I'm always on the lookout for open source software that works well in educational settings. Recently I decided to check out Endless OS, a lightweight, Linux-based operating system with a customized desktop environment forked from GNOME 3.
The operating system was developed by Endless Computer to power its inexpensive computers for developing countries where widespread internet availability isn't a given. In 2016, Endless made the OS available for anyone to use, rather than only on its hardware.
Nevertheless, the laptop became unusable. I could not boot it from HDD. I had to save it. I managed to create a Live USB with Kubuntu 16.04 image using another laptop I had. But even then, HDD partition table was destroyed. Linux operating system could not read anything from the disk.
Here comes Testdisk. This is a small CLI utility to help in these situations. I installed it in the Live Kubuntu 16.04 and let it run. It took some time for Testdisk to scan my 1TB drive. I must admit that the interface of Testdisk is far from perfect, and you can easily null the scan results by pressing just one button. That made my work iterative before I finally managed to rescue my drive.
Testdisk found partitions on my HDD, and even helped me to copy files from the data partition to an external HDD. At least, I saved my data.
The next step was to recreate partition table. There were certain partitions for Linux, Linux Swap, OS restore and data. But the main Windows partition was lost, and instead I saw couple dozen broken bit-size partitions. Using Testdisk, I managed to recreate the partition table. Live Kubuntu could mount these partitions normally, which was already a big achievement. Few more files were copied from the Linux partition to the external drive, just in case.
The Fedora Marketing Team is continuing with the Fedora Podcast and we have a new episode out. This ongoing series will feature interviews and talks with people who make the Fedora community awesome. These folks work on new technologies found in Fedora. Or they produce the distribution itself. Some work on putting Fedora in the hands of users.
While systemd 237 was released just over one month ago, systemd 238 was released today as the next installment of this init system.
Adam Jackson of Red Hat who is also the X.Org Server 1.20 release organizer has made available a Copr repository for those wanting to test this near-final X.Org Server and updated DDX drivers on Fedora systems.
Adam Jackson has posted a rebuild of the X.Org Server and the DDX drivers into a Copr repository of the current state of X.Org Server 1.20, which saw its first release candidate happen last week after more than one year in development.
Ahead of the imminent release of X.Org Server 1.20, several other X packages are seeing updates.
Xorgproto was recently updated with the new protocol header additions around non-desktop / leasing for X.Org Server 1.20. Now in starting off the new week is libxcb 1.13 and xcb-proto 1.13. These XCB updates bring support for buffer modifiers and multi-planar buffers through DRI3 v1.2 and Present v1.2. There is also related bits for leasing KMS devices to clients via the RandR 1.6 updates.
The latest extension proposed for the OpenGL / OpenGL ES registry is INTEL_blackhole_render.
The GPU motor has come a long way since the “G80” GPU was launched by Nvidia back in 2006, laying the groundwork for what has evolved into the Volta GPU, arguably them most complex and rich computing engine yet put into the field for parallel processing. This GPU had eight shader cores, each with sixteen processing elements, introducing a much more parallel architecture than prior chips from Nvidia.
We knew it was coming still for X.Org Server 1.20, but now the DRI3 v1.2 support has landed in the server.
Along with the X.Org Server bits are support within the modesetting DDX driver and GLAMOR acceleration for the new DRI3 v1.2 capabilities. This includes support for multiple planes and buffer modifier requests. The modesetting DDX work includes atomic mode-setting support and supporting buffer formats/modifiers. The multi-plane support should be particularly useful for ARM/embedded Linux devices.
For those wondering how the Linux 4.16 kernel is performing with regards to the ongoing work around Spectre and Meltdown mitigation in the kernel, here are some fresh benchmark results.
A new hope dawns and it is finally time to start heading towards a final release. Today we are happy to announce that we are bringing you the first official pre-release Alpha build to a galaxy near you.
Kodi v18 Leia Alpha was released today with "more than 6140 (code chunks changed)", with great improvements to the HTPC software's music library, Live TV and video player. See the changelog for more details.
Kodi, the popular HTPC software formerly known as XBMC, has put out the first alpha release of their upcoming 18 Leia milestone.
Kodi 18 is a big update coming later in 2018 with RetroPlayer gaming support, Wayland support improvements, Google Assistant support, better live TV support, and much more. While there are new features, stability and usability improvements were also a main focus during Kodi 18 development.
The source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.
When you work on alone or on a very small team, sometimes software development best practices can be ignored. Things like documentation, code abstraction, and clean code structure can fall by the wayside. As long as it works efficiently and the developers can maintain it, does code quality really matter? A few days ago, the two lone developers of the critically acclaimed platformer Celeste released some of their movement code as open source on GitHub. And let’s just say it shows that you don’t need to write clean code to make a tremendous game.
Want to be the monster? CARRION [Official Site], from the BUTCHER developer will give you that chance and it looks delightfully disturbing.
Originally announced back near the end of February, which we somehow missed, CARRION sees you assume the role of an amorphous alien being. They've just release put up a new alpha video showing off some more gross gameplay:
For those of you who like your evil deeds, the Dungeons 3 'Evil of the Caribbean' [Steam, GOG] DLC is now out that takes you to the not-so-peaceful sandy beaches of Turtoga.
Like the previous DLC, it's not huge, but it's not expensive either. The Evil of the Caribbean DLC offers a new, fully-voiced campaign across three new maps, as well as three new evil hubs, a new wall tile set for your dungeon and a silly new pirate outfit for Thalya.
Total War: THRONES OF BRITANNIA [Steam, Feral Store] is coming to Linux shortly after the release for Windows, if you're excited about it come see the new trailer showing off the Welsh.
The Majesty of Colors Remastered [Steam] is a very short game about a monster who has never seen the surface above the water and it's now on Linux.
Sunless Skies [GOG, Steam, Official Site], the steampunk exploration RPG from Failbetter Games is to officially leave port in September.
Starting with 5.1 release KDevelop supports built-in integration with static-analysis tool Cppcheck. Cppcheck provides unique code analysis to detect bugs and focuses on detecting undefined behaviour and dangerous coding constructs. The goal is to detect only real errors in the code (i.e. have very few false positives). Such analysis is very useful for all projects, especially for projects with complex structure and large code volume. Convenient integration with the development environment greatly simplifies and speeds up the process of code checking, as there is no need to study the analyzer documentation, its manual configuration and code navigation when processing the analysis results.
Latte Dock v0.7.4 has been released containing many important fixes and improvements! Soon at your distro repos or...
You unboxed your KDE Slimbook II, posted the pics to Instagram, and logged into the desktop. What you are seeing now is Plasma, a graphical environment created by a worldwide network of top-class programmers. Plasma may look familiar, but it is not Windows or macOS; it’s something much better. It is Free Software for starters — no hidden costs, bloatware and spyware here. Secondly, it is made to be tweaked, letting you adapt it to your precise needs.
I’m from South Africa. I’ve been drawing my whole life, mostly with graphite pencil but when I discovered digital drawing I was hooked. I started out just using a standard desktop mouse and GIMP and got kind of good at it. Since then I have improve a lot and plan to keep improving and creating new art for as long as I can.
It’s been one of those weeks when gnome-terminal and vte keep stumbling on some really weird edge cases, so it was a happy moment when I saw this on Fedora 27 Workstation.
At the request of the community, Microsoft made it possible to download and install Kali Linux directly from the Windows 10 Store on its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) feature, which needs to be enabled on your Windows 10 machine before attempting to run Kali Linux (see the instructions below).
"We’re excited to announce that you can now download & install Kali Linux via the Windows Store," said Tara Raj, Program Manager at Microsoft. "Our community expressed great interest in bringing Kali Linux to WSL in response to a blog post on Kali Linux on WSL. We are happy to officially introduce Kali Linux on WSL."
It still feels weird writing that a Linux distribution is something you can download and install from the Microsoft Store. But it’s been true for a while now. Windows 10 has an optional feature called the Windows Subsystem for Linux that lets you load a command-line Linux operating system that runs inside of Windows, allowing you to use Linux tools without rebooting or opening a virtual machine.
We are very happy to announce that Redcore Linux Hardened 1803 (Jupiter) reached Alpha status. This development cycle we are leaving new features on a second plan, and we are focusing mostly on the security aspect of the distribution.
It was seven years ago that Mandriva 2011 switched to using RPM5 from RPM4, but now for the next OpenMandriva release they are transitioning back to using RPM4 and with that making use of Fedora's DNF.
Cooker and 3.0 may be broken for upcoming days, as we need to adapt our docker builders and scripts to RPM4 and dnf.
Red Hat, a provider of enterprise open source solutions, has introduced a decision management platform and low-code development tool intended to simplify the development and deployment of rules-based applications and services. Red Hat Decision Manager 7 is the next generation of the company’s business rules management offering, Red Hat JBoss BRMS, and is designed to enable organizations to quickly build applications that automate business decisions.
“The notion of low-code development is less about eliminating code or cutting traditional programmers out of the application development process, and more about helping business and IT users to do what they need to do quickly and efficiently, and in a complementary manner,” said Mike Piech, vice president and general manager of middleware for Red Hat. “Ultimately, what low-code tools should offer - and what we have built with Red Hat Decision Manager - is not a platform geared toward one or the other, but rather a rich and tightly integrated feature set designed to provide a better user experience regardless of whether you are a business analyst or hard-core developer.”
Learn about the Ansible Service Broker and how it works on the OpenShift platform from Veer Muchandi and check out his GitHub page that explains how to create your own Ansible Playbook Bundle.
ZTE is working with Red Hat to ensure ZTE’s virtual network functions (VNFs) interoperate with the Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The collaboration stems from a request from a mutual telco customer of the two vendors.
ZTE already has a homegrown virtualization platform for the NFV infrastructure (NFVi) layer. ZTE’s NFVi is based on OpenStack with customization. “Mutual customers are asking for ZTE VNFs to be available on our OpenStack platform,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager of OpenStack at Red Hat. “Customers want to mix and match at all layers.”
On February 22, 2018, the Debian Project released a kernel update for Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" users to fix the Spectre Variant 2 (branch target injection) vulnerability for the Intel x86_64 architecture and the Meltdown security vulnerability for PowerPC and PPC64el (PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian) architectures.
The kernel update also addressed an information leak in the Linux kernel, a bug in v4l2 IOCTL handling code's 32-bit compatibility layer, and Spectre Variant 1 (bounds-check bypass). However, it appears that it caused a regression on PowerPC architectures that could lead to random segfaults and data corruption.
Finally, I updated my Debian packaging with Git notes, and wrote new notes on using sbuild.
Here is what Anna has to say about Debian: "Debian is one of the strongest GNU/Linux distributions with the free software philosophy, and that's why it's so impressive. Anyone who comes in contact with Debian necessarily learns more about free software and the FLOSS culture."
TeX Live 2017 has received its final update just the other day and we are moving forward to start the period of testing leading up to the release of TeX Live 2018. Thus, this release for Debian is also the last one based on the TeX Live 2017, and updates based on TeX Live 2018 pretest will hit experimental in the next days. This release does not bring too much new items, mostly a bug fix for upgrades from Jessie, plus the usual bunch of updated packages, see below.
Last month, we reported that elementary OS Juno would sport a new versioning scheme, which means that it will be versioned 5.0 instead of 0.5 as many users might have expected, and will be based on Canonical's upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system.
And now, we're finally getting a sneak peek at elementary OS Juno's new features, which include animated system panel indicators, new installer and Initial Setup wizard, updated default apps, nearly full HiDPI support, and the long-anticipated Night Light feature so you won't have eye strain.
OpenEmbed’s affordable, RK3399-based “em3399” module ships with up to 4GB DDR3L and 128GB eMMC 5.1. There’s also a compact evaluation board with GbE, wireless, HDMI 2.0, and USB 3.0 and Type-C ports.
OpenEmbed has launched a computer-on-module variously referred to as the System-on-Module em3399, the em3399, and the SOM3399, that taps one of the hotter ARM SoCs around these days: the Rockchip RK3399. There’s no indication this is an open source board, but the boards are priced for smaller scale buyers: The module starts at $99, and you pay only $50 for the optional “emPAC-RK3399-EVB” evaluation board. OpenEmbed tells us that Android and Linux images are available now, and Ubuntu Core is under development.
A student-developer put off by the price of Android Auto head units has released the Linux-based Crankshaft OS that turns a $35 Raspberry Pi 3 with the official $60 Raspberry Pi seven-inch touchscreen into a functioning, unofficial Android Auto head unit.
Built by Huan Truong, Crankshaft is based on the recently released OpenAuto project, an aasdk- and Qt-based emulator for running Android Auto on a Raspberry Pi.
But whereas OpenAuto requires configuration work, Truong says Crankshaft is a "turnkey GNU/Linux distribution", which only needs to be downloaded and written to an SD card for the Raspberry Pi 3 tablet.
The SMACH Z [Official Site] gaming handheld is still a thing apparently and they've now release the final specs along with a trailer and pre-orders start soon.
Raspberry Pi enthusiasts thinking of building their very own pocket PC may be interested in a Pi Zero project called the Noodle Pi, which takes the form of a tiny 3D printed pocket computer equipped with a Pimoroni HyperPixel 3.5ââ¬Â³ display. The tiny HyperPixel display is capable of providing users with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels at 270 PPI and offers touchscreen support with 18-bit colour and a 60 FPS frame rate.
The pocket computer is also equipped with a Raspberry Pi Camera Module v2, for up to 8MP still photos, and 1080p30 or 720p60 or VGA90 video and powered by an internal rechargeable 500mAh battery. A number of different kits are available depending on your budget and requirements from $49 up to $199 for a pre-assembled Noodle Pi complete with all components and fully tested.
Noodle Pi is the first modern open GNU/Linux handheld computerThat has been built using the Raspberry Pi Zero and equipped with a high-resolution touchscreen. The system includes two different keyboard docks, an NES game controller dock, a holster, and a wrist dock help make Noodle Pi a versatile and practical wearable computer. The “Noodle Air” version provides air-gapped security for sensitive notes, photos, passwords, private keys, crypto-currency cold storage, etc.
There are a lot of options now for people who would want an Android Auto compatible head unit, but they are undoubtedly expensive. Plus, if you have an older car, chances are the newer head units won’t fit on your dashboard. A developer has shared a way for you to DIY your way to an Android Auto head unit, if you like doing DIY projects and if you’re willing to see what you can make out of the Crankshaft Android Auto software, a Raspberry Pi 3, and its touchscreen.
What is Crankshaft? Well, it is a free “turnkey” GNU/Linux distribution that you can install onto a Raspberry Pi 3 with touchscreen. Then you can place the “head unit” on your old car, connect your phone to use Android Auto, and drive away. That’s pretty easy when you read it, but there is real work involved in putting these things together. That said, it should be pretty straightforward for people who are used to DIY electronic projects.
What is behind the recent surge in innovative organisations using open source platforms? DevOps and Linux expert Karel Striegel explains.
Not long ago, open source software (OSS) was dismissed as a cheap alternative to proprietary software. Today, open source is acknowledged as the future of software for innovative organisations, allowing IT departments to accelerate the process of bringing their ideas to market.
Even Fortune 500 companies allow open source to drive their organisations by encouraging developers to use OSS to improve software packages constantly while reducing costs.
Open source is cost-effective because companies save money and lessen technical debt by debugging and improving existing OSS.
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) celebrated its 20th Anniversary at Campus Party Brazil 2018 during the first week of February. Campus Party Brazil is among the largest and most diverse tech events in the world. The eleventh edition of the event received a total of 120,000 attendees, of which 8000 were "campers" (participants who actually camp in tents inside this week long event). Approximately 40% of attendees were women, which is a very high mark for a tech event.
The OSI was well represented at Campus Party. Patrick Masson, the general manager of the OSI, flew in from New York to meet staff member Nick Vidal and two former OSI Board members who live in Brazil: Bruno Souza, founder of SouJava (the world's largest Java user group), and Fabio Kon, professor at USP university (the top higher education institution in Latin America).
After serving in the board of a few technological Israeli associations, I decided to run as an individual candidate in the OSI board elections which starts today. Hoping to add representation outside of North America and Europe. While my main interest is the licensing work, another goal I wish to achieve is to make OSI more relevant for Open Source people on a daily basis, making it more central for communities.
XCP-ng, the effort to revive an open source version of XenServer, will go ahead after crushing its crowdfunding campaign.
The project's Kickstarter sought €6,000 but ended up with €38,531 from crowdfunding contributors. Project founder Olivier Lambert wrote to backers with news that their donations, plus more money from as-yet-un-named sponsors, brought the total fundraising effort to "around 50k€+".
The folk behind the project said that's enough to help them create a first release by March 31st, then figure out "how to update XCP-ng (should be straightforward) but also how to upgrade it." Also on the team's to-do list is making it possible to upgrade a XenServer machine to XCP-ng.
Free and open source software is far more than just another way to develop code. In fact, the rise of the open source revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we use information to create a better world.
Traditionally, individuals and organisations would tightly guard their intellectual property, hoarding it and protecting it from outsiders.
Though it may have initially sprouted from the software development community, open source is now a movement, a philosophy. In this new way of thinking, we emphasise collaboration between brilliant minds, traversing different domains of knowledge, different countries and cultures – to ultimately tackle some of society’s most pressing challenges.
As of Chrome 64, Chrome for Windows is compiled with Clang. We now use Clang to build Chrome for all platforms it runs on: macOS, iOS, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, and Windows. Windows is the platform with the second most Chrome users after Android according to statcounter, which made this switch particularly exciting.
While Google has already been using LLVM's Clang C/C++ compiler to build the release builds of the Chrome web-browser for Linux rather than GCC and has also switched to using Clang on other platforms, this open-source C/C++ compiler has now been able to replace Microsoft's Visual C/C++ compiler for building Chrome on Windows.
Google's Chrome browser is now built using the Clang compiler on Windows. Previously built using the Microsoft C++ compiler, Google is now using the same compiler for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, and the switch makes Chrome arguably the first major software project to use Clang on Windows.
Chrome on macOS and Linux has long been built using the Clang compiler and the LLVM toolchain. The open-source compiler is the compiler of choice on macOS, making it the natural option there, and it's also a first-class choice for Linux; though the venerable GCC is still the primary compiler choice on Linux, by using Clang instead, Google ensured that it has only one set of compiler quirks and oddities to work with rather than two.
The Firefox add-ons platform provides developers with a great level of freedom to create amazing features that help make users’ lives easier. We’ve made some significant changes to add-ons over the past year, and would like to make developers aware of some updates to the policies that guide add-ons that are distributed publicly. We regularly review and update our policies in reaction to changes in the add-on ecosystem, and to ensure both developers and users have a safe and enjoyable experience.
Let me walk you through how exactly to write CSS that works in every browser at the same time, even the old ones. By using these techniques, you can start using the latest and greatest CSS today — including CSS Grid — without leaving any of your users behind. Along the way, you’ll learn the advanced features of Can I Use, how to do vertical centering in two lines of code, the secrets to mastering Feature Queries, and much more.
Friday 2nd of March we held 59.0b14 DevEdition testday.
I was in Toronto (where a large part of the gfx team is) last week and we used this time to make plans on various unresolved questions regarding WebRender in Gecko. One of them is how to integrate APZ with the asynchronous scene building infrastructure I have been working on for the past few weeks. Another one is how to separate rendering different parts of the browser window (for example the web content and the UI) and take advantage of APIs provided by some platforms (direct composition, core animation, etc.) to let the window manager help alleviating the cost of compositing some surfaces and improve power usage. We also talked about ways to improve pixel snapping. With these technical questions out of the way the rest of the week -just like the weeks before that- revolved around the usual stabilization and bug fixing work.
Windows nightlies no longer crash on startup! Sorry about the long delay in reverting the change that originally triggered the crash.
In the last week, we merged 70 PRs in the Servo organization’s repositories.
PostgreSQL has long claimed to be the most advanced open-source relational database. For those of us who have been using it for a significant amount of time, there's no doubt that this is true; PostgreSQL has consistently demonstrated its ability to handle high loads and complex queries while providing a rich set of features and rock-solid stability.
But for all of the amazing functionality that PostgreSQL offers, there have long been gaps and holes. I've been in meetings with consulting clients who currently use Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server and are thinking about using PostgreSQL, who ask me about topics like partitioning or query parallelization. And for years, I've been forced to say to them, "Um, that's true. PostgreSQL's functionality in that area is still fairly weak."
The open source version of Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) has been renamed Jakarta EE to satisfy Oracle's desire to control the "Java" brand.
The renaming became necessary after Oracle moved Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation, a shift it hoped would see developers become more engaged with the project.
Remember when Oracle bought Sun? The one thing that seemed to make sense about this deal was Oracle's acquisition of Java. Almost 10 years later, Oracle gave up on Java Enterprise Edition (JEE), aka J2EE, and started spinning Java's still-popular enterprise middleware platform to the Eclipse Foundation. Now, under the aegis of the Eclipse Foundation, JEE has been renamed to Jakarta EE.
Why? Because Oracle was never successful in monetizing Java. In large part, this was because of Sun and then Oracle's failed attempts to steer the Java Community.
As Oracle's server-side Java evangelist, David Delabassee, admitted in August 2017: "We believe that moving Java EE technologies including reference implementations and test compatibility kit to an open source foundation may be the right next step, in order to adopt more agile processes, implement more flexible licensing, and change the governance process."
[...]
If Jakarta sounds familiar, it's because it is not the first time that name has been applied to a JEE server. From 1999 to 2011, the Apache Software Foundation ran Apache Jakarta, which covered all of Apache's open-source Java efforts.
The next major release of LibreOffice will use native GTK3 dialogs on Linux desktops.
“Wait —LibreOffice doesn’t already use GTK dialogs?!” you might be asking. It was certainly my own first reaction when I opened an e-mail about the news in our tip inbox this morning (btw – thanks Dee!)
Admittedly I do not use LibreOffice properly. Like, at all. Nothing against the suite itself — it’s rather marvellous — it’s just that the only writing I tend to do takes place inside a WordPress editor.
One of the most important elements new website owners fail to give enough consideration to is in selecting the right open source content management system (CMS) for their website. Obviously some websites are put together without the inclusion of a full CMS. Yet those websites used in enterprise environments are almost always employing some kind of CMS for easy content handling. Continue reading for my recommended best CMS options.
As for open source, as mentioned above, SAS interoperates with it, mostly through Viya. However, dealing the lack of perception about SAS and ML, SAS should start contributing to open source.
While id Software founder John Carmack has been known for his open-source and Linux interests over the years and even working on Utah GLX back in the day, he just wrapped up a self-driven "programming retreat" where he was using OpenBSD.
These days Carmack is mostly accustomed to using Windows and Visual Studio, but decided to take a week long holiday where he was experimenting with C++ neural network implementations and doing all of his work strictly from a base OpenBSD operating system.
The Free Software Foundation’s future is looking bright according to its Fiscal Year 2016 Annual Report. The report outlines efforts and accomplishments by the free “as in freedom” software advocacy group over the previous year, from activism to awards and growth in membership and infrastructure.
With individual contributions to the non-profit totalling more than $1 million and additional funding from earned revenue, investments, interest and others, the organization was able to cleanly cover all operating expenses while setting over $56,000 aside, with a reported 81 percent of funds supporting the GNU project, free software and its other endeavors. An evaluation of the FSF’s financial health, accountability and transparency alongside over 8,000 other non-profits by Charity Navigator earned the FSF a top four-star rating.
“[Charity Navigator] chose us, out of 8,000 charities, for their all-purpose list of “10 Charities Worth Watching,” demonstrating significant progress toward making user freedom an issue of general, widespread importance,” foundation executive director John Sullivan wrote in the opening letter of the report. “These accolades reflect the hard work of our small, dedicated team, and show that supporters are right to invest their dollars and time in the FSF.”
According to Winslow, “any project that implements license scanning and compliance should aim to make it sustainable” and should set realistic goals to avoid being overwhelmed by the number of options and issues that may arise.
Winslow also explains how using tools, such as FOSSology for license scanning and Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) to help package scan results into meaningful reports, can help projects succeed in compliance efforts.
When it comes to music production and audio engineering, Linux isn’t the most common choice. This isn’t for lack of decent tools or other typical open source usability issues: Ardour as a highly capable, feature-rich digital audio workstation, the JACK Audio Connection Kit for powerful audio routing, and distributions like Ubuntu Studio packing all the essentials nicely together, offer a great starting point as home recording setup. To add variation to your guitar or bass arrangement on top of that, guitarix is a virtual amp that has a wide selection of standard guitar effects. So when [Arnout] felt that his actual guitar amp’s features were too limiting, he decided to build himself a portable, Linux-based amp.
WiFi cameras like many other devices these days come equipped with some sort of Linux subsystem. This makes the life of a tinkerer easier and you know what that means. [Tomas C] saw an opportunity to mod his Xiaomi Dafang IP camera which comes configured to work only with proprietary apps and cloud.
[Tadas UstinaviÃÂius] writes in to tell us of his latest project, which combines his two great loves of open source and annoying people: OpenKobold. Named after the German mythical spirit that haunts people’s homes, this tiny device is fully open source (hardware and software) and ready to torment your friends and family for up to a year on a CR1220 battery.
Whether you're a budding data science enthusiast with a math or computer science background or an expert in an unrelated field, the possibilities data science offers are within your reach. And you don't need expensive, highly specialized enterprise software—the open source tools discussed in this article are all you need to get started.
Python, its machine-learning and data science libraries (pandas, Keras, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, SciPy, NumPy, etc.), and its extensive list of visualization libraries (Matplotlib, pyplot, Plotly, etc.) are excellent FOSS tools for beginners and experts alike. Easy to learn, popular enough to offer community support, and armed with the latest emerging techniques and algorithms developed for data science, these comprise one of the best toolsets you can acquire when starting out.
After many readers expressed their indignation, Milley wrote a follow-up blog post on the SAS website, which took on a considerably more diplomatic tone. She defended SAS as software that can be valued for its "support, reliability, and validation." Recent history, however, has made it much more difficult to conflate proprietary software with reliability or functionality.
R certainly presents a powerful case study in how an open source language has rendered long-dominant proprietary software, such as SAS, largely irrelevant. Although it is difficult to quantify the size of R's user base, one interesting metric of popularity is its use in academic journal articles. In that court, R surpassed SAS in 2015. Additionally, although it is merely anecdotal, it is amusing to note a thread from 2017 on the Statistics subreddit, in which the original poster wonders why SAS is still around in substantial numbers. To paraphrase the prevailing response, companies still buy SAS because it's what they have always used in the past and change is hard! Or as Woodrow Wilson put it, "If you want to make enemies, try to change something."
In contrast, there are developers and data science professionals who don't want to make any concessions to functionality. They want the optimal tools for their analyses, even if it means having to dig through Stack Overflow every now and then. For them, there is R. It started as a statistical computing environment, but it's had so many additions that it can now be classified as a general-purpose language.
It’s a known fact that there is a lack of gender diversity in the tech industry. While the companies and independent organizations are working to promote an open and inclusive environment, a lot of work needs to be done. However, a recent report from HackerRank suggests that things are slowly changing and the gender gap is slowly shrinking.
Named Women in Tech 2018, this report is based on the response from more than 14,000 professional developers. Out of them, about 2,000 were female. Before digging up and finding the most popular programming languages among female programmers, let me tell you some encouraging facts about the ongoing change.
Google might be preparing a big visual change for its most popular product, Google Search. The company is testing a revamped version of Search which was spotted by a vigilant netizen who posted the screenshot on Reddit.
Researchers led by Dr. Knut Woltjen report a new gene editing method that can modify a single DNA base in the human genome with absolute precision. The technique, which is described in Nature Communications, is unique in that it guides the cell's own repair mechanisms by design, providing pairs of genetically matched cells for studying disease-related mutations.
Single mutations in DNA, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms—or SNPs for short—are the most common type of variation in the human genome. More than 10 million SNPs are known, many of which are associated with ailments such as Alzheimer's, heart disease and diabetes. In order to understand the role of SNPs in hereditary disease, scientists at Kyoto University's Center for iPS cell Research and Application (CiRA) create induced pluripotent stem cells from patient donors.
The first direct comparison of in vitro and in vivo screening techniques for identifying nanoparticles that may be used to transport therapeutic molecules into cells shows that testing in lab dishes isn't much help in predicting which nanoparticles will successfully enter the cells of living animals.
The new study demonstrated the advantages of an in vivo DNA barcoding technique, which attaches small snippets of DNA to different lipid-based nanoparticles that are then injected into living animals; more than a hundred nanoparticles can be tested in a single animal. DNA sequencing techniques are then used to identify which nanoparticles enter the cells of specific organs, making the particles candidates for transporting gene therapies to treat such killers as heart disease, cancer and Parkinson's disease.
The U.S. government on Sunday ordered Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) to delay its March 6 shareholder meeting, a highly unusual request that will allow time for a national security review of the deal, but that also cast new doubt on Singapore-based Broadcom Ltd’s (AVGO.O) $117-billion bid for its U.S. semiconductor peer.
The burden of high drug costs weighs most heavily on the sickest Americans.
Drug makers have raised prices on treatments for life-threatening or chronic conditions like multiple sclerosis, diabetes and cancer. In turn, insurers have shifted more of those costs onto consumers. Saddled with high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs that expose them to a drug’s rising list price, many people are paying thousands of dollars a month merely to survive.
For more than a year, President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress have promised to take action on high drug prices, but despite a flurry of proposals, little has changed.
These are the stories of Americans living daily with the reality of high-cost drugs. And there are millions of others just like them.
Intellectual property rights, particularly patents, are considered by some as being a barrier in access to medicines despite being a stimulus for innovation. At a recent symposium co-organised by the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and World Intellectual Property Organization, speakers also talked about the role of science, governments, and universities in health innovation and access, and how to address challenges such as secondary patents.
What is an "eclipse" attack? Amy Castor, who follows Bitcoin and Ethereum, walked readers in Bitcoin Magazine through this type of attack.
"An eclipse attack is a network-level attack on a blockchain, where an attacker essentially takes control of the peer-to-peer network, obscuring a node's view of the blockchain."
Catalin Cimpanu, security news editor for Bleeping Computer: "Eclipse attacks are network-level attacks carried out by other nodes by hoarding and monopolizing the victim's peer-to-peer connection slots, keeping the node in an isolated network."
Meanwhile, here are some definitions of Ethereum. It is an open software platform based on blockchain technology.
In a new paper, the researchers at Purdue University and the University of Iowa have discovered vulnerabilities in three procedures of the LTE protocol.
The loopholes could be exploited to launch 10 new attacks, such as location tracking, intercepting calls and texts, making devices offline, etc. With the help of authentication relay attacks, an evil mind can connect to a network without credentials and impersonate a user. A situation of an artificial emergency can be created by issuing fake threat alerts, similar to the recent missile launch alerts in Hawai.
Some of the workstations I run are sometimes used by multiple people. Having multiple people share an account is bad for security so having a guest account for guest access is convenient.
If a system doesn’t allow logins over the Internet then a strong password is not needed for the guest account.
If such a system later allows logins over the Internet then hostile parties can try to guess the password. This happens even if you don’t use the default port for ssh.
The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targeting Github last week, which at its peak involved 1.3 terabits per second (Tbps) of traffic, has been attributed to the exploitation of a feature that was never intended to be exposed to the internet
The eight-minute attack last Wednesday was more than twice the next-largest ever recorded DDoS attack. It took advantage of the Memcached feature of Linux in an attack described as "memcached amplification".
In these attacks, hackers inundate servers with small UDP-based packets. These are designed in a way so that they look like they were created by the target of the attack.
Akamai helped GitHub fend off the attack. The company explained that Memcached techniques "can have an amplification factor of over 50,000, meaning a 203 byte request results in a 100 megabyte response.
Intel developers are working on bringing transparent memory encryption support to the Linux kernel that works in conjunction with upcoming Intel platforms.
More than seven weeks after a devastating report from the media watch group FAIR, top executives and prime-time anchors at MSNBC still refuse to discuss how the network’s obsession with Russia has thrown minimal journalistic standards out the window.
FAIR’s study, “MSNBC Ignores Catastrophic U.S.-Backed War in Yemen,” documented a picture of extreme journalistic malfeasance at MSNBC:
— “An analysis by FAIR has found that the leading liberal cable network did not run a single segment devoted specifically to Yemen in the second half of 2017. And in these latter roughly six months of the year, MSNBC ran nearly 5,000 percent more segments that mentioned Russia than segments that mentioned Yemen.”
— “Moreover, in all of 2017, MSNBC only aired one broadcast on the U.S.-backed Saudi airstrikes that have killed thousands of Yemeni civilians. And it never mentioned the impoverished nation’s colossal cholera epidemic, which infected more than 1 million Yemenis in the largest outbreak in recorded history.”
A half-decade's worth of litigation by "FOIA terrorist" Jason Leopold is finally bearing fruit. The petition, filed in 2013 to peel back a few layers of opacity from the Feds' favorite court (DC District Court), has been partially granted by Chief Judge Beryl Howell. (h/t Mike Scarcella)
Nearly two years ago, substantial progress was made when Judge Howell ordered the US Attorney's Office (USAO) to examine sealed dockets (of which there are many -- the DC circuit is home to hundreds of dockets rendered invisible by government requests for secrecy) and to start unsealing anything that wasn't related to ongoing investigations.
The government fought back, but as the lengthy opinion [PDF] shows, there was much more cooperation between the USAO and Leopold than one would expect, given the government's antipathy towards him goes so far the Pentagon once offered Leopold a stack of documents in exchange for him promising to never file another FOIA request.
Solar photovoltaic panels in the desert near Phoenix may seem unremarkable. After all, the southwestern United States offers some of the best solar conditions in North America.
But a recently announced 65 megawatt (MW) project is making news by coupling solar PV with battery energy storage, a first for utility Arizona Public Service, which solicited proposals in 2017 for generation sources to provide electricity during peak demand hours.
Perhaps more noteworthy is the fact that the solar-plus-storage bid beat out other generation sources, including multiple proposals for natural gas plants. (The utility has an agreement with an existing natural gas-fired plant for a total of 570 MW for the summers of 2020 through 2026.)
Two years ago, Tang Xin had never set foot in Mexico and didn’t know a word of Spanish. While his grasp of the language hasn’t improved much since then, he has built one of the country’s hottest apps.
Noticias Aguila, which translates as News Eagle, now has 20 million users and became the No. 1 news app in Google Play’s Mexico store late last year, according to App Annie. That has come as Tang and his development team remain based in Shenzhen, the Chinese technology hub just across the border from Hong Kong.
Back in 2014, Techdirt first wrote about TISA, the Trade in Services Agreement, another massive international trade deal that was being negotiated behind closed doors with no public scrutiny. Its central aim was to establish a common regulatory framework for services globally. But in doing so, it would circumscribe the ability of governments to bring in their own national laws, since many options would be forbidden by the agreement. For key areas, then, TISA would impose globally-agreed standards for services, with little freedom to diverge, whatever the local populace or democratically-elected politicians might think or want.
During 21 rounds of talks, good progress was made on agreeing what should be in TISA, and it seemed that a final text was quite near. But with the election of Donald Trump, everything went quiet, as TISA negotiators waited to find out what his views on the deal would be. Since then, not much has happened, although TISA's supporters are doubtless hoping that negotiations can be picked up again at some point.
A recent patent filing reveals that Paypal might be considering expanding its exposure to the cryptocurrency ecosystem with a new system for speedy transactions. We shouldn’t however expect a Paypal Lightning Network or anything close to that any time soon. There is currently a global race to file patents for everything crypto or “blockchain” related and the company might just be strengthening its portfolio for future patent battles.
Harvesting a cauliflower is not as simple as it looks.
First it must be deemed firm, compact and white, before being gently prised from its main stem to prevent bruising, and plucked with a few outer leaves still attached to protect the head.
So when scientists were looking for a robotic helper capable of taking on Britain's brassica crop, they chose to mimic a tried and tested tool - the human hand.
Prof. Hrdy has an interesting new blog post to accompany her paper titled Technological Un/employment. Her work focuses on the intersection between jobs and intellectual property – looking both historically and toward the future of automation. “[T]he impact of technology on employment has historically been “skill-biased”—demand for high skills workers rises; demand for low skill workers falls.”
The conventional wisdom is that intellectual property is good for innovation and good for jobs. But this is not quite right. In reality, a significant subset of the innovations protected by intellectual property, from self-service kiosks to self-driving cars, are labor saving, and in many cases also labor displacing innovations—meaning they drastically reduce the need for paid human labor. Therefore, to the extent intellectual property is successful at incentivizing innovation, intellectual property actually contributes to job loss. More specifically, intellectual property contributes to what this article terms “technological un/employment”—the simultaneous creation and elimination of jobs resulting from technological change. The normative question is what to do about this. Commentators like Bill Gates suggest using the tax system to slow down the pace of automation and provide aide to displaced workers. But this article yields another surprising insight: intellectual property law itself can be designed to effectuate similar goals, either alone or, more likely, in coordination with the tax system. At the least, intellectual property is guaranteed to play a prominent role in society’s current technological un/employment moment, both as part of the problem and as part of the solution.
During the 2016 presidential race, an op ed in the New York Times by Jacob S. Hacker, a professor of political science at Yale, and Paul Pierson, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, asserted that "blue states" that support Democratic candidates, like New York, California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, are "generally doing better" in an economic sense than "red states" that support Republican candidates, like Mississippi, West Virginia, Kentucky, and (in some election cycles) Ohio. The gist of their argument is that conservatives cannot honestly claim that "red states dominate" on economic indicators like wealth, job growth, and education, when the research suggests the opposite. "If you compare averages," they write, "blue states are substantially richer (even adjusting for cost of living) and their residents are better educated. Companies there do more research and development and produce more patents. Students score better on tests of basic science-oriented skills like math."
I am not here to argue over whether blue states do better than red states economically. What I do want to point out is how professors Hacker and Pierson use intellectual property – and in particular patents – in making their argument. Blue states, they write, "produce more patents" than red states. Indeed, "few of the cities that do the most research or advanced manufacturing or that produce the most patents are in red states." How, they ask rhetorically, can conservatives say red states are doing better when most patents are generated in California? FN1
Hacker and Pierson's reasoning, which is quite common, goes like this. Patents are an indicator of innovation. Innovation is linked to economic prosperity. Therefore, patents – maybe even all forms of intellectual property – are linked to economic prosperity.
President Donald Trump loves putting his name on everything from ties to steaks to water — and, of course, his buildings. But now the Trump Organization appears to be borrowing a brand even more powerful than the gilded Trump moniker: the presidential seal.
In recent weeks, the Trump Organization has ordered the manufacture of new tee markers for golf courses that are emblazoned with the seal of the president of the United States. Under federal law, the seal’s use is permitted only for official government business. Misuse can be a crime.
Putin claimed that Russia’s full parity with the United States in strategic weaponry has been restored. His blunt message to the United States to abandon its 16-year attempt to achieve a first strike capability and sit down for arms control talks drew the immediate attention of world media, even if the initial reading was confused.
In the grand scheme of his many legal and regulatory conflicts, President Donald Trump’s spats with state regulators over damaged wetlands and excess water use at his New Jersey golf courses seem almost trivial. Trump ultimately was fined $147,000 — less than he banks from a couple of new memberships at the two private country clubs where he was cited for breaking state law. Both disputes were resolved during his presidential campaign and went unnoticed in the press.
Yet, as small as the sum was for a man like Trump, these two episodes are telling, not just because his resistance to oversight seems so disproportionate to the underlying allegations, but also because they provide a revealing anatomy of the five primary stages of Trump response. They could be summarized as Delay, Dissemble, Shift Blame, Haggle and Get Personally Involved. (The elements can be used in any order, more than once.) Often, there’s a sixth stage, too: Offer a job to one of the key players on the opposing side. Trump deployed those tactics again and again in his titanic real estate battles in New York, and his mega-dollar fights over casinos in New Jersey, according to Wayne Barrett’s biography, “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall.”
Dozens of Palestinian journalists on Monday staged a demonstration outside the UN’s Gaza City office to protest Facebook’s practice of unilaterally blocking Palestinian Facebook accounts.
Demonstrators held banners aloft, reading, “Facebook is complicit in [Israel’s] crimes” and “Facebook favors the [Israeli] occupation”.
According to Salama Maarouf, a spokesman for Hamas (which remains in de facto control of the Gaza Strip), Facebook blocked roughly 200 Palestinian accounts last year -- and 100 more since the start of 2018 -- “on phony pretexts”.
In a new attack on free speech, the European Union (EU) is calling on major social media and Internet firms including Facebook, Twitter and Google to automatically and immediately censor online material.
On March 1, the EU Commission called on companies and EU states to ensure “the detection and removal of illegal content through reactive (so called ‘notice and action’) or proactive measures.” It also identified a vast amount of material targeted for censorship. According to the Commission, its recommendations apply to all forms of “content ranging from terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products and copyright infringement.”
Once social media companies and websites began acquiescing to EU Commission demands for content takedown, the end result was obvious. Whatever was already in place would continually be ratcheted up. And every time companies failed to do the impossible, the EU Commission would appear on their virtual doorsteps, demanding they be faster and more proactive.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft all agreed to remove hate speech and other targeted content within 24 hours, following a long bitching session from EU regulators about how long it took these companies to comply with takedown orders. As Tim Geigner pointed out late last year, the only thing tech companies gained from this acquiescence was a reason to engage in proactive censorship.
It seems the next generation of youth in China won’t be hearing of George Orwell’s famed “Animal Farm” anytime soon — at least online — according to California-based bilingual news website China Digital Times last Feb. 26. Censorship authorities started their work on limiting online discussion by banning a multitude of terms and words from the Chinese microblogging site Weibo — and the list is almost endless.
The censorship move comes after Chinese state media released on Feb 25 a list of amendments to the Chinese constitution, which are to be carried out at the National People’s Congress Session in Beijing today. Among the 21 proposed amendments is the eradication of the current two-term limit of China’s presidents and vice presidents.
It’s no secret: Social media has changed the way that we access news. According to the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of Americans report getting at least some of their news on social media. Another study suggests that globally, for those under 45, online news is now as important as television news. But thanks to platforms’ ever-changing algorithms, content policies, and moderation practices, news outlets face significant barriers to reaching online readers.
San Diego CityBeat's recent experience offers a sad case in point. CityBeat is an alt-weekly focusing on news, music, and culture. Founded in 2002, the publication has a print circulation of 44,000 and is best known for its independence and no-holds barred treatment of public officials and demo tapes. The site is also known for its quirky—and, it turns out, controversial—headlines.
Here's a bit of a surprise. The Wall Street Journal's Editorial board has come out vehemently against SESTA. The reason this is surprising is that much of the push for SESTA has been a fairly obvious attack on internet companies, especially Google, by trying to undermine CDA 230. And the Wall Street Journal has spent years attacking Google at every opportunity.
But, this time, the editorial gets the story right -- highlighting that the effort is clearly being driven by anti-Google animus, even though it will create all sorts of other problems (problems that Google can mostly survive easily). However, the most important part of the editorial details why SESTA is not actually needed. Throughout the process, the backers of the bill always point to Backpage.com as the reason the bill is necessary. As we pointed out, when the bill was first released, nearly every quote from Senators backing it mentioned how it was necessary to take down Backpage.
Many media analysts have rightly identified the dangers posed by “fake news,” but often overlook what the phenomenon means for journalists themselves. Not only has the term become a shorthand way to malign an entire industry; autocrats are invoking it as an excuse to jail reporters and justify censorship, often on trumped-up charges of supporting terrorism.
Around the world, the number of honest journalists jailed for publishing fake or fictitious news is at an all-time high of at least 21. As non-democratic leaders increasingly use the “fake news” backlash to clamp down on independent media, that number is likely to climb.
The United States, once a world leader in defending free speech, has retreated from this role. President Donald Trump’s Twitter tirades about “fake news” have given autocratic regimes an example by which to justify their own media crackdowns. In December, China’s state-run People’s Daily newspaper posted tweets and a Facebook post welcoming Trump’s fake news mantra, noting that it “speaks to a larger truth about Western media.” This followed the Egyptian government’s praise for the Trump administration in February 2017, when the country’s foreign ministry criticized Western journalists for their coverage of global terrorism.
Censorship, one of the insidious strategies used by the apartheid government, has made an ominous comeback in South Africa with the recent X18 classification of the award-winning film Inxeba (The Wound). In South Africa the film can now only be shown in locations licensed to screen adult entertainment.
The apartheid government tried to maintain its power over a racially segregated South African population through controlling the media. This included censoring films – initially international and then also local ones. The Publications Control Board had the power to ban a film outright, demand scenes be cut or, bizarrely, to restrict the screening of a film to certain (usually white only) audiences.
Censorship in India is illegal and yet a majority of India endorses it. Director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan from Kerala made this rather-startling revelation at the first screening of his controversial “S Durga” in Kolkata.
Before the screening on Monday, Sasidharan spoke about his film’s longdrawn censorship battle at a seminar attended by Chitrabani director Father PJ Joseph and various other film scholars. A qualified lawyer, Sasidharan gave up practice in 2006. But thanks to his acumen in the field, he knew his film would eventually win the case though he himself didn’t participate as a lawyer. But the legal tussle left him exhausted—emotionally, physically and financially. “My film was made on a budget of Rs 10 lakh-Rs 12 lakh. But the ministry must spent more than that to fight me. A fight for censorship can’t be an individual’s battle. People should feel they have the right to see a film uncut,” he said during a seminar on censorship, moderated by Someswar Bhowmik, director at St Xavier’s College’s Educational Multimedia Research Centre.
The EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Vera Jourova, ahead of her US visit announced “a tough tone” on remaining gaps in the implementation of the privacy shield, the arrangement that allows to transfers of data of EU citizens to the United States. Speaking before the EU Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE), Jourova said while she had heard the privacy shield was not a priority of the US administration, “it will be a priority, if we make clear that we will suspend the system if it doesn't work,” adding, “My patience is coming to an end.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council today (6 March) is expected to hear a report on government surveillance to be presented by the UN special rapporteur on the right to privacy. The report calls for the urgent development of a comprehensive legal framework on privacy and surveillance in cyberspace.
On the agenda is presentation of a report by the Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, Joseph Cannataci, addressing the issue of oversight of government surveillance.
“There is no question that the global community needs to undertake urgent action … by developing a clear and comprehensive legal framework on privacy and surveillance in cyberspace, to operationalise the respect of this right, domestically and across borders,” the rapporteur’s report states.
On 20th January, we had a Tor meetup in Mumbai. Hasgeek organized the event, with OML providing the meeting space. I noticed the announcement over Twitter, and made sure that I registered for the event. Two contributors from the core team, Sukhbir Singh and Antonela Debiasi, were present at the event.
Formal legal action has been launched against the UK Government today over the inclusion of a specific clause in the new Data Protection Bill which means at least three million people across the country would be unable to find out what personal data the Home Office or other related organisations hold on them under a clause the government claims is needed for ‘effective immigration control’.
Lawyers from Leigh Day, who are acting on behalf of the3million – the largest grassroots organisation of EU citizens living in the UK – and the Open Rights Group (ORG) – the UK's only digital campaigning organisation working to protect the rights to privacy and free speech online – have written to Home Secretary Amber Rudd outlining their concerns and asking for the clause to be removed from the bill.
The government has introduced a sweeping “immigration exemption” in Schedule 2, Paragraph 4. The exemption will remove your right to data protection if it is likely to prejudice “effective immigration control” or the “investigation or detection of activities that would undermine the maintenance of effective immigration control”. What it won’t do is ensure effective immigration control.
This immigration exemption will ensure that the Government will not need to face up to its mistakes. Currently, according to the Government’s Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, mistakes and administrative errors are involved in 1 out of 10 immigration cases.
What’s it like to one of those 1 in 10? You can ask any one of the hundred EU citizens, living in the UK entirely legally, who were sent letters demanding they leave or risk deportation in August last year.
Tencent Holdings Ltd. Chairman Ma Huateng called on the Chinese government to introduce an ID system that would link multiple sets of travel documents with a mobile phone as part of a plan to boost regional trade between Hong Kong and the mainland.
China’s second-richest man said new technology systems and laws could let Hong Kong residents make electronic payments and cross the border more easily. Ma was speaking at a press conference in Beijing before the country’s legislative council convenes in the capital to set the year’s agenda. He was joined by fellow tech billionaires such as Baidu Inc. founder Robin Li, who expressed a willingness to list their companies’ shares in China.
“It’s still very complicated and we’d need to make it work with the customs systems but from a technology point of view we can do it,” Ma said. “We have been talking to the chief executive in Hong Kong for quite some time about a number of these issues, including the electronic ID.”
Virtru co-founder Will Ackerly developed the company’s underlying encryption technology while he was working as an engineer at the NSA, so it’s fair to say he knows a thing or two about the subject. The company has been delivering encryption products for email and files in transit for several years now, mainly through a partnership with Google GMail and Microsoft Office 365. Today, it announced it was opening up that technology to third party developers through the Virtru Data Protection Platform.
Consent is one of the six lawful bases that justify the processing of personal data. To be adequate, consent must be a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the individual’s wishes by a statement or clear affirmative action – granular is the word the regulators use. It is not silence or a pre-ticked opt-in box. It is not a blanket acceptance of a set of terms and conditions that include privacy provisions. It can be ‘by electronic means’ – it could be a motion such as a swipe across a screen. But, where special category data (sensitive data such as health data) are processed and explicit consent is needed, this will be by way of a written statement.
An internal NSA newsletter recently published by The Intercept records how the US government used pornography to debilitate and humiliate prisoners during the Iraq War. This is the latest in a string of revelations showing that the CIA and NSA regularly employ pornography as a tool in covert operations.
The latest release from the Snowden cache describes how the NSA used pornography to debase and abuse Iraqi prisoners. An article from the NSA's internal newsletter SID Today details how Marines brought in laptops, CDs, phones and hard drives belonging to detainees. The previously-secret document was written by an NSA volunteer working for the Iraq Survey Group, a joint CIA-DIA mission in Baghdad.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Jennings v. Rodriguez, a class action lawsuit challenging the federal government’s practice of jailing immigrants for months or years while they litigate their deportation cases. The ACLU had argued that neither the immigration laws nor the Constitution permit such detention unless a judge determines, at a hearing, that the immigrant will pose a danger or flight risk if released.
In a 5-to-3 decision (Justice Kagan was recused), the court overturned a 2015 ruling from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that required the government to give immigrants a custody hearing after six months of imprisonment. But in doing so the court only addressed one of the two arguments advanced by the ACLU. It rejected the ACLU’s claim that the immigration laws require hearings. But the ACLU had also asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether the Constitution permitted lengthy imprisonment without hearings, and on that question, the court sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit to address first.
At the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, where Mississippi sends some of the most seriously mentally ill people in the state prison system, even the most troubled patients are routinely ignored and the worst cases of self-harm are treated with certain neglect. The conditions at EMCF have cost some prisoners their limbs, their eyesight, and even their lives.
In 2013, the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and prisoner rights attorney Elizabeth Alexander filed a class-action complaint on behalf of all the prisoners held at EMCF. As the case heated up, the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP joined as co-counsel, providing major staffing and support. Despite years of attempts by Mississippi to derail the lawsuit before our clients even saw the inside of the courtroom, the case will finally proceed to trial Monday.
The lawsuit against EMCF describes horrific conditions at the facility: rampant violence, including by staff against prisoners; solitary confinement used to excess, with particular harm to prisoners with mental illnesses; and filthy cells and showers that lack functional toilets or lights. It also sheds light on a dysfunctional medical and mental healthcare delivery system that puts patients at risk of serious injury and has contributed to deaths in custody.
The Chesterfield County Police Department is willing to violate your rights. If it's not your Fourth Amendment rights, it'll be your First. And this is fine with the department's chief, who's gone on record as a supporter of rights violations.
At a D.C. event, survivors of a Mexican drug cartel massacre, triggered by a botched DEA operation, tell their story.
As well as flogging sniper rifles, shotguns, batons and handcuffs, the exhibition promotes cyber-spying firms that have been accused of helping repressive governments. Exhibitors include Gamma Group, which offers “strategic communications intelligence (network-based interception)”. The Bahraini security services used Gamma Group software to hack phones and computers of pro-democracy activists and lawyers (Eye 1373).
Another exhibitor, Grey Heron Technologies, has strong links with Hacking Team, the notorious Milan-based surveillance company. At the fair Grey Heron will be selling “state-of-the-art software for legal surveillance of digital devices”. It gives a Milan address and its chief marketing officer is former Hacking Team spokesman Eric Rabe.
Last month you might recall that the NRA gave FCC boss Ajit Pai the Charleton Heston Award for Courage for his decision to dismantle popular net neutrality rules. The tone-deaf celebration was a pretty hollow attention seeking move, but was also an ouroboros of blistering idiocy. One, the NRA appears oblivious to the fact that net neutrality rules would have helped it as well, since the entire point is to ensure the internet is a level playing field for all competitors and voices. Net neutrality protects free speech (even speech you don't agree with), something you'd think the folks at the NRA would be able to appreciate.
Two, there's simply nothing courageous about teaming up with Comcast to screw over the public and the nation's small businesses and startups. Pai's decision is widely derided as the dumbest decision in the history of modern tech policy. And while ISPs like to frame net neutrality as partisan to sow division and prevent meaningful rules, surveys repeatedly indicate the rules had broad bipartisan support.
It didn't take long for ethics experts to point out that the award and the NRA's gift to Pai (a Kentucky long rifle) was over $200 and therefore violated ethics rules and lobbying restrictions:
"The best entrepreneurs, developers, and investors have become wary of building on top of centralized platforms," Chris Dixon, a partner with investor Andreessen Horowitz wrote last month, in a kind of manifesto for a more decentralized internet. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web has similar concerns. Graphite Docs and some other early DApps are far from perfect, but show there's something to the hype. A life less dependent on cloud giants is possible, if not yet easy.
Over the past few weeks, we've mentioned in a couple of posts that the Copyright Office is currently taking public commentary for changes to the DMCA's anti-circumvention exemptions provisions. While we've thus far limited our posts to the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment's bid to have those exemptions extended to preserving online video games and the ESA's nonsensical rebuttal, that isn't the only request for expanded exemptions being logged. A group of filmmaker associations put in a request last year for anti-circumvention exemptions to be extended to filmmakers so that they can break the DRM on Blu-ray films in order to make use of clips in new works. At issue is the fact that these filmmakers are able to make use of clips in these new works thanks to fair use but cannot readily get at them due to the DRM on the films themselves.
A few years ago, anger at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM birthed a grassroots tech movement. The company's lockdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM and the company's EULA prohibited the lion-share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.
The John Deere fiasco resulted in the push for a new "right to repair" law in Nebraska. This push then quickly spread to multiple other states, driven in part by consumer repair monopolization efforts by other companies including Apple, Sony and Microsoft. Lobbyists for these companies quickly got to work trying to claim that by allowing consumers to repair products they own (or take them to third-party repair shops) they were endangering public safety. Apple went so far as to argue that if Nebraska passed such a law, it would become a dangerous "mecca for hackers" and other ne'er do wells.
Wary of public backlash, many of these companies refuse to speak on the record regarding their attacks on consumer rights and repair competition. But they continue to lobby intensely behind the scenes all the same. The latest example comes courtesy of the "The Security Innovation Center," a new lobbying and policy vehicle backed by hardware vendors and wireless carriers. The group issued a new "study" this week that tries to use the understandable concerns over flimsy IOT security to fuel their attacks on right to repair laws.
The Pirate Bay, known as TPB for short, is a known name trying to preserve the existence of torrent indexing sites. But TPB doesn’t run all the time flawlessly. However, it has shown persistence while withstanding against the pressure in the past. But, it can be any day TPB can face a downtime, possibly because the feds want so.