able to request that a company delete it.
According to The Wall Street Journal, neither patients nor doctors have been notified of the data collection and storage.
The Wall Street Journal’s Rob Copeland wrote that the data amassed in the program includes “lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, complete with patient names and dates of birth,” and that as many as 150 Google employees may have had access to the data.
The New York Times corroborated much of the report later in the day, writing that “dozens of Google employees” may have access to sensitive patient data, and that there are concerns that some Google employees may have downloaded some of that data.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported details on Project Nightingale, Google’s under-the-radar partnership with Ascension, the nation’s second-largest health system. The project, which reportedly began last year, includes sharing the personal health data of tens of millions of unsuspecting patients. The bulk of the work is being done under Google’s Cloud division, which has been developing AI-based services for medical providers.
Blockchains are a very important part of IoT. With ledgers and activities being stored across hundreds of thousands of devices, it may become the main way we store critical information in the future.
There is one element of blockchains that goes relatively unnoticed. How long does data stored on a blockchain remain there? If many copies of a blockchain are spread across devices, and data isn’t deleted between them, does this mean we’re entering a future of permanent information?
"Not only is he running cover for the Saudi government by saying the pre-planned murder of a Washington Post writer was a 'mistake,' he compares the murder of a human being to Uber making a tech glitch."
Primack challenged his comparison of a political assassination, as described in a CIA report, to the presumptively accidental killing of a pedestrian by a self-driving car.
Here, Primack attempted to explain why an analogy between someone being killed by a faulty self-driving car and someone being dismembered via bone saw maybe wasn’t entirely apt. “The CIA didn’t suggest that they made a mistake and that it was an oversight, like with self-driving that was basically a bad censor, correct? The CIA suggested the Crown Prince had a role in ordering the assassination. It’s a different thing. You guys didn’t intentionally run somebody over.”
The conference, colloquially known as Davos in the Desert, was taking place at the same Ritz-Carlton that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman used as a prison in late 2017 during his massive power grab. The conference also became a political flashpoint last year, as a number of companies and executives backed out from participating following Khashoggi’s initial disappearance and assumed murder at the Saudi consulate in Turkey.
None of this stopped those three executives, though.
In recent times, media have taken a great interest in highlighting and even generating intergenerational fighting. One example is the focus on the “OK boomer” meme, a witty two-word comeback gaining popularity on the internet. “OK boomer” is a pithy, cutting retort millennials (those born between 1981–96) and Generation Z (those “Zoomers” born even later than 1996) give to those born during the baby boom (1946–64). The digital equivalent of an eye roll, it conveys that the speaker considers the person being addressed to be obtuse, stubborn and out of date.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
As a community organizer with the criminal justice advocacy organization Silicon Valley De-Bug, Jose Valle helps incarcerated people and their families navigate the justice system. This includes both people in county jails, designed to briefly hold inmates awaiting trial or serving short terms, and in prisons that house people convicted of felonies and sentenced to years behind bars. In recent years, Valle has been hearing a surprising refrain from people being held in California’s Santa Clara County jails.
“All the time we hear these guys telling us, ‘I can’t wait to go to prison,’” he said at a recent event held by ProPublica, The Sacramento Bee and the Stanford Criminal Justice Center at Stanford Law School. “I don’t think that’s what realignment was about.”
Once again the international community represented at the United Nations General Assembly on November 7 has spoken and voted to reject overwhelmingly the financial and economic blockade (embargo) imposed by the United States against Cuba through unilateral sanctions. The US blockade has been imposed in an escalating progression over the last 57 years with the most damaging rapid increase in the last few months under the Trump administration. Yet, Cuba thrives socially and internationally, if not economically. Despite the undeniable negative impact of the blockade on the population, by and large the majority of Cubans are confidently committed to resisting and enduring. But what motivates that courageous resilience and the international support for Cuba?
French President€ Emmanuel Macron’s various public statements during his visit to China€ last week were remarkable, for what went unsaid more than their substance.
Thousands of people with mental health conditions across Nigeria are chained and locked up in various facilities where they face terrible abuse.
On Veterans Day this year, in a nation now reflexively thankful for military service of all kinds, nearly 500,000 former service members are not included in our official expressions of gratitude.
Russia should support, not block, diplomatic talks about possible action to address the civilian harm caused by the use of incendiary weapons, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
Many liberals will readily agree that our white supremacist civilization has all along shown contempt for human beings and for the earth. Native author Joseph Marshall tells us the Lakota people watching the 19th-century white incursion on their lands saw the white soldiers as killers, not braves. Further, some of us on the so-called left can agree that civilization’s modern avatar, late-capitalist neoliberalism, constitutes what Hannah Arendt called “radical evil” in its perfection of that contempt for all human beings. It’s not so difficult to name evil, nor even to realistically prophecy our civilization will “get what it deserves,” and the “common lot” go back to “brutish, nasty and short.” The difficult thing, because it requires much more than simply reaching a logical conclusion that allows us to continue our way of life without changing, is to find, and to act upon, radical good. This is the one thing that has not been tried on a large scale, and it’s not difficult to understand why. Why on earth would you concern yourself with restoring the conviction of intrinsic self-worth when it works far better – for those at the top and for those determined to stay off the bottom – that human beings remain convinced of our worthlessness, capable of attaining only the limited self-worth that can be demonstrated in material success?
In the nearly 20 years since America’s longest wars began, more than 500,000 US troops have returned home with invisible wounds like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries only to be dismissed from the military for minor infractions and given “less than honorable” discharges that deny them benefits, including Veterans Affairs benefits that would ensure access to treatment for PTSD and other service-related injuries.
Is President Donald Trump more like Richard Nixon or Al Capone? That’s not a question many commentators in search of historical analogies will ask as the House begins televised hearings on Trump’s impeachment this week.
Samya Stumo liked to ride pigs. This was on her family’s farm, in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Caring for the pigs was one of her chores, so she would hop on an old, dilapidated Army jeep and drive a water tank to the sty, where she would fill the troughs and take a ride. She was 9 years old.
Samya had always been precocious. She started playing cello when she was 3, the year before her younger brother, Nels, became ill with cancer. When her mother, Nadia Milleron, returned from the hospital one day, Samya told her that she had learned to read.
Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi is the first guest on this week’s show; his new book, “Hate, Inc.” explains how today’s corporate media, especially television, profits€ by pitting Americans against one another.Then independent journalist Abby Martin returns to the program; on this segment, she describes the making of her new documentary Gaza Fights For Freedom, and the distortions and omission in US media coverage of Palestine. Notes: Matt Taibbi’s previous books include “Insane Clown President” and “Griftopia.”€ Abby Martin’s work can be found at€ www.theempirefiles.tv
The Cambodian authorities should immediately and unconditionally dismiss all charges against the political opposition leader Kem Sokha and let him resume his political activities.
In a recent submission to the US Trade Representative, the MPA applauds Australia's anti-piracy enforcement tools, including effective copyright laws. Hollywood's trade group notes that piracy rates are dropping. However, it adds that even more can be done on the anti-piracy front to keep copyright problems at bay.
Austrian ISP T-Mobile has announced that following a supervisory procedure carried out by local telecoms regulator TKK, it has begun blocking two dozen Sci-Hub and Libgen related domains. The original complaint was filed against rival ISP A1 several months ago by publishing giant Elsevier. A1's blocking is also well underway.
