Even seasoned system administrators can overlook Linux workstation backups or do them in a haphazard, unsafe manner. At a minimum, you should set up encrypted workstation backups to external storage. But it’s also nice to use zero-knowledge backup tools for off-site/cloud backups for more peace of mind.
Let’s explore each of these methods in more depth. You can also download the entire set of recommendations as a handy guide and checklist.
As the program manager of the Kubernetes community at Google, Sarah Novotny has years of experience in open source communities including MySQL and NGINX. Sarah sat down with me at CloudNativeCon in Berlin at the end of March to discuss both the Kubernetes community and open source communities more broadly.
Among the topics we covered in the podcast were the challenges inherent in shifting from a company-led project to a community-led one, principles that can lead to more successful communities, and how to structure decision-making.
Today, supporting Linux is as critical to Microsoft as it is to Red Hat and SUSE.
On April 18, Docker founder Solomon Hykes made a big announcement via a pull request in the main Docker repo: "Docker is transitioning all of its open source collaborations to the Moby project going forward." The docker/docker repo now redirects to moby/moby, and Solomon's pull request updates the README and logo for the project to match.
Reaction from the Docker community has been overwhelmingly negative. As of this writing, the Moby pull request has garnered 7 upvotes and 110 downvotes on GitHub. The Docker community is understandably frustrated by this opaque announcement of a fait accompli, an important decision that a hidden inner circle made behind closed doors. It's a textbook case of "Why wasn't I consulted?"
The latest are greatest Linux Kernel 4.11 should launch this weekend after being postponed to let it mature. Linus announced via the mailing list that he could have released it on Sunday, but it didn't feel right.
After hearing good things about meson for a long time, I decided to take the plunge and started working on porting the build system of systemd to meson. In our case "build system" is really a system — 11.5k lines in configure.ac and two Makefile.am s. This undertaking was bigger than I expected. Even though I had the initial patch compiling most of the code after a weekend of work, it took another three weeks and 80 patches [1] to bring it to mergeable state. There are still minor issues outstanding, but the pull request has been merged, so I want to take the opportunity to celebrate and summarize my impressions about meson.
Systemd can now be built with the Meson build system as an alternative to its traditional Make support.
One day after announcing the release of the Linux 4.10.12, 4.9.24, and 4.4.63 kernels, Greg Kroah-Hartman informed the community about the availability of yet another maintenance update to the Linux 3.18 kernel series.
Linux kernel developers are still looking to raise the requirements of GCC for building the Linux kernel.
It turns out some developers are still using GCC 4.1 for building the mainline Linux kernel, largely for MIPS and other niche architectures. Plus some developers still are using older GCC compiler releases for allegedly better compiler warnings. But at least in 2017 it's looking like there's some agreement on beginning to mandate later GCC 4.x compilers as a minimum for being able to build newer kernel releases.
One of the many features to look forward to with Linux 4.12 is the Nouveau DRM driver providing initial 3D/accelerated support for GeForce GTX 1050/1060/1070/1080 "Pascal" graphics cards. Here are some benchmarks of this open-source NVIDIA driver support for these latest-generation GPUs compared to the proprietary driver.
ed Hat is looking to hire another developer to specialize in advancing the open-source graphics stack.
In particular, this latest developer they are looking to have on their growing open-source graphics driver team is to focus on the GPU computing area but may carry over into general Linux GPU driver improvements too.
Last week I began posting a number of AMD Radeon RX 580 Linux benchmarks but not covered so far has been the OpenCL compute performance considering the Clover-based compute stack isn't good enough for benchmarking and is basically unmaintained these days by AMD. Meanwhile, their ROCm stack is still being brought up and is not yet fully-opened nor optimized yet for performance. Thus for those with desktop cards looking for basic OpenCL support are left with the AMDGPU-PRO hybrid driver with its closed-source OpenCL driver. In this article are some fresh OpenCL benchmarks of AMDGPU-PRO on the RX 580 and other Radeon GPUs compared to NVIDIA with its Linux OpenCL driver.
It appears that GRUB 2.02 is now ready for release as the first stable update to GRUB2 since the v2.00 release five years ago.
MKVToolNix developer Moritz Bunkus proudly announced the release and immediate availability for download of MKVToolNix 11.0.0 "Alive" open-source MKV (Matroska) manipulation utility.
Coming one month after the MKVToolNix 10.0.0 release, MKVToolNix 11.0.0 stable update is here with important bug fixes for both the AVC/H.264 and HEVC/H.265 parsers, a bunch of improvements to the GUI (Graphical User Interface), as well as some new features implemented mostly in the mkvmerge component.
ShellCheck is a static analysis tool that shows warnings and suggestions concerning bad code in bash/sh shell scripts. It can be used in several ways: from the web by pasting your shell script in an online editor (Ace – a standalone code editor written in JavaScript) in https://www.shellcheck.net (it is always synchronized to the latest git commit, and is the simplest way to give ShellCheck a go) for instant feedback.
Boostnote is an Open Source Markdown note-taking editor app designed for programmers. Of course, non-programmers can use it without issue and take advantage of all its modern features which include full Markdown (with live preview) and Latex support.
These days Chromebooks are pretty popular. Especially recently, as Google made it possible to install Android apps directly from the Play Store onto some Chromebooks. This has created an uptick in users switching from other operating systems (most notably Windows) to Google’s Chrome OS.
What’s music to you? Ask this question to people & answers will different. Some would say that its how they enjoy life, some would say it helps them sleep better after a hard day’s work & for some it just make them feel good about them & their surroundings. It can be said without doubt that everybody loves music in one form or another & Linux lovers are no different.
This post is for those Linux lovers who enjoys music & are looking for a music player for their UBUNTU & Linux Mint systems. Though there are many music players available for Linux lovers but we have prepared a list of ‘Top 8 music players for Ubuntu and Linux Mint‘
There are many text editors available for Linux such as command line editors (vi, vim, nano and so) and GUI editors (Gedit, Pluma, Kate and so on). Linux always has space for new stuff but Xed isn't new and around from quite sometime. Xed text editor offers most of the standard editor features, extending this basic functionality with other features not usually found in simple text editors. It supports editing of multiple text files in a window (using Tabs) just like any other famous text editor. Support to encode UTF-8 files, compare files among others, syntax highlighting of source code, auto indentation and manual indentation, printing, print preview support, and many other standard features.
I've been playing Lil Tanks [Steam, Official Site] and I think it's a fantastic side-scrolling action game well worth a look.
I haven't been this excited for quite a while, the original creator of X-COM, Julian Gollop, and the rest of his studio Snapshot Games have put up Phoenix Point for crowdfunding on Fig.
I'm excited for a number of reasons: It will support Linux, it will be on both GOG & Steam and it looks very much like an evolution of the XCOM.
Linux has come a long way from where it started, and it’s certainly made progress when it comes to gaming. But there are still folks who doubt the ability of Linux to run games.
One redditor recently asked about gaming on Linux, and he got some very informative responses in the Linux subreddit.
Rocket League too hard for you? UniBall might be what you're after. It has very simple movement controls so it's quick to learn.
It appears we've never mentioned OpenRCT2 [Official Site, GitHub] before, a fully featured open source engine for RollerCoaster Tycoon 2!
After attempting to gain access to Eidos’ original source code for Tomb Raider, a couple of developers have started to completely rebuild the game from scratch as part of a browser-based project.
OpenRA is easily one of my favourite open source projects. It allows us to play early Westwood RTS games like Red Alert and Dune 2000 in a modern engine on Linux. The latest release is a good one too.
The fancy looking Ephoto 1.0 [Official Site, Git] for Enlightenment has been officially released recently with lots of useful features to manage your image library.
An Enlightenment developer has been working on support for accelerating EFL Evas filters with OpenGL shaders.
Evas is Enlightenment's display canvas API. Those wishing to learn about Evas before reading this article can see this Enlightenment.org page.
KDE Plasma 5.9.5 has been released today and it brings in some useful features as well as tons of bug fixes.
I’ve recently had an occasion to implement reordering of a GtkListBox via drag-and-drop (DND). It was not that complicated. Since I haven’t seen drag-and-drop used much with list boxes, here is a quick summary of what is needed to get the basics working.
I love GNOME Shell — and no, not just because I’ve little choice now that is Ubuntu’s default desktop! But the more I use GNOME the more I learn that the desktop environment, like every other, has its own share of quirks, bugs and inconsistencies. Like the following appreciably niche niggle in the the way GNOME handles desktop wallpapers.
Have you been looking for a GNOME wallpaper slideshow extension? If so, you can stop.
In the comments to our recent post on the way GNOME handles wallpapers a number of readers asked whether GNOME had an image slideshow feature built in, without the need for third-party apps and the like.
The answer is yes, GNOME does. Sort of.
As you may already know that Ubuntu is switching back to Gnome, this is the transition time for Ubuntu to switch back. Some creators are motivated and creating themes for Gnome desktop, which is a good thing and hopefully we shall see plenty of Gnome themes and icons around soon. As its name shows "Minwaita" it is minimal/compact version of Adwaita theme, the theme is available after some enhancements to make Gnome more sleek and more vanilla Gnome experience without moving to away from Adwaita's design. This theme is compatible with Gnome 3.20 and up versions. This theme was released back in November, 2016 and still in continuous development that means if you find any problem or bug in the theme then report it to get it fixed in the next update. Obsidian-1 icons used in the following screenshots.
If you are struggling with focus on something, it could be your work or study then try Pomodoro technique, this method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. You can read more about Pomodoro here.
In GTK+3, only GtkContainer subclasses can have child widgets. This makes a lot of sense for “public” container children like we know them, e.g. GtkBox — i.e. the developer can add, remove and reorder child widgets arbitrarily and the container just does layout.
Finally, it’s here! We’re happy to announce the availability of the Kali Linux 2017.1 rolling release, which brings with it a bunch of exciting updates and features. As with all new releases, you have the common denominator of updated packages, an updated kernel that provides more and better hardware support, as well as a slew of updated tools – but this release has a few more surprises up its sleeve.
A couple of weeks back we added more HTTPS support to our Kali infrastructure, and wanted to give our users some guidance and point out what’s new. While our Kali Linux download page (and shasums) has always been served via HTTPS, our mirror redirector has not. Now that we generate weekly images, secure access to the mirror redirector has become crucial.
We’ve been hard at work after last week’s snapshot on various items. We got some early reports of hardware incompatibilities with Wayland as well as issues on the GNOME edition of Wayland breaking important functionality like the ability to re-login after a logout. After some investigation, we have decided to temporarily disable Wayland in both gnome-session as well as GDM.
Last week, the grand leader of the Solus Project released a new snapshot of his rolling release distro. There were a good number of changes. The most notable was a GNOME ISO.
deepin 15.4 is really beautiful in every single detail. The beauty of deepin lies on its simplicity, drop shadow and translucency style, with completeness of feature. All the beauty cost only around 730MB of RAM at idle time. It's so user-friendly until I believe kids can use GNU/Linux easier with this. It has its native applications that are fulfilling daily needs, complete in feature, and always with pretty look. The desktop menu understands the users, with greatly accessible features. The Control Center is great as well, making the users have complete control with less learning curve. I believe anyone formerly using Windows, MacOS, Android, even any GNU/Linux distro will be easy to switch to deepin 15.4.
The OpenELEC 8.0 open-source embedded Linux entertainment operating system received its second maintenance update, versioned 8.0.2, which fixes various issues reported by users lately and updates some core components.
Zbigniew Konojacki informed Softpedia about the availability of the Beta release of the upcoming 4MRecover 22.0 open-source data recovery Live CD based on the 4MLinux operating system.
Shipping with an up-to-date base system based on the upcoming 4MLinux 22.0 operating system series, 4MRecover 22.0 Beta includes the latest TestDisk 7.0 and PhotoRec 7.0 utilities that let users recover lost data (images, videos, etc.) from broken partitions and memory cards.
The new Q4OS 'Orion' 1.8.4 stable release is out to implement several improvements and fixes. The most significant new feature is integration of alternative desktop environments into the native Q4OS 'Desktop profiler' utility. Users can now select alternative desktops to install and use alongside the default Q4OS Trinity desktop. LXQT support has been depreciated in Q4OS Orion, while we intend to support it thoroughly in the Q4OS 'Scorpion' edition. Icedove messaging application is no more available by the Q4OS installer, as it has been replaced by the real Thunderbird 45.8 release.
Red Hat is aggressively expanding its operations in India. The company recently announced the opening of two new offices in Bangalore and New Delhi. With the opening of the new offices, Red Hat is expanding its footprint in India with a goal of supporting interest for open source solutions and services from customers and partners and further promoting the benefits open source solutions can offer enterprises in India. Red Hat now has six offices in India, including additional facilities in Bangalore and New Delhi, and offices in Mumbai and Pune.
Red Hat’s new Bangalore office is a 14,000 sq. ft. facility at Lavelle Road. It is designed to act as a training and enablement center for customers and partners. Through the new facility, which features a cafeteria, and space for networking, meetings, training and certification exams, and an indoor game zone, Red Hat aims to bring its open, collaborative culture to life. The additional New Delhi office is a 12,405 sq.ft facility located close to the international airport at Aerocity, designed with an eye toward enabling collaboration with customers throughout the region.
Since RHEL 6, CGroups have been a work in progress. So, in RHEL 7 features evolved through new Systemd commands like systemd-cgls, systemd-cgtop, and mainly systemctl set-property.
Still through Systemd, RHEL 7.0 brought the CPUShares (percentage of CPU), MemoryLimit (memory quota), and BlockIOWeight (percentage of block IO) main properties, allowing you to set some constraints on system resources.
It has started around 9:00 o’clock and we were surprised that the attendees were earlier than 9 to get a sit in the workshop. I did a review of the History of GNU/Linux and then introduction to Fedora and GNOME applications. I also noticed that people that have been in previously events such as Install Fest were there to learn more about the projects and of course, commands on terminal ( as was published in the Flisol ad).
After many years of serving the needs of our users, and some more of declining usage in favor of better options, all public-facing debian.org FTP services will be shut down on November 1, 2017. These are:
The official date for them to be shut down is November 1, 2017. They stated the reasons being that FTP servers have no support for caching or acceleration, they haven't used FTP in their installers for years and other understandable reasons.
When Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical (the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution), announced his company would not only be abandoning their custom desktop environment (Unity), but also halting development on their phone/tablet operating system, many questions were left unanswered.
One of those questions: What happens to the existing phones and tablets running Ubuntu Touch that have already been sold?
Security updates for Ubuntu phone and tablet will end this June, Canonical has confirmed. Current OTA updates are currently limited to critical fixes and security updates — a decision we were first to tell you back in January. But after June 2017 Canonical “will no longer deliver any further updates”.
Canonical had already announced development of its Ubuntu Phone software was ending. Now we know when the final nail goes in the coffin: June.
With the death of yet another open source/free software/Linux-based mobile platform, Ubuntu Touch, clearly it is time for us to sit down and have a frank discussion about what we in the free software world can reasonably accomplish in a mobile platform.
One of the biggest issues—if not THE biggest issue—with Ubuntu Touch was that it simply had goals that were far too aggressive to reasonably achieve. It suffered from the all-too-common malady known in software development as feature creep.
For the most part, not much has changed on Ubuntu's Desktop edition in the past year. Unity 7 has more or less remained the same while work was progressing on the next version of the desktop, Unity 8. However, now that both desktops are being retired in favour of the GNOME desktop, running Ubuntu 17.04 feels a bit strange. This week I was running software that has probably reached the end of its life and this version of Ubuntu will only be supported for nine months. I could probably get the same desktop experience and most of the same hardware support running Ubuntu 16.04 and get security updates through to 2021 in the bargain. In short, I don't think Ubuntu 17.04 offers users anything significant over last year's 16.04 LTS release and it will be retired sooner.
That being said, I could not help but be a little wistful about using Unity 7 again. Even though it has been about a year since I last used Unity, I quickly fell back into the routine and I was once more reminded how pleasant it can be to use Unity. The desktop is geared almost perfectly to my workflow and the controls are set up in a way that reduces my mouse usage to almost nothing. I find Unity a very comfortable desktop to use, especially when application menus have been moved from the top panel to inside their own windows. While there are some projects trying to carry on development of Unity, this release of Ubuntu feels like Unity's swan song and I have greatly enjoyed using the desktop this week.
While there is not much new in Ubuntu 17.04, the release is pretty solid. Apart from the confusion that may arise from having three different package managers, I found Ubuntu to be capable, fairly newcomer friendly and stable. Everything worked well for me, at least on physical hardware. Unity is a bit slow to use in a virtual machine, but the distribution worked smoothly on my desktop computer.
Certified Ubuntu images are now available in the Oracle Bare Metal Cloud Services, providing developers with compute options ranging from single to 16 OCPU virtual machines (VMs) to high-performance, dedicated bare metal compute instances. This is in addition to the image already offered on Oracle Compute Cloud Service and maintains the ability for enterprises to add Canonical-backed Ubuntu Advantage Support and Systems Management. Oracle and Canonical customers now have access to the latest Ubuntu features, compliance accreditations and security updates.
Canonical announced the official availability of Certified Ubuntu images in Oracle's Bare Metal Cloud Services, which accompany the images that the company already provides in the Oracle Compute Cloud Service.
Canonical's Certified Ubuntu images in Oracle Bare Metal Cloud Services are a great addition because they promise to provide developers with dedicated, high-performance bare-metal compute instances, as well as virtual machines with up to 16 Oracle Compute Unit (OCPU). They also add the ability for Oracle's enterprise customers to access the latest and greatest Ubuntu features.
European Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider City Network, has joined the Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud (CPC) programme. This is the second very big European win for Ubuntu after it signed up OVH earlier this month. As an Ubuntu CPC partner, City Cloud will no longer need to create, curate, patch and maintain Ubuntu images. This will all be done by Ubuntu who will then provide them to City Network.
Canonical announced the availability of an updated kernel patch for all supported Ubuntu Linux releases, addressing a security vulnerability discovered recently in the upstream Linux kernel.
On 26th April, 2012 the most beloved version of Ubuntu was released "Ubuntu 12.04 Precise" Long-Term support version, I still remember and miss that day when it was released. I personally used it a lot after "10.04 LTS" and still I use it for productivity because it is stable has a lot of stuff available developed by community such as applications, themes, icons, 3rd-party scripts for it and so on.
SolidRun’s “Marvell MacchiatoBIN” is a $349, Mini-ITX networking SBC that runs Linux 4.4 on Marvell’s quad -A72 Armada 8040, and supports ODP, OFP, and NFV.
SolidRun, which is known for its NXP i.MX6 based HummingBoard SBCs and Marvell Armada 38x based ClearFog Pro and scaled down ClearFog Base networking boards, has spun a $349 (and up) Marvell MacchiatoBIN SBC that showcases Marvell’s high-end Armada 8040 SoC. The 170 x 170mm “community” Mini-ITX board ships with schematics and layout files, and offers an open source, mainline Linux 4.4x BSP.
Intrinsyc‘s 31.5 x 15mm “Open–Q 2100 SOM” and Nano-ITX dev kit for wearables run Android 7.0 or Android Wear on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 SoC.
In case you’ve been dying to use Linux-like command line on your Android device – or you simply want people to stop playing with your phone – this app might be precisely what you’ve been looking for.
Available for free, Linux CLI Launcher is an unusual app launcher that turns your regular Android phone into a full-fledged command line interface.
ZTE announced its new Max XL phone today, a Boost Mobile exclusive that features a 6-inch Full HD display and Android Nougat 7.1.1. The phone will cost only $129.99. It’s nice to see ZTE launching even its budget phones with updated Android software as well as a rear fingerprint sensor. But while the company is marketing the device as ideal for streaming videos and playing games, the puny 2GB of RAM will likely be quickly filled up. Still, for the price, users are getting a nice size display, which certainly is useful for watching videos, although the resolution isn’t high enough to make for a gorgeous display.
Phoenicia is a new literacy application for Android developed by Michael Hall, an open source software developer, community manager, and technology evangelist currently working at Canonical, maker of Ubuntu. In this interview, he talks about the diagnosis of his oldest child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, his learning curve of Android development, and why user testing matters more than you think.
The Android-x86 project was proud to announce the release and immediate availability for download of the third stable update to the latest Android-x86 6.0 Linux- and Android-based operating system for personal computers.
While earlier this year the future of Android-x86 was questioned, so far the project is moving along and released this week was Android-x86 6.0-r3 as the latest Marshmallow update.
Android TV is my favorite pick for putting content up on the big screen, but there aren’t a lot of options available when it comes to hardware. The best bang for your buck option is probably the Xiaomi Mi Box, but since this is Android, there are always some crazy ways to build on new hardware. Now, an XDA user has successfully gotten Android TV running on the Raspberry Pi 3.
Development of OmniOS – an Oracle-free open-source variant of Solaris – is being killed after five years of work.
Active development of OmniOS by OmniTI is being suspended, we're told, with its current beta being the final release. OmniOS is a distribution of Illumos, which is derived from OpenSolaris, Sun's open-source flavor of Solaris.
Ever wanted to build your own banking platform? Now you can with the open-source Fineract project.
The open-source Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has many different processes, including one for how a new project can be incubated, mature and eventually graduate to become a Top-Level Project.
I recently sent a report to project management containing some numbers that purport to describe the status of the RDO project.
I got a long and thoughtful response from one of the managers—we'll call him Mark—and it seems worthwhile sharing some of his insights. To summarize, what he said was, don't bother collecting stats if they don't tell a story.
[...]
We track "downloads" of RDO, which roughly speaking means every time someone runs the quickstart and it grabs the RPM. Except RDO is on a mirror network, so that number is false—or, at best, it reflects what the trends might be across the rest of the mirror network. So we have no idea what this metric means. So why are we bothering to track it? Just stop.
Baidu, China’s largest search engine, said last week that it’s opening up its self-driving technology to drive the development of the budding industry. At the Shanghai Auto Show, according to the Financial Times, the company said the project would provide an “open, complete and reliable software platform for its partners in the automotive and autonomous driving industry to develop their own autonomous driving systems.”
Developers can also improve upon, use, and re-contribute (under LGPLv2 license) to SRT.
After 1.5.0 earlier in the year, Prometheus 1.6.1 is now out. There’s a plethora of changes, so let’s dive in.
The biggest change is to how memory is managed. The -storage.local.memory-chunks and -storage.local.max-chunks-to-persist flags have been replaced by -storage.local.target-heap-size. Prometheus will attempt to keep the heap at the given size in bytes. For various technical reasons, actual memory usage will be higher so leave a buffer on top of this. Setting this flag to 2/3 of how much RAM you’d like to use should be safe.
In this video from Switzerland HPC Conference, Stig Telfer from StackHPC presents: OpenStack for Research Computing. OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) has evolved significantly since the concept began to be considered in the 1990s, and Martin Casado, General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz, used his keynote at the Open Networking Summit to talk about how he’s seen SDN change over the past 10 years.
Mozilla and more than 150 other tech companies continue to oppose the U.S. administration’s revised Executive Order on travel as it winds its way through the U.S. Court system.
This order seeks to temporarily prohibit the U.S. Government from issuing new visas to travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries and suspend the U.S refugee program. Soon after it was issued, two federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland held the revised order to be discriminatory and unconstitutional. So far, their decisions have prevented the order from being enforced, but the administration has appealed to higher courts asking for a reversal.
Partners HealthCare has joined forces with Persistent Systems to build an open source platform for sharing clinical knowledge among healthcare providers, the companies announced on Tuesday morning.
The Free Software Foundation of Europe has just completed the process of electing a new fellowship representative to the General Assembly (GA) and I was surprised to find that out of seven very deserving candidates, members of the fellowship have selected me to represent them on the GA.
I'd like to thank all those who voted, the other candidates and Erik Albers for his efforts to administer this annual process.
The open sourcing of "cregit," the underlying tool used at cregit.linuxsources.org, provided by The Linux Foundation. cregit enables easy access to and improves the visibility of details in the history of changes in source code files.
The open-source landscape can be tricky to navigate with the different projects, licenses, and compliance requirements. The Linux Foundation and Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) are announcing new resources to simplify free and open-source software license identification and compliance.
Newcomers to free and open source software (FOSS) might be bewildered by the variety of licenses that dictate how users can use community offerings.
For example, the Open Source Initiative lists nine "popular licenses" and Wikipedia lists dozens more coming in a variety of flavors for different purposes. Those purposes include linking, distribution, modification, patent grant, private use, sublicensing and trademark grant.
In October 2016, the association Droit des Lycéens, which represents French high school students and helps them assert their rights, finally obtained the source code of an algorithm that influences students’ choice of university after the Baccalauréat exam. This puts an end to a conflict lasting more than seven months between the association and the Ministry of Education, which until then had refused to publish the source code of its tool.
The opening of algorithms and calculators is a flagship measure in the French law for a digital republic that was passed in 2016. Since then, France has started to publish some source codes, such as the personal tax calculator in April 2016. This may have created a precedent for the present case, according to the association.
The algorithm in question forms the core of the APB (Admission Post-Bac) online platform, which is used by all students in France. It allows them to enter their preferences in terms of universities and syllabus, and helps match applicants to available places. But Droit des Lycéens believes that the calculation method has been kept secret by the Ministry, and lacks transparency.
The OpenForum Europe (OFE) think tank welcomes the publication of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF). This document continues to emphasise the importance of openness, the organisation writes on its blog.
A data visualisation application developed in 2015 by the Czech Ministry of Finance, is helping to promote the publication of open data, and is making the case for open source software development across the government. The tool, called Supervizor, was one of the winners of the European Commission’s Sharing and Reuse Award. At the Sharing and Reuse Conference in Lisbon (Portugal), on 29 March, Supervizor was awarded EUR 15,000 - to help the project expands its reach.
Garanti Bank Romania selected FinTP, Allevo’s open source solution to connect to SWIFTNet, ensuring compliance to SEPA standards and regulations, in order to optimize its operations. The bank continues, as such, to grow rapidly on the Romanian market, offering better services to its customers.
By adopting FinTP, Garanti Bank Romania benefits from a technology that drives cost reduction and conveys full control over the source code of the application, thus eliminating the vendor lock-in dependence, while gaining access to a transparent product development process and transparent product audit.
[...]
FinTP is distributed under the free GPL v3 open source license. This distribution model is different from what vendors in this industry practice, its main advantage being that it removes any dependence on the vendor.
These two states are moving to slash the astronomical costs of higher education by introducing open source textbooks.
The University System of Maryland awarded mini-grants to 21 recipients across 12 different universities for converting all of their reading materials to open source platforms for students. Between the 7 Maryland community colleges and 5 public four-year institutions, the initiative has the potential to save over 8,000 students $1.3 million in textbook costs over the Fall 2017 semester.
New York state Governor Andrew M. Cuomo is also moving to invest $8 million of the state budget into open source educational materials. The budget also included a new proposal that will provide free college tuition to any families or students in the state making less than $125,000 per year.
It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, but the PHP 7.2 release schedule was firmed up earlier this month and is aiming to ship by the end of November.
POCL, the Portable Computing Language project, aiming to provide a portable OpenCL implementation for usage against different CPUs and back-ends, has been working on CUDA support.
Science fiction has long served as a platform for the hashing out of big social, political and economic issues, either metaphorically or literally. Cory Doctorow has never been shy of speaking their names directly, whether examining the implications of the surveillance state or the shifting of social and economic forces caused by technology. In his first novel for an adult audience in eight years, Doctorow revisits many of the themes he's written about in the past, and he refines them into a compelling, cerebral "hard" science fiction narrative of a not-too distant future that ranks with some of the best of the genre.
Walkaway (from Tor Books, which releases on April 25 in hardcover) is a very Doctorow-y book. Intensely smart and tech-heavy, it still manages maintains the focus on its human (or in some cases, post-human) protagonists. Walkaway is also full of big ideas about both the future and our current condition, and it has enough philosophical, social, and political commentary lurking just below the surface to fuel multiple graduate theses.
or those still having OS/2 software to run or just missing the days of OS/2, the software firm Arca Noae that is run by OS/2 veterans is preparing a new installment of the operating system with blessings from IBM.
Arca Noae is preparing this week to release their final beta of ArcaOS 5.0 "Blue Lion"to allow OS/2 software to run on modern hardware. Blue Lion can run on modern devices with USB support, AHCI / SATA, and other modern hardware compared to when OS/2 development ended in the late 90's. The final/GA release of ArcaOS 5.0 is expected soon.
Our goal is to identify hijacked resolvers by analyzing their fingerprints, in order to increase safety of Internet users. To do that, we utilize data collected via RIPE Atlas (atlas.ripe.net).
The researchers, from across three universities in Germany and Trend Micro, checked the PHP code bases of more than 64,000 projects on Github and uncovered more than 100 vulnerabilities that they believe might have been introduced as a result of developers picking up the code that they used from online tutorials.
BrickerBot, the botnet that permanently incapacitates poorly secured Internet of Things devices before they can be conscripted into Internet-crippling denial-of-service armies, is back with a new squadron of foot soldiers armed with a meaner arsenal of weapons.
Webroot's security tools went berserk today, mislabeling key Microsoft Windows system files as malicious and temporarily removing them – knackering PCs in the process.
Not only were people's individual copies of the antivirus suite going haywire, but also business editions and installations run by managed service providers (MSPs), meaning companies and organizations relying on the software were hit by the cockup.
Between 1200 and 1500 MST (1800 and 2100 UTC) today, Webroot's gear labeled Windows operating system data as W32.Trojan.Gen – generic-Trojan-infected files, in other words – and moved them into quarantine, rendering affected computers unstable. Files digitally signed by Microsoft were whisked away – but, luckily, not all of them, leaving enough of the OS behind to reboot and restore the quarantined resources.
Updating software is one of the most important ways to keep users and organizations secure. But how can software be updated securely? That's the challenge that The Update Framework (TUF) aims to solve.
Justin Cappos, assistant professor at New York University, detailed how TUF works and what's coming to further improve the secure updating approach in a session at last week's DockerCon 17 conference in Austin, Texas. Simply using HTTPS and Transport Layer Security (TLS) to secure a download isn't enough as there have been many publicly reported instances of software repositories that have been tampered with, Cappos said.
Researchers say they've discovered a new wave of malware with one purpose: to disable poorly secured routers and internet of things devices before they can be compromised and integrated into botnets. We've often noted how internet-of-broken-things devices ("smart" doorbells, fridges, video cameras, etc.) have such flimsy security that they're often hacked and integrated into botnets in just a matter of seconds after being connected to the internet. These devices are then quickly integrated into botnets that have been responsible for some of the worst DDoS attacks we've ever seen (including last October's attack on DYN).
With a sprawling workforce, a wide range of devices running on multiple platforms, and a growing reliance on cloud infrastructure and applications, the idea of the corporate network as the castle and security defenses as walls and moats protecting the perimeter doesn’t really work anymore. Which is why, over the past year, Google has been talking about BeyondCorp, the zero-trust perimeter-less security framework it uses to secure access for its 61,000 employees and their devices.
MS17-010 was released in March and it closes a number of holes in Windows SMB Server exploited by the NSA. Exploits such as EternalBlue, EternalChampion, EternalSynergy and EternalRomance that are part of the Fuzzbunch exploit platform all drop DoublePulsar onto compromised hosts. DoublePulsar is a sophisticated memory-based kernel payload that hooks onto x86 and 64-bit systems and allows an attacker to execute any raw shellcode payload they wish.
Hackers have unleashed a new malware strain that targets Linux-based systems.
The Linux/Shishiga malware uses four different protocols (SSH, Telnet, HTTP and BitTorrent) and Lua scripts for modularity, according to an analysis of the nasty by security researchers at ESET.
Shishiga relies on the use of weak, default credentials in its attempts to plant itself on insecure systems through a bruteforcing attack, a common hacker tactic. A built-in password list allows the malware to try a variety of different passwords to see if any allow it in.
Finding and fixing vulnerabilities is a good thing, according to Docker engineer Michael Crosby. In a standing-room only session at the DockerCon conference in Austin, Texas last week, Crosby went into detail on how the open-source container project deals with vulnerabilities.
The Trump administration is considering barring passengers flying to the US from UK airports from carrying laptops, sources have told the Guardian.
The proposed ban would be similar to one already imposed on travellers from several Middle Eastern countries.
British officials understand that their US counterparts are looking at extending the ban – which prevents any devices larger than a smartphone being taken as carry-on luggage – to flights from Europe.
The day is marked with a public holiday, and despite the USS Michigan, one of US' most powerful submarines, arriving in South Korea Tuesday in an apparent show of force, there was no sign of tension in Pyongyang as North Koreans took to the streets to celebrate.
Many of Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations faced vocal opposition from constituents and public interest groups. But well-connected corporate lobbyists stalked the halls of Congress to make sure Trump’s team was confirmed by the Senate, new filings show.
Koch Industries, a fossil fuel conglomerate that owns a variety of business interests that have clashed with environmental regulators, directly lobbied to help confirm Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
The firm’s latest disclosure form reports that its in-house corporate lobbying team spent $3.1 million to influence lawmakers over the first three months of the year on a variety of issues affecting its bottom line, including the EPA’s Clean Power Rule on carbon emissions, carbon pricing, the Clean Air Act and “nominations for various positions at the Department of Energy.”
Indian IT companies get over 60 per cent of their revenues from the North American market, about 20 per cent from Europe and the remaining from other economies.
WASHINGTON: The US has complained that Indian blue chip IT firms Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Cognizant unfairly get the lion's share of H-1B visas by putting extra tickets into the lottery system, which the Trump administration wants to replace with a 'merit-based' immigration policy. A Trump administration official said at a White House briefing last week that a small number of giant outsourcing firms flood the system with applications, which increases their chances of success in the lottery draw.
BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen has already earned a spot in the Internet hall of fame, but he's not done yet. In recent years he's taken a strong interest in cryptocurrencies, something he will devote himself full-time to in the near future. This includes launching a new cryptocurrency which addresses some of the challenges facing Bitcoin.
The five contributed €£15m out of a total €£24.1m given to Leave campaigns in the five months before the referendum
The government is being urged to act swiftly to halt a post-Brexit brain drain which threatens the international competitiveness of the UK’s university sector.
A significant new report by MPs sitting on the Commons education committee says the rights of 32,000 university staff from EU countries to continue working in the UK should be guaranteed as a matter of urgency.
It says the government should be prepared to unilaterally agree the rights of EU nationals in the UK before the end of the year, even if a reciprocal deal has not been agreed, to prevent an exodus of talented EU staff leaving the UK for competitor countries.
Launching the report, Neil Carmichael, the Conservative chairman of the committee, said: “Higher education in the UK is a world leader, but Brexit risks damaging our international competitiveness and the long-term success of our universities.”
University staff from EU countries should be guaranteed a right to stay and work in the UK after Brexit to avoid a "damaging brain drain", says a report from MPs.
The education select committee wants urgent steps taken to end uncertainty over the future status of EU academics.
The MPs also want overseas students to be taken out of migration figures.
Committee chairman Neil Carmichael said Brexit risks damaging universities' "international competitiveness".
A group of ministers from developing countries released a roadmap today for global digital commerce discussions, aimed at paving the way to discussions on electronic commerce at the World Trade Organization ministerial conference in December.
“The Government needs to step in before it’s too late – and reassure millions of workers across the country this is not just the tip of the Brexit iceberg.”
Trade was a major theme in President Trump’s campaign.
He repeatedly complained that our trade negotiators were stupid and therefore had negotiated bad trade agreements. These bad trade deals are the cause of our trade deficits, which have cost us millions of manufacturing jobs over the last two decades.
Trump made very specific promises to turn things around once he was in the White House. In “Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter,” his “100-day action plan to Make America Great Again” included two very clear trade-related promises:
Now, the whiners in the US lumber industry don’t want Canadian lumber in their market but they can’t exclude it. Instead they whine that the royalty system is government intrusion in the market, a subsidy, when it’s not. It’s a tax. Effectively, the Canadian tax is less than the USAian tax determined by auctions. They keep taking this to court and LOSING.
So, bewildered Wilbur and stupid USAians who think the world should do things their way are doing everything they can to drive exports of softwood lumber to China and India… Smart. Real smart. Perhaps USAians won’t mind rising costs for building homes and shortages of lumber and deforestation and … Look, we Canadians don’t have to do things USA’s way. We are a free nation of free people and we choose our own path.
As EU leaders rushed to praise Emmanuel Macron, they were confronted with questions about how appropriate it is for Brussels to intervene in a national election amid fears of a backlash from French voters.
Perhaps nowhere was the question as irresistible — or inevitable — as in Moscow, where the pro-Kremlin television network Russia Today pressed the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, to explain a tweet she sent Sunday night that appeared to hail Macron as “the hope and future of our generation.”
The Senate Press Gallery's Standing Committee of Correspondents chose to deny permanent Hill credentials to Breitbart News on Tuesday morning.
Breitbart has been using temporary press credentials for over two years as it has attempted to meet the press gallery's requirements. The committee has repeatedly extended its temporary passes after deciding Breitbart has not met those requirements, and more recently for not providing adequate evidence of severing its ties with former executive chairman and current White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
White House national security staffer Sebastian Gorka faced off with student critics he described as “victims of fake news” at a Georgetown University panel on Monday, eventually walking out of the event in the middle of the question-and-answer period.
Gorka, a deputy assistant to President Trump, blamed “fake news” — the topic of the panel — for a series of stories alleging connections between him and far-right or anti-Semitic Hungarian political organizations.
The threat of a U.S. government shutdown this weekend appeared to recede on Tuesday after President Donald Trump backed away from a demand that Congress include funding for his planned border wall with Mexico in a spending bill.
In remarks to conservative news media outlets that were confirmed by the White House, Trump said on Monday evening he may wait until Republicans begin drafting the budget blueprint for the fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1 to seek funds for the wall.
Trump's fellow Republicans control both chambers of Congress but the current funding bill, which has to be passed by Friday night, will need 60 votes to clear the 100-member Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats and so will have to get some Democratic support. Democratic leaders had said it would not get it if funds for the wall were included.
Our government isn't exactly known for its security chops, but in a letter sent recently from Senator Ron Wyden to two of his colleagues who head the Committee on Rules & Administration, it's noted that (incredibly), the ID cards used by Senate Staffers only appear to have a smart chip in them. Instead of the real thing, some genius just decided to put a photo of a smart chip on each card, rather than an actual smart chip. This isn't security by obscurity, it's... bad security through cheap Photoshopping.
Where are the nose-pegs this time? Those who tolerated anything the Labour party did under Blair tolerate nothing under Corbyn. Those who insisted that we should vote Labour at any cost turn their backs as it seeks to recover its principles.
They proclaimed undying loyalty when the party stood for the creeping privatisation of the NHS, the abandonment of the biggest corruption case in British history, the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme, bans on peaceful protest, detention without trial, the kidnap and torture of innocent people and an illegal war in which hundreds of thousands died. They proclaim disenchantment now that it calls for the protection of the poor, the containment of the rich and the peaceful resolution of conflict.
After deliberating since October 2016, a federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has recently issued an order for appearance to the lawyers representing the DNC and former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the plaintiffs representing Bernie Sanders supporters, Jared Beck and Elizabeth Lee Beck. The hearing is set for 1:30 p.m. on April 25, when the judge is expected to announce the court's decision in response to the DNC's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The lawsuit was initially filed in June 2016 in response to the mounting evidence that Wasserman Schultz used the DNC to tip the scales in Hillary Clinton's favor during the Democratic primaries.
Buffalo News headline (4/18/17) asked a pointed question about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo: “How Did Cuomo Make $783,000 on Memoir That Sold 3,200 Copies?”
The accompanying article did not delve particularly deep into the mystery, beyond noting that the royalty amounts to $245 per copy for a book that retails on Amazon for $13.05, and that it more than doubled Cuomo’s income for 2016, when his $216,000 in royalties topped the $168,000 he got as his gubernatorial salary. “This payment was contractual and per the agreement with the publisher,” a Cuomo spokesperson told the News.
The identity of that publisher—HarperCollins, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp—goes a long way to solving the mystery: Murdoch has long made a practice of funneling large payments to influential politicians via HarperCollins book contracts, in what amounts to a system of legalized bribery.
The Justice Department threatened to cut off grant funding to eight cities on Fridayââ¬Å —ââ¬Å unless those cities provide more support to federal officials trying to crack down on undocumented immigrants. But DOJ’s threat is unconstitutional and is highly unlikely to survive a lawsuit.
In fact, the Justice Department’s threat against these eight cities appears to be so amateurish and so poorly aligned with longstanding Supreme Court precedent that it raises serious questions about whether the threat was properly vetted.
At issue is funding for so-called “sanctuary cities,” a term that’s often used for cities that choose not to cooperate with federal efforts to arrest immigrants.
Maziar Bahari is a dissident, exiled Iranian journalist who was imprisoned and tortured by the regime for 118 days in 2009. Now he runs Iranwire, a leading Persian politics site. They've just launched Sandoogh96 (Vote 2017), an app that publishes independent political news. Word of the app is spreading in Iran, and it's challenging the dominant narrative.
China's state prosecutors are not normally in the business of bankrolling TV productions. Presumably, they took that unusual step on this occasion because it was important to increase public support for Xi Jinping's long-running fight against corruption's "tigers" and "flies" using a medium that would reach a much wider audience than dull government speeches or press articles exhorting them to do the same.
One of the best ways to ensure the widest possible audience for that message would be to allow the TV series to appear on sites for people to download freely. So asking the companies running them to remove copies in order to "protect" the official broadcasts seems perverse. If anything, it shows that respect for copyright in China has now gone so far as to be harmful to more serious matters like tackling the country's corruption.
German Football Association (DFB) president Reinhard Grindel has backed the Bild newspaper over claims of Russian censorship ahead of this summer's Confederations Cup.
Bild, Germany's most popular paper, has said it will boycott this summer's Confederations Cup in Russia if journalists are not given freedom to report as they please.
Print journalists attending the event -- which serves as a warm-up for the 2018 World Cup in Russia -- have been informed that they will be restricted in their travelling and reporting.
The AP maintains a permanent presence in the country, with a small team of international correspondents and photographers, and a few North Koreans who work primarily as fixers. Eric Talmadge, who has led the bureau since 2013, likens working in Pyongyang to being embedded with the military. “Obviously the context is quite different,” he said. “But in practical and psychological terms, I find it very similar to my experiences embedded in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
The freedoms granted to the AP reporters are denied to would-be journalists from inside the country, said Kang Cheol Hwan, president of the North Korea Strategy Center. “Journalism in North Korea is run by the state,” Kang said.
For two years, he has been waiting for his chance to apply to CBFC. But the authorities refused to entertain him since the title of his movie didn't have a registration from the Eastern India Motion Pictures Association (EIMPA). On Monday, his problem was finally resolved after an instruction came from the CEO of CBFC. Many other independent filmmakers apart from Mukherjee stand to benefit after CBFC's new stance.
Legislation designed to protect student journalists from censorship has hit a roadblock Thursday amid criticism from some lawmakers that they’re not entitled to those protections.
House Majority Leader John Allen, R-Scottsdale, yanked SB 1384 from consideration after more than an hour of debate over its merits. Allen told Capitol Media Services he was unsure whether there were sufficient votes on the floor for approval.
Allen said the measure still could be resurrected. But he said Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, who crafted the legislation and got it approved unanimously in the Senate, is going to have to work to convince some House foes to drop their opposition.
Hotmail is boycotting a vital service to all humanity, they are boycotting the use of a VPN service, the thing that actually improves user safety. What if you live in a country like China or just happen to be traveling there, where the government blocks access to U.S. email services like Hotmail, what could be done? The thing a VPN is good for, to access the Internet when a government is blocking it, to read your emails, to let other Chinese folks read their emails too. Hopefully not being arrested for using a VPN. I would expect Hotmail to understand how important the use of a VPN is to humanity.
New Zealand spied on Japan to help the United States at an international whaling meeting in 2007, according to a classified National Security Agency document.
The Intercept website published the paper, received from US whistleblower Edward Snowden, as part of an article on Japan's secretive relationship with the National Security Agency.
A global survey on internet security and trust found users are worried about privacy, and in particularly wary of cybercriminals, internet companies, and governments. This lack of trust is hurting the potential of electronic commerce, the survey revealed.
Newly released documents sourced from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal details of the intelligence community's planning for large-scale evacuations and the response to a North Korea attack.
The Intercept news website - run by Glenn Greenwald and a team of investigative journalists - released a batch of 251 internal National Security Agency newsletters, a publication called SIDtoday.
"No, no one tried to contact him. I believe that Snowden clarified his position which has not changed. Nothing has changed actually, he still lives and works in Russia," the attorney said.
Kucherena added that Snowden continued to learn Russian.
"He started to learn the Russian language and he can already speak a little of it," the attorney said.
Supporters of the bill claim the lack of an exception to the privacy law leaves administrators powerless. True, a school administrator can't seek a warrant to access the contents of a student's phone, but there are options schools can use rather than exempt every California student from the state's privacy law.
Most schools have electronic device policies that tie search consent to school attendance, which usually includes personal electronic devices along with vehicles parked on school grounds and lockers. A consensual search -- even if performed under an "implied consent" standard rather than a more affirmative version -- is still a "clean" search, though possibly one less likely to survive a courtroom challenge. Many schools also have police officers on staff. Whether or not these officers can seek warrants to access phone contents is unclear, but in cases of suspected criminal conduct, this would be turned over to law enforcement anyway.
A camera inside a car could also identify [...]
Sameena further said that she had learnt that her mother was sold to the kafeel for 3 lakh. "The torture started when she denied to a contract marriage with her Kafeel in Saudi Arabia. She however informed me sending message that she was sold by agents. so the Kafeel does not want to send her back,"
“My outreach to Muslims has led to all these fights that I have been receiving from the Muslims,” he said. “These people have been hunting for me since the early ’80s. And as a result, they even managed to kill my mother by poisoning, and after the death of my mother, they went ahead and killed my livestock. They are provoking me to leave the area.”
Uber has said it will no longer use that program to thwart local regulators.
Uber hid its fingerprinting of iPhone users from Apple – techniques that would have had any other app thrown out of Apple's store. Uber retained the information even after the Uber app had been deleted and the phone had been wiped. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick got a personal reprimand from Apple CEO Tim Cook, but the app stayed put, and Uber continues to use fingerprinting worldwide.
Fears have been raised that criminal offences could go unreported after it was revealed that the Metropolitan police has been referring victims of crime over to the Home Office for immigration enforcement.
In response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from Politics.co.uk, the Met admitted passing on details of both victims and witnesses of crime if there were concerns over their immigration status.
An African-American homeless man slain with a sword on the streets of New York. A mosque attacked in Fort Collins, Colorado, its windows smashed by a man who finished off his assault by hurling a Bible inside the Muslim house of worship. A portion of Junction City, Wisconsin, evacuated after a man angry with his Hmong neighbor opened fire. A man arrested in Port St. Lucie, Florida, for trying to set fire to a convenience store he suspected was owned by a Muslim, after which he said he’d just been trying to “do his part for America.”
That happened in the month of March in America. In fact, just a flavor of it.
There was also the Jewish cemetery vandalized in Rochester, New York. The man beaten with a pipe in a restaurant in Salem, Oregon, by an attacker who said, “Arab, you need to leave.” The African-American family in Delano, Minnesota, who moved out of their home just months after moving in after it was ransacked and spray painted with epithets.
Here in the States, regulators and Congress are preparing to gut our existing net neutrality rules -- replacing them with the policy equivalent of wet tissue paper. In Canada, regulators are taking the complete opposite tack, last week cementing the country's net neutrality rules as some of the most comprehensive in the world.
After years of some obnoxious behavior by Canadian ISPs like Rogers, Canadian regulators adopted guidelines back in 2009 that prevent ISPs from blocking websites, while requiring that they're transparent about network management. In 2013, those guidelines were expanded to cover zero rating after Ben Klass, a graduate student in telecommunications, filed a complaint with the CRTC over zero rating. Specifically, Klass and his co-filers noted that Bell had begun exempting its own streaming video service from the company's usage caps, thereby putting smaller streaming competitors at a notable disadvantage.
It looks like Prenda's Paul Hansmeier isn't nearly as interested John Steele in striking a deal with the feds. Of course, Steele folded immediately, offering up Hansmeier as bus undercoating, which likely means Hansmeier isn't being feted by feds with plea deals.
The 17-count indictment relayed a story familiar to Techdirt readers, since we have covered nearly every part of the scam: a get-rich-quick scheme that paid off at first for Prenda, but quickly unraveled as courts (and many copyright troll fighters) uncovered fake defendants, shell companies, forged documents, and honeypot-as-business-model tactics.
Why are advocates for major media and entertainment companies pushing Congress to rush through a bill that would make the U.S.’s top copyright official— the Register of Copyrights— a position appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate? Unfortunately, it is likely because the new appointment process will increase the ability of the incumbent copyright lobby to influence the Copyright Office, to the detriment consumers, creators and innovators.
H.R. 1695’s supporters insist that it would increase accountability by giving Congress more of a voice in the selection process. But in practice, making the appointment one more contentious political contest would create a Register who’s only really accountable to the lobbyists and special interests that help her get selected and confirmed. Indeed, proponents of the bill have touted it as a measure that will better enable the Copyright Office to serve the interests of the “creative industries.”
For any of the entrenched entertainment players seated comfortably in their lofty offices, quite used to counting stacks of money and calling it a profession, they likely already know this fearful mantra: the millennials are coming. Millennials, and even more so the generations younger than them, are driving changes in the entertainment industry. These younger consumers are largely responsible for the cord-cutting trend winding its way through the cable industry, not to mention being the force behind ever-expanding streaming options for everything from movies to television shows and live sports. These are the customers of the future. Customers that will outlive a public that became used to having bloated cable television packages filled with channels and content fit to be ignored.
Music industry group RIAA, which represents the leading recording labels in the US, is now a major customer of anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp. In fact, the RIAA's commitment to the copyright troll outfit is so significant that its business accounted for 44% of Rightscorp's revenue in 2016.