The latest Windows 10 upgrade, a.k.a. the Fall Creators Update, did wreak havoc on some computer displays, as noted by several tech sites — the least of which is resolution confusion. A quick search on Richard’s display, the HP 27-inch monitor, says it has a native resolution of 1920Ãâ1080, so what happened to it?
The likely culprit is that existing hardware — the video card — doesn’t quite work with the update. Some people fixed the issue by downloading updated software (also called drivers) for their Intel, Nvidia, ATI or other graphics card. In some cases, companies, notably Razer, are still working with Microsoft on this.
The Kubernetes community is extending the reach of the container orchestration platform into the field of machine learning.
Kubeflow is an open source project that supports machine learning stacks on Kubernetes. The project is housed within the Kubernetes project, which is part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). CNCF is, of course, housed within the Linux Foundation.
This upgraded offering includes access to the latest 4.9 LTS kernel and was created for those who run enterprise or high-performance applications on Linux and, as such, was designed with performance, stability, and security in mind.
The OCI, part of the Linux Foundation, launched in 2015 "for the express purpose of creating open industry standards around container formats and runtime." Currently there are two specs: Runtime and Image, and both specs released version 1.0 in 2017.
One of the common test requests to come in for our end-of-year benchmarking has been a fresh look at the Radeon GPU performance incorporating some both old and new GPUs to see the current state of the open-source driver stack. Tests were done from a Radeon HD 5830 on the Radeon+R600g driver stack to the RX Vega 64 on AMDGPU+RadeonSI, while using the Linux 4.15-rc5 kernel paired with Mesa 17.4-dev.
The OpenChrome DRM driver continues to largely be developed by one community contributor left standing for supporting VIA x86 graphics on the Linux desktop. These VIA graphics chipsets haven't been too common in about a decade, but OpenChrome continues persevering with working to deliver a full-functioning, open-source driver that VIA itself was never able to produce.
Ben Skeggs of Red Hat has been working on a few Nouveau DRM changes for the next kernel cycle.
No pull request has yet been sent into DRM-Next, but the current work-in-progress activity can be found via the Nouveau DRM repository.
For those with extra time this holiday week, AMD recently published their latest patch queue of DC "display code" updates.
RADV Vulkan driver co-founder David Airlie has begun digging through AMD's newly-opened AMDVLK official Vulkan driver in order to gain some hindsight and port some fixes/changes to this unofficial Mesa-based open-source Vulkan driver.
Back from his Christmas break, earlier today David Airlie posed some questions to AMD about the future of AMDVLK. Previously he indicated that he would continue RADV now regardless of AMD's open-source actions, but we'll see what ends up happening over the weeks/months ahead. Among his questions were how the AMDVLK development process will be handled at AMD, how AMD will be engaging with the open-source community, the development process for new Vulkan functionality, etc.
More trouble ensues for 32-bit operating systems as NVIDIA announces the end for graphics driver support for the 32-bit systems.
I doubt there is a better alternative to Ookla’s speedtest when it comes to testing our internet speed. Once in a while, we all like to test our internet speed by visiting their website. Wouldn’t it be a lot cooler if we could test our internet speeds by using speedtest.net without having to visit their website right from the terminal?
Updated to version 0.28.0, MPV has received supported for the latest FFMpeg 3.4 open-source multimedia backend, which means that it now requires the libavutil >= 56.6.100, libavcodec >= 58.7.100, libavformat >= 58.0.102, libswscale >= 5.0.101, libavfilter >= 7.0.101, and libswresample >= 3.0.100 libraries to compile on supported operating systems.
MPV 0.28.0 also ships with a bunch of interesting new features, among which we can mention initial support for the Vulkan graphics API and Direct3D 11, an Android OpenGL backend, support for NVIDIA Hardware Video Decoder, a mediacodec hardware decoder for IMGFMT_MEDIACODEC frames, support for Display P3 primaries, as well as support for up to eight frontends.
With the Christmas weekend release of the MPlayer-forked MPV Player 0.28, it's the first video player we are aware of supporting the Vulkan graphics API for video presentation. This release has just basic Vulkan support but it will be much better in the next release.
The MPlayer-forked MPV Player is out with a new feature release that presents several interesting features.
Most exciting to us is that MPV 0.28 presents initial Vulkan output support for presenting videos via this modern Khronos graphics API. This Vulkan video output support is still in its early stages but those wanting to look closer at its current functionality and progress can take a look at this Git search showing the vo_gpu Vulkan activity.
You might not look at Opera the same way you do at Chrome, and recently Firefox. But Chrome’s 22-year-old brother from another mother has maintained its presence in the market.
Give your Linux desktop a Christmas touch with some Christmas themes Linux wallpapers and Christmas tree in the terminal.
Do you like high-speed racing games, how about hovercrafts? SmuggleCraft [Steam, Official Site] combines them and turns you into a smuggler.
It seems they had a few issues with the Linux version initially not working, so I held off on covering it at release, but they did make good on it and sorted it out. I requested a key since I was very much intrigued be the idea of the game after seeing it fixed, so here are my thoughts.
For those who love their space colony building games, Maia [Official Site] just got another update that's really quite interesting.
One change that I'm particularly happy with, is the fact that your colonists will now hold items that are related to what they're doing. One of my long-standing gripes with Maia is just not knowing what people are doing. Now, they might hold something like a wrench if they're off to repair something. It's a reasonably small thing, but it ticks a box to make the game feel a little more complete.
I've been personally waiting for this one for quite some time! ASTRONEER, a game of interplanetary exploration finally has Linux support officially on the roadmap.
The developer did confirm it was coming to Linux a few times in the past, however, they never firmly laid out their plans for it. I spoke to them last year, where they confirmed it, but nothing ever came of it. They then confirmed it again at the start of this year, but again nothing happened.
If you have fond memories of Breakout and all the similar games it inspired, Puppet Kings [Steam] might be a game for you.
As of December 20th, the game is now officially supported on Steam for Linux. You can see the official announcement here.
For those who missed it, my original post about the time-travelling tactics game All Walls Must Fall [itch.io, Steam, Official Site] had me really impressed, I'm even more impressed with the latest updates.
Note: All Walls Must Fall is currently in Early Access.
4MLinux 23.1.1 is ready for download. Exceptionally, so called point release has been marked as a major one due to some new amazing features. The live CD is now over 1GB in size and it comes with some popular programs available out of the box (Audacious, Chrome, VLC, GNOME Office). Full 3D support is enabled by default for AMD, Intel and NVIDIA video cards. On the other hand, 4MLinux is still friendly for older PCs. So called Legacy Installer makes it possible to install 4MLinux on the machines with 128 MB of RAM and 2 GB of free disk space.
4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojackiââ¬Â informs Softpedia today about the general availability of a special Christmas release of his independently developed GNU/Linux distribution, 4MLinux 23.1.1.
4MLinux 23.1.1 might look like a point release to most users, but, in fact, it's a major revamp of the 4MLinux 23 stable series of the operating system that brings full 3D support for Intel, AMD Radeon, and Nvidia graphics cards, as well as popular apps like VLC Media Player, Google Chrome, Audacious, and GNOME Office.
Despite adding all these new apps and features, 4MLinux remains friendly with older computers, as the integrated Legacy Installer lets users install 4MLinux on machines with no more than 128 MB of RAM and 2GB of free disk space. 4MLinux 23.1.1 is developer's way of saying Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all 4MLinux users.
eelo is a new mobile OS based on open source Android distribution LineageOS. Its creator is trying to build an ecosystem which is free from Google and Google related products.
Red Hat Inc. recently purchased a hedge against a potential strengthening of the U.S. dollar as it prepares to repatriate offshore cash, finance chief Eric Shander said. The maker of open-source software solutions company had $2.13 billion in cash, cash-equivalents and available-for-sale investments, of which 52.3% was held outside of the U.S. as of Feb. 28, […]
If you are running Fedora Rawhide (their daily/development packages) and using an Intel mobile chipset, be forewarned that they are enabling the SATA link power change that runs the slight risk of potentially causing disk corruption.
While Fedora Rawhide has improved in quality and robustness the past few years, you really shouldn't be running it on any production systems. But if you are, it may be a wise idea to do a data backup before applying the latest Rawhide kernel build.
ââ¬â¹It's not a long time since Fedora 27 was released and I had been using it since then. Fedora comes in 3 forms i.e. workstation, server and atomic. Fedora is generally known as the distro for developers, so I thought to try it but as a normal user to find out if Fedora is suitable for all. Below you will find out all my experience with the latest release of Fedora and all screenshots (including my favorite themes and extensions).
I already orphaned the following packages upstream, but was still maintaining the corresponding Debian packages. I don't use any of this software at the moment, though, so that doesn't make much sense. I'm therefore going to orphan these Debian packages or put them for adoption. (In some cases, there are other possibly obvious maintainers, so I'll ask them first.)
Since summer we have worked on our git.debian.org replacement based on GitLab. I am really happy to say that we are launching the beta of our service today. Please keep in mind that it is a beta, we don't expect any database resets, but under unexpected circumstances it might still happen.
Last week we reported on Ubuntu maker Canonical's financial performance for FY2017 with a $122M turnover and nearly 600 employees after spotting the latest data. For those wondering how that compares to previous years, here is more of the past year's performance.
The data was compiled from the public reports of the UK's Companies House with their most recent filing having been last week for their 2017 fiscal year that ended back on 31 March. Their reports go back to 2009 when the Canonical Group Limited entity itself was formed. Of course, Canonical/Ubuntu itself dates back to 2004.
After Canonical essentially gave up on developing Ubuntu Linux software for smartphones earlier this year, a group of developers at UBPorts decided to pick up where Canonical left off.
The community-based project doesn’t have the resources of a company like Canonical, but the developers still like the idea of running Ubuntu on smartphones, and so they’re continuing to develop the software and they’ve released official and unofficial builds for a number of devices.
Linux Mint project leader Clement Lefebvre revealed in the project's last monthly newsletter for 2017 that the development team will soon begin work on the next major Linux Mint and LMDE releases.
That's right, you've guessed it! With all the editions of the Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" release out the door, it's time for the Linux Mint team to concentrate their efforts on the Linux Mint 19 and Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 3. While LMDE 3 will be just a refreshed installation image of the rolling distro, bringing all the latest Debian security updates, Linux Mint 19 will be based on the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system.
"Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! The year is almost over, our latest release is out, all the work we’ve done has been delivered and this holiday season is an opportunity to take a little break to contemplate and enjoy where we are and what we have, before 2018 starts with a new development cycle, new ambitions and two important targets on the horizon: Linux Mint 19 and LMDE 3," writes Clement Lefebvre in the monthly newsletter.
The year is almost over, our latest release is out, all the work we’ve done has been delivered and this holiday season is an opportunity to take a little break to contemplate and enjoy where we are and what we have, before 2018 starts with a new development cycle, new ambitions and two important targets on the horizon: Linux Mint 19 and LMDE 3.
I’d like to thank you for your support, for your help and for your feedback. 2017 was a lot of fun. See you all next year for more!
I'm going to walk you through a few of the pieces involved in net-booting a Raspberry Pi and then talk about the challenges of running cloud native apps on a net-booted RPi.
It's undeniable - Raspberry Pis capture the imagination of techies of all ages. Combine several Raspberry Pis into a cluster and you now have an x10 or x100 multiplier, but there are some problems with SD Cards. Netbooting is meant to fix this - but there are some limitations to its usefulness.
Few things are as frustrating as a WiFi signal that drops in and out. On a public network it is bad enough but at home? Even if you can live with it, your cohabitants will certainly impune your technical abilities if they don’t have solid WiFi. One solution is a WiFi repeater. You can buy one, of course. But you can also make one out of an ESP8266 and some code from GitHub. There is also a video about the project, below.
Adlink’s Linux ready “Express-DN7” is a Type 7 module with an up to 16-core Atom C3000 SoC, 4x 10GBASE-KR ports, PTP, and a new Express-BASE7 carrier.
If you happen to have an older Sandy Bridge era Intel NUC, it may now supported by mainline Coreboot.
Ever since Samsung announced Tizen Mobile App Incentive Program, the quantity and quality of apps & games in the Tizen Store has seen a noticeable growth. A number of good quality games have been added to the Tizen Store this year. Let us have a look at some of the very best among them.
Another year has passed, and the Tizen smartphone ecosystem has thankfully made a slight progress, at least in terms of good quality apps. After the introduction of Tizen Mobile App Incentive program, We did see a number of good quality apps being added in the Tizen Store every month. Today, we list the 15 best apps added in the Tizen Store in the year 2017. These are the apps that we think are capable of making difference to the Tizen smartphone ecosystem. Have a look.
However, I cannot avoid feeling sad about the demise of FirefoxOS. While most of the apps have Android versions by now, some of the games never made it to Android. For example, my three favorite games, or what I called "The Cat Trilogy", were doomed to extinction and cannot be found in the Android app ecosystem.
No one working in cloud and data centers should be surprised that organizations have changed how they run their IT departments. Applications are written and deployed differently, moving away from monoliths to microservices. Organizations operate their data centers by applying development principles to operations through open source software and community collaboration. Open source software is used heavily in development, testing, and production. In a survey done in 2016, 90% of respondents say open source improves their efficiency, interoperability, and innovation, and 65% of companies are contributing to open source projects.
This type of "innovation-through-openness" has proven that global collaboration on code and inclusivity of diverse intellectual contributions advance the technological state of the art and solve problems faster.
FreeBSD Project Quarterly Status Report - 3rd Quarter 2017
This quarter's FreeBSD developments continue to provide excitement and promise for further developments. I myself have a soft spot for manual pages, so it is especially good to see that we have gained some documentation for writing them (and I hope that this will translate to more and improved manual pages in the future!). The core@ entry is also of particular note, with the introduction of the FCP process and the recognition of the first non-committer FreeBSD Project Member (and more). Read on to find out more about these, as well as improved support for the AMD Zen family of processors (e.g., Ryzen), and a whole lot more!
The FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report covering work done in the third quarter has now been published.
Swatantra 2017, an international conference on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), became the platform for discussions on emerging developments in the field, and highlighted the major FOSS initiatives of the Government of Kerala.
Held on 20 and 21 December 2017 at Thiruvananthapuram, Swatantra 2017 was the sixth edition of the conference held on a triennial basis, and was organised by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an institution set up by the Kerala government.
Around 400 free software enthusiasts – students, IT professionals and others – participated in the conference, with 36 speakers from across the globe sharing their experiences and leading sessions on a range of topics. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated the conference, the slogan of which was ‘Celebrating Freedom’.
Paytm on Tuesday announced the launch of its ‘Indian Open Source Project Incubator’, where professionals and students can build open source-based solutions, and share these projects with the global developer community.
Paytm, India’s digital payments unicorn, announced its plans to launch its incubator programme enabling startups to build and share tech solutions in the country. Through the ‘Build For India’ initiative, Paytm will bring together students and professionals who can build open source solutions and share them with the developer community worldwide.
Paytm is all set to join the ranks of India's growing accelerators and incubators through its incubator programme to enable building and sharing of solutions among technology developers in India. The 'Build For India' initiative will see Paytm bring together students and professionals, who can build open-source-based solutions and share those projects with the global developer community.
Soon, you'll be able to try Lisa's pioneering operating system for yourself: In 2018, the Computer History Museum will release the code behind the Apple Lisa operating system for free as open source, for anyone to try and tinker with. The news was announced via the LisaList mailing list for Lisa enthusiasts.
Long-time Node.js advocate Ashley Williams kicked off her recent Twitter thread in the same sort of stream of consciousness that many devs go through when they are coming to terms with the truth: Unit testing is annoying but necessary.
Unit testing is an essential part of developing software applications. Also called component testing, it is all about isolating one unit of code to verify that it’s working as it should be. And unlike many types of testing, this is usually done by the developer of the code itself.
A unit test differs from an integration test because an integration test, as its name suggests, focuses on the interaction between these units, modules, or components, as a unit test focus on one specific piece. The unit test also mocks behavior while the integration test runs on the actual code or in production.
podlators is the source for Pod::Man and Pod::Text, which convert POD documentation to man pages and text documents.
This version includes a fairly significant formatting change for Pod::Man: man page links and function names (including auto-discovered function names) are now bold instead of italic.
I’ve been hacking about learing Rust for a bit more than a year now, building a Hawk crate and hacking on a distributed lock service named Rubbish (which will never amount to anything but gives me a purpose).
In the process, I’ve run into some limits of the language. I’m going to describe some of those in a series of posts starting with this one.
One of the general themes I’ve noticed is lots of things work great in demos, where everything is in a single function (thus allowing lots of type inference) and most variables are 'static. Try to elaborate these demos out into a working application, and the borrow checker immediately blocks your path.
Today’s frustration is a good example.
With services like Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps suggesting shortcuts for commuters through the narrow, hilly streets of Leonia, N.J., the borough has decided to fight back against congestion that its leaders say has reached crisis proportions.
Travel is a major global industry, but in 2017 it attracted unprecedented resentment and retaliation towards tourists. A growing global backlash against tourism extended from tropical rain forests to urban destinations like Rio de Janeiro and Venice. I have studied tourism’s social and environmental consequences along the coastlines of Colombia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, in the rain forests of Peru and Ecuador, on the islands of Fiji and the Galapagos and across the Savannahs of South Africa and Tanzania. My research and that of numerous other scholars spotlights a key fact: More tourism is not always better. Increasing the number of visitors has generated profits for travel companies – particularly the cruise ship industry – but it has not always benefited local communities and environments where tourism occurs. Fortunately, once people are aware of the often surprising ways in which their trips impact local people and places, it becomes easy to ensure that their travel has more positive consequences for the destinations they visit.
A staunch supporter of the Democratic Party and critic of President Donald Trump, Schmidt still continues to lead the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), even well after the new administration took over in January. This begs the question: should Schmidt’s history of partisan advocacy and condemnation of Trump be a worrisome prospect for the current White House?
Regardless of the answer, Trump’s retention of Schmidt may be emblematic of more than political divisiveness within the current administration, like from “Obama holdovers.” In fact, it may be the opposite of unwanted internal discord and a sign of an underlying ethos for the Trump administration — diversity of thought.
There was a bit of controversy last week concerning Apple slowing down older devices. It started, as so many things do, with a Reddit post, noting that Apple appeared to be slowing down the processor on phones with older batteries. Geekbench's John Poole then ran some tests confirming this. Apple then confirmed that it was doing so. All three of those links above also present the reason for this -- which is not necessarily a nefarious one -- though that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good explanation either. In short, it was a solution to a problem of older batteries causing "spontaneous" or "unexpected shutdowns."
But, of course, slowing down the phone to avoid those kinds of shutdowns still has the impact of reduced performance on older phones -- which ultimately angers users or makes them feel like they need to upgrade before they really do. This wouldn't necessarily be a huge issue if two things were true: (1) it was easy to replace the batteries and (2) Apple was clear and upfront about this -- telling people they could avoid this issue by replacing the battery. Neither of those things are true. Apple makes it quite difficult to replace the batteries (though, not impossible) and only now is explaining this "hack."
Health officials warn against these five common cellphone practices
At least 71 civilians have been killed in the last 48 hours in air raids carried out by a Saudi-led military coalition targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, residents and local media say.
Residents told Al Jazeera that several air strikes rained down on the capital Sanaa early on Monday, killing at least 11 people, including three children and two women.
A family of nine members, including five children, were killed on Monday morning when Saudi-led coalition warplanes hit the family's house five times in Yemen's capital Sanaa, residents and a Xinhua photographer at the scene witnessed.
"Father, his wife, two women (who are sisters to the father), and five little children were killed on the spot after their house was hit by five missiles fired from fighter jets of the Saudi-led coalition," Xinhua photographer reported.
Rescuers and medics said five other people from nearby houses were critically wounded.
Residents said the targeted family's small house is located inside a cemetery near a densely populated neighborhood.
President Trump’s recent report on National Security Strategy supposedly reflected his America First “realism” but his approach seems more like old wine in a new bottle, particularly his continued strong support for Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Middle East combined with an even more aggressive U.S. policy in Asia aimed at containing China as well as confronting North Korea.
The enthusiastic republishing of the FBI's narrative does little more than rewrite the DOJ's press release. Very few have dug into the charging documents. If they had, they might not have depicted a terrorist attack that was never going to happen as somehow being "thwarted" by the arrest of a 26-year-old man reeling from the recent loss of his children in a custody battle.
According to the criminal complaint [PDF], Everitt Jameson was planning to detonate explosives at Pier 39 in San Francisco, a popular destination for tourists. The lead-up to Jameson's arrest (and supposed "thwarting") was filled with FBI informants and undercover agents, but not a single actual member of a terrorist group.
Michael Gove is facing demands from Labour to explain whether the government has abandoned a Conservative general election manifesto pledge to give MPs a free vote on whether to overturn the foxhunting ban.
It follows reports that Theresa May will announce in early 2018 plans to permanently drop the commitment to a House of Commons vote, in a move that would risk infuriating rural Tories.
China’s financial hub of Shanghai will limit its population to 25 million people by 2035 as part of a quest to manage “big city disease”, the cabinet has said.
The State Council said on its website late on Monday the goal to control the size of the city was part of Shanghai’s masterplan for 2017-2035, which the government body had approved.
“By 2035, the resident population in Shanghai will be controlled at around 25 million and the total amount of land made available for construction will not exceed 3,200 square kilometers,” it said.
President Trump has signed into law the Republicans’ tax plan, which will shower billions of dollars of tax cuts upon the rich and major corporations, while ending a central pillar of President Obama’s signature healthcare law.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's eldest son has quit as vice mayor of the southern city of Davao, citing his being linked to a drug smuggling case by opponents and personal problems from a failed marriage as reasons for the move.
Following Trump’s election, everyone pretty much knew 2017 was going to be an angry year, but what remains stunning is how much of that anger turned inward, setting off rounds of extreme vetting and denunciation within the ranks of the left-leaning cultural community itself. It is to the accidental but nonetheless great credit of the Whitney Biennial, the best -ennial I saw all year, that it encapsulated this tendency in an almost uncanny way with the inclusion of two works. The first, of course, was Dana Schutz’s painting of the remains of Emmett Till, which sparked a blazing controversy over whether the white Schutz had the right to portray the grievous power of Till’s black body, and whether the work should be removed from the show (as the curators refused to do) or even destroyed.
So when faced with those doubts, those questions, those rare signs ambiguity that ultimately build that child up into the adult they will become, the method of approaching it should be met with a nurturing hand filled with explanations, answers, debates, and evidence. Not arguments, belittlement or the passive aggressive responses of, “Sit down and be quiet,” “I didn’t see your hand up,” and, “That’s just how things are, we’re moving on now.”
When one destroys that inquisitiveness, how can you complain about the lack of critical thinking? When the system is based on building a soldier who walks in straight lines and fires on command, how can you ask for a general who can think of strategies and can lead the herd you’ve created?
It is not usual to see in China's cinemas so many sensitive topics, including the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Sino-Vietnamese war (1979) and the 1-million disarmament of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the 1980s, touched on in one single film. But Youth, a new film directed by Feng Xiaogang, which is currently being screened across the country, shines a light on these "taboo" periods.
The film immediately gained widespread attention after its debut and became a blockbuster. This past weekend, Youth (Fanghua in Chinese), grossed over 800 million yuan ($122 million) at the box office. Chinese moviegoers from different generations have contributed to Youth's overnight success.
For those citizens born after the 1990s, they said they hoped to learn about the "forgotten history" not mentioned in their school textbooks or to understand more about their parents' lives. For the middle-aged and the elderly born after the 1950s, they simply wanted to revisit the memories of their tumultuous youth.
As you are kicking back, finishing off the last of the festive food, and browsing through Facebook or Netflix, spare a thought for those living in the one-party Communist states of Vietnam and China, where the online censorship situation continues to deteriorate.
David Kaye, a law professor who has also been the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression (quite the title!) has penned a very interesting article for Foreign Affairs (possibly behind a paywall or registration wall) about how Europe's recent attempts to regulate the internet are now a major threat to free speech. It talks about many issues we've written about, from the awful Right to be Forgotten cases to efforts to fine internet platforms if they don't magically disappear hate speech. While telling internet platforms to "fix it' may feel good, the reality is that it doesn't work, creates more problems, and gives those platforms even more power as the de facto speech police (something we should all be worried about).
parently, federal policy analysts were presented with a list of forbidden words recently, handed down from the Trump administration. An age-old strategy: control people by controlling the dialogue.
China has shut down or revoked the licenses of 13,000 websites since 2015 for violating the country’s internet rules, state media reported Sunday.
The news comes as the Communist country continues to strengthen its already tight regulation of the internet, a move which critics say has picked up pace since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
China has closed more than 13,000 websites since the beginning of 2015 for breaking the law or other rules and the vast majority of people support government efforts to clean up cyberspace, state news agency Xinhua said on Sunday.
China has closed more than 13,000 websites since the beginning of 2015 for breaking the law or other rules and the vast majority of people support government efforts to clean up cyberspace, state news agency Xinhua said on Sunday.
The government has stepped up already tight controls over the internet since President Xi Jinping took power five years ago, in what critics say is an effort to restrict freedom of speech and prevent criticism of the ruling Communist Party.
A report from the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has revealed that China has either shut down or revoked licenses for more than 13,000 websites since the start of 2015, or just under 3 years ago. It had also prompted the closure of nearly 10 million internet accounts (most likely social network accounts).
The Intelligence Community -- sixteen government agencies engaged in intelligence work under the ODNI's direction -- doesn't have much in the way of effective oversight. It's also not fond of whistleblowers, despite several legislative efforts to force the IC to play nice with those who report wrongdoing. Because of this, it's been repeatedly rocked by leaks. That's the sort of thing that happens when someone clamps down on the official whistleblowing routes: the pressure has to escape somewhere.
Things will get worse in the IC, especially for whistleblowers, before it gets any better… or if it gets any better. A few months ago, the IC began ousting its in-house oversight. Dan Meyers, the Inspector General for the IC, is slowly and steadily being stripped of his power. Not only is Meyers barred from communicating with whistleblowers, but he's forbidden from briefing Congress or IC agencies about his office's tasks. He's also been stripped of his staff.
Facebook, which was a bit late to the party, recently released its latest transparency report. In a break from earlier versions of the report, the social media giant has finally moved beyond only detailing requests for information by the government and its alphabet agencies and is now including intellectual property requests and statistics as well. There is a decent amount of information in both sections of the report, but on matters of both intellectual property requests and government information requests, an analysis of the numbers leads to some troubling conclusions.
Let's deal with the IP section first. The headline of much of the media reporting on this has been about the 377,000 or so requests Facebook got to take down content based on IP issues, with well over half of those specifically being about copyright. It's not a small number and some are using it to make the case that Facebook is Mos Eisley when it comes to copyright infringement: a hive of scum and villainy. Tragically for those arguments, the validity of those requests makes this all seem far less impactful.
However, even before 2023, some slot machines will require user identification before customers can use them. As the stock of machines is renewed, some of the newer installations will always demand user authentication.
In 2017, the federal government surged its high tech snooping on immigrants and foreign visitors, including expanded use of social media surveillance, biometric screening, and data mining. In response, EFF ramped up its advocacy for the digital rights of immigrants.
“We need to look carefully at how some companies work in [I]nternet, in social media, and how widely they are involved in our domestic political life,” Putin said, speaking at a meeting with leaders in Russia’s parliament about a new “foreign agents” law.
The world is taking an increasingly dim view of the misuses of technology and those who made their names (and fortunes) from them. In 2017, Silicon Valley companies were caught up in a ongoing trainwreck of scandals: biased algorithms, propaganda botnets, and extremist online organizing have dominated the media's headlines.
But in less-reported-on corners of the world, concerns about technology are being warped to hurt innocent coders, writers and human rights defenders. Since its founding, EFF has highlighted and defended cases of injustice and fearmongering perpetrated against innocent technologists. We advocate for unjustly imprisoned technologists and bloggers with our Offline project. In 2017, we continue to see fear being whipped up against those who oppose oppression with modern tools—as well as those who have done nothing more than teach and share technology so that we can all use and understand it better.
Take Dmitry Bogatov, software developer and math lecturer at Moscow's Finance and Law University. Bogatov ran a volunteer Tor relay, allowing people around the world to protect their identities as they used the Internet. It was one part of his numerous acts of high-tech public service, which include co-maintaining Xmonad and other Haskell software for the Debian project.
In the wake of the 2016 election, California lawmakers quickly adopted the posture of “The Resistance.” For the digital rights community, this presented an opportunity to pursue legislation that had not previously enjoyed much political momentum. As a result, EFF staff found themselves trekking back and forth between San Francisco and Sacramento to testify on everything from surveillance transparency to broadband privacy. In the end, we checked off a number of victories, but also some defeats, and created more opportunities for next year.
The days after Election Day last year seemed to bring with them a rise in hate crimes and bias incidents. Reports filled social media and appeared in local news. There were the letters calling for the genocide of Muslims that were sent to Islamic centers from California to Ohio. And the swastikas that were scrawled on buildings around the country. In Florida, “colored” and “whites only” signs were posted over water fountains at a high school. A man assaulted a Hispanic woman in San Francisco, telling her “No Latinos here.”
But were these horrible events indicative of an increase in crimes and incidents themselves, or did the reports simply reflect an increased awareness and willingness to come forward on the part of victims and witnesses? As data journalists, we went looking for answers and were not prepared for what we found: Nobody knows for sure. Hate crimes are so poorly tracked in America, there’s no way to undertake the kind of national analysis that we do in other areas, from bank robberies to virus outbreaks.
These events are a reminder that the online world depends on technologies where trust is an important element. That approach is now looking increasingly shaky as nation states wage attacks not just by means of the Internet, but even against it. This may explain why Russia says it wants alternative DNS servers for the BRICS nations: they could come in quite handy if -- by any chance -- the rest of the Internet goes down.
By now we've well-established that the FCC's attempt to repeal net neutrality rules has been rife with fraud. From fake DDOS attacks to bogus comments during the open comment period, there was a fairly obvious effort made by the FCC and a mysterious ally (gosh, who benefits?) to downplay massive public opposition to the plan. And while the FCC has completely blocked law enforcement investigations into which group was behind these efforts, you can expect significantly more details to emerge during the court battles in the new year.
The Apollo 1201 project is dedicated to ending all the DRM in the world, in all its forms, in our lifetime. The DRM parade of horribles has been going strong since the Clinton administration stuck America with Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") in 1998. That law gave DRM special, hazardous legal protection: under that law, you're not allowed to remove DRM, even for a lawful purpose, without risking legal penalties that can include jailtime and even six-figure fines for a first offense.
That's a powerful legal weapon to dangle in front of the corporations of the world, who've figured out if they add a thin scrim of DRM to their products, they can make it a literal felony to use their products in ways that they don't approve of -- including creative uses, repair, tinkering and security research. (There's an exemption process, but it's burdensome and inadequate to protect many otherwise legal activities.