The most reliable hosting company site in March 2022 was Aruba, which has now topped the table for four months in a row. Aruba provides hosting, cloud and digital signature services, fibre optic internet, digital preservation, and more. The company has data centres across Europe, in the UK, Germany, Czechia, Poland, Italy and France.
In this video, I am going to show an overview of deepin 20.5 and some of the applications pre-installed.
This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re taking you on a behind the scenes tour of our studio setups. All the equipment we use each week to produce this show…DL which is quite unique being that it’s a live video and audio podcast. We’re also going to discuss the amazing open-source software that powers it all. Then we’re going to talk about the upcoming Thunderbird email client release. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.
Hello and welcome to Episode #462 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts take on two topics. The first is the art and science of the hamfest, exploring what happens at hamfests, what you can do, how you can participate and how you can benefit. Then we discuss future changes to the format and schedule of Linux in the Ham Shack to keep everyone informed and explain how these updates will make the show better. Thanks for listening and have a great week.
A varied selection of Discoveries including Telegraf, writing tools, a book about networking, and fixing a Mac. Plus your feedback about Matrix bridges, virtualisation, Pocket alternatives, the BBC, game development, and more.
How we nearly crashed our Matrix server; what we did wrong and how we’re fixing it.
Plus an update on elementary OS, GNOME’s next chapter, and we kick off the NixOS Challenge.
Chris's thoughts on Linux's NVIDIA conundrum, Elon's takeover of Twitter, MailChimp's insider hack, and the Google Drones taking off in Texas.
Coming one and a half months after fwupd 1.7.6, which added support for Star Labs’ Star Lite Mk III laptop, the fwupd 1.7.7 release is here with support for even more of Star Labs’ StarLite Linux-powered laptops, though no specific model is mentioned in the release notes at this time, so if it works with your device you’re in luck.
 The LXD team is proud to announce the release of LXD 5.0 LTS!
LXD is a system container and virtual machine manager which provides a cloud-like user experience. It can work on any regular Linux system from a simple laptop all the way to a large cluster of servers.
As a Long Term Support release, LXD 5.0 will be getting upstream bugfix and security support until June 2027. The first two years will include frequent bugfix releases and the remaining three years will be limited to security fixes.
Choosing the best remote desktop for Linux will enable you to access computers and mobile devices remotely from your Linux computer. But there are far fewer options available for Linux users than for Windows or Mac owners, and these tend to be much more difficult to use.
This can make it hard to select the right option, particularly if you don’t want too steep of a learning curve. Many Linux remote desktops are open-source and versatile, but they also require significant tech skills to install and use.
To help you find your way through the confusing jargon surrounding Linux remote desktops and select the right option for your business, we’ve put together this guide. In it, we take a close look at the leading Linux remote desktop programs available today.
Want to migrate over from Snaps to Flatpaks on your Linux machine? Well, unsnap is a new tool in the early stages that will help you do just that. Developed by Alan Pope, who previously worked for Canonical and was an advocate for Snap packages, it's certainly an eyebrow raising move.
The idea is simple: to allow you to quickly and easily migrate from Snap to Flatpak applications. Done over a two-stage process, it allows you to "view and/or edit the scripts prior to execution to validate or tweak them".
If you’ve added Linux support to your Chromebook, chances are pretty good it’s not using the latest version of Debian (which is version 11.3, aka “Bullseye”). Given that there are several important security and bug fixes to this release, you shouldn’t think twice about upgrading it on your Chromebook.
In my previous article, I described what KernelCare is. In this article, I’m going to tell you how to install, uninstall, clear the KernelCare cache, and other important information regarding KernelCare. In case you’re yet to know about the product, here’s a short recap. KernelCare provides automated security updates to the Linux kernel. It offers patches and error fixes for various Linux kernels.
So, if you are looking for anything similar, you have landed upon the right page. Let’s begin without further ado.
Ubuntu 22.04 has a new in-shell screenshot UI for taking screenshots and recording desktop. The old default screenshot app (GNOME Screenshot) is no longer available out-of-the-box.
For those somehow sticking to the old screenshot tool, here’s how to install it back and configure keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu 22.04.
Manjaro is a Linux-based distro built upon the Arch Linux OS with a core focus on convenience and an easy UI experience. Like every other open-source Linux-based distro, Manjaro is also free and comes with great support from the community.
However, unlike popular options like Ubuntu, Manjaro is developed in a rolling release method. It is an excellent option for new Linux users as it offers a flexible desktop experience and is relatively user-friendly.
One of the best things about most Linux-based distros is that they come with many different editions, each boasting a separate GUI for various users. Manjaro is no exception as it comes in three different versions with other desktop environments, namely KDE Plasma, Xfce and GNOME. You can check them out from the official page by clicking here.
One of the things I like most about Linux is that we have many applications to do a task. And I like this because each one has something to contribute. An example of this are the monitoring tools. One alternative to monitor a server is to install Monitorix. Today, we will show you how to do it on a Debian 11 system.
It can be a bit frustrating when hardware doesn't work on your Linux install, especially WiFi. Sometimes, WiFi works out of the box - and other times, not so much. In this video, Jay from LearnLinuxTV will let you know why this is sometimes a problem, as well as some of the things you can do about it.
Network Interface allows connecting your device with some internet connection. In Linux, the network interface can be either physical or virtual. The physical network interface helps in connecting with various computers or connecting with the internet. On the other hand, the virtual interface usually connects with one device.
The network interface must be enabled and functioning properly to either connect with the internet or locally. To have a functional network interface, one must keep an eye on the status of the network interface. This article provides the possible ways to get the status of the network interface on CentOS 8.
Learn how to use the host_list and Nmap plugins to build inventory files for your Ansible playbooks.
GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) comprises compilers for well-known programming languages such as C, C++, Go, Fortran, Objective-C, and many more. The GCC is completely free and provides cross-platform support for Linux, Windows, and multiple BSD-based systems.
Apart from this, one can suggest or make enhancements to GCC and you can utilize the enhancements done by other developers/users as well. Moreover, the GCC can be used to make executable files for other systems which makes it the best choice for embedded systems (as they don’t have any compiler).
Keeping in view the importance of GCC, this guide demonstrates the step-by-step procedure to install GCC on Arch Linux.
The RC stands for “run commands” and usually the rc phenomenon is practiced by system administrators to run a command at system boot. The “rc.local” is a script that contains the commands to be exercised at system startup.
In Linux, the system administrators may wish to conduct a system test before startup. In such a situation, the admin must put the relevant commands inside the rc.local file to make their execution possible at system startup.
If you are curious about using the rc-local file on CentOS 8; you are in the right place.
Q4OS is a new Linux distribution that’s based on Debian; a common base that’s shared with other distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
It’s aimed at users who just want a simple, stable, easy to use Linux operating system that they can conveniently run on an aging computer so they may surf the web, check emails, watch videos, and even play games while offering them a good level of security and privacy.
Curl, short for Client URL, is a handy and flexible command-line tool used to transfer data between client systems. It supports a myriad of protocols such as FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTP, LDAP, POP3, and SCP just to mention a few.
By default, Proxmox uses noVNC client to access the console of a Virtual machine. The noVNC client is just enough if you want to connect to a Proxmox VM without any additional tools. However, a few things don't seem to work well with noVNC.
One of the major problem is I can't hear any sound from the VM. Also, when I play a YouTube video, it is lagging and stuttering and out of sync with the audio.
After searching through Proxmox forums, many users have suggested that SPICE client helped them to solved such issues. So I gave it a try. To my surprise, SPICE works great.
UE5 will empower you to realize next-generation real-time 3D content and experiences with greater freedom, fidelity, and flexibility than ever before.
After being available in Early Access since May 2021 and Preview since February 2022, Epic Games has today released Unreal Engine 5 which will no doubt go on to power some of the biggest upcoming releases.
"With this release, we aim to empower both large and small teams to really push the boundaries of what’s possible, visually and interactively. UE5 will enable you to realize next-generation real-time 3D content and experiences with greater freedom, fidelity, and flexibility than ever before." — Epic Games.
Epic say that developers will be able to continue using "workflows supported in UE 4.27" but get access to the redesigned Unreal Editor, better performance, improved path tracing and the list goes on.
Something happened to me recently while playing the Steam Deck that I felt the need to share with you.
The Steam Deck may be a modern device but it's been giving me a very heavy dose of nostalgia recently. No, it's not because it's a great machine for emulation, which I've done very little of so far because so many amazing modern games work but for something totally different.
Here's something it reminds me of: I grew up with the likes of the Game Boy. In fact, I originally had the Game Boy Pocket, the one you could see through the case and get a look at the insides. I used to stay up far too late playing Pokémon Yellow, with one of those terrible bulky light and magnifier attachments which had quite a bit of weight to it with the batteries inside. To me, the Steam Deck is bringing back memories of that. As weird as it might be to say from a modern device, the injection of nostalgia I've been getting has been quite wonderful.
 The popular terminal emulator found on almost all Xfce-powered distributions, Xfce Terminal has just released its first major upgrade under a new maintainer (and a new versioning scheme).
Let us take a look at some highlights of the release.
Igor Zakharov was leading the development from 2016 until 2020. Unfortunately, it was left unmaintained in 2021 when the new maintainer, Sergios Anestis Kefalidis (also a developer of Thunar file manager), took over the responsibility.
The developers of the Linux-based NitruxOS (NXOS) have been working on a slick new convergent desktop environment called Maui Shell designed to look good and function well on just about any device no matter the screen size, which makes it an interesting option for phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers – or devices that are designed to work as one or more of those, like a phone that can be used as a desktop when an external display is connected.
An update to Q4OS 4 Gemini LTS has been released. The new 4.8 series receives the recent Debian Bullseye 11.3 update, updated Debian stable kernel and important security and bug fixes. This update brings along significant Q4OS specific improvements, fixes and a cumulative upgrade covering all the changes from the previous stable Gemini release. Among other improvements, localization and languages support API library for the Desktop profiler as well as for other Q4OS tools has been rewritten and vastly improved, Setup tool gets polished and installation process has been more secured.
We welcome everyone to download installation media images from the Downloads section of the Q4OS website. We are currently pushing all the changes mentioned above into the Q4OS repositories, automatic update process will take care about to update computers for current users.
 People browsing through openSUSE’s websites may spot something new on get.opensuse.org.
Leap Micro, which is currently showing the 5.2 beta version, is for containerized and virtualized workloads. It is immutable and ideal for host-containers and described as an ultra-reliable, lightweight operating system that experts can use for compute deployments. The community version of Leap Micro is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro and leverages the enterprise hardened security of twins SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Leap, which merges this to a modern, immutable, developer-friendly OS platform.
Leap Micro has several use cases for edge, embedded/IoT deployments and more. Leap Micro is well suited for decentralized computing environments, microservices, distributed computing projects and more. The release will help developers and IT professionals to build and scale systems for uses in aerospace, telecommunications, automotive, defense, healthcare, robotics, blockchain and more. Leap Micro provides automated administration and patching.
In January, we published “Anaconda is getting a new suit” to let you know that we’re looking to modernize and improve Anaconda’s user experience. Before starting the redesign work for the Anaconda installer, the team reviewed user feedback and usability study data that we’ve gathered over the years.
[...]
We sorted the feedback into high-level groupings. One of the larger groupings focused on the current installer navigation model, often referred to as “hub and spoke.” In a “hub and spoke” model, the summary screen, known as a “hub”, is the central point. Individual configuration screens are known as “spokes”. The phrase is commonly used today for airport connections because passengers often have to change flights at a central airport—or hub—instead of flying directly between two airports.
Due out next month, Tails 5.0 will be a major update to this GNU/Linux distribution for anonymous surfing of the Internet and the first version to be based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” operating system series.
We plan to release Tails 5.0 on May 3 or May 31. It will be the first version of Tails based on Debian 11 (Bullseye). It brings new versions of most of the software included in Tails and some important usability improvements.
The 22.04 beta release allows Ubuntu Mate users to test the system with added features but a reduced installation image size.
Linux on the desktop continues to grow in popularity. Although it doesn't enjoy the consumer market share of Android, Windows, iOS, or macOS, the open-source operating system on the server end is massively popular within enterprise businesses. But little by little, Linux continues climbing up the market share ladder. One reason for this is Ubuntu.
For those that don't know, Ubuntu has been, for years, one of the top 10 most popular Linux desktop distributions on the market. One of the many reasons for this is due to remarkable user-friendliness. Ubuntu is simple to install, use, and maintain, supports a wide range of hardware, just works, and (of course) is free to anyone.
In response to the Russian invasion and acts of war in Ukraine, Canonical has sent notice of termination of support, professional services, and channel partnerships with Russian enterprises. We will not resume such engagements while broad and democratically instituted sanctions on Russia remain in place.
We will not restrict access to security patches for Ubuntu users in Russia – free software platforms like Ubuntu, VPN technologies, and Tor, are important for those who seek news and dialogue outside state control. We will direct any Russian subscription income for such maintenance to Ukrainian humanitarian causes.
Last week, we discovered that our two main websites had been supressed from the Google search engine for more than one year. Although this doesn’t seem to hurt us a lot (we get thousands links from external websites), and although it’s quite fun to extend our “geGooglisation” to being totally out from Google Search, we realize that, besides the misconfiguration of some of our web servers, we have to care about our “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization) at some point.
What is also important is to be transparent about our websites URLs, so that people can put the correct links to them. This is really the most helpful practise that brings new users and let them discover what we do.
This week, we’re pleased to spotlight another OSI sponsor, Google, and learn why open source is important to their organization.
Warning to all Ubuntu users. Starting with Ubuntu 22.04, Firefox users will be forced to migrate to the "Snap" version of Firefox. This will be done automatically. Ubuntu doesn’t provide a native Firefox anymore. You had probably been warned with Ubuntu 21.10.
You may observe that Firefox is slower to start, that it doesn’t follow your theme anymore and other problems. But the main issue is that Snap Firefox is, by design, unable to speak to other software. In Belgium, this breaks the official Belgian id authentication.
It should be highlighted that Belgian officials are doing a really good job at providing the official electronic ID tool for Linux (they have a Debian/Ubuntu repository) and they are well aware of the issue.

What’s new? Well, a lots of folks, including Mozilla are hyped about Firefox 99’s support for GTK overlay scrollbars. These slimmer page sliders hide when not in use but appear on scroll and increase in size when you interact with them.
Thing is they aren’t enabled by default in the stable version, just the beta and nightly builds. So to enjoy GTK overlay scrollbars in Firefox 99 on your system you need to dive into the browser’s about:config page and set the widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled setting to true...
We are very proud to announce that the GNU Health project has been declared a Digital Public Good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA). GNU Solidario received the announcement this Sunday, April 3rd 2022.
The Digital Public Goods Alliance is a multi-stakeholder initiative endorsed by the United Nations Secretary-General, working to accelerate the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals in low-and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods.
Many open source users love a good Bash alias and are usually happy to show off a particularly robust .bashrc file when given the chance. If you're a frequent user of Git, you might benefit from a few Git aliases mixed in with your other Bash aliases. Alternately, you can create aliases specific to Git with this git config command. This example sets the git co command to git checkout.
Today, Cython celebrates its 20th anniversary!
On April 4th, 2002, Greg Ewing published the first release of Pyrex 0.1.
Already at the time, it was invented and designed as a compiler that extended the Python language with C data types to build extension modules for CPython. A design that survived the last 20 years, and that made Pyrex, and then Cython, a major corner stone of the Python data ecosystem. And way beyond that.
Now, on April 4th, 2022, its heir Cython is still very much alive and serves easily hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide, day to day.
I'm very grateful for Greg's ingenious invention at the time. Let's look back at how we got to where we are today.
On his blog, Stefan Behnel writes about the 20th anniversary of Cython, which is a compiler for Python extensions written in C, for wrapping C libraries in order to provide Python bindings for them, and for embedding Python into other applications. It is used by NumPy, scikit-learn (and other scikit-* extensions), pandas, and more.
A new version 0.0.8 of RcppSpdlog is now on CRAN. RcppSpdlog bundles spdlog, a wonderful header-only C++ logging library with all the bells and whistles you would want that was written by Gabi Melman, and also includes fmt by Victor Zverovich.
Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 972 other packages on CRAN, downloaded over 24 million times (per the partial logs from the cloud mirrors of CRAN), and the CSDA paper (preprint / vignette) by Conrad and myself has been cited 465 times according to Google Scholar.
A new release 0.2.17 of RInside arrived on CRAN and in Debian today. This is the first release in two years since the 0.2.16 release. RInside provides a set of convenience classes which facilitate embedding of R inside of C++ applications and programs, using the classes and functions provided by Rcpp.
Rust 1.0 was released in 2015. Since that time, we've seen Rust grow from a small language used for a handful of prominent projects into a mainstay in use at virtually every major tech company.
As we work towards Rust 2024, it's natural to ask what's next for the language. This roadmap provides insight into that question by describing what we, as members of the lang team with input from other Rust teams, would like to prioritize.
I’m considered to be a server guy. I had access to some really awesome server machines. Still, when computers come up in discussions, we are almost exclusively talk about workstations. Even if servers are an important part of my life, that’s “just” work. I loved the SGI workstations I had access to during my university years. Many of my friends still occasionally boot their 30 years old Amiga boxes.
[...]
I started my IT life with x86: an XT then 286, 486, and so on. I used some really powerful RS/6000 machines remotely at Dartmouth College. I learned basics of scripting on them, how to exit from vi, and few more things. But it was just a bit of curiosity, not any kind of attachment. I also had access to Macs there, but I never really liked it, as MacOS felt a kind of dumb, and does so ever since.
Fast forward a few years. Soon after I started university I became part of the student team at the faculty IT department. When a couple of SGI workstations arrived there, I got user access, and soon admin access as well. This is where I first used Netscape Navigator, ran Java applications, and enjoyed running a GUI on a UNIX machine.
The Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA) of the European Parliament voted on its resolution on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age on March 22nd, and underlined the importance of Free Software for AI with a broad majority. We now ask EU co-legislators to take this position into account and to include provisions and guidelines on Free Software in the upcoming legislation.
Public authorities using AI systems should make them publicly available. Public research inventing AI systems should make them publicly available. Transparency in AI technologies is necessary to test them, evaluate their results, and improve them. The FSFE is following closely the legislative process and analysed how AI can remain verifiable and trustworthy as well as lead to further innovation with Free Software.
Open Source Software (OSS) is a proven model that delivers tangible benefits to businesses, including improved time-to-market, reduced costs, and increased flexibility. OSS is pervasive in the technology landscape and beyond it, with adoption across multiple industries. In a 2022 survey by Red Hat, 95 percent of IT leaders said they are using open source in their IT infrastructure, which will only increase.
Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (polkit, postgresql, and zlib), openSUSE (389-ds and opera), Red Hat (kpatch-patch), SUSE (389-ds and util-linux), and Ubuntu (waitress).
Linux v5.10 was released in December, 2020. Here’s my summary of various security things that I found interesting:
seccomp user_notif file descriptor injection Sargun Dhillon added the ability for SECCOMP_RET_USER_NOTIF filters to inject file descriptors into the target process using SECCOMP_IOCTL_NOTIF_ADDFD. This lets container managers fully emulate syscalls like open() and connect(), where an actual file descriptor is expected to be available after a successful syscall. In the process I fixed a couple bugs and refactored the file descriptor receiving code.
Kees Cook catches up with the security-related changes in the 5.10 kernel, released at the end of 2020.
As I mentioned last time, bearer tokens are not super compatible with a model in which every access is verified to ensure it's coming from a trusted device. Let's talk about that in a bit more detail.
Brian Krebs has a detailed post about hackers using fake police data requests to trick companies into handing over data.
[...]
The “credentials” are even more insecure than we could have imagined: access to an email address. And the data, of course, isn’t very secure. But imagine how this kind of thing could be abused with a law enforcement encryption backdoor.
From Gmail and Google Photos to Google searches and other online activities, the tech giant tracks all your movements. Almost anything connected with Google (hardware and software) gathers your personal information. However, the tech giant insists it doesn’t spy on you with malicious intent. Instead, your collected details are used to enhance the performance of its services and tools.
Access Now welcomes the new lawsuit filed today, April 5, in France against the Israeli spyware company NSO Group for facilitating the unlawful surveillance of French-Palestinian human rights defender, Salah Hammouri, through the use of its spyware Pegasus.
The legal action was submitted jointly by the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), the Human Rights League (LDH), and Salah Hammouri.
[...]
“Litigation remains an important tool in the fight against spyware abuses,” said Natalia Krapiva, Tech-Legal Counsel at Access Now. “Spyware companies like NSO Group and states that use their technologies should know: you will be held accountable.”
Access Now reiterates its call to the European Union to urgently sanction NSO Group and take all appropriate action to prohibit the sale, transfer, and use of NSO Group’s surveillance technologies until adequate human rights safeguards are in place.
Jordanian human rights defenders (HRDs) work in a generally hostile environment. Since the Arab Spring in 2011, grassroots protests have emerged, reflecting growing discontent with government corruption and wealth inequality, among other issues. In response, authorities have often arrested activists and curtailed freedoms.
Jordan saw a wave of protests in 2011, as part of the Arab Spring. Protests were driven partly by the Hirak, groups of youth activists not connected with traditional centres of political power in Jordan. Protests flared up again in June 2018, galvanised by a government plan to increase taxes and reduce subsidies, as required by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). More than 30 trade unions called a general strike, and protesters occupied the Fourth Circle area of Amman near the Prime Minister’s office. In response, the government temporarily withdrew the bill, and re-introduced it in September 2018 with minor changes. When the bill’s final text was published in the Official Gazette in December 2018, activists once again held protests in the Fourth Circle that persisted into 2019. In March 2019, Jordanian authorities began a wave of arrests against Hirak members, charging them with “insulting the King” and “undermining the political regime.”
Authoritarians love smart cities projects.
Vladimir Putin is no exception. Moscow has been on a mission to become a smart city for the last decade. Russia’s capital has around 200,000 surveillance cameras. That’s more cameras per square mile than in Beijing or New York. In October 2021, the Moscow Metro launched a facial recognition payment system. Branded as a quick, contactless way of paying ride fares, it was also used for surveillance. Since September 2020, almost 3,000 criminals have been caught in the Moscow Metro because of the system, according to city authorities. But the extreme crackdown on dissent triggered by the war in Ukraine makes Moscow’s technological advances terrifying for anyone who opposes the government.
Since the start of war in Ukraine, speaking out against the government has become incredibly risky for the Russians. Over 15,000 people have been detained for protesting and anyone who does as little as sharing a social media post that contradicts the official position risks a 15-year prison sentence.
The stories coming out of Bucha, a small city near Kyiv that was under Russian occupation since early March, are horrific. Witnesses have described scenes of torture, summary executions and mass graves. Journalists who accompanied Ukrainian troops moving into the city have reported seeing civilian corpses along the road, some with their hands tied behind their backs, others with a gun blow to the head.
This adds to the growing pile of evidence that Russian troops have perpetrated war crimes in Ukraine. On April 4, President Biden called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be brought to trial. The European Union created a Joint Investigation Team with Ukraine that will collect and process evidence that can be brought before the International Criminal Court.
In the last couple of years I've mostly seen talk about how the Internet hasn't fulfilled its promise of making the world better. Centralised social media, algorithmic amplification, the control of military drones or state surveillance, proof or work cryptocurrencies.
Ukraine's ability to keep its internet up and running has allowed its citizens to stay connected to the world despite Russia's invasion.
Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has launched cyberattacks and missiles that have knocked out large portions of the country's internet, but it's failed to push Ukrainians completely offline thanks to a robust telecommunications system.
"Unlike a much smaller country that may rely on just a couple of connections out to the outside world, there is a rich fiber optic backbone connecting the cities of Ukraine," said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik. "If one line gets cut, there's other paths to get around it."
"We haven't seen very long-term outages for the larger providers," said Amanda Meng, research scientist at Georgia Tech. "For some smaller operators, we do see disconnections that we've seen for weeks."
U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen just secured a political agreement to keep data flowing between the European Union and the United States.
But with EU and U.S. negotiators still hammering out details on the new transatlantic data pact — and legal challenges expected once the deal is completed — policymakers are already scrambling to shore up the free flow of data across the Western world.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group of mostly rich countries, may have an answer.
It sounds like the setup to a bad joke, but the wildly popular music streaming service in fact collects, stores, and shares reams of seemingly mundane user data, adding up to an intrusion that's much more than just the sum of its parts. While Spotify customers are busy rocking out, the company has its metaphorical hands full profiting off the data that rocking generates. And it generates a surprising amount. What Spotify does with that data, and why that should concern you, are complex questions involving third-party advertisers, densely written terms of service, and inferences drawn from every piece of music or podcast you've ever listened to on the streaming platform. But according to privacy experts, one aspect of this digital mess is absolutely straightforward: Spotify users should pay attention to how their data is used, and take the available steps to limit that use whenever possible.
