This has been a really interesting week with the release of Linux kernel 6.0, which you can already install on your Ubuntu machines. The GNU Linux-libre 6.0 kernel is also out, as expected, for those who want to build a 100% free computer.
On top of that, Canonical launched free Ubuntu Pro subscriptions for everyone, Collabora announced an open-source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA GPUs, and TUXEDO Computers released a live ISO image of its Ubuntu-based TUXEDO OS Linux distribution.
Linux is considered by many to be for pros and enthusiasts, but that’s not the case. There are plenty of Linux distros for beginners as well. Linux laptops can be great whether you’re new to the operating system or a power user.
In this article, we’re going to move away from Windows laptops and Apple MacBooks to make way for the best Linux laptops in 2022. Below, you’ll find a couple of Linux laptops you’ve never heard of as well as some famous options that have been specifically built for optimal Linux performance. Additionally, we’re including a couple of Chromebooks on this list since ChromeOS is based on Linux and that means pure Linux distros will also perform well on them.
A GUI is only a supplemental component of a Linux system, and is not essential. Many System Administrators will elect to keep their servers as command line only, as a GUI is completely unnecessary for running a plethora of different services. Everyday users, however, will usually want a GUI to perform basic functions like web browsing, watching videos, etc.
In this tutorial, we will discuss some of the pros and cons of using Linux without a GUI, and look at scenarios where this type of configuration would be advantageous. You will also learn how to disable the GUI on popular Linux distros like Ubuntu and Debian.
Linux User Space A podcast focused on connecting user space and community
Happy birthday, Free Software Foundation!
What the heck is going on? Fedora is dropping features, GNOME is getting Iced, and the mistake we'll never make again. We've got a lot to sort out.
AMD's recently updated P-state EPP driver for Linux-based computers delivers a good boost in CPU power efficiency. The company is utilizing the ACPI CPPC Energy Preference Performance information to control the CPU's power, making the processor more efficient and increasing performance.
Linux Kernel 6.0 has been released with new features and improvements over the previous version. Linux Kernel is the backbone of the Linux operating system, managing hardware resources and providing essential services. This latest release includes better support for newer hardware and security and stability enhancements. This kernel is a significant update to which users of Linux distributions should be sure to upgrade.
wayland-protocols 1.27 is now available.
This release includes two new staging protocols:
* Content type hint
This protocol enables clients to provide hints to the compositor about what kind of content it provides, allowing compositors to optionally adapt its behavior accordingly.
* Idle notify
This extension allows compositors to notify clients about when the user is idle.
Apart from these two new extensions, this release also brings the usual clarifications, cleanups and fixes. Enjoy!
Daniel Stone (1): xdg-shell: ack_configure must be strictly monotonic
Emmanuel Gil Peyrot (1): staging/content-type: Content type hint support
Isaac Freund (1): ext-session-lock: add note on client termination
Jonas Ãâ¦dahl (1): build: Bump version to 1.27
Simon Ser (3): xdg-shell: forbid loops in set_parent ext-idle-notify: new protocol build: alphabetically sort list of staging protocols
git tag: 1.27
Intel released the latest Libva update (version 2.16.0) to improve the VA-API library in Linux. The update will improve graphics hardware acceleration seen in multimedia software. The Libva integration is also commonly used in many drivers within Linux.
A lot of people may not think about Linux when video editing comes to mind, but make no mistake, there are a myriad of fine choices available when it comes to video editing software on a Linux system. There are varying levels of software, depending on whether you want to do in depth video editing or just quick edits on the fly. In some cases, you may find it useful to have one of each.
In this tutorial, we have compiled a list of our favorite video editing software for Linux. Check out our picks below to find one that suits you best for your video editing needs.
If you have tried to run the sudo command on your Linux system and are greeted with a sudo command not found error, we have the solution for you. This error most commonly occurs on minimal installs, such as in Docker or on a VPS (virtual private server), and can happen on any Linux distro, like Ubuntu Linux and Debian . In this tutorial, we will show you how to resolve the error and give you the ability to run sudo commands without error.
The journalctl command can be used to view all of the logs collected by systemd on a Linux system. This includes logs related to the system’s kernel, initrd, various services and applications, as well as systemd itself. The journalctl command makes querying all of these logs pretty painless, since systemd gathers and stores all these various logs in a central location for administrators to view.
In this tutorial, you will see how to use the journalctl command on Linux. This will include frequently used options, as well as information about how to interpret system logs, since they can be rather cryptic to the uninitiated. Check some of the examples below to grasp the command, and try out some of the command options on your own system while you follow along.
The purpose of this tutorial is to list all disks, partitions, and their sizes on a Linux system. This will help you identify what hardware storage you have available, how the disks are partitioned, and what sizes each of them are. You will learn a command line and GUI method below.
When we create a new user on a Linux operating system, at that time user creation some set of privileges are granted to each user.
Graphite is an open-source tool used to track and graph the performance of computer systems.
SysPass is an open-source password manager written in PHP with AES-256 CTR encryption.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Ventoy on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Ventoy is an open-source tool to create a bootable USB drive. One of the interesting features of this tool is that it let you directly boot from an ISO file, with no extraction is needed. It supports Legacy + UEFI mode.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Ventoy bootable apps on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.
Tutorial to learn the steps involve in how to install the Terminator Terminal emulator app on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish Linux.
Terminator is an open-source terminal multiplexer written in Python that allows you to use multiple terminals within a single window and switch between them using keyboard shortcuts. This is similar to the tiling mode of window managers. So you can keep several shells open at the same time without tabs or other terminal windows.
Originally developed for GNOME, the program can now be used with any desktop environment. In contrast to programs such as Screen or tmux, however, an XServer (graphical desktop) is explicitly required.
If you are looking for a great Terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop environment, the Terminator Terminal emulator is the best one for you. Among other features of the Terminator emulator, Terminator solves the problem associated with opening multiple tabs in a single Terminal window. You can seamlessly arrange the Terminal tabs with Terminator.
Terminator basically comes with a lot of customization options, which can help you arrange the Terminals in a grid-shaped arrangement, besides support for multiple tabs. With the number of key bindings, you can carry out the most common activities, and you can easily drag and drop tabs for the purpose of ordering them and enjoy a streamlined workflow. Terminator has support typing the same text in multiple Terminal instances at the same time, which can also be useful in certain situations.
Here's a recap of some of the articles our developers created for you in September 2022, from 101-level intros to deep dives.
So, you managed to install Google Chrome browser on your Ubuntu system. And now you wonder how to keep the browser updated.
On Windows and macOS, when there is an update available on Chrome, you are notified in the browser itself and you can hit the update option from the browser.
Things are different in Linux. You don’t update Chrome from the browser. You update it with the system updates.
Yes. When there is a new update available on Chrome, Ubuntu notifies you via the system updater tool.
If you used the certbot utility to obtain your free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt, but now wish to delete it, there’s a very simple way to do it. Follow along with us as we show you how to delete a site’s certificate data with certbot on Linux.
Brasero is a free and open-source disc-burning program for the GNOME desktop environment. Developed by The GNOME Project, it has been included as a default application in many Linux distributions. Brasero is designed to be simple and easy to use, and it offers a range of features that make it well-suited for use cases such as creating audio CDs and data backup. For instance, Brasero can automatically detect the optimum writing speed for a disc and perform on-the-fly disc finalization. In addition, Brasero can burn both ISO image files and physical discs, making it a versatile tool for anyone who needs to burn optical media.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install Brasero on Linux Mint 21 LTS release series disc-burning utility software using the APT package manager.
With all the talk of big tech companies selling user data and government surveillance, it’s no wonder that more and more people are looking for ways to protect their privacy online. Your web browser is one of the essential tools for protecting your privacy. While many browsers on the market claim to be privacy-focused, few can rival LibreWolf. LibreWolf is a free, open-source browser designed from the ground up with privacy in mind. Its features make it easy to browse the web securely and anonymously, including built-in ad and tracker blockers, DNS over HTTPS, and a VPN.
What’s more, LibreWolf is based on the same code as Firefox, so you can rest assured that it’s a reliable and stable browser. If you’re serious about protecting your privacy online, LibreWolf is your browser.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install LibreWolf Browser on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS release series. The tutorial will describe importing the official repository and gpg key and updating and removing the browser by utilizing the command line terminal.
Opera is a freeware, cross-platform chromium-based browser developed by Opera Software. The browser features a built-in ad blocker, a VPN, and a social network aggregator. Opera has been downloaded more than 350 million times and is available in more than 90 languages. The browser was first released in 1996 and is based on Chromium’s open-source project. Opera also offers a mobile app for Android and iOS. Opera has been known for its speed, security, and reliability. The browser is also known for its innovative features, such as Opera Turbo, which compresses data to improve speeds, and Opera Unite, which allows users to share files and run applications without installing them on their computers. Opera also has an extensive collection of extensions and themes. In 2015, Opera was acquired by a consortium of Chinese companies.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Opera Browser on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS series that includes the stable, beta, and development (nightly) branch with steps to install, update and remove the browser using the command line terminal.
There’s been a few big developments related to the Steam Deck in the past week, so let’s get to it! The first one is about the availability of the device.
[...]
This will make the scalpers cry, but it seems like Valve has now increased their production to a point where they can now accept orders and ship directly without entering a queue system (note: this does not apply to Asia for some reason, where I am still waiting for Komodo to give any kind of useful info about the order since August 4th 2022). This also invalidates a bunch of predictions we have made back in early 2022: many of us expected the device to still remain largely limited in supply by the end of the year, and it looks like the situation has changed much faster than we had anticipated. In other news, there’s unsubtantiated numbers circulating around (in a recent KDE presentation related to the Steam Deck, the number of 1 million of Decks sold was given, without any specific source) that seem to indicate that the production is accelerating.
This is a lightly edited version of my GUADEC 2022 talk, given at c-base in Berlin on July 21, 2022. Part 1 briefly summarizes the horrors we’re likely to face as a result of the climate crisis, and why civil resistance is our best bet to still avoid some of the worst-case scenarios. Trigger Warning: Very depressing facts about climate and societal collapse.
While I think it’s critical to use the next few years to try and avert the worst effects of this crisis, I believe we also need to think ahead and consider potential failure scenarios.
What would it mean if we fail to force our governments to enact the necessary drastic climate action, both for society at large but also very concretely for us as free software developers? In other words: What does collapse mean for GNOME?
In researching the subject I discovered that there’s actually a discipline studying questions like this, called “Collapsology”.
In this video, I am going to show an overview of Nitrux 2.4.1 and some of the applications pre-installed.
Great news, Fedora Friends! I am excited to announce that we have completed our search for a new Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator (FCAIC). He joins the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) team at Red Hat to work with the Fedora Community today. Please give a warm welcome to Justin W. Flory (he/him).
If you’re a contributor to Fedora, you may have already worked with Justin on a variety of teams and projects. Although I couldn’t possibly list them all in one post, Justin’s Fedora contribution highlights include co-founding CommOps, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (D.E.I.) Team, and Mindshare Committee. More contribution highlights include former editor-in-chief of the Fedora Magazine and Community Blog, former Council Member, leading the Marketing team, contributing as a packager, and traveling to events and conferences worldwide as a Fedora Ambassador. He has attended many Flocks: organizing workshops, presenting sessions, and coordinating informal socials like the international candy swap. Most recently Justin presented “5 Lessons Learned from 5 years of Fedora’s D.E.I. Events” at Nest with Fedora 2022.
Learn about Kubernetes operators and when you should use them—and when you shouldn't.
Remember when mobile phone service providers owned your mobile phone number? If you wanted to switch to another provider, you had to change your number and make sure all of your contacts got the new one (assuming you were brave enough to deal with the headache).
There’s a similar situation today with cloud technologies. Should you place your bets on one cloud provider and keep everything in-house – or pursue a hybrid cloud strategy and avoid getting stuck?
We took that question to Red Hat’s former bankers, who identified five critical advantages of adopting a hybrid cloud model.
 While it might seem like mobile phones are special devices, both in their ease of use and in their ubiquity in the modern culture, they are essentially nothing more than small form-factor computers with an extra radio and a few specific pieces of software to run. In theory, as long as you can find that software (and you pay for a service plan of some sort) you can get any computer to work as a phone. So naturally, the Raspberry Pi was turned into one.
[asherdundas], the phone’s creator, actually found a prior build based around the Raspberry Pi before starting this one. The problem was that it was built nearly a decade ago, and hadn’t been updated since. This build brings some modernization to the antiquated Pi phone, and starts with a 3D printed case. It also houses a touchscreen and a GSM antenna to connect to the cell network. With some other odds and ends, like a speaker and microphone, plus a battery and the software to tie it all together, a modern functional Raspberry Pi phone was created, with some extra details available on the project page.
From entertainment to security, automation is now pervasive. Intelligent devices are transforming our homes while enriching our lives, making them more efficient, productive and environmentally friendly.
Most embedded devices run Linux, and their number is poised to keep growing.
[....]
At Canonical, we know we stand on the shoulders of giants in building Ubuntu. We are now raising the bar of what is possible in the world of free software while delivering it with phenomenal security.
With Ubuntu Core, we built the lightest and most secure version of Ubuntu for IoT devices. As Ubuntu Core is the premier embedded Linux choice by innovators, we are committed to keeping it secure by automatically delivering OTA updates on day zero.
Imagine the possibilities generated by integrating advanced AI and powerful sensors into one of the most iconic outdoors jackets with a heritage that’s more than 50 years old. You could start sensing and interacting with the surroundings like never before.
This is what we created here at Arduino: enclosing the Nicla Sense ME, the new sensory brain from Arduino, into the K-Way jacket, powered with Edge Impulse AI, to sense the external world and enable a new way to conceive smart clothing.
LILYGO T-RGB is a wireless 2.1-inch round color touchscreen display based on ESP32-S3R8 dual-core microcontroller with WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, 8MB PSRAM, and 16MB flash storage.
The device also includes a microSD card socket for data storage and a Grove I2C connector for expansion and supports LiPo battery power. The company also says it can be charged through USB, so the board must include a battery charging circuit contrary to some other boards from LILYGO.
Samsung has confirmed the first third-party smart TV makers to ship with its Tizen operating system (OS), with several manufacturers preparing to launch Tizen-powered TVs this year across Europe and Australasia.
Tizen, for the uninitiated, is a Linux-based OS hosted by the Linux Foundation for more than a decade, though Samsung has been the primary developer and driving force behind the project, using it across myriad devices, including smartwatches, kitchen appliances, cameras, smartphones and TVs.
Although Samsung has essentially abandoned Tizen in smartphones and smart watches, TVs have remained fertile ground for Tizen to flourish, chiefly due to the fact that Samsung is the biggest selling TV maker globally. But while recent figures from Dataxis show that Tizen’s market share in 2020 was roughly one-third in terms of installation base, the number has been slowly creeping downward with the likes of Android TV and Roku edging upward.
If you are an old school system user who prefer using Terminal apps over GUI programs, then you will enjoy Baku.
Baku is a terminal application for to browse your and organize your bookmarks and minimal personal web for advanced users.
It helps you import your bookmarks from your web browsers, organize them, easily browse them and search with a rich advanced search tool that offers a full-text search.
As Baku imports your bookmarks, it automatically fetches the title, description, and other tags from the live version online, and add them to the bookmarks in your local database.
[...]
Baku is a free and open-source project (FLOSS) that is released under the GPL-3.0 License.
You see it everyday in technical forums--people asking questions in a stupid way.
We’re starting to upload videos from our recent LibreOffice Conference 2022!
Paying for full HD streaming to Netflix and yet it doesn’t play in 1080p?
It’s because, for some stupid reasons best known to streaming services like Netflix, they do not stream full HD content in the Firefox browser. Not in Linux, not in Windows, or any other operating system.
You can check it by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D while playing Netflix in Firefox but NOT in full-screen mode.
Dear all,
The last few months (since the release of Gnuastro 0.18) have been very productive in Gnuastro (16866 lines added and 4864 lines removed, in 71 commits) with some pretty exciting, and long-awaited new features now available (for the full list, see [1] below).
- Warp: align images with the WCS (usually RA/Dec), or another image (with any rotation/projection/distortion), while accounting for all WCSLIB-recognized distortions and projections (for the full list of projection and distortion models see [1] below). In other words, we are finally free from the chains of the TPV and can directly align images with SIP or other distortions in creating aligned coadds! Tip: if you get unreasonable results, upgrade to WCSLIB 7.12.
- ConvertType: draw vector graphics markers based on input catalogs in the output PDFs (very good for producing high-quality figures in your papers).
- Statistics: least squares fitting (currently in 1D).
In fact, Pedram (author of the newly added Warp feature above) has recorded a video highlighing the first two points in Warp and ConvertType, please watch it to get a hands-on feeling of the power of these new capabilities using SDSS and J-PLUS images:
https://peertube.stream/w/uq7SBDYZS1HRtJwCkbcDsz
If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to get in touch with Pedram and the rest of the users and developers in our Matrix chat:
https://openastronomy.element.io/#/room/#gnuastro:openastronomy.org
As always, complete tutorials and documentation for all these features is also available. Currently the documentation is only in 'info' format, installed with Gnuastro (the webpage will be updated with version 0.19). A PDF copy of the latest documentation is available here: https://akhlaghi.org/gnuastro.pdf
We are therefore almost ready for the next official release of Gnuastro; hence the reason for this alpha release. It would be great if you could try building and using this release to help us fix any important bugs, crashes, compiler warnings and etc. Your feedback will allow Gnuastro 0.19 to be smoothly usable for all of us :-).
Here is the compressed source and the GPG detached signature for this release. To uncompress Lzip tarballs, see [2]. To check the validity of the tarballs using the GPG detached signature (*.sig) see [3]:
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.18.71-c982.tar.lz https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.18.71-c982.tar.lz.sig
Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums (other ways to check if the tarball you download is what we distributed). Just note that the SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to (see [4] on how to generate it). For the list of software used to bootstrap this tarball, see [5].
67df5849a8717da55b73982eaa72082fc9769296 gnuastro-0.18.71-c982.tar.lz Qw8bU2sZDVR28q8ZaNppFKJUQ0Dgqa106nzUIq25y0c gnuastro-0.18.71-c982.tar.lz
For their direct contribution to this version's source code, I am very grateful to Pedram Ashofteh-Ardakani (6 commits), Raul Infante-Sainz (6), Sepideh Eskandarlou (5), Jash Shah (3), Marjan Akbari (2), Elham Saremi (1) and Faezeh Bijarchian (1). I am also grateful to (in alphabetical order) Marjan Akbari, Faezeh Bijarchian, Sepideh Eskandarlou, Giulia Golini, Raul Infante-Sainz, Teet Kuutma and Richard Stallman for their good suggestions or reported bugs that have been implemented in this release.
If any of Gnuastro's programs or libraries are useful in your work, please cite _and_ acknowledge them. For citation and acknowledgment guidelines, run the relevant programs with a `--cite' option (it can be different for different programs, so run it for all the programs you use). Citations _and_ acknowledgments are vital for the continued work on Gnuastro, so please don't forget to support us by doing so.
Best wishes, Mohammad
-- Staff Researcher Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Plaza San Juan 1, Planta 2, Teruel 44001, Spain
EasyOS 4.4.1 has Limine version 3.20220928.0; however, Reynaldo reported that the image file (that you would write to a USB-stick) reports that it is version 3.25...
Php (recursive acronym for Hypertext preprocessor) is a general-purpose scripted language that one can use to manipulate existing systems or create one from scratch. If you are still in the learning phase, working on different Php projects is the best way to master the language. It can also help you get a taste of how real programming projects work.
Most such Php project ideas require a good grasp of fundamental Php concepts. That said, you can’t really start your career without any prior experience working on projects. But we know that starting a project or choosing which to work on can be confusing. So, if you’re stuck in that place right now, keep reading to explore with us.
After the talk, Franz Thoma approached me and told me a story of how we was once implementing the game Minesweeper in Haskell, and in particular the part of the logic where, after the user has uncovered a field, the game would automatically uncover all fields that are next to a “neutral” field, i.e. one with zero adjacent bombs. He was using a comonadic data structure, which makes a “context-dependent parallel computation” such as uncovering one field quite natural, and was hoping that using a suitable fix-point operator, he can elegantly obtain not just the next step, but directly the result of recursively uncovering all these fields. But, much to his disappointment, that did not work out: Due to the recursion inherent in that definition, a knot-tying fixed-point operator will lead to a cyclic definition.
Not even a month after the release of Apple’s new iPhone 14 series, the phones are already making headlines for a feature that works a little too well. The feature in the new phones is meant to detect car crashes and alert emergency workers. While it works as intended, the feature also triggers false reports by notifying 9-1-1 that iPhone 14 owners have been in crashes while riding roller coasters.
It appears to be raining data breaches at properties belonging to Singapore's multinational telecommunications conglomerate Singtel, with the telco announcing on Monday that there had been an intrusion into its Australia-based IT services provider Dialog.
Security sources have told iTWire that the attack on Dialog was carried out using the Agenda ransomware that runs only on Windows systems.
This is the second breach in recent days to affect Singtel's properties. On 22 September, Optus, Australia's second biggest telco which is also owned by the Singapore firm, announced a massive breach that was initially said to affect nearly 10 million customers.
On Monday morning, data stolen from Singtel on 20 January last year, during an attack through a file-sharing system from Accellion that was close to end-of-life at the time, surfaced on a forum on the clear Web.
The web browser has long been the security sinkhole of enterprise infrastructure.
So I was about to toss this in the trash, but it had a word document attached. Thankfully I'm not sitting on a Windows machine and can just preview the document via Google without a fear of infecting myself.
This is a story of one piece of what is probably a complex employment scam. Basically, real programmers are having their resumes copied and co-opted by scammers, who apply for jobs (or, I suppose, get recruited from various job sites), then hire other people with Western looks and language skills are to impersonate those first people on Zoom job interviews.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (knot-resolver and libpgjava), Fedora (booth, dotnet3.1, expat, nheko, php-twig, php-twig2, php-twig3, poppler, python-joblib, and seamonkey), Mageia (colord, dbus, enlightenment, kitty, libvncserver, php, python3, and unbound), Slackware (libksba), SUSE (cyrus-sasl, ImageMagick, and xmlgraphics-commons), and Ubuntu (nginx and thunderbird).
Oxeye researchers discovered a severe vm2 vulnerability (CVE-2022-36067) that has received the maximum CVSS score of 10.0. Called SandBreak, this new vulnerability requires R&D leaders, AppSec engineers, and security professionals to ensure they immediately patch the vm2 sandbox if they use it in their applications.
Surveillance technology is weaponry - it targets, tracks, invades, and decimates - and its unbridled use is a far-reaching, destructive violation of human rights. It is an assault rifle in the sustained global offensive on civic space, and we need a global moratorium on its export, sale, transfer, servicing, and use.
When news broke this month of three journalists and human rights activists in Mexico targeted once again by invasive Pegasus spyware from the NSO Group, it was not entirely shocking. This was yet another group of people attacked for fighting for basic human rights. However, the fact that President Obrador had publicly assured the world that his administration was no longer spying on activists, and more specifically that “there is no longer any relationship with the company [Pegasus],” makes this case particularly enraging.
The recent Mexico revelations by digital rights organisation Red en los Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) and The Citizen Lab is far from an isolated case. The relentless unearthing of spyware abuse across the globe — from Hungary and Poland to Thailand, El Salvador to Jordan — drives home the point that while this industry remains unregulated, no entity can fully be trusted to employ this technology while upholding human rights under international law.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order to implement a European Union-United States data transfer framework announced in March that adopts new American intelligence gathering privacy safeguards.
The deal seeks to end the limbo in which thousands of companies found themselves after Europe's top court threw out two previous pacts due to concerns about U.S. surveillance.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters the executive order "is the culmination of our joint effort to restore trust and stability to transatlantic data flows" and "will ensure the privacy of EU personal data."
Access Now fully supports members of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee’s recommendations to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, which urged “clear and determined action” against commercial spyware. This action is a step towards accountability for the purveyors of surveillance technology, and a moratorium limiting the sale, transfer, and use of these invasive tools.
In their call, the lawmakers cited Access Now and partners’ letter, which outlines the reported abuses of Pegasus spyware over the past year. Through a letter, the House Intelligence Committee pushed for continuous updates to the Commerce Department’s Entity List — which puts restrictions on foreign companies that threaten U.S. interests — close monitoring of potential abuses to ensure spyware companies are not getting around the restrictions, and work with other states to ban foreign commercial spyware.
Costa Rica remains the first and only country to support Access Now’s call for a moratorium — the U.S. and other countries must join the wave of pressure against this dangerous and unchecked industry.
The Technology for Democracy Cohort of the U.S. Summit for Democracy (S4D), co-led by Access Now, the UK, and Estonia, officially launched today, Monday, October 10, at the Tallinn Digital Summit. The international multi-stakeholder Cohort is composed of governments, civil society actors, and the private sector. The overarching goal of the Cohort, across three strands of work, is to enhance connectivity and democratic safeguards around the world.
“Access Now, along with the UK and Estonia, is incredibly proud to be spearheading the Technology for Democracy Cohort of the U.S. Summit for Democracy,” said Jennifer Brody, U.S. Policy and Advocacy Manager at Access Now. “We are committed to defending and extending human rights in the digital age, and will work diligently to convene civil society from around the world to bring about real change, from combating internet shutdowns to advancing algorithmic transparency. Our priority is centering the lived experience of marginalized groups and ensuring civil society voices are meaningfully incorporated, especially from the global majority.”
Protests against the Iranian government following the death of Mahsa Amini are now in their third week. The 22-year-old woman died in custody three days after being arrested by Iran’s so-called morality police. She was accused of wearing “inappropriate attire.”
After much anticipation and delay, an independent consultancy finally released its report on the conduct of Meta — the social media giant that runs Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — during the events of May 2021 in Israel-Palestine.
Following a bout of censorship during that violent month — which witnessed a mass Palestinian uprising, Israeli repression, and a war on Gaza — Meta commissioned Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) to conduct a review into its moderation policies for Arabic and Hebrew language content across all three platforms, and to produce a human rights due diligence report.
Delicious (stylized after its domain del.icio.us) was a social bookmarking website. It might not sound all that interesting, but it was one of the best websites in the early 2000s. Here’s why I miss this defunct website so much.
Delicious let users bookmark their favorite links and annotate them with comments and tags. You would primarily save links you valued enough to remember. The site’s true value was all the organizational work and link comments.
As a society, most of our problems, our lack of progress and our tendency to self-destruction seems to lie in the fact that we always submit to institutions, we play nice with more-than-human administrations, we accept being bullied, humiliated. All of that because we believe we don’t have the choice. Because we are convinced that institutions are always stronger than us.
I love Common Lisp. I wish I had taken the plunge when I was a younger. I've been a CL user for about 10 years, and here is what I think about my experience.
Emacs is the biggest problem, if you don't already know it. I didn't, and the combined cognitive overload made the curve hard.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.