With the end of the month comes our recap of the major Linux happenings for the past 31 days with our enthusiast, graphics, and hardware bent on the open-source operating system.
For the month of July 2013 on Phoronix there were 258 original news stories (an average of over eight articles per day) and 29 original featured-length articles (one per day). Nearly all of these articles were written by your's truly, including in the rush at the end of the month where just yesterday were 12 news postings and three featured articles. Even today there were 11 mews postings and two featured articles; there's no one else as prolifically writing as much about Linux on a constant basis.
American chip giant Intel is looking to establish itself in Sweden. A southern town called Lund will be the home of about 50 new Intel employees – and now for the surprising part – they're ex ST-Ericsson employees.
I’m Nathan Schneider, a writer and editor. I write for publications like Harper’s and The Nation and The Chronicle of Higher Education and co-edit an online literary journal on religion and a site for daily news and analysis on resistance movements (I also manage the back-end for both). I’ve written two books, one on debates about the existence of God and one on Occupy Wall Street.
The cost of supercomputers is less expensive due to the availability of open source Linux OS. SUSE is offering enterprise class server operating system in Linux. SUSE Linux enterprise server OS is used by more than one third of the top hundred supercomputers in the world. SUSE says in past few years there are significant changes in high performance computing due to open source and new clustering technologies. The cost of supercomputers is coming down due to availability of low-cost hardware and Linux OS. Computing power of supercomputers is increased 1000X from fast few years which enables even mid-size organizations to have a supercomputer equivalent server on a commodity type hardware. SUSE says it leads in this domain by offering scalable, flexible architecture which can handle large number of CPUs.
Big Blue wants a much bigger piece of the $10 billion annual Linux server business, and it is rolling out a fatter version of its Power7+ server lineup in the PowerLinux line to chase big Java, database, and analytics workloads. The new machine, called the PowerLinux 7R4, is a Linux-only version of the four-socket Power 750+ server that was announced back in February along with a revamped entry Power7+ server line and an even fatter Power 760+ machine.
Using the latest ZFS On Linux support, the ZFS file-system was benchmarked from the Linux 3.10 stable kernel and compared to the Linux file-system competition.
A power capping framework has been proposed for the mainline Linux kernel to provide some standard interfaces for the increasing amount of drivers/hardware that support power monitoring and limiting.
As I’ve discussed in the past, I will be selecting one “longterm stable” kernel release every year, and maintain that kernel release for at least two years.
All a Linux distribution really needs is any version of the Linux kernel that fits its needs. Linux businesses, like Canonical, Red Hat, and SUSE need more. When they build commercial Linux distributions they need to know that the base Linux kernel will have long-term support. That's just what Linux Foundation fellow and leading Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman is giving them.
It's time for another Sunday release of the Linux kernel. While it's out on schedule, the Linux 3.11-rc4 release carries about the same amount of changes as 3.11-rc3, which isn't making Linus Torvalds happy.
Nearing the end of the Linux 3.11 kernel with most (if not all) of the interesting pull requests merged, here's a look at the exciting features that will premiere in this next Linux kernel release.
While DRI2 PRIME has led to Optimus-like support for laptops with NVIDIA/Intel GPU combinations, one of the problems making this technology less beneficial is the lack of dynamic power management handling. What's the point of keeping one GPU fed with power when it's being unused and just lowering your battery life? Fortunately, a fix is ahead.
While the Mesa 9.2 release is right around the corner, Mesa 9.1.6 was released on Thursday to ship various bug-fixes for the major open-source Linux graphics drivers.
While this week we published benchmarks that showed how NVIDIA's Linux driver can compete with Windows 8 -- when using the closed-source drivers and not the open-source Nouveau solution -- and that even the FreeBSD NVIDIA performance is competitive, this isn't the case for AMD's drivers. From the same Core i7 Haswell system as used for the NVIDIA testing, AMD Radeon graphics cards were tested on Windows 8 and Linux. It wasn't a surprise that the open-source Radeon Gallium3D was much slower than Catalyst, but took us off guard a bit was that the Linux Catalyst driver does take some noticeable performance hits over the Microsoft Windows driver in some OpenGL workloads.
Another week, another xf86-video-intel graphics driver update. This latest xf86-video-intel DDX driver update brings performing tuning for the Haswell GT3e graphics core, disables triple buffering for compositors, and other changes.
The graphics subsystem on Linux is undergoing change. The X Window System is 30 years old and showing its age. Richard Hillesley tells some of the story of X and its replacements…
Cross-device synchronization support for DMA-BUF is still being worked on for a future Linux kernel release.
This feature comes down to synchronizing the rendering of multiple devices via DMA-BUF, the buffer sharing mechanism introduced in the Linux kernel for sharing graphics buffers between DRM drivers and other related drivers in the context of ARM SoCs.
Aside from the progressing PRIME support for Wayland, more good news today for this X.Org Foundation backed project is RealVNC expressing interest in supporting Wayland for their remote desktop software.
The AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta driver was released today and with it comes full support for OpenGL 4.3, support for the Linux 3.10 kernel, and various fixes.
Another week, another xf86-video-intel graphics driver update. This latest xf86-video-intel DDX driver update brings performing tuning for the Haswell GT3e graphics core, disables triple buffering for compositors, and other changes.
Using the latest ZFS On Linux support, the ZFS file-system was benchmarked from the Linux 3.10 stable kernel and compared to the Linux file-system competition.
Any Linux user will tell you that a good text editor is a vital component of a computer system, no matter if you’re a new user or a seasoned pro. While using a Terminal text editor (like nano or vim) is equally important, you might as well make use of your graphical desktop environment whenever it’s available to you.
Transmission is a must for those looking for a simple and efficient BitTorrent client for convenient everyday use, especially for lovers of downloading free music and software.
The BitTorrent protocol is increasingly used, and sometimes almost indispensable, for example on a site of free music (http://www.jamendo.com/) is the official protocol, there are a few free clients such as Transmission. It is an open source, cross-platform, volunteer-based project.
VLC Media Player 2.0.8 has been released. This is a maintenance release that fixes some regressions in the 2.0.x branch. There are also numerous fixes for crashes, dangerous behaviors, ISDB-S tuning and some OS X issues were resolved.
Creating a new image for a certain embedded device is a boring process that can take a lot of time. For some time I’ve been working with MIC that is a rather easy to use tool for image creation.
DeCalc is a puzzle game that makes math fun! It's like reversed calculator - you get a result and your job is to arrange the buttons so when pressed in given order, you get that result. There are several twists and rules that enrich the puzzles as well.
MouseCraft is a puzzle game where players help mice in their relentless quest for cheese by stacking world's most famous blocks: Tetrominos.
While Fez 2 has recently been cancelled by developer Phil Fish, Polytron's producer Marie-Christine Bourdua has confirmed to Joystiq that the studio is still working with Sony on an upcoming project. Bourdua also confirmed that indie-hit Fez will be getting ported to Mac and Linux.
The Fullbright Company, a team founded by the folks who worked on the Minerva’s Den downloadable content for BioShock 2, announced today that they will be releasing their first game as an independent company called Gone Home - slated to be released on August 15th.
The game’s first patch released over the weekend, and is available automatically through Steam or via a repeat download for DRM-free purchasers. The patch notes reveal a collection of bug fixes but also plenty of balancing – various firearm skills now use less ammunition, for example.
Welcome to your second instalment of the GOL Craft Weekly, covering what's been happening on our Minecraft server which is ever growing.
Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition was released to Windows games earlier in the year and features the classic Duke Nukem 3D game plus three expansion packs. Megaton Edition features visual enhancements, SteamPlay support, and other improvements over the original games.
I spend a lot of time with my face directed at my computer screen. Most of the time, I’m even looking at the screen and actively typing or reading. To help me stay focussed, I took a lesson from GNOME 3 book, then turbocharged it for own KDE setup: there is nothing on my desktop, my panel hides itself automatically, and I use the dashboard extensively. This way, most things won’t distract me unless I was already thinking about them.
This year's gearheads' meetup was in Bilbao which is located in the Basque Country in Spain. The talks were very good and gave a good idea of whats going around in the Qt and KDE worlds. There were people taking Qt to new platforms and others getting your contacts more organized.
Last week I reported that KWin compiles and links against Qt 5 and KF 5. This week I’m glad to report that I got KWin also to run. The biggest issue was a PEBKAC – if you try to run anything build against frameworks make sure to not have KDE 4 libraries in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
In recent versions of Dolphin, the view sometimes looked like this just after entering a directory.
We've been asked many times how to contribute to Kubuntu financially so we are now open for donations. Your donations will help finance project expenses such as hardware, travel and cloud computing.
We are happy to announce the 1.1 Beta release for Plasma Media Center (PMC). The first release of the software received a lot of appreciation and feedback, some of which have been implemented in this release. If you find yourself using your computer (a laptop, a tablet, or a computer connected to a big display) for listening to music or watching your favorite videos and photos, you should definitely try PMC :)
I'm currently sitting on a plane to a family trip. My bag contains about 8 pounds worth of hardware along these formfactors, though some of that is through accidental overpacking. I've been looking for ways to solve this problem without sacrificing my productivity, for quite a while. Carrying this much tech is unnecessary and it makes travel, even locally on transit, a literal pain in the neck. Some people are able to rock iPads with bluetooth keyboards and get their dayjobs done. I've had issues with this workflow as a developer; it's worked to some extent when I was on an OS with decent multitasking, but it left me wanting -- no easy way to debug web sites in-browser was the biggest show-stopper, there were some other things though.
The Calligra team is proud and pleased to announce the release of version 2.7 of the Calligra Suite, Calligra active and the Calligra Office Engine. This version is the result of thousands of commits which provide new features, polishing of the user interaction and bug fixes.
Only 5 months after we released Krita 2.6, we release Krita 2.7 today! There are a lot of cool new features, bug fixes and improvements. Soon to come to a Linux distribution near you.
The release of Qt 5.0 brought to an end the first opportunity in 7 years to break source and binary compatibility for a Qt release. It was a huge effort from across all disciplines and contributions, from design discussions, documentation and development to infrastructure, administration, marketing, testing and packaging.
Plasma Media Center 1.1, the second release to this KDE multimedia project providing a nice shell for multimedia needs, is now available in beta form. Plasma Media Center 1.1 is set to bring several new features to this KDE component for music and video playback.
The temperature rose once again in Brno today. Thirsty hackers were seen sheltering in the shade, while the local conference team shipped in extra water for all the participants.
the latest development update before our planned freezes and beta release for GNOME 3.1o is finally available.
For your visual pleasure, here are some fresh screenshots from GNOME 3.9.5. Enjoy :-)
The third development version of the upcoming PyGObject 3.10 library, for the GNOME 3.10 desktop environment, was announced a few days ago, bringing assorted fixes and improvements.
GNOME 3.9.5 has been released as the latest development release leading up to the GNOME 3.10 debut in September.
GNOME has two new components for the upcoming GNOME 3.10 release: Maps and Geoclue2. These two GNOME packages saw their first official releases this week.
Geoclue2 was announced on Wednesday as a rewrite of Geoclue. Geoclue2 is intended to support GPS receivers, 3G modems, WiFi-based positioning, and IP address geolocation in order to provide geolocation support. Over the original Geoclue, the Geoclue2 component provides a single D-Bus service to abstract the different geolocation back-ends and also gives the end-user controls over what applications can access their location data.
I used and reviewed OS4 13 (LTS version) earlier as well. But, I didn't find it appealing earlier. The default design of XFCE looks way better than the legacy BeOS design of OS4. I checked out the 13.1 version earlier and was not that pleased with OS4. However, my opinion changed with the release OS4 13.6 (I missed out the other updates after 13.1, honestly). With a change in design, interesting applications pre-installed in the distro and a more refined interface, OS4 13.6 OpenLinux suddenly seems more attractive.
Today, August 3, David Tavares has just announce the immediate availability for download and testing of the second Alpha release of the upcoming Pear OS 8 Linux operating system.
The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
alphaOS, a distribution based on Puppy Linux and built from Arch Linux packages, has just reached version 9.0 (20130801).
Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) Director Jeff Clarke unloaded 3,829 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, August 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $52.56, for a total transaction of $201,252.24. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 5,062 shares of the company’s stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this link.
Last week, evolution caught up with the Ubuntu juggernaut. After jerking people around with Unity, WaylandMir, and generally annoying lovers of Free Software with top-down stuff, Canonical drove more people to take a look at installing Debian GNU/Linux as suggested by the page-hit ratings on Distrowatch. That puts Debian GNU/Linux in #2 after Mint.
A ‘Early Alpha’ of Unity 8 is available to install and test in Ubuntu 13.10 from today – just don’t expect too much from it quite yet.
The appearance of Nautilus, System Settings and several other GNOME 3 applications in Ubuntu 13.10 has been improved in a recent update.
A regression in Ubuntu’s default themes, present since Ubuntu 13.04, that has seen GTK+ 3 applications lack correctly coloured toolbars has finally been corrected.
Is the Ubuntu Edge, the Linux-powered "superphone" that Canonical hopes to develop through a crowdsourced funding campaign, a dying prospect? Maybe. But that doesn't mean the project hasn't already succeeded in significantly advancing Canonical's goals in the smartphone and mobile-device market. Here's why.
The Indiegogo fundraising campaign for the Edge is only in its second week, but bloggers are already loudly proclaiming its impending failure. And despite the positive spin that some writers, including Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon, are putting on the endeavor, the naysayers may well turn out to be right. Contributions to the Ubuntu Edge fundraiser, which now total about $7.8 million of the $32 million goal, have slowed to a trickle. Giving needs to rebound hugely if Canonical hopes to meet its goal before the fundraiser ends on Aug. 21.
This week the project has progress quite a lot. To start with, I’ve finally made the case handle. This was done using a “Cobra weave” and used roughly 3 meters of purple paracord.
At this time there will still be PowerPC images for Ubuntu Server, Lubuntu, and other flavors, but the official Ubuntu desktop flavor for PowerPC is likely to be eliminated by the end of the week, per this mailing list post.
re you a Linux desktop user who loves Ubuntu but is wary of Unity? You're in luck. There are lots of Ubuntu spins, both from Canonical and independent developers, which preserve the basic infrastructure and essence of Ubuntu but replace the default Unity desktop.
Canonical has been producing official spins since its second release, but they have been getting more attention since Ubuntu switched to Unity. The oldest, and one of the most popular, is Kubuntu, which offers the KDE desktop; if you want Ubuntu goodness on an underpowered computer, there's the lightweight Lubuntu; and starting with the 13.04 Raring Ringtail release, users will also be able to use the Gnome desktop thanks to the new Ubuntu Gnome spin.
Network World - The crafters of the LinuxMint distro are in a ticklish position. Mint is based on Ubuntu, which in turn, is based on Debian, which in turn, has the moveable feast of the Linux kernel as its underpinning. All three have changed underneath LinuxMint, but LinuxMint 15 pulls off a new cut without missing a step (save a missing KDE version).
Gumstix unveiled a major expansion of its Geppetto drag-and-drop custom embedded board design platform. In addition to supporting the design of custom baseboards for Gumstix’s Overo computer-on-modules, the browser-based service now lets customers create custom Linux-compatible SBCs based on the TI Sitara AM3354 SoC and receive assembled boards within three weeks.
Cable operators could leave CableCard behind in their own hardware.
The Jolla Mobile developers that are in the midst of their first smart phone just updated their SDK to support Qt 5, Qt Quick 2, and Wayland.
Quick notes on Q2 smartphone stuff. Sony reports Q2 quarter, smartphones (which all run Android, and Sony has completed its transition from dumbphones to smartphones) generated strong profits, grew unit sales 19% to 9.6 Million. I get prelim market share for Sony at 4.1%. Very good performance.
Samsung is reportedly bringing back the flip phone, adding Android and a pair of 3.7-inch touch screens to a form factor popular in the first GSM phones of the mid-1990s.
The last time Google visited Jelly Bean's user saturation numbers, it took the combined efforts of 4.1 and 4.2 to edge out Gingerbread's (v2.3.3 through 2.3.7) hold on the user base. Not anymore; the latest numbers from the Android Dashboard show the base version of Jelly Bean, Android 4.1, representing 34 percent of the active devices -- singlehandedly surpassing the old guard's 33 percent share of the market. When combined with the rest of the Jelly Bean contingent (Android 4.2 and above), Google's latest flavor of Android crushes Gingerbread with a 40.5 percent majority.
Installing an Android app brings up a permissions prompt that most folks ignore (though they probably shouldn't). But, what if you could grant applications access to some parts of your smartphone and not others?
Behold the long-awaited Android 4.3 (a.k.a. Jelly Bean). Google Play is also finally getting textbooks.
Google on Thursday unveiled the Moto X, a customizable smartphone that marks the tech giant’s first new phone since acquiring Motorola last year.
The Moto X lowers the emphasis on manual control in favor of always-on sensors built to respond to speech, gestures, and context.
I wonder, seeing the Thousands of Apps that are available for Android & iOS Devices utilized for Multi-Categorized uses like Utility, Development, Games, etc… and being an Linux System Administrator, I ever wonder if there will be a list of Apps designed especially for Linux System Administrators as well?
Forgetful and unlucky Android phone and tablet owners will be happy to hear that their lost or stolen devices will now be trackable with a free service much like Apple's "Find my iPhone."
The Android Device Manager, announced by Google in a blog post Friday, will let you quickly locate your phone or tablet, whether it's in the kitchen or at the bar you were hanging out at last night.
Small tablets are making big gains, while Apple is beginning to plateau, says market researcher Canalys.
I put a little more work into running Zotero on Plasma Active tablets. First of all, it is now possible to install Zotero via zypper. You can get Zotero from my xulrunner branch repository on Mer OBS. Furthermore, it now comes with a .desktop file; so, you can start Zotero like any other application.
The XO Tablet is an Android tablet from the folks behind the One Laptop per Child program. It’s designed for kids, has a semi-rugged removable case, and a custom suite of software with a focus on educational apps and games.
You can also run normal Android apps on the $149 tablet, but there are parental controls which let you restrict the apps your kids are using.
PRISM was a wake-up call for many even though it is still not really clear how extensive the spying, logging and wiretapping really is. One reasonable approach to the issue is to move away from products of large companies such as Google, Microsoft or Apple as they have been linked to PRISM. But that is not really enough, considering that other companies too may cooperate with the NSA or other agencies, or may do so when they are approached.
I wan't to introduce a small side project of me today that we needed for ownCloud but could be useful for other too. It's call CONTRIBOOK and I planed to do this for many years. Lately I was sitting in planes and trains a lot so I have some time to finally do the version 1.0 It's a tool that can be used for community building and showing community activity as we wanted to do on ownCloud.org but it's very generic and can be used by other open source projects tool.
In February of this year, I reported that the Raleigh Public Record—a local, online news publication in Raleigh, NC—was in the process of creating an open source solution to extract data from PDFs. The problem many news journalists have is easily and quickly (which is very important given the nature of their job) converting data and images into a usable format from documents they use for their reports (see an example here).
Google has been working hard on improving the Chromebook user experience. Quite a lot of development work is going on which can be access through beta and dev channels.
The beta channel for Chrome OS has been updated to 29.0.1537.41 (Platform version: 4319.52.0) for all Chrome OS devices. As usual this build contains a number of bug fixes, security updates and some exciting feature enhancement.
Today, Telefonica announced that the ALCATEL ONE TOUCH Fire and ZTE Open devices will go on sale in Colombia and Venezuela. Both devices are now available through Movistar stores and sales channels. Telefonica also announced that Firefox OS devices will launch in Brazil in Q4.
Several months after GeeksPhone developed two Firefox OS-based phones for the developer community, the Spanish smartphone startup is bringing Mozilla's OS to consumers with the new Peak+ smartphone.
The Peak+ is now available for pre-order and follows the April debut of the Keon and Peak developer phones, both of which sold out within hours.
South American Telefonica has announced two Firefox OS powered devices going on sale in Colombia and Venezuela. Alcatel One Touch Fire and ZTE Open are now available through Movistar stores and sales channels. Firefox OS based devices will be launched in Brazil in Q4.
The Document Foundation has announced that the first Release Candidate version for LibreOffice 4.0.5 is now available for the Linux platform, bringing a lot of bug fixes and improvements.
Part of this uncertainty or this difficulty that many Free and Open Source projects have when working with creative people, be it designers, artists or both, is that each operates and thinks along completely different line. While I could grasp that quite easily it is however necessary to understand what difference there is in how designers work and create compared to a set of more or less well defined contribution process of a software development project. My questions to the designer at La Fonderie ultimately led me to realize that the difference lies in the perception of what a contribution really is and the level of priority one gives to contribution’s formality. Let me explain.
The latest and greatest WordPress, version 3.6, named Oscar is released with a new blog-centric theme autosave and post locking options, native support for audio and video embeds and also improved integrations with SoundCloud, Rdio and Spotify.
Great news for WordPress users. The version 3.6 aka Oscar has been released and it comes with some cool features including a beautiful new blog-centric theme, bullet-proof autosave and post locking, a revamped revision browser, native support for audio and video embeds, and improved integrations with Spotify, Rdio, and SoundCloud.
Awk's features have advanced considerably in the last decade — such as the addition of a debugger and a profiler — all without removing any of the elegance or terseness of the fabled little language.
Last week Andreas did an upstream release of the file synchronization software csync. Frequent readers know that csync is the sync engine that is used in the ownCloud client, so this is a very important and special release for us.
The House of Representatives has published all 51 titles of the U.S. Code in Extensible Markup Language (XML) format for download, as part of the leadership’s open government agenda. For developers and government watchdogs, it provides tools for rendering taggable, machine-readable versions of U.S. law.
Developers are already taking advantage of the release and building tools to facilitate the searching and rendering of the code. “Putting U.S. Code into XML doesn’t revolutionize the way legislators and citizens interact with the law yet, but it could,” said Hudson Hollister, executive director of the Data Transparency Coalition.
There seems to be more than enough tit-for-tat to go around in the ongoing patent battle between Apple and Samsung. If we wanted to be snarky, we’d say we haven’t seen this much legal maneuvering since the last days of the Beatles and the “sue me, sue you blues.”
Oddly, this fight puts us American FOSSers in the position of supporting the guys on foreign soil over our homegrown boys from Cupertino because Samsung is being sued and sued again over their implementation of Android, reportedly a version of Linux. Then again, maybe it’s not so odd given the fact that Apple doesn’t really make anything here. The United States is for dreaming stuff up and Asia is for actually getting things done, or so it sometimes seems.
When it comes to building vehicles, cars are relatively easy. So are boats. Heck, you can even make your own model rockets without a hitch (mostly). But putting together a plane requires some real aviation design and expertise.
You’ve heard of open-source software that makes its source code freely available. Well, get ready for open-source power tools.
ShopBot Tools, an established Durham manufacturer of computer-driven, multi-purpose industrial tools, has developed a portable, hand-held version aimed at consumers that it touts as an “open hardware platform.”
Intel started shipping their first "open-source" personal computer. According to several sources, Intel's open source PC may be described as the best in terms of bare-bones system related to x86 devs. It also aimed to target the growing DIY market and the chip giant is well on its way in exploring what it has to offer.
Collaboration is one of the key principles of the open source way and a major topic here on opensource.com. One of our goals to highlight great collaboration stories, and when we discuss collaboration, the need for the perfect collaboration tool frequently comes up. One article, Avoid the tool trap when building communities, provides some great insights (hint: people create community, not tools).
As anticipated, the LLVM Clang compiler has now enabled the use of its SLP Vectorizer by default.
LLVM developers have been anticipating turning on SLP vectorization by default and with today's code activity they finally have turned it on when using the -O3 compiler optimization level.
We're pleased to announce PyPy 2.1, which targets version 2.7.3 of the Python language. This is the first release with official support for ARM processors in the JIT. This release also contains several bugfixes and performance improvements.
The co-editor of Boing Boing, novelist and fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation shares his tools for circumventing censorship in airports, easing back pain and sparking the curiosity of his 5-year-old daughter
A co-founder of one of Russia's most conspicuous Internet successes is said to be brain dead in a coma after being stricken suddenly while undergoing care for what the company described as "a treatable form of cancer."
Spy agency putting pressure on agents not to divulge information to media, congress about events surrounding 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, CNN reports
A new field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism provides evidence confirming revival of the use of "double tap" tactics that target rescuers coming to the scene of a previous drone strike.
The Bureau'(TBIJ) study concentrated mainly on strikes near a single village in North Waziristan many aimed at senior Al Qaeda figure Yahya al-Libi. He was finally killed in a strike on June 4, 2012.
The original Benghazi scandal began when internal security at Benghazi was reduced from 34 people to just three by the State Department. Instead, groups known to be tied to al Qaeda terrorists were hired to guard the Benghazi consulate. These terror-linked guards abandoned Benghazi shortly before the attack. The State Department and the White House changed the Benghazi talking points significantly before the attack was announced to the public, causing some to claim the Benghazi scandal should impeach Obama since it’s claimed the actions were taken for political reasons.
Oh, I know, I know: for over half a century your professors, Hollywood, the media, etc. have all hammered away that Batista was “a U.S. backed dictator!” and that, while fighting Batista, the Castro rebels also fought heroically and David-like against brutal and Goliath-like “Yankee imperialism!” But actually:
The original, official account of last year’s attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, can be summed up as follows: A mob of Libyan demonstrators, enraged by a short You Tube video clip which insulted the Prophet Muhammed, stormed the Consulate and set it ablaze. No US military assets were available to effect a rescue mission and four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, tragically died. The President was barely aware of the situation and two of the most powerful agencies of the most powerful government on Earth – the US Department of State and Department of Defense – were unable to obtain real-time information of events on the ground and were also unable to do anything about it. Not one single individual has accepted any responsibility. As former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “what difference, at this point, does it make?”
One unnamed CIA source calls the Agency's efforts to silence those who know the truth about Benghazi "unprecedented." CIA agents operating in Benghazi have been subjected to monthly polygraph exams since January, according to "a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings." These lie detector tests are being conducted in a bid to discern whether any agents are leaking information to Congress or the media.
Prior to 2009, the CIA did not belong to any political party. Now, if this report is accurate, it’s looking like it has become an arm of Organizing for Action.
SEVEN people were killed and three others injured in a US drone attack on a residential compound in Shawal tehsil of North Waziristan Agency on Sunday evening. According to the details, the drone fired two missiles minutes before Iftar at the compound in Sheenkai Narai area, about fifty kilometers from the Afghan border, destroying the house and the bodies of the deceased were charred beyond recognition.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Pakistan that he hoped the drone strikes against militants would end "very, very soon".
Today we have a review of Mark Mazzetti’s new book about the CIA’s drone war, discussing America’s adoption of assassination as one its major modes of warfare. It’s a momentous step which, like the other large mad policies begun by America during the past decade, we have made thoughtlessly — and will later regret.
Afghanistan’s NATO-led force has launched an investigation into the accidental killing of five Afghan policemen in a US air attack during an overnight operation that injured two others, the force said on Thursday.
His crime was to expose the criminal nature of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US ruling elite were particularly affronted by the leaking of footage showing US forces killing unarmed people in Iraq.
While proclaiming Manning's guilt, Barack Obama himself is guilty of numerous crimes. He has sent drones around the world to kill people on the basis of suspicion.
CIA Director John Brennan sent a letter to the survivors of the Benghazi attacks inviting them to share information with congressional committees.
Sources told CNN that 35 Americans were in Benghazi that night — 21 of whom were working out of the annex — and that several were wounded, some seriously.
US Army private Bradley Manning was convicted on 19 counts, including charges under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for leaking approximately 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks.
While it was a relief that he was not convicted of the worst charge, "aiding the enemy", the verdict remains deeply troubling and could potentially result in a sentence of life in prison.
60 Minutes reporter Liz Hayes discusses her time inside the Ecuadorian Embassy with Julian Assange, his take on current Australian politics and Julian's concern for whistle-blowers Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning.
So how might the government deal with its classification problem? Herb Lin, a researcher at the National Academy of Sciences, believes that budgets must be used to change behavior.
When Republicans invite a Democrat to testify at a congressional hearing and Democrats invite a Republican, we should pay attention. Such cross-partisan connections aren’t common and typically indicate that congressional leaders are trying to answer difficult questions. That was certainly the case recently, when the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on how to end “too big to fail.”
On July 9, the Organization of American States held a special session to discuss the shocking behavior of the European states that had refused to allow the government plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales to enter their airspace.
National Security Administration whistleblower Edward Snowden fits the mold too well. By coming forward to journalist Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, Snowden creates news and commands attention from Obama Administration, Congress, European Union, trading partners and citizens across the globe.
NSA is an out-of-control monster, Snowden contends. Top brass lie to Congress. Technocrats flout congressional authorization by conducting blanket searches when Congress okayed individual ones. Massive, intrusive surveillance of phone calls, email, web searches, Facebook accounts accompanied by secret orders of a secret court compromise and transform powerful American telecommunications network operators and Internet behemoths into spy engines.
Everyone should read and understand the implications of these two sentences from the 2011 report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC).
In response to many torrent sites being blocked by ISPs in the UK, dozens of proxies sprang up to ensure that users could still enjoy access. However, ISPs responded to rightsholder requests by blocking proxy sites too. Now a new service has appeared that not only unblocks torrent sites, but also unblocks proxies. It’s called Immunicity – and it’ll crack Cameron’s porn filter too.
As Americans sort through their feelings regarding the disclosure of the massive collection of metadata by the National SecurityAdministration, we are now learning of what may be a far more insidious violation of our constitutional rights at the hands of a
Activists in 20 cities protested Sunday against the National Security Administration’s surveillance programs that track Americans’ phone and email records.
Documents provided by two House members demonstrate how they are blocked from exercising any oversight over domestic surveillance
The vice chairman on the U.S. Senate intelligence Committee denied members of Congress were being blocked from seeing details of intelligence programs.
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s revelations that the US government essentially monitors all communications going in and out of the US have led to accusations that the monitoring program is actually much wider than initially suspected. This is because international calls between two different parties in non-US countries are often routed through the US telephone exchange system, where the NSA has access.
FreedomWeb, an Irish company known for providing hosting for Tor "hidden services" -- services reached over the Tor anonymized/encrypted network -- has shut down after its owner, Eric Eoin Marques, was arrested over allegations that he had facilitated the spread of child pornography. Users of Tor hidden services report that their copies of "Tor Browser" (a modified, locked-down version of Firefox that uses Tor by default) were infected with malicious Javascript that de-anonymized them, and speculate that this may have originated with with FBI.
With this city repeatedly roiled by civil protests and the public’s attention sharply focused on government surveillance, local officials are pushing forward with a federally funded project to link surveillance cameras, license-plate readers, gunshot detectors, Twitter feeds, alarm notifications and other data into a unified “situational awareness” tool for law enforcement.
The Wikimedia Foundation is speeding up its implementation of SSL encryption in light of surveillance revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden, claiming it had been the target of one of the programs.
The group, which manages Wikipedia, said it appeared to have been “specifically targeted by XKeyscore”, a program that assembles metadata on targets selected by the National Security Agency (NSA).
ProPublica has produced a video showing, point-by-point all the ways that US government officials, all the way up to Obama, have told blatant lies about the details and extent of NSA spying.
Anyone Who Says the Government Only Spies On Metadata Is Sadly Mistaken
The U.S. government's efforts to recruit talented hackers could suffer from the recent revelations about its vast domestic surveillance programs, as many private researchers express disillusionment with the National Security Agency.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-revelations-hurt-collaboration-with-hackers-who-now-feel-betrayed-2013-8#ixzz2azNCmCii
Law-enforcement officials are expanding the range of methods and means they use for surveillance purposes. Now they are using tools routinely used by computer hackers while engaging in criminal acts. Federal agencies have largely kept quiet about these capabilities, but court documents and interviews with people involved in the programs provide new details about the hacking tools, including spyware delivered to computers and phones through email or web links. Such techniques are more commonly associated with attacks by criminals than surveillance conducted by law enforcement agencies.
The U.S. government's efforts to recruit talented hackers could suffer from the recent revelations about its vast domestic surveillance programs, as many private researchers express disillusionment with the National Security Agency.
More than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the US still has several military bases in Germany. Experts think that they could play a key role for the NSA's activities.
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who initially broke the Edward Snowden story, said the "top secret" leaked training slides showed that NSA analysts were able to search "with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals."
Germany has ended a spy treaty with the United States and Britain. The announcement was made Friday. This decision means the end of an agreement that goes back to the Cold War era.
Privacy has a long tradition in modern Germany. In 1983 the German government wanted to organize a census and drafted a law for this census. People protested against this law in front of Germany’s highest court Bundesverfassungsgericht (“federal constitutional court”). The court did not only stop the census but went much further and did something which has never happened before in German history: the court created a new civil right directly derived from the other civil rights.
Wikipedia is taking steps to make its site ‘unsnoopable’ to the NSA following revelations that its site users were being spied on. The measures will include the use of secure encryption for its logged-in users to minimize eavesdropping.
There are tight controls on the NSA’s access to U.S. phone records and data from U.S. Internet companies, the agency’s director says.
Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry mobile phones.
More than 80 percent of adult Americans have a cellphone, and they make heavy use of them: calling for more than 2.3 trillion minutes a year and sending nearly 2.2 trillion text messages annually. And it is fair to assume that a good many of those users consider what they do with their devices to be private. It is far from certain, though, that the Constitution protects cellphone privacy. The courts are starting to give answers to that question.
*Well, what else can he do, practically speaking? After all, it’s not like the guys who run the NSA invented *themselves.*
As a followup, the terrorists won another victory with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security on November 25, 2002. This department gives a much more menacing facade to the federal government and proved to be the moment when American citizens got the idea that they were viewed as the enemy by their own government. Thankfully, our nation's soul was not entirely obliterated. We have also enjoyed victories in the War on Terror, such as the failing of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (nicknamed the "PATRIOT II Act").
Campaigners say mood has shifted in their favour since 4 July demonstrations against government surveillance
In 2001, the Patriot Act opened the door to US government monitoring of Americans without a warrant. It was unconstitutional, but most in Congress over my strong objection were so determined to do something after the attacks of 9/11 that they did not seem to give it too much thought. Civil liberties groups were concerned, and some of us in Congress warned about giving up our liberties even in the post-9/11 panic. But at the time most Americans did not seem too worried about the intrusion.
Section 230 of the law broadly protects Internet publishers and service providers from responsibility for user-generated content on their sites. But in June, a group of state attorneys general proposed a change to the law that would allow prosecution of publishers in cases where user-posted content violates state law.
Divide activists into four groups: Radicals, Idealists, Realists and Opportunists. The Opportunists are in it for themselves and can be pulled away for their own self-interest. The Realists can be convinced that transformative change is not possible and we must settle for what is possible. Idealists can be convinced they have the facts wrong and pulled to the Realist camp. Radicals, who see the system as corrupt and needing transformation, need to be isolated and discredited, using false charges to assassinate their character is a common tactic.
As representative democracy sinks into crisis, we need to go back to democracy in its original meaning as rule of the people. What could this look like?
On July 9, the Organization of American States held a special session to discuss the shocking behavior of the European states that had refused to allow the government plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales to enter their airspace.
Morales was flying home from a Moscow summit on July 3. In an interview there he had said he was open to offering political asylum to Edward J. Snowden, the former U.S. spy-agency contractor wanted by Washington on espionage charges, who was in the Moscow airport.
Hackers disabled several websites of New Zealand's ruling party to protest a new law that would enable the country’s spy agency to snoop on its citizens. Kim Dotcom said hacking the sites only gave PM John Key “a new excuse to pass the GCSB bill”.
Government ministers and MPs are divided on whether the hacking of National Party websites is a legitimate protest or cyber crime.
But the hackers' actions have drawn the ire of internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.
The websites of 14 Government ministers, MPs and associated groups are out of order after being hacked by a group called "Anonymous'' in protest at the GCSB legislation before Parliament.
The Detroit Guild on Thursday sent a letter to Police Chief James Craig denouncing Free Press photographer Mandi Wright’s arrest last week after filming an arrest with an iPhone.
“The Guild demands that you issue a formal apology to Wright and that you take disciplinary action against the officers responsible for this illegal conduct against a photo journalist, who was just doing her job while witnessing a police arrest on a public street,” guild president Lou Mleczko wrote. He also sent a letter to Free Press publisher Paul Anger urging the organization “to take further action directed at the Detroit Police Department.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee, looking to provide protections for journalists and their sources, ran into a roadblock Thursday when lawmakers couldn’t agree on the definition of “journalist.”
Under the legislation, journalists wouldn’t have to comply with subpoenas or court orders forcing them to reveal sources or confidential information unless a judge first determines there’s reason to think that a crime has occurred and government officials have exhausted all other alternatives.
But despite the impressive sounding title, Spalding doesn’t know squat about nullification, as he’s demonstrated time and again in his confused but emphatic dissertations on the subject.
But the situation is far more serious than what we thought. Yes, our Constitution is and has been under attack. And yes, the relationship between the individual and the government has been fundamentally altered. But the document that perhaps may be even more significant to us as Americans, the Declaration of Independence, is also under attack. The attack, if we want to be intellectually honest, started with the man the government touts as the greatest American president Abraham Lincoln.
Tucked away in Google Fiber's terms of service is one clause that might annoy some technically inclined users. "Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you to do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection," Google tells subscribers to its Gigabit Internet service.
There aren't as many amicus briefs in this second Viacom appeal as there were in the first, less than half, but there are six die-hards supporting Viacom's second appeal who have just filed their amicus briefs in Viacom v. YouTube-Google. They don't understand the Internet. They hate the DMCA's Safe Harbor provision, and they have learned absolutely nothing from history or from the rulings in this case so far.
After swinging and missing twice, Viacom is telling an appeals court it needs an umpire who isn't blind to YouTube's alleged copyright infringement.
In its ongoing war against online piracy, the MPAA is currently recruiting new soldiers. One of the open positions that caught our eye recently is that of an “Internet Analyst,” tasked with manipulating media files and monitoring social networks, communities and forums. For those still in school the MPAA also has a job opening for an unpaid summer intern to assist with various “content protection” projects.
A book published during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur has a greater chance of being in print today than one published during the time of Reagan.
Last year I wrote about some very interesting research being done by Paul J. Heald at the University of Illinois, based on software that crawled Amazon for a random selection of books. At the time, his results were only preliminary, but they were nevertheless startling: There were as many books available from the 1910s as there were from the 2000s. The number of books from the 1850s was double the number available from the 1950s. Why? Copyright protections (which cover titles published in 1923 and after) had squashed the market for books from the middle of the 20th century, keeping those titles off shelves and out of the hands of the reading public.
The U.S. Department of Commerce today released a green paper on Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy (Green Paper) to advance discussion on a set of policy issues critical to economic growth. The Green Paper discusses the goals of maintaining an appropriate balance between rights and exceptions as the law continues to be updated; ensuring that copyright can be meaningfully enforced on the Internet; and furthering the development of an efficient online marketplace.
A 2010 Planet Money podcast with “Hollywood economist” Edward Epstein explains how it’s done. For each new film, a movie “is set up as its own corporation, the entire point of which is to lose money” by paying fees to the studio producing the movie. So if Superhero Studios decides to film Spider-Man 10, they create a shell company, Spider-Man 10 Incorporated. Superhero Studios then overcharges Spider-Man 10 Inc for every aspect of making, marketing, and distributing the movie. By the time Superhero Studios finishes paying itself (through Spider-Man 10 Inc) to perform work that costs $100 million, Spider-Man 10 Inc will be on the hook for one billion dollars.
Companies involved in open-source code, crowdsourcing, and fair use of intellectual property on Thursday delivered a strong message to U.S. lawmakers reviewing IP laws: Don't forget about our businesses.
Companies involved in open-source code, crowdsourcing, and fair use of intellectual property on Thursday delivered a strong message to U.S. lawmakers reviewing IP laws: Don't forget about our businesses.
The primary defense of the necessity of the US National Security Agency’s broad spying powers—including, apparently, recording pretty much everything anyone anywhere is doing on the internet—is that its activities are necessary to protect against terrorists and violent criminals. But a report published Saturday in the New York Times indicates that federal agencies with far more mundane mandates are unable to resist the lure of the NSA’s vast trove of data.
When I founded the Swedish Pirate Party and decided to change the political landscape of the copyright monopoly, I frequently told reporters that the plan was to change Sweden, Europe, and the world – in that order. They usually backed away wondering whether I was serious, so I laid out the plan for them.