Linux is a family of operating systems (OS) based on the kernel of the same name. There is no single Linux operating system like Windows or MacOS. There are many distributions (a set of files needed to install software) that perform specific tasks.
The following system can be successfully implemented in diverse areas starting from education and aviation and finishing with home automation. This article is concentrated on the topic of home automation and the use of Linux in it. Just imagine that your https://www.progressivedesk.com/pages/gaming-desk system for TV or window shades can be easily managed remotely simply through any convenient for you gadget. And Linux appears here as an advanced operating system for smart controllers.
HP and System76 have come together to develop a new laptop, powered by Pop!_OS and aimed toward developers.
The HP Dev One is a new laptop that is developer-focused and was created with the help of System76. This new laptop (which is yet to even go on pre-order), will start at $1099.00 and has a spec sheet that includes the likes of 16GB of DDR4 (@ 3200 MHz) RAM (upgradeable to 64GB), AMD Radeon graphics, a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO CPU, and a 14" FHD anti-glare display. This is all powered by System76’s own Pop!_OS Linux distribution.
Early on Valve promised that spare parts would be available for the Steam Deck and after a long wait they've delivered on that promise and iFixit has become an authorised seller of these components but it's not everything you need.
One of the most negative reviews that I have ever given a Linux distribution was my video a couple of months ago on LinuxFX, a Windows 11 clone. LinuxFX has mostly proprietary software installed, including a bunch of Microsoft products. It also comes with its own "LinuxFX" tools that are all closed source, proprietary software. And like Windows, LinuxFX requires users to "activate" a license.
In this video, we are looking at how to install the Brave Beta browser on Debian 11.
This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to be talking about an Ubuntu Remix project that is reviving the Unity desktop. Then we will be discussing a new laptop being offered by the folks at HP. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those penguins marching!
The Linux kernel developers have announced version 5.18 of the stable Linux kernel, with a feature that could affect future Intel processors by limiting CPUs unless users pay for upgrades to unlock features that already exist on the silicon.
Linus Torvalds has released the 5.18 version of the Linux kernel on schedule, but he hardly sounds happy about it
Torvalds said “nothing really odd stands out” for users of Linux distros from the latest 5.18 update, dubbing the kernel “plain old boring 5.18”.
The news means that the merge window for the soon to land 5.19 kernel will open within hours, hopefully providing loyal users with a bit more excitement.
nginx-1.22.0 stable version has been released, incorporating new features and bug fixes from the 1.21.x mainline branch — including hardening against potential requests smuggling and cross-protocol attacks, ALPN support in the stream module, better distribution of connections among worker processes on Linux, support for the PCRE2 library, support for OpenSSL 3.0 and SSL_sendfile(), improved sendfile handling on FreeBSD, the mp4_start_key_frame directive, and more.
Developers often work with several apps and windows at the same time, he requires the IDE or text editor top be open, a file manager, a web browser on certain pages, and a terminal, or more than one terminal.
You must have heard and used the dig command in Linux for DNS lookup. Alternative to that, there is a dog command which is an open-source tool with a beautiful interface used for DNS lookup. Its output is very attractive with different colors provided in Json format. It supports the DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS protocols.
Even if you use the Linux command line moderately, you must have come across the grep command.
Grep is used to search for a pattern in a text file. It can do crazy powerful things, like search for new lines, search for lines where there are no uppercase characters, search for lines where the initial character is a number, and much, much more. Check out some common grep command examples if you are interested.
But grep works only on plain text files. It won’t work on PDF files because they are binary files.
This is where pdfgrep comes into the picture. It works like grep for PDF files. Let us have a look at that.
Mini Diary is a beautiful open-source journaling app that comes with a dozen of handy features for anyone who takes daily journals.
Although, the app gains a momentum, due to its usability and fancy look, the developers stopped to maintain and develop it.
Today we will go through its features, and how does it look like, to help anyone who is interested in creating a similar experience.
I searched online and found that this "bug" has always been there. In the initrd, the kernel correctly identifies the NMVE PCIe internal drive on my PC as not-rotational, and the internal HDD as rotational -- but, reports the external USB flash stick as rotational.
In most Linux distributions, there is a udev rule to post-process this, and report correctly. I say "most", but don't really know what distributions have an appropriate udev rule. I think that some distributions have a udev rule that just sees if it is a USB drive and assumes non-rotational.
Alpine Linux 3.16.0 has been released. Here is how to upgrade from version 3.15.xx to 3.16.0.The post How to upgrade Alpine Linux 3.15 to 3.16 appeared first on nixCraft.
WireGuard is an open-source, free, modern, and fast VPN with state-of-the-art cryptography. It is like OpenSSH in simplicity and uses private and public keys. Hence, it is more straightforward as compared to IPSec and OpenVPN. Initially released for the Linux kernel, it works with other operating systems. This page explains how to install and set up WireGuard VPN on Amazon Linux EC2 or Lightsail server.
You can check the time zone using the timedatectl and date commands or trace the path to the file containing time zone information. You can then change the time zone using the terminal, time zone selection menu or a graphical user interface.
This tutorial helps you change the time zone in Linux using straightforward steps. Read on to learn more.
Chromebooks are far less powerful than traditional gaming PCs, but there are ways to game on Chrome OS machines. Here are some of your options.
Upgrading to the latest beta (development) release of Ubuntu is easier than you might think. By default, Ubuntu won't tell you when there is a new development version available. You can, however, check for one and upgrade to it with just a few quick commands at the terminal.
This tutorial will show you how to install TensorFlow on Ubuntu 22.04. According to their site, TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. It has a comprehensive, flexible ecosystem of tools, libraries and community resources that lets researchers push the state-of-the-art in ML and developers easily build and deploy ML powered applications.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to create Django models. We are going to use Django 4.0. In the previous tutorial, we saw how to create your first project. We displayed hello world in our browser.
As a recap of what we saw in the previous lesson, let’s create a new project once more.
This tutorial will show you how to install TensorFlow on Debian 11. According to their site, TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. It has a comprehensive, flexible ecosystem of tools, libraries and community resources that lets researchers push the state-of-the-art in ML and developers easily build and deploy ML powered applications.
This tutorial will show you how to install TensorFlow on Rocky Linux. According to their site, TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. It has a comprehensive, flexible ecosystem of tools, libraries and community resources that lets researchers push the state-of-the-art in ML and developers easily build and deploy ML powered applications.
This is a quick guide to help anyone who might want to set up a local duckling proxy. I was initially confused as to how to get it working or how to make a server certificate/key and puzzled things out
OpenSSL Cryptography and SSL/TLS Toolkit is an open-source, full-featured package used in Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocols to provide secure communication between client and server. This commercial-grade and robust toolkit is widely used by various programs like PHP, Internet servers, comprising the majority of HTTPS websites.
Most Linux distributions come pre-installed with the OpenSSL library. However, in some cases, the OpenSSL library is not there so you have to install it yourself.
In this video, I am going to show how to install Kali Linux 2022.2.
The Linux Crash Course series goes over all the key concepts you'll need to know in order to master Linux, one video at a time. In this episode, we'll take a look at understanding memory and swap usage.
KVM, an acronym for Kernel-based Virtual Machine is an opensource virtualization technology integrated into the Linux kernel. It’s a type 1 (bare metal ) hypervisor that enables the kernel to act as a bare-metal hypervisor.
KVM allows users to create and run multiple guest machines which can be either Windows or Linux. Each guest machine runs independently of other virtual machines and the underlying OS ( host system ) and has its own computing resources such as CPU, RAM, network interfaces, and storage to mention a few.
This guide shows you how to install KVM on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish). At the tail end of this guide, we will demonstrate how you can create a virtual machine once the installation of KVM is complete.
For those who have recently installed Linux and constantly hear a static noise from their audio devices, here's a quick fix to this problem.
Speakers emitting unwanted static noise can be a huge annoyance when trying to focus and can significantly hamper your productivity. It is not a pleasant sound to the ears as well. If you have recently switched to Linux and find your audio devices malfunctioning, this guide can help you troubleshoot your issues and fix static noise on Linux.
Advanced Linux users prefer command-line apps for almost everything. Here's how to install cmus, a terminal-based music player for Linux.
When you want to listen to some music, you'll most likely turn to the GUI audio file or streaming player that came with your distro, but what if you could play music from the command line? It's easy with Linux and a little program called cmus.
You may need to restart or stop network services on your Rocky Linux system occasionally. This article shows you step-by-step how to start, stop, or restart network services on Rocky Linux 8. The same commands also work on other RHEL clones such as AlmaLinux 8 and CentOS 8.
Apache Cassandra is an open-source NoSQL database management system. It is designed to handle large amounts of data across many servers and to survive the loss of any server.
Cassandra’s architectural model is quite different from relational database systems. Cassandra stores non-relational data in row key-value pairs in a distributed set of nodes so that no single point of failure exists and scales linearly by adding more nodes as necessary to meet the demands on capacity, request throughput, and storage capacity for an increasing number of users or client applications.
Learn the steps to install PlayOnLinux on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish using command terminal and graphical user interface software app.
PlayOnLinux is a graphical frontend for Wine. It helps in installing, configuring and uninstalling Windows applications on Linux. In addition, it allows each Windows program to be installed in a separate Wine prefix, with which a program can be assigned a different Version of Wine or individual programs can be configured independently of each other. For example, it is possible to run games that no longer run under current Wine versions with an older Wine version.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Webmin on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Webmin is an open-source web-based Linux system administration control panel. It is based on Perl and uses port number 10000 to let users access the web GUI dashboard for managing various server services, configuration files, disk quotas, and many more.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Webmin web-based interface systems administration on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.
The popular Qt based screenshot tool KSnip 1.10.0 was released few days ago with some cool new features. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu.
For those never heard of KSnip, it’s a free open-source cross-platform (supports Windows, Linux and MacOS) screenshot tool with some annotation tools, upload options and more.
Ever wondered how long your favourite apps take to open on Ubuntu?
Maybe you’re keen to see if Snap app startup times are as notoriously un-nimble as claimed. And maybe you want to see if any of the ‘speed improvements’ Canonical often hypes up have a tangible effect on your system versus whatever their chosen benchmark is.
If so, Ubuntu developer Marco ‘3v1n0‘ Trevisan is on hand to help with his Applications Startup Time Measure extension for GNOME Shell. This software stopwatch does exactly what it claims: it tells you how long an app takes to open, from when you click its shortcut to when it appears on your screen, ready to use.
When the extension is installed and enabled it’s good to go; no further configuration is required. Next time you open a (compatible, see below) app the extension will measure it and tell you how long it took to launch.
Anyway, yesterday I decided I had too many issues with void linux on my desktop and that it was time to hop again. For the past 3 or so years I have primarily ran Artix linux, an arch derivitive without systemd. I personally do not have extreme opinions on systemd other than as an end user it is more frustrating to use than openrc or runnit, so I prefer to use those. After these 3 years I have come to the conclusion that systemdless versions of systemd distros are just a pain. Sure they work fine 99% of the time but then for whatever reason their version of a package has an issue, but the original distro's version relies on a part of systemd so you have to find some workaround or spin up a vm just to do one task. For this reason I wanted to pick a distro that is systemdless by design and not a systemdless respin of an already existing distro.
Jonathan Saul Cohen, of Charles Fussell (parody site) is a cyberbully first and lawyer second. He is attacking a Debian volunteer who resigned at a time when he lost two family members.
Fortunately, the UK Law Society has one of the weakest ethical codes we ever heard of.
How is Debian paying for this vampire?
Debian volunteers work long shifts, unpaid, selling t-shirts at tech conferences like FOSDEM
The underlying GNU/Linux operating system was upgraded. This release is based on the Debian Sid repository (as of 2022/May/22).
Powered by Linux kernel 5.17 and based on the Debian Sid repository as of May 22nd, 2022, the Clonezilla Live 3.0 release is here to introduce support for Apple’s APFS file system, which means that you can now use Clonezilla Live to clone APFS partitions, as well as support for LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) encrypted disks.
Clonezilla Live 3.0 also adds a better mechanism to check the GPT/MBR format of a disk as a workaround to handle ChromeOS Flex partition tables, adds the “memtester” option in the UEFI boot menu for memory stress-testing, and adds a new mechanism to skip using devices list cache, which can be disabled with the use_dev_list_cache=no boot parameter.
Alpine Linux 3.16 is now available for this widespread container-oriented distribution and other situations that require a tiny footprint.
If you’re a typical desktop Linux user, you probably wonder how Alpine Linux has remained hidden from you. Don’t be concerned; this is entirely normal.
Although Alpine Linux can be used as a fully working desktop system, this is not its primary goal.
The distribution is strongly focused on the container world because of its exceptional lightweight and different approach to the software providing its functionality. So, for example, you won’t find systemd here; instead, the boot initialization system is handled by OpenRC.
The 2022 Red Hat Summit was held on May 10-11 and covered a number of customer, partner and industry expert approaches in open source technology delivery.
Red Hat has seen a lot of growth and market share when it comes to enterprise Linux. The innovation demonstrated at Red Hat Summit 2022 shows continued growth, not just when it comes to the OS, but also in ways that address organizational challenges such as skills gaps, edge growth and modernization across the ecosystem.
The shift in Red Hat's CentOS strategy caused disruption in the market for those using CentOS in production. However, Red Hat's advancements and forward-thinking direction seem to be addressing customers' biggest challenges. Market adoption will ultimately dictate the success of their strategy.
Version 251 of the controversial systemd Linux init system is here, and you can expect it to feature in the next version of your preferred distro.
The unified system and service manager for Linux continues to grow and develop, as does Linux itself. There is a comprehensive changelog on Github, so we will just try to pick out a few of the highlights.
New releases of systemd appear roughly twice a year, so the chances are that this will appear in the fall releases of Ubuntu and Fedora.
The new version now uses the GCC compiler's C11-with-GNU-extensions standard, nicknamed gnu11.
This brings it into line with the Linux kernel itself, which uses the same standard as of version 5.18 – in turn facilitated by kernel 5.15 moving the minimum required GCC version to 5.1.
The creation and delivery of intelligent and stream-based applications requires having a robust streaming platform that can support ingesting and transforming large amounts of data at a fast pace.
Red Hat OpenShift Streams for Apache Kafka can support enterprise organizations in solving digital experiences challenges. This article is part of a series that offers technical solutions to commonly known use cases, such as replacing batch data with real-time streams processing, streamlining application modernization and managing event-driven architectures.
A summary of the FOSS project improvements in Google Summer of Code (GSOC 2022) that includes Ubuntu, Debian, LibreOffice and More.
We are very excited to announce that Debian has selected three interns to work under mentorship on a variety of projects with us during the Google Summer of Code.
With the rapid pace of solar panel installations over the course of the previous decade, there has been an ongoing challenge of trying to improve their efficiency. Apart from the typical silicon crystal photovoltaic cells, there are also more efficient/expensive cells known as concentration photovoltaics (CPV), which rely on a set of mirrors to focus sunlight into a small multijunction cell. Although this technology reduces the size and material requirements, it also requires precise sun tracking for peak performance.
Ruediger Loechenhoff has been able to create a far cheaper solar tracker controller, which relies on an Arduino Uno to drive a set of two motors that position the panel. To achieve this, the Uno was connected to a 9-axis MPU-9250 compass module for internal positioning, a DS3231 real-time clock for accurate timing, and a DIY shading beam sunlight sensor to detect optimal angles. Operating the tracker is also quite simple since the firmware only requires an occasional calibration step after a set number of days.
Our reliance on electronic devices and appliances has never been higher, so when the power goes out, it can quickly become an unpleasant and inconvenient situation, especially for those who are unable to prepare in time. To help combat this problem, Roni Bandini has devised a device he calls “EdenOff,” which is placed inside an electrical outlet and utilizes machine learning at the edge to intelligently predict when an outage might occur.
Developed with the use of Edge Impulse, Bandini began by creating a realistic dataset that consisted of three columns that pertain to different aspects of an outlet: its voltage, the ambient temperature, and how long the service has been working correctly. After training a model based on one dataset for regular service and the other for a failure, his model achieved an excellent F-1 score of .96, indicating that the model can forecast when an outage might take place with a high degree of accuracy.
The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 102 to the stable channel for Windows (102.0.5005.61/62/63), 102.0.5005.61 for Mac and Linux.Chrome 102 is also promoted to our new extended stable channel for Windows and Mac. This will roll out over the coming days/weeks.
Mozilla Thunderbird email client has been updated to 91.9.1 and shipped to the software repository.
The Mozilla Firefox browser has been updated to 100.0.2 and shipped to the software repository.
LibreWolf is designed to minimize data collection and telemetry as much as possible. This is achieved through hundreds of privacy/security/performance settings and patches. Intrusive integrated addons including updater, crashreporter, and pocket are removed too. LibreWolf is NOT associated with Mozilla or its products.
My workday takes me from email to terminals to browsers to documents. I love tiling window managers because they keep me organized and less distracted. Many are less resource-intensive as well.
Although i3 has graced my displays for years now (and I’ve written many posts about it), I recently picked up an AMD graphics card and made my way to sway.
After two years of pandemic restrictions, more and more in-person events are now taking place. Members of the LibreOffice community attended the recent Univention Summit 2022 in Bremen, northern Germany. They had a stand with LibreOffice merchandise, talked to visitors and answered questions.
In May 2022, LibreOffice has received two Awards: SourceForge’s Open Source Project of the Month, and Software Informer’s Editor’s Pick.
Say hello to “Arturo” and WordPress 6.0, inspired by Grammy-winning jazz musician, Arturo O’Farrill. Known for his influence on contemporary Latin jazz, Arturo has pressed more than 15 albums spanning a body of work across five decades.
Take some time to explore WordPress 6.0, built to help you unlock your creative aspirations and make your site-building experience more intuitive. And check out some of Arturo’s inspirational sounds that span Afro Cuban jazz, contemporary Latin jazz, and so much more.
There is of course the issue of "if they're using text-based communication during an interview, how do we know they're not looking up the answers online?" In a traditional interview, this could open up the possibility of cheating or being dishonest about how you came to the answer.
When you have to maintain other people's code, little things can give you a bad feeling. They aren't disasters, but they don't give you confidence in your predecessors.
Loops are an important and widely utilized element in all current programming languages.
A loop is the finest solution for automating a certain repeated operation or preventing yourself from writing repetitive code in your projects.
Loops are sequences of instructions that are executed repeatedly until a condition is fulfilled. Let’s take a closer look at how Python loops function.
Cob is an ancient construction material composed primarily of subsoil or clay; it is similar to rammed earth, but with organic material (usually straw) added to increase strength. Its use has seen a resurgence in recent decades because it is sustainable and inexpensive (though labor intensive). Due to its high thermal density, buildings made of cob can maintain comfortable internal temperatures using passive means (depending on local climate).
The EU law defines a certain type of vehicle as a moped that can be driven from the age of 15 with an AM type driver's license. These mopeds have two to four wheels, no more than 50 cc engine capacity (4.0 kW in case of electric engine), can drive no faster than 45 km/h (28 mph). I believe they may not exceed 450 kg of weight, fuel excluded, but a fast search hasn't confirmed that right now. The four wheel variety usually looks much like a Smart Car, which is very cute in a way.
Toyota is to slash global production of motor vehicles due to the semiconductor shortage. The news comes as Samsung pledges to invest about $360 billion over the next five years to bolster chip production, along with other strategic sectors.
In a statement, Toyota said it has had to lower the production schedule by tens of thousands of units globally from the numbers it provided to suppliers at the beginning of the year.
"The shortage of semiconductors, spread of COVID-19 and other factors are making it difficult to look ahead, but we will continue to make every effort possible to deliver as many vehicles to our customers at the earliest date," the company said.
The system-on-chip (SoC) side of the semiconductor industry is poised for growth between now and 2026, when it's predicted to be worth $6.85 billion, according to an analyst's report.
Chances are good that there's an SoC-powered device within arm's reach of you: the tiny integrated circuits contain everything needed for a basic computer, leading to their proliferation in mobile, IoT and smart devices.
The report predicting the growth comes from advisory biz Technavio, which looked at a long list of companies in the SoC market. Vendors it analyzed include Apple, Broadcom, Intel, Nvidia, TSMC, Toshiba, and more. The company predicts that much of the growth between now and 2026 will stem primarily from robotics and 5G.
Robots are being deployed in increasingly diverse situations, Technavio says, and small, purpose-built SoCs are ideal for such applications in the automotive, electronics, healthcare and defense industries.
Zoom has fixed a security flaw in its video-conferencing software that a miscreant could exploit with chat messages to potentially execute malicious code on a victim's device.
The bug, tracked as CVE-2022-22787, received a CVSS severity score of 5.9 out of 10, making it a medium-severity vulnerability. It affects Zoom Client for Meetings running on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and Windows systems before version 5.10.0, and users should download the latest version of the software to protect against this arbitrary remote-code-execution vulnerability.
The upshot is that someone who can send you chat messages could cause your vulnerable Zoom client app to install malicious code, such as malware and spyware, from an arbitrary server. Exploiting this is a bit involved, so crooks may not jump on it, but you should still update your app.
A Ukrainian minister has accused software giant SAP of continuing to operate in Russia despite the German vendor previously vowing to withdraw from the aggressor nation.
In the months following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, SAP attracted criticism as it continued to support installations of its software in Russia and cloud services used by Russian businesses, including state-owned bank Sberbank.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr and openldap), Fedora (curl), Oracle (kernel and kernel-container), Red Hat (maven:3.5), SUSE (cacti, cacti-spine, firefox, go1.18, openldap2, python-requests, rsyslog, and slurm_20_11), and Ubuntu (firefox, htmldoc, libpng, libxfixes, libxrender, thunderbird, and vim).
CISA has added 20 new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. These types of vulnerabilities are a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risk to the federal enterprise. Note: to view the newly added vulnerabilities in the catalog, click on the arrow on the of the "Date Added to Catalog" column, which will sort by descending dates.
The GitLab team has released GitLab 15, which features a new WYSIWYG editor, container scanning in all tiers, improved management of iteration cadences, and more.
The WYSIWYG editor for wikis allows for easier editing of code blocks, links, and media. According to the announcement, you can choose from more than 100 different programming languages, so that “your CSS, YAML, and Python code are distinct from each other with accurate syntax highlighting.”
Container Scanning helps developers to easily find known security vulnerabilities in dependencies that are installed in their container images. With GitLab 15.0, we are making the basic Container Scanning features available in every GitLab tier.
This Google blog entry looks at some zero-day Android exploits that were detected and makes it clear what the stakes are.
In the last #PrivacyofthePeople post we looked at whether there are any safeguards to protect a person from random phone checking by the Police. In this post, we look at how the information collected by period tracking applications may be misused and to what extent the Data Protection Bill, 2021 will address any of these issues.
Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has called on global regulators to end the “era of technological exceptionalism” and to recalibrate the “range of human rights” that play out online.
Ms Inman Grant spoke on a panel at the World Economic Forum on Monday, alongside Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium Petra De Sutter, Finland’s Minister for Communications Timo Harakka, and Brett Solomon, the co-founder and executive director of international digital rights group Access Now.
One thousand four hundred and fifty-nine days have passed since data rights nonprofit NOYB fired off its first complaints under Europe’s flagship data regulation, GDPR. The complaints allege Google, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram forced people into giving up their data without obtaining proper consent, says Romain Robert, a program director at the nonprofit. The complaints landed on May 25, 2018, the day GDPR came into force and bolstered the privacy rights of 740 million Europeans. Four years later, NOYB is still waiting for final decisions to be made. And it’s not the only one.
Since the General Data Protection Regulation went into effect, data regulators tasked with enforcing the law have struggled to act quickly on complaints against Big Tech firms and the murky online advertising industry, with scores of cases still outstanding. While GDPR has immeasurably improved the privacy rights of millions inside and outside of Europe, it hasn’t stamped out the worst problems: Data brokers are still stockpiling your information and selling it, and the online advertising industry remains littered with potential abuses.
Now, civil society groups have grown frustrated with GDPR’s limitations, while some countries’ regulators complain the system to handle international complaints is bloated and slows down enforcement. By comparison, the information economy moves at breakneck speed. “To say that GDPR is well enforced, I think it’s a mistake. It's not enforced as quickly as we thought,” Robert says. NOYB has just settled a legal case against the delays in its consent complaints. “There’s still what we call an enforcement gap and problems with cross-border enforcement and enforcement against the big players,” adds David Martin Ruiz, a senior legal officer at the European Consumer Organization, which filed a complaint about Google’s location tracking four years ago.
The UK's data protection body today made good on its threat to fine controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI, ordering it to stop scraping the personal data of residents from the internet, delete what it already has, and pay a €£7.5 million ($9.43 million) fine.
The company, which is headquartered in New York, claims to have over 20 billion facial images on its databases, mostly culled from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Clearview AI has developed a facial recognition tool – which it is attempting to patent – that is trained on these images. The tool attempts to match faces fed into its machine learning software with results from its enormous image database, which it claims is the largest of its kind "in the world" and which it sells (to law enforcement bodies, among other clientele) across the globe.
The move from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) comes after an investigation launched in 2020 in conjunction with the Australian Information Commissioner to see if Clearview had breached the Australian Privacy Act or the UK Data Protection Act 2018.
Digital and human rights activists are demanding that Amazon Web Services drop out of a contract to host the Department of Homeland Security’s next-generation biometric data-hosting system.
“This mass biometric data collection by DHS is a deep invasion of privacy, an assault on human rights, and places hundreds of millions of people at risk of raids, detentions, deportations, and family separation,” write nonprofits led by Access Now, Immigration Defense Project and Just Futures Law. “By hosting DHS’ HART [Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology] database, AWS is directly facilitating the creation of an invasive biometrics database that will supercharge surveillance and deportation, risking human rights violations.”
US president Biden and South Korea's new president Yoon Suk Yeol have pledged further co-operation in many technologies, including joint efforts to combat North Korea.
While the US agreed to deploy physical weapons and hold military drills if necessary to defend the South against the North, the pair together vowed to "significantly expand cooperation to confront a range of cyber threats from the DPRK, including but not limited to, state-sponsored cyber-attacks."
This cooperation will include working groups attended by law enforcement and homeland security agencies from both nations.
North Korea stands accused of running many offensive operations online. Last month, the US government offered a reward of up to $5 million for information to disrupt North Korea's cryptocurrency theft, cyber-espionage, and other illicit state-backed activities. That bounty came one day after the FBI blamed Lazarus Group – a cybercrime gang that executes on behalf of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau – for the theft of $620 million from video game Axie Infinity's Ronin Network.
Celebrate by helping a turtle cross the street, visiting your local zoo, or just watching a documentary about turtles.
Asset poverty is the lack of assets that can be used to support oneself for three months. Such assets to do not be to be liquid, such as cash: a house or other real estate, a spare car, stocks, and possessions that hold value such a jewelry or furniture are also included.
When discussing wealth disparity and other human development issues, poverty is almost exclusively defined in terms of raw income. The international extreme poverty live is defined as a daily income of less than $1.90, and even the United States defines national poverty as a yearly income of less than $12880 for one person
Capital One and MasterCard made a final ruling in my favor against Batteries Plus Bulbs after the merchant chose to go ahead and accept it, but where did Chargebacks come from?
I wrote yesterday that Capital One and MasterCard ruled in my favor in my dispute against Batteries Plus Bulbs for “service not rendered”, but where did Chargebacks come from?
Before the mid-1970s in the United States, credit cards existed, but they were not widely used or accepted.
Practically anyone who got your card or just the number could charge anything they wanted to it, and you wouldn’t know they did until you got the bill at the end of the month, and there was no way to object to any of it.
Over the next week, shareholders at three of the most powerful tech platforms in the world will have their chance to make their voices heard on pressing issues of human rights and corporate governance. As Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon hold their annual general meetings (AGMs), we are calling on shareholders at those companies to use their vote to ensure that the companies adopt and implement meaningful human rights practices. We urge shareholders to support the following proposals that push these tech platforms toward greater accountability for their human rights impacts.
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Meta is advising its shareholders to turn all these proposals down, but the company’s record demonstrates just how necessary these measures are. For example, Meta’s failure to implement effective content moderation in Ethiopia, a nation with an estimated 10 million Facebook users, has exacerbated violence in the country in the midst of ongoing civil unrest and conflict. Furthermore, it appears clear that the company knew exactly what was going on, but did little to mitigate the situation.
Apart from the documented repeated harms to societies and its users, Meta’s financial performance should raise flags for shareholders. The company holds the dubious distinction of having had the single largest one-day drop in share price in stock market history, signaling serious instability regarding its value.
In 2021, grassroots, frontline, and feminist digital rights organizations and human rights defenders continued to face mounting challenges — but they also rose to confront, and overcome those challenges. As civil society defended digital rights during multiple crises — from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, to internet shutdowns during military coups and armed conflict, to the Pegasus spyware attacks —the Access Now Grants Program delivered support to bulwark their vital and important work.
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In 2021, Access Now awarded $1,410,071 in direct financial support across 51 grants to 46 separate local and grassroots organizations and individuals working in 29 countries.
n a recent fireside chat, Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian discussed the flawed reasoning behind current legislative proposals to regulate tech, like S. 2992, H.R. 3825, and H.R. 3826. The measures in these bills would regulate targeted companies with an extremely heavy and bureaucratic hand, subjecting them to common carrier-style “non-discrimination” requirements, structural separation, and prohibitions on mergers and acquisitions. Varian found the origins of each of these measures in the 2020 House Antitrust Report, often underpinned by arguments divorced from economic reality.
Varian explained how the measures would impact consumers. Common carrier-style “non-discrimination” provisions would effectively break integrated user experiences, requiring users to make many additional clicks rather than allowing user-friendly one-click navigation within an online platform or ecosystem. Likewise, structural separation and line of business regulations would force many integrated online platforms and ecosystems to split into distinct services, degrading user experience and reducing the ability of tech firms to compete with incumbent firms outside of each tech firm’s core market. Prohibitions on mergers and acquisitions would effectively prevent tech firms from acquiring startups. A supermajority of successful startup founders seek acquisition by larger firms, in many cases expecting acquisition from the outset. In the absence of acquisitions, startups would find it much harder to exit successfully and return cash to their investors, and consequently funding from venture capital funds would be much harder to come by, reducing funding for future innovative startups and reducing startup formation.
KONPEITO was quarterly Lo-fi hip hop & chill bootleg mixtapes, distributed exclusively through the Gemini protocol. Each tape was a half-hour mix, clean on side A and repeated on side B with an added ambient background noise layer for atmosphere.