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Links 15/1/2015: KDE Plasma 5.2 Beta, Elive 2.5.2 Beta





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Popular Open Source CSS Frameworks for Developers
    Whether you’re a CSS rookie or frontend virtuoso, frameworks can be used effectively during the early stages of development. Crafting a website from scratch is sometimes useful and oftentimes necessary. But it’s not the only solution in this wacky open source wonderland.


  • A Deeper Dive Into the Shark Tank: How Open Source Technology Enables Agile Business Growth
    ABC’s Shark Tank is a US television show and a favorite among American entrepreneurs. Each week, business owners offer up a piece of their equity in exchange for cash from savvy and respected investors. It’s exciting to see entrepreneurs get their dreams funded — but what do these contestants have in common? And although a majority are using WordPress, what other platforms and CMSs are these businesses running on?


  • Lumicall: big steps forward, help needed
    Lumicall, the free, open source and secure alternative to Viber and Skype.


  • Under the hood of I2P, the Tor alternative that reloaded Silk Road
    Tor is apparently no longer a safe place to run a marketplace for illegal goods and services. With the alleged operator of the original Silk Road marketplace, Ross Ulbricht, now going to trial, the arrest of his alleged successor and a number of others in a joint US-European law enforcement operation, and the seizure of dozens of servers that hosted "hidden services" on the anonymizing network, the operators of the latest iteration of Silk Road have packed their tents and moved to a new territory: the previously low-profile I2P anonymizing network.


  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome



      • Google Chrome Stable Updated with New Flash Version, but Not for Linux
        The Google developers have been keeping themselves busy and they've released a new stable version of the Google Chrome browser that comes with an updated Flash (not for Linux) and a few other changes and fixes.


      • Chrome, Contributing Made Easy, and Linux Kills
        Today in Linux news Jim Mendenhall discusses whether Chrome OS is a Linux distribution. In other news, Konrad Zapałowicz said contributing to the Linux kernel is easier that one might imagine and another Linus quote is making headlines. Elsewhere, Danny Stieben compares Linux to BSD and OpenSource.com is wondering which distro you use.




    • Mozilla



      • Firefox 35 Is Officially Released
        Mozilla has announced that a new version of the Firefox browser, 35.0, has been released and is now available for download. As usual, the new release is full of interesting changes and improvements, although it's not all that exciting.


      • Support Collab House Indiegogo Campaign
        who has been a contributor for many years. Vineel is raising money for Collab House, a Collaborative Community Space in India which has been used for many Mozilla India events and other open source projects.


      • Fresh Player Plugin Sees New Release (Pepper Flash Wrapper For Firefox)
        The Adobe Flash Player plugin that's bundled with Google Chrome is in the form of a PPAPI (or Pepper Plugin API) plugin and Mozilla isn't interested in adding support for it. Because of this, Rinat Ibragimov has developed Fresh Player Plugin, a wrapper that allows Linux users to use Pepper Flash from Google Chrome in Firefox and other NPAPI-compatible browsers.


      • Firefox says Hello! on PCLinuxOS and OpenMandriva
        The new update to Firefox 35 is available on PCLinuxOS and OpenMandriva.

        I have been expecting this update because it includes Hello, the new video-call feature from Mozilla.






  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Go vote on OpenStack Foundation bylaws
      When open source projects grow, their governance models must evolve to support them. We’ve written on the governance of the OpenStack project before, but an important event taking place this week is to make some modifications that might make a big difference.




  • Funding



    • NoSQL Pioneer Basho Scores $25M To Attempt A Comeback
      Basho was once a rising star in the NoSQL space, but over time other vendors began to move in, and it lost a step or two — then came a big turnover of key personnel last year. With the company ready to start anew, CEO Adam Wray says a new $25M cash infusion should help get Basho moving.




  • BSD



    • Linux vs. BSD: Which Should You Use?
      At MakeUseOf, we cover Linux quite a bit as the “alternative” to Windows and Mac OS X. However, those aren’t the only three operating systems out there — there’s also the BSD family of Unix-like operating systems, which are technically speaking different from Linux.

      In the name of fair competition, it’s time that we gave BSD operating systems some recognition as well. And there’s no better way to do that than to compare them against Linux. What’s different about BSD operating systems, and should you be running it instead of Linux? How does Linux and the best BSD desktop OS, PC-BSD, compare on the desktop?


    • DragonFlyBSD Pushes Big Sound System Update, Borrowed From FreeBSD
      Users of DragonFlyBSD on the desktop (or otherwise using sound on this popular BSD platform) will benefit from the next major update of the operating system.

      DragonFlyBSD has pulled in the sound system from the FreeBSD 11 development code and it offers a huge improvement over the previous code, which was from FreeBSD 6.x.

      With this new sound system update there's smarter volume controls, improved HDMI/DisplayPort audio, an easy way to switch the default sound device, and HTML5/YouTube videos should now play with sound out-of-the-box. There's also new hardware support with this new sound update.


    • BatMon.app OpenBSD ACPI support




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • These pictures are worth 1,024 words
      These beautiful badges come in four different styles, each with three color schemes to pick from. They're perfect for sharing on social media or embedding on your Web site or blog, and we've provided embed code that links back to pages that will help new people get acquainted with free software.


    • Norwegian BokmÃ¥l subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation
      A few days ago, the Free Software Foundation announced a new video explaining Free software in simple terms. The video named User Liberation is 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a way to explain what Free Software is all about. Unfortunately several of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did not make sense to show it to them.




  • Project Releases



    • RcppGSL 0.2.3
      A new version of RcppGSL is now on CRAN today. This package provides an interface from R to the GNU GSL using our Rcpp.


    • Lua 5.3 Brings Support For Integers & UTF-8 Support
      Lua 5.3 was released today with a variety of new features for this lightweight scripting language.

      The big ticket items for Lua 5.3 is support for integers, official support for 32-bit numbers, bitwise operators, basic UTF-8 support, and functions to pack/unpack values.




  • Licensing



    • Allwinner Accused of Breaking Linux License Rules
      Fabless processor company Allwinner Technology Co. Ltd. (Zhuhai, China) has been accused of violating the GNU General Public License (GPL) under which Linux is distributed.

      The alleged violations are within the software development kits that support the writing of software for some of Allwinner's 32-bit system-chips, according to Linux-Sunxi, a community of open-source developers that has formed around the Allwinner SoCs. The Linux kernel is at the heart of the Android operating system, and therefore a significant factor in the tablet computer market which has been a key part of Allwinner's business to date.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Crowdfunded Open-Source Dildo? Crowdfunded Open-Source Dildo.
      A startup called Comingle is trying to raise $50,000 to launch The Mod, a "multivibrating open-source dildo." OK, you've got my attention.


    • Open Data



      • OpenStreetMap: Help us #MapLesotho
        You are invited to participate in a mapping event with OpenStreetMap (OSM) that will kick off on January 16, 2015 called #MapLesotho Mapathon! Last year, we had 5 out of 50,000 American OSM users participate. By contrast Germany had over 200 and Poland over 40. Let’s show the world that America can map with OSM!






  • Programming



    • What is a good IDE for C/C++ on Linux
      "A real coder doesn't use an IDE, a real coder uses [insert a text editor name here] with such and such plugins." We all heard that somewhere. Yet, as much as one can agree with that statement, an IDE remains quite useful. An IDE is easy to set up and use out of the box. Hence there is no better way to start coding a project from scratch. So for this post, let me present you with my list of good IDEs for C/C++ on Linux. Why is C/C++ specifically? Because C is my favorite language, and we need to start somewhere. Also note that there are in general a lot of ways to code in C, so in order to trim down the list, I only selected "real out-of-the-box IDE", not text editors like Gedit or Vim pumped with plugins. Not that this alternative is bad in any way, just that the list will go on forever if I include text editors.


    • The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2015






Leftovers



  • Oxford Junior Dictionary’s replacement of ‘natural’ words with 21st-century terms sparks outcry
    Margaret Atwood and Andrew Motion among authors protesting at dropping definitions of words like ‘acorn’ and ‘buttercup’ in favour of ‘broadband’ and ‘cut and paste’


  • Same Performance, Better Grades
    Academic achievement hasn't improved much, so why are college-goers getting higher GPAs than ever before?


  • The Clever Way Amazon Gets Away With Not Always Offering The Lowest Prices
    The average shopper likely thinks Amazon has the lowest prices anywhere on the web.

    That's not always true. In fact, Amazon will tweak its prices many times per hour (equaling millions of individual price changes per day), taking advantage of the psychology of price perception.


  • Security



    • Tuesday's security updates


    • You can’t stop crypto, Mr. Cameron
      I am COO of a London-based startup, Eris Industries, that specialises in distributed computing. Hence, cryptography is involved. If the UK bans proper E2E encryption we are going to pack our bags for more liberal climes such as Germany, the U.S., the People’s Republic of China, Zimbabwe, or Iraq.


    • Security Tests – SCAP Content
      While the SCAP technologies are interesting, they have limited value without security content – the actual set of security tests run by SCAP. Fortunately there is a good set of content available that can be used as a starting point.


    • Cyberattack Results In Physical Damage To German Steel Mill's Blast Furnance
      A report [pdf link] recently released by Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) details only the second known cyberattack that has resulted in physical damage. According to the report, hackers accessed a steel mill's production network via the corporate network, following a spear-phishing attack. This then allowed them access to a variety of production controls, culminating in the attackers' control of a blast furnace, which prevented it from being shut down in a "regulated manner." The end result? "Massive damage to the system."




  • Transparency Reporting



    • Letter to Senate crossbenchers in relation to Julian Assange
      Please do not be distracted by the array of reputational attacks – including that he is everything from a rapist, megalomaniac and a traitor - that have been made on Mr Assange. The claims are entirely irrelevant and have no bearing on his fundamental human rights or the right to the presumption of innocence. Indeed Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Murdoch Press Redundant as Liberals Attack Wikileaks and Others
      Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, has been trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for two and a half years. He has not been charged with any crime. Wikileaks has extensively exposed the US military’s crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, including its killing of journalists - and the USA’s ongoing efforts to oust democratic governments. The Swedes have used sexual assault allegations against Assange which are based on ridiculously flimsy evidence as a pretext to do the USA’s dirty work. Highlighting Sweden’s gross hypocrisy and its true motives in the Assange case, in 2001, US agents sexually assaulted two “rendition” victims in Stokholm in the presence of Swedish officials. Nobody has been prosecuted for it. One positive outcome of Assange having challenged Sweden’s efforts to extradite him for questioning is that it forced the UK High Court to describe the allegations against him. I strongly encourage people to read the court’s account (paragraphs 74-76 and 93 in particular). Under normal circumstances (i.e. when US “security interests” are not involved) allegations based on such weak evidence would get tossed by a legal system with any respect for the accused’s presumption of innocence. The only credible reason Swedish prosecutors have not dismissed them (as they initially did) is to punish Assange for his work with Wikileaks. There is even less excuse for Sweden’s refusal to question Assange via Skype or by travelling to the UK. Swedish authorities recently questioned a professional hockey player via Skype regarding assault allegations so that he wouldn’t miss a game. I learned about that from the Wikileaks Twitter account many UK liberals would like everyone to ignore.


    • NY Times Reporter Blasts Fox News' "Political Attempt To Make [Obama] Look Like He Is Soft" On Terror Following Paris Attacks




  • Privacy



    • Letters to the editor: Mass surveillance is not needed


    • Could Cameron Be So Stupid as to Undermine Encryption?
      Taken at face value, his words imply much, much more. As well as those chat apps, encrypted email would be affected. The UK government might be able to use warrants to twist the arm of big companies like Google and Microsoft to hand over encryption keys for specific users, but it won't be able to do anything about users of smaller services that have been set up specifically to avoid that eventuality. And what about PGP, Tor and OpenVPN? Even HTTPS could be a problem, since soon many sites will be using certificates provided by the Let's Encrypt project, and unlike companies providing such services, it will doubtless be unwilling to hand over anything to British government.
    • Can the government ban encryption?
      But in an era when communication takes many forms, and with the added problem that much of this communication is encrypted, how easy is it to turn this sound bite into reality?

      [...]

      "Encryption is mathematics, not technology. It can't be suppressed by law," Mr Bloch told the BBC.

      Whatever route the government elected in the UK in May decides to go, Prof Woodward hopes that it will listen carefully to the technology industry.

      "The government will need to take a lot of wide-ranging advice as this has the potential to go spectacularly wrong."

      It is also worth noting, he added, that the men involved in the Paris shootings were known to the authorities and had been under surveillance until it was deemed that the threat from them had lessened.

      "The security forces need better resources not more powers."


    • What does David Cameron want?
      Of course, that is impossible. You cannot 'always' be able to open, read, or find a record of a communication. Nor should it be compulsory for you and I to record every time time we talk to someone, online or offline. But we should take a moment to consider what Cameron might actually be proposing.


    • UK declares war on privacy under the facade of "national security"


    • ORG responds to Cameron's call for legal powers to break encryption


    • Cameron wants to ban encryption – he can say goodbye to digital Britain
      On Monday David Cameron managed a rare political treble: he proposed a policy that is draconian, stupid and economically destructive.

      The prime minister made comments widely interpreted as proposing a ban on end-to-end encryption in messages – the technology that protects online communications, shopping, banking, personal data and more.

      “[I]n our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?”, the prime minister asked rhetorically.


    • 'David Cameron hates your privacy'
      Sorry, but that's not a system, it's a bit of red tape. A pathetic formality lies between the government and access to the most sensitive personal communications data ever amassed. The content -- not just the metadata -- of your phone and email conversations, your instant messaging and literally anything else you can think of. It's all fair game in Cameron's eyes. Strong encryption may well face some sort of ban or prohibition. The intimate details of your internet activity could be watched over at will.


    • Exclusive: Edward Snowden on Cyber Warfare
      It’s the new NSA director saying that the alleged damage from the leaks was way overblown.


    • Attack in France shouldn’t blunt drive for NSA surveillance reform
      Politicians and Beltway commentators are today consumed in a debate over whether President Obama, in failing to attend the march in Paris, failed to show solidarity with the victims of the terror attack and the cause of free speech in general.


    • A Summary of the Snoopers’ Charter
      It was almost inevitable that the Communications Data Bill, aka the Snoopers’ Charter, would be called for once again in the aftermath of the attacks in Paris. Having regenerated a number of times since the powers were first mooted in 2007 under a Labour Government, the powers have proved to continuously be controversial due to their un-targeted nature.
    • How To Safeguard Surveillance Laws
      I watch with alarm as, in the wake of the barbaric murders in France, politicians seek increased surveillance powers for the security services.


    • Letters from ORG's Advisory Council members: Mass surveillance is not needed
      It is not just libertarians who are dismayed by the growing calls for the return of the Snooper’s Charter in response to events in Paris, but anyone who has studied the reality of recent terrorist atrocities and the role of intelligence and surveillance.

      The Charlie Hebdo shooters — just like the murderers of Lee Rigby and the Boston bombing suspects — were known to the authorities, and had been for years, linked with known groups.




  • Civil Rights



    • Times Reporter Will Not Be Called to Testify in Leak Case
      James Risen, a New York Times reporter, will not be called to testify at a leak trial scheduled to begin this week, lawyers said Monday, ending a seven-year legal fight over whether he could be forced to identify his confidential sources.

      The Justice Department wanted Mr. Risen to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former C.I.A. officer charged with providing him details about a botched operation in Iran that was intended to disrupt that country’s nuclear program. Mr. Sterling had raised concerns inside the government about the program, and prosecutors suspect he took those concerns to Mr. Risen, who described the program in his 2006 book, “State of War.”


    • Trial Begins for Former C.I.A. Official Accused of Breaching National Security
      Twelve jurors and two alternates, an even mix of men and women, will hear the case in a trial that is expected to last three weeks. Prosecutors released a witness list that includes Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser, as well as several C.I.A. operatives who will testify behind screens and reveal only their first names and last initials.


    • DOJ, Which Once Claimed James Risen's Testimony Was Necessary, Now Tries To Block Other Side From Using Him
      The James Risen saga is basically over, but ended in a bizarre way. As you hopefully recall, this case goes back many years, and involves the DOJ trying to convict Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA official, of leaking info to Risen. However, Risen has made the compelling case that the DOJ's desire to involve him was an attempt to punish him for earlier work he'd done exposing questionable practices by the intelligence community -- and specifically to force Risen to give up a source, so that future whistleblowers can't trust him. This backfired massively, as Risen fought this entirely, promising never to give up his source, even as the issue went up the Supreme Court (which refused to hear the case), but technically ended with a court saying Risen had to give up his source. Risen still insisted that he would not, and he'd go to jail if he had to. This put Attorney General Eric Holder in a bit of a bind, as he'd promised not to put reporters in jail. Thus, last month, Holder blinked, saying the DOJ would not force Risen to give up his source. However, he was still supposed to testify, just not on that.


    • “There are indeed consequences”: The case against Gen. David Petraeus
      The Espionage Act is a bad law -- but here's why the former CIA director needs to be prosecuted for violating it


    • Obama Calls For New Hacking And Privacy Laws, Hackers Keep Hacking
      While the hacks on Monday appeared relatively superficial and limited to CENTCOM’s presence on third-party social media sites, the proposals from Obama targeted incidents where digital intruders access the inner workings of a company’s computer systems and steal personal data. When companies get hacked like this, executives, employees, law enforcement, and contractors can often find out about the incident long before the customers whose data has been breached.

      Obama today called for a single federal standard on notifying customers that their data has been breached, within 30 days of the hack.


    • Charlie Hebdo, “Free Speech” and the Hypocrisy of Pencils in Western Media
      To be fair, he wasn’t wholly responsible. If it wasn’t for all the lunacy that preceded him, I probably would have dismissed his cartoon as just another Herald Sun atrocity, more a piece of Murdoch-madness to be mocked rather than trigger for outrage.

      But context is everything. And after days of sanctimonious blather about freedom of speech and the Enlightenment values of Western civilisation, his was one pencil-warfare cartoon too many.

      The cartoon in question depicts two men – masked and armed Arab terrorists (is there any other kind of Arab?) – with a hail of bomb-like objects raining down on their heads. Only the bombs aren’t bombs. They are pens, pencils and quills.

      Get it? In the face of a medieval ideology that only understands the language of the gun, the West – the heroic, Enlightenment-inspired West – responds by reaffirming its commitment to resist barbarism with the weapons of ideas and freedom of expression.

      It is a stirring narrative repeated ad nauseam in newspapers across the globe. They have been filled with depictions of broken pencils re-sharpened to fight another day, or editorials declaring that we will defeat terrorism by our refusal to stop mocking Islam.


    • Feinstein’s Uphill Battle To Permanently Ban the Use of Torture
      “Never again.” This was the vow of many lawmakers and government officials when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its long-awaited so-called “torture report” examining the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA under the Bush administration.


    • Suspensions Voided for Two Ted Stevens Prosecutors
      Top U.S. Department of Justice officials violated policy in suspending two prosecutors involved in the botched case against the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, a federal board ruled this month in declaring the discipline invalid.


    • Letter From an Army Ranger: Here's Why You Should Think Twice About Joining the Military
      Make no mistake: whatever the news may say about the changing cast of characters the US is fighting and the changing motivations behind the changing names of our military "operations" around the world, you and I will have fought in the same war. It's hard to believe that you will be taking us into the 14th year of the Global War on Terror (whatever they may be calling it now). I wonder which one of the 668 US military bases worldwide you'll be sent to.

      [...]

      The number of non-combatants killed since 9/11 across the Greater Middle East in our ongoing war has been breathtaking and horrifying. Be prepared, when you fight, to take out more civilians than actual gun-toting or bomb-wielding "militants." At the least, an estimated 174,000 civilians died violent deaths as a result of US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan between 2001 and April 2014. In Iraq, over 70% of those who died are estimated to have been civilians. So get ready to contend with needless deaths and think about all those who have lost friends and family members in these wars, and themselves are now scarred for life. A lot of people who once would never have thought about fighting any type of war or attacking Americans now entertain the idea. In other words, you will be perpetuating war, handing it off to the future.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • Obama calls for end to 19 state laws that harm community broadband
      President Obama today called for an end to state laws that restrict the rights of cities and towns to build their own broadband networks.

      In a report titled, "Community-based broadband solutions: The benefits of competition and choice for community development and highspeed Internet access," the White House said it wants to "end laws that harm broadband service competition."




  • DRM



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • We Need to Stop the White House From Putting TPP and TTIP on the Fast Track To Ratification
      Senators are now working around the clock to re-introduce a bill that would put trade agreements on the fast track to passage in the US after those deals are finalized. Deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been negotiated in almost complete secrecy, except for private industry advocates serving on trade advisory committees who can read and comment on these texts. That has enabled these agreements to include extreme copyright and other digital policy provisions that would bind all signatory nations to draconian rules that would hinder free speech, privacy, and access to knowledge. Under fast track, also referred to as Trade Promotion Authority, lawmakers would only have a small window of time to conduct hearings over binding trade provisions and give an up-or-down vote on ratification of the agreement without any ability to amend it before they bind the United States to its terms.


    • Please Write to Your MP to Ask for Parliamentary Scrutiny of TTIP
      One of the many big problems with TTIP is the lack of democracy: it is being negotiated behind closed doors, with virtually no input from the public. The texts will be made available once the negotiations are complete, at which point it will not be possible to make changes. Even the national parliaments will be limited to a simple yes or no vote.


    • Copyrights



      • Record Labels Try to Force ISP to Disconnect Pirates


        A long running legal battle between the world's largest record labels and an Irish-based ISP has resumed today. Sony, Universal and Warner want UPC to warn and disconnect subscribers found sharing infringing content online but the ISP doesn't want to foot the bill.


      • Piracy Notices Boost Demand For Anonymous VPNs in Canada


        The mandatory piracy notifications that were implemented to deter copyright infringement in Canada have boosted the interest in anonymous file-sharing tools. Data from Google reveals a massive increase in searches for VPNs over the past two weeks, while VPN providers see a surge in traffic and sales.








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Technology: rights or responsibilities? - Part V
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