The team over at Netrunner have just announced the launch of Netrunner 18.03 Idolon for the Pinebook. This is the direct result of a year of collaboration between the Netrunner, Pine and KDE Communities in a effort to drive down memory consumption, fix glitches in the graphics stack and enabling accelerated video decode, all of which has resulted in a product that showcases the coming together of the amazing software from KDE and some brilliant hardware engineering from the folks over at Pine.
It’s been quite a journey for my colleagues and I at Blue Systems in putting together this product. We have had to delve into areas where we originally did not have the expertise to fix bugs and constantly push the boundaries of our abilities. This was especially challenging in the ARM world since there are parts of the stack that were proprietary, meaning we cannot debug those parts, leading to many frustrating evenings having been spent on trying to reverse engineer buggy behaviour.
After months of development effort, Kubernetes is now fully supported in the stable release of the Docker Enterprise Edition.
Docker Inc. officially announced Docker EE 2.0 on April 17, adding features that have been in development in the Docker Community Edition (CE) as well as enhanced enterprise grade capabilities. Docker first announced its intention to support Kubernetes in October 2017. With Docker EE 2.0, Docker is providing a secured configuration of Kubernetes for container orchestration.
"Docker EE 2.0 brings the promise of choice," Docker Chief Operating Officer Scott Johnston told eWEEK. "We have been investing heavily in security in the last few years, and you'll see that in our Kubernetes integration as well."
Back in the mists of antiquity when I started reading Linux Journal, figuring out what an infrastructure was going to cost was (although still obnoxious in some ways) straightforward. You'd sign leases with colocation providers, buy hardware that you'd depreciate on a schedule and strike a deal in blood with a bandwidth provider, and you were more or less set until something significant happened to your scale.
1 – Linux isn’t Windows. There is no magical company to go to,things will behave differently. If you expect a parity experience, you’re going to be disappointed. Software types, source of software or installing a new driver.
2 – Linux does what it’s told to. Something isn’t working? Odds are, it’s just not working as expected it means you need to adjust a configuration or rethink the tools used to interact with Linux. This includes hardware not appearing to work, audio and video.
3 – Linux applications may work differently than legacy applications. MS Word vs LibreOffice, Photoshop vs GIMP, exe installers vs repositories.
4 – Linux offers choice. Different distros, desktop environments and methods of application installation.
Guest appearance on “Time Out” with Kevin Gallagher: We talk a bit about Facebook’s latest controversy, talk about Kevin Gallagher’s “Time Out” show and take a look at where configuration files are stored on Linux systems.
Of the many great features/changes for Linux 4.17, one of the most exciting to us is the idle power efficiency and performance-per-Watt improvements on some systems thanks to a rework to the kernel's idle loop handling. Rafael Wysocki and Thomas Ilsche as two of the developers working on this big code change presented on their work today for this CPU idle loop ordering problem and its resolution.
Linus Torvalds has started the development cycle of the Linux 4.17 kernel series, according to a report by Softpedia.
The first Release Candidate build has been released, and comes two weeks after the launch of Linux 4.16.
“Public testers can start downloading, compiling, and installing the upcoming Linux 4.17 kernel,” stated the report.
A year ago The Linux Foundation created its 'Harmonisation 1.0' initiative, focusing on collaboration between projects and with standards bodies. It brought together a set of open source projects, which together form the basis of the modern telecoms systems. Open source creates three values for telcos: speed to services, vendor collaboration, and cost reductions. The LF is also creating a framework between open source and standards communities; for example, this year it announced an agreement with the TM Forum, focused on the APIs that work between the two communities.
In this article, we talk with Andrew Jenkins, Lead Architect at Aspen Mesh, about moving from monolithic apps to microservices and cut through some of the hype around service mesh for managing microservice architectures. For more on service mesh, consider attending KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU, May 2-4, 2018 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
In the first article in our series on the Cloud Foundry for Developers training course, we explained what Cloud Foundry is and how it's used. We continue our journey here with a look at some basic terms. Understanding the terminology is the key to not being in a constant state of bewilderment, so here are the most important terms and concepts to know for Cloud Foundry.
Eric Anholt believes he is getting quite close to the stage of merging the Broadcom VC5 DRM driver into the mainline Linux kernel tree.
As part of the VC5 open-source driver stack for supporting the next-gen Broadcom VideoCore 5 graphics hardware, there's been the VC5 Gallium3D driver that is already in mainline Mesa for OpenGL support and the VC5 DRM driver that has been outside of the kernel tree up until now. (There's also been the also out-of-tree experimental work on VC5 Vulkan support via BCMV, etc.)
Last week NVIDIA released their first 396 Linux driver beta that most notably introduces their new "NVVM" Vulkan SPIR-V compiler. Coming out today is a new Vulkan beta update with some continued enhancements.
AMD kicked off the start of a new week by doing fresh code drops of the PAL and XGL code-bases used to form the AMDVLK open-source Radeon Vulkan Linux driver.
On the XGL side this latest code drop of around one thousand lines of code reduces the number of malloc/free calls, support for INT64 atomic operations within LLPC (the LLVM Pipeline Compiler), other tweaks to LLPC, more barriers in the render pass clear, adding FMASK shadow table support, and other changes.
The 2018 X.Org Board of Directors elections are over with 49 of the 91 X.Org registered members having casted a ballot.
The new X.Org Board of Directors members are Bryce Harrington (Samsung OSG, formerly Canonical), Eric Anholt (Broadcom, formerly Intel), Keith Packard (HPE / Valve, formerly Intel), and Harry Wentland (AMD).
With last week's release of Feral GameMode as a system tool to optimize Linux gaming performance, which at this point just toggles the CPU frequency scaling driver's governor to the "performance" mode, reignited the CPU governor debate, here are some fresh Linux gaming benchmarks. Tests were done with both the CPUFreq and P-State scaling drivers on Linux 4.16 while testing the various governor options and using both AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards.
This comparison shows how a GeForce GTX 1080 and Radeon RX Vega 64 perform under the different CPU frequency scaling driver/governor options on the Linux 4.16 stable kernel. Tests were done with an Intel Core i7 8700K running at stock speeds throughout the entire benchmarking process.
The primary task of the system administrators is monitoring and examine Linux system and how long its been promenade. This article demonstrates use of Tuptime tool that help's System Administrators to analyse how long Linux machine is up and running.
Tuptime tool counts accidental system restarts and not just only uptime of system. When tuptime is installed on system it registers first boot time after installation. Once the first boot time is registered from there onwards it checks for system tuptime and downtime and represents it in Percentage (%). Tuptime also registers current tuptime of system from last restart. Reports Largest Running system Time, Shortest Running System Time & Average of both.
dutree is a free open-source, fast command-line tool for analyzing disk usage, written in Rust programming language. It is developed from durep (disk usage reporter) and tree (list directory content in tree-like format) command line tools. dutree therefore reports disk usage in a tree-like format.
Every Linux administrator has it's own preferences on how to monitor processes in terminal. And you probably know about tools like top and htop. These are tools for process monitoring in terminal without any visualization. And you probably know about gtop and vtop which are also process monitoring terminal tools, but with visualization. In this article, we are going to install and use another terminal based graphical activity monitor called gotop. Unlike the two mentioned above, gotop is written in Go.
Nginx 1.14.0 is now available as the latest open-source stable release of this popular web server alternative to Apache.
Most people tend to think of DJ's using Macbooks alongside their equipment when picturing a DJ who uses a laptop in today's world, but little do most realize that GNU/Linux systems can hold their own as well.
As a part-time dabbler in electronic music production (read: I mix tunes for my own amusement, and a couple uploaded here and there) I have a few programs that I bounce around from depending on the purpose I need, but generally speaking I don't really muck around a lot with things, and I tend to prefer to just simply mix two songs together live and on the fly, record it, and win.
Aquiris Game Studio, developer of FPS Ballistic Overkill has announced their retro-inspired racing game Horizon Chase Turbo [Official Site].
It's actually a revamp of an older title of their's named Horizon Chase World Tour, only this time it's not locked to mobile platforms and it will be getting a Linux version too! Honestly, it looks like a really fantastic attempt to bring out a classic-style racing game for a new generation of players.
RUINER, the absolutely brutal and damn fun action game is now out of beta and officially available on Steam, with a GOG release to follow. I have it confirmed from my GOG contacts it will land soonish, but if you doubt my own word, the developer said so on the Steam forum as well.
I already wrote some thoughts up on the game here, so I won't reiterate too much. As it stands, it's an excellent action game full of character customisation with tons of perks you can activate and deactivate any time, brutal take-downs and plenty of blood.
Amarok is a cross-platform, free, and Open Source music player written in Qt (C++). It was first released on June 23, 2003, and even though it is part of the KDE project, Amarok is released as a software independent of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle.
It features a clean, responsive, and customizable User Interface along with Last.fm support, Jamendo service, Dynamic playlists, context view, PopUp dropper, bookmarking, file tracking, multi-language support, and smooth fade-out settings, among many other options.
The latest release of CMake has landed in FreeBSD. Prior to release we had good contact with KitWare via the bug tracker so there were few surprises left in the actual release. There were still a few last-minute fixes left, in KDE applications no less.
Secondly, I've been working a bit on KDE Connect's bluetooth support. The code was mostly working already, but the remaining stuff is (of course) the hardest part! Nevertheless, more and more parts start working, so I assume it'll come your way in a couple of months. I'll post an update when it's ready for testing.
The 5.11 release of Qt 3D is mostly about speed and stability but it also introduces a number of new features.
One of them is generalized ray casting which can be used to find objects intersecting a 3d ray.
The Qt 3D ray-casting support is to be used for finding objects intersecting a 3D ray. This generalized ray-casting support is expected to be useful for applications making use of secondary controllers and VR environments among other possible use-cases where you would want to see what objects intersect with an arbitrary ray.
For Qt developers wanting to learn more about this generalized ray-casting support coming to Qt 3D, the folks at the KDAB consulting firm have put out a lengthy blog post detailing this new feature for the upcoming Qt 5.11 release.
Last Saturday we celebrated the release of GNOME 3.28. It was a bit late, but happened nonetheless!
GNOME 3.29.1 was released this afternoon as the first step towards what will eventually become GNOME 3.30 in September.
Want insights into how other organizations are building cloud-native applications and microservices? At Red Hat Summit 2018, developers from a number of different companies will be sharing their stories in break-out sessions, lightning talks, and birds-of-a-feather discussions. Learn how they solved real business problems using containers, microservices, API management, integration services, and other middleware.
The upcoming Fedora 28 Linux distribution release is now under its "final freeze" for releasing in the next few weeks.
While we're waiting for the Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster" operating system series to be released, it looks like the Debian Release Team announced the codenames for the next two upcoming releases.
Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster" is already halfway through its development cycle, and the release team recently published an update to inform users and developers about the release dates of various upcoming milestones, such as Transition Freeze on 12 January 2019, Soft Freeze on 12 February 2019, and Full Freeze on 12 March 2019, as well as the approximate final release date.
TeX Live 2018 has hit Debian/unstable today. The packages are based on what will be (most likely, baring any late desasters) on the TeX Live DVD which is going to press this week. This brings the newest and shiniest version of TeX Live to Debian. There have
As you should be aware, alioth.debian.org will be decommissioned with the EOL of wheezy, which is at the end of May. The replacement for the main part of alioth, git, is alive and out of beta, you know it as salsa.debian.org. If you did not move your git repository yet, hurry up, time is running out.
The purpose of this communication is to provide a status update and highlights for any interesting subjects from the Ubuntu Server Team.
I’m happy to announce that MAAS 2.4.0 beta 2 is now released and is available for Ubuntu Bionic.
This week’s focus was on bugfixes with a good number of clustering related fixes and improvements as well as some tweaks and fixes to other recently added features.
On the feature development front, the current focus is on improving the database tooling in LXD and adding a new backup feature to the API to implement container export/import.
It's beautiful, it's lovely, it's amusing, it's Ubuntu MATE 18.04 beta 2. It is an LTS version which will be supported for 3 years. It's more just-work now with a set of different appearances for Windows users ("Redmond"), for Mac OS X users ("Cupertino"), for Unity 7 users ("Mutiny"), and of course for long time Ubuntu MATE users themselves ("Traditional"). It comes with special Welcome program to introduce Ubuntu MATE for any new user, it comes with same experience like previous versions but latest applications (LibreOffice 6.0, Firefox 59, MATE Desktop 1.20) and enhancements, it needs only mid-level specs. with around 640MiB of RAM, and those all made Ubuntu MATE beta 2 really enjoyable. This short review will help you expecting what you will get on Ubuntu MATE final release later on April 26. Enjoy!
In about two weeks, Canonical will release its next LTS, 18.04 Bionic Beaver. What makes it special is that it's going to be running a Gnome 3 desktop instead of Unity, a sort of full-circle reversal of direction and strategy, and that means ... uncertainty. With Trusty Tahr being the only production Linux system in my setup, I am quite intrigued and concerned, because I need to choose my next LTS carefully.
So far, the prospect isn't encouraging, given the more-than-lukewarm performance by Aardvark. There's a lot of hope in the Plasma spin, given the stellar performance of the Plasma desktop recently, but that's still a big unknown, especially since Kubuntu 17.10 was a regression compared to the most magnificent and awesome Zesty Zapus. Therefore, I decided to check this beta, to see what gives ahead of the official release. Normally, I don't like testing unfinished products, but this be an extraordinary occasion. Let's do it.
Pinguy Builder, the open-source and free graphical utility that lets the developers of the Ubuntu-based Pinguy OS distro build their operating system, has been recently updated with support for Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus), Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark), and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) support.
Pinguy Builder is a fork of the well known Remastersys tool that's no longer maintained. It contains all the scripts needed to create a live ISO image of any of the supported Ubuntu Linux releases in a few minutes and without too much hassle. Also, it can be used to backup your Ubuntu system.
Google has launched new versions of its AIY Voice Kit ($50) and AIY Vision Kit ($90) that bundle a Raspberry Pi Zero WH SBC. Google also released an Android app for AIY Projects.
Google and Target have launched updated, and more complete, versions of Google’s AIY Projects kits for audio voice agent and visual neural network processing development that bundle a Raspberry Pi Zero WH SBC. In addition, users of Google’s existing AIY Voice Kit and AIY Vision Kit can now download an Android companion app that works with all old and new AIY kits.
Adlink’s rugged, Ubuntu-friendly “MCM-100” is a condition monitoring system for industrial machines that offers an Intel Apollo Lake SoC and a 24-bit analog sampling input for up to 128kS/s frequencies.
Samsung want you to know that they are serious about their wearable devices, and one way of showing the “Love” is continued development and support. Support can come in many forms and one of the best for end-users software updates.
Google Play is under investigation in South Korea for allegedly abusing its position in the market to pressure game developers into publish on its platform only.
According to The Korea Herald, the South Korean Fair Trade Commission has begun surveying local mobile game companies to review whether the allegations have merit.
The Korean FTC is also investigating whether game companies faced negative consequences if they did not agree to launch on Google Play only.
Mirantis is pivoting again. Two years ago, the company pivoted from OpenStack to Kubernetes. Now it's now saying the Spinnaker open source continuous application integration is the future.Mirantis is pivoting again. Two years ago, the company pivoted from OpenStack to Kubernetes. Now it's now saying the Spinnaker open source continuous application integration is the future.
Spinnaker is the new open-source project to watch. It’s a multi-cloud continuous delivery platform that came out of Netflix and that now also has the backing of Google.
Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd, a global technology consulting and digital solutions company has joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the world's largest open source blockchain initiative. As a member of the EEA, LTI will collaborate with industry leaders in pursuit of ethereum-based enterprise technology best practices, open standards, and open-source reference architectures.
Aventus, a Jersey-based foundation using blockchain to provide the ticketing industry with a fair and secure means of ticketing events, has announced the availability of the first version of its Aventus Protocol source-code; an open-source blockchain ticketing platform that will allow anyone to build powerful decentralized applications for the ticketing industry.
In case you missed it but are living in Berlin - or are visiting Berlin/ Germany this week: A handful of Apache people (committers/ members) are meeting over breakfast on Friday morning this week. If you are interested in joining, please let me know (or check yourself - in the archives of the mailing list party@apache.org)
In January the CfP for FOSS Backstage opened. By now reviews have been done, speakers notified and a schedule created.
I'm delighted to find both - a lot of friends from the Apache Software Foundation but also a great many speakers that aren't affiliated with the ASF among the speakers.
Chrome 66 is rolling out today on Mac, Windows, and Linux with a number of user-facing features and policy changes that have been in development for the past several months. This includes new media autoplay behavior, blocking third-party software, and other security changes.
The technology industry was dealt a major setback when the Federal Circuit recently decided in Oracle v. Google that Google’s use of Java “declaring code” was not a fair use. The copyright doctrine of Fair Use impacts a developer’s ability to learn from and improve on the work of others, which is a crucial part of software development. Because of this ruling, copyright law today is now at odds with how software is developed.*
This is the second time in this eight year case that the Federal Circuit’s ruling has diverged from how software is written. In 2014, the court decided that declaring code can be copyrighted, a ruling with which we disagreed. Last year we filed another amicus brief in this case, advocating that Google’s implementation of the APIs should be considered a fair use. In this recent decision, the court found that copying the Java declaring code was not a protected fair use of that code.
The mixed reality team at Mozilla devoted two years to brainstorming and experimenting to find a way to bring virtual reality to the web. That’s because we believe the web is the best possible platform for virtual and augmented reality. The ability to share and access virtual experiences with a URL is a game-changer; the key needed to take this amazing technology and make it mainstream.
We don’t have to tell you that video is a key channel for sharing information and instructional skills especially for students and developers who’ve grown up with YouTube. At Mozilla, we’ve always been a leader in supporting the open technologies that bring unencumbered video into the browser and onto the web.
Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 7 Update 5 for the x86_64 architecture. You can find the individual RPM packages on the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) and the Oracle Linux yum server. ISO installation images will soon be available for download from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud and Docker images will soon be available via Oracle Container Registry and Docker Hub.
Just one week after launching Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5, Oracle has released the latest version of their RHEL7-derived Oracle Linux 7. The Oracle Linux 7 Update 5 pulls in the latest *EL7 changes while also offering their "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" option.
Oracle has released VirtualBox 5.2 Maintenance Release 10.
Oracle VM VirtualBox 5.2.10 addresses all the CPU (Critical Patch Updates) Advisory for April 2018 related to Oracle VM VirtualBox; A Critical Patch Update is a collection of patches for multiple security vulnerabilities.
Oracle announced a few moments ago the release of the VirtualBox 5.2.10 maintenance update for their open-source and cross-platform virtualization solution for Linux, Windows, and macOS operating systems.
VirtualBox 5.2.10 is here one and a half months after version 5.2.8 to fix all the critical security vulnerabilities related to Oracle VM VirtualBox, as well as various reported bugs. Among these, we can mention a hang that occurred when starting the KDE Plasma desktop environment on various GNU/Linux distributions.
The update also addresses a regression from VirtualBox 5.2.0 that allowed the presence of multiple NVMe controllers with ICH9 enabled, fixes an interrupt storm issue in FreeBSD guests with HDA audio enabled, and adds support for handling the 0.0.0.0 nameserver as a valid NAT setting.
Today, I'm going to install four popular content management systems. These will be Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, and Backdrop. If you're trying to decide on what your next CMS platform should be, this would be a great time to tune in. And yes, I'll do it all live, without a net, and with a high probability of falling flat on my face. Join me today, at 12 noon, Easter Time. Be part of the conversation.
Microsoft has issued a press release describing the security dangers involved with the Internet of things ("a weaponized stove, baby monitors that spy, the contents of your refrigerator being held for ransom") and introducing "Microsoft Azure Sphere" as a combination of hardware and software to address the problem.
Hot on the heels of the first release candidate, we’re happy to have a second RC ready! In the last 3 weeks since releasing GIMP 2.10.0-RC1, we’ve fixed 44 bugs and introduced important performance improvements.
As usual, for a complete list of changes please see NEWS.
In the three weeks since GIMP 2.10 finally reached the release candidate stage a lot of changes have continued to land and today marks the GIMP 2.10 RC2 availability.
GIMP 2.10 RC2 most notably offloads painting to its own CPU thread. This should yield better performance with the painting and display code-paths running on separate CPU threads. Thanks to underlying improvements, in the future this parallelization framework may also be used elsewhere besides just for the painting process. The GIMP 2.10-RC2 release also features GEGL updates that should further enhance the performance of this open-source image manipulation program.
Open-source file syncing and sharing software company Nextcloud has scored a major client with the German federal government set to move to a self-hosted cloud from the firm.
A statement from Nextcloud said the Federal Information Technology Centre (ITZBund), which takes care of IT services for the entire federal government, had been running a pilot of 5000 users with Nextcloud since October 2016.
[...]
ITZBund employs about 2700 people, mostly IT specialists, engineers and network and security professionals.
The Nextcloud statement said strict security requirements were crucial for the choice of Nextcloud as the file sync and share solution. Another important concern was scalability both in terms of large numbers of users and extensibility with additional features, for which Nextcloud offers its powerful Apps concept (with over 100 apps available in its app store).
It claimed that "Nextcloud delivers some of the strongest security measures in the industry, making it the ideal solution for government agencies or companies dealing with data of private citizens".
I had grand ambitions this week. I’d come across a smattering of articles delving into the history of programming languages, practices, and other Internet-based tidbits. I’d pondered a pithy title like “if !mistake(history) do repeat” and dug through my source materials for evidence, but came up a bit empty-handed. In the end, the line that really summed up this week’s theme was found at the closing of an interesting article asking why does “=” mean assignment?
Earlier this month Intel ISA documentation pointed to a new CPU micro-architecture codenamed "Tremont", we've seen a few kernel patches also referencing Intel Tremont, and now there is Tremont microarchitecture support for LLVM's Clang compiler.
SAP has revealed its attitude to Oracle’s decision to let go of Java EE and have it tended by the Eclipse Foundation.
SAP’s position is simple: it’s cool with it.
“The announcement of Oracle to handover stewardship of Java EE to the Eclipse foundation is a forward-looking process targeting future releases of the technology stack,” says the company’s “”stance” on the matter.
Linux is a free and open-source software operating systems built around the Linux kernel. It typically packaged in a form known as a Linux distribution for both desktop and server use. It is a great development environment for programmers and developers. However, without the development tools, that would be impossible. Fortunately, plenty of Linux tools are available. Here are the top 5 most useful Linux tools for programmers.
The United States undercut China’s technology ambitions on Tuesday, advancing a new rule that would limit the ability of Chinese telecommunications companies to sell their products in this country.
The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to move forward with a plan that would prevent federally subsidized telecommunications carriers from using suppliers deemed to pose a risk to American national security. The decision takes direct aim at Huawei, which makes telecommunications network equipment and smartphones, and its main Chinese rival, ZTE, sending a message that the government doesn’t trust them.
A day earlier, the government barred ZTE from using components made in the United States, saying the company had failed to punish employees who violated American sanctions against North Korea and Iran.
In a grand hotel ballroom on Tuesday, Huawei executives laid out a soaring vision for the future. The Chinese electronics giant, already the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment that powers the wireless age, now wants to provide the digital backbone for artificial intelligence, the internet of things and other transformative technologies.
But that future is increasingly looking as if it will not include the United States.
Prof. Carlos Correa of Argentina, an influential academic whose analyses of patents and medicines access have informed debates and challenged the status quo for decades, has been named the next executive director of the South Centre. He will take over for Martin Khor, who will be retiring after nine years at the helm. Separately, former South African President Thabo Mbeki was named chair of the Board.
The number of patents for drug delivery devices has shot up in recent years, and has had the effect of significantly extending the protection enjoyed by patented pharmaceuticals, delaying cheaper versions of the drugs and leading to higher prices, a recent paper found. And in a Q&A below, one of the authors raises an issue for policymakers.
In a letter to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, 55 cybersecurity professionals from around the country are calling for a veto for S.B. 315, a state bill that would give prosecutors new power to target independent security researchers.
This isn’t just a matter of solidarity among those in the profession. Georgia represents our nation’s third largest information security sector. The signers have clients, partners, and offices in Georgia. They attend conferences in Georgia. They teach and study in Georgia or recruit students from Georgia. And they all agree that S.B. 315, which would create a new crime of "unauthorized access," would do more harm than good.
In short, a global, invisible, low-level conflict is taking place across the internet and it is possible that your router has been conscripted as a foot soldier. Maybe it is worth getting your firewall and antivirus checked out after all.
We are excited about the future of Heads on Librem laptops and the extra level of protection it can give customers. As a result we’ve both been writing about it a lot publicly and working on it a lot privately. What I’ve realized when I’ve talked to people about Heads and given demos, is that many people have never seen a tamper-evident boot process before. All of the concepts around tamper-evident boot are pretty abstract and it can be difficult to fully grasp how it protects you if you’ve never seen it work.
We have created a short demo that walks through a normal Heads boot process and demonstrates tamper detection. In the interest of keeping the demo short I only briefly described what was happening. In this post I will elaborate on what you are seeing in the video.
In recent weeks, the journalist had written about Russian mercenaries known as the "Wagner Group" who were reportedly killed in Syria on 7 February in a confrontation with US forces.
This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks – and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the “gas” videotape which horrified the world – despite all the doubters – is perfectly genuine.
War stories, however, have a habit of growing darker. For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo made a top-secret visit to North Korea over Easter weekend as an envoy for President Trump to meet with that country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, according to two people with direct knowledge of the trip.
The extraordinary meeting between one of Trump’s most trusted emissaries and the authoritarian head of a rogue state was part of an effort to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and Kim about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the highly classified nature of the talks.
Just a few hours before the arrival in Syria of UN chemical weapons inspectors to investigate the use of chemicals in Duma, a Damascus suburb where last week 42 persons were reportedly killed, the attack against Syrian government chemical facilities by the U.S. and its British and French allies with neither U.N. nor Congressional authorization is a bit suspicious–to put it mildly.
For the three Western nations to to bomb before the international inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) could check the bodies of those killed for chemicals, take soil samples, talk to survivors and compare the results with what is in the Syrian government chemical facilities is bewildering– unless the U.S., UK and France knew the UN inspectors were going to find NOTHING to substantiate their assessment. Without any evidence, but with merely a “high possibility”, the three countries were going to attack Syria anyway.
For weeks, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have insisted that there is “no alternative explanation” to Russian government responsibility for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last month.
But in fact the British government is well aware that such an alternative explanation does exist. It is based on the well-documented fact that the “Novichok” nerve agent synthesized by Soviet scientist in the 1980s had been sold by the scientist–who led the development of the nerve agent– to individuals linked to Russian criminal organizations as long ago as 1994 and was used to kill a Russian banker in 1995.
The connection between the Novichok nerve agent and a previous murder linked to the murky Russian criminal underworld would account for the facts of the Salisbury poisoning far better than the official line that it was a Russian government assassination attempt.
The credibility of the May government’s attempt to blame it on Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered because of Yulia Skripal’s relatively rapid recovery, the apparent improvement of Sergei Skripal’s condition and a medical specialist’s statement that the Skripals had exhibited no symptoms of nerve agent poisoning.
Pamela Anderson has shared her fears over the health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who she said is being subjected to "a form of torture".
Mr Assange, who has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, recently had his internet access cut off and has been banned from receiving visitors.
Anderson, a close friend of Mr Assange, told ITV's Good Morning Britain that she is "very concerned about his health".
She said: "I think this is a form of torture, I think they're slowly killing him.
"I'm very, very, very concerned, deeply concerned for him. He's one of the most important people on the planet right now.
Pamela Anderson has told of her concerns about her close friend, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was recently banned from having internet access or receiving visitors at his home, the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Pamela Anderson has told of her concerns about her close friend, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was recently banned from having internet access or receiving visitors at his home, the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
...cited an old Wikileaks expose on its leader Arun Jaitley’s reported remark that his party uses ‘Hindu nationalism’ as a tool to attract votes.
Where did this misleading news originate? YourNewsWire published the fake news article reporting that Clinton previously voiced support for destroying Syria in a “leaked.” You can read it below.
Pamela Anderson fears U.S. authorities are investigating her over her friendship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Julian has been holed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 in a bid to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual assault, and the Baywatch star has become a regular visitor for the past three years.
In an interview with breakfast TV show Good Morning Britain, Pamela said that since the internet activist had his internet access cut off last month (Mar18), she has been banned from contacting him - and that she fears their relationship is being probed by U.S. authorities, who want to arrest him for exposing classified government secrets.
Whatever the actual numbers, it seems like some hefty percentage of technology news revolves around leaks of one kind or another. Whether it concerns government, corporate, or legal proceedings information leaking to the public, it happens enough that at this point the operating posture of any organization should probably be to expect leaks, rather than flailing at modernity and trying to stop them. Hell, if the White House can't keep what seems like literally anything under wraps, what hope does the average business have?
Apple recently sent a lengthy memo warning employees about leaking. As you might have guessed, that memo got leaked.
On Friday, Bloomberg News published what it described as an "internal blog" post in full. The memo warned that Apple "employees, contractors, or suppliers—do get caught, and they’re getting caught faster than ever."
The post also reportedly noted that, "in some cases," leakers "face jail time and massive fines for network intrusion and theft of trade secrets both classified as federal crimes," adding that, in 2017, "Apple caught 29 leakers, and of those, 12 were arrested."
It is not clear what precise charges those arrested face.
The Government Accountability Office has ruled the Environmental Protection Agency broke the law by spending $43,000 to install a soundproof phone booth for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. It’s the latest ethics scandal to hit Pruitt, who is also facing scrutiny over revelations the EPA has spent $3 million on his security detail. The EPA first claimed the spending was justified due to death threats against Pruitt, but then admitted, in response to a FOIA request, that there are no records of death threats against Pruitt.
Are Democrats finally learning to refuse to play the “pay-for” game?
In Bitcoin‘s early days, you could easily mine the cryptocurrency on your own PC. But now you need cheap electricity and a serious investment in specialized hardware to have any hope of making money.
It’s impossible to make money mining Bitcoin on your computer, even if you have a decent graphics processor (GPU) optimized for gaming. Anything that promises to mine Bitcoin with your CPU is a scam, as it won’t even be worth the cost of electricity.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation raiding a National Security Agency employee’s home revealing over 4 Million “dick pictures” is fake news. There is no truth to a report that a NSA employee’s home had been involved in a FBI raid with the government agency seizing over 4 million “dick pics” not belonging to him but rather other men on his computers. If the story sounds wild and crazy that is because it is just that as it is false.
Long before Donald Trump’s attorney paid Stormy Daniels or had his office raided by the FBI, a pattern was established: The associates of Michael Cohen have often been disciplined, disbarred, accused or convicted of crimes.
The covering up of a marble statue of a muscular, half-naked Greek warrior for a conference on Islam in Italy has drawn accusations of overly-zealous cultural censorship.
The reclining statue of Epaminondas, a fourth century BC general who fought for the liberation of the Greek city-state of Thebes, was draped in a red satin sheet to spare the sensibilities of Muslim delegates.
Conservative politicians seized on the case, claiming it was an example of Italy going too far to accommodate the feelings of immigrant communities.
Pavel Durov, the founder of the popular Telegram messaging service, has pledged millions of dollars to fund tools that would allow users to sidestep new Internet restrictions imposed by the Russian government.
Russian Internet providers began to block access to Telegram on Monday following a court decision last week ruling to block the app over its refusal to provide the security services with keys to decrypt private conversations. The number of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that have been blocked in Russia since the move has ballooned to 17 million by mid-Tuesday, from 2 million earlier in the day.
Saudi Arabia is lifting the ban on movies shown in theaters — but moviegoers can likely expect censored versions.
The showing of "Black Panther" breaks a 35-year prohibition of motion pictures in the country. And while "Black Panther" has already celebrated international success, the film may have fewer difficulties adapting to strict guidelines than other films, such as "Fifty Shades of Grey."
Last year, Saudi Arabia announced that movies shown there can't contradict "Sharia Laws and moral values in the Kingdom."
And while the country has yet to issue a public list of what exactly the film restrictions will look like, we can gain clues from looking at patterns in the region.
Censorship appears to be increasingly gripping Pakistani media as journalists, watchdogs, and media organizations blame attempts by the country’s powerful military to silence critics and prevent the coverage of protests that criticize its policies and actions.
This week, several leading newspapers either refused to publish articles on the Pashtuns’ protests or deleted stories they had already published. Organized under the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) or Pashtun Protection Movement, members of Pakistan’s second-largest ethnic group have rallied to demand security and rights.
This month, Geo TV -- Pakistan’s leading television news channel -- was prevented from reaching audiences through cable networks. On April 16, a provincial court ordered a government regulator to ensure that “anti-judiciary” speeches of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz were prevented from being aired on television. The two have campaigned against the military’s attempted to micromanage politics in the country.
Peking University, China’s top academic institution, admitted this month that 20 years ago a professor had been involved in “inappropriate student-teacher relations” with a female student. Former classmates of that student, Gao Yan, a star pupil studying Chinese literature, say she was raped and that the assault pushed her to commit suicide less than a year later.
The university said in a statement on 6 April that at the time they concluded the professor, Shen Yang, had “handled the situation very imprudently” and he was given an administrative warning and demerit in the summer of 1998, about four months after Gao’s suicide. Shen has denied the allegations by Gao’s classmates, calling them “total nonsense”.
For one student, that wasn’t enough. Deng Yuhao, an undergraduate at Peking University studying maths, posted a statement on WeChat on 7 April calling for students and teachers to pressure the university to release more details of their investigation. His article was viewed or shared more than a million times.
For many years now, various internet companies have released Transparency Reports. The practice was started by Google years back (oddly, Google itself fails me in finding its original trasnparency report). Soon many other internet companies followed suit, and, while it took them a while, the telcos eventually joined in as well.
I want to think about what we can learn from the forerunners of modern social networks—specifically about USENET, the proto-internet of the 1980s and 90s. (The same observations probably apply to BBSs, though I’m less familiar with them.) USENET was a decentralized and unmanaged system that allowed Unix users to exchange “posts” by sending them to hundreds of newsgroups. It started in the early 80s, peaked sometime around 1995, and arguably ended as tragedy (though it went out with a whimper, not a bang).
As a no-holds-barred Wild West sort of social network, USENET was filled with everything we rightly complain about today. It was easy to troll and be abusive; all too many participants did it for fun. Most groups were eventually flooded by spam, long before spam became a problem for email. Much of that spam distributed pornography or pirated software (“warez”). You could certainly find newsgroups in which to express your inner neo-Nazi or white supremacist self. Fake news? We had that; we had malicious answers to technical questions that would get new users to trash their systems. And yes, there were bots; that technology isn’t as new as we’d like to think.
But there was a big divide on USENET between moderated and unmoderated newsgroups. Posts to moderated newsgroups had to be approved by a human moderator before they were pushed to the rest of the network. Moderated groups were much less prone to abuse. They weren’t immune, certainly, but moderated groups remained virtual places where discussion was mostly civilized, and where you could get questions answered. Unmoderated newsgroups were always spam-filled and frequently abusive, and the alt.* newsgroups, which could be created by anyone, for any reason, matched anything we have now for bad behavior.
In the wake of a damning report by the DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG), Congress is asking questions about the FBI’s handling of the locked iPhone in the San Bernardino case and its repeated claims that widespread encryption is leading to a “Going Dark” problem. For years, DOJ and FBI officials have claimed that encryption is thwarting law enforcement and intelligence operations, pointing to large numbers of encrypted phones that the government allegedly cannot access as part of its investigations. In the San Bernardino case specifically, the FBI maintained that only Apple could assist with unlocking the shooter’s phone.
But the OIG report revealed that the Bureau had other resources at its disposal, and on Friday members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that included several questions to put the FBI’s talking points to the test. Not mincing words, committee members write that they have “concerns that the FBI has not been forthcoming about the extent of the ‘Going Dark’ problem.”
In court filings, testimony to Congress, and in public comments by then-FBI Director James Comey and others, the agency claimed that it had no possible way of accessing the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. But the letter, signed by 10 representatives from both parties, notes that the OIG report “undermines statements that the FBI made during the litigation and consistently since then, that only the device manufacturer could provide a solution.” The letter also echoes EFF’s concerns that the FBI saw the litigation as a test case: “Perhaps most disturbingly, statements made by the Chief of the Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit appear to indicate that the FBI was more interested in forcing Apple to comply than getting into the device.”
Last Monday, the BBFC released a public consultation calling for people’s views on the guidance they plan to issue to age verification providers.
Under the Digital Economy Act, websites will soon have to ensure that all UK users are above the age of 18 before allowing them to view pornographic content. As the age verification regulator, it is the BBFC’s job to dictate how these age verification systems should work.
We have written in the past about the dangers of age verification - highlighting the lack of a focus by the Government on the potential privacy concerns. That was back in 2016, and this consultation paper proves that not much has changed since then. The Government have proved their lack of interest in user privacy by appointing the BBFC an especially narrow role that allows them only to issue guidance on how tools should work practically, and does not allow them to outline any requirements for tools to meet certain privacy standards.
Late last week, two Black men in Philadelphia were doing what people do every day in this city — they waited in a coffee shop to meet an associate. While they were engaged in this mundane activity, they were removed from the Starbucks cafe at 18th and Spruce Streets in handcuffs by Philadelphia police officers.
This is another example of the kind of daily indignities that African-Americans face every day in Philadelphia and around the country. We can’t even wait in a coffee shop for a friend without the possibility that someone will call the police. Two days after the news broke of the incident, I’m angrier now than I was when I first heard about it.
Attorney-client privilege is indeed a serious thing. It is inherently woven into the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel. That right to counsel is a right to effective counsel. Effective counsel depends on candor by the client. That candor in turn depends on clients being confident that their communications seeking counsel will be confidential. If, however, a client has to fear the government obtaining those communications then their ability to speak openly with their lawyer will be chilled. But without that openness, their lawyers will not be able to effectively advocate for them. Thus the Sixth Amendment requires that attorney-client communications – those communications made in the furtherance of seeking legal counsel – be privileged from government (or other third party) view.
The problem is, it doesn't take a raid of a home or office to undermine the privilege. Bulk surveillance invades the sphere of privacy these lawyer-client communications depend on, and, worse, it does so indiscriminately. Whether it involves shunting a copy of all of AT&T's internet traffic to the NSA, or warrantlessly obtaining everyone's Verizon Wireless phone call records, while, sure, it catches records of plenty of communications made to non-lawyers (which itself is plenty troubling), it also inherently catches revealing information about communications made to and from lawyers and their clients. Meanwhile the seizures and searches of communications devices such as cell phones and laptops raises similar Constitutional problems. Doing so gives the government access to all records of all communications stored on these devices, including those privileged ones that should have been expressly kept from it.
Lots of lawyers are arguing over who should review the documents seized from Trump's lawyer. The decision will affect us all.
Since the search last week of the office, home, hotel room, and safe deposit box of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, lots of lawyers have been squaring off about an important legal issue that rarely gets banner-headline billing: How does the government, armed with a warrant for a criminal suspect’s digital files, go about sorting through those files in a way that ensures that constitutional and legal rights are not violated?
The risks of wrongful privacy invasions are too great to leave to the prosecutors when the government seizes digital data. Such files should be reviewed in the first instance by a neutral party, or “special master,” appointed by and answerable to the court, to ensure that the prosecutors and investigators get the evidence they are authorized to look for. They should not be allowed to roam widely through digital files that may contain terrabytes of private information.
Cohen has claimed that because he is an attorney — for Trump and others — some of the seized files may be entirely off-limits to the government because they are protected by the attorney–client privilege. President Trump’s lawyers have made similar arguments. Both have asked the court to allow their legal teams to have the first cut at the seized files in order to review them for privilege, and then to produce the remainder to the government or a special master. The government has countered that the court should allow a so-called “taint team,” made up of prosecutors who are not assigned to the case and who are technically walled off from those working on the case, to do the sorting. The court is now considering the parties’ arguments and is expected to rule quickly.
The Myanmar government has ordered the release of three dozen political prisoners, a welcome step that still leaves scores in detention or on trial on politically motivated charges, according to local monitors. Real reform in Myanmar will require stripping away the architecture of repression and ending prosecutions of the government’s critics.
Yesterday, newly elected President Win Myint followed the tradition of releasing prisoners on the first day of the Myanmar New Year by announcing the release of more than 8,500 prisoners, including 36 political prisoners. These releases are commonly referred to as “amnesties” but are, in reality, pardons, which do not absolve those released of their crimes or the legal consequences.
Elizabeth Pierce is accused of "forg[ing] guaranteed revenue contracts to fraudulently induce investors to invest more than $250 million in a fiber optic cable network in Alaska," according to a press release issued last week by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
As we've noted previously, Comcast has enjoyed a little more resilience to the cord cutting threat than satellite TV and telco TV providers--thanks to its growing monopoly over broadband. As DSL users frustrated by lagging telco upgrades switch to cable to get faster speeds, they're often forced to sign up for cable and TV bundles they may not want (since standalone broadband is often priced prohibitively by intent). Of course that doesn't mean these users or stick around (or that they even actively use the cable subscription they pay for), but it has helped Comcast all the same.
There are some indications that advantage isn't helping as much now that we're seeing so many streaming services come to market. At least one Wall Street research firm predicts that Comcast's cord cutting defections will double this year, though those totals still remain modest (400,000) compared to the company's total number of pay TV (22.4 million) and broadband (25.5 million) subscribers.
Abolition of Australia’s innovation patent system is still possible but potential options to improve it are also not ruled out
Following the Australia’s Productivity Commission’s inquiry into IP arrangements last year and the government’s consultation on innovation patents, IP Australia has decided to undertake further industry consultation targeted at better understanding the needs of innovative SMEs before deciding...
For many observers of US patent law the current Supreme Court term essentially boils down to one case. But as we wait for the ruling in Oil States on the constitutionality of inter partes review, the justices had another case to hear yesterday on the extraterritoriality of damages law. In Western Geco v Ion Geophysical Corp, the patent owner Western Geco, sued Ion in district court over components that Ion manufactured in the US but then shipped abroad for assembly.
Interim decisions are always full of interesting tidbits. Nothing was more juicy than last month's decision from Mr Justice Carr in Illumnia v Premaitha [2018] EWHC 615 (Pat) in which he dealt with two applications brought by the defendants for (i) strike out of Illumina’s claim on the basis of abuse of process, and (ii) summary judgment against Illumina on the basis of issue estoppel. Although shackled by time in reporting on the decision, the AmeriKat asked a new IP kitten, Constance Crawford (Bristows) to get her paws wet in her first Kat post.
With thousands of websites blocked all around the world on copyright grounds, pirates are continuing to innovate. The rise of apps designed to provide free content represents a fairly recent development but one the entertainment industries are keen to stem. The CEO of Warner Music Russia now says his company has infringing apps firmly on the anti-piracy agenda.
In some way, shape or form, Internet piracy has always been carried out through some kind of application. Whether that’s a peer-to-peer client utilizing BitTorrent or eD2K, or a Usenet or FTP tool taking things back to their roots, software has always played a crucial role.
With site-blocking now fully en vogue in much of the world as the preferred draconian solution to copyright infringement, one point we've made over and over again is that even this extreme measure has no hope of fully satisfying the entertainment industries. Once thought something of a nuclear option, the full censorship of websites will now serve as a mere stepping stone to the censorship of all kinds of other platforms that might sometimes be used for piracy. It was always going to be this way, from the very moment that world governments creaked open this door.
And it appears it isn't taking long for the entertainment industries to want to take that next step, either. As the debate about Kodi addons rages, and as governments begin to clamp down on the platform at the request of the entertainment industry, several industry players at an IP forum event in Russia have started announcing plans to push for app-blocking as the next step.
A 19-year-old Canadian is being criminally-charged for accessing a website. The Nova Scotian government's Freedom of Information portal (FOIPOP) served up documents it shouldn't have and now prosecutors are thinking about adding charges on top of the ten-year sentence the teen could already be facing. (via Databreaches.net)
Journalists first spotted the problem April 5th, when the FOI portal was taken offline. The Internal Services Minister, Patricia Arab, refused to provide details about the portal's sudden unavailability. It wasn't until the following week that the press was given more information and those affected notified.
For tech lawyers, one of the hottest questions this year is: can companies use the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)—an imprecise and outdated criminal anti-“hacking” statute intended to target computer break-ins—to block their competitors from accessing publicly available information on their websites? The answer to this question has wide-ranging implications for everyone: it could impact the public’s ability to meaningfully access publicly available information on the open web. This will impede investigative journalism and research. And in a world of algorithms and artificial intelligence, lack of access to data is a barrier to product innovation, and blocking access to data means blocking any chance for meaningful competition.
The CFAA was enacted in 1986, when there were only about 2,000 computers connected to the Internet. The law makes it a crime to access a computer connected to the Internet “without authorization” but fails to explain what this means. It was passed with the aim of outlawing computer break-ins, but has since metastasized in some jurisdictions into a tool to enforce computer use policies, like terms of service, which no one reads.
Efforts to use the CFAA to threaten competitors increased in 2016 following the Ninth Circuit’s poorly reasoned Facebook v. Power Ventures decision. The case involved a dispute between Facebook and a social media aggregator, which Facebook users had voluntarily signed up for. Facebook did not want its users engaging with this service, so it sent Power Ventures a cease and desist letter and tried to block Power Ventures’ IP address. The Ninth Circuit found that Power Ventures had violated the CFAA after continuing to provide its services after receipt of the cease and desist letter and having one of its IP address blocked.
The teen has been charged with "unauthorized use of a computer," which carries a possible 10-year prison sentence, for downloading approximately 7,000 freedom-of-information releases.