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Links 3/1/2015: Korora 21 (Darla) Beta





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • North Korea Linux 3.0 (Red Star OS) screenshot tour
    The desktop version North Korea Linux 3.0 is finally available for download and install, thanks to the same guy who initially brought us the server version of North Korea Linux. The ISO download has been popping up all over the place on torrent sites, and I’ve got a full screenshot tour of this odd but interesting Linux distribution. I suggest downloading it via Kick Ass Torrents.


  • Download the desktop version of North Korea Linux 3.0
    Martyn Williams at North Korea Tech reports on the public release of Red Star 3.0:

    The latest version of North Korea’s home-grown desktop operating system, Red Star Linux 3.0, was uploaded to BitTorrent on Monday. We first got a look at the operating system almost a year ago when screenshots were posted online.




  • Kernel Space



    • Graphics Stack



      • X.Org Server Saw More Code In 2014 Than 2013, But Its Heydays Are Over
        The X.Org Server had more code churn in 2014 than it did in 2013, but its pace has certainly slowed down compared to years prior. But at the same time for those thinking X.Org Server development is going the way of the dinosaur due to Mir and Wayland, you're sadly mistaken too.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt



      • SoK comes to an end
        The KHangMan was initially a KXmlGuiWindow, but the new UI did not need a few things like the menubars and such, for which it was changed to a QMainWindow.The Messages.sh script was initially placed in src/desktop/ , but since those 3 folders (desktop, harmattan, plasma-active) were about to go, it was moved from there to simply src/ , and it was modified to translate the qml files also. After all these changes the code needed some heavy cleanup, because a lot of functionalities already implemented in the QML code were also defined in the cpp code. Some of the other cleanup tasks were removing commented out statements, removing unnecessary variables, optimizing the code by removing some unncecessary statements, and so on.




    • GNOME Desktop/GTK



      • OpenPGP Smartcards and GNOME
        The combination of GnuPG and a OpenPGP smartcard (such as the YubiKey NEO) has been implemented and working well for around a decade. I recall starting to use it when I received a FSFE Fellowship card long time ago. Sadly there has been some regressions when using them under GNOME recently. I reinstalled my laptop with Debian Jessie (beta2) recently, and now took the time to work through the issue and write down a workaround.






  • Distributions



    • Arch Family



      • ArchBang New Release 2015
        Updated packages, Network Manager (nm-applet) for network connections, Firefox web browser and of course Gparted for all you power users




    • Red Hat Family



      • Red Hat Now Covered by Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald (NYSE:RHT)
        Several other analysts have also recently commented on the stock. Analysts at BMO Capital Markets raised their price target on shares of Red Hat to $77.00 in a research note on Tuesday. Separately, analysts at Piper Jaffray initiated coverage on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Tuesday. They set an overweight rating on the stock. Finally, analysts at William Blair reiterated an outperform rating on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Monday, December 22nd. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nineteen have issued a buy rating to the stock. Red Hat presently has a consensus rating of Buy and a consensus target price of $72.78.


      • Fedora



        • F21 Release Party in Brno
          I finally found time to write a blogpost about our F21 release party in Brno office of Red Hat. It took place on the release date – December 9th. It was, as always, well attended. It’s hard to estimate the total number of attendees, but it was definitely over 100. Unfortunately, F21 DVDs had not arrived yet, but we still had other swag for people to take: Fedora product stickers, Fedora logo stickers, case badges, badges, pins, flyers,…


        • Installing The AMD Catalyst Driver On Fedora 21
          Installing the AMD Catalyst (fglrx) driver on the latest Fedora release can sometimes be a challenge due to Fedora catering towards the open-source graphics drivers.

          With Fedora being on the bleeding-edge and not caring much about proprietary software support while the open-source graphics drivers continue to evolve, sometimes it can be a bit of a headache installing the AMD Catalyst/fglrx driver on the newest Fedora release, but generally it's possible.


        • Korora 21 (Darla) Beta - Now Available


          The Korora Project is very pleased to announce that the first beta release of version 21 (codename "Darla") is now available for download.

          Although this is a beta release of Korora, it is derived from Fedora 211 stable and should be ready for every day use. We are keen however, to hear any issues people encounter so that we can improve it for the final release. Feel free to bombard us on social media or log a report in our support system, Engage.


        • Korora 21 Now In Beta With Cinnamon 2.4 & More
          The first beta release of the Fedora-based Korora Linux distribution is now available that's powered by last month's Fedora 21.






    • Debian Family



      • Release Critical Bug report for Week 01


      • Weirdness with hplip package in Debian wheezy


      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu



          • Nokia Lumia 1020 Ubuntu OS Features Leaked
            There is a fresh leak being spread throughout the mobile device world from Team Ubuntu (via GizmoChina) that appears to reveal the Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone running a full version of Ubuntu OS Linux. This type of leak is hard to confirm one-hundred percent, but a series of images within the source website show the mobile device running the operating system effectively. The images appear to reveal the smartphone running the full version of the Ubuntu OS desktop operating system. Anyone who has used the Ubuntu Linux operating system previously should recognize the setup on the phone, as it featured a basic wallpaper with tiles commonly used for features and shortcuts set to the left hand side.


          • Meizu M1 Note to go open-source in 2015: Smartphone expected to feature Ubuntu Touch, to be launched at CES 2015
            Chinese smartphone brand Meizu, which not too long ago grabbed eyeballs of technology enthusiasts across the world by announcing its decision to convert its high-end smartphone, the MX4 to open-source, is now in the news again.

            This time it is because the China-based company's first Canonical Ubuntu-powered smartphone, the M1 Note running the Ubuntu Flyme operating platform is pegged for official launch during the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015) in Las Vegas.










  • Devices/Embedded



    • LG tips new 4K TVs running WebOS 2.0
      Following up on its well-received first batch of WebOS based smart TVs, LG has announced a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS.

      Following up on its well-received first batch of WebOS based smart TVs, LG just announced a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS. WebOS 2.0 offers up to 60 percent faster boot time, as well as an easier interface and easier connectivity to external devices. In addition, users can now customize their menus on the Launcher Bar.


    • Phones



      • So the Smartphone 'Bloodbath' Annual Preview for Year 2015 - This is so boring
        So yes, readers, it was an exhilirating ride. But it is now over. The bloodbath is gone. Samsung won the hardware war clearly. Android won the OS war, decisively. There are no dark horses left. We just learned a week ago that even the so-called ‘third ecosystem’ haha, Windows Phone, has actually failed to activate one third of all the Lumia Nokia smartphones shipped using that OS. So Windows is in reality a far worse disaster than has even been reported, and the Nokia collapse was the worst corporate management catastrophy ever witnessed. Well, we know all that, Elop the worst CEO of all time and all that. what we now will see in the coming years is more price wars that will cause unforseen profit warnings, more mergers and acquisitions like Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset business and Lenovo buying the Motorola business from Google. We may well see former greats like HTC and Blackberry being sold and buyers from Asia most likely China but could be India or elsewhere in Asia. Japan’s seven handset makers have gone through their own consolidation through mergers and acquisitions already shrinking from 7 manufacturers to 4. The South Korean market is in similar state now with Pantech being on the block.


      • Tizen



      • Android









Free Software/Open Source



  • Open source carries software-defined storage forward
    In my small home-office, I have hard drives, flash drives, and solid-state drives, which use FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, Btrfs, Ext3, and Ext4 file systems, and are connected to the computers with CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, ssh, and ftp over the Internet and Gigabit Ethernet with a variety of authentication systems based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Active Directory (AD). And, this, mind you, is a simple, small-business network.

    Is it any wonder then that companies, far, far larger then my little operation, want to abstract their storage concerns away with software-defined storage (SDS)? I think not!


  • Coreboot Ported To Another Lenovo ThinkPad
    While Coreboot is most commonly used by Google Chromebooks, an increasing number of Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are becoming compatible with Coreboot for initializing and booting the system with open-source software.


  • Open Source App Allows Easier Image Sharing in Google Hangouts


  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome



      • Google’s Chromebooks can now run Linux using a Chrome extension
        Google’s Chromebooks can now run Linux, François Beaufort, former frequent Chrome hacker who was hired by Google in 2013, revealed on a Google+ post. To run Linux, users will essentially have to enable developer mode, and use a Chrome extension named Crouton Chrome.

        Chromebook computers run on Google’s ChromeOS, which isn’t as full-fledged as Windows, OS X, or most Linux distributions for that matter. Google, however, has added several handy features to the operating system in the last couple of months. Chromebooks now support offline video playback and also lets users run a handful of Android applications.




    • Mozilla



      • Hats Off to Mozilla
        Firefox turned ten years old last November and celebrated the occasion with a new version (33.1) that featured a much-welcomed developer edition. It also featured a "forget" button that lets you backspace through time, blowing away history, cookies and open tabs: one more privacy tool for the shed.

        Those were two among many new moves by Mozilla, Firefox's parent, all siding with individuals leaning against two prevailing winds that have blown across the on-line world for at least a decade.






  • BSD



    • BSD Community is Too Insular
      First of all let me say I really like BSD. I enjoy studying it's history which extends back to 1978 when it was a mere add-on to Bell Labs Unix version 6. The longest uptime I've ever had on a computer was with OpenBSD. It's a fine piece of work.

      On the other hand when I look at the BSD community I see a less than friendly environment. It is rather like a gated community where you need to be invited in. Often when one goes to BSD forums one gets some mysterious error message and no access. IRC channels related to BSD are also invite only.


    • The Good & Bad Of ZFS + HAMMER File-Systems On BSD
      Among the pros of ZFS are it's self-healing, writable clones, fully journaling system using ZFS snapshots, compression, and portable storage. Among the viewed HAMMER positives are the focus on data integrity, great SQL database performance, lower RAM requirements, supports pseudo file-systems, fully open-source with a BSD license, etc. Of course, with each also comes various cons.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • A small update to our "User Liberation" video


      So we've now chucked this particular easter egg, and written this post to document the decision. Doing this reminded me of the relative impermanence of all digital media. DRM-pushing companies like Amazon and Apple who distribute videos and ebooks have the same capability, to go back and edit works after they are published. In many cases, they can even do it remotely, replacing works that you think of as living on a device in your home. Will they tell you about it when they do?

      Thank you to Urchin Studios for making the edits and for their amazing work on the project! It really demonstrates the power of free software and free formats, and debunks the myth that professional designers and animators must use proprietary software to be top notch.


    • Happy GNU year 2015!




  • Project Releases



    • Release 0.11 of ctioga2
      The possibilities of the new styling system are particularly interesting, and I'm working on ways to make it more powerful, and providing series of default style files that anyone could use as they want. Among other future changes, I want to improve the position of ticks, especially when using non-linear axes, and add functions to draw vector fields (though this still needs some thinking). Enjoy, and a happy new year to everyone !




  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming



    • Pulp in the New Year
      Pulp has used web.py as its web framework for a long time, but unfortunately that project has gone dormant. Since Pulp only uses a small set of web.py’s features (essentially using it as a thin WSGI adapter), replacing it is a reasonably straight-forward task. This gave us an opportunity to re-evaluate what we want out of a web framework and consider several compelling options.


    • My $2375 Amazon EC2 Mistake


      When I woke up the next morning, I had four emails from Amazon AWS and a missed phone call from Amazon AWS. Something about 140 servers running on my AWS account. What? How? I only had S3 keys on my GitHub and they where gone within 5 minutes!

      Turns out through the S3 API you can actually spin up EC2 instances, and my key had been spotted by a bot that continually searches GitHub for API keys. Amazon AWS customer support informed me this happens a lot recently, hackers have created an algorithm that searches GitHub 24 hours per day for API keys. Once it finds one it spins up max instances of EC2 servers to farm itself bitcoins.

      Boom! A $2375 bill in the morning. Just for trying to learn rails.

      Lucky for me, I explained my situation to Amazon customer support – and they knew I wasn’t bitcoin mining all night. Amazon was kind enough to drop the charges this time!


    • New tool to track use of open source Web code
      Prior to Libscore, developers contributed to front-end open source projects, hoping their work would be used at-large, but without having any concrete visibility.






Leftovers



  • Prince Andrew and 'naked pool parties' at his paedophile friend's house
    Juan Alessi, who spent 11 years working for Epstein, also told the Daily Mail how the Prince enjoyed daily massages by young women during his visits.

    He said Andrew emerged ‘smiling’ after the rub-downs which, he believes, were paid for by Epstein.


  • Science



    • Are two thirds of cancers really due to bad luck?
      A paper published in Science has been widely reported in the media today. According to media reports, such as this one, the paper showed that two thirds of cancers are simply due to bad luck, and only one third are due to environmental, lifestyle, or genetic risk factors.

      The paper shows no such thing, of course.

      It’s actually quite an interesting paper, and I’d encourage you to read it in full (though sadly it’s paywalled, so you may or may not be able to). But it did not show that two thirds of cancers are due to bad luck.




  • Health/Nutrition



    • Drug firms sway vets on antibiotics in food animals
      In 2016, a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy will give veterinarians a key role in combating a surge in antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” that infect humans. For the first time, the agency will require veterinarians, not farmers, to decide whenever antibiotics used by people are given to animals.




  • Security



    • DNSSEC
      Many registrars don’t support DNSSEC, if you use such a registrar (as I do) then you need to transfer your zone before you can productively use DNSSEC. Without the DS entries being signed by a registrar and included in the TLD no-one will recognise your signatures on zone data.


    • Friday's security updates


    • OpenBSD Moves to 5.7-beta
      As always, your testing is needed to ensure that any bugs are found and squashed early!




  • Transparency Reporting



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • How Fox News Covered Pope Francis' Action On Climate Change
      Fox News reported on Pope Francis' upcoming action on climate change by promoting climate change denial and suggesting that the pope is aligning with "extremists who favor widespread population control and wealth redistribution."


    • UK’s leading fund manager picks his stocks for 2015
      Britain’s leading fund manager, Neil Woodford, has warned that falling oil prices could prompt a rout in the global bond market as shale companies default on vast debts built up during the US fracking boom.


    • Every Time You Fly, You Trash The Planet — And There’s No Easy Fix
      When the latest international Climate Conference wrapped up in Lima, Peru, last month, delegates boarded their flights home without much official discussion of how the planes that shuttled them to the meeting had altered the climate.

      Aircraft currently contribute about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. That might not seem like much, but if the aviation industry were a country, it would be one of the world’s top 10 emitters of CO2. And its emissions are projected to grow between two and four times by 2050 without policy interventions.






  • Finance



    • TTIP Update XLVI
      There are *already* more than €30 billion worth of ISDS claims against EU nations

      [...]

      This is the key problem with ISDS: it places the rights of corporations above the rights of nations - indeed, in this case, above the rights of the EU to determine laws within its borders. ISDS cannot be "fixed", as the European Commission would have us believe, because it was designed with exactly this purpose in mind: it was introduced as a way of protecting investments in countries where the local rule of law could not be depended upon. Since that is manifestly not the case in the EU or US, it serves no purpose other than to undermine the strong legal systems there. The only solution is therefore to drop ISDS from TTIP, CETA and all future agreements.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Koch-Funded News Outlet Defends Dark-Money Organizations
      Conservative news outlet Watchdog.org released a six-part series defending dark-money organizations -- politically focused groups that conceal the identities of their donors -- but failed to disclose its own funding from the Koch brothers and other conservative dark-money players.




  • Privacy



  • Civil Rights



    • Fox News' Attack On Driver's Licenses For Undocumented Californians Is Full Of Falsehoods
      Fox News falsely claimed that California's new program to issue driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants amounted to "back door to citizenship" that would increase identity theft. But the program requires a stringent background check and shares the support of law enforcement and public officials who point to studies that show the program will lead to increased safety and transparency for citizens.


    • Who Goes to Jail? Matt Taibbi on "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap"
      In part two of our holiday special, we feature our April 2014 interview with Matt Taibbi about his book, "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap." The book asks why the vast majority of white-collar criminals have avoided prison since the financial crisis began, while an unequal justice system imprisons the poor and people of color on a mass scale. "It is much more grotesque to consider the non-enforcement of white-collar criminals when you do consider how incredibly aggressive law enforcement is with regard to everybody else," Taibbi says.


    • The lost detainees and the CIA's dungeons
      The executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on CIA torture was finally published on 9 December 2014, and it proved shocking, despite being highly-redacted and missing 9,400 documents "withheld by the White House".




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



  • DRM



    • Netflix Cracks Down on VPN and Proxy “Pirates”


      Netflix is starting to block subscribers who access its service using VPN services and other tools that bypass geolocation restrictions. The changes, which may also affect legitimate users, have been requested by the movie studios who want full control over what people can see in their respective countries.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Canadian ISPs and VPNs Now Have to Alert Pirating Customers
        Starting today Canadian Internet providers are required to forward copyright infringement notices to their subscribers. This notification scheme provides a safe harbor for ISPs but is also expected to result in a surge in piracy settlement schemes. The new law further causes trouble for VPN providers, who are now required to log customers for at least six months.








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