This is a new series showcasing Linux around the world. For the past few years, COVID has largely curtailed gatherings of Linux enthusiasts with only virtual meetings being possible. But as physical meetings are starting to resurface, now is the time to launch this series.
The Armbian “distro” is a build framework to create ready-to-use images with working kernels in variable user space configurations for supported single board computers (SBCs). These are usually Debian or Ubuntu flavored.
The term “Armbian” is comprised of ARM for the RISC processor architecture and the last half (bian) from Debian. Unlike Debian, Armbian Linux is focused and optimized for the ARM architecture. This can be a handy alternative to those who play in the realm of alternatives to the Raspberry Pi board.
So, there I was in Austin, Texas, covering The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit a few weeks ago when -- pop! -- an electrical surge blew out my Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5, a great two-in-one Chromebook/tablet.
Argh!
I was on deadline -- when am I not? -- but I didn't have a backup machine with me. I was in deep trouble. But I was already ready for this disaster. Indeed, one of the reasons I've been a Chromebook fan since they first rolled out of the factory is that if a Chromebook dies on you, you can replace it and be back in business in no time flat.
Tired of Distro Hopping? Or looking for that perfect distribution? This is my guide on how I install Linux without downloading 100s of different installers.
In this video, I am going to show an overview of Ubuntu Unity 22.04 and some of the applications pre-installed.
The above statements check the comparison box of curl vs wget in terms of their definitions. However, you as a user need more data in the case of curl versus wget before you can comfortably settle for either of these tools.
Rainloop is an open-source, web-based email client written in PHP. It is fast, lightweight, and supports SMTP and IMAP protocols. This guide will teach you to install the Rainloop client on a Ubuntu 22.04 server.
“FFMpeg is a free and open-source video and audio converter. It has been widely adopted by many applications, including VLC, the Android OS, Spotify, etc. ffmpeg provides unparallel features for working with audio and video files.
In this tutorial, we will focus on how to extract audio files from videos and other useful techniques.”
Ansible execution environments have largely replaced Python virtual environments for automation. Legacy virtual environments are sandboxes that start with Python and little more, meaning that you must rebuild your desired environments before you can use them.
In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to shut down your Linux computer using the command-line interface (CLI), aka Terminal.
The shutdown command is especially useful for Linux servers. It’s also useful if you’re writing a bash script or if you just prefer using the CLI instead of the GUI on your Linux distro.
This tutorial will work on any Linux distro, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, CentOS, Fedora, Debian, etc.
So, open up the Terminal, or SSH into your server, and follow the instructions below.
In this article, we are going to learn how to install Terraform on Alma Linux 9.
Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as code software tool that provides a consistent CLI workflow to manage hundreds of cloud services. Terraform codifies cloud APIs into declarative configuration files.
Infrastructure as code (IAC) tools allow you to manage your infrastructure with a configuration file rather than through a graphical interface. IAC allows you to build, change and manage your infrastructure in a safe, consistent, and repeatable way by defining configurations that you can version, reuse and share.
In this guide we are going to install MariaDB 10 on Opensuse, but first what is MariaDB?
MariaDB Server is one of the most popular open-source relational databases. It’s made by the original developers of MySQL and guaranteed to stay open source. It is part of most cloud offerings and the default in most Linux distributions.
It is built upon the values of performance, stability, and openness, and MariaDB Foundation ensures contributions will be accepted on technical merit. Recent new functionality includes advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4, compatibility features with Oracle Database and Temporal Data Tables, allowing one to query the data as it stood at any point in the past.
In this guide we are going to install MariaDB 10 development version, but first what is MariaDB?
MariaDB Server is one of the most popular open-source relational databases. It’s made by the original developers of MySQL and guaranteed to stay open source. It is part of most cloud offerings and the default in most Linux distributions.
It is built upon the values of performance, stability, and openness, and MariaDB Foundation ensures contributions will be accepted on technical merit. Recent new functionality includes advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4, compatibility features with Oracle Database and Temporal Data Tables, allowing one to query the data as it stood at any point in the past.
Install and configure SAMBA server on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish Linux to share files and folders with Windows 7/10/11 and Linux systems.
Samba is a free & open-source implementation of SMB protocol for integrating servers and desktops running Linux or Unix in environments with Microsoft’s Active Directory directory service. The software can be used as a controller for the domain or as a normal member.
Using SAMBA software the users can easily access the files, printers, and other shared resources on a company network or intranet, among other things. And the best thing in almost all Linux distributions, SAMBA is present in their repositories to install easily.
Samba uses the frequently used client/server protocols SMB (Server Message Block) or nowadays CIFS (Common Internet File System). The latter is an open variant of SMB. If applications are compatible with SMB or CIFS, they can communicate with the Samba Server.
Samba’s SMB/CIFS client is called smbclient. Some desktop variants of Linux have the Samba Client pre-installed whereas others need to install manually. The source code can be found under samba.org.
Remmina is a popular remote control software. Remmina works on multiple protocols like RDP, VNC, NX, XDMCP, SPICE, HTTP/HTTPS, SSH, and SFTP protocols. Remmina is available in 67 languages and can be installed in 50+ distributions.
This tutorial will explain in step by step how you can install jamovi, a free and open source statistical analysis software, a user-friendly alternative to SPSS on Ubuntu. This is not to be confused with JASP, another free software for statistics, which we have already covered at Ubuntu Buzz. We use the OS version 22.04 "Jammy Jellyfish" and this should be sufficient for any later OS version as well. Let's install it.
Mirage is a fast and simple GTK+ image viewer because it depends only on PyGTK. If you want a decent image viewer and the ability to access it via command line, a fullscreen mode, slideshow mode, essential editing tools to resize/crop/rotate/flip, and a configurable interface, Mirage would be the most straightforward option. Mirage also supports drag-and-drop operations from other applications such as Nautilus, making it easy to view or edit images quickly.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install Mirage on Fedora 36 Linux using the DNF package manager with the command line terminal.
openSUSE Tumbleweed is a rolling release version of the openSUSE project, which ships with the latest stable applications including everyday-to-use office applications, Linux kernel, Git, Samba, and many more. It is an ideal distribution for enthusiasts and developers who are developing the latest application stacks.
For new users to openSUSE, OpenSUSE Leap is a better fit since the software provided is thoroughly tested. It also uses binaries and sources from SUSE Enterprise Linux which results in a stable system, unlike TumbleWeed which is a rolling release distribution.
PostgreSQL is a highly stable and reliable database management system that has been used for over 20 years. It’s supported by an active community who contribute their time to its development, which results in higher levels of resilience, integrity, and correctness. PostgreSQL powers many web applications, including those from Google Earth Engine Geospatial datastore for analytics software like predictive modeling toolsets built using machine learning algorithms created within R/Rapidminer packages
The following tutorial will teach you how to install PostgreSQL on Fedora 36 Linux using the command line terminal and some basic configuration and setup tips.
LXDE, or Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, is a free desktop environment known for being lightweight, fast, and energy-efficient. It can replace the standard default GNOME Desktop on your Fedora 36 Workstation with LXDE using less RAM and CPU than other desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME, which can be desired for low-powered computers laptops, and netbooks users.
LXDE is based on the GTK+ widget toolkit and uses the Openbox window manager. It is also suitable for older computers that may not have the resources to run a more demanding desktop environment, such as KDE Plasma 5. LXDE includes several applications typically found on a default GNOME install, such as a file manager, image viewer, text editor, and Terminal emulator. Overall, LXDE is an excellent choice for users looking for a fast and lightweight desktop environment that is also easy on resources.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install LXDE Desktop Environment on your Fedora 36 Linux workstation desktop with steps on installing optional extra packages with LXDE and how to update or remove the desktop environment in the future if required.
Brave is a free open source browser that blocks ads and trackers by default without having to download an extension that blocks ads. By blocking malicious trackers and ads, not only it serves a safer browsing experience but also it improves the loading speed of sites on your browser.
In this tutorial you will learn how to Install Brave browser on Linux Mint and Ubuntu.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PlayOnLinux on Fedora 36. For those of you who didn’t know, PlayOnLinux is a free and open-source graphical front-end for Wine that allows Linux users to install a large number of Windows-based computer games and applications such as MS Office, Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and several other programs on your Linux system.
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 PlayOnLinux on a Fedora 36.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ReactJS on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, React (also known as React.js or ReactJS) is an open-source JavaScript front-end library for creating web frontend and UI components. Many developers are using it because of its flexibility, integrity, and its feature to bring Html directly into JS.
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 ReactJS 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.
In this guide we will learn how to configure TLS/SSL in kubernetes using ingress for already existing ssl certificates (either Self-Signed) or purchased ones.
For this to work, you should also have a working ingress set up. We will use Nginx Ingress. You should also have the domain used already configured with the Nginx ingress endpoint record.
Cacti is an open-source, web-based network monitoring tool written in PHP. Cacti generates CPU load and network bandwidth utilization graphs using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). This guide will show you, how to install the Cacti monitoring tools on Debian 11.
There are several video games that have been released since the first computer game was created that changed the gaming industry forever. Very old games such as Space Invaders and Space War had huge impacts on inspiring future game producers to be innovative in their thinking. As technology advanced, the improvements in the gaming experience increased significantly. There are a few stand-out video games that are regarded as revolutionizing the computer gaming industry with impacts that would last forever.
To test KDE Plasma 5.25, I installed a new virtual machine using the KDE Neon distribution. At first, I attempted to use the testing release, but that failed every time I ran the installer.
Instead, I opted to go the stable route, which offers a lovely presentation of what KDE Plasma 5.25 is all about. I will warn you even the stable version of KDE Neon (as shipped with KDE 5.25) isn’t exactly the most stable desktop I’ve ever tried. In fact, I found KWin regularly crashed on me. Is this a product of Neon or KDE 5.25? We may never know. It took me a few installs, but I eventually managed to get a reliable desktop up and running.
Some EasyOS testers have been reporting to me by email, instead of via the forum. We had two boot failures, reported by Reynaldo and Alfons.
Firefox Browser received an incremental update to 102.0.1 and shipped to the software repository.
HomeBank is the free software you have always wanted to manage your personal accounts at home. Homebank has been updated to 5.5.6.
Vivaldi Browser has been updated to 5.3.2679.68 and shipped to the software repository.
Opera Browser has been updated to 88.0.4412.74 and shipped to the software repository.
Google Chrome Browser has been updated to 103.0.5060.114 and sent to the software repository.
 openSUSE Micro is a new Linux distribution geared toward hosting containerized workloads with automated administration and patching. With this open-source, purpose-built operating system you’ll have an environment specifically designed for workloads that would benefit from transactional updates. This rolling-release distribution could be just the thing your company needs.
openSUSE Micro aims to be predictable, scalable, reliable and flexible. With this new take on containerized deployments, you don’t have to learn a new package format (as it uses standard openSUSE RPMs), there are no size limitations and it can be rolled out easily and repeatedly.
Oracle announced the general availability of its enterprise OS, Oracle Linux 9, for x86_64 and aarch64 architectures.
Oracle Linux is a high-performance and secure operating system for application development and deployment. It is the second one of the “big three” RHEL-based forks (AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and Oracle Linux) that is releasing a stable version of the recently released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
As we announced earlier, AlmaLinux 9 was the first to be announced, and Oracle Linux 9 has now jumped on the bandwagon.
We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Satellite 6.10.7 is generally available as of July 6, 2022.
Red Hat Satellite is part of the Red Hat Smart Management subscription that makes it easier for enterprises to manage patching, provisioning, and subscription management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure.
IT execs and hiring managers aren’t just prioritizing automation skills anymore. They’re carving out whole roles that are largely defined by IT automation.
This is a twist on the general fear that automation eliminates jobs. It’s true that automation – not just in IT but across a wide range of roles and industries – is impacting various jobs, now and in the future. But automation will also likely create many new jobs that don’t exist yet or didn’t exist, say, 10 years ago, even as it gets rid of other positions.
IT occupies an interesting space in that broader trend. Many of the dominant and emerging trends in IT – hybrid cloud, containerization, orchestration, CI/CD, cybersecurity – depend heavily on automation. That means they also depend heavily on people with the right mix of skills to implement and manage the various tools and technologies underpinning modern software development and IT infrastructure.
The work around Raspberry Pi 4 has been on going for a number of years, but we've never officially supported it due to lack of accelerated graphics and other key features. A few of us have led the push to get the accelerated graphics work over the line upstream so it now makes sense to enable this in Fedora and make support for the Raspberry Pi 4 more official.
Recently, Red Hat relaunched the Developer Subscription for Teams, enabling organizations already running other Red Hat technologies to access Red Hat Enterprise Linux for their development activities without friction. In this article, we clarify what Red Hat defines as development activities and highlight some exciting use cases for the Developer Subscription for Teams.
The presiding panelist is Matthew Kennedy. He has worked at the WTO Secretariat in Geneva. He gained his Master of International and Comparative Law at ULB in Brussels, the same venue that hosts the FOSDEM conference where Molly de Blanc infamously used cat pictures to promote shaming the developers.
Each party to the dispute was asked to propose three candidates. From the list proposed by Jonathan Saul Cohen, acting for the cabal, WIPO has selected Clive Thorne of British law firm McCarthy Denning.
Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard with Rockchip RK3588 SoC now has a little sister/brother based on Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor called ITX-3568JQ, and designed to power Arm PCs, cloud terminals, industrial controllers, edge computers, advanced NVR, NAS devices, and more.
The motherboard supports up to 8GB RAM, 128GB eMMC flash, offers SATA storage, dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, optional 4G or 5G cellular connectivity, can handle up to three independent displays, and offers plenty of I/O options including an RS232/RS485 DB9 connector and a PCIe slot.
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Firefly will provide support for Android 11.0, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04 and RTLinux, but the Wiki is currently empty.
Love LoRa€®? Wish it were easier to design and implement complete solutions with LoRaWAN€® connectivity? Now it is.
We’re happy to announce the launch of two new ready-to-use, industrial-grade gateways for LoRaWAN€® connectivity for indoor and outdoor use, resulting from Arduino Pro’s partnership with RAKwirelessââ¢.
The WisGate Edge Lite 2 and WisGate Edge Pro ensure secure and reliable connectivity for a wide range of professional applications. They’re suitable for medium-sized to wide area coverage in industrial environments and remote regions. Smart cities and smart agriculture to logistics and building automation. The sky’s the limit!
On top of the existing non-volumetric fog, Godot 4.0 introduces a new type of fog: Volumetric Fog. For the 4.0 release, we decided to take Volumetric Fog one step further with the addition of FogVolumes. These allow users to dynamically place fog and control complex fog effects with shaders.
This post starts off with a high-level description of what FogVolumes are and how to use them, and then includes some technical details about what is going on under the hood and how we get them to render so fast.
"VNC" (or Virtual Network Computing) compatibility has a long history in Qt, and we are now improving this story with Qt 6.4.
GitHub and GitLab are free web-based version control system and collaboration platforms for developers. While, they are free on certain aspects, many developers and companies like to have their own version control system self-hosted on their servers.
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Gitly is released under the GPL-3.0 License.
As I was sitting in a meeting room, speaking with one of my teammates, our manager walked in with the rest of the dev team. The door slammed shut and our manager revealed that he had a big announcement. What unfolded before our eyes was the next project we were going to develop—an open source CLI (command line interface) application.
In this article, I'd like to share what I learned during our development process, and specifically what I wish I had known before we began developing Datree's CLI. Perhaps the next person can use these tips to create a great CLI application faster.
My name is Noaa Barki. I've been a full-stack developer for over six years, and I'll let you in on a little secret—I have a superpower: My interest and expertise are evenly split between back-end and front-end development. I simply cannot choose one without the other.
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Use CLI commands that are named in a SINGLE form and VERB-NOUN format. This allows the command to be read like an imperative or request, for example: Computer, start app!
Minimize with the total number of commands you use, and don't rush to introduce new verbs to new commands. This makes it easier for users to remember command names.
“The SQL LIKE operator allows performing logical evaluation for any matching records. Using the LIKE operator, you can specify single or multiple conditions. This allows you to perform an action such as select, delete, and updating any columns or records that match the specified conditions. It is mainly paired with a where clause to set the conditions.
In this tutorial, we will look at the workings of the LIKE clause and how we can use it to specify multiple conditions.”
“JSON is a popular data-interchange format that has been widely adopted across the development community. However, JSON has strict schema and formatting tools. JSON does not natively support multi-line strings. This can be quite frustrating when looking for flexibility and storing large texts.
Let us discuss a simple workaround and how we can use multiline strings.”
“When working with PostgreSQL databases, you will encounter instances where you must drop records from a table. Before running a delete query, it is important to ensure that the table does not leave any incomplete relationships between tables.
In PostgreSQL, we can use the CASCADE DELETE feature to accomplish this. This feature allows a delete operation to remove the specified records and any foreign keys that reference them.
Using this article, we will review how to perform a cascade delete in PostgreSQL.”
“Kibana is a free and open-source analytics and visualization platform for Elasticsearch. It provides a browser-based graphical interface for interacting with your Elasticsearch database.
It is very simple and intuitive. You can perform operations such as search, view, update, delete and query all the indices in your Elasticsearch cluster. When it comes to visualization, it offers a wide range of options, including charts, tables, maps, etc.
However, Elasticsearch and Kibana have a notorious reputation for being difficult to set up and configure, especially when getting started.
I wrote this post after seeing Flavio Poletti's blog post entitled OATH Toolkit. I have been a fan of time-based one time passwords (TOTP) for many years. In fact, I used Mobile-OTP in commercial applications for several years before the Initiative for Open Authentication (OATH) and OATH/TOTP were codified in RFC6238.
Now-a-days, OATH/TOTP is the best choice for time-based one time passwords, and has been for at least a decade.
“When trying to install Python packages, you may sometime encounter “default to user installation because normal site-packages are not writeable” error. In this attempt, we will explain why this error occurs and how we can resolve it.”
Pip is the most popular and versatile package installer for Python. It offers a command-line utility that allows you to manage Python packages easily. Using pip, you can perform actions such as downloading, installing, updating, and uninstalling packages with simple commands.
Pip uses a caching mechanism that allows you to download and install Python packages faster. It works by storing a cache of the downloaded packages on the local wheel.
The caching mechanism allows pip to improve the download and installation of the packages. This is because pip does not need to download already existing packages.
In some cases, pip may not need to redownload a package when updating if it already exists in the cache.
This tutorial will discuss how to work with the pip cache, how to manage the pip cache using various commands, and how to clear it when you need to start afresh.
This guide will discuss the “No module named matplotlib” error in Python: why it occurs, and how to resolve it in different environments.
“In this tutorial, you will learn the various methods you can use to specify multiple conditions using the np.where() function.”
Frequently, you may need to customize the default font size in the plots created with matplotlib. Thankfully, matplotlib has extensive support for text manipulation, including font size adjustment and more.
Python is at its peak popularity due to its easy-to-understand syntax and versatile libraries. With that in mind, using Python tools for data science isn’t surprising. Data scientists do not have an easy job. They have to understand tons of complex ideas and polish existing data in order to interpret them.
To make things easier, Python tools containing various libraries exist to deal with such tedious tasks. For instance, data scientists have to analyze a large number of data and follow through with several processes to come to their conclusion. That means a lot of repetition is undoubtedly at play here – and python tools come in handy right at this point.
“JSON or JavaScript Object Notation is a lightweight data exchange format that is widely adopted by modern applications. Whether you are working in NoSQL databases or fetching API data, you will encounter JSON.
It is a heavily adopted language due to its simplicity but strict schema. This helps to reduce errors while still retaining human readability.
Pandas is a free and open-source Python library that provides fast, flexible, and expressive data structures that make working with scientific data easy. Pandas is one of Python’s most valuable data analysis and manipulation packages.
It offers features such as custom data structures that are built on top of Python.
This article will discuss converting a column from one data type to an int type within a Pandas DataFrame.
TensorFlow is a free and open-source library for machine learning and artificial intelligence. It offers a vast collection of tools and utilities that makes the process of machine learning and AI more intuitive and fun. TensorFlow is cross-platform and can be installed on any machine running Linux, macOS, Linux, Android, or a JavaScript engine.
In some instances, you may face a “No Module Named TensorFlow” error when attempting to use TensorFlow in your application.
Throughout this guide, we will explore various scenarios of why this error occurs and how you can resolve it.
Whether you think they’re neat or annoying, stickers indicating what’s inside your computer have been a key part of basically every pre-built machine this side of Apple. The last 30 years has seen tremendous shifts in the public image of a typical PC, but there is a high chance that your new ultrabook, just like the desktop your family once bought for Microsoft Excel and Quake, would come covered in vendor badges. Today’s Tedium goes into the origins of the long-running marketing scheme and some of its historical highlights. Stick with us if you want—we promise that’s the last sticker pun you’re going to read here.
STMicro introduced the VL53L8 multi-zone direct Time-of-Flight (dToF) sensor last month, but here’s another ToF sensor with VL53L5CP specifically designed for the PC market with the enablement of features such as user detection, gesture recognition, and intruder alert.
STMicro says the ranging sensor continuously scans its field of view to map the scene and gather intelligence without using a camera or recording images. With 64 (8Ãâ8) zones within a wide 61-degree field, the VL53L5CP can detect and track multiple targets, calculating at their X/Y/Z coordinates and motion at high speed.
Malicious individuals are using stolen personally identifiable information (PII) and voice and video deepfakes to try to land remote IT, programming, database and software-related jobs, the FBI has warned last week.
A quick search online for EFB applications shows plenty of third party software available to use on EFBs. Many of these applications are available for download on public app stores. Some of these applications are developed by small software companies, others by large well known software developers. It is not for us to speculate how much involvement or oversight state regulators have had in the development and testing of these EFB applications, but we should keep in mind that there are thousands of EFB applications available and they can originate from anywhere in the world.
With regards to EFB integrity, often the complication with third party applications, as opposed to performance applications, is the added risk of using different data sources as well as the potential for using software which has not been risk-assessed or security tested to the same standard as that of aircraft manufacturers. Performance applications will complete calculations locally and any required data is entered by the pilot. Many third party applications complete calculations locally but require access to databases online to source required information. In some cases, these databases are connected to other databases which feed into them. This creates more attack surfaces for tampering with an EFB.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (ldap-account-manager), Fedora (openssl1.1, thunderbird, and yubihsm-connector), Mageia (curl, cyrus-imapd, firefox, ruby-git, ruby-rack, squid, and thunderbird), Oracle (firefox, kernel, and thunderbird), Slackware (openssl), SUSE (dpdk, haproxy, and php7), and Ubuntu (gnupg2 and openssl).
OpenSSL has released a security update to address a vulnerability affecting OpenSSL 3.0.4. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.
CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), North Korean State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Use Maui Ransomware to Target the Healthcare and Public Health Sector, to provide information on Maui ransomware, which has been used by North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors since at least May 2021 to target Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) Sector organizations.
In 2020 and 2021, we filed three RTI applications with the Delhi Police seeking information on their use of FRT. The information was refused under Section 8 of the RTI Act. Some information was refused on the ground that it is not available. The Delhi Police also said they have “Nil” information on CCTV cameras! Our first appeals against these responses were rejected, so we filed Second Appeals with the Central Information Commission. They were heard on June 29, 2022, and the Delhi Police were directed to revise their response to the RTI applications, in compliance with the RTI Act.
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IFF has been tracking the development of the Delhi Police’s facial recognition system since 2019, along with tracking instances of facial recognition use in the country overall, through Project Panoptic. In October 2020, we filed two RTI applications with the Delhi Police, seeking information on their use of FRT in traffic management and criminal investigation, which was widely reported in the media. In 2021, media reports also recorded the Delhi Police’s use of FRT for investigations in the pogrom that took place in North-East Delhi in February 2021. So, we filed another RTI application with the Delhi Police in March 2021 asking them for information on this.
Daily life, for better or worse, revolves around having access to the internet, and the Kenyan government wants to assure its citizens that that will not change during the upcoming general election cycle. Kenya’s general elections to elect a new President and members of the National Assembly will take place on August 9 and the race is close and tense. Much of the tension is the result of the outgoing president, Uhuru Kenyatta, throwing his support behind opposition leader Raila Odinga rather than William Ruto, the current deputy president.
Waves of disinformation pushed by paid social media influencers have been a growing concern in the run-up to elections that some experts worry could lead to violent eruptions. The country is still haunted by clashes during the 2007 elections that left over 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), set up in the wake of the violence 15 years ago, rates the likelihood of electoral violence as just about “medium high risk,” while in Nairobi County, home to the capital city, the risk of violence is considered to be “very high.”
After three years of intense negotiations, the EU Digital Services Act has finally arrived. On 5 July 2022, the European Parliament approved the final text of the future EU content moderation rule book. The DSA has been labeled by some as a “gold standard” for content and platform governance in the EU. In this blog post, we unpack what this long-awaited law contains and what changes people can expect to see as the law becomes applicable in 2024.
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The DSA applies to hosting services, marketplaces, and online platforms that offer services in the EU. The DSA will apply to all providers regardless of their place of establishment. In other words, if individuals are residing in the EU they will fully benefit from the DSA’s protective scope. Hence, the DSA is putting people first by default and not corporate interests.
New sets of obligations are designed as “made to measure”: the DSA singles out Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) as well as Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs), which are platforms with more than 45 million average monthly active users in the EU. This way, the law rightly recognises the platforms’ specific control over public discourse and the often manipulative influence they have on people’s behaviour online.
Twitter Inc. said Tuesday it has filed a legal challenge against the Indian government’s orders that the social-media company block some users’ accounts and individual tweets in the country, ramping up a battle over online speech between U.S. tech giants and New Delhi.
Internet shut down for 20 hours during demonstrations when tens of thousands took to the streets
Demonstrations have been continuing in Sudan as citizens demand an end to military rule, with the death toll rising to at least 113 protesters killed since the military coup last October.
Last Thursday, the internet was shut down for about 20 hours during protests when tens of thousands of civilians took to the streets of the Sudanese capital Khartoum and its twin cities of Omdurman and Bahri; at least nine people were killed. Participants and Sudanese activists abroad had been sharing photographs and videos of the demonstrations on social media using the hashtag #EyesOnSudan.
“It is unacceptable for the military in Sudan to continue to perpetrate brutalities against the Sudanese people during protests whenever the internet is shut down. This impunity must be condemned by all,” tweeted Felicia Anthonio, a campaigner who works with Access Now on their #KeepItOn campaign, which fights against internet shutdowns.
Online freedom in India is in peril — constitutional courts must intervene and protect the rights of millions.
Twitter’s legal challenge against the Indian government’s blocking orders comes against the backdrop of rising digital authoritarianism, and imminent threats to free speech. The court must declare the government’s overbroad censorship actions as unconstitutional, and bring to light authorities’ abuse of power online.
The Indian government and Twitter have locked horns in the past, but this case is not about one Big Tech firm versus the Indian government. It is about protecting human rights, and holding the Indian Ministry for Electronics and Information Technology to account for abusing its already flawed web censorship powers under India’s Information Technology Act.
“A democracy cannot survive without free expression, and the current wave of digital authoritarianism in India puts the world’s largest democracy at risk,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, Senior International Counsel and Asia Pacific Policy Director at Access Now. “Authorities are targeting people for content posted online, and regularly intimidating web platforms and social media services into complying with its censorship through rights-violative tools such as the IT Rules and other provisions of the Information Technology Act. Today, Twitter is standing up for the population and doing what should be the government’s job: safeguarding our rights.”
I've recently pruned many of my old posts, after doing a quality check. Some were something that wasn't worth-reading, not leaving you with a sense of "oh! didn't know that! awesome that I learnt something new about X", something which I strive to achieve from now on, on my new posts. Of course, I can't always achieve that, so there'll be some ramblings here and there.
I wrote many of the posts just for the sake of writing that day, not that I felt inspired or the need to write that day, which as I later realised it's the wrong mentality for a blog. From now on, the blog will be more of a self-reflection journal and memory bank, things that help me over all. I'm happy that someone else can take and be influenced by an idea I put on the table. Even if the post inspired one reader, it's a great thing.
As for myself, I teethgnashingly write more "I think", "for me", "it seems to me" and so on, on my own blog no less, because I kept getting pushback from people commenting on my blog arguing with me that the things I said are not universally true, which seems super obvious to me because I am writing on my blog. Grrrrr.
Perhaps I hear my words in my own voice, see myself sitting in a coffee house with friends, and we don't qualify every statement. Those qualifications are implied by the simple fact that we are people talking to each other.
Other people are probably hearing those words like they read the newspaper. "News" is supposedly "universally true" or aims to be. I think. Hah!
It seems to me that I have been force-fed Google's services by almost everyone in my life: friends, family, but most notably school. My school's tech department *really* loves Google and uses it for *everything* - Google Classroom for homework assignments, Gmail for all communications, Google Slides for lesson presentations, I could go on all day. What really bugs me is the fact that in order to see what homework I have, I have to log in to Google Classroom every day, using an account with my real name on it! As if just using their products wasn't enough, they made a G Suite for Education account for every student with no warning or prior notice, using real names! (Granted, when I joined in year 7, I was fairly indifferent towards Google, but still.)
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.