For thin clients to keep pace with the latest developments in the data center, they need up-to-date software clients and protocol standards. The earlier the firmware becomes obsolete, the more often the hardware is replaced. In order to avoid this, IGEL is releasing a further update for its IGEL Linux v4 firmware.
The 2015 Linux Jobs Report from The Linux Foundation and Dice was recently released. This forecasts the Linux job market based on a survey of Linux professionals and hiring managers. It found that managers are looking for more evidence of formal training and certifications when hiring Linux professionals.
Whether you’re a Windows XP refugee, looking for a way to keep a faithful computer running securely, or just someone who’s naturally curious, I highly recommend you check out our list of the best Linux distros and jump right in. You can trust the people who make Linux, and even join them if you want to.
And a few are threatening to go to Linux. Microsoft keeps removing things that people like and use and that is adding fuel to the fire as well.
So Maybe it is Microsoft who is endanger of collapsing and not the P.C.
Most people are happy with inexpensive Chromebooks. Some people, and I'm one of them, want top-of-the-line hardware and were willing to pay $1,449 for the Chromebook Pixel back in 2013. Now, Google will soon be releasing a Chromebook Pixel 2.
For the first time since its original release last April, Horizon can manage systems with both Windows and Linux applications and desktops.
VMware released a new version of its all-purpose Horizon 6 virtualization package, continuing the expansion of its next-gen virtual desktop product line.
It has been a while since I wrote the first two articles in my series on Docker security. This article will give an update on what has been added to Docker since then and cover new functionality that is going through the merge process with upstream Docker.
Nicolas Dichtel and Thierry Herbelot pointed out that the directories in the /proc filesystem used a linked list to identify their files. But, this would be slow when /proc directories started having lots of files, which, for example, might happen when the system needed lots of network sockets.
Today we have some good news for all users of the Linux 3.18 kernel, as its status has been changed to LTS (Long-Term Support) on March 11, which means that it will be supported with patches for at least two more years from today.
The world of Linux kernel development can be a contentious place, marked by enthusiastic debate, spirited disagreement, and occasional out-and-out temper tantrums. But a “patch” authored by senior developer Greg Kroah-Hartman is looking to raise the tone a bit.
Linus Torvalds has taken a lot of criticism for his...er...blunt responses to Linux developers over the years. But now the Linux Foundation has set up a "code of conflict" that might change the way Linus interacts with developers.
The Linux kernel now has its own Code of Conflict, stating: “if anyone feels personally abused, threatened, or otherwise uncomfortable [in mailing list discussions], that is not acceptable”. For some people, this has been a long time coming, but for others, it could just force artificial politeness on proceedings when frank opinions would be more effective.
The binary translator and interface is similar to existing projects such as Cygwin and Cooperative Linux, as measured in this GitHub comparison. But Foreign LINUX is unique in that it serves as a low-level emulator that only implements kernel system calls and uses the original, unmodified system libraries to improve emulation accuracy.
In a sad turn of events, but not exactly surprising, the President of Blizzard responded to the petition calling for Blizzard to support Linux, the answer is obvious, but what's sad is the response from the petition creator.
For almost a decade now, the Linux gaming community have been requesting and requesting and requesting for you to show some love towards us. Sadly you have constantly ignored our requests.
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is the brutal conclusion to the Hotline Miami saga, set against a backdrop of escalating violence and retribution over spilled blood in the original game. Follow the paths of several distinct factions – each with their own questionable methods and uncertain motivations – as unforeseen consequences intersect and reality once again slips back into a brilliant haze of neon and bloodshed.
A window manager is software for an operating system that manages the placement of open windows. There are many window managers for Linux. Each one manages applications differently.
KDE has announced today, March 13, the immediate availability for download and update of KDE Frameworks 5.8.0, a collection of over 60 add-on libraries for the powerful Qt GUI (Graphical User Interface) toolkit. This release brings a great number of improvements over the previous version, KDE Frameworks 5.7.0, which was released on February 14, 2015.
Florian Müllner of the GNOME Project has announced the immediate availability for testing of Mutter 3.16 Beta 1, as part of the recently released GNOME 3.16 Beta 1 desktop environment. Mutter, GNOME’s default window and compositing manager, is in charge of displaying and managing your desktop via OpenGL technologies.
The GNOME Photos app has been recently updated as part of the second Beta release of the forthcoming and highly anticipated GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, due for release on March 25, 2015. GNOME Photos 3.16 Beta 2 bringing a number of fixes and updated translations detailed below for your reading pleasure.
Linux has always been the outsider's operating system. Even more hipster than Apple's iOS and completely off the radar of most Microsoft Windows users, the open source OS umbrella covers an ever increasing collection of mutations and flavours, known to its users as distros (short for distributions).
The newsfeeds weren't overflowing this evening, but there were a few bright spots. First up, Tecmint.com is running a new series called My Linux Story featuring folks sharing their journeys to Linux. Elsewhere, Justin Pot asked can we really trust Linux and Computer Business Review today listed their choices of distributions for new users.
Linux has always been the outsider's operating system. Even more hipster than Apple's iOS and completely off the radar of most Microsoft Windows users, the open source OS umbrella covers an ever increasing collection of mutations and flavours, known to its users as distros (short for distributions).
For the beginner such choice can appear overwhelming, and so CBR has pared it down to the five most accessible.
The Korora distribution is available in four editions -- Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE and Xfce. There was previously a MATE edition, but at the time of writing that flavour of Korora appears to have been discontinued. Each edition of Korora is available for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 machines. Since I tried the default GNOME edition of Fedora a few months ago I decided to get some variety by installing Korora's KDE edition. The download for Korora's KDE flavour is 2.5GB in size.
Sabayon offers four editions of the distribution -- GNOME, KDE, Xfce and Minimal. Each edition is available for 64-bit x86 machines exclusively. I opted to download the KDE image which is 2.2GB in size. Booting from the live media brings up a boot menu where we can choose to launch a live desktop environment, run the system installer, install a media centre edition of the distribution or install Steam Big Picture. We can also choose to launch a console only mode, handy for trouble-shooting problems. I will come back to the media centre and Steam interfaces a little later.
Ubuntu derivatives are many and varied. Most build on the same base, and then add a new work environment in order to infuse the distro with a unique spin. LXLE 14.04.1 does this by applying an almost namesake desktop environment on the latest LTS Ubuntu release, and so a new fork is born.
I spent several more days playing with Kubuntu Vivid dev branch, testing Plasma, to see what more it can do. Sure, there are bugs and niggles, the repositories are sometimes quite slow and bits and pieces go missing, so you have to wait a few hours or days before you can have a successful update cycle. Some of the functions still do not work, some work inadequately, there are visual inconsistencies and other problems. But all in all, Plasma is progressing nicely, and it’s about to kick some major ass very soon. Let me show you. A sample of what I had the pleasure of doing one Saturday evening.
The Chakra team is happy to announce the third release of the Chakra Euler series. This is a maintenance release to fix some installation issues and provide all the updated packages that landed in the stable repositories since the previous release. The main new feature is that our ISO now supports booting and installing on UEFI systems! Please follow the instructions carefully on how to achieve this.
Finally I had enough free time to get Kde Plasma on my Arch Linux workstation. Installation was pretty easy but understanding how things work now was not because there are some differences with Kde4.
We’re happy to report that the recently released Mozilla Firefox 36.0 web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird 31.5.0 email and news client are now available in the main software repositories of the Arch Linux computer operating system.
OpenSUSE is one of the top GNU/Linux based operating systems on Distrowatch. It's also one of my favorite OSes and is a great desktop distro for average, new, and advanced Linux users alike.
The SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5, now generally available, offers an updated infrastructure-as-a-service platform.
Oracle, through Michele Casey, had the pleasure of announcing today, March 13, the general availability of Oracle Enterprise Linux 7.1, a computer operating system designed for enterprise environments and based on the Linux kernel.
Red Hat’s technology powers the Internet infrastructure and has benefited from the open source involvement of its community of users.
Daniel Farrell is a Software Engineer, recently upgraded from an intern, on Red Hat’s SDN Team. He has been working on SDN-related projects since he entered the industry, which was right as SDN started to pick up speed. From a non-technical perspective, Daniel enjoys craft beer, biking, SCUBA diving and travel.
Fedora 21 Workstation added the ability to log in and run a Wayland session from the login screen (GDM), leaving the login screen itself running using the older X protocol. This is changing with a new feature in Fedora 22 enabling the login screen to run on Wayland by default.
If someone characterizes systemd as an “init system,” you may safely assume that s/he is either utterly clueless or deliberately obfuscating the discussion. Calling systemd an init system is like calling an automobile a cup holder. Not even Lennart Poettering pretends that systemd is anything but the “Core OS” (sic).
Anytime I'm forced to use Windows or OS X I instantly find myself missing the specific features I enjoy on the Linux desktop. More specifically, it's the post-installation enhancements that make using someone else's computer near painful.
In this article, I'll share my favorite Ubuntu Linux enhancements and how I use them to get more value out of my desktop experience.
We have some really great news for you today, as BQ announced a few minutes ago on Twitter that a new flash sale of its BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition smartphone would take place tomorrow morning, March 12, starting 9 AM CET (Central European Time).
Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS have been updated in order to repair a few Apache HTTP Server vulnerabilities that have been identified.
Canonical has published details in a security notice about an eCryptfs vulnerability in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS that has been found and corrected.
The MK80LE runs Ubuntu 14.04 Linux and supports hardware-accelerated video when using the VLC media player. As far as I’m aware this doesn’t mean that all Ubuntu apps can take advantage of the computers PowerVR G6230 graphics, but it does at least mean that you shouldn’t have problems playing HD video.
After a three-year gestation period, the Ubuntu operating system is finally on real, live smartphones that are being sold to consumers. However, don't expect a huge retail or advertising push for the platform on phones this year, according to Ubuntu's top mobile executive.
Canonical has finally got skin in the mobile game, putting its first Ubuntu phone on sale in Europe last month.
As it promised last week in a teaser video, Canonical – the software company founded by South African born entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth – has brought prototypes of the second phone to run its Ubuntu operating system to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today.
As expected, Canonical was present at Mobile World Congress 2015 with a really nice and spacious booth to promote the latest innovations implemented in the Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server computer operating systems, as well as the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system.
Systemd has generated lots of heated discussions online, with many Linux users expressing their anger and fears about it on various sites. Now Ubuntu, one of the biggest and most used desktop distributions, has switched to systemd in the beta version of Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet.
The Ubuntu Phone sold well after its initial release. But will it succeed over the long haul against rivals like Android and the iPhone? Datamation looks at what the Ubuntu Phone has to offer and considers its chances for success.
Linux Mint Debian Edition is a distribution built on Debian rather than Ubuntu and it's been in the works for quite some time. It's still under development and it's not really a surprise that the devs are getting much closer to their goal.
If you have “broken the ice” with GNU / Linux through Raspberry Pi already, here is a board that allows you to jump into the real professional world, with all the needed support and with totally “Open” instruments and, why not, in an enjoyable way. Arietta G25 is the “mascot” of a series of professional boards designed and made in Italy by Acme Systems. That also provides support to its boards for the next 5 years.
The CubieTech octa-core Allwinner A80 based “Cubieboard4ââ¬Â³ SBC goes for $125, competing with LinkSprite’s $129 Beta Arches and Merrii’s $300 H88 Hummingbird.
Logic Supply unveiled two rugged, Intel NUC “ML100ââ¬Â³ mini-PCs: one with two GbE ports based on a Bay Trail Celeron, and one with Intel’s 5th-Gen Core CPU.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation make it pretty clear that Raspbian is the recommended operating system for the Raspberry Pi series of computers. Most of the Foundation's documentation and support directs users to Raspbian. The downloads section of their website does list other operating system images. But there are many more images available, and one really piqued my curiosity; a Ubuntu 14.10 / Linaro 15.01 "developer" image. Unlike Raspbian, this image is compiled for ARMv7/armhf.
The Raspberry Pi has been a tremendous success story, ever since the low-cost development board first appeared in 2012. Among enthusiasts and educators it’s sparked an interest in "real" computing, unseen since the halcyon days of the 1980s, and it's also inspired an army of copycat devices. Now, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is building on that success with the long-awaited successor - the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. See also: The eight best uses for your Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi celebrates its third birthday today. Well actually it doesn’t, as the super-affordable ARM GNU/Linux computer was launched on February 29 2012, in what was (obviously) a leap year, but it’s close enough.
I love my latest Android device (see the March 2015 issue's Open-Source Classroom column for details), but for some reason, it won't automatically connect to my Bluetooth headset. When I turn on my headset, I want it to connect to my Android device so I can start using it right away. In order to make it connect, I have to go into the settings app, then Bluetooth, and then tap the device to connect. Thankfully, there's an application that makes life a lot easier.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge have been out for almost a week and a half and they seem to have already gathered a lot of positive feedback.
Google has finally announced the long awaited Android 5.1 update after its not-so-secret debut on Android One devices in the Philippines. This new build of Lollipop is rolling out to Nexus devices right now, but what’s in it? The official changelog was severely lacking in detail, but now that it’s hitting devices we can see all the tweaks to this version of Android. Let’s check it out.
Much to the delight of Apple fanbots everywhere, Apple has now fully unveiled the Apple Watch. The watch, which was previewed in September, will go on sale April 10 and ship on the 24th. Based on its brand name, styling, accessories, and battery life claims, it will likely be a big hit -- at least as far as smartwatches go.
Tech attracts passion like no other consumer product vertical. And the Android vs iPhone debate is PC vs Mac for the digital native generation. We all love our gadgets, but some people take things to extremes. Here at Macworld UK we aim to protect you from these extremes of Android fandom, and we believe that forewarned is forearmed. So here is our spotters guide to the seven types of Android fanboy you can expect to encounter on the internet. We've left it gender neutral in order to leave no-one out (but in our experience the worst behaviour is exclusively male: in Fandroidism as in life).
Huawei has unveiled its first smartwatch, a circular Android Wear-powered device.
Compatible with smartphones running Android 4.3 or higher, the device features a 1.4-inch Amoled display with a resolution of 400 by 400 pixels resolution (286ppi). It also includes a heart rate monitor sensor, a six-axis motion sensor, and a barometer.
That’s been one of the more surprising stories to come out of this year’s Mobile World Congress. Huawei, a colossal company that makes most of its money on networking equipment and infrastructure, has launched its most overt play for consumers yet by unveiling its first smartwatch. The Huawei Watch is a circular device that looks closer to a traditional watch than the Moto 360, LG G Watch R, or any other Android Wear product to date. One week before Apple is set to reveal the final details of its own watch, Huawei has presented a very different vision informed by the principles of classical watch design.
I’ve news. Starting today, I will be working full time in a new role. I’m now a Director at the global consulting firm WiPro in their Open Source practice, advising both customers and implementation teams on open source issues concerning software selection, community engagement, license compliance and more. You’ll find me at a variety of conferences and events, and I’ll continue to write for InfoWorld and others.
SageTV was a cross-platform media center application and digital video recorder tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. I say “was” because Google acquired the company in 2011 and used the technology for its Google Fiber TV service.
My two biggest dreams growing up were to be either a firefighter or a space explorer. Though I didn’t get to do either of those things, I satisfy the former via being a volunteer in prevention with Cal Fire, California’s state fire department, and the latter by reading everything I can get my hands on about space—both fiction and non-fiction.
Open source has come a long way in the past 30 years and is entering the consciousness of most modern cultures. When thinking of open source projects, people categorize them several ways: governance structure, type of product platform, programming language, utility, technical details (language written in), industry sponsored or fully independent, and more.
Are we, as a group, more interested in enforcing a specific set of behaviors, or are we more interested in fostering a culture of respect, collaboration, and participation? To view interlocutors as "offenders" ensures the former. I'm much more interested in the latter.
Trying to explain why open source works, you can of course point to the Cathedral and the Bazaar by Erik. But the kernel development process shows it happening 'in real time', every day, and that's a major reason why I so enjoy reading the weekly LWN.
Eric Raymond's How to Ask Questions the Smart Way was published in 2001 and has been very popular ever since. It gets referenced on my local Linux User Group mailing list with some frequency (usually alongside an admonishment to stop top-posting). To be sure, it contains a lot of good advice for how to perform research, how to frame a question, and what salient information is generally a minimum required to solicit help.
A startup fresh out of private beta offers a three-way intersection between machine learning, the API economy, and open source developers' need to monetize their creations.
Algorithmia, which launched privately last year, allows users to build algorithms, make them available as a Web service, and monetize them.
The service can be used in two basic ways: either by calling algorithms available in the system via its REST API (with examples provided), or by writing and submitting the algorithms to be used. Each algorithm has its own interactive console page, so they can be tried out directly on the Web without needing to write and implement code. Many of the algorithms are original creations; others are implementations of existing software, such as a tokenizer based on Apache OpenNLP.
OSDC Nordic is an upcoming open-source friendly community-oriented event, held May 8th - 10th in Oslo.
The free software movement is a global phenomenon, and we want the LibrePlanet conference to reflect that. That's why, wherever you are, you are invited to participate remotely by watching the livestream and participating in the discussion via chat.
Mozilla has released an open source memory forensics tool that some college students designed and built during the company’s recent Winter of Security event.
The new tool, known as Masche, is designed specifically for investigating server memory and has the advantage of being able to scan running processes without causing any problems with the machine. Masche runs on Linux, OS X and Windows and Mozilla has posted the code on GitHub.
Mozilla, in the latest version of its Firefox browser has introduced support for the newly finalised HTTP/2 network protocol along with other features. Firefox 36 is currently only available for Windows, OS X, and Linux desktop systems.
Today, we are announcing that Firefox 38 will take further measures to secure users’ communications by removing support in WebRTC for all DTLS cipher suites that do not support forward secrecy. For developers: if you have a WebRTC application or server that doesn’t support PFS ciphers, you will need to update your code.
With the launch of Unreal Engine 4.7, Epic Games has added the ability to export to HTML5 as a regular part of their Windows binary engine releases. One of the world’s most advanced game engines is one step closer to delivering truly amazing content right in your browser. With this addition, developers will be able to create content in Unreal Engine 4.7, immediately compile it to the Web, and launch it in their browser of choice with the click of a button.
Mozilla's Firefox 36 debuts with support for HTTP/2 protocol as well as 17 security advisories for vulnerabilities that have been patched in the open-source browser.
Now here is an interesting open source project that has been flying under the radar: The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), which stewards more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, announced the availability of Apache Tajo v0.10.0, the latest version of the advanced open data warehousing system in Apache Hadoop.
To learn more about RethinkDB, we caught up with Slava Akhmechet. Akhmechet is the founder of RethinkDB, the company with the same name as the open source project. Before founding RethinkDB, he was a systems engineer in the financial industry, working on scaling custom database systems. He is currently a PhD student on leave from a program in Computational Neuroscience at Stony Brook University.
Stross is a long-time Linux user who only uses Word because the publishing industry expects he will. But he's not alone in loathing the necessity to do so: fellow UK science fiction writer Alastair Reynolds says the application "drives me to distraction."
The developers behind LibreOffice, the free and open source productivity suite forked from OpenOffice, have sweated and bled to advance the toolkit over the past couple of years. The effort has paid off: It’s a no-brainer to recommend LibreOffice over OpenOffice, thanks to Libre’s consistent release schedule and the increasingly polished quality of the product.
Now for the bigger question: Can you recommend LibreOffice in the same breath as Microsoft Office? The short answer: Maybe. To its credit, LibreOffice 4.4 handles old- and new-school Microsoft Office documents better than ever before -- no small feat considering how prohibitively complex such documents can be. If you plan on using LibreOffice as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office, know that document compatibility is still a roll of the dice -- but with each revision LibreOffice is improving the odds.
Joomla! is a highly-extendable content management system (CMS) licensed under the GNU GPL written in PHP that readily scales from small websites to large projects. Joomla was designed with extensibility in mind -- a wide variety of extensions are available for the needs of the audience. Importantly, Joomla can be easily adapted to a wide variety of use cases, including as for a corporate intranet, as an e-commerce platform, or for web presence and information, as is the case for the Guggenheim Museum website, which runs on Joomla.
Increased interest in privacy issues – particularly in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region – is driving interest in new software security solutions. This has combined with a change in attitude towards open-source solutions to create an opportunity for businesses.
If eZ Systems isn't a name you’re familiar with, allow us to introduce ourselves: eZ is a commercial open source software vendor. We provide a content management system (CMS) and platform known as eZ Publish, which will soon be known as eZ Platform. eZ serves as a foundation for digital businesses, providing value-added solutions on top of our open source CMS platform.
Are you cheating if you download open source software without paying for it? Recently, Linux distribution elementaryOS angered users by implying that you are -- an opinion that is hardly new, but no more valid than the last dozen times anyone voiced it.
GNU Guile-SDL is Guile plus SDL. Simple, no?
Running free gate patterns on FPGAs could potentially be a useful method for making digital devices that are free at the circuit level. However, to make FPGAs usable in the free world, we need free development tools for them. The obstacle is that the format of the gate pattern file that gets loaded into the FPGA is secret. Until recently there was no model of FPGA for which those files could be produced without nonfree (proprietary) tools.
At Apple's "Spring Forward" press event on Monday, March 9, the electronics company expounded upon its plans to release a smartwatch and revealed updates to its MacBook computer line, among other announcements. Underneath their focus on "innovation" and "design," however, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other participating speakers neglected to address growing concerns about the proprietary software and Digital Restrictions Management technologies distributed with its products and services, which only serve to extend the company's oppression of computer users and their freedoms.
This year again Guix participates in the Google Summer of Code under the umbrella of the GNU Project.
For our March “Community Choice” Project of the Month, the community elected GnuCash, an easy-to-use personal and small-business finance manager with a checkbook like appearance. The GnuCash team shared their thoughts about the project’s history, purpose, and direction.
The Kodi development team has announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the RC (Release Candidate) version of the upcoming Kodi 14.2 media center software for GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, Apple TV, and Raspberry Pi. This release brings a bunch of fixes that aim to improve the stability of the application on all supported platforms.
The Greens in the German parliament want the Foreign Ministry to revert back to open source software solutions on its workstations. The ministry in 2010 abandoned its open source desktop strategy, pressured by staffers struggling with interoperability problems. The Greens are now asking the ministry to justify the proprietary licence costs it has made since then.
Is the alternative that every government agency bear the cost and effort of writing its own software? Clearly this doesn't make much sense either. As often happens when an economic arrangement becomes impaired over time, cutting out the middleman solves the problem—the middleman here being for-profit enterprises that manage the production and costs of vital software systems.
At the Open Compute Project Summit this week, startup Vapor announced a new open-source specification designed to help manage data center environments.
Open Education Week (OEW) is an annual, global event and will take place this year from March 9-13, 2015. The event aims to raise awareness and celebrate achievements of the global Open Education Movement.
Access to high-quality human biospecimens such as blood, saliva, plasma, DNA, and RNA is integral to developing a better understanding of diseases and advancing molecular technologies, clinical trial research, personalized medicine research, and clinical practice.
Recently, we've been covering the Open Data Platform, recently announced by Pivotal, which is shaping up to be very influential in the Hadoop and Big Data market. Now, WANdisco, a provider of continuous-availability software for global enterprises working with Big Data, has announced that it has joined the Open Data Platform (ODP) Initiative. WANdisco has patented technology that enables Hadoop availability across data centers that can be very far apart, while also securing data.
I recently attended the Triangle Open Data Day (TODD) conference at North Carolina State’s campus in Raleigh, an event sponsored by Code for America. On the surface, the open data movement is about getting local, state, and federal government to publish data in a way that citizens can use it. This means publishing reports, spreadsheets, and other documentation online -- and it scales to mean publishing data sets with APIs, so applications all over the place can build upon and extend those data sets.
That was the question many Italians were asking recently when reports appeared in local media that Massimo Banzi, co-founder and high-profile figurehead for the popular open hardware project, was stepping down from managing the initiative. The lead was to be taken by Federico Musto, CEO of Dog Hunter, an Internet of Things company that had previously contributed to Yun, a family of wi-fi products that combine Arduino and Linux.
Part of being a good open source citizen is contributing to the projects and programs you use and care about most—and learning how to code can be a big part of that. But with so many programming languages out there, picking the right entry point into coding can be a challenge.
Today, I’m putting my foot down. I helped start this nonsense, so I’m going to help stop it. If a DVCS is great for your workflow, fine. If the trade-offs it imposes are good for you, great. But let’s stop claiming that they’re free, because they have a cost, and the cost is sometimes not worth it.
In July of 2006, I first wrote about Google Code, as a new competitive alternative to SourceForge for open-source project hosting. Times sure have changed in the last 8.5 years and Google is now shutting Google Code down.
I've had my own GitHub account since March 2014, where I host all the code for my personal open source projects dating back to 2004 (previously, I was using SourceForge). My first-ever project was a blogging script and simple content management system that used PHP and MySQL.
There are endless ways to share files between devices. Some of them are complex, ftp and Network File System (NFS). Some, such as Apple Bonjour and Windows Homegroup, work with only a few operating systems. Still others, like Dropbox and Google Drive, require you to use a cloud. Then, there's BitTorrent Sync 2.0, which is easy to use, works with most devices, and doesn't use a cloud.
So I got up very early this morning after suffering through the night with a new oral sleep apnea appliance. I haven’t gotten much sleep so I’m a bit bleary-eyed as I write this post. Anyway, I checked my email as I usually do and found a note from a friend mentioning that something had happened to Google+.
In today's integrated world, no software can stand on its own. So CTOs need to create APIs right from the start — and consider developers as they would end users. That advice comes from Uri Sarid, CTO at MuleSoft, which helps organizations connect data, applications, and devices. In this interview, he shares his thoughts on the importance of interoperability.
GOP stalwarts are trying to cut millions in university funding, and critics say the moves could spell disaster.
Why are Republicans constantly bashing college these days? I was one of them -- and the answer may surprise you
The dramatic trend in GNU/Linux page-views seen on StatCounter may well continue for years.
Intel has lowered its revenue forecast for the first quarter of its fiscal 2015 by nearly a billion dollars, citing a weaker than expected PC market.
IBM today is publicly disclosing a flaw that it found and reported to Dropbox, impacting the security of the popular file sharing and sync service. Since Dropbox functionality is embedded in multiple applications, the risk and potential impact is larger than just the Dropbox app itself.
Adobe has issued patches for security vulnerabilities in Flash Player -- 11 of which are deemed critical.
On Thursday, Cisco security researchers reported that a problem in the Google Apps engine, used to renew websites registered through the system, has results in the public disclosure of 282,867 domain owner records.
Over one million websites running the WordPress content management system are potentially at risk of being hijacked due to a critical vulnerability exposed in the WP-Slimstat plugin.
Lenovo's Superfish debacle seems to have drawn the ire of the Lizard Squad hackers.
It's starting to look like Superfish and other software containing the same HTTPS-breaking code library may have posed more than a merely theoretical danger to Internet users. For the first time, researchers have uncovered evidence suggesting the critical weakness may have been exploited against real people visiting real sites, including Gmail, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Gpg4Win.org, to name just a few.
Internet traffic for 167 important British Telecom customers—including a UK defense contractor that helps deliver the country's nuclear warhead program—were mysteriously diverted to servers in Ukraine before being passed along to their final destination.
Researchers at Trustwave today said that over the past few days, several hundred messages have been corralled that are trying to exploit users’ trust in Office documents with some clever social engineering thrown into the mix in an attempt to convince users to enable macros and thus download the banking malware onto their machines.
...NSA has worked to ensure that anyone can use packet injection to hack into computers.
Initiative by Palestinian terror organization to ‘introduce itself to the world’ met with mockery
On Sunday, an image circulated showing Islamic State supporters allegedly threatening Jack Dorsey, a founder of Twitter, in retaliation for the social network engaging an escalating war against the militant group.
The "anti-Western anger" has been "fed by the powerful antagonism on Russian federal television channels" since "Putin cranked up the volume after protest movements in late 2011 and 2012, which he blamed on the State Department."
[...]
Funny thing, though–the anti-American sentiment in Russia is pretty much a mirror image of anti-Russian sentiment in the United States, which has likewise risen to record heights since polling began roughly 25 years ago.
Swedish prosecutors have offered to travel to London to question Wikileaks founder Julian Assange over sex assault allegations.
Prosecutors had previously insisted on questioning Mr Assange in Sweden, after seeking his arrest in 2010.
Mr Assange denies the assault claims and has been living at the Ecuadorean embassy in London since 2012.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spent nearly three years in an Ecuadorian embassy in London in an effort to avoid both charges from the United States regarding the dissemination of classified information as well as a nearly five-year investigation that alleges Assange committed sex crimes in Sweden. With the statue of limitations in the latter case set to expire this August, Swedish prosecutors hope to travel to London to interview Assange in the near future in a last-ditch effort to decide whether to pursue charges.
Even for a Republican White House that was badly stumbling through George W. Bush’s sixth year in office, the revelation on April 12, 2007 was shocking. Responding to congressional demands for emails in connection with its investigation into the partisan firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the White House announced that as many as five million emails, covering a two-year span, had been lost.
Audit checked 165 federal offices, found only 67 with updated and populated online libraries; Some 17 "E-Star" agencies disprove common excuses of cost and disability compliance
No one told Bart Bibler not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” during his six months on the job at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Then, on March 4, he walked into a Florida Coastal Managers Forum, a teleconference with representatives from other state agencies.
This week, US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), took to the Senate floor to call upon America to “wake up” to the damaging effects of climate change denial and the fossil fuel industry funding received by groups that promote it, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate bill mill that has been pushing a destructive agenda of climate change denial.
Inhofe (R-Ok.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, took to the Senate floor recently to try to debunk what he called the "hysteria on global warming" by holding a snowball. While the Washington Post editorialized that the performance was a "national embarrassment"–despite the paper having columnists on staff who make similarly absurd arguments (FAIR Blog, 3/3/15)–NBC's Meet the Press (3/1/15) had a different reaction to Inhofe's performance.
A study conducted by US Geological Survey scientists found traces of the Monsanto Corporation’s Roundup herbicide in 75% of rain and air samples tested. The study, “Pesticides in Mississippi air and rain: A comparison between 1995 and 2007,” appeared in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, in 2014.
Prof. Wolff discusses with Jessica Desvarieux of The Real News Network the latest unemployment figures, and says the raising of interest rates by the Federal Reserve during a weak recovery would be disastrous for our heavily indebted society.
Wall Street moneymen loot companies and destroy jobs, but need to see themselves as liberators. The press lets them
In an attempt to make it harder for people to find pirated copies of its movies, NBC Universal has tried to remove several TorrentFreak articles from Google's search results. Apparently, talking about piracy is already enough for websites to be hit by takedown requests.
China wants the encryption keys from U.S. technology companies as part of a counter-terrorism law. The draft law leaves U.S. tech giants with two options: Play ball or get out.
The Cryptocat developer's new team aims to get easy file and message encryption into everyone's hands, which could give Gmail and Dropbox (and the NSA) a run for their money.
Encrypted communications provider Silent Circle has raised approximately $50 million in a funding round aimed at pushing the company forward in the enterprise market.
Silent Circle, the Swiss manufacturer of the super-secret Blackphone, has announced a second in its line of secure handsets for the masses along with a seven-inch tablet running its own PrivatOS 1.1 and a suite of new apps for business.
As we start to connect more and more of the things in our lives to the web—from our cars to our to thermostats to our barbecue grills—it’s hard not to worry about those things being hacked. No one wants their toaster to become a spambot, after all.
Well, this is disappointing. Back in September, we were happy to see both Apple and Google announced that their mobile platforms would be encrypted by default (for local storage, not for data transmissions), which has kicked off something of a new round of Crypto Wars, as law enforcement types have shoved each other aside to spread as much possible FUD about the "dangers" of mobile encryption (ignoring that they also recommend mobile encryption to keep your data safe).
Another security-focused development in the European mobile space: Finnish mobile startup Jolla, which develops the Sailfish mobile OS and its own brand mobile hardware, has just announced it will be partnering to create a “security hardened” version of the platform, called Sailfish Secure.
FINNISH MOBILE PHONE FIRM Jolla is working with partners to bring a toughened version of its Sailfish OS to a range of hardware.
With each passing day, it appears that new revelations come out, detailing how the Komodia/Superfish malware is even worse than originally expected. If you don't recall, last week it came out that Lenovo was installing a bit of software called "Superfish" as a default bloatware on a bunch of its "consumer" laptops. The software tried to pop up useful alternative shopping results for images. But in order to work on HTTPS-encrypted sites, Superfish made use of a nasty (and horribly implemented) "SSL hijacker" from Komodia, which installed a self-signed root certificate that basically allowed anyone to issue totally fake security certificates for any encrypted connection, enabling very easy man-in-the-middle attacks. Among the many, many, many stupid things about the way Komodia worked, was that it used the same certificate on each installation of Superfish, and it had an easily cracked password: "komodia" which was true on apparently every product that used Komodia. And researchers have discovered that a whole bunch of products use Komodia, putting a ton of people at risk. People have discovered at least 12 products that make use of Komodia.
Last week we noted that while AT&T has been trying to match Google Fiber pricing in small portions of several markets, it has been busily doing it in a very AT&T fashion. While the company is offering a $70, 1 Gbps service in some locations, the fine print indicates that users can only get that price point if they agree to AT&T's Internet Preferences snoopvertising program. That program uses deep packet inspection to track your online behavior down to the second -- and if you want to opt out, that $70 1 Gbps broadband connection quickly becomes significantly more expensive.
Some people have noticed I’m writing for a VPN service, and having my regular commentary on liberties presented by that VPN service: by Private Internet Access VPN. Seeing my previous stance on advertising, I think it merits some explanation why I’m choosing to associate with a service brand.
Just as the Bush administration and the U.S. media re-labelled “torture” with the Orwellian euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” to make it more palatable, the governments and media of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance are now attempting to re-brand “mass surveillance” as “bulk collection” in order to make it less menacing (and less illegal). In the past several weeks, this is the clearly coordinated theme that has arisen in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as the last defense against the Snowden revelations, as those governments seek to further enhance their surveillance and detention powers under the guise of terrorism.
First, that the recent attempts by politicians to demonize strong encryption look like an attempt to cover up the fact that most digital systems are already vulnerable using one or more of the techniques that have been revealed over the last year or two. That is, the NSA and GCHQ can probably access most digital content stored or transmitted in any way -- either because the encryption itself or the end-points have been compromised. Even standalone strong encryption systems like PGP -- thought still to be immune to direct attacks -- can be circumvented by breaking into the systems on which they are used.
Perhaps the dark hints that encryption could be banned or backdoored are simply part of a cynical ploy to present such an appalling vision of what could happen, that we gladly accept anything less extreme without complaint. In fact, the authorities have no intention of attempting anything so stupid -- it would put all online business at risk -- because they don't need to: they already have methods to access everything anyway.
Weeks after The Verge published internal memos from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in which he said "we suck at dealing with abuse," the company is rolling out new tools to reduce harassment on the service. Under the changes, users who receive temporary bans may have to verify an email address or a phone number to resume using Twitter. (Other users can be banned permanently.) Email addresses are relatively easy to obtain, but phone numbers are harder — and by checking phone numbers against a list of banned users, Twitter could be able to keep more abusers and harassers from creating accounts.
Despite the feds' best efforts to keep IMSI catchers (Stingray devices, colloquially and almost certainly to the dismay of manufacturer Harris Corporation, as they head to becoming the kleenex of surveillance tech) a secret, there's still enough information leaking out around the edges of the FBI's non-disclosure agreements to provoke public discussion.
But aside from ideals and growth markets, the report highlights a tension inherent to the question of access: When Facebook sets sail to disconnected markets, what version of the internet will it bring?
The billion-dollar lawsuit against the producers of the Edward Snowden documentary CitizenFour rolls on, gradually unraveling as it does. Since we last covered the story (where the United States of America was added as an involuntary plaintiff -- a plaintiff since forcibly removed by the court), a lot has happened. For one, CitizenFour won an Oscar for Best Documentary, something that can't be sitting too well with Horace Edwards and his legal representation, which sought to have the film removed from consideration during the early days of this lawsuit.
And that's it: basically, the ISC is saying that all that is needed is a bit of a legal tidying-up. In terms of more detailed recommendations, the report suggests that the abuse of interception powers should be made a criminal offense -- currently it isn't -- and that a new category of metadata called "Communications Data Plus", which includes things like Web addresses, needs slightly greater protection than "traditional" telephone metadata.
In his appearance as the Council on Foreign Relations today, a woman with Human Rights Watch listed (starting at 56:30) a number of abuses our “partners” in the fight against ISIL engage in, including,
The ABC report of egregious abuses committed by some of Iraq’s elite military units Iraqi militias carrying out ISIS like atrocities Beheadings and violent attacks on journalists in Saudi Arabia
She then asked, “How do you think Iraqi Sunni civilians should distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys in this circumstance”?
This wouldn't be the first time we've seen nefarious alterations to Wikipedia entries, and it won't be the last. But the disclosure of NYPD's entries by Capital New York come as the Justice Department announced a national initiative for "building community trust and justice" with the nation's policing agencies.
A little-known EU law could force vendors to stand behind their products for up to two years -- instead of the one year warranty typically offered. Each year the Finnish consumer authority receives thousands of complaints about warranties for electronic devices.
With the abuses of asset forfeiture being loudly publicized, there has (finally) been some legislative pushback against these abusive programs. Wyoming's legislators -- hoping to institute asset forfeiture reform -- ran into pushback themselves from the state's governor, who vetoed the popular bill (which passed out of the Senate with an 80-9 vote) when it hit his desk.
After a U.S. court ruled that Kim Dotcom is not entitled to contest the forfeiture of his assets because he is a "fugitive" facing extradition, the government has just tightened the noose. In a filing before the same court yesterday, the U.S. requested a default judgment to seize the assets of Dotcom, his co-defendants, and their Megaupload empire.
We lost one of the "good guys" when Magistrate Judge John Facciola retired late last year. Facciola was a leading figure in the small -- but important -- "Magistrates' Revolt" that emerged in the wake of the Snowden leaks. Multiple times the government approached Facciola for a signature on overly-broad warrants seeking the entire contents of a phone or an email account, only to find the judge unwilling to help it pack for its fishing trip.
Floridians, we need your help to stop a dangerous anti-anonymity bill. This week, the Florida state legislature is considering a bill that would make it illegal to run any website or service anonymously, if the site fits a vague category of “disseminat[ing]” “commercial” recordings or videos—even the site owner’s own work. Outlawing anonymous speech raises a serious First Amendment problem, and laws like this one have been abused by police and the entertainment industry.
It's an interesting time to be a computer security researcher. Last week, Kaspersky Lab released a report about a new family of malware from an entity they called "The Equation Group". The report demonstrated for the first time that firmware-based attacks, previously only demonstrated in lab settings, have been used in the wild by malware authors. This should serve as a wake up call to security professionals and the hardware industry in general: firmware-based attacks are real and their numbers will only increase. If we don't address this issue now, we risk facing disastrous consequences.
A prominent American blogger of Bangladeshi origin has been hacked to death with machetes by unidentified assailants in Dhaka, after he allegedly received threats from Islamists.
The body of Avijit Roy, founder of the Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site – which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation – was found covered in blood after an attack that also left his wife critically wounded.
He was not only arrested, he was also charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor. A prior drug charge on his record meant he was potentially looking at decades in prison. Seven witnesses backed up the police account that Dendinger had assaulted Cassard.
Philadelphia cops put Tony Wright away for a brutal crime he didn't commit. DNA tests have exonerated him.
Less than one quarter of the 119 detainees named in the US Senate Intelligence Committee 2014 report on the CIA’s secret torture program are actually housed at the Guantánamo Bay military prison.
Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism recognized just 36 individuals originally sent to Guantánamo after CIA interrogations. Of these, 29 remain as of January 2015.
A phone video of a homeless man who goes by the name Africa being shot and killed by the LAPD went viral Sunday night. The video was raw, the outrage on display from those watching the killing unfold in real time, palpable.
Today was, no hyperbole intended, probably one of the more historic -- albeit at times one of the dullest -- days in FCC history. The agency, led by a former lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries few expected anything from, bucked a myriad of low expectations and voted 3-2 to approve Title II-based net neutrality rules after an unprecedented public-driven tech advocacy campaign. While net neutrality will likely get the lion's share of today's media attention, the FCC also today voted to begin a prolonged assault on ISP-driven, protectionist state telecom law.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted today to accept FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal that the Commission "use its Title II authority to implement and enforce open Internet protections." Or, to put it in plain English, your ISP must provide equal broadband access to you or any site -- Amazon, Netflix, etc. -- without slowing down or speeding up sites for additional fees.
When the months-long financial disputes between Netflix and Internet service providers ended last summer, a lot of network congestion problems that affected Internet consumers were cleared up.
Tom Wheeler tells the world’s largest telecoms trade show ‘there needs to be a referee’ even as European officials propose fast lanes that don’t impair traffic
While the FCC may have buckled to public demand and voted to finally approve tougher net neutrality rules last week, if you thought that meant an end to the hysterical over-reaction to what appear to be some fairly basic consumer protections, you're going to be gravely disappointed. From editorials lamenting the FCC's attempt to "strangle startups in their cribs", to claims the agency is murdering "innovation angels", we're clearly entering an entirely new, bloody chapter when it comes to divorcing net neutrality reality from rhetoric.
Net neutrality supporters won a major victory this week when regulators issued the toughest Internet rules the country has ever seen, but their battle is still far from over.
New Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations are already coming under new scrutiny from Capitol Hill and are bound for a gauntlet of legal and legislative challenges assuring that the rules are anything but set in stone.
Andrus Ansip, Europe's Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, wants to abolish geoblocking. Restricting user access to content based on their location, which Netflix, YouTube and others do, is discrimination, he says. "I want to pay – but I am not allowed to. I lose out, they lose out," Ansip notes.
The definitive definition of net neutrality by the experts for the kids (and adults, too)
America’s Federal Communications Commission’s has voted three to two in favour of its chairman’s proposals for new net neutrality regulations.
The proposals will have a huge impact on how Internet Service Providers (ISPs) treat Internet traffic, but what the heck is net neutrality anyway?
A few weeks ago, after it was more or less confirmed that the FCC was going forward with full Title II reclassification of broadband, we noted that the stocks of the big broadband companies actually went up suggesting that Wall Street actually knows that reclassification won't really impact broadband companies, despite what they've been saying publicly. Perhaps this is partly because those same companies have been telling Wall Street that the rule change won't have an impact.
A leaked draft of what the European Union wants excluded from a new trade deal with the United States has been obtained by the BBC.
The document describes itself as the EU's "initial offer" in negotiations over the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP).
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks are stalling while the White House assures its trading partners that this secret trade agreement won't be amended when it comes back to Congress for ratification after the President signs the deal. That's why the Executive is scrambling to get its allies in Congress to pass Fast Track. If they succeed, the U.S. Trade Representative can block remaining opportunities for the examination of the TPP's provisions by lawmakers who could ensure that this secret deal does not contain expansive copyright rules that would lock the U.S. into broken copyright rules that are already in bad need of reform.
This week is Fair Use Week, according to the Association of Research Libraries, and that's as good a time as any to remind everyone that it's wrong to refer to fair as merely a "limitation or exception" to copyright law -- or merely a defense to infringement. It is a right that is protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has regularly referred to "fair use" as a "safeguard" of the First Amendment, allowing copyright law to be compatible with the First Amendment. As such, it seems bizarre that fair use is not seen as the default, rather than the other way around. If we are to protect the First Amendment, and not allow for speech to be stifled, at the very least, we need a greater recognition of the importance of fair use in guaranteeing that the First Amendment's principles of free speech are allowed to thrive.
Back in November, the DOJ argued that it should get to keep all of Kim Dotcom's money and stuff because he's a "fugitive", which is a bizarre and ridiculous way to portray Kim Dotcom, who has been going through a long and protracted legal process over his potential extradition from New Zealand (though he's offered to come to the US willingly if the government lets him mount a real defense by releasing his money). Dotcom's lawyers told the court that it's ridiculous to call him a fugitive, but it appears that Judge Liam O'Grady didn't buy it.
After coming under intense pressure PayPal has closed the account of cloud-storage service Mega. According to the company, SOPA proponent Senator Patrick Leahy personally pressured Visa and Mastercard who in turn called on PayPal to terminate the account. Bizarrely, Mega's encryption is being cited as a key problem.
Kim Dotcom was in court today pleading for access to his seized assets. A reportedly "destitute" Dotcom asked for the release of US$152,000 a month for living expenses and as much as US$3m for legal fees. The Megaupload founder said if funds aren't forthcoming, living in a mansion may no longer be an option.
It shouldn't even be controversial. If you're lying about holding a copyright monopoly to something, you're infringing on that work's distribution, and should suffer the same penalties as any other infringer does today.
THE PIRATE PARTY UK is steadily increasing its position in the political spectrum, aided perhaps by the actions and behaviour of the big three parties.